Weekly Cooking (and Related Issues) Thread

[Liz]

Soup starts off on a sheetpan.

Steak Soup / from Cali restaurant

METHOD Saute tender 15 min cup melted butter, 11/2 c ea chp onions, sliced carrots, cup diced celery.
Add cup flour; stir smooth; Cook bubbly at edges, do not overcook--will break down. Set aside.

BEEF Crumble lb ground beef onto rimmed baking sheet and pat inch thick. Bake/brown 350 deg
15-20 min (coloration determines color of soup). Drain meat. Break into 1/2" chunks.

FINAL Add 11/4 C water to pan with cooked veg; bring to simmer. Add 8 oz can chp tomatoes, beef
chunks, 1/3 c beef stock base; pepper. cook/stir 10 min. Add 11/4 c water, pkg frozen mixed veg. Cook
5 min til veg are tender. Do not boil.

[Jamestown1630]

How do you make your taco seasoning? This sounds like something my husband would like.

[Jamestown1630]

Don’t forget sprouts, in your ‘prepper’ plans. They are ‘yugely’ nutritious, give you fresh veggies in a few days, and the seeds keep for a long time.

[Jamestown1630]

Good Tips!

(And as my husband says, “I love vegetarians; I eat them all the time...)

[Jamestown1630]

I had to look that up - doesn’t the famous turkey-brining recipe come from Zuni?

I saved their roast chicken and bread salad recipe - Thanks!

[Liz]

"Slab pies" are baked in rimmed sheetpans. Good for a crowd.
Then again, the fam wont mind having half a slab pie to eat later.

This is peach. southernliving.com has slews of wonderful slab pie recipes.

[Mears]

Oh my,that looks heavenly.

.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

I forgot to mention...I have a 24-pound bucket of ‘sprouts’ from the ‘stash,’ as well. I’m starting my first batch. The peas look good - the spelt and white and red wheat aren’t spouting at all, though.

They have one more day and then they’re going to the hogs! ;)

[Aliska]

I was helping a Polish lady take care of my aunt, and you reminded me of her chicken soup. She must have put some secret herbs and spices in it, a bay leaf, but stirred sour cream in it when it was done.

She made wonderful pierogi. Chef John cheats with round won ton wrappers. Perfect. She'd fill them with potatoes with green onions and bacon, also a kasha mixture I think. She also made a kasha mixture wrapped in dough and baked. I grew to CRAVE that stuff, must have some nutrients I needed. Never was able to make it like her though even though I have my notes for the ingredients and method.

Then there were her piccked "feesh" Beautiful fish. Where did you get them? Chicago. It was Christmas. They were the best pickled herring or feesh I ever had although I prefer the ones with sour cream. She indicated you could do that too. I didn't watch her do those and don't know if she cut them in pieces raw or cooked. I suspect raw.

The only dish I asked her to make, and I wasn't crazy about it, was borscht. Probably good for you. There are beet packs as nutrition supplements you can buy online, not gonna do it.

I got some picked beets from Walmart, good brand name, in a glass jar, but they have no zing. And are almost raw Well I can remedy the raw easily enough, but what do I spice them up with? I know vinegar, don't have cider vinegar, maybe allspice, cloves, sugar, what else?

Sorry I'm late to the party, am reading through the posts.

[pinkandgreenmom]

Homemade Taco Seasoning (3 TBSP of mix = one 4 oz packet)

1/2 c chili powder
1/4 c onion powder
1/8 c ground cumin
1 TBSP garlic powder
1 TBSP paprika
1 TBSP sea salt

Put all ingredients in small jar or container and shake well. Keeps forever in the fridge.

[Jamestown1630]

I have read that you can freeze sprouting seeds, which really surprised me; but I haven’t experimented with it yet.

We recently sprouted some that we’d had around for several years (not frozen, just left in original packaging) and they mostly did well.

I would like suggestions on harvesting - getting the hulls off and drying. So far, we’ve rinsed them in the kitchen sink, straining off the hulls; and then lay them in layers on paper towels to dry. I would think that you wouldn’t want the ‘debris’ going down the drain, so harvesting is something of a project.

We have one of those burlap-looking bags that you can put them in and swing it around to get rid of the moisture, but haven’t tried that yet.

[Jamestown1630]

Thanks!

[Aliska]

I love fish sticks, haven't had any for a long time. Also like McDonald's fish and cheese sandwiches with extra tartar sauce.

What was on my mind tonight was Rice Chex mix. I buy some Italian name Gira something but my mom's were the best. The original recipe you can google.

Mom used stick pretzels, wheat chex, corn chex, the peanuts with no skins from a can. Cheerios a must. The reason is her coating was dark and she must have added tabasco because you'd hit a piece with extra dark stuff baked in the hole, hot but so flavorful. Also stuck in the holex of the chex. I would add some broken pieces of rye bagel chips but they weren't available back in the 50's where I sill live.

The sauce was butter, garlic powder, onion powder?, worcestershire, whatever else the original recipe says. Trying to recreate them years ago, a friend said to put some mustard seeds in butter and swirl them until they either pop or are "done" whatever that was. They didn't hurt the mixture at all.

We didn't use a flat pan though but the bottom part of the turkey roaster.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

I’m not willing to work that hard for my food, LOL!

I think I’ll do some culling and just save the seeds that have actually sprouted in my original test run.

My Dad is a prepper NUT to the extreme. I’m all about being prepared and ready for ice storms (which we are in the middle of!), blizzards, tornadoes, etc. here in The Heartland, and being as self-sufficient as possible, but if you could’ve seen the stockpiles I had to go through and sort and send back out into the Universe, well, it was an IMPRESSIVE amount of work to say the least! :)

[Jamestown1630]

LOL!

But, I do think sprouts are an essential addition to any kind of ‘prepping’ - and even of just an everyday diet. They are very nutritious, and you can produce them indoors any time of year.

They make a very nice fresh, crunchy addition to a sandwich, too.

[Aliska]

I garbled the chex mix. We never used corn chex, just wheat and rice. Now the small formed pretzels would be better.

Thanks for the taco seasoning and fajita recipe (can't remember who posted). Doesn't have anything that would give it an undesirable taste.

Liz, thanks for the steak soup recipe, looks really good.

[Flaming Conservative]

I ruined two new high quality aluminum half sheet pans by putting them in the dishwasher. :( You probably wouldn’t do anything that stupid, but I did.

[Jamestown1630]

I’m a fan of McDonald’s fish sandwiches, too.

The thing is, they don’t seem to sell that many of them here, and ordering one seems to put a wrench in the works. In recent years, they’ve been cold and not ‘crispy’; but they’ve improved lately at our local.

(You can make one easily, with Mrs. Paul’s fillets, a slice of cheese, a bun, and a jar of tartar sauce :-)

[Flaming Conservative]

A lot of people swear by crock pots, but I have little use for them. Everything I’ve tried to make in them pretty much flops. I do use them to hold food hot for parties, etc., though.

[Jamestown1630]

No, I have absolutely done that! We bought two at Costco, and washed them once in the dishwasher with no problem; then I washed one again, and it was destroyed.

At the time, it seemed that washing them in a liquid dishwash detergent worked fine; but when we used powdered dishwash detergent, the pans became oxidized.

I just decided to never again put them in the dishwasher; and using foil eliminates most need to clean them anyway.