Honey Beer Chicken

Adapted from Cooking Light.

Delicious!  And freezable!  I'm starting to make and freeze meal kits in preparation for the arrival of Kiddo #3 and this one is on the list.  I made a kit of this recipe for my husband to make for dinner one night that I worked late...he said it was easy to make, easy to follow and tasted great.  So it's even husband-proof ;)

My grocery store had 4 lb. bags of frozen chicken breasts on sale, so I'm making two kits of this recipe along with 4 kits of gumbo.  If you wanted not to have extra of anything hanging around (like 4 oz. of beer out of a 12 oz. bottle), plan to make 3 honey beer chicken kits.  Fortunately, I have a willing volunteer to take care of the extra for me today (the aforementioned test cook/Dear Husband).

Btw, I completely spaced out and didn't take a *single* photograph of this dish, any of the 3 opportunities I've had.  Go see the Cooking Light site for a beautifully food-styled picture.

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San Francisco Pork Chops

Original recipe here.

These are just so good!  The finished reduction is a mite salty thanks to the soy sauce, so I strongly recommend using low-sodium soy sauce and maybe even going halfsies on the soy with some no-salt broth.

These are completely prep-ahead and freezer-friendly.  Just mix up all the sauce ingredients in a container to fridge or freeze, make sure you've got pork chops available and have cornstarch in your pantry. 

The sauce reduces as the pork chops cook on the stovetop, giving a thick, glossy, flavorful glaze that is just out of sight.


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Shrimp Amatriciana

This is a Rachael Ray recipe originally.  She wraps the shrimp in pancetta for beautiful presentation.  I don't worry so much about that presentation crap.  My less-attractive-but-still-delicious way of prepping this dish ahead also lets you organize it as a freezer kit, which I don't feel comfortable doing with shrimp that you've had to thaw and handle as you'll do if you wrap it with pancetta.

I've made this dish with regular ol' American bacon instead of pancetta and it's quite tasty.  The difference between Italian pancetta and most conventional bacons is smoking...bacon is smoked, pancetta is not.  Bacon is also usually cut much thicker than pancetta is.  So if you want to use it to wrap the shrimp in, unless you have really big shrimp or really thin bacon, you'll need to halfway-cook the bacon first to keep from having overcooked shrimp with still-raw bacon wrappers.  Of course, if you skip the wrapping (like I do), you don't need to worry about this at all.

To make a freezer kit, dice up your bacon/pancetta and wrap well.  Dice the onion and put in a freezer container.  Combine white wine and basil (I have basil puree already frozen and just take a lump out of that stash) in a freezer container.  Package all together with shrimp and cooking instructions.  Make sure to have some whole canned tomatoes in the pantry along with your pasta (I label the boxes and cans that belong to a kit so I don't forget and use them for something else). 

Mise-en-place

If you're just prepping ahead for same day or next day cooking, you can use fresh tomatoes.  I'm using 1 pint cherry tomatoes and 3 medium normal tomatoes cuz that's just what I have on hand.  Chop/combine ingredients as suggested above and fridge.

Slap a note somewhere in your workspace when you start cooking that you'll need to grab 1/2 cup of pasta water before draining.  I *always* forget this part.

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Ginger pork chops

I saw the original recipe for this one in an email recipe newsletter (you know, the ones that usually go straight to the junk mail folder sight unseen).  I'm glad that newsletter didn't get automatically junked this time!  I've modified the original recipe significantly in order to make the recipe freezer kit-friendly, a leetle more calorie-friendly and because it's the wrong season to be finding candied ginger easily at the store. 

If your grocery store sells packages of "assorted pork chops" (meaning a mix of bone-in and boneless, loin and sirloin chops), this is a great recipe for those guys.  Please note there is no pepper or salt called for here...the ginger carries plenty of zing so pepper would be overkill and the soda brings sodium to the party. 

To shortcut the actual cooking of this recipe, you can skip the browning step if you are really pressed for time or only brown on one side...if you choose the latter, be sure to put the browned side up in the baking pan.  I highly recommend roasting some broccoli, cauliflower or carrots alongside the pork chops to cut down on the allover dinner workload.

 I like Vernor's ginger ale for this recipe (and just in general). It's got the strongest real ginger flavor IMHO of the ginger ale brands that are widely available. I'm sure there are micro-soda companies making really good ginger ale or ginger beer (not an alcoholic beverage, btw), and if you have some available (especially ginger beer) use that!

Extra double bonus cocktail recipe: Dark and Stormy...1 shot dark rum over ice in a 12 oz. glass, fill with ginger beer. 

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Doomsday Chicken and Peppers

Doomsday Chicken n Peppers with rice and bok choy salad

I misread a blog post title here and I can't get the idea of Doomsday Peppers out of my mind now LOL  Red, orange and yellow peppers are on big sale at my grocery store this week, so I am taking advantage!

Actually, if you had to throw together dinner quickly b/c the world was about to end, this might the recipe for you ;)  I'm prepping it ahead b/c I am doing Big Things later today but the prep is so quick that you could easily do this at the last minute without turning a hair.  You could freeze this as a kit as well since you cook the peppers and onions into a soft, chunky, peperonata sauce anyway so the fact that they loose their crisp in the freezer isn't an issue.

The red-yellow family of peppers is certainly attractive and highly nutritious with all those colors, but if you'd prefer, you certainly can use green peppers.  If you do have an abundance of inexpensive colored bell peppers available, you can roast them and freeze them in bulk or incorporate some of these recipes into your weekly menu:

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Garlic Artichoke Pasta

I <heart> artichokes.  They're supposedly cancer-fighting and they're exotic and they're amazing with butter.  That's the first thing that made me want to try this recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens Better Than Mom's Slow Cooker Recipes book.  The second thing was that this is a recipe that is made practically entirely from pantry goods without being one of those can-of-cream-of-death-soup type of recipes.  You can buy all the ingredients you need for this ahead and keep them on-hand as a pantry meal kit.  You can also prep the crockpot mixture ahead to fridge or freeze.

Until I had a toddler, we never had dairy beverages in the fridge routinely.  I had to buy milk or cream or half-and-half specifically for a recipe that called for it.  These days, I use whole milk for all recipes calling for cream or half-and-half because it is what we have in the fridge.  So use whatever you happen to  have here (or use canned evaporated milk, if you are like pre-toddler, dairy-drink-less me) if you throw this recipe together out of "ingredients on hand".  If you're planning to make a meal kit for this recipe, you can freeze an appropriate amount of milk or cream, rely on having some in the fridge on Dinner Day or buy canned evap milk for the "pantry kit". 

Comparatively, cream and half and half will be the highest in calories and fat, then evaporated milk and regular milk.  If you get non-fat evap milk, you'll get the best of both worlds...the lighter caloric/fat profile of milk with the rich mouthfeel of cream.

So a meal kit for this recipe will look like this: canned tomatoes, canned artichokes, box of pasta and can of evap milk (if using) labelled and stored in the pantry with garlic+dry herbs and milk/cream (if using) on hand or frozen in ziptop bags.  OR everything except milk mixed together and frozen with pasta/evap milk in the pantry.

The one gripe I have about this recipe is that it's a crockpot recipe that still requires significant cooking right before dinner.  The joy of the crockpot is that you don't have to cook at dinnertime, right?  Boiling pasta isn't hard, but getting the water up to a boil takes time...more time than I'm willing to spend to "finish" a crockpot meal. 

The solution is to cook the pasta almost fully in advance, toss it with a bit of oil or butter to keep it from sticking, fridge it and stir it into the crockpot at the end to warm up and finish cooking through.  Or you can boil the pasta at the last minute, whatever works with your schedule.  Just please don't rinse the pasta...rinsing washes away starch which will prevent the pasta from sticking to itself but then it also won't stick to the sauce.  Besides, the starch is where the flavor lives (yes, pasta does have a flavor of its own) so rinsing washes away flavor, too.

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Pumpkin Soup and Pumpkin Muffins

Oh look!  There I am, reflected upside down, in the spoon!

I was reading a newspaper article recently that claimed Halloween was the only "major" American holiday that didn't have a signature food or meal associated with it...Thanksgiving has turkey, Mother's Day has brunch, St. Patrick's Day has green beer, the list just goes on LOL

That statement rang true at first, but as I thought more about it, I realized Halloween does have a signature food...the pumpkin!  I think most of us tend to think of pumpkins as edible only in pie form, but they're part of the winter squash family and as such, are versatile menu players. 

Peeling a fresh whole pumpkin for a recipe is an undertaking, and I prefer when possible to use canned puree (not pumpkin pie filling which is actual pumpkin plus a bunch of other stuff).  The following recipe for soup (which I made for our pre-trick-or-treating repast) only calls for 1/2 a can, so I made muffins with the remaining puree...less waste = less cost = less aggravation.  I am brilliant ;)

The soup recipe is from the Frugal Gourmet Cooks American.  You can make this soup up to the point of adding the scallops and milk and fridge or freeze it (be sure to include scallops and milk as part of the freezer kit to finish the soup).  Just reheat the soup base to a simmer, add the milk and scallops and simmer 5 minutes to finish.  Or if you don't have front-end time to make the soup in its entirety, prep and group the ingredients for next-day or same-day cooking: onion/celery/garlic/ginger in one bowl, flour/spices in another, stock/Worcestershire/Tabasco in a bowl, pumpkin/squash cubes in yet another and scallops/milk saved for last. 

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Gingered scallops



Sea vs. bay scallops

This is stupidly easy.  Saute bay scallops with sliced ginger in butter and season with salt and pepper.  Really. There's the whole recipe. 

What makes this worth blogging about is 1) you rarely see a main dish recipe that calls for the smaller, less expensive bay scallops front and center instead of the large, spensy sea scallops and 2) the ginger does things to the scallops.  And to your taste buds.  I mean, things like you wouldn't believe.  Naughty, delicious, page 227 in a romance novel kinds of things.  Oh yeah, this one is a repeat.   

No picture b/c I was too busy having a gustatory climax.  Sorry, sort of ;)

I suppose you could make this into a freezer kit, but it's so simple to prep, it's probably not worth the storage container.

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Root Beer Sauce for Pork

I want to make this again just to have the house smell like A&W all night (I do prefer A&W for this, having tried it with Barq's as well). 
The root beer reduces to a slightly syrupy, but not overly sweet, jus that is intriguingly spicy and rich in flavor.  This sauce will top grilled chops, braised shanks, fried ham, sliced roast or pulled pork shoulder equally well.  You can measure and combine ingredients a day ahead of time (or freeze the mixture), or make the sauce to reheat up to a day ahead as well.

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April's Microwave Salisbury Steak

The original recipe is from a friend who writes a gluten-free cooking (and other stuff too) blog at An April a Day.  This recipe, she tells me, is not gluten-free thanks to the canned golden mushroom soup.  I'm not wild in general about using store-bought canned soups, but golden mushroom soup would be a PITA to recreate homemade (and I'm willing to go aways in the direction of homemade substitutions) so take that as you will.  And it's so good that it's worth it...my 18 month old would have licked his plate, if he had better hand-eye coordination.

This is an awfully fast dish to put together thanks to the store-bought help and use of the microwave for cooking, but it's EVEN FASTER when you prep it ahead and stash it in the freezer.  Plan ahead for your storage needs...the patties will  need to cook in a microwave-safe baking dish, so you'll either need to freeze in an appropriate container or be prepared to transfer the somewhat delicate patties between freezer container and microwave cooking dish.

I have also used this recipe as the basis for a crockpot roast.  Instead of making patties with ground meat, brown a roast on all sides, then put in a crockpot.  Combine the remaining seasonings (omit breadcrumbs and egg) and sauce ingredients and pour over.  Cook 8-10 hours on low. 

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Hungarian Stuffed Peppers

The thing that makes these peppers stand out from all the other stuffed peppers in the world is the paprika...it's in the meat, it's in the gravy, it's in the smell that permeates the house while you're baking this dish. 

The pepper-and-paprika infused gravy is built on an intensely flavorful stock and finished in the original recipe (Frugal Gourmet's Immigrant Ancestors) with a "beurre manié" of flour and sour cream.  Since I've never had good things come of freezing sour cream, I use buttermilk inside for a freezer-friendly version.  Just be sure when you add the buttermilk-flour slurry to whisk constantly and pour slowly to avoid lumps.

Since this does take a little prep work, it's worth it to make a LOT and freeze these puppies up.  Especially if you hit a good sale on bell peppers at your market.  Doubling this recipe is no problem, just freeze the peppers in the number of portions you want with appropriate division of the gravy stock and flour-buttermilk mixture.

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Chicken and Sausage Gumbo

If you're wondering what to do with your garden okra (or just like some Cajun cookin'), here is your recipe!  If I don't have enough okra to cook as a side dish for the whole fam, I slice it and throw into a freezer bag and keep adding as more okra comes in.  When I've got 1 1/2 cups, I make gumbo.  This is also a good way to use up leftover cooked chicken or turkey (hello Thanksgiving!).  You'll need about 2 cups cubed.

Like all stews, gumbo is gorgeous reheated.  Make it ahead for next-day service or freeze it in its fully-cooked form.  You can also make a freezer kit for the stew if you prefer.  You'll have to cook the roux before making the freezer kit, so give yourself plenty of time.

Here is the I Screw Up So You Don't Have To portion of the program...brown the meats in a skillet and make your roux in your soup pot (if you're making the soup start-to-finish, ignore this if you're making a freezer kit).  Or clean your soup pot really well after browning the sausage and chicken and before making the roux.  Any "browned bits" stuck to the pot after browning will act like a magnet for the roux and cause it to scorch.  Yuck.  Remaking a roux doesn't really cost much in terms of ingredients, but it does cost a good bit of time.

Making the characteristic Cajun "red" roux isn't much different than making a light roux for white sauce.  You just cook it longer.  But it is a bit like playing chicken...you want to cook it as dark as you can without burning it.  This is one time when stirring the pot CONSTANTLY really is necessary.  I turn off the heat when I achieve peanut-butter colored roux, though some recipes encourage an even darker color. 

Last note...the Cajun mirepoix or Trinity is onion, celery and green bell pepper.  I use carrot instead of celery here as I'm cooking around a food sensitivity, but feel free to use either.


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Crockpot Grinders

Oh. My. Gawd. These are good.  All my favorite things...crockpot-friendly, prep-ahead and freezer-friendly and garlicky.

You can serve the grinders on toasted hoagie rolls and topped with cheese, sauteed peppers, onions and mushrooms.  Just layer everything up and broil a minute or two to melt the cheese.  Or for a lower carb serving idea, serve the sauce and sausage over cooked spaghetti squash, steamed cauliflower or braised cabbage.

This recipe makes either 1 really big batch, or 2 smaller batches.  Perfect for dinner tonight and 1 freezer kit, 2 freezer kits or dinner for a crowd.  There's a lot of sauce here, and leftover sauce can be frozen to repurpose as pizza sauce or pasta sauce.

Adapted from the Better Homes and Gardens Better Than Mom's Slow Cooker Recipes.


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Cinnamon Marinated Fish

Cinnamon is usually thought of as a sweet spice, but it has a savory side.  In the absence of sweeteners, cinnamon has a peppery smoky quality that pairs nicely with fish.  The cinnamon comes across more strongly in the aroma of the finished dish and is subtle in the flavor.

If you want to do a "taste-test" batch of cinnamon oil, use just 1 cinnamon stick and 1/2 cup of vegetable oil.  It will be enough for 2 or 3 marinades.  When you crush up the cinnamon sticks, just pound them in a plastic bag with a meat pounder until they look like mulch. 

It's tempting to buy cheapie spices for this or use cinnamon sticks that have been hanging around since last autumn's spiced cider kick, but the fresher and more strongly flavored the cinnamon is, the better the marinade will be.

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Crockpot Sloppy Joes & Mustard Bread buns

Spending some time slow-cooking makes this sloppy joe filling remarkably tender and blends the flavors in a way that just can't happen in 20 minutes on the stovetop.  The real beauty of this recipe (adapted from BH&G's Slower Cooker Recipes) is that it adapts to whatever your cooking time frame is...if you've got a whole day free before you need to serve it, you can do it completely in advance and reheat from fridged or frozen...if you've got just a little time to prep and more to cook, just measure, assemble and freeze the ingredients to finish on Dinner Day...or if you're in between, you can cook the beef and onions and freeze it with the sauce to dump into the crockpot on Dinner Day.  Options, options, options!

This recipe makes A LOT of sloppy joe filling, so serve it for a crowd or serve half for dinner and freeze the remainder for another day.

I'm serving this tonight with Mustard Bread buns, a recipe adapted from one of James Beard's.  If you use a bread machine, add the ingredients in the order recommended by your instruction manual and use the dough setting.  The bread dough can itself be frozen if desired.  If you freeze shaped rolls, simply thaw them at room temp, let them rise until doubled in size (if you take them out of the freezer in the morning, they should be good by afternoon) and bake them off.

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Pizza Meat Pie

Freezer kit

Another South Beach Diet cookbook adaptation.  This sounds so odd, but is so good.  If you think crust on pizza is a waste of stomach space (I know who you are LOL), this is the pizza pie for you. 

I elect to use oatmeal as a binder rather than the SBD-sanctioned whole wheat breadcrumbs since I grind up bread to make my own crumbs and sometimes I just feel lazy.  I also reduce the salt called for and use totally different toppings.  Use whatever toppings you like.

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Beef and berry stew

WHAT kind of stew??  (I can hear some readers asking already)

Beef stew.  With blackberries.  Calm down, it's delicious.  And easy with only 5 ingredients.  And seasonal.  And a lesson in our nation's cultural heritage.  According to the Frugal Gourmet (from whom the original recipe comes), this is a Sioux recipe that would have been made with bison meat charred briefly over an open fire with wild berries picked at the height of summer. 

This is a great recipe for me as my blackberry plants only produce a handful of berries at a time toward the end of the season, where most blackberry recipes call for several cups.  If you use frozen berries and plan to make freezer kits, one 12 oz. bag will make 2 batches of this stew so go ahead and get double the beef and broth and make one batch for dinner and one batch into a freezer kit.

Stew beef is a more convenient choice than a slab o' buffalo IMHO. And cooking it in a crockpot instead on the stovetop is a far more convenient choice.

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Spiced Braised Pork Chops

Adapted from Art Smith's Back to the Table.  I was looking for a recipe that would suit bone-in pork chops and discovered Art Smith's Spiced Pork Loin with Vidalia Onion Sauce.  I am using thick-cut pork chops rather than a loin and regular onions instead of sweet, but you can make changes to my changes.  If you want to make this for a roast, make up a double batch of the braising/spice mixture and cook the roast for 1 1/4 hours. 

This sauce mixture is so easy to put together, you should consider making extra for more than one kit.  Or you can make a double batch, cook one half for dinner tonight and freeze the rest to get two dinners for one night's work.

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Hula Chicken Stirfry

49g carb per serving

This recipe is originally from the Better Homes and Gardens New Junior Cookbook gifted to me, er, my son for his birthday. I made it once and the kids wolfed it down, so it's now on our do-again list.  The bonus, of course, is that it is well-suited to freezer kit organization (yay!).  The recipe below makes 2 kits, due to the popularity of the dish at my house as much as to the fact that my grocery store only carries pineapple chunks in 20 oz. cans instead of the 8 oz. can required by the OR.

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Stay-in Take-out: Pork Lo Mein

This is an America's Test Kitchen recipe originally, which means it's absolutely delicious but persnickety and step-heavy.  If you want to try it Chris Kimball's way, you can prep it ahead for same day or next day cooking with no problem...assemble the marinade for the meat and get that started, make the sauce, chop the veggies and grate/mix the ginger-garlic and set all that aside in the fridge.  But you can't freeze it ahead as a kit well, and the final cooking process comes to way more than 3 or 4 steps which my mental processing limit at 6pm.

 

So I keep the best parts of this recipe (the sauce, the cut of pork and the basic method of cooking) and reconfigure all the other parts to achieve simplicity and freezability.  If I do say so myself.  For vegetables, you'll need about 8-9 cups of veg...it seems like a lot, but it cooks down.  I park some frozen veggies in the freezer kit and plan to make up the remainder with fresh vegetables purchased the week I'll make this dinner or canned stirfry favorites like water chestnuts or bamboo shoots.  Use what you like in any combination. 

 

For the "lo mein", I've used udon, soba and whole wheat linguine, all with perfectly good results.  Just make sure to read the package directions since each type requires a different cooking time.

 

The sauce ingredients are perhaps a bit outside of the usual pantry staples, but are worth finding if only to duplicate this recipe many times over.  Oyster sauce is in the Asian foods section of even my podunk grocery stores, and it's like a steak sauce but much less vinegar-y.  Hoisin is an Asian-style barbecue sauce, and 5 spice powder is a mix of pepper, fennel, cloves, cinnamon and anise (at least my jar is).

 

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