If you have an addictive personality, avoid this recipe.
Seriously, its the culinary equivalent of crack.

Ingredients:

1/2 lb pork sausage
1/4 lb ham
1/4 lb bacon
5 cans great northern beans
4 stalks celery, diced
3 carrots, diced
1 med. white onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 T butter
3 1/2 C chicken stock
salt & pepper to taste

Method:

Start by melting the butter in a 4 quart pot over medium heat.  Once it starts to brown a bit, add the garlic, onion, and bacon.  Cook until the onions start to become translucent, then add the carrots, celery and the sausage.  Mix everything up and put the lid on.  Grab your food processor and put 2 cans of the beans, drained and rinsed, in it.  Set on puree and whirl till – you guessed it – pureed.  Add the machined beans to the pot and mix them in with their new friends. Put the lid back on for a few minutes to let everything get hot.  Next, add the rest of the beans, the ham, and the stock to the pot and replace the lid.  Cook for another 20 minutes on med-high heat.  Check it often, stir each time you check.  Taste it as you go, you’ll probably find that it wont need much seasoning.  If you want to add anything, try some cumin, coriander, and sage.  All three add an earthy tone that works well with the pork.  In the pic above, I topped mine off with a bit of Sriracha.  Makes a ton, so be prepared to take some to work the next day (or 5).

ejnoy,
-E

Tags: bacon, beans, Pork, sausage, Soup

A sick wife sent me scurrying the internet to find a new Chicken Noodle soup recipe the other weekend. I found one that I modified for my own needs, and it turned out pretty well. You can use any kind of chicken you like, but I use the bone-in chicken thighs/leg quarters because I love the flavor of dark meat, the skin/fat/bone flavors the broth really well, and you get a lot of good protein out of it.

Ingredients:

2 lbs. bone-in chicken thighs
4 cups low-sodium chicken stock
4-6 cups water
2 carrots, peeled and sliced
2 celery ribs, washed and sliced
1 small onion, chopped
1 zucchini, sliced
6 oz. egg noodles

The recipe I found seemed workable, but huge – I don’t need to serve twelve, just a few – or me, a few times. So I worked backwards a bit and shrunk the ingredient size proportionally. I also sort of followed Michael Ruhlman‘s rules for stock usage – if you don’t make your own stock, don’t use the canned stuff – just use water. I used a 50/50 mix, and the flavor turned out pretty well.

In a large soup pot, bring your stock and water to a boil. Once heated, put your chicken in and make sure the fluid covers your bird. Simmer/cook for about 20 minutes until the chicken is cooked through. Then remove the chicken, let cool, and take the meat off the bone. Throw away the skin, and everything else from the bird – unless you want to use it to make a stock for next time.

Strain your broth, and if you’re really feeling ambitiously healthy, chill it in the fridge to get the fat to the top, and remove. I skimmed the fat off the top but didn’t get all of it – in a perfect world I would have waited but godblessit, I wanted that soup now. Return the broth to the stockpot and return to a simmer. Add your onion, carrot and celery to the broth and cook for about 8 minutes or until the veggies are soft.

Then return your chicken to the mix, add your egg noodles and zucchini, and cook until the noodles are done to the specifications on the bag or to your taste. I added my zucchini at the same time as my other veggies and it turned out well-cooked but a little too soft and overdone for my taste. Salt and pepper as you see fit, and serve.

Plenty of other soups require hours of cooking or use of a slow-cooker, but this one should be ready in about an hour or so, and got us about 5-6 servings. Oh, and it reheats pretty well, too.

Tags: carrot, celery, chicken soup, comfort food, onion, stock, thigh meat, zucchini

One of the first semi-complicated things I ever really tried cooking was jambalaya. Now it seems easy enough to me, but when I was first trying my hand at these culinary arts, it was very hit-or-miss with whether or not this experiment would even be edible.

When it turned out to be not only edible but (gasp) good, part of me couldn’t believe it – and the other part started planning the next menu, and off I went. Normally, jambalaya is supposed to be cooked in huge bulk amounts in a big cast iron kettle. However, if you’ve got a average-sized soup pot you should be good to go for recipe.

Ingredients:

1 white onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 cup celery, chopped
2 tomatoes, diced
1 lb. smoked sausage, sliced
1 lb. chicken, diced
8oz. tomato sauce
3 cups rice
3 cups chicken stock
Creole seasonings*

Heat your kettle over a medium flame and cook the sausage slices til’ browned and leave a fond on the bottom of the kettle. Add your onion, pepper and celery (called the trinity in NoLa cooking) to the sausage, add seasoning to taste and cook til’ your veggies are soft, about 5 minutes. (By the way, the smell of the trinity hitting the smoked sausage and starting to cook is one of my favorite smells in the world.)

Add your tomato, tomato sauce, and raw chicken and simmer for 20 minutes. If you think there’s not enough liquid in there to simmer the chicken in, give it a couple minutes – those tomatoes will warm up and release a lot of their juice and make a nice stew.

Then add your three cups of chicken stock and rice, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, simmer and stir until the rice is done to your liking, generally 15-20 minutes. Don’t let the rice stick to the bottom, or it will burn.

Traditionally, andouille sausage is the more cajun choice, but smoked sausage will do the trick unless andouille is easily found. Other ingredients can be added like shrimp, crawfish or prawns if one wishes. Don’t be afraid of the big batch size, and feel free to portion it out for lunches and such – the flavors meld together, much like chili, and it reheats very well.

* Creole seasoning is generally a mix of paprika, garlic salt, onion powder, black pepper, cayenne pepper, and maybe some oregano and thyme. Check out Emeril’s “Bayou Blast” for a decent representation.

The above is the worst picture of jambalaya ever taken.

Tags: cajun, celery, creole, jambalaya, onion, pepper, rice, trinity

3 – 15 ounce cans of black beans, drained & rinsed
2 – cans corn or 1 package frozen corn
1.5 c vegetable broth
1 c salsa
5 t lime juice
3 t ground cumin
1 t garlic, minced
1/2 t smokey tabasco sauce
2 cups cilantro, roughly chopped
1 jalapeno pepper (opt)
4 green onions, sliced (opt)
sour cream (opt)
cheddar cheese (opt)

Take 1.5 cans of black beans and one cup salsa and pulse in food processor until smooth. Pour into a sauce pan on medium heat; add remaining 1.5 cans of black beans and all but the last three ingredients. Heat on medium until boiling, simmer for 10 minutes or until its a good consistency. Pour soup into bowls to serve and top with a dollop of sour cream, a sprinkle of cheddar cheese, and some green onion to taste. Leave out the cheddar cheese and sour cream for vegan recipes.

Toonz claimed that he made a ” sooooooo freaking good” Lasagna Soup, so of course I had to try it. One problem. Toonz insisted it was supposed to have “bulk Italian sausage” in it. That just isn’t something currently in my diet. (I know, I know. You’re probably thinking that I’m missing out.) I couldn’t go another day without tryin’ the soup, so I thought really hard – nearly bursting a brain vessel, and vegetarianized it. No, I don’t think that’s a word.

Jen’s Lasagna Soup
1 T Jen’s Italian Seasoning
1 T Fennel Seeds
1 T olive oil
1 – 1.5 pounds of veggie crumbles
2 cups onion, chopped
2 cups carrots, sliced
2 Tb minced garlic
4 cups vegetable broth (or 2 / 15 ounce cans)
1 can (14.5 oz) Italian-stewed tomatoes, whole
1 can (15 oz) tomato sauce
2 cups uncooked curly pasta (I used gemelli)
2 cups fresh spinach
shredded mozzarella, opt.
shredded Parmesan, opt.
dried basil & red pepper for garnish

1] Grind fennel seeds and Italian seasoning in a coffee grinder until the fennel seeds are in smaller chunks. Pour olive oil into a large stockpot on low heat and add Italian seasoning and fennel mix. Stir the mixture until the seasoning is completely coated by the olive oil. Add veggie crumbles and stir until olive oil + seasoning covers the crumbles. (At this point I prepped the rest of my ingredients.)

2] Add onions, carrots, and garlic to the pot. Saute for around four minutes.

3] Pour in vegetable broth, tomatoes, and tomato sauce. Stir. Bring to a boil on medium-high heat. Once boiling, add in your curly pasta. I let it boil for about three minutes and then brought the heat down to medium-low and let it cook for an additional 10 – 13 minutes.

4] Add spinach, and stir until it wilts. Put some mozzarella in the bottom of a bowl, add the soup, and top with Parmesan. If in season, top with fresh basil strips and red pepper to taste. If not in season, dried basil works fine.