Tag Archives: Cook

Dec4

Beef Stroganoff

Posted on December 4, 2014 by Rachel

Back in college I used to eat frozen dinners all the time, and this was one of my favorites. Thankfully, I’ve learned to cook since then and no longer shop in the frozen meals section. But I was craving beef stroganoff the other night and thought I could make it myself! You can use practically any beef for this. I used the “boneless family steak” cut from the 40% off clearance meat section of my grocery store. I have no idea what cut of beef “family steak” is, but when I figure it out, I’ll let ya know! You can use top sirloin or ground beef for that matter in this recipe.

Ingredients:
1 sweet onion
1 package of mushrooms (8 oz – 10 oz)
2 cups beef broth (about 75% of a box)
2 garlic cloves
1 stick of butter
1-1.5 lbs beef
12 oz (1 bag) egg noodles
4 T flour
Splash of worchestishire sauce
Splash of wine (optional)
Splash of heavy whipping cream (optional)
Salt and pepper

1. I forgot to take a picture (oops), but take about a tablespoon of butter and melt it in a hot skillet for your steak you’ve seasoned with salt and pepper. Cook your steak until pink in the middle, then take out and let it rest. Leaving the juices in the pan, now throw in 1/2 of your butter and chopped onion and cook for about ten minutes. I like to let the onions go first so they get a little golden before adding the mushrooms.

2. Now add your mushrooms, garlic, a few dashes of Worchestishire sauce, the rest of your butter, and salt and pepper. Cook for another ten minutes or so until everything is golden and delicious.

3. Are you drinking wine while making dinner? Lean over your sauté pan and spill some wine from your cup into the veggies and deglaze your pan. If not, you can skip this part, but it makes it soooo yummy 🙂 Oh, hello Mr. Box!

4. Now add your flour to the pan and stir around for 3-4 minutes. You want the flour to thicken up your veggies and cook a little bit before adding your liquid.

5. Now add 2 cups of beef broth and allow this to come to a boil. While you’re waiting for this to happen, go slice up your steak into this bite sized strips.

6. Once it’s boiling, add your steak strips to the pan and turn the heat down to a simmer. This will continue to cook the meat and make the meat tender. Also, it gives the flour a chance to thicken up the sauce. Allow to simmer 20-30 minutes. Now is a good time to start your noodles if you want everything to come out at the same time.

7. Lastly, and this is optional, add a splash of heavy whipping cream to your pan. It’ll take this sauce into a creamy heavenly perfection. Ahh, so good 🙂 If you don’t have heavy whipping cream, a few dollops of sour cream will do or 1/2 and 1/2. Or you can omit entirely if you’d like. Taste for salt and pepper needs before serving over egg noodles. It’s so perfect 🙂

Nov6

Perfect Pot Roast

Posted on November 6, 2014 by Rachel

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I love easy dinners like this pot roast you can just throw in all one dish and let it cook away all day! I made mine in the oven only because I wanted to use my shiny orange ovenware dish, but this works perfectly in a crockpot too. Crocktober lasts pretty much all fall and winter at my house, and this is one of my favorites. Also, I know some of you may be hesitant about using sweet potato in this recipe, but I promise you it’s so delicious, and once you’ve tried it you’ll never cook pot roast with just plain potatoes ever again!

Ingredients:

1 large sweet potato
1 large sweet onion
8-10 purple potatoes (you could use new potatoes too, I just love the color of the purple ones)
1 large Yukon gold potato
3 garlic cloves
3 carrots
1 can cream of mushroom and chicken (if you can’t find this, just use regular cream of mushroom)
1 package Zesty Italian Seasoning
4 cups of water
Your favorite all purpose seasoning (something with salt, pepper, garlic, etc)
2-3 lb pot roast

1. Chop all your veggies and put in your crockpot or casserole dish. Combine in a separate bowl can of cream of mushroom/chicken, Zesty Italian Seasoning, and 4 c water. Stir until combined and pour over the veggies.

2. Season pot roast liberally on all sides with your favorite all purpose seasoning and place on top of veggies and cover with lid.

3. Bake in oven for six hours at 300 degrees or place crockpot on high for 6-8 hours (depending on the strength of your crockpot and weight of your roast). Serve over rice or with tortillas in a pot roast taco for a delicious cool weather meal! If you’re serving with rice, I like to cook the rice with some of the pot roast liquid after it’s done cooking to give it extra flavor. Yum!

Oct27

Chicken Noodle Soup

Posted on October 27, 2014 by Rachel

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There’s nothing better than homemade chicken noodle soup on a cool weather day, or when you’re recovering from an illness. Mmmm 🙂 This is only about a million times better than the canned version! I think the trick to making the chicken extra tasty is letting it marinade overnight in your favorite all purpose seasoning (something salt-free like a garlic herb seasoning) in the fridge (or at least for four hours if you can’t do it overnight). Let’s get started…

Ingredients:
1 package chicken thighs with bone and skin on
4 carrots
4 celery sticks (with leafy tops)
2 onions (I love sweet onions)
Chicken bouillon cube (as always, I use the Knorr brand)
6 oz egg noodles
1 stick butter
1/4 c flour
2-3 small garlic cloves chopped
Your favorite all purpose seasoning, salt, and pepper

1. Chop 1 onion, 3 carrots, garlic, and celery and place in saute pan. You’re going to reserve the celery leafy tops and bottoms, 1 carrot, and 1 onion sliced in half and place all of that in a pot to make your broth.

2. Add your marinated chicken to the pot with the veggies and add your chicken bouillon cube and enough water to completely cover the veggies and chicken. Set to a boil and let this go for about an hour.

3. Meanwhile, add your butter, salt, and pepper to your veggies in your saute skillet and set that on about medium heat. You don’t want to brown these – you want to sweat them out and cook until they’re soft and the onions are transparent. This should take about 20-25 minutes. You’ll notice in this picture there is only 1/2 stick of butter present. I decided halfway through cooking these they needed more butter. I think the lesson here is clear: When it doubt, add more butter! Amen.

4. After your veggies are done cooking, add your flour and stir the veggies around for 3-4 minutes while the flour cooks through and it will thicken up the veggies. Then turn the heat off and set aside.

5. At this point your kitchen smells delicious! Don’t worry, you’re almost done… Now you’ll get out a strainer and dump your broth and chicken pot into it, allowing the broth to go into a bowl under the strainer and then pick out the chicken to cut into bite sized pieces on your cutting board (discard skin and bones).

6. Discard the stuff in the strainer and pour the veggies, chicken, and broth mix all back into the pot and bring to a boil. Also, I added about 2 cups of water after dumping the broth in to thin it out a bit, but you can use your own judgement here. Then add 6 oz or so of your favorite noodles (I love egg noodles here) and allow to boil until the noodles are cooked. That’s it! Now the most delicious homemade chicken noodle soup is ready to eat 🙂

Aug6

Hot Chow Chow

Posted on August 6, 2014 by Rachel

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Do yall understand that hot chow chow is one of the best things on earth? I absolutely love it and look forward to eating it every summer on my peas, greens, hot dogs, etc. This recipe was made up this year after my mom’s garden had a huge crop of green tomatoes (10 pounds!) and I am so looking forward to having enough chow chow in my pantry to last me the next couple of years! This recipe is spicy and uses lots of peppers, so if you don’t like it hot, I suggest taking the seeds out of maybe 1/2 of the peppers used. Also, this recipe can easily be cut in half (or more), but I’m going to post the recipe for the 10 lbs of tomatoes I used since that’s what you’ll see in all the pictures. It made 15 pints of chow chow and 5 pints of hot pepper sauce to keep for my greens and other deliciousness! That’s because after the chow chow was drained out of pot we had so much delicious liquid leftover we decided it would’ve been a sin not to keep it! After drizzling it on buttered cornbread last night we decided we were definitely glad we did 🙂

Ingredients:
10 lbs green tomatoes
2 bags sweet mini bell peppers (or use 2 each of yellow, orange, and red)
2 cups of hot peppers chopped (we used an assortment from the garden of jalapenos, serranos, and a few banana peppers)
6 onions
4 c white vinegar
2 c apple cider vinegar
2 c water
5 c sugar
1/2 c salt (use pickling salt if you have it)
8 whole cloves
1 T mustard seeds
1 T whole black peppercorns
24 dried cayenne peppers
1 tsp turmeric

1. First you’re going to get your pickling liquid going. In a sauce pot combine vinegars, water, sugar, salt, spices, and dried cayenne peppers. Bring to a boil, then lower heat and allow to simmer for 30 minutes.

2. Now start prepping all your veggies to go into your food processor (tomatoes, peppers, onions). For tomatoes cut the tops off and cut in half or quarters depending on the size of the tomato. Quarter up your onions and make sure your peppers are small enough for your processor to handle. Start processing in batches and add to a large pot.

3. Once your pickling liquid is done simmering and all your veggies are processed and combined in the large pot, pour STRAINED pickling liquid over the chow chow mix and bring to a boil. This will take a while and you’ll have a considerable about of liquid in there, so be patient:) After it comes to a boil, bring the heat down and allow it to simmer about 40 minutes or until it looks like this.

4. Now it’s time to start canning! Start putting chow chow into your hot jars (I’m assuming you’ve prepped your jars) and filling them up to about 1/2 inch from the top. You’ll want to sort of let the juice run out, not quite straining the liquid, but getting mostly the chunky stuff to fill up your jars first, then pour the liquid in at the last. This will give you 15 pint size jars. After you’ve canned your chow chow, you can take liquid that’s leftover at the bottom of the pot and save it for yummy hot pepper sauce. I can’t even tell you how delicious this is!

5. Water bath the jars for 15 minutes, then allow to sit and seal on your counter top.

6. Now it’s time to make yourself a southern meal of peas, greens, cornbread, chicken, etc, and sprinkle some hot chow chow all over it and go ahead and sign out for the evening! You’ll be so glad you took the time to make these little green gems into this delicious concoction!

Jul23

Roasted Red Snapper With Veggies

Posted on July 23, 2014 by Rachel

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I love fish! There are so many people that tell me they love fish but that they’re scared to cook it or all they know how to do is fry it. Don’t get me wrong, I love fried fish, but there are so many healthier and just as delicious ways to enjoy our friends from the salty sea. This red snapper is a very mild white fish, and if you can’t find snapper where you are, a similar tasting fish would be grouper, flounder, or another mild white flaky fish. Halibut is delicious too, but it’s usually an arm and a leg, and I like to stick with the affordable stuff! Normally I do sort of a cooked pico de gallo recipe with this fish, but I had some bell peppers in my garden that were ready to pick, so those got incorporated into this dish and I was so happy I put them in there!

Ingredients:
1 fish filet per person
1 large tomato or a few handfuls of cherry tomatoes cut in half
1 handful chopped cilantro
As many chopped jalapenos as you can handle 🙂
2 bell peppers any color
2 chopped onions (I did one sweet and one purple because I had them both, but if you’re just picking one, go with sweet)
butter
2 chopped garlic cloves
Salt and pepper
Olive oil
Your favorite fish seasoning (I like to use the GOYA brands I normally use on chicken which are the Seasoning Total and GOYA con pepper in addition to a few cracks of fresh black pepper from the grinder)

1. Using an oven safe skillet (hello cast iron!), saute with about 3 T of butter and a drizzle of oil your onions and peppers and season with salt and pepper. This will take about 10 minutes or so on medium high heat. Then add your garlic and saute for a few more minutes.

2. Turn the heat off and add your chopped tomatoes and cilantro and add additional salt if needed. Stir that around until everything is incorporated.

3. Place your seasoned fish filets on top of the veggies and place into a 425 degree oven for about 12 minutes. You’ll need to vary your time based on how many filets you have, the thickness, etc, but you get the idea that they’re going in and coming out pretty quickly. Also, I find it helps roast the fish and hold in the moisture if you drizzle the tops with a little olive oil as well as the seasoning you put on them.

4. I started checking my fish at 10 minutes and I could tell when it was done when the meat bounced back firmly and poked a fork in there and it was opaque. Remember, when you take it out it will continue to carry over cook, so there’s no need for you to cook the blazes out of it.

5. Plate that puppy up and serve with a twist of lime or a side of rice for a delicious and healthy meal!

Jul18

Chicken Spaghetti

Posted on July 18, 2014 by Rachel

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Who loves cheese? Well then this chicken spaghetti recipe is for you! It has an ooey gooey cheesy sauce that is absolutely delicious! Also, this is a great recipe to chop up veggies into tiny pieces and hide them in the sauce so your kids eat them. I’ve got lots of squash and parsley in my garden right now and my son had no idea either were in this dish. I think you could easily substitute zucchini, peas, chopped asparagus, finely chopped broccoli, finely chopped spinach, or any combination of those veggies into this dish easily!

Ingredients:

1 sweet onion finely chopped

1/4 c roasted red peppers chopped (or two jars pimentos)

Additional chopped veggies of your choice (I used one yellow squash and a few sprigs of chopped parsley)

1/2 lb linguine pasta (I used whole wheat)

4 oz Velveeta

1 can cream of mushroom

2 T cream cheese

1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

1 package boneless skinless chicken thighs (about 2 lbs)

Chicken bouillon cube

Salt and pepper

2 chopped garlic cloves

3 T butter

1 T garlic and herb seasoning

Additional mozzarella or other Italian cheese for topping

Italian breadcrumbs

1. First we’re going to season the water you’ll be using to cook the chicken (and later the noodles). Bring a pot of water with chicken bouillon and garlic herb seasoning to a boil and add chicken to pot. This will need to boil about 20-25 minutes.

2. Add chopped onion, chopped veggies of your choice, butter, salt, and pepper to a sauté pan. Cook until veggies become tender and add chopped garlic and roasted red peppers and cook a few more minutes on medium high heat.

3. Turn heat down to medium low and add cream of mushroom, cream cheese, mozzarella, and Velveeta. Stir and allow mixture to melt and come together.

4. Pull your chicken out of the boiling seasoned water and cut into bite size pieces.

5. Add chicken to sauce mixture.

6. Add linguini to the boiling seasoned water and cook using directions on the box. Once it’s done, add the drained pasta to the chicken and cheese mix.

7. Pour this into a buttered 9×11 baking dish and top with more cheese and sprinkle top with Italian breadcrumbs.

8. Bake in a 375 degree oven for 20 minutes or until top is golden brown.

Mmmmmm would you look at that beautiful masterpiece?! It’s delicious with a hunk of crusty garlic bread and large glass of red wine 🙂

Jul7

Garden Vegetable and Shrimp Alfredo

Posted on July 7, 2014 by Rachel

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I am so happy when summer veggies start coming up in my garden and love to use them in tons of different recipes. This pasta I made tonight was so yummy, and it uses summer squash and zucchini as the vegetables, but really any veggie you could want would do great in here. Peas, broccoli, asparagus, carrots, etc would be tasty! I also added shrimp for some protein, but feel free to leave it out or substitute grilled chicken instead.

Ingredients:
1/2 lb linguini pasta
1/2 pint (1 cup) heavy whipping cream
5 oz shredded Romano cheese (or use Parmesan if you prefer)
1 zucchini sliced into 1/2 rings
1 squash sliced into 1/2 rings
1 lb shrimp that’s been peeled and de-veined
1 stick of butter
1 clove garlic chopped
1-2 T chopped fresh herbs (I used flat leaf parsley and basil from the garden)
Salt and pepper
Cayenne pepper (optional)

1. First get your water boiling for the pasta and get your veggies started in a separate skillet with 2 T butter. Oh hello there cast iron skillet! You know how much I love you 🙂

2. Saute on medium-high heat for a few minutes and season with salt and pepper, then add your chopped garlic and saute a few more minutes. Drain into a bowl and set aside.

3. Next, saute your shrimp in 4 T of butter and season with salt, pepper, and a pinch of cayenne pepper. The last minute they’re in there toss in your freshly chopped herbs. Remove pan from the heat and set aside.

4. For the sauce, just melt 2 T of butter in a small sauce pot over low to medium heat, and add your heavy whipping cream once it’s melted. Season liberally with salt and pepper, then add 3-4 oz of your shredded Romano cheese.

5. Once it’s thickened and melted, it will stick to the back of your spoon and become a deliciously sinful white cheesy sauce.

6. Combine your veggies, pasta, sauce, and shrimp all together and stir.

7. Top with more freshly chopped herbs and the rest of your shredded cheese, then serve with cheesy garlic bread for a yummy summer Italian meal!

Jun12

Duke’s Jalapeño Havarti Sliders

Posted on June 12, 2014 by Rachel

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You may or may not have drawn the logical conclusion that I’ve had a thing for sliders this pregnancy. It’s true! I’m currently obsessed with sliders and have made them several different ways, but I think this one is my favorite! This recipe uses ground turkey and deliciously creamy Havarti cheese, and they’re heavenly. Can’t find Havarti cheese? Pepper jack would work great here too.

Ingredients:
1 package ground turkey (the one I bought was 19 oz, so slightly over a pound)
1 chopped jalapeño (seeded and deveined)
About 1/4 c cubed jalapeño Havarti cheese
Your favorite burger seasoning
1 heaping T Duke’s mayonnaise

1. Combine mayo, ground turkey, jalapeños, cheese, and seasonings in a mixing bowl. I added about a tsp of seasoning into this mix, then sprinkled a little more on each patty after they were assembled. It’s important to note that every Southerner knows that Duke’s mayo is the best mayo you can buy and blows Hellman’s out of the water, so I highly suggest that’s what you use. However, if you can’t find it, any mayo you find will work.

* That one on the top right is plain for my 2 year old 🙂

2. You can either grill these or cook them on your stovetop. You may have heard me mention I live in a wind tunnel with a vortex that threatens to suck me up every time I step outside to approach my grill, so I did these on the stovetop. Don’t forget to spray your pan like I did, because these puppies stick!

3. Prepare yourself for the juiciest and most delicious slider ever! I highly recommend serving on a toasted slider bun with a kicked up creamy coleslaw and sliced garden tomato. For a quick coleslaw that’s only semi-homemade I used a creamy coleslaw mix and added a spoonful of Duke’s mayo to the mix, a splash of white vinegar, cayenne pepper, and salt & pepper. It really made it taste like it was totally from scratch and incorporated the Duke’s mayo theme I was going for. Yum!

Jun9

Pulled Pork Enchiladas

Posted on June 9, 2014 by Rachel

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Y’all know I love to buy meat in bulk and cook my fabulous meals on the cheap, but coming up with different recipes with the same meat can be tricky! Making 2-3 different meals with the same meat can help break up your dinners so it feels like you did the whole thing that night brand new. This recipe uses leftover pulled pork, and there are so many different things you can do with pulled pork besides BBQ sandwiches. This and my pork tacos are probably my two favorite Mexican themed dishes to do with leftover pulled pork. Also, there aren’t really measurements for this because each person will obviously have different amounts of leftovers, so I tried to take good pictures of the portions I used so you can get an idea for when you do yours.

Ingredients:
Leftover pulled pork
Tortillas (corn or flour. – both are great, but I used flour here only because that’s what my husband likes)
Caramelized onions
Green chiles
Sour cream
Mixed shredded cheese
Enchilada sauce
Salt and pepper

1. First put all your pulled pork in a mixing bowl. Pure guesstimate here, but I’ll say this looks to be about 4 cups of pulled pork.

2. Take a few handfuls of your favorite shredded cheese, a few spoonfuls of sour cream, caramelized onions, green chiles, and a little salt and pepper and put it in your mixing bowl.

3. Give it a big stir and it should look something like this:

4. Get your enchilada sauce and smear a few spoonfuls at the bottom of a baking dish.

5. Start stuffing your enchiladas by putting a few spoonfuls of the mixture in the tortillas. It helps if you warm them up a little first by wrapping them in a damp paper towel in the microwave for a little bit to prevent them from cracking.

6. Once your dish is full of enchiladas, pour your sauce on top and top with shredded cheese.

7. Cook in a 350 oven for about 40 minutes or until cheese is melted and sauce is bubbly.

This is a side note, but if you’re one of those people that packs lunches for your husband or likes to have individual freezer homemade meals, I like to do a few individual enchiladas here to be placed in the freezer. Assemble, cover with plastic wrap, then a layer of foil and freeze. To cook later, remove foil/plastic wrap and place in oven/microwave for a tasty individual meal.

Jun4

Pork Chop Grenades

Posted on June 4, 2014 by Rachel

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This is one of those summer hits that people will be wanting your recipe for. A few years ago, I saw a recipe on one of those recipe chain Facebook posts for stuffed chicken breasts that used these same stuffing ingredients, and thus, eventually the pork chop grenade was born. At first, I made this recipe using chicken thighs, but it has expanded to the “other white meat”, and I’ve gotta say it’s pork perfection! But feel free to sub chicken or even pork tenderloin in place of a pork chop here – it really is versatile!

Ingredients:
Pork chops or pork steaks with bones removed
BBQ sauce (I used Sweet Baby Rays here)
1-2 strips of bacon per grenade
1/2 jalapeño sliced per grenade
Your favorite grilling seasoning or just plain salt and pepper
About 1 T cream cheese per grenade

1. This recipe graduated from chicken to pork because these bone-in pork steaks were on sale for a steal at the store. See what being a savvy shopper can do for you? 🙂 I just cut out the bones of the steaks before using them. Obviously, the easiest thing would be to buy thin cut boneless pork chops.

2. Sprinkle your favorite grilling seasoning on your meat and put about a tablespoon of cream cheese on each chop.

3. Using either the back of a spoon or your fingers, mush the cream cheese out a little bit and place 1/2 a jalapeño on each. I like to keep a few seeds and stems in mine to keep them spicy! Please excuse the blurry pic 🙂

4. Now here is the messy part! You’re going to wrap these up into grenades using 1-2 slices of bacon each. Try to seal them up with the bacon because it helps keep the stuffing inside. I like to do a little fresh cracked black pepper on top of the bacon because it’s delicious and it looks pretty.

5. Now you can decide to either bake or grill these. Normally, I grill mine but now that I’m living in Amarillo AKA the US’s windiest city , I don’t particularly enjoy grilling in gale force winds, so I bake them. I use a grilling sheet I’ve sprayed with non-stick spray on top of a cookie sheet/jelly roll pan lined with foil for easy cleanup. Bake at 375 for anywhere from 45-60 minutes based on the thickness of your meat. Then take them out and turn the heat up to 400 or crank the grill up.

6. Now you’re going to baste them with your favorite BBQ sauce and put back in for 10-15 minutes. Again, you don’t want to overcook them, so keep in mind the thickness of your meat before you cook it.

7. Your grenades are ready to eat! Let’s cut into one of these babies and check out that creamy spicy perfection!

Blonde Bitchin' West Texas Kitchen

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Tag Archives: Cook

Beef Stroganoff

Perfect Pot Roast

Chicken Noodle Soup

Hot Chow Chow

Roasted Red Snapper With Veggies

Chicken Spaghetti

Garden Vegetable and Shrimp Alfredo

Duke’s Jalapeño Havarti Sliders

Pulled Pork Enchiladas

Pork Chop Grenades