Ham Bowls

This is an idea that I'd been thinking of for a while.  It's basically a breadbowl, but instead of using bread, using ham.  Since ham and cheese go together like ham and cheese, I opted to go with a broccoli cheese soup for the filling of the bowl.

Ingredients:

1 Precooked Ham

1 Stick Butter

1 Onion

1 Bag Chopped Broccoli

1 32 oz Box Vegetable Broth

2 cups Milk

1 1/2 pint Carton of Heaving Whipping Cream

1 tblspoon Minced Garlic

1lb Bag Shredded Cheddar

Instructions:

Cut the ham in half

Using a spoon (or other scooping device) scoop out the innards of the ham

Be careful not to puncture the walls or floor of the bowl, as this would ruin it's capacity as a bowl

Repeat with the other half of the ham

Weigh the bowls

Bake at 350 degrees for 10minutes per pound

Chop the onion

Add the butter and the onion to a pot

Cook on high for a minute

Add the broccoli, broth, milk, cream, and garlic

Bring to a boil

Reduce heat

Gradually stir in the cheese

Remove the hams from the oven

Drain the ham juices that had pooled in the bottom of the bowls

Spoon the soup into the bowl

This turned out better than I'd expected, but worse than I'd hoped.  The soup actually turned out extremely well.  Despite my attempt at adding the cheese gradually, it still wound up not quite melting evenly, but it was still delicious.  The ham bowl on the other hand was more questionable.  The ham itself turned out fairly well, and the bowl actually worked as a bowl (closer to cup in terms of soup holding capacity), but the ham bowl didn't turn out to be equal to the sum of its parts.  Mostly because even after scooping out a large potion of it, it's still a lot of ham.  Like, a lot of ham.  And you get to it after you've already had a cup of soup or two.  But partially because it's just a lot of ham.  Eating the whole bowl was a mistake, and not something that I'd recommend to anyone.  Which is why when I ate the second bowl, I didn't eat the whole thing, and rather just ate the walls of the bowl.  Which was still a decent amount of ham.  After only the base was left, I cut it in half to make two thick slices of ham, which I then used for sandwiches.  Even after if was cut in half, the base was still enough ham to be a bit much on the sandwiches.  Because it was a lot of ham.

Beers, Brats, Battlestar Galactica

It'd been a while since I'd had brats, and while I was at the store picking up the ingredients for the next recipe and saw a pack of cheddar and beer brats I'd decided to go ahead and pick it up, along with some stuff to go with it.

Ingredients:

1 Package of Tailgate Cheddar and Beer Brats

1 Yellow Onion

1 Orange Pepper
3 12oz Cans of Beer
1 Package of Brat Buns
Mustard
Relish

Instructions:

Brown the brats in a pan

Slice the onion

Add the brats and half of the onion to the slowcooker

Cook on low for 4-6 hours, or 2-4 on high

Slice the pepper

Pan fry the pepper and remaining onion

Add the mustard and relish to the bun

Add brat to the bun

Top with slowcooker onions and pepper and onion mix

This turned out fairly well, but beer brats usually work out fairly well.  There were a couple of things that I could have done better though.  I didn't really notice the cheese in the brats, but that might have just been due to the manner of cooking not being conducive to cheddar brats, or that there was just too much other stuff going on.  I probably didn't need the pepper and onion mix in addition to the beer onions.  Speaking of those, I forgot the first rule of slowcookers when making these.  I put the onions on top of the brats instead of below, so they didn't wind up fully cooked and were still a bit on the hard side.  I probably could have made do with only two cans of beer, which would have left another to be disposed of by other means.

Steakless Meltsican

This meal was built from the ground up in order to accommodate an ingredient that wound up not being included in the final meal at all.  I went to the grocery store to find some stuff to cook, and the first thing I got to was a cooler containing BOGO steaks.  I figured that this wasn't an opportunity that I should ignore, so I picked up two.  The initial plan was to eat one as steak, and then build a meal around the other, so I picked up a marinade spice mix.  Knowing that steak goes well in Mexican, and Mexican-Inspired cuisine, I picked up ingredients for a Mexican-Inspired meal.  When I got home, I realized that instead of that, I could eat both steaks as steaks.  So that is what I wound up doing.

Ingredients:

1 package of Knorr Spanish Rice

1 can of refried beans

1 block of Manchego Quesadilla Melting Cheese

1 7 oz can of Hot Salsa Casera

1 bag of frozen onions and peppers

2 flash frozen chicken breasts

Chili powder

Cumin

Smoked paprika

Instructions:

Thaw chicken

Begin cooking spanish rice according to instructions

Cube chicken

Add chicken and onion/pepper mix to a pan

Add spices and cook over medium heat

Pour can of refried beans into a pan and begin cooking over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally

Cut cheese into chunks

Add chunked cheese and salsa to a small pot and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently

Continue cooking and stirring

Plate chicken/veggies, "rice", and beans

Pour Queso over the plate

This turned out fantastically.  It's hard to go wrong with some cheesy goodness, and using the manchego resulted in a higher quality queso than what I usually make.  I'd initially planned on adding a can of corn to the chicken mix, but there wasn't enough room in the pan.  The refried beans weren't actually in my initial plan, but I discovered that I'd had them when I went to add some oil to the chicken pan.  So I effectively traded a can of refried beans for a can of corn, which worked out.  I'd forgotten that the Knorr Spanish rice is mostly noodles, which worked out well for eating this on a plate, but attempting to eat it as a burrito, or with chips, doesn't work as well as if it had been actual rice.

Baked Barbecue Bird

This is the eleventh entry in this blog, and you might be wondering why it is that I've managed to make over 10 posts in a cooking blog without ever using an oven.  The fact is that I'm moderately afraid of ovens.  I don't think that this is an entirely unreasonable fear, given the fact that it's a box of hot that burns more people than would admit.  Well, this  entry finally breaks beyond my semi-rational fears and embraces the oven.  This is largely the result of wanting to cook some chicken smothered in BBQ sauce rather than some move to prove that I'm over my fear, or some statement about ovens and how they are a tool rather than the last resort of a fool.  

Anyhoo, now that I'm done justifying my partially legitimate fear of ovens, it's time to move on to the grocery shopping trip that resulted in this story.  As I was going back and forth through the aisles of my local grocery store a bottle of barbecue sauce caught my eye.  It was a bottle of Mad Dog & Merill's Spicy BBQ sauce.  Given the fact that I enjoy a good barbecue sauce (this bottle makes for number 3 in my fridge at the moment) as well as an enjoyment of some heat led to me opting to pick up this sauce.  After I decided that the sauce was worth a purchase I felt obliged to justify this purchase, so I wound up picking up a pair of boneless skinless chicken legs as well.

Ingredients:

1 Package of Boneless Skinless Chicken Legs

1/3-1/2 Bottle MDM Spicy BBQ Sauce

1 Box Southwest Style Scalloped Potatoes

1 tblspoon margirine

.5 cup milk

1/2 Bag Green Beans (Frozen)

Chili powder

Cumin

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350

Grease 2 pans

Add Chicken and BBQ Sauce in Pan A and mix together

Stir Potatoes and milk and butter in Pan B

Put both pans in oven and wait 30 min

Remove bag of green beans from freezer

Realize that said bag has been frozen for far too long and is not more ice than bean

Begin the process of thawing slash randomly stabbing the ice apart

Season the bejeezus out of the beans on account of them being over frozen

Begin cooking beans

Turn oven up for the last 5 minutes

This worked out by and large the way that I'd been hoping that it would.  The chicken was flavorful and juicy.  The BBQ sauce had some kick to it, but wasn't quite as hot as I'd been hoping that it would be.  The scalloped potatoes actually had more heat to them.  The only part of this that didn't work was the beans  This was partially due to them being overly frozen and partially due to them being overly seasoned.  Definitely a meal worth doing again, but with better vegetables.

Gochujang Cones

This is a meal I'd had the general idea about for a while.  I'd initially been planning on using a buffalo sauce, but upon the realization that I had the bottle of gochujang sauce in my fridge I opted to mix things up a bit.  In the end, I'm glad I did, because this worked out extremely well.

Ingredients:

1 Package of Large Shrimp

1 Bag of Frozen Pearl Onions

1 Bottle of Gochujang Sauce (most of it anyways)

1 Bag of Frozen Chopped Broccoli

Some Rice (I believe I used 2/3 cups of rice and 4/3 cups of water)

Instructions:

Begin cooking rice because it's a super slow process

Deshell shrimp (or buy deshelled shrimp if you want to skip this)

Begin pan frying said shrimp

Start cooking the broccoli on the stove

Add Pearl Onions to the pan and continue cooking

Add Gochujang sauce to the pan and continue cooking

Also add gochujang sauce to the broccoli, because green greens are overrated

Cook until everything looks done

Put the shrimp on the plate so they lay flat

Balance the pearl onions onto the shrimp

Add rice and broccoli to the plate

Spoon some excess pearl onions onto said rice and broccoli

This turned out extremely well.  I'm not sure if this is due to the gochujang sauce working well with shrimp, or if it's just a sauce that's just pretty dang good.  The amount of effort involved with stacking a pearl onion on top of a shrimp.  Luckily this can be bypassed by just mixing the shrimp, onions, broccoli, and rice together.  Sidenote: this would make one heal of a burrito.  

Just about the only thing I would change about this would be to use larger shrimp.  This is entirely due to the fact that it will make the act of stacking the pearl onions easier.  It will also make the cones look more conish.  But overall it's a recipe that just works.  Onions go with all meats.  I'm pretty sure this is a fact.  If there are any meats that don't mix with onions, please let me know, and I'll immediately put it to the test.

Porkloin Pasta

This is the story of the pork loin that I knew what to do with.  It's a lot less interesting than the pork loin I had to figure out something to do with.  Partially because I knew what I was going to do so there was less making it up as I go along, and partially because what I had planned was super simple.  It's also been about a month since I made this, so I'm a bit hazy on the details.

Ingredients:

1  Roasted Garlic & Herb Marinated Pork Loin

1 Jar Pasta Sauce (I believe what I used was Ragu Hearty Traditional)

Some Spaghetti (I can't remember who much)

Instructions:

Preheat Oven to 375

Put Pork in Oven and Bake for 30m Per Pound (was about 50m for me) {If this seems familiar, it's because it's from the last recipe verbatim}
Cook the spaghetti as per the directions on the box
Heat the sauce in a pot
Cut the pork loin into slices
Layer the pasta, the pork, and the sauce

This turned out basically the way that I thought it would.  It's hard to mess up meat, tomato sauce, and pasta.  I'm sure I could pull it off if I really put my mind to it, and I probably will at some point in the future.  But a garlic and herb pork loin goes hand in hand with an Italian(ish) meal, so this meal was basically in the bag.  It's an easy recipe that I can easily recommend.

Mesquite-O Bites

This was not the meal I'd intended to make when I went to the grocery store this afternoon.  However, they had BOGO pork loins, so I bought one, and then I got one.  One of the loins (which is the one that I like to think that I bought) I had an idea of what to do with.   This is not the story of that loin.  This is the story of the gotten loin.  The boughten loin will be dealt with at some point in the future.  When I got back to my apartment, I had 2 meals that I had a rough idea for, a piece of meat with an uncertain future, and some snacks.  So I took the obvious route of combining the meat with the snacks to make an uncertain meal.

Ingredients:

1 Pork Loin Fillet with Slow Smoked Mesquite flavor (Only about a third is used with this batch size)

15 Wheat Thins

Crazy Joe's Mushroom, Onion, and Jalapeno Dip

Hot Sauce(s)

Instructions:

Preheat Oven to 375

Put Pork in Oven and Bake for 30m Per Pound (was about 50m for me)

At ~5min Left, Begin Adding a Thin Spread of the Dip on the Wheat Thins

Remove Loin from Oven

Cut into thick slices

Cut slices into chunks of Wheat Thin comparable size

Add pork to Wheat Thins

Add a dab of hot sauce to the top if so desired

This turned out better than expected.  Though, I s'pose I wasn't really expecting much out of it since I basically threw it all together at the last minute.  The flavors worked well with each other.  I really enjoy the flavor of the MOJ dip (I'd been eating it on carrots while the pork was in the oven), but it's main purpose in this recipe was to act as a binding agent between the wheat thin and the pork.  To that end, it can be replaced with another suitably thick dip, or spread if you either can't find it or would prefer something different.  The hot sauce is another area that can be left to personal taste.  It is by no means necessary, so if you'd rather go milder it works just fine.  As for the hot sauce to use, I tried it with Tapatio, Frank's, and Sriracha, and of the three, I felt that Franks worked the best.

There are a few things that I would do differently.  First, while this is delicious, it's a terrible meal.  It doesn't come close to being anywhere near balanced, and it isn't super filling either.  So, while I'd definitely make these again, it wouldn't be for a snack, but probably for either a snack or a party offering.  Second, I would give the pork an opportunity to dry.  While the fact that it turned out juicy would have been great had I been eating it on it's own, I was eating it on crackers.  While the dip provides a seal against the juices, it isn't perfect and some of the crackers were less crisp than I'd have liked.  The last thing I'd change is to use thinner slices of pork.  While it worked out the way I'd cut it, the bites were a bit on the larger side.  To this end, I might be looking to acquire a mandolin in the near future, because over the course of this blog I'm beginning to realize that I cut overly thick slices.

Craburritos

This is an idea which I had apparently come up with at some point in the past while I was out shopping and had apparently forgotten about somewhere down the line.  I say this because the other day I was gathering up the bags that had accumulated at my door (I tend to set down the bags at my door, then unload the bags from there instead of moving them into the kitchen first, I'm not sure why) and I discovered that one of them wasn't actually empty and in fact contained three cans.  Remembering why I had bought these I made an unplanned trip to the store for tortillas and cheese (and chips, salsa, and hot sauce).

Ingredients:

1 6oz can of crab meat

1 10oz can of diced tomatoes with green chiles

1 15oz can of frijoles cubanos

1/2 cup rice

tortillas

shredded cheese

hot sauce

Instructions:

Add the contents of all the cans to a pan

Stir in rice

Simmer over medium heat for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally

When enough liquid has evaporated/been absorbed into the rice, reduce heat

Heat an additional 5-10 minutes, stirring occasionally until the liquid is gone

Remove from heat

Spread a thin layer of cheese over a tortilla and microwave for 11 seconds

Open the microwave to discover this was not nearly enough time

Microwave for an additional 11 seconds

Scoop a spoonful of the mixture onto the tortilla

Top with hot sauce and wrap

This is a fairly standard burrito recipe.  Meat+tomatoes+beans+rice is a fairly easy burrito filling recipe that I've been eating for years.  This is the first time I've had it with crab though.  In fact, this is the first time that I've cooked with crab.  I've learned that cans of crab meat contain a paper cup thing to contain the crab meat.  I'm not entirely sure why this is a thing, but apparently it is.  

Overall, this worked out fairly well.  The crab was less noticeable than I'd been hoping, so if I try this again I think I'll go with 2 cans of it to see how that goes.  Also, as is apparently my trend with carbs, the rice was a bit harder than I'd been hoping.  I wasn't sure initially if I'd go with it, but when I realized how much liquid there was I realized that need to either add something to wick some of the liquid, cook it longer than I'd normally do in order to evaporate some of the liquid, or drain some of the liquid.  I do think that in the future I'd cook the rice for a bit before starting the main spiel.  One other option I'm considering, that is something that I've had before, is to switch the rice out with Zatarain's Spanish Rice, or something similar.

Buffalo Turkey Alfredo

If you remember back to the previous post, you might recall that I wound up with an extra potato and onion, as well as a gigantic pan I had forgotten to use for cooking large amounts of food.  This post will tell the tale of how I decided to cook the excess in the excessively large pan.

This is also the first post of a recipe that I refer to as "Fridge Podge".  You might be asking what fridge podge is, which is reasonable, because I'm pretty sure it isn't actually a word.  A fridge podge is a hodge podge of food thrown together from whatever you happen to have in your fridge.  Or, as my mother prefers to call it, "cooking with what you already have".  This recipe isn't technically a pure fridge podge, since I wound up picking up an onion and a pepper specifically for this while I was buying light bulbs, but the overall idea, and the majority of the ingredients were already owned and waiting for a good usage.

Ingredients:

1 lb ground turkey

1 onion

1 bell pepper

2 potatoes

8(ish) oz buffalo wing sauce

1 jar Ragu Roasted Garlic Parmesan Cheese Creation sauce

Instructions:

Dice onion

Begin browning turkey and onion

Forget about the pepper that is half the reason for the recipe

Chop potatoes and add to pan

Continue browning

Stir in buffalo wing sauce

Begin adding the "Alfredo" sauce to the pan

Remember the pepper

Finish stirring the sauce into the mix

Hastily cut the pepper and stir it into the pan

Simmer, covered, for several minutes

This mostly turned out really well.  The buffalo sauce and the pasta sauce combined considerably better than I'd been expecting them to.  The buffalo complements the creamier sauce without overpowering it, resulting in a sauce that is more than the sum of it's parts.  I suspect that this will work with any cream based pasta sauces, and I suspect I'll be experimenting with this in the future.  Unfortunately, I'd put the onions on too late in the process, so they wound up being a bit firmer than I'd intended.

There are a few things I'd do differently in the future.  First I'd begin cooking the potatoes at the same time as I started the onions and ground meat.  The potatoes being a bit softer would help the overall quality of the recipe.  The other thing I'd do is use a green pepper rather than an orange one.  This has nothing to do with the relative flavor of the peppers in respect to each other and everything to do with the aesthetics of the dish.  I'm not usually one to care for such things, but since the buffalo sauce causes everything else in the dish to be uniformly orange, a smidge of contrasting colors could really give the dish some extra pop.

In addition to the more important changes listed above, the ground turkey could be substituted with any other ground meat, or even chunks of meat.  The Roasted Garlic Parmesan sauce could also be replaced with virtually any cream based pasta sauce depending on availability and personal preference.  I'm sure I'll be experimenting with the possibilities in the days to come.

The Drowning Meal vs The Goopy Inferno

For roughly the past week and a half I've been jonesing for some curry.  This started last Saturday when one of the dishes at a wedding I was at was some Thai red curry.  I'd wanted to get more of the curry, but I felt like if I tried to eat anything more I would explode, so I opted against seconds.  I would have made some sooner, but on Tuesday I was invited over to help polish of leftovers from said wedding and I'd built up my hopes for more of the curry.  Upon arrival and discovery that the curry hadn't made it that long I realized I needed to take matters into my own hands.  Luckily I still had a box of S&B Golden Curry sauce mix left over from when I'd made curry chicken dip earlier in the summer.  

This meal almost didn't make it.  Between some overzealous shopping, some inattentive shopping, and some poor pan picks, the curry almost turned out both too thick and too thin.  A couple of pieces of advice before the recipe proper: If you have to ask if you can get more ingredients into the pan, the answer is no.  If you're looking to simmer something, be sure that said thing is in the water and the water doesn't come to the top of the pan.  Split chicken breasts contain both skin and bones.  If you put different amounts of water into two 

pans, you should also put different amounts of sauce mixes into the pans, particularly if it contains a thickening agent.  This recipe is intended to be served over rice, but I've yet to figure out a good way to do rice quickly and consistently, so if you have a preferred method, use it.

Ingredients:

2-3 lbs chicken breast

1 8.4 oz package of S&B Golden Curry Sauce Mix (pick heat level based on personal preference/gastrointestinal strength) NOTE: contains MSG, so if you think that bothers you either suck it up or skip this recipe

2 onions

2 bell peppers

20ish baby carrots

1 package sliced mushrooms

1 potato

6 cups of water

Instructions:

Oil Pan(s)

Cut chicken into chunks (this is considerably easier if you buy boneless skinless chicken breasts rather than split chicken breasts)

Dice onions (or long dice if you're lazy like me)

Begin pan frying the chicken and onions while you finish crying

Stir occasionally while preparing carrots and peppers

Cut baby carrots either in half or into thirds based on size and add to holding bowl(s)

Cut peppers in half, then into strips and add to holding bowl(s)

When onions have browned (or bowl{s} are ready) stir contents of bowl(s) into the pan(s)

Add water to pan(s)

Bring pan(s) to a simmer, then simmer for 5 minutes while preparing mushrooms and potatoes

Rinse mushrooms

Clean and dice potato

Stir mushrooms and potatoes into pan(s)

Simmer an additional 10 minutes

Remove from heat and stir in curry mix until dissolved

Simmer for 5 minutes (I assume this means to return to heat, so that's what I did)

If you're rocking two pans, compare the consistency of the mix between the two pans.  If there's a noticeable difference, consider doing what I did and combining the pans into one pot

As you might be able to tell from my pre-recipe tips, a lot of things didn't go correctly for this meal.  While I was shopping I got a little ahead of myself and wound up picking up one more potato and pepper than I wound up using (I have no idea yet how I'm going to utilize both of these into one meal yet but I'm sure I'll figure something out) and split chicken breasts instead of boneless, skinless chicken breasts.  On the bright side I now know something to look for while shopping, in addition to the fact that deboning chicken breasts before cooking them is more effort than I want to put for for a meal.

After my questionable shopping choices I proceeded to make matters worse with my pan choices and my refusal to compensate for the pans I had picked.  I own a fairly large frying pan, that could have probably fit either most, or all of these ingredients into it.  However, I'd forgotten about this pan until I was searching for lids to use on the pans I'd picked (you're supposed to cover the pan while simmering.  I'd opted not to both because I didn't have correct sized lids and because I wanted to get rid of some water).  Since I didn't realize I had that pan (which does have a lid) I instead decided to split the recipe in half and do half in my deeper pan (which will now be referred to as lefty) and my shallower pan (which will now be referred to as righty).  The problem with this is that lefty has more volume than righty, and this fact will come center stage shortly.

After doing a terrible job of deboning and chunking the chicken breasts and adding the chicken and onions to the pans I saw that one pan had more room left (heh) than the other, so I allocated more carrots and peppers for lefty than for righty.  Unfortunately, when I went to divvy up water between the two pans I didn't take the volume discrepancy into account initially.  So I attempted to put 3 cups of water into righty, but I realized that this wasn't going to work and put some of what was intended for righty into lefty, and scooped some more out to ensure a safer simmer level.

At this point lefty has more vegetables, water, and empty space than righty.  So when I add the potatoes and mushrooms I put more into lefty, which makes sense.  Unfortunately, the 8.4 oz packages of curry are separated into two individual trays.  So I put one tray into each pan, totally forgetting the discrepancy I'd been building in every step since step 2.  This resulted in lefty being both thinner in texture and lighter in color than righty.  In fact, looking at them in this entry's initial picture, they hardly seem like they have all of the same ingredients in them.

At this point I knew that something had to be done.  One pan had far too much water and was nearly drowning in excess fluids while the other was overly thick and would have had the texture of eating sludge, which is exactly as unappetizing as it sounds.  Luckily, the solution to this conundrum was present on my stove.  By pouring both pans into my pot, then stirring the mixture together and allowing it to use the residual heat from the pans to accelerate the merging of the two curries I was able to end with a single, delicious curry.

Sriacha Honey Pot

Welcome to the first Slowcooker Sunday post.  On account of the fact that I'm super paranoid about burning down my apartment building, I typically will only use my crockpot on days when I'm home.  This has led to me typically using it on Sundays, which has the added benefit of providing several meals for the rest of the week.  I wound up working from home this Thursday, so this will be Slowcooker Sunday Took ill on Thursday edition.  Maybe it's not the best idea to use Solomon Grundy as the naming convention for this, particularly for days past Wednesday.

Anyhoo, since I was going to be around for most of the day I decided that there was no time like the present to try a slowcooker recipe that had been on my list of things to try for a few weeks.  The recipe in question is Honey Sriracha Chicken.  

To start things off is the chicken itself.  You'll want to get this started firs, and since it's the main component of the meal I figured it'd be best to start here, moving on to the drizzle later.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 lb chicken breasts

1/4-1/2 cup sriracha

1/4-1/2 cup honey

1 tablespoon lime juice

1 tablespoon soy sauce

Instructions:

Cut the chicken into chunks and place in pot

Mix everything else together

NOTE: I say 1/4-1/2 because the measuring cup I was using has at some point lost it's lines and my attempt at eyeballing it resulted in the cup being mostly full by the time I was done)

Cook on Low for 5-7 hours

The Drizzle

Ingredients:

1/2 cup of Greek yogurt

The remainder of a bottle of sweet chili sauce

2 tablespoons honey

2 tablespoons hot sauce

Instructions:

Stir until evenly mixed

NOTE: You can apparently replace half or all of the Greek yogurt with mayo, but I didn't feel like buying two things for this

NOTE 2: It's supposed to use 1/4 cup of the sweet chili sauce, but I knew I had an indeterminate amount in my fridge so I skipped buying any and went all in to get rid of it

NOTE 3: It's supposed to take 2 teaspoons of hot sauce, but I either wasn't paying attention or wanted more heat (I shouldn't wait so long to write these)

I have mixed feelings about this recipe.  On the one hand, the flavor of this was very good.  The honey-sriracha-lime flavor works incredibly well.  I'd been hesitant about it before eating this, but combination works better than I'd been expecting.  The combination in the drizzle also works out better than I'd been expecting, providing a sweet heat that also can work as either an impromptu salad dressing or sandwich spread (see below).

On the other hand, the chicken was dry.  Really dry.  I had to double check that there were still juices in the pot (there were) after I tried it.  I'm not sure if this was due to me using flash frozen chicken breasts, or if it's just that the breast meat doesn't have enough fat on it to survive for extended periods in a crockpot without drying out.

I would like to try this again, but if I do I'd do one of several things differently:
Option A: Use leg meat instead of breast meat.  Dark meat tends to be a bit fattier which might keep it from drying out quite so much.  

Option B: Increase the amount of meat and sauce.  After I'd added everything to the pot it was probably less than a third of the way full.  I have no evidence for this but I feel like slowcookers work better when they are more full.

Option C: Instead of chunking the chicken breasts, leave them whole, then shred them and return them to the sauce.  Even with the rather dry chunks this already works decently for sandwiches, especially with the sauce as a spread.  Shredding it might both draw attention away from the dryness (I've never noticed other meals I've made with chicken breasts in the crockpot to be dry after I've shredded them) and make it easier to put on a sandwich.  This can be combined with Option B.

Option D: Cook this on the stove rather than in a crockpot.  Cooking this on the stove (potentially marinating in the sauce before starting) should keep the chicken from drying out so drastically.  It also has the advantage of taking less time to cook if you either run out of time or don't trust leaving a crockpot running while you're away.

Two Meals One Pork (part 2)

It's been several days since I made this meal, and I keep putting off writing this because I don't really know how I feel about this meal.  I keep going back and forth in my head about whether it's any good or not, which is probably a sign that it's probably not for public consumption.

If you remember back to the previous post, you may recall that I felt that half of the items I'd picked up were fairly hodgepodgey.  This is largely due to my habit of impulse buying things that either look interesting or I was recently thinking about while grocery shopping.  Of the two ingredients that fell into the impulse buys category, one was something that had looked interesting, the other was something that I'd brought up in a conversation earlier in the day.

The first item was a packet of McCormick Sweet Mesquite & Caramelized Onion burger mix-in.  As I was looking at the various seasoning blends, this one stood out to me as something that I'd like to try on pork.  I don't know why it is, and had I looked at it more I would have realized that this is intended to be mixed into raw hamburger and then formed into patties, not something that necessarily is intended to be used for an over the stove mix.

The other item is a small can of sauerkraut.  I'd had a conversation earlier in the day about Rubens, so when I saw it in the store I picked it up, figuring that I could use it at some point on either a sandwich or brats.  That was not the fate intended for this can.

As I was cooking my pork tacos I was struggling with if I should should go all in with the extra ingredients, or if I should try to work something out something more sensible.  In the end I decided against sensibility which resulted in:

Sweet Mesquite Pork with Broccoli & Kraut

Ingredients:

1/2 Pork Sirloin Roast

1 14.5oz bag of frozen broccoli cutlets
1 packet McCormick Sweet Mesquite & Caramelized Onion Burger Mix-in

1 8oz can of Sauerkraut

Instructions:

Cut the pork into chunks.

Oil pan and set to medium heat.

Add the pork, brocoli, and kraut.

Stir in the mix-in.

Cook until broccoli isn't frozen and pork is cooked, stirring occasionally.

Plate and eat.

As I mentioned before I am still unsure how I feel about this meal.  The ingredients don't really mesh well, so there isn't a consistent flavor to the meal.  One bite will prominently feature the smokiness from the mix-in and the next will have the sourness of the kraut.  The mesquite was more noticeable in the pork itself, while the broccoli and the kraut gravitated more towards the kraut.  While I do personally enjoy the conflict of favor that this creates, I don't really think that it's a good meal.  Combined with the realization that the mix-in contains high fructose corn syrup, which I hadn't anticipating from a seasoning mix (I really should have looked into that some more before I bought it) I don't think I will be trying this again.

Two Meal One Pork (part 1)

After camping this weekend and being super lazy after getting back on Sunday, I realized that I was running low on prepared meals.  Not wanting to have to break into my "Ain't got time to cook" reserves of prepackaged meals and soups I opted to head to the store.

My plan was to pick up a thing of pork, some vegetables, and potentially a seasoning pack if anything stood out to me, with a backup of a mix of  garlic and herb, olive oil, and water.  However, when I got to the store my tendency to pick up things I found interesting got the better of me, and when I was checking out I realized that the items in my cart didn't match the pseudo-Italian pork I'd been intending to make.  Roughly half of the items made sense with each other, but the rest were, for the most part, totally unrelated and heavily at odds with the first half.

By the time I'd gotten home I'd realize that my normal strategy of meat in the non-stick pan and the veggies in the can-stick pan then portioning the two together wouldn't work with the hodgepodge of ingredients I'd picked up.  So instead I opted to use the two pans for two meals instead of two halves of one larger meal.  The meal I had a general plan is in the pan on the right and will be covered in the rest of this post, and the meal I made up as I went along went in the pan on the left, and will be covered in a later post.  Which leads us to:

Tacos de Cerdo

The first impulse buy I'd made was a box of taco shells that was on sale.  This must have stayed on my mind since I also picked up 2 cans out of the Hispanic section.  So by the time I'd hit the freezer section it only made sense to pick up a bag of onions and peppers.  Sidenote: I love peppers and onions and will probably add them to a large number of recipes in the future.  So the obvious choice for the first half of the meat was pork tacos.

Ingredients:

1/2 Pork Sirloin Roast

1 16oz bag of frozen peppers and onions
1 10oz can of Diced Tomatoes w/ Green Chiles

1 7oz can of Diced Green Chiles

A sprinkling of cheese

Instructions:

Dice the pork into as small of pieces as you think can reasonably fit in a taco shell.

Oil pan and set to medium heat.

Add pork, peppers, and onions to pan.

Stir.

Add cans of tomatoes and chiles.

Stir contents of cans into the mix.

Let cook, uncovered for a while, stirring occasionally (time unspecified due to being distracted prepping another meal).

Drain excess juices.

Add to taco shell, sprinkle with shredded cheese if so desired.

Overall this turned out fairly well.  Both tacos I had tasted good.  While the flavor that the chiles provide adds to the dish, when I'm having Mexican-ish I'm usually going for a bit more heat.  If you're like me it might be worth replacing the can of chiles with something that provides more heat, such as a can of diced jalapenos or another pepper you enjoy the flavor of, but if you have a more mild palette the chiles will add more flavor without being overbearing.
The general ease of the recipe, combined with the fact that added liquid of the cans of tomatoes and chiles minimize risk of burning or sticking, so I can easily recommend the recipe to anyone who can use a knife and a stove.