Italian Meatballs

Hi everyone!  Hope all of you are faring well in this interesting weather we're having.  Here in Indiana, we got about 10" of snow, and although for a Minnesota transplant and a Chicago/Yooper transplant that's a regular Thursday, basically our entire town has shut down.  As a result, we dug into the freezer to find dinner tonight, and I made one of Chris's favorites: meatballs!

The original inspiration from this recipe came from Rachael Ray (thanks again Food Network), but I've definitely doctored this one a bit.  You can find the original recipe here.

This recipe calls for:

1/2 lb ground beef, as lean as you can find/are willing to pay for.
1/2 lb mild Italian sausage
1 egg
1/2 Cup Italian seasoned breadcrumbs
1/4 Cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2+ cloves garlic (to taste)

Okay, so this is another recipe where you quite literally dump everything in a bowl and mix.  Start with your ground meats:

Unfortunately, we only had 80% lean ground beef, so these turned out a little greasy/squishy.  They still tasted great, though.

Then add everything else.  Make sure you beat the egg before you dump it in.

Oh!  A note on the cheese.  I am by no means a Parmesan purist, but for the love of everything, use fresh grated when you're cooking.  The powdered stuff (and even the pre-grated you find in the expensive cheese case) has garbage in it to keep it from sticking together in the container, and this prevents the cheese from melting properly.  Please, please, please use the real thing.  A wedge of the cheap stuff will cost maybe $6, but it's totally worth it, really.

Okay, so put everything in the bowl.

Mmm.  Except not yet.  Roll up your sleeves, wash your hands, and get in there like this is meatloaf.  I have tried using the Kitchenaid, and it really does not mix as thoroughly as your fingers do.  Combine the ingredients REALLY well, squishing it between your fingers.  You're trying to combine the two meats as well as you can.  When you finish mixing, it should a lot like meatloaf... one homogeneous substance.

Also, somewhere in here, you should preheat your oven to 425*.  Take the mix little by little and roll with your hands into 1"-2" balls, and then place them on a cookie sheet.

This recipe makes approximately 16 meatballs, although it depends entirely on how large you roll them.

Pop them into the oven for about 10-12 minutes, and they'll come out all bubbly, especially if you didn't use lean ground beef...

Finally, put them on top of your favorite pasta and sauce, and eat them!! They're also awesome reheated. 

Enjoy!  Cheers to a happy and safe snowday!  If you need me, I'll be sledding... ;)

Mom's Sage and Onion Stuffing

Are you sick of Thanksgiving food yet?  No?  Good!

In case you have yet to have a turkey feast, or if you ate elsewhere and are looking to make some for yourself in order to eat leftovers for the next week, or if you're married to a turkey and stuffing aficionado like I am, here's an amazing stuffing recipe to try.  Like most great family recipes, I stole it from my mom. :)  Also, fair warning, this is NOT what I would call a healthy, low-calorie recipe.  It's Thanksgiving, so a couple hundred calories either way probably isn't going to make too much of a difference.

There are three special ingredients that make this stuffing different than all the rest.  They are:

Brownberry stuffing croutons.  These are the best.  You can make it with other types, but it won't taste as good.

Pork sausage.  It really is a defining characteristic of this stuffing.

Milk.  Yes, milk.  Not chicken or turkey broth, or water, or anything else.  Milk.

So.  The ingredients.  This recipe is per 12lbs of turkey, so adjust accordingly.

1 package Brownberry Sage and Onion stuffing croutons

1 large yellow onion

1 stalk celery (about 8-10 ribs)

1/2 package Jimmy Dean regular pork sausage

2 sticks butter

Rubbed Sage

S&P

Approx. 1 quart milk

The only thing in that list that doesn't scale according to how many bags of stuffing you use is the butter.  I made two bags of stuffing with our turkey two weeks ago, and I still only used 2 sticks of butter.  Basically, before you pour the vegetable/sausage mix over the stuffing, you want there to be some liquid in the bottom of the pan.  If you need to add 3 sticks of butter, go for it.  Honestly, there really isn't such a thing as too much butter in this recipe.  Healthy doesn't count on holidays, right?? ;)

Start off by chopping the onion and celery into small pieces.  I use an As-Seen-On-TV onion chopper that I got at Target for $20.  It is arguably the best kitchen gadget I own, and it will save time and onion tears!

Dump all the chopped up veggies into a sauce pan, and then add a stick of butter.

Cook down the celery and onions until they are almost soft, and it's difficult to determine whether each individual piece is celery or onion.  If you like a crunchier stuffing, or you're stuffing this into a bird, you can leave them a little less cooked.  However, Chris doesn't like celery unless it's unrecognizable, so I generally cook the veggies down until almost mush. 

Make sure to keep the heat at medium or below, and stir very frequently.  The goal is to cook/simmer the veggies, and if you leave them sit while cooking them in butter, you will fry them, which makes them crunch and defeats the purpose of cooking them.  About 2/3 of the way through, when the onion is soft but the celery is still a little crunchy, and the first stick of butter has basically evaporated, add the second stick of butter.  At the end of the cooking process, you want there to be at least a couple tablespoons of liquid left to help moisten the stuffing.

Next, brown the sausage, breaking it up VERY well.  Make a chopping motion with your spatula as you cook it, breaking up any pieces that are dime-sized or bigger.  This stuffing is best when it is one homogeneous food, and that is best done with little pieces.  Then, add the sausage to the veggies and cook them together for a minute or two.

Really, this is a picture of the sausage and not cat food.  Though the cat thinks this is his food, too...

Mmmm.... Finally, empty the bag(s) of stuffing croutons into a large container.  When I made this with turkey the other day, I mixed the stuffing in the turkey pan, and then transferred the mixed stuffing into a mixing bowl.  You will need about twice as much space as stuffing for mixing room.  If you are cooking your turkey in a disposable foil pan, it might make sense to buy a second one to make the stuffing in, or wash it out after mixing up the stuffing.  THESE are the famed croutons.  Difficult to find, but so totally worth it:

Dump the veggie/sausage mix over the croutons and mix well.

Okay.  Now comes the tough part.  Moistening stuffing is an imperfect art.  The liquid will seep through the croutons almost immediately, and only by scooping up the stuffing on the bottom and smearing it over the top will you be able to evenly distribute the liquid.  The routine is basically to pour a bunch of milk over the top, mix for about 2 minutes, then repeat.  It definitely takes some time and arm muscles, and you can't be a pansy about it.  You will likely get stuffing up to your elbows.  Just be okay with it.  This stuffing is fully cooked right now, so you can eat it, and you don't have to worry about kitchen food safety until you start to put it in the bird.

In the midst of the stirring/moistening process, begin to add just a ridiculous amount of sage.  Personally, we like our stuffing almost spicy with sage, but the best part about this recipe is that it is versatile enough that you can add as much or as little sage as you want, and it won't change the consistency much.  Add some salt and pepper as well.

Finally, determine when the stuffing is the 'right' consistency for what you're using it for.  If you're stuffing a turkey with it, you can leave it a little more crumbly, as the juices from the turkey will seep in and help aid in moistening, as well as infusing it with that traditional turkey flavor.  If you're baking it in a casserole dish (which is what we did tonight), then I recommend adding a little more milk so that it doesn't get too dry in the oven.  You want to have the stuffing moldable, but not soggy.  This is what it should look like:

It should stick to the spoon, but you can still see the general shape of the croutons.  Make sure to taste test!!  It's cooked, and it hasn't touched turkey yet, so you're good to go with your tasting fork/spoon.

Add your stuffing to your turkey, or cook it in a casserole dish.  When we cook a turkey, we generally cook 1 bag more stuffing than necessary.  We stuff the bird, and then we put about 1 bag worth in a covered casserole dish, with the turkey neck buried within so it still gets a turkey flavor to it.  In the casserole, cook the stuffing at 350 degrees for 30 minutes (without neck) or until a meat thermometer inserted right next to the neck reads 165 degrees (food-safe temp for salmonella-bearing foods like poultry).

Enjoy!!

Mmmm stuffing...

Have a wonderful holiday season!!

Shortbread Cookies

This recipe was found through one of my favorite recipe sites: Food Network!  Thanks to Barefoot Contessa for this super simple recipe!

Chocolate-Dipped Shortbread Cookies

This recipe calls for:

3/4 lb. unsalted butter, which is 3 sticks.  I only had 2 sticks unsalted, so I used them plus 1 stick regular.  I omitted the salt called for, which turned out to be a great balance.

1 tsp. Pure Vanilla Extract

1 Cup sugar

3 1/2 Cups flour

That's it!  I think the best part about this recipe so far is that it's super basic, and for moms, egg free!! This would be a great kid-friendly recipe because they can put as much raw dough in their mouths as they want without salmonella risk.

Although the written directions call for a much more complicated process, the video that Food Network graciously attached show Contessa literally dumping all of the ingredients into her KitchenAid at once.  This was the method I used.  (More on why the most important tool in my kitchen is my KitchenAid later.)

So, I started with my butter.  I softened it in the microwave, using 5-7 second intervals at half power.  Once butter melts, the oil and the cream separate, and it totally loses its consistency.  It is very important, especially when baking, to not MELT butter, but instead SOFTEN it.  When using a stand mixer, it's possible to not use completely softened butter, though it sometimes makes it more difficult for recipes come together.  This time, I did not soften my butter completely, and you'll see what it ended up looking like.

So, first: butter!

As you can see, I started to smush the butter with my mixer.  Then I added the sugar and vanilla.

And finally, the flour.

Then mix!

Unfortunately, because I didn't soften my butter well enough, the dough didn't come together right away, and it became crumbly:

Don't worry if this happens!  I turned my mixer up one notch, and the butter eventually softened until the dough resembled scooped ice cream.  It looked delicious!!

Finally, I plopped the dough down on some Saran wrap, and wrapped it up and put it in the fridge to chill while I went to buy some more Christmas lights from Lowes.  Note to self: pre-lit trees are really pretty until the light strands fail, and then it takes two hours for you and your husband to pull all of the lights off.  Hopefully the investment we're making in LED lights will help mitigate this problem for at least a few years...

Anyway, when I returned, I took out the cookies and began to roll them out.  The trick here is to work quickly!  The dough warms up quickly, and the dough sticks and falls apart as they warm.  Flour your workspace, cookie cutter, and the rolling pin well.  Roll to 1/2" thick, and then cut them out with your choice of cookie cutter.

However, all things considered, I was impressed by how easily these cookies came off the rolling surface.  Unfortunately, they did not come off on the cookie cutter as it appears in the video, so I had to pull out the dough from around the shapes.  I then collected the dough and refrigerated it until the first batch was done in the oven.  Working quickly, I was able to get three roll/cut processes done before the dough got too warm to work with.  Be careful not to overdo the rolling/cutting process.  Each time you roll out, you add more flour to the dough, and that can make the last few cookies tough instead of chewy.

Finally, I placed the cookies on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.  Parchment paper is a relatively new discovery for me, but it's awesome!  It's cheap, helps keep foods from sticking, and it's especially important when baking.  The last sugar/shortbread cookie I tried to make stuck to the baking pan so badly that the cookies were ruined, so parchment paper has become a staple in my house.

Be careful to arrange the cookies with a small amount of baking space.  I did not do that, and had a couple cookies that stuck together.  Then put them in a 350* oven for 15-ish minutes:

And finally, remove from the oven when they are barely starting to brown on the edges.  The thicker you rolled the dough, the more the cookies will puff as they cook.  This recipe is versatile enough that you can make big puffy cookies or thinner cookies that still taste great with just an adjustment in cooking time.

Voila!  These turned out deliciously!  And just in time for Christmas!

First Post!

Hello, and welcome to my cooking blog!

I have recently started cooking, or at least cooking food I actually want to eat.  My husband was recently transferred from Chicago to a small Midwestern town in the middle of nowhere, and the lack of options food-wise has sent me to my kitchen in search of amazing food.

I have spent a lot of time this fall finding recipes and experimenting with them.  I have discovered that with the right tools, a willing experimenter (what are husbands for, after all?), and some persistence, cooking great-tasting, great-looking, whole foods is in fact possible, even when the only grocery stores in town are big-box chains.  I refuse to shop at Volde-mart, and it is my goal to help my little family to eat as simply as possible.  I am striving every day to break free from frozen/boxed foods!

Anyway, I hope that you enjoy following us along this food journey.  I'll do my best to post pictures, and keep in mind that thus far, I am only experimenting with others' recipes.  Frankly, I'm not sure I'd know where to begin with my own stuff.  I will do my best to link to all original content.

Happy eating!