Baked Bacon

Do you like bacon.  I love bacon.  To my kosher friends, I sincerely apologize.  Bacon is my weakness (among other things).

Two things I don't love about bacon:
1. How long it takes to cook a package.  You only have so much room in that little pan.
2. Cleaning up.  The spatter gets into the darnedest of places.

There was a time when I thought I'd just have to suffer through.  But no more!  I learned I can bake bacon in my oven!  Okay, so maybe its only a miraculous discovery to me.  But if you didn't know about this method, I want to encourage you to eat more bacon try it out.

1 package of bacon
1 cookie sheet
tin foil
cooling racks (optional)

1. Set your oven to 400 degrees and line a cookie sheet with tin foil.  If you have some that are safe for the oven, place one or more cooling racks on the cookie sheet.  You can stagger and layer them so that they cover the whole sheet.
2. Lay the bacon on the cooling racks or on the tin foil.  Put them in the oven for 20-30 minutes.  I recommend checking them after 20 minutes and every 5 minutes after until they reach desired crispness.

That's all there is to it.  Tasty, crisp bacon with no real clean up.  Be warned that this method can generate a bit of smoke when you open your oven to check the bacon.  It's a wise idea to turn on the vent hood or crack a window.

For the truly frugal and time conscious, you can make your own pre-cooked bacon by freezing them once they're cooked.  It has a tendency to stick together when chilled, so you might want to ether pop the whole sheet in the freezer or separate the slices with paper towels/wax paper/parchment paper.

Brined Pork Chops

I am not a big fan of pork.  It's far to easy to over cook, and it instantly becomes dry and tasteless.  Boring, bland, blah.  All that changed when I found a simple pork brine recipe.  Suddenly my pork chops were moist and perfectly seasoned every time.  Huzzah!

I don't recommend trying to brine just two pork chops every time you want to use them except if you want to have a special treat.  It's much more practical to mass-brine a bunch of chops and then freeze them for the future.  I buy a big pack of them every few months and just get them all in one go in a gallon sized zip top bag.  Just freeze them in smaller bags with enough chops for one meal.

Here's how I do it (which differs from the original method only slightly):

3/4 cup coarse kosher salt
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 cup boiling water
1 gallon cold water
1 tablespoon pepper


Boil one cup of water in a mid sized sauce pan.  Toss in any additional flavorings you like.  I use ginger, 2-3 cloves of garlic, and a small handful of peppercorns.  Thyme sprigs, juniper berries, mustard seed, cloves, cinnamon sticks, star anise, hot pepper flakes, or anything that would be good with pork would work too.  Add two more cups of cold water and dissolve salt and sugar in the water.


Place the pork chops in a gallon sized zip-top bag that is sitting in a large bowl.  The bowl is intended to catch any leaks or spills, so make sure it is fairly good sized.  Pour the brine mixture onto the pork chops and then fill the bag the rest of the way with more cold water.  


Seal the bag and let it sit in the refrigerator for 12-24 hrs.  Its easiest to just leave it overnight.  Drain the bag and rinse the chops before cooking or freezing.


Do not salt your chops before cooking!  You'll find they have plenty of flavor on their own.  

It might sound like a lot of effort, but the taste makes it completely worth the time.  They're perfectly seasoned and slightly sweet.  I've found them much, much harder to over cook too.  No more bland pork chops!

Tears of the Onion

I'm a wuss. No doubt about it. Every time I cut an onion, I end up with tears pouring down my face. It's so bad, I've considered buying goggles just to use in my kitchen. There's a tiny food processor on my counter that primarily chops onions for me. Urgh.

Of course, the internet offers a ton of suggestions. Hold your breath. Put your tongue against the roof of your mouth and breath through your mouth. Submerge it in water for a few hours before cutting. What a hassle. Finally, though, I seem to have found something that works pretty well and is dead simple.

Oddly enough, its from Gordon Ramsey. He's not the only one to suggest it, mind you. Cutting down through the root seems to be the trick. I'd always been a doofus and hacked the root right off, releasing the tear gas contained inside. Silly me.

Homemade Chicken Stock (the easy way)

I put off making my own chicken stock for years. While it isn't difficult, having to baby sit a giant pot of liquid for 8-12 hours never really struck me as being entertaining. Then I fell across an amazing suggestion: make it in a crock pot.

What?!

Yes. It was such a simple idea I could've kicked myself.

Here's the plan:

Grab yourself a gallon sized plastic baggie and start filling it with scraps. Any chicken bones, carrot tops, celery ends, onion roots, tops from leeks, mushroom stems... the list goes on. Stash the bag in one of those haunted, vacant corners of your freezer. Any time you have new scraps, toss 'em in. Don't throw out your raw chicken skin and bones after you de-skin and de-bone some chicken thighs, folks! It goes in the bag. Please don't throw out the stems from your parsley. The bag calls to you. The sorry, stripped carcass of your store bought rotisserie chicken? Goes in the bag. All of it. ALL OF IT.

When the bag is full, its time to have some fun. Depending on the types of scraps you collected and the way you like to flavor your chicken stock, you might want to pick up one or two things at the grocery store on your weekly fresh produce trip. I like to hack up and freeze hunks of ginger, for instance. I'll toss a piece in along with four or five (or most of a head...) of garlic.

Empty the whole bag of scraps right into your crock pot. Just dump it right in. Don't be shy. No, there's no time to thaw! Just do it. Pitch in a bit of salt (or a small handful if you use kosher or other coarse salts). Next, stick it right under your tap and fill it up till either everything is covered by about a half to one inch of water or until its half an inch under the rim of your crock.

Now for the complicated part. No, I'm lying. Nothing about this is complicated. Put your crock in the crockpot base, plug it in, and turn it on low. Put the cover on and go to sleep, go to the movies, watch a Firefly marathon, or anything you like. Leave it alone for about 10-12 hours. It can even go a bit longer if you lose track of time.

Be warned: The smell will be nearly enough to cause insanity.

Once its all done, turn it off and let the liquid cool. You'll want to strain out the bones and veggie bits since they've given their all for your taste buds. I use a colander on top of my soup pot with a re-usable coffee filter inside. The coffee filter does a stellar job of straining out the sludge that can sometimes accumulate in the stock. Other folks use fancier things like cheese cloth and chinoise, but I'm all about the cheap. Walmart and 4.93 hooked me up with a pretty gold mesh coffee filter.

After its all strained, give it a taste. It'll probably taste a bit watery, but a few pinches of salt will cure that. OR you could pop the pot on the stove and reduce it down some and make a glace. Sounds fancy.

If you're going for a normal stock, though, toss it in the fridge either overnight or through the day. The fat will rise to the top as it cools and you can skim that off (and cook some freakin' tasty homefries in it!). Congrats. You're all done! Pour it into some quart containers courtesy of the dollar store and freeze anything you're not going to use in the next few days. Or give it away if you're nicer than me.

If your stock looks like jello after chilling... Yay! That means its awesome and full of natural gelatin from the bones. My first stock caused a great deal of concern and furious googling when it did that. Turns out, life was good and so was my stock.

There you go. Not only did you save $3-4 a quart, you prevented food waste and made yourself something super tasty. Not bad, right?

Chicken and Mushrooms in Balsamic Cream Sauce

Chicken and Mushrooms in Balsamic Cream Sauce

This is one of my very favorite recipes. It seems really swanky and special, but cooks really fast. The only change I made was to make a whole box of orzo (one pound). I recommend making sure to cook the shallots thoroughly before moving on if you're not fond of onion flavor or if your shallots are really strong.

The first time I made it, I didn't follow the times for cooking the mushrooms as closely as I should have. I tend to like softer, more browned mushrooms, but I forgot that they keep cooking as you move on the next stages of the dish (duh!). I've also substituted half-and-half for the cream when I didn't have any. Usually I don't have parsley lying around, so I just skip that ingredient. It still turns out fine, though its better with.

A recommendation for left over cream: If you make instant mashed potatoes and use half-cream and half-milk, you'll get much fluffier, more home-made tasting potatoes.

Roasted Chicken Noodle Soup

I love chicken noodle soup. Its comforting, easy, and cheap. You can feed a ton of people off one pot; especially if you pair it with some grilled cheese sandwiches or crusty bread.

1 - 1 1/2 lbs bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
8 cups chicken stock (boxed is fine, but try making your own in a crockpot! sometime)
1 small bunch parsley (chopped)
1-2 cloves garlic (chopped fine) (depending on how much you like)
2-3 sprigs fresh thyme (or 1/2 tsp of dried)
1 med onion (diced or chunked - however you prefer)
1 - 2 carrots (chopped)
2 stalks celery (chopped)
1 cup orzo pasta (or try making your own noodles!)

1. Preheat oven to 400. Line a cookie sheet with tin foil. Drizzle chicken thighs with olive oil, salt and pepper on both sides and lay on cookie sheet skin side up. Line a second cookie sheet with tin foil and coat veggies with olive oil, salt and pepper. Place both cookie sheets in the oven. Roast the vegetables for 20 min or until as tender as you like. Roast the chicken for 35-40 min or until juices run clear.

Alternate 1. Fix the chicken the same way, but chop and saute the veggies in your soup pot until just starting to soften.

2. Put 8 cups of chicken stock in a large soup or stock pot and add the garlic. Bring to a boil and cook orzo according to box directions. Turn down the heat to low. When chicken has cooled to the point you can handle it, remove skin and pull chicken off of the bone. Shred or chop the chicken and add to the stock. Add vegetables to the stock along with parsley and thyme. Season soup to taste with salt and pepper.

I've found that roasting the chicken gives the soup a great flavor and makes the whole process much faster. Bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs are really cheap at the grocery store and really delicious. I usually save the bones to make more stock with later. You should also save the carrot tops, onion skins and ends, and celery ends for that purpose.

Orzo pasta seems to hold up better to being stored than most egg-type noodles and since I make big pots of soup for lunch for the week, that's important. If you plan on eating the pot right away, you could use pretty much any noodle you like. Roasting the vegetables is new to me, but adds some nice flavor when you get some caramelization going on. Alternately, you can just cook the veggies in the stock while the chicken is roasting. My sister swears this is the best chicken soup she's ever had. Its really easy and surprisingly fast too.

Apple Pie

I've gotten addicted to making pies. Apple is my specialty, but I've done cranberry-apple, raspberry, and mixed berry. I've got a recipe for a raspberry-pear filling that I want to try too. The really hard part was figuring out the crust. I've never been fond of spending all that time trying to cut the cold fats into the flour and dealing with the resulting arm fatigue. Alton Brown made a pie crust in his food processor and I've been doing it that way ever since. I use a different recipe, though.

Combination Butter/Shortening Crust from Simply Recipes
Ingredients for one double-crust 9 inch or 10 inch pie:
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons sugar
3/4 cup (a stick and a half) unsalted butter, chilled, cut into 1/4 inch cubes
1/2 cup of all-vegetable shortening (8 Tbsp)
6-8 Tablespoons ice water
1 Combine flour, salt, and sugar in a food processor; pulse to mix. Add the butter and pulse 4 times. Add shortening in tablespoon sized chunks, and pulse 4 more times. The mixture should resemble coarse cornmeal, with butter bits no bigger than peas. Sprinkle 6 tablespoons of ice water over flour mixture. Pulse a couple times. If you pinch some of the crumbly dough and it holds together, it's ready. If the dough doesn't hold together, keep adding water, a tablespoon at a time, pulsing once after each addition, until the mixture just begins to clump together.
2 Remove dough from machine and place in a mound on a clean surface. Divide the dough into 2 balls and flatten each into 4 inch wide disks. Do not over-knead the dough! Dust the disks lightly with flour, wrap each in plastic, and refrigerate for at least an hour, or up to 2 days before rolling out.
3 After the dough has chilled in the refrigerator for an hour, you can take it out to roll. If it is too stiff, you may need to let it sit for 5-10 minutes at room temperature before rolling. Sprinkle a little flour on a flat, clean work surface and on top of the disk of dough you intend to roll out. (We use a Tupperware pastry sheet that has the pie circles already marked.) Using a rolling pin, apply light pressure while rolling outwards from the center of the dough. Every once in a while you may need to gently lift under the dough (a pastry scraper works great for this) to make sure it is not sticking. You have a big enough piece of dough when you place the pie tin or pie dish upside down on the dough and the dough extends by at least 2 inches all around.
4 When the dough has reached the right size, gently fold it in half. Lift up the dough and place it so that the folded edge is along the center line of the pie dish. Gently unfold. Do not stretch the dough.
5a If you are only making a single crust pie, use a pair of kitchen scissors to trim the dough to within 1/2 inch of the lip of the dish. Tuck the overhang underneath itself along the edge of the pie dish. Use your fingers in a pinching motion, or the tines of a fork to crimple the edge of the pie crust.
5b If you are making a double crust pie, roll out the second disk of dough. Gently place onto the top of the filling in the pie. Use a kitchen scissors to trim the overhang to an inch over. Fold the edge of the top piece of dough over and under the edge of the bottom piece of dough, pressing together. Finish the double crust by pressing against the edges of the pie with your finger tips or with a fork.
6 Use a sharp knife to cut vents into the top of the pie crust, so the steam has a place to escape while the pie is cooking. Optional Before scoring, you may want to paint the top of your crust with an egg wash (this will make a nice finish).

Apple Pie Filling:
4-5 apples depending on the size (I prefer jonathan, jonagold, macoun, or pink lady apples)
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 tbs flour
1 tsp cinnamon

1. Peal and slice apples and give them a spritz of lemon or lime juice to prevent browning. Microwave them for 1-2 minutes in a good sized bowl and then let sit for 10-15 minutes till cool. Drain off any excess liquid that collects in the bottom. This begins the cooking process of the apples for a more even doneness and also helps prevent watery filling.
2. Add brown sugar, flour, and cinnamon to apples and toss to coat evenly. Let sit for 10-15 more minutes to let the flavors marry. Drain off an excess liquid that collects in the bottom of the bowl.
3. While apples sit, pre-heat oven to 400 degrees and prepare bottom pie crust in a 9 inch pie pan. I like to store that in the fridge while I roll out and prepare the top crust so that the fat doesn't start to melt.
4. Pour filling into the crust and put on top crust -- don't forget to cut the vents. Brush on an egg wash (I use a simple 1 egg and a bit of water kind) and bake for 35-45 minutes until apples are desired tenderness. I prefer a more firm apple, so I usually finish around 35 minutes. Its wise to check on the pie after 30 minutes. If the crust is getting too dark, wrap the edges in tin foil.

I highly recommend waiting till the pie cools before cutting into it. Otherwise your filling might still be too liquid. If you're having problems with watery filling, try using a different type of apple or adding a bit more flour to your filling. I've also experimented with blind baking my bottom pie crust to make sure it gets cooked properly. I usually bake it for 10 minutes at 400 degrees, lined with tinfoil and filled with either dried beans or rice. This gets the crust started so I don't end up with the dreaded doughy bottom.

You can also dice the apples finer and use the filling for other types of pastries like turnovers. I haven't tried this yet, but it looks like an awesome way to make pie for gifts or just for quick, single servings: Pie in a Jar.

Homemade Hummus

I keep meaning to add some photos since my cell phone now has a decent camera...

I've been wrestling with my weight for years and trying to find low-fat/calorie snacks that are filling and still fit within my budget can be tough. I had a bunch of carrots and celery left over from making chicken noodle soup for one of my friends, so I thought I'd eat those for my mid day snack at work. Sadly, I'm not super fond of either celery of carrots on their own. I decided to try my hand at making hummus. It was surprisingly easy and the only things I needed to buy were chick peas (69c!) and a bottle of olive oil (since I was running low anyway).

1 15 oz can chick peas/garbanzo beans

5 cloves of roasted garlic, roughly chopped

1 clove raw garlic, crushed or grated

1 tbs lemon juice

1 tsp cumin

1 small handful of fresh parsley

1/4 c olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

1. Drain the chick peas and rinse them in cold water. If you want a really smooth hummus, you can take the time to remove the skins from all of the chick peas.

2. Toss everything into your food processor except the olive oil. Turn it on and start streaming the olive oil in through the top. Let it run until it seems pretty smooth. Give it a taste and add salt and pepper if needed. If the hummus seems to dry, add more olive oil and process for a few minutes more.

I made my housemates taste the hummus and they seemed to like it. I like mine very garlicky, so the one raw clove really gives it a bit of bite. If you prefer the roasted garlic taste, you could roast a whole head of garlic by cutting off the top, wrapping it in tin foil and baking it in a 400 degree oven for 20-30 minutes. The garlic should be soft when it is done. I also spotted a recipe that called for using fresh oregano instead of parsley. I may give that a try next time.

I've read that running the chick peas through a food mill strips the skins off while it mashes them up, so if you're one of those lucky peoples who has one, give it a try. I'm not sure this recipe would work well in a blender, though. You'll probably notice I didn't use Tahini -- I was making this on the cheap -- but you could most likely substitute 1-2 tbs of Tahini for the Cumin.

EDIT: Whooo eeee! After letting the hummus sit in the fridge over night, the garlic flavor is now seriously strong. I can feel it burn my tongue a bit. I LOVE garlic, and this is almost too strong for me. I might just try upping the amount of roasted garlic cloves next time and not add any raw garlic. If you like it strong, though, this is good stuff.

Meal Planner

Recently, I had a discussion with a dear friend who was lamenting the price of food. (Amen, sister!) She was cooking more at home and using more fresh produce in an effort to save money/be more healthy/all that jazz.

I, being me, couldn't help but offer some advice when it wasn't asked for. My method is to plan all my meals for the month in advance and make up a shopping list. It allows me to buy meat (tasty, tasty meat) in bulk and freeze it in my charming little deep freezer.

To organize my insanity, I made a spreadsheet. I should pause here and say I love spreadsheets. Weird. I know. I'm going to share this with you all now since, ya know, you didn't ask.

Via la Google Docs

First Post

This bog is going to be about food. How to make it, what to make it with, weird stories about it -- FOOD. Because I love food. And I also can't stop myself from giving out unsolicited advice about it.

If you're looking a for fat-free, vegan, gluten-free wonderland, its time to carry on. You will get my bacon only from my cold dead hands. Even then you should be concerned that I'll reanimate and fight you for it. Its not that I don't respect people who put those kinds of diet restrictions on themselves, but my carnivorous, cheese loving, carb fiend of a self would never be happy that way.

That's not to say that I won't ever post recipes that are, say, gluten-free. Part of the reason I became such a fan of cooking is because I come from a gene pool filled with bizarre food allergies. I sympathize with folks who can't eat their favorite meals because it will haunt them a few hours later. It can be challenging (and fun!) to modify recipes so that someone can enjoy a decadent delicacy once again.

As for why Kitchen Slippers? Its literal. I wear slippers in my kitchen. Clever, yes?

So now that you know a bit about where this train wreck is headed, hopefully you can decide whether to cling to maniacally to your seat or to bail out into the uncharted waters of the internet. Welcome aboard!