Tag: Onions

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Not Very Barbecue Ribs

The word “barbecue” makes me salivate.  When it’s done properly, I can’t think of anything I’d rather eat.  Even some of the mediocre barbecue is worth eating.  So, when we drive past a barbecue joint and the smell of wood smoke starts to permeate the car, I get cravings. Smoke and meat and rubs and sauce all combine to create something bigger than all the parts.Succulent Barbecue Ribs

When we travel to areas known for their barbecue, we seek it out.  I would eat it for every meal if my family didn’t insist on eating other things.  Every now and then, when we travel south, I will reluctantly put the barbecue cravings on hold in lieu of fried chicken.  Just one of the sacrifices I make to keep my family happy because I’m just that kind of mom.

By now you will have figured out that I was pretty excited when I saw a Barbecued Ribs recipe among my collection.  It’s handwritten which means that it’s a secret family recipe, right?  Something really special handed down from generation to generation.  I studied the ingredients carefully.  There weren’t a lot of ingredients in it that I recognized from other barbecue sauces I’d made, but maybe this was an unexpected hidden gem.  Perhaps it was a diamond in the rough.

Now how do I put this?  Have you ever seen an incomplete diamond?  One that hasn’t been exposed to enough pressure for long enough?  It’s a lump of coal, right?  Coal is great, it’s useful, it’s functional, it gives people jobs.  But it’s not a diamond.  Not even one in the rough.

The ribs are good and porky.  They have a great flavor and I would love this sauce on chicken or even on a pork chop.  But when I think about ribs, I want something that is messy, tangy, maybe kind of spicy.  I love mustard based sauce almost as much as I love something tomato based.  I know that the rub makes more of a difference to the meat than the sauce, but I still love a good barbecue sauce.  This sauce, while good, doesn’t meet my requirements for barbecue sauce.  In fact, it resembles Spanferkel more than it does barbecue.

The other problem I have with the sauce is that it claims to make 2 cups, but then calls for 2 1/2 cups of water.  therefore, this means that the sauce needs to be cooked down which I should’ve noticed.  Also, salt and pepper your meat.  Do not make this recipe and only use the teaspoon of salt and 1/2 teaspoon of pepper the sauce requires.  You will not be happy.  Worcestershire on its own isn’t salty enough to make up for not properly seasoning your meat before browning it.Succulent Barbecued ribsThey can’t all be winners and even the most perfect diamond has a flaw.  These ribs are not worth pulling off the road for on family vacation, although it’s still better than that barbecue restaurant in Alabama where the waitress assured us that their soggy fried green tomatoes were great.  They weren’t, but they were probably the best thing on the menu.

The Recipe:

Barbecued Ribs

Allow 3/4 pound per person.  Brown on both sides.
Wrap in foil with sauce.  Cook in oven or on charcoal 1 1/2 hours.  Turning package every 15 minutes.

Sauce:
1/4 cup oil
A clove minced garlic
A big onion minced
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp mustard
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp pepper
1 TB Worcestershire sauce
2 TB vinegar
1 TB horseradish
1 TB fresh herbs
2 1/2 cups water

Saute onions and garlic until soft, add remaining ingredient and reduce until it measures 2 cups.

For more great pork recipes try Pork Chops Jimmy, Pork Chops and Rice, and Pork Meatballs.

If you want to see what else I’m doing in my kitchen follow me on Facebook.

 

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Oven Stew

It has been so cold!  My house is having trouble keeping up with the temperatures, or at least the room with the thermostat is.  Let me just take a second to complain about flawed logic with thermostat planning.  If you put a thermostat in the room that contains the fireplace, that room will get nice and toasty and your thermostat will say that the temperature of the house is comfortable.  Your body will probably feel otherwise if you take a step outside of the room that is being heated by the fireplace.  Likewise, if your thermostat is in a room with a ton of possibly leaky windows, the temperature of the room registers as colder than it should be.  Then your furnace runs continuously and the rest of the house is warmer than you’d like, even though the thermostat is not showing that.  On a related note, I think I need to reconsider the placement of my thermostat.DSCN3443

These are the sorts of days where hibernation makes sense.  Of course there are a thousand projects I could be doing, but it just seems like a lot of effort to get moving.  It’s the sort of day where I just want dinner to cook itself without a lot of intervention from me.  As I was pouring over recipes, I found a recipe for Oven Stew.  It is the perfect recipe for frigid, lazy days.  DSCN3450I made this recipe while my son had a friend over. His friend saw the onion on my cutting board and said, “Is that an onion?  I like onions.”

“Like raw onions?” I asked.

“Any kind of onion.” He stated.

“Like on something…or….?” I questioned, confused.

“Like anything.  Chopped up in pieces.  Can I have some?”

“Like for a snack?”  I queried, still trying to figure this kid out.

“Yeah, like 50 of them.”

“Um…I’m cutting up cheese and sausage for you guys.”  During this whole thing, I was trying to decide if this kid was for real.  We’ve all heard about those old men that will eat onions like apples after they finish their braunschweiger and Limburger sandwiches, but a kid?!?

He is an awesome kid, even if I was a little surprised by his request.

I ended up not giving them onions as a snack and just put the onion into my oven stew.  When his mom came to pick him up later, she commented on how good the house smelled. “It’s my great-grandma’s recipe.” I replied.  (But then again, it seems like they all are these days.)DSCN3451

This recipe does not say to add water to the pan.  Do it anyway.  It’s not stew without the water.  It also doesn’t call for tossing the beef cubes with flour and browning them before adding them to the pan.  Do that also.  It just makes for deeper flavors in the stew.

Have you ever had oven stew?  It is incredible and easy.  Once you are done putting everything into the pot, you are done.  You can just walk away.  That makes this an ideal recipe for the crockpot if the temperature outside isn’t so cold that you want your oven on all day to try to warm up the house.

We ate ours with homemade bread.  But you do you and eat it with whatever you want.

Oven Stew

Oven Stew

1 1/2 pounds of beef cut into cubes
1 cup chopped celery
1 can of tomatoes
1 TB sugar
6 carrots, cut
2 TB minute tapioca
1 large onion, sliced
4 medium potatoes, quartered
Salt and pepper to taste

Mix ingredients well in pan or kettle with tight fitting cover.  Bake at 250°.  Do not disturb while baking.

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Sauerkraut In A Hurry

I have this friend that has an amazing German heritage.  Her family speaks German and sometimes when trying to talk “secretly” in front of people they will speak in German.  Her grandma forgets that I understand German also, which is why I found out that her grandma lost her teeth on the way to the birthday party.  “Ich habe meine Zahne verloren!” She exclaimed upon entering.  I tried to stifle my giggle, but tend to have a very expressive face.

I wish I had made this dish when she was coming over, but instead I made it when my brother was here.  We also have amazing German heritage, but our celebration of the culture has a lot more to do with sausages and beer than it does language.  (That might also be the Wisconsin background.  It’s pretty indistinguishable, really.)  Regardless, it’s an excuse we didn’t even need to eat brats and sauerkraut.

You are going to have to excuse these terrible pictures.  They are from the time where I was still learning how to use the basics of my camera.

DSCN2627

The sauerkraut here is not something you do in a hurry, regardless of what the recipe says.  To get it to the point where I felt it was done, it took at least a half hour, maybe longer.  Maybe their idea of a hurry was different than mine?  I mean, they are making Jell-O salads that take all day.  These are not things that a working mom can do on a limited schedule.

Ok, so taste.  Have you had a French choucroute garnie? Because it’s like that.  I’m sure that doesn’t help a lot of you.  Here’s what Wikipedia says about it.  If you don’t feel like clicking over, it’s sauerkraut, sausages, potatoes, onions, and beer all cooked together for a nice long time and best served with mustard (not the yellow stuff, the good stuff).  The long cooking time mellows the bite of the sauerkraut and everything sort of melts into each other.  This has amazing similarities to that dish, but much quicker.  It’s kind of like sauerkraut for beginners.

When you have time to make this “in a hurry” dish, you may want to put on your leiderhosen, put on some polka, make some spaetzle, and indulge.  Even if it wasn’t my brother’s favorite, I thought it was pretty darn good.Sauerkraut in A Hurry

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Pork Chops and Rice

Pork Chops and Rice

Sickness has invaded our house.  It came in with a slight wheeze that turned into a cough.  A slight sniffle, a small sneeze.  The weather is going to turn again, maybe for real this time?  We want to be outside absorbing the last little bits of vitamin D, finishing up the yard work that we wanted to get done before it got too cold.  Instead we are just doing small bits of things in between dealing with assorted viruses.  We could all use some comfort food.  DSCN2402

I pulled this recipe out from the archives.  I originally made it in the summer when my tomatoes and peppers were fresh from the garden.  There is nothing quite like summer tomatoes.  The woodchuck that lives under our garage agrees.  Tiko has an entrance to his den in the garden.  We put a fence around the garden hoping to keep rabbits and assorted other animals out, but there is no stopping a woodchuck.  The garden had been a dog kennel.  Apparently even though I can still smell dog in the area, it doesn’t bother Tiko.

 

Tiko also likes apples and will sit up and eat an apple just like a human.

At some point this summer, we realized that Tiko also has a girlfriend.  We named her Tika.  I have these images of Tiko and Tika hanging out and Tika saying things like “I don’t like that wall there.  I want more of an open concept.” and Tiko obligingly digs another hole.  “You know, our living space is just not big enough, we need a bonus room.”  Tiko sighs and gets back to work.  DSCN2600We need to relocate Tiko and Tika before we have a bunch of little Tikis running around our yard digging up holes that I will probably break my ankle in.

 

When you make these pork chops, make sure the pan is covered tightly when you put it in the oven.  The steam from all the juice and liquid will cook the rice.  If for some reason, you are nervous about the rice not cooking all the way, just put it on the bottom of the pan to absorb all the yumminess from the pork and veggies.

 

 

This dish is so basic and easy that you’ll be able to think of a thousand ways to change it up to fit whatever you are craving.  If summer veggies are no longer available, think about using fall fruits with the onion.  In the dead of winter, you can use some mushrooms and greens.  Hate pork?  Use chicken breast.  Have 6 people coming for dinner?  Slice another onion and another tomato.  Serving just you?  You can still make this.  It beats anything from the cookbook “Microwave Cooking For One”.

 

DSCN2409Share this recipe with your kids.  Have them make it.  This is the sort of food that you want them to be able to cook so that you don’t have to worry when they are on their own.

 

Pork Chops and Rice

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Tomato-Apple Chutney

I struggle with preserving.  I am a process person and need to be completely organized when I begin.  This was a struggle.  I often psych myself out of beginning because the workflow seems intimidating.

Canning is really not that hard.  It helps to have everything in place and set up before you begin, but the process is not overly complicated.  This is a place, however, where my training in project management and creating work flows helps.  I am able to visualize everything that needs to happen including timelines so that I don’t get in over my head.DSCN2741However, in the middle of chopping everything, I realized I only had half the amount of celery that I needed.  And then comes the struggle.  I want to be true to the recipes, but there have to be some cases where substitutions are allowed.  For this one, I split the difference.  I went to the store and got the celery, but I did not go to Penzey’s to get cayenne pepper and used Berbere seasoning instead.

Berbere is an Ethiopian spice blend, the main ingredient of which is cayenne pepper.  When I consulted mom, she reassured me that great-grandma probably left it out all together.  Whatever.  We are talking about 1/4 tsp in a vat of tomatoes, apples, celery, and onions.

And since we are doing true confessions here, I used fresh tomatoes instead of canned.  I put a garden where the dog kennel used to be.  I grew a lot of weeds where I didn’t put down landscaping fabric, but I also managed to get some usable veggies out the situation including tomatoes.DSCN2747This recipe seems exotic for 1950’s Iowa, but I can see where it would be a good use for those vegetables that are still hanging on when the apples are starting to ripen.

Chutney, though, is one of those things that I sometimes have a hard time using up.  It’s a relish and goes with roasted meats.  Mix it into mayo and put on sandwiches.  Combine some with veggies to make them more exciting.  I have no better ideas to use it and jars of it to use.  Please help.  dscn2751.jpgThis is a good basic chutney.  Not something you’d find in an Indian restaurant.  It might have a little too much celery for my taste, but it’s good.  It’s that nice mix of sweet and tart and spicy that chutney should be.

The Recipe:

Tomato Apple Chutney

If you like this recipe, check out Apple Marmalade, Perfect Picnic Baked Beans, and Stroganoff Burgers

Pinnable Image Tomato Apple Chutney

 

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Egg Foo Yung

Egg Foo Yung

There are times where I fail at a meal completely.  It doesn’t happen often, but it does occasionally happen.  Since John can remember, there have been only handful of meals that we absolutely could not eat.  This was one of them.  It wasn’t something like that episode of Chopped where the contestant mistook salt for sugar.  The dish didn’t burn.  The eggs weren’t spoiled. It was nothing that I did wrong.  It was the recipe.  Maybe cooking Chinese food created by Iowa farmers with German heritage was a bad idea.  Maybe my expectations were too high.  I do remember thinking while looking at the ingredients “how bad can this be?”.  DSCN2449

We spent the meal creating alternative names for this dish.  Egg Foo Yuck, Egg Foo Old, Egg What the F!&@.  It was horrible.  It tasted like the Rock River smelled a few years ago when the carp all got herpes and died.  The river was a stream of dead fish, the fish got caught up in the trees on the side of the river.  The smell was horrific.

The Egg Foo Yung was horror movie worthy.  It was like dirty socks mixed with dead fish.  The texture was silken tofu-y.

It was like something that Gordon Ramsey pulls out of a drain on one of those episodes of Kitchen Nightmares. You know what I’m talking about.

In case you are wondering, cans of chop suey vegetables are really just cans of bean shoots with 3 pieces of carrot and one piece of celery.  It is gross on so many levels.  It looks disgusting, it smells disgusting, there is nothing good I can say about it.  I’m hoping to not find more recipes that call for this ingredient.

Canned shrimp is probably fine in other uses, but even so it didn’t ruin the dish any worse than anything else.  I really can’t think of much that would make this dish worse except a can of tuna…and serving it with soy sauce like the recipe suggested.  Don’t do that.  It makes it worse.   DSCN2451

If you have decided that my description is not scary enough and you are going to insist on making this, it probably takes 20 minutes on low and covered to set the egg, but please, do not make it.  You will regret wasting the ingredients, you will think of all the delicious things you could’ve made with those eggs.

Thank goodness this was not the only thing we had for dinner.  The roasted beets with blueberry vanilla goat cheese and the zucchini and tomatoes cooked with Penzey’s Fox Point Seasoning were delicious.  And the other dish I made to go with it was something I thought was called Japanese Chicken, but that’s the next post.