The Pioneer Woman Wannabe: Sloppy Joes

I think my mom secretly works for The Pioneer Woman. She's managed to not only introduce myself, my 3-year old, and my brother's girlfriend to Ree Drummond but make us obsessed with her. Ok, that happened on it's own after we started watching the show, but still. From not having heard of her before, suddenly we're buying her books, trying her recipes, and making sure we're home from our errands in time for her show to come on. Recently it was my turn to try out one of her recipes and I chose Sloppy Joes. My husband had suggested it the night before and as I scoured the internet for recipes, I remembered watching one of her shows feature such an item. A quick trip to her website, http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/ and we were on our way!

Now, I'm not feeding anyone or anything on a cattle ranch, just myself, husband, and toddler who seems to have a bottomless stomach for snacks and sweets but not so much for entire meals. I take that back. She'd sell her soul for some eggs and 'tatoes. So I had to scale back and alter the recipe a bit. Here is Ms. Drummond's Sloppy Joe concoction: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2010/04/sloppy-joes/, and here is what I did:

1-1 1/2 pounds ground beef
1 Tbs butter
1/3 of a large onion, chopped
3/4 of a green pepper, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 cup Ketchup
1/2 cup water
1 1/2 Tbs brown sugar
1 1/4 tsp chili powder, more or less to taste
1 tsp mustard powder
Few dashes of Worcestershire
1 1/2 Tbs tomato paste
Salt and pepper to taste

I put the butter in a big pot then added the ground beef when it started to bubble. I browned the beef then drained off a little bit of the fat. Then I added the chopped onion, green pepper, and garlic and let it cook until the onions were very tender. We enjoy the taste onions bring to a dish but not so much the crunch that goes with it.

I then added the ketchup, brown sugar, mustard powder, chili powder, tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper, and water and let it simmer for about 20 minutes.

 Being pregnant, I'm sensitive to smells, especially that of cooking food. But this made the house smell absolutely heavenly as it cooked.

I didn't serve with Kettle chips like The Pioneer Woman, sour cream and onion seemed to fit the bill just fine. And with my toddler just about finishing an entire sandwich and my husband going back for thirds, the chips were pretty secondary to non-existent. 

Success! Add another Pioneer Woman Wannabe to the mix!

Crock-Pot Veggie Chowder

I don't want to jinx myself, but I just might be getting the hang of combining ingredients to make something relatively tasty.

I love having a crock-pot, love using it, and always have such high expectation for dishes that are prepared with it. I think it's a great appliance to use during the summer to keep from having to heat up your house, and I even used it to make the main dish and cake for my daughter's 2nd birthday party. I love that it's uses have extended beyond chili's, soups, and stews to desserts, appetizers, and even things that don't require 8 hours to cook. But - and I know it's mostly of my own doing - a lot of meals I've made via crock-pot have turned out less than stellar so I'm never quite sure if 8 hours in the crock-pot will ultimately result in a last-minute pizza-run.

With it getting cold, I flipped through my Barnes and Noble bargain-rack find, Best Loved Slow Cooker Recipes for something I had yet to attempt: soup. I opened the "Beyond Basic Soups" section and selected a nice variety for the week, one of them being "Easy Corn Chowder."

This is the book's recipe:

2 cans (14.5 oz each) chicken broth
16 oz bag frozen corn, thawed
3 small red potatoes cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 medium onion, diced
1 rib celery, sliced
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp coriander
1/2 cup heavy cream
8 slices of bacon, cooked and crumbled.

And this is what I actually used:

3.5 cups chicken broth
1 16oz bag frozen "farmer's mix:" corn, carrots, and green beans, un-thawed (if I see an opportunity to throw more vegetables in, I take it)
3 small/medium red potatoes, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
Variety of small red, yellow, and orange bell peppers, eyeballed to equal 1 whole pepper, diced
1 green onion chopped
2 Tbs dried onion
1 rib celery, chopped
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 tsp fresh flat leaf parsley, finely chopped
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
8 slices of bacon, cooked and crumbled

To be completely honest, I hadn't realized the recipe called for UN-thawed frozen veggies until just now. Also, I had some time to kill so a lot of the cooked bacon might have gone missing. I can't be sure.

The instructions state to put all of the ingredients, minus the heavy cream and bacon, in the crock pot, cover and cook on low for 7-8 hours. I didn't get everything in the pot until it was late enough so we'd be eating like fashionable Manhattan-ites, so I cooked it on low for the first 4.5 hours, then switched it to high for the last 1.5/2.

The recipe then states to partially mash the soup with a potato masher in order to thicken it up, stir in the cream, then turn to high until heated through. I got a little carried away with the potato masher, though. Then I added the heavy cream and let it cook on high while I heated some garlic bread in the oven.

I sprinkled the bacon on top as instructed but used it so it was more of an added ingredient rather than a garnish. I think it had such a good impact on the overall flavor of the soup that I might try harder to rein in my bacon-eating and add the 8 slices after the heavy cream is heated through rather than spreading it around to individual servings.

Overall, though, the soup - what I now call "Veggie Chowder," - was amazing. My husband - upon hearing it was 90-percent vegetables - was initially hesitant only to find himself finishing his bowl, and surprising himself with how much he liked it and how filling it was. I surprised myself, actually, and now I'm wondering how I can sell it to Campbell's...

Upside Down Roasted Chicken

Forget what all of the TV chefs and "food experts," are telling you, *I'm* the one who (accidentally) discovered how much better an oven-roasted chicken is that has been roasted upside down.

I don't know if I've ever mentioned it before, but I never had any desire to cook. Before moving in with and marrying my husband, I had ventured as far as brats and tacos in terms of dinner preparations. Oh, and a Thanksgiving dinner. Even after we were married, breakfasts and dinners were of the microwave/frozen skillet variety, so when I decided to roast a chicken - like my Thanksgiving dinner adventure - I did it all from the vague memory of watching my mom prepare it when I was a child (and following some packaging instructions).

You might be thinking there are so many downsides to this. As it happened, there was only one: I mistook the back for the the breasts because I just knew that the "hump" was on top. It was the best mistake I could have made, the chicken turned out so good that my husband was still telling me about it days later. So now this is how I always oven-roast a chicken. I wonder if it would work with turkey....

I didn't - and still don't - have a proper roasting pan so I put the chicken on a cooling rack on top of a casserole dish. I use my fingers (my mom will swear to you, she'd never thought she'd see the day where I'd touch raw meat, especially chicken) to spread extra virgin olive oil all over what I can see of the bird (i.e. not the underside), then season for whatever I happen to be in the mood for. Sometimes I load that sucker with every seasoning I find in the cupboard, and sometimes I just use salt, pepper, garlic, dried onion, and parsley.

I roast it in the oven per the package instructions, which is usually about 20 minutes per pound at 325/350-degrees (when I find an oven that doesn't have a mind of its own, I might be able to follow package instructions verbatim). After an hour, I like to baste it. I don't think this makes much of a difference since most of the meat is getting juiced pretty regularly throughout the roasting process, but I always loved doing it as a kid. And now that I finally have a baster and don't have to scorch my arm using a tablespoon, I love it even more.

When roasting is done, I let the chicken rest for a while, then take a knife to it, which is surprisingly easy; I did it all myself this time without losing a finger (not to say that I've lost fingers every other time I've done it, I usually just make my husband carve it up). Since the juices have spent their oven-time dripping off the chicken, into the pan, then bouncing back up to the down-facing chicken breast, the meat is incredibly juicy and literally falls off the bone. I went to cut the leg off and the leg bone just slid out of the whole chicken, complete free of meat.

 In theory, you could season the breast-side, then flip it over to roast it to get flavorful skin on the breast meat. But since you don't really eat off the spine anyway, I usually just peel off the crispy, seasoned skin from the back and serve it up with the breast.

 I'm a leg n' wing girl, myself. The dark meat has a few more calories than the white, but both have health benefits. And if you've ever met me in person, you know I couldn't hurt to have a few more calories.

This is probably my signature meal. No, those aren't veggies picked from my not-yet-a-reality garden; they're frozen, picked from the Wal-Mart frozen-food section. They accompany oven-roasted, sliced red potatoes seasoned with extra virgin olive oil, salt, pepper, dried onion, garlic, oregano, and basil, and roasted with the chicken. I didn't roast them long enough this time, however, so I ended up having to cook them on the stove, breakfast-style. Still turned out yum.

When I first made the upside-down mistake and told my mom, she giggled but said she thought I was on to something. Who knows - our kids could one day use the phrase, "You actually roasted a chicken breast-side up?! No way." I swear, it'll be exactly like that, too.

Beer 'N Brat Soup

Ok, the official title of the recipe is Octoberfest Beer and Brat Soup, meant for celebrating this time of year known as October. I, however, used it to once again keep summer alive by making a soup that - like my Cheeseburger Soup - sounds like something that should never be made. But, oh, it definitely should.

You can find the original recipe HERE, thanks to following Better Recipes on Twitter. See, it doesn't only have to be about politician-genitals.

Of course, I messed with the recipe, this time because I didn't have all of the ingredients and didn't want to go to the store. So since I didn't actually create the Better Recipes recipe, I changed the name up a bit too. I used:

2 Tbs butter
1/2 onion, chopped
Chopped carrot, enough to visually match the onion pile
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 large and 1 small-ish red potato, peel left on, chopped
1 2/3 cup chicken broth
12oz bottle of beer
1/4 tsp ground mustard
1/4 black pepper
(in retrospect, I should have also added celery salt)
1 cup shredded cheese
3 brats, cooked and chopped (because I'm also feeding a toddler)

Per the instructions, I melted the butter, but I used a giant pot instead of a saucepan. I then added the onion, garlic, carrot, and potatoes to the pot to cook until the onions became translucent. At least, I think they did. I'm pretty sure they did.

I then added the chicken broth and beer, brought it to a boil, then reduced the temperature so it could simmer for 10 minutes. I did not puree the soup as the instructions say so maybe that makes this more of a stew? I would like to try pureeing it in future attempts, the consistency seems appealing.

It's always a little risky mixing up a recipe, and I'll be honest, it doesn't always work out. When your husband is vomiting in the bathroom approximately six hours post-dinner, your home-maker ego isn't doing so hot. Luckily, this passed the Husband 'N Toddler Test. Whew!

A few things I do have to add, though: never buy Wal-Mart brand brats. I don't know what they taste like since I only used them for this recipe, but they cook up absolutely horribly. Also, I removed the thyme as I hate it and think it taste like eating a pine tree. Otherwise, enjoy gripping on to summer like grim death (which, ironically, is pretty much what fall is...)!

Cheeseburger Soup. Hold On to Those Summer Nights

For my husband's birthday one year, I wanted to make his favorite meal. All I could really come up with was hamburgers, and being new at kitchen roulette, I had never made them before. And this was back when I still thought I could cook without having to touch raw meat so making beef patties was clearly out of the question. Then it was like the daytime television world caught my EPSN, The Chew was showcasing a recipe on Cheeseburger Soup. Perfect!

As you saw from my previous post, I don't follow recipes to the letter. Sometimes it's because I want to - there are spices my palate can definitely do without. But most of the time it's on accident because I have trouble following directions. I try to follow the recipe instructions fairly close, however, since I only look like a person who knows what they're doing. So here is the recipe I used from my food go-to website, allrecipes.com: (You can also find it by clicking here.)

1/2 lb ground beef
3/4 cup chopped onion
3/4 cup shredded carrots
3/4 cup chopped celery
1 tsp basil
1 tsp parsley
4 Tbs butter
3 cups chicken broth
4 cups cubed potatoes
1/4 cup flour
2 cups cubed cheddar cheese
1 1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup sour cream

In reality, this is what I actually used, either out of necessity, or personal preference:

1 lb ground beef (this comes from the mountain of ground beef you get at Costco so I'm just estimating this particular chunk is one full pound)
1/2 onion, chopped
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup  chopped carrots (shredded? Why?)
1 clove garlic, chopped finely
1 green onion, chopped
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried parsley
4 Tbs butter
3 cups chicken broth
4 cups potatoes chopped
1/4 cup flour
2 cups cubed cheddar cheese
1 1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup sour cream

Per the recipe, I melted 1 Tbs of the butter in a large pot on the stove. Then I threw in the beef, onion, garlic, and veggies to cook until the meet was brown. I then stirred in the basil and parsley, and added the potatoes and chicken broth. I brought that to a boil then let simmer for about 11 minutes, or until the potatoes were tender.

In a separate bowl, I melted the remaining 3 Tbs of butter then whisked in the flour. I added the milk and while I was supposed to mix it until smooth, it didn't happen so I dumped it into the soup anyways. I think the problem was that I wasn't stirring the mixture as I was adding the milk; yet another thing in the kitchen where having a third arm would be handy (PUN!). Anywho... I stirred the soup constantly and brought it to a boil, then reduced to simmer again.

Finally, I stirred in the cheese and when it was melted, added the sour cream. The soup is to then be heated through but NOT BOILED. Within only a few minutes, it's ready to be served, Seinfeld soup mug and medieval spoon or no.