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.