The truth is, the Sunday dinner I made today wasn't too special—something I sort of squeezed in while doing other stuff, and probably nothing to write about. I roasted a traditional chicken (slowly, because Kathleen and Sarah were in Sioux Falls) with Zehnder's seasoning and made some rice pilaf and Dutch green beans for the sides.
The Dutch green beans were something I came across when two of my enthusiasms intersected: I was trying to duplicate the green beans they have at KFC; and I was browsing through old school lunch menus and saw them listed from one dating back to the late 1960s.
That got me scouring the Internet for an appropriate recipe. The one that sounded most like what I wanted turned out to be cafeteria-sized: you START with a No. 10 can of cut green beans, which seems to be something like 6 or 7 pounds of them. I like green beans, but I don't like them THAT much.
Anyway, I scaled it down to just two 15 oz. cans.
The first thing you do is fry up three or four pieces of bacon, nice and crisp.
Those come out of the pan (onto a paper towel) and I toss a Tablespoon (or so) of finely chopped onions into the hot bacon grease and cook until they start to get translucent.
Then in go the two cans of (drained) green beans. I sprinkle those with about a Tablespoon of white vinegar and some salt (you don't need a lot of salt with the bacon) and black pepper (you can be fairly liberal with the pepper).
Stir it all around until the beans are heated all the way through, then crumble the bacon and add that to the mix. Out of the pan and into the serving dish.
You can shortcut this if you're in a hurry:
I keep a container of bacon grease in the fridge (learned that from my dad) that I use to start things, then just add bacon pieces (like Hormel) at the end.
And if I don't have a fresh onion handy, I'll use frozen, but chop it really fine and let the water cook out before I add the beans.
If you don't have the beans—well, in that case you probably should make sometime else.
Next time I'm going to complain about a couple of my favorite liquors changing their traditional bottles. It's not really a recipe, but Mr. Mom likes a drink when cocktail hour rolls around. So there IS a connection.
Showing posts with label recipes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recipes. Show all posts
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Monday, September 3, 2012
Barbecued ribs: Am I doing them wrong?
It's Labor Day, and that means barbecued ribs at our house. One of the cool things about holidays is that we've always either followed or established traditions for what we eat. That saves a lot of thinking going into what are usually pretty busy days.
Today started busy: We were out putting up flags on the boulevards of Brookings. It's a marching band activity—probably raises some funds for the band (maybe I should pay closer attention at the parents' meetings!)—but more than that, it was kind of fun. We got up a zero-dark-thirty, rendezvoused with other band parents at a storage shed to pick up the flags, then hit the streets. The whole thing took a little more than an hour, after which we had a leisurely breakfast at Perkins. We go out again at around 6:30 to take them down and back to the shed. So it's good to know dinner is already planned.
However, this year I'm approaching the ribs with a little trepidation: Apparently I've been doing them wrong for the last 15 or 20 years! I recently posted something on Facebook about how I parboil them first, and I caught heck from one of my old friends who told me in no uncertain terms you DO NOT parboil (or boil) ribs. Yikes!
Here's what I've been doing since my earliest days as Mr. Mom back in Texas. I got away with it there for a couple of years, but that was before Facebook, so all anyone ever knew about was the result, not how I got us there.
Parboil a rack or two of pork ribs (either short ribs or baby back ribs, depending on what I find on sale) for about 45 minutes in a stock pot with a few big glurps of white vinegar in the water. I don't know how big a "glurp" is, but that's the sound the vinegar jug makes when I pour it in. I'm guessing that altogether it's about a cup, maybe two. If I don't smell vinegar while they're cooking, I didn't use enough. Sometimes the ribs go in frozen, sometimes I cut them into smaller sections, sometimes they just go into the boiling water/vinegar.
Anyway, after about 45 minutes a lot of the connective tissue has been broken down and they're ready for the oven. I fish them out of the water, set them on a cutting board and season them. I always do one of two things: season salt and Tony Chachere's Creole seasoning; or my homemade Cuban rub. (I'll post the recipe for that below.)
Then onto a rack (sprayed with olive oil) in a covered pan with a little water underneath, and into a 375° oven for another 45 minutes.
When that's done you can finish them however you like. Sometimes I serve them as dry ribs—especially if I used the Cuban rub—which means jacking up the heat to 450° for another 15 minutes uncovered. Most of the time I brush them with barbecue sauce—I tend to use the cheap stuff, Kansas City style or original Kraft, sometimes Jack Daniel's brand, occasionally even homemade— and back into the 450° oven for 15 minutes. And sometimes they get the sauce then go on the grill—over mesquite charcoal in the Weber, or with some mesquite or hickory chips in the smoker box if they go on the gas grill.
And that's pretty much it.
But today I'm going to try something a little different. I'm not willing to let go of the parboiling just yet—I think it makes the ribs more tender—but I'm going to move them from there directly to the gas grill, indirect heat (as low as I can get it) with a pan of water over the flames on both sides and hickory chips in the smoker. I have no idea how long they'll need to cook, but I can tell when they're done by how easily I can pull the meat off the bone. (The beans and rice, corn and Texas toast all go pretty fast and can wait until the ribs are finished.)
I'll get back to you on how they turn out. Who knows, maybe next time I'll get all traditional and try low heat and smoke them all day!
Meanwhile, here's the recipe for the Cuban rub (for me, each "part" is a teaspoon, but if you want to make a larger quantity and store it, you can substitute some other measurement, then do the math for the bay leaves):
6 parts Montreal Steak Seasoning (yeah, that's kind of cheating, but it works)
2 parts anise seed
2 parts ground coriander
3 parts ground cumin
1 part dried lemon peel
4 bay leaves, chopped very fine
If you'd rather do this as a marinade and use fresh ingredients, here's how that could work, with this caveat: I haven't done this one specifically, but these are roughly the proportions I use for liquids, spices and solids in other marinades:
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup lemon juice
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 medium onion, chopped fine
Fresh rosemary, chopped
Fresh cilantro, chopped
2 tsp. anise seed
3 tsp. cumin
1 tsp. Kosher or sea salt
1/2 Tbsp. fresh ground black pepper
1/2 Tbsp. paprika
4 bay leaves, chopped very fine
It occurs to me that I ought to be posting pictures, so maybe after I make them today, I'll do that. Assuming, of course, they come out okay!
Today started busy: We were out putting up flags on the boulevards of Brookings. It's a marching band activity—probably raises some funds for the band (maybe I should pay closer attention at the parents' meetings!)—but more than that, it was kind of fun. We got up a zero-dark-thirty, rendezvoused with other band parents at a storage shed to pick up the flags, then hit the streets. The whole thing took a little more than an hour, after which we had a leisurely breakfast at Perkins. We go out again at around 6:30 to take them down and back to the shed. So it's good to know dinner is already planned.
However, this year I'm approaching the ribs with a little trepidation: Apparently I've been doing them wrong for the last 15 or 20 years! I recently posted something on Facebook about how I parboil them first, and I caught heck from one of my old friends who told me in no uncertain terms you DO NOT parboil (or boil) ribs. Yikes!
Here's what I've been doing since my earliest days as Mr. Mom back in Texas. I got away with it there for a couple of years, but that was before Facebook, so all anyone ever knew about was the result, not how I got us there.
Parboil a rack or two of pork ribs (either short ribs or baby back ribs, depending on what I find on sale) for about 45 minutes in a stock pot with a few big glurps of white vinegar in the water. I don't know how big a "glurp" is, but that's the sound the vinegar jug makes when I pour it in. I'm guessing that altogether it's about a cup, maybe two. If I don't smell vinegar while they're cooking, I didn't use enough. Sometimes the ribs go in frozen, sometimes I cut them into smaller sections, sometimes they just go into the boiling water/vinegar.
Anyway, after about 45 minutes a lot of the connective tissue has been broken down and they're ready for the oven. I fish them out of the water, set them on a cutting board and season them. I always do one of two things: season salt and Tony Chachere's Creole seasoning; or my homemade Cuban rub. (I'll post the recipe for that below.)
Then onto a rack (sprayed with olive oil) in a covered pan with a little water underneath, and into a 375° oven for another 45 minutes.
When that's done you can finish them however you like. Sometimes I serve them as dry ribs—especially if I used the Cuban rub—which means jacking up the heat to 450° for another 15 minutes uncovered. Most of the time I brush them with barbecue sauce—I tend to use the cheap stuff, Kansas City style or original Kraft, sometimes Jack Daniel's brand, occasionally even homemade— and back into the 450° oven for 15 minutes. And sometimes they get the sauce then go on the grill—over mesquite charcoal in the Weber, or with some mesquite or hickory chips in the smoker box if they go on the gas grill.
And that's pretty much it.
But today I'm going to try something a little different. I'm not willing to let go of the parboiling just yet—I think it makes the ribs more tender—but I'm going to move them from there directly to the gas grill, indirect heat (as low as I can get it) with a pan of water over the flames on both sides and hickory chips in the smoker. I have no idea how long they'll need to cook, but I can tell when they're done by how easily I can pull the meat off the bone. (The beans and rice, corn and Texas toast all go pretty fast and can wait until the ribs are finished.)
I'll get back to you on how they turn out. Who knows, maybe next time I'll get all traditional and try low heat and smoke them all day!
Meanwhile, here's the recipe for the Cuban rub (for me, each "part" is a teaspoon, but if you want to make a larger quantity and store it, you can substitute some other measurement, then do the math for the bay leaves):
6 parts Montreal Steak Seasoning (yeah, that's kind of cheating, but it works)
2 parts anise seed
2 parts ground coriander
3 parts ground cumin
1 part dried lemon peel
4 bay leaves, chopped very fine
If you'd rather do this as a marinade and use fresh ingredients, here's how that could work, with this caveat: I haven't done this one specifically, but these are roughly the proportions I use for liquids, spices and solids in other marinades:
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup lemon juice
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 medium onion, chopped fine
Fresh rosemary, chopped
Fresh cilantro, chopped
2 tsp. anise seed
3 tsp. cumin
1 tsp. Kosher or sea salt
1/2 Tbsp. fresh ground black pepper
1/2 Tbsp. paprika
4 bay leaves, chopped very fine
It occurs to me that I ought to be posting pictures, so maybe after I make them today, I'll do that. Assuming, of course, they come out okay!
Sunday, September 2, 2012
First, full disclosure...
I'm not Mr. Mom anymore.
It was, without question, the best job I ever had. I did it for ten years, until the youngest of my three daughters was heading into first grade. A big part of it was learning to cook for my family, a task I had to learn, but something I now do for fun. So how did I get there?
We quit government service back in the nineties when we had only two daughters, both born during our time at the embassy in Mexico City. They were about a year and two-and-a-half years old when we decided we didn't want to raise them in the Foreign Service—if we had, we would have spent a year back in DC, then, then at least two years at the embassy in Managua, where they most likely would have started school. We already had our onward assignments there, and the welcome cable said all sorts of things about how many hours a day we'd have electrical power, how often we'd be able to get things like bread and milk... It didn't sound like a great environment to raise a couple of kids.
So we decided to leave government service and move back to the States to raise the girls in a more stable environment. We landed in Texas, where Kathleen was hired by a small, private university. The plan was to get settled, then I'd find a job in my field, we'd put the girls in daycare, and we'd get to the business of living our lives.
Kathleen started work and I went about getting our household set up. After having a job where the government took care of pretty much everything except shopping for food, making the meals and sleeping in the beds, it was quite a change. We decided we'd have out big meal at midday and that Kathleen would come home for that. I could cook some basic stuff—spaghetti, roast chicken, various breakfasts—but I'd never done that for more than just two people, at least not with any regularity.
As near as anyone can recall, I made the chicken the day Kathleen started her new job, and had it on the table with mashed potatoes and a vegetable when she came home around noon. We all ate, she headed back to work, I cleared the table and did the dishes. Then I sat down in the living room, pretty much exhausted. It seemed like I'd been sprinting, on a dead-run that started around seven that morning. But I did it! The family was fed!
Then it struck me: I have to do this again tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that...
But it turned out that I kinda liked it. Kathleen had The Joy of Cooking and I got a copy of The Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook. I made my first meat loaf. I looked for a stroganoff recipe that didn't use tomato sauce. I started doing the grocery shopping, based on what I was planning to cook that week. I realized we could have pretty much anything we wanted for dinner as long as I was willing to learn how to cook it.
I also realized that I was really enjoying being a dad.
That probably sounds silly—after all, my older daughter was 2½ years old, so it's not like this was some kind of new experience. But actually, it was. When we worked for the government, the nanny took care of the girls all week long. I'd kiss them goodbye in the morning and hold them on my lap to read a book or watch TV in the evening. No nanny on the weekends, but Kathleen was a pretty engaged mother, so my parenting experience was a lot like a stone skipping off the surface of water. The water was there, but I never really got down into it.
That changed dramatically in Texas. I was with the girls all day, every day. I dressed them, I fed them, I changed diapers, I picked up after them, I took them shopping with me and to the park to play. And I liked it. Heck, they were even more fun than cats! And it turned out you could actually toilet train them!
But there was this plan: me finding a job, the girls into daycare. Suddenly that didn't sound so good any more. But I needed to talk about it with Kathleen.
Kathleen's favorite meal is lasagna.We always have it on her birthday and on Mothers' Day, and sometimes we just have it to have it. But at that point I'd never made a lasagna, and in looking at the recipe in the Better Homes cookbook, it seemed a bit more daunting than a meat loaf. But I did it up, along with garlic bread and a fresh salad. After dinner, when she was well-fed and happy, I said something like, "So about me looking for a job..."
She said she needed to look at the numbers—that would be a significant difference in income from what we'd planned, but like me, she liked the idea of us raising our girls instead of someone else. By the time we had the girls tucked in bed she said, "I think we can do it." My career as Mr. Mom—and the full-time cook—began the next day.
That was something like 50 pounds ago. I figured out how to make all kinds of different meals—actually planned them out a month in advance for a while, until I got better at improvising—and I don't think I ever enjoyed learning and doing something so much in my life.
What I plan to do here is something a lot of folks have told me for a lot of years that I should do: Share some of my recipes and my experiences in the kitchen. In the old days it was, "You should write a book." More recently that gave way to, "You should start a blog."
I've done blogging before—as a ghostwriter in my professional life, and in irregular and sporadic bursts elsewhere on Blogger. I hope to do this one a little more regularly. There's rarely a week when I'm not trying some new recipe or inventing one of my own, so it seems likely that I'll have enough material to get that done. One way or another, I guess we'll see!
It was, without question, the best job I ever had. I did it for ten years, until the youngest of my three daughters was heading into first grade. A big part of it was learning to cook for my family, a task I had to learn, but something I now do for fun. So how did I get there?
We quit government service back in the nineties when we had only two daughters, both born during our time at the embassy in Mexico City. They were about a year and two-and-a-half years old when we decided we didn't want to raise them in the Foreign Service—if we had, we would have spent a year back in DC, then, then at least two years at the embassy in Managua, where they most likely would have started school. We already had our onward assignments there, and the welcome cable said all sorts of things about how many hours a day we'd have electrical power, how often we'd be able to get things like bread and milk... It didn't sound like a great environment to raise a couple of kids.
So we decided to leave government service and move back to the States to raise the girls in a more stable environment. We landed in Texas, where Kathleen was hired by a small, private university. The plan was to get settled, then I'd find a job in my field, we'd put the girls in daycare, and we'd get to the business of living our lives.
Kathleen started work and I went about getting our household set up. After having a job where the government took care of pretty much everything except shopping for food, making the meals and sleeping in the beds, it was quite a change. We decided we'd have out big meal at midday and that Kathleen would come home for that. I could cook some basic stuff—spaghetti, roast chicken, various breakfasts—but I'd never done that for more than just two people, at least not with any regularity.
As near as anyone can recall, I made the chicken the day Kathleen started her new job, and had it on the table with mashed potatoes and a vegetable when she came home around noon. We all ate, she headed back to work, I cleared the table and did the dishes. Then I sat down in the living room, pretty much exhausted. It seemed like I'd been sprinting, on a dead-run that started around seven that morning. But I did it! The family was fed!
Then it struck me: I have to do this again tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that...
But it turned out that I kinda liked it. Kathleen had The Joy of Cooking and I got a copy of The Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook. I made my first meat loaf. I looked for a stroganoff recipe that didn't use tomato sauce. I started doing the grocery shopping, based on what I was planning to cook that week. I realized we could have pretty much anything we wanted for dinner as long as I was willing to learn how to cook it.
I also realized that I was really enjoying being a dad.
That probably sounds silly—after all, my older daughter was 2½ years old, so it's not like this was some kind of new experience. But actually, it was. When we worked for the government, the nanny took care of the girls all week long. I'd kiss them goodbye in the morning and hold them on my lap to read a book or watch TV in the evening. No nanny on the weekends, but Kathleen was a pretty engaged mother, so my parenting experience was a lot like a stone skipping off the surface of water. The water was there, but I never really got down into it.
That changed dramatically in Texas. I was with the girls all day, every day. I dressed them, I fed them, I changed diapers, I picked up after them, I took them shopping with me and to the park to play. And I liked it. Heck, they were even more fun than cats! And it turned out you could actually toilet train them!
But there was this plan: me finding a job, the girls into daycare. Suddenly that didn't sound so good any more. But I needed to talk about it with Kathleen.
Kathleen's favorite meal is lasagna.We always have it on her birthday and on Mothers' Day, and sometimes we just have it to have it. But at that point I'd never made a lasagna, and in looking at the recipe in the Better Homes cookbook, it seemed a bit more daunting than a meat loaf. But I did it up, along with garlic bread and a fresh salad. After dinner, when she was well-fed and happy, I said something like, "So about me looking for a job..."
She said she needed to look at the numbers—that would be a significant difference in income from what we'd planned, but like me, she liked the idea of us raising our girls instead of someone else. By the time we had the girls tucked in bed she said, "I think we can do it." My career as Mr. Mom—and the full-time cook—began the next day.
That was something like 50 pounds ago. I figured out how to make all kinds of different meals—actually planned them out a month in advance for a while, until I got better at improvising—and I don't think I ever enjoyed learning and doing something so much in my life.
What I plan to do here is something a lot of folks have told me for a lot of years that I should do: Share some of my recipes and my experiences in the kitchen. In the old days it was, "You should write a book." More recently that gave way to, "You should start a blog."
I've done blogging before—as a ghostwriter in my professional life, and in irregular and sporadic bursts elsewhere on Blogger. I hope to do this one a little more regularly. There's rarely a week when I'm not trying some new recipe or inventing one of my own, so it seems likely that I'll have enough material to get that done. One way or another, I guess we'll see!
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