Well, this worked!

One of my favorite breakfasts or brunches to make on a lazy weekend day is crepes.

I like them because the batter is very easy to make and once you get the hang of them, I actually think they are easier to make than pancakes!

Plus you can fill them with all kinds of delicious stuff.

The problem I’ve encountered with crepes is that it’s hard to feed a crowd with them. You can only make one at a time and people usually want 2-3 for a meal so if you’re feeding four people, that’s 10-12 crepes!

Then one day the idea of a crepe pie smacked me over the head and I had to try it immediately.

It worked better than I ever thought it would.

Savory Crepe Pie

Yield: Serves 4-6.

Prep Time: 40 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour

Ingredients:

Basic Crepe Batter:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
2 large eggs
1.5 cups milk
2 tablespoons melted butter (plus some for the pan)

Filling:
8 ounces crimini mushrooms, sliced
1 yellow pepper, diced
1 poblano pepper, diced
1/2 onion, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
6-8 ounces cheddar cheese, grated
Salt and pepper
Butter, for the pie pan

Helpful Equipment:
Large nonstick skillet or crepe pan

Directions:

1) Make your crepe batter by mixing the dry ingredients together in a bowl and the wet ingredients (except butter) in a separate bowl. Stir wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Whisk in melted butter. Batter should be pretty runny. Let batter sit while you prep the filling.

2) Slice mushrooms, dice peppers, onions, and garlic. Add mushrooms to a large skillet with a drizzle of olive oil and saute over medium-high heat until the mushrooms release their liquid and soften, about 5-6 minutes.

3) Add other filling ingredients (except cheese) to the skillet and cook for another 4-5 minutes until peppers soften. Season filling with salt and pepper, red pepper flakes, and a pinch of dried thyme. Set filling aside.

4) Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

5) Using a large nonstick skillet, or crepe pan, add a small amount of butter over medium-high heat. Pour in about 1/2 cup of crepe batter and swirl it around the pan so it flattens out. Cook for 30-45 seconds on the first side until it firms up, then carefully flip the crepe and cook for another 15-20 seconds. Repeat until you have 4 large crepes. The batter will make 5-6 crepes so you can mess up one without worry.

6) Butter a pie pan and lay a crepe in the bottom of the pan. Add half of the mushroom filling and 1/3 of the grated cheese.

7) Top with a second crepe and 1/3 of the cheese.

8) Top with a third crepe. So the middle layer is just cheese basically.

9) Add rest of filling and cheese to top of the pie and top with the fourth crepe. Kind of crimp the edges of the crepe around the edges of the pie so it is mostly sealed.

10) Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.

11) Let cool briefly and then slice and serve!

The Filling

Over the years, I’ve put together dozens of different crepe fillings. Sweet, savory, fruity, cheesy… you name it, you can probably stuff it in a crepe.

So I don’t want you to get the impression that this filling is the only filling that you can use for this recipe. This is just the one I used and it worked really well.

Good winter veggies.

Rinse and slice up the mushrooms and dice up your veggies. It’s okay to keep them in pretty big chunks. You don’t want the veggies to disappear in the dish.

Great flavors.

Then just add a few tablespoons of olive oil to a large skillet and toss in the mushrooms. Cook them over medium high heat until they start to soften and release their water. Then you can add in all the other veggies and continue to cook until they are soft.

Total cooking time for this will probably be in the 10 minute range. There’s actually a lot of wiggle room in how much you cook the veggies. It is important to saute them though so you can cook off some of the water in the veggies. Otherwise the filling would be very watery in your final dish.

When the veggies are cooked, season the filling with salt and pepper, red pepper flakes, and dried thyme.

Very important.

The Crepes

This is my basic crepe batter recipe. It’s never failed me really. Don’t fix it if it ain’t broken right?

Whisk together the dry ingredients in a bowl and stir the wet ingredients together in a separate bowl (minus the melted butter). Then stir the wet into the dry and finally stir in the butter.

Ideally, let this batter sit for a few minutes before making the crepes.

I like to make the batter, then make the filling, and by the time the filling is done the batter is rested and ready to go.

Pretty easy batter.

Like I said, I find cooking crepes easier than pancakes honestly. That said, you might mess up one or two. Don’t worry about it if you do. Since these are going in a layered dish, they don’t have to be perfect.

When you’re ready to cook a crepe, just add a small amount of butter to a large nonstick pan or a crepe pan and then pour in about 1/3-1/2 cup of crepe batter. Swirl it around in the pan so it flows out and forms an even, very thin crepe.

Cook the crepe for about 45 seconds on the first side and then give it a flip. Flipping is always the part that people mess up but just do your best. Like I said, they don’t have to be perfect.

Takes maybe a minute!

You need four crepes to make this dish so just go ahead and make four and stack them up on a plate or something.

Making the Pie

You can use almost any kind of pie dish that you have. Is it important to have something round though so the crepes fit snuggly in there.

To make sure the crepes don’t stick to your pan, butter the thing really well.

Butter is important.

Then lay in one crepe and make sure to push it down so it’s snug against all the walls of the pie pan. Then add about 1/2 of your mushroom filling and 1/3 of your grated cheese.

Bottom layer.

Then toss on the second crepe. For the middle layer, I just did an all cheese layer. So add another 1/3 of the cheese to this layer.

Speaking of cheese, be sure to use a good flavorful cheese for this. You don’t want to use a lot of cheese, but make sure to use good stuff! I used a nice sharp white cheddar.

Just cheese on this layer!

Add on the third crepe and then the rest of your filling stuff.

It should all stack up very nicely.

More of the same.

Put the top crepe on and kind of press the edges down around the sides of the pie pan. Again, don’t freak out if it isn’t perfect.

Stick this whole thing in a 400 degree oven for about 20 minutes.

The great part about baking this is that the top and bottom crepes actually get a bit crispy which is nice and then the center is just this awesome savory party.

So good!

I was worried that this would just fall apart when I sliced it, but if you let it cool for just a minute or two when you pull it out of the oven, it actually slices really nicely.

You can even make out all the layers.

One of my favorite brunches.

If this is all your serving, assume about 1/4 of the pie per person. If you’re serving this with some other stuff then you could cut it into sixths and be fine.

The good news is that you can make these in advance and then just toss them in the oven if you’re having people over.

This is the right way to do crepes for a group!

There's gin in there...

It seemed like there was a phase in the cooking world, and maybe it’s still happening, when vodka pasta sauce was the freakin’ bee’s knees.

It was the sexiest thing you could do to pasta.

I’ve definitely made it and ate it and enjoyed it, although I’ve never posted on it.

Here’s my problem with vodka sauce: Good vodka is specifically engineered to be tasteless. That’s why it’s great for mixed drinks. It really has almost no taste.

So wouldn’t it make sense to make a sauce with booze that has some flavor? More importantly, maybe booze that has some herbal flavors that would go well with tomatoes and cheese?

Gin has these flavors and it will kick your pasta sauce up a notch.

Gin Penne Pasta

Yield: Serves 4.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients:

1 pound penne pasta, cooked al dente
1/2 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 28 ounce can diced tomatoes
1 cup gin
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 cup cream
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
1/4 cup fresh basil, minced
Salt and pepper

Helpful Equipment:
Stick blender or normal blender

Directions:

1) In a medium pot, add olive oil, onions, garlic, and red pepper flakes and begin cooking over medium heat. Cook for 5 minutes until onions are soft and fragrant. Be careful not to brown the onions and garlic. You just want them soft.

2) Add in tomatoes and cook for a few minutes.

3) Remove sauce from heat and blend with a stick blender, or normal blender until sauce is fairly smooth. It doesn't have to be perfect.

4) Add gin and sugar to sauce and bring to a simmer. Simmer for 20 minutes or so until alcohol cooks off from gin. You'll know when it's ready because it won't smell like strong alcohol.

5) Stir in cream, Parmesan cheese, and basil and season with salt and pepper. Keep warm.

6) Cook pasta according to package. Make sure to pull it when it is al dente or has a slight bite to it still.

7) Drain pasta well and add directly to sauce. Stir together.

8) Serve garnished with Parmesan cheese and fresh basil!

Gin Over Vodka

I was a bit worried when I had the idea for this sauce that I would go too far in the other direction. I was worried that gin would have too much flavor and completely overpower the sauce. I started slow and added a quarter of a cup to the sauce, let it simmer and tasted it.

At the end of it, I decided that about a cup of gin is the right amount. Even though gin has a pretty strong flavor on its own, when it cooks down and mixes with the other ingredients, it’s a subtle but nice flavor.

Basically, I think it gives the sauce some interesting complexity that definitely can’t be found with a vodka sauce. Gin after all is made with a fair amount of botanical herbs and spices while vodka is made mainly with… potatoes.

A few basics...

Starting the Sauce

While there is some simmering and stirring that goes on with this sauce, there’s really not much chopping. Just dice up some onion and garlic and you’re ready to start the sauce.

Just a few things to chop.

Add the olive oil to a medium pot with the onions, garlic, and red pepper flakes. Cook this over medium heat until the onions and garlic start to soften and it smells very fragrant.

You don’t want the onions to brown at all. They should just get soft over medium heat which will take around 5-6 minutes.

Try not to brown them.

Then add in your tomatoes and sugar. The small amount of sugar balances some of the acidity of the tomatoes.

Any diced tomatoes will do the trick for this recipe. I went with some fire-roasted Muir Glen tomatoes.

Any kind of stewed tomato will do the trick.

Continue to cook this for a few minutes.

I wanted my sauce to be pretty smooth so I decided to blend it up with my stick blender. You could also use a normal blender or just kind of mash the tomatoes as they cooked and go with a more rustic version of the sauce.

You definitely don’t need a blender to make this sauce, but if you can, I recommend taking it for a spin.

A quick spin.

Big Time Flavor

At this point our sauce is pretty standard, but it’s about to get a big bump in the flavor department.

Starting with the gin. A whole cup. It doesn’t really matter what brand of gin you use, but I wouldn’t use super-cheap stuff.

A whole cup!

Bring this sauce to a simmer and let it simmer for about 15-20 minutes, stirring regularly. Your goal here is to cook off most of the alcohol and reduce the gin flavors.

You’ll know when it’s done because the sauce won’t smell intensely like alcohol!

As a final step stir in some cream which will mellow out some of the flavors and give the sauce a nice, rich texture.

Mellows it a bit.

Any time I’m trying to make a really good tomato-based pasta sauce, there are two ingredients that I almost always include: Real Parmesan cheese, and fresh basil.

Must have flavors.

Add a good amount of these to the sauce and season the sauce with salt and pepper.

I recommend finishing the sauce and then just keeping it warm while you work on the pasta.

This was my finished sauce!

Done deal!

Finishing the Dish

For the pasta itself, just cook it according to the package. While I guess you could use any pasta, I think penne works perfectly for this dish.

Whatever you do, don’t overcook the pasta. Soggy pasta is pretty much the worst.

Steaming hot.

As soon as the pasta is drained, toss it into the sauce (or toss the sauce into your pasta depending on your pot size).

Stir it all together. Even though it will look like a lot of sauce, as you stir in the pasta, all that sauce will get trapped in the penne pasta and you’ll be all set.

These guys will soak up a lot of sauce.

I like to serve pasta dishes like this family style which basically means I just pile it in a huge bowl and add some basil and cheese to the top.

I like to serve it family style.

Surprisingly, even with a cup of gin in this sauce, the flavor is pretty subtle. All of those gin botanicals, most importantly juniper, give the sauce this really complex flavor and fragrance.

It’s one of those dishes that if you were to eat it without knowing what was in it, you wouldn’t be able to put your finger on it, but once you know it’s gin, then it makes sense.

Let it be known: When it comes to pasta sauces, gin is the new vodka.

My first shells!

Let’s talk about something quickly that has confused me over the years: the difference between yams and sweet potatoes.

Here’s the thing. It’s actually hard to find real yams in grocery stores. They aren’t popular in America. But, there are two kinds of sweet potatoes that are sold: ones with a lighter skin and light yellow flesh and ones with a more orange tint to it.

Unfortunately, a lot of grocery stores label the more orange sweet potatoes as yams even though they aren’t. They are still sweet potatoes but just a different variety.

My grocery store actually had these labeled as “Sweet Potatoes/Yams” as if they were the same thing!

Real yams have a dark skin and are even sweeter than sweet potatoes. They are popular in Caribbean cuisine, but are actually a bit hard to find in most grocery stores in the states.

So let the record show: These wonderfully delicious baked shells are stuffed with sweet potatoes and definitely not stuffed with yams.

Sweet Potato Stuffed Shells

Yield: Serves 5-6.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

Ingredients:

2 large yams, boiled and mashed
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
6 fresh sage leaves, minced
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 cup Greek yogurt
1/3 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped
1 28 ounce can tomato sauce
6 ounces mozzarella cheese, sliced
16 ounces pasta shells, cooked al dente
Salt and pepper
Fresh chives (garnish)

Directions:

1) Peel and cube yams and boil them in salted water until they are very tender, about 12-15 minutes. Drain yams and mash in a bowl.

2) You can cook shells in same water. Cook until al dente and then remove and drain shells.

3) Dice onions, sage, and garlic and saute in butter over medium heat until onions are soft, about 5-6 minutes. Don't brown the onions. Add red pepper flakes and a pinch of salt.

4) Add onion mixture to mashed yams with greek yogurt, cream, and walnuts. Stir together and season with salt and pepper.

5) Add half of the tomato sauce to the bottom of a 9x13 baking dish. Working with one shell at a time, fill shell with a few spoonfuls of filling. You can stuff them pretty full. It's also okay if they rip a bit.

6) Arrange stuffed shells in baking dish. Once the dish is full, top each shell with extra sauce and a slice of mozzarella.

7) Cover dish loosely with foil and bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees. Then uncover and bake dish for another 15 minutes at 400 degrees.

8) Serve shells garnished with fresh chopped chives.

Making the Filling

This is really a perfect winter filling. You could do a lot of things with it actually besides stuff it in shells. You could layer it in a lasagna or put it in manicotti. You could put it in ravioli or add some cheese and extra cream to it and make a kind of baked dip out of it.

It all starts with sweet potatoes though. Two large ones should do the trick. Just peel them and dice them into pretty large cubes.

Peeled and cubed

Boil these cubes in salted water until they are very tender (about 15 minutes) and then mash them up in a bowl. It’s okay if they aren’t completely smooth. Some lumps are just fine.

No need to be perfectly smooth.

Filling Flavors

Sweet potatoes are a good start but we want to add a lot more flavor to this filling. I really like the onion/sage flavor profile that the polenta I posted on Thursday had, so I decided to use similar stuff for this filling.

Good winter flavors.

Dice up the onion, mince the garlic and sage, and saute the veggies in butter over medium heat until the onions are soft. Be sure not to cook them on high heat or the veggies might brown which isn’t what you want.

You just want them to soften a bit so they turn slightly sweet. It should take about 5-6 minutes.

Then add in your red pepper flakes and add this mixture to the mashed sweet potatoes. You can add your yogurt and cream at the same time!

Yogurt... or sour cream.

I stirred this all together and tasted it.

Very Important: Any time you are coming up with a filling like this, it’s very important to taste it as you go.

When I tasted this, I liked the flavor, but I thought the texture was a bit mushy. So I went rummaging through my pantry and landed on some walnuts that I thought would give this filling some great texture.

Great add-in.

Just remember… if the filling tastes good on its own (which this did) then it’s going to be even better when it’s baked and covered with cheese.

The Pasta

Like I said, I wanted to use shells for this dish just because I don’t use them very often. You could use almost any baked pasta thing though for this filling, so go crazy!

Whatever pasta you choose, just make sure you don’t over cook the stuff. Pull it out while the pasta still has a very tiny bite to it. It will continue to cook in the oven later.

Be careful not to overcook these guys!

Prepping the Shells

These shells are actually really easy to stuff assuming that you don’t overcook them. Just add a few spoonfuls of filling to each shell! You can really stuff them pretty full.

Easy as that.

In a large baking dish, add about half of your tomato sauce to the bottom of the dish and then start stacking these shells in the dish.

You might have some leftover filling or shells depending on a few things, but it’s better to have leftover filling then not enough!

Might have some leftovers...

Add the rest of your tomato sauce to the top of the shells and top each shell with some mozzarella cheese.

I’m always inclined to add a large amount of cheese to dishes like this, but I would really recommend keeping the cheese light in this instance. The filling is really the star of the show and very delicious and rich on its own. So just a small amount of cheese should do the trick.

No need to go crazy with cheese.

Baking the Pasta

Cover this dish loosely with foil and bake it at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes.

Then crank up the heat to 400 and remove the foil. Bake it for another 15 minutes just so the tops of the pasta gets slightly browned.

Baked!

Serve these suckers with some fresh chopped chives!

Really great meal!

These were a delicious winter dinner and the leftovers were perfect also. Betsy and I ate these shells for a few days and I never got sick of them.

So remember: These are sweet potatoes, not yams.

And also remember to try this as soon as possible!

Hello beautiful.

Administrative Announcement: This is my official 1,000th post on Macheesmo. That’s insane and that’s all I’ll say on that.

Onto polenta which was the winner of last week’s poll. I’ve made polenta a few different ways over the years and always love it. I’m starting to feel very comfortable serving polenta instead of pasta for some meals.

For example, I brought this beautiful dish to a dinner party last weekend and the hosts made a delicious venison stew. Normally, I might serve that with egg noodles or just on its own, but man was it good with this polenta. They were made to be together!

What I liked about how this dish turned out is that even though it looks like an incredibly rich dish, the polenta is really very light and airy. After being slow cooked and baked, they turn into these little clouds of corn goodness.

How could clouds of corn be bad?

Polenta Gratin

Yield: Serves 8 as a side.

Prep Time: 1 hour

Total Time: 3 hours

Ingredients:

1 cup coarse ground polenta
5 cups water
1 large sweet onion, diced
12 leaves sage, minced
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, 4 for onions 2 for polenta
Salt and pepper
2-3 ounces Gruyere or Fontina cheese

Directions:

1) Dice and mince onions and sage. In a large skillet saute veggies in butter over medium heat until they soften. Season with a pinch of salt and cook for about 6-8 minutes. You don't want them browned at all, just softened. Remove from heat and set aside when done.

2) Bring 5 cups of water to a simmer and whisk in polenta in a steady, slow stream. Bring to a simmer and stir until the mixture thickens slightly.

3) Turn heat down to very low and cook the polenta for 45-60 minutes, stirring occasionally to make sure it isn't sticking to the pan. The polenta should be over very low heat so it just bubbles every few seconds.

4) Once polenta is thick, stir in onions and sage and a knob of butter. Season with salt and pepper.

5) Line a sheet pan with plastic wrap and pour polenta onto sheet pan. Spread it evenly over the pan.

6) Refrigerate polenta for about an hour until it's firmly set.

7) Butter or grease a 9x13 baking dish and preheat oven to 350 degrees.

8) Break polenta into 1x1 inch chunks and stack them in the baking dish. Overlap some pieces and stagger them so they are uneven. There should be lots of gaps in between polenta pieces.

9) Add grated cheese to top of polenta.

10) Bake for 30 minutes at 350, then broil on low until the tops of the gratin are slightly browned, about 5-10 more minutes.

11) Let cool briefly and then serve warm.

Adapted from The Zuni Cafe Cookbook.

Making the Polenta

I’ve seen a huge range of theories on the correct way to prepare polenta. Some are incredibly fast while some require a bit more time.

The preparation that Judy Rogers recommends in The Zuni Cookbook is on the far end of the spectrum. If you followed her recipe step by step it would require many hours to make this dish.

Well, to be completely accurate, it would require many additional hours.

So I took half of her advice, but not all of it, and I ended up with a very delicious product.

I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. To start, you really just need a few simple ingredients.

Pretty basic stuff.

I wanted to get my onions and sage out of the way. These are actually optional. You could make the gratin with just the polenta, but I thought these gave it some really good complexity.

Just dice them up pretty evenly.

Nice and even dice.

In a large skillet, cook the onions and sage in some butter over medium heat. You want to cook them slowly so they don’t brown but just turn translucent and soft.

It’ll take 6-8 minutes to get to the right texture. Just don’t rush them. Once they are soft, you can remove them from the heat until you need them.

Not browned, just soft.

The big change in this recipe from the other polenta recipes I’ve seen is the polenta to water ratio. Normally, it’s three cups water to each cup of polenta. I’ve even seen 4-to-1.

Judy recommends an amazing 5-to-1 ratio though. The idea is to cook it very low for a long time with lots of moisture and the corn grains will swell and soften and turn into this almost creamy texture.

It takes a bit longer than cooking them quickly, but the results are different and better in my opinion.

One cup makes a lot.

Bring your water to a simmer and then whisk in the polenta in a steady, slow stream. It’s important to whisk the water as you stir in the corn or the grains will stick together immediately.

One cup of polenta will look like nothing in five cups of water, but don’t worry. It’ll all get absorbed.

Five to one ratio!

The Stirring Myth

Much like risotto, there’s a myth that you need to be constantly stirring polenta while it cooks. That’s true if you’re cooking it quickly over high or even medium heat. The way that Judy recommends though, you only need to stir it occasionally.

First, bring your polenta mixture to a slow simmer and then reduce the heat down to very low. The heat should be so low that the polenta only bubbles every few seconds.

Since it’s cooking so slowly, you only need to check on it and give it a good stir every 5-10 minutes just to make sure it isn’t sticking to the pan. The mixture should always be slightly liquid and never firm.

Believe it or not, you may have to actually add more water to the pan if it gets too thick.

Cook this at this low temperature for about an hour until it’s creamy, soft, and smooth.

Then add in a knob of butter and season it well with salt and pepper.

A generous buttering.

This is where I departed from Judy. She recommends holding the polenta at a low temperature over a water bath for another few hours which will improve the consistency.

That might be true and fairly easy to do in a restaurant kitchen, but I didn’t want to spend a whole day making polenta so I just moved ahead with the recipe. It seemed to work out fine.

The next step is to stir in those sauteed onions and sage. I love the smell of this.

Lots of flavor here.

The Gratin

It’s worth noting that you can stop here. The polenta with onions and sage is delicious as-is. Serve it with some grilled chicken or something and it’s a wonderful meal.

But if you want to take it to the next step, line a sheet pan with plastic wrap and then pour the polenta into the sheet pan. Spread it out so it’s nice and even over the pan.

Chill out.

Let this cool for a few minutes at room temperature and then stick it in your fridge for 45-60 minutes until it’s nice and firm.

Once it’s firm, start breaking the polenta into chunks!

Random chunks is better than perfect squares.

This gratin shouldn’t look like a potato gratin which are so uniform and perfect.

This gratin should be craggy and have different shaped pieces. So don’t worry about breaking up the pieces into the same size and don’t cut them into even squares or anything. Just rip them up and throw them in a dish.

Speaking of the dish, make sure you butter it well.

We call this the rustic look.

Butter that dish!

Cover this with just a light coating of cheese and it’s ready to go. You won’t hear me say this often, but don’t over-do it on the cheese. It should be a very light layer.

Don't over-do it.

Bake the gratin at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes and then stick it in the broiler (low is best) to brown a bit on top for about 5 minutes.

Bake and broil.

What I love about this gratin is that you have some peaks from the polenta that get a bit more browned than other parts so some parts are really crunchy and some pieces are nice and smooth.

This is about as good as a winter side dish can get in my opinion.

This stuff absolutely disappeared when I made it.

I was barely able to get thirds before it was gone.

First gumbo is a good one.

I’ve had gumbo on my list of recipes to try out for over a year now. There’s one main reason why I haven’t made it until now: Gumbo snobs.

Yep. You read that right. I’ve discovered that people who make gumbo are very… um… opinionated. There’s one way to do it and it’s their way.

Of course, the reality of it is that there are a bunch of different ways to make gumbo. It can have seafood, sausage, chicken, or just veggies. It can use a dark or light roux made from oil or butter. It should probably be served over rice, but I’m sure there are other options.

So let’s just get this out of the way: This is one way to make gumbo. I’m not sure if it’s the best, but it’s damn good.

If you have issues with it, please take it up with Bettyjean, the creator of the recipe. Who’s Bettyjean you might ask? I have no idea.

A friend (Hi Jess!) let me borrow a cookbook to browse through called Old Biloxi Recipes and this was the recipe that caught my eye. The book is basically a collection of really wonderful recipes that have been handed down generation to generation. Some of the recipes don’t even have amounts. It’ll just say stuff like “Carrots” or “Celery”, but you can figure it out.

Anyway, Bettyjean apparently let them publish her gumbo recipe and I’m glad she did. I made a few changes to it, but nothing major.

Bettyjean's Chicken Gumbo

Yield: Serves 8.

Prep Time: 1 hour

Total Time: 4 hours

Ingredients:

Stock:
1 whole chicken or 3 pounds pieces with bones
2 onions, quartered
2 carrots, quartered
3 stalks celery, quartered
20-30 black peppercorns
1 head garlic, halved
A handful of parsley stalks

Roux:
1 cup peanut oil
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

Finished Gumbo:
1 large sweet onion, diced
1 bell pepper, diced
3 stalks celery, diced
6-8 scallions, diced (reserve green parts for garnish)
1/2 cup white wine
Hot sauce
Long grain white rice
File powder
1 pound sausage (andouille is best), sliced and browned (opt.)

Directions:

1) Add stock ingredients to a large pot with enough water to cover everything, 8-10 cups. Bring to a simmer and simmer on low, covered, for at least 2 hours.

2) Remove chicken pieces from stock. Remove skin from chicken and shred the pieces into large chunks. Strain the stock.

3) Add stock and chicken back to large pot.

4) To make roux, stir oil and flour together over medium-low heat until it turns a nice dark color. The lightest it should be is the color of peanut butter, but you can go much dark. Stir regularly while it's cooking so it doesn't burn. It will take at least 20 minutes to get to the right shade.

5) Dice up onions, bell peppers, and celery for finishing ingredients. Split into two piles.

6) Add one pile of diced veggies to the roux when it's the shade you want. That will stop the cooking process for the roux. Stir together veggies and roux.

7) Saute the second pile of veggies in a skillet over medium-high heat with a drizzle of olive oil and a pinch of salt. Cook until softened, about 4-5 minutes.

8) Bring stock and chicken to a simmer and start adding roux mixture to it. Add it in large spoonfuls and make sure it dissolves completely before adding more. It'll take 5-10 minutes to add all the roux to the stock. Continue to simmer for 20 minutes uncovered to thicken the mixture. If you're using browned sausage (like andouille) add it now.

9) Add sauteed veggies to gumbo and white wine. Season with hot sauce and salt and pepper.

10) Serve gumbo over rice sprinkled with file powder. Garnish with scallion greens.

Adapted from the Old Biloxi Recipes book.

Starting with Stock

I got into a brief comment debate recently on an old post about how I’m a hypocrite. Basically, I talk a lot about how people should make their own stock and stuff and then I sometimes use store-bought stock.

This is true. At the end of the day, I’m a human being and try to have a life outside of the kitchen. Even when I do use store-bought stock though, I’m well aware that there’s a better way to do it. I don’t kid myself.

But when I do have time, I always try to make my stock. This is especially true for soups (although Macheesmo detectives will be able to find examples of soups on the site that I used store-bought stock to make).

This is really especially true though when the soup involves chicken because you have to cook the chicken anyway so it’s not a too much extra work to just make stock at the same time.

Taking stock.

For this recipe, you can either use a whole chicken or about 3-4 pounds of chicken pieces. Whatever you do, don’t make stock out of boneless skinless chicken breasts. There will be no flavor!

You need bones and skin to make your stock. So if you’re doing pieces (which I did for this version), use some thighs or legs and make sure to get breasts with the bone in.

Then just add everything to a large pot and bring it to a simmer.

This will smell great in an hour.

Let this simmer, covered, for at least two hours. The longer you go, the deeper your stock will be. Two hours is the absolute minimum.

When you’re happy with it, remove the chicken pieces and let them cool. Then strain the stock you’ll have a nice dark chicken stock that will smell delicious.

The real stuff.

Once your chicken is cool enough to handle, remove the skin from the pieces and shred the chicken into large pieces. Then add the chicken back to the pot with all the stock. You should have about 8 cups of stock here. If you have less, then add water or a good store-bought stock to make up the difference.

Chicken and stock.

The Roux

I make a lot of roux for recipes. Most importantly, it’s how I make queso dip. The roux for gumbo though is a much different beast although the idea is the same. Basically, it’s just fat and flour, cooked together and used to thicken something.

Instead of butter though, I used peanut oil. You also need much more of it and it’s good to get it much darker than when you’re making a light cream sauce.

Just two ingredients.

Add your oil and flour to a medium pot and get it cooking over medium heat. Stir it frequently while it cooks to make sure it doesn’t burn.

After 15-20 minutes, it’ll resemble the color of peanut butter. This is about as light as you can go for gumbo. You could stop here if you wanted and proceed with the recipe.

You could stop here.

Generally though, you’ll get a more flavorful gumbo if you continue to cook your roux for another 5-10 minutes so it gets really dark.

Like I said, this was my first gumbo so I wasn’t sure exactly how far you could go before burning the flour, but I got mine a few shades darker before deciding it was done. You might be able to go even darker, but this was the stage I stopped at and it made for a great gumbo.

You could maybe even go darker.

It’s really important to stop the cooking of the roux when it reaches the color you want. It could keep cooking and possibly burn.

The easiest way to stop the cooking is to stir in about half of the finishing veggies that you’ll need for the finished gumbo. Stir these in and it’ll stop the roux from cooking and actually cook the veggies a bit at the same time.

Stop that cooking!

Finishing the Gumbo

The gumbo is really easy to finish at this point.

Take your other half of the finishing veggies (onions, scallions, pepper, celery) and saute them on medium in a drizzle of oil until they are soft. You don’t want them browned, just soft. This will bring out some of the sweet flavors of the veggies.

Just 4-5 minutes of cooking should do the trick.

More veggies.

Bring your stock and chicken mixture back to a simmer and slowly start adding your roux to the stock in large spoonfuls. Make sure each spoonful gets dissolved before adding more.

Once all your roux is incorporated into the stock, let the gumbo simmer for 20 minutes or so to thicken up. Then add in the sauteed veggies, white wine, and sausage if you’re using it. Brown the sausage and slice it up before adding it to the gumbo.

Season the gumbo with hot sauce and salt and pepper. It’s really important to taste it and adjust the seasoning. I probably added 2-3 tablespoons of hot sauce to mine and a few big pinches of salt and pepper.

Don't forget to taste and season.

Serving Gumbo

While there is a lot of different ways to make gumbo, I’m not sure how many different ways you can serve the stuff. It’s really made for rice.

I just used normal long grain white rice and sprinkled on some gumbo file which gives the finished dish a very distinct gumbo flavor. I think this stuff is worth ordering if you want your gumbo to taste authentic, but you could definitely forego it and still have a pretty good meal.

Good stuff.

I garnished my gumbo with some of the greens from the scallions.

This was a really great winter meal.

Really good!

Besides being delicious, this also makes a metric ton of gumbo. Betsy and I ate it for multiple meals. It would also freeze really well if you wanted to keep it for longer than a week.

The next time I make it, I do think I’ll try adding some sausage to it, but I was pretty happy with this as my first gumbo attempt.

Ok. What did I miss?

People who know gumbo – leave a comment with tips/suggestions/etc.

Hello veggie burger!

One of my ongoing quests is to find the perfect veggie burger.

Here’s a hint: It’s definitely not in the freezer section of your local supermarket. Unless, of course, cardboard is your idea of perfect.

In my opinion, the perfect veggie burger should be really filling and have a substantial texture (like meat). It should have lots of flavor and spices and should leave you not missing meat.

Honestly, I try a lot of different veggies burgers and I rarely post them because I find them to be kind of blah.

To date, my best veggie burger attempt, in my opinion, was the beet burgers I made over a year ago.

I still like those burgers, but I think this brown rice burger might surpass it as my favorite for one simple reason: it’s a lot easier to make! You can use leftover rice and have a very delicious burger in no time.

I’m not kidding at all when I say that I would take one of these instead of probably 95% of beef burgers in the world.

Brown Rice Burgers

Yield: 4 burgers.

Prep Time: 45 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

Ingredients:

2 cups brown rice, cooked
1/2 sweet onion, sauteed
1/4 cup cilantro, minced
1 tablespoon garam masala
1 large egg
3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1/3 cup oat flour
Salt and pepper
4 large buns, toasted
1 avocado, sliced

Mango-pineapple Relish:
1 cup pineapple
1 mango, cubed
1-2 Serrano peppers, with seeds

Helpful Equipment:
Food Processor for relish

Directions:

1) For relish, combine ingredients in a food processor and pulse until smooth. If you don't have a food processor, you can also just dice everything very finely.

2) Cook brown rice according to package and let cool or use leftover rice.

3) Sautee diced onion in 1 tablespoon olive oil over medium heat until the onion is translucent, but not browned, about 5 minutes.

4) Mix onion, cilantro, and garam masala with rice. Crack in an egg and combine well. Stir in oat flour. You might need a bit more oat flour. Your rice should be firm and stick together if you press it into a ball.

5) Form 4 large burgers with the rice mixture and season each burger with salt and pepper.

6) Cook the burgers in a heavy pan over medium-high heat with 2 tablespoons of olive oil in the pan. Cook until browned evenly on both sides, about 4-5 minutes per side.

7) Toast buns and serve rice burgers on bun with relish and topped with sliced avocado.

Hello Mango

The other nice thing about this burger is that it’s actually incredibly healthy for a burger. No cheese or mayo or anything. For the sauce, I just pureed a few really flavorful ingredients into a spicy relish that was very delicious.

Great flavors.

Ideally, just cube up these ingredients and add them to a food processor and pulse them until it’s mostly smooth.

I used one Serrano with the seeds and I thought it was pretty spicy, but if you wanted to up the heat level even more, you could use two.

If you don’t have a food processor, don’t fret. Just dice up the ingredients very finely and you’ll have more of a salsa, but it’ll still be really tasty.

Some chunks are okay.

Making the Burgers

The one down side of these burgers is that brown rice does take a while to cook. While you could use white rice for it, I worry that the burgers would end up being a bit bland. Brown rice has a nice nutty flavor that really adds to the burgers.

In an ideal world, you could save a few cups of leftover brown rice for a separate meal and then use it to make these burgers. That would cut your prep time down to just minutes.

Leftover rice would be great.

Once you have your rice, add to it your sauteed onions (just cook them over medium heat in a drizzle of olive oil until they soften). Also add the minced cilantro and stir this all together.

Cook the onions first!

At this point, the burgers have a great texture and some good backbone flavors going on, but I thought they needed a hit of a good spice.

Enter garam masala! This was the perfect spice for these burgers. These days you should be able to find this spice mixture in most supermarkets.

If you’ve never used garam masala before, it’s a pretty popular spice mixture for Indian food. It normally has a pretty large list of ingredients in it, but almost always has some cumin, cardamon, cloves, and various peppers. It’s good stuff.

Spice is nice!

The Binder

Now our burgers should be pretty tasty, but there’s no way you’ll get this rice mixture to stick together as is. So crack in an egg and mix in some oat flour.

You can easily substitute all-purpose flour for oat flour, but the oat flour does add a little bit of extra flavor to the finished burgers.

The binder!

Making and Cooking

Make a test burger to make sure that the mixture sticks together well. If it seems really sticky, add in a bit more flour.

Once it’s a nice firm consistency, make four large burgers out of the mixture.

4 big burgers.

Season these burgers with salt and pepper and then cook them in a large heavy skillet over medium high heat with a drizzle of olive oil (about 2 tablespoons). Cook them for about 4-5 minutes per side until they are nicely browned.

I didn’t try it, but I think you could grill these guys. They were pretty sturdy actually and I think as long as you didn’t mess with them much on the grill, they would hold up just fine.

Any pan will work really.

Serving the Burgers

As always, I’m a fan of a toasted bun for my burgers so I definitely recommend that. Then add a good slather of the relish to the bottom bun.

Check out that color!

Love that color!

Stack on a burger and a few slices of avocado and you’re ready to go!

The 'cado is key.

The avocado acts like a creamy element for the burgers. It’s very essential in my opinion.

Betsy and I both gave these guys two thumbs up and fought for the extras for lunch the next day.

She w0n.

Just a great burger.

Now, if you are completely set on sabotaging my veggie burger recipe, you could make a beef burger and slap it between this relish and some avocado and still have a pretty tasty thing.

But try it with rice. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised!

This warms the soul.

It’s been a very long time since I’ve posted something made in my crockpot, almost two years in fact. So I was very happy when a crockpot dish won the poll last week.

Plus, it just makes sense. It’s cold and you’re probably busy this time of year so a dish that you can RONCO (set it and forget it) is probably helpful.

Funnily, this soup fits almost all of the categories in the poll last week. I swear that wasn’t planned… sometimes it just works out that way.

I’ve made chicken tortilla soup before, but never posted on it. This version was, by far, the best version I’ve ever made though. Something about letting the flavors just kind of mingle all day long really gave the finished soup an interesting and deep flavor.

You’d be silly not to try this!

Crockpot Chicken Tortilla Soup

Yield: Serves 5-6

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 8 hours

Ingredients:

1 yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 Serrano pepper, diced (with seeds)
1 red pepper, diced
1 stalk celery, diced
1 chipotle pepper, minced
1 15 ounce can diced tomatoes
1 pound chicken breasts
2 dried New Mexico chile peppers (or poblano)
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 bay leaves
6 cups chicken stock
A few sprigs cilantro
3 corn tortillas, diced
1 cup corn
Salt and pepper

Garnish:
Corn tortilla strips
Avocados
Limes
Cotija cheese
Sour cream

Helpful Equipment:
Crockpot

Directions:

1) Finely dice the onion, garlic, peppers, and celery and add them to a crockpot.

2) Also add in the chicken breasts, canned tomatoes, bay leaves, cumin seeds, dried chiles, and chicken stock. The stock should just cover all the ingredients.

3) Cover and set the crockpot on low. Cook for 6-8 hours.

4) Remove dried chiles and bay leaves and discard. Remove chicken breasts, shred, and return to crockpot.

5) Add in cilantro sprigs, corn, and a few corn tortillas cut into bits. Let the crockpot simmer for another 30-60 minutes.

6) Season soup with salt and pepper.

7) To make tortilla strips, dice corn tortillas into strips and bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes until lightly browned and crispy.

8) Serve soup piled high with tortilla strips. Other fun garnishes include lime wedges, crumbled cotija cheese, avocados, and sour cream.

Preparing the Veggies

I know what you’re thinking: ”Holy crap that’s a lot of ingredients!”

True. But hang in there. Most of them are basic stuff and once they are all in the pot, there’s very little work involved in this meal. You can go cross stuff off your list and come home to a delicious soup.

These are the few veggies that you need to start this soup.

Just a few basics.

The key to these is to dice them pretty finely.

For the Serrano pepper, I left the seeds in. You could take them out though if you’re worried about the heat.

Then just toss all this stuff into your slow cooker!

A fine dice.

Besides the veggies you need a few other things to get this soup going.

This is where a lot of the flavor comes from in this soup.

Flavor town.

Add all this stuff to the crockpot along with your chicken breasts. I would shoot for about a pound of chicken but you could use more if you wanted.

For the chipotle pepper, make sure you dice it very finely. Nobody wants a big bite of chipotle in their soup.

For the dried peppers, you can use almost any dried pepper. I went with New Mexico chile peppers, but poblanos would work also. Just break up the dried peppers into a few pieces and scrape out the seeds. Then throw the dried pieces into the crockpot along with the chicken breasts.

Everybody in the pot!

Add in all your chicken stock which should just barely cover all the ingredients.

A Slow Cook

Set your crockpot to a low heat and let this sucker cook, covered, for at least six hours. If you wanted you could cook it for even longer though. Six hours is the minimum.

After that, your house will smell amazing and your soup will look something like this.

6 hours later...

Finishing the Soup

There’s a few things we need to do to finish this soup now that most of the cooking is done.

For starters, take out the bay leaves and dried peppers from the soup and discard them. They’ve given the soup plenty of flavor and there’s no need to hang on to them.

Next, take out the chicken breasts and use a few forks to gently shred the meat. Then you can return it to the crockpot.

Get it?

Finally, there are three new ingredients that I recommend adding at this point as they don’t need to simmer all day long.

First, add some corn and cilantro sprigs. Second, cube up a few corn tortillas and add those cubes straight to the soup.

Just some more flavor!

Cover this and let it simmer for another 30-45 minutes. The tortillas will soften and some will completely disintegrate into the soup which will give it a really rich texture. The cilantro will give the soup a nice herb flavor.

After it’s second cooking, remove the cilantro stalks and season the soup generously with salt and pepper.

The Garnishes

My favorite part of chicken tortilla soup is serving it with tons of fun garnishes and toppings and then people can kind of make their own bowls.

The essential topping (in my opinion) is crispy tortilla strips. These are super-easy to make. Just cut a few corn tortillas into long strips and bake them at 350 degrees for about 15-20 minutes.

The strips will be lightly browned when the are done and super-crispy.

Great garnish.

Some other topping ideas that I like are sliced avocado, crumbled cotija cheese (or any cheese really), sour cream, and lime wedges.

Some other fun add-ins.

Once your soup is seasoned well with salt and pepper just ladle it into a bowl and pile on the toppings!

From above.

It’s actually a very filling meal for soup because of the chicken, tortillas, and cheese. It’s very warming and just a complete winner of a meal in my book.

Don’t be daunted by the ingredient list here, people. You can and should give this a shot sometime this winter!

The cute little napkins in this post were kindly donated by Oh Little Rabbit.

Quick. Simple. Delicious.

There’s come a point after every Thanksgiving I’ve ever hosted or attended where there’s a few huge bags of leftover turkey meat in the fridge and everybody has pretty much had as much turkey as they can take.

You will eat it with stuffing, put it on a sandwich, and probably sneak it at midnight, but sometimes even with all of that, you’ll be left with more turkey than you know what to do with.

This is when fajitas come in and save the day. They may just be the perfect way to use leftover turkey. Let me explain:

1) They take just a few minutes to make. After slaving away over the stove for days, it’s nice to have a quick meal.

2) They are somewhat healthy. They are mostly lean meat, veggies, and salsa. It’s actually a somewhat light meal after days of gorging.

3) They have a different flavor profile. Even though you’re using turkey, it has a completely different taste because of the spices.

Even though the actual turkey day is still a few days away, this is a great way to put a dent in some of those leftovers!

Leftover Turkey Fajitas

Yield: Serves 4.

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients:

1-1.5 pounds leftover turkey, chopped
1 red pepper, sliced
1 orange, yellow, or green pepper, sliced
1 yellow onion, sliced
1 jalapeno, sliced thin
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
Salt and pepper
12 flour tortillas

Toppings:
Sliced avocado
Salsa
Sour cream

Directions:

1) Chop up turkey roughly. You can use white or dark meat. Also slice peppers and onions into strips.

2) Pre-heat oven to 300 degrees and wrap tortillas in foil. Add tortillas to oven and let heat up for 5-10 minutes.

3) Add oil to a large skillet over high heat. Once hot, add the peppers and onions and cook until they are slightly caramelized, about 4 minutes.

4) Add chopped turkey to skillet with spices and a pinch of salt and pepper.

5) Toss ingredients together well and cook until the turkey is slightly browned.

6) Serve turkey mixture with warm flour tortillas and toppings.

Peppers and more Peppers

Like I said, one of the great things about fajitas is it gives you a chance to use some nice fresh veggies after days of carbs.

I like my fajitas to be really pepper-heavy so I usually use a red pepper, one other kind of pepper, and a jalapeno or two.

Essential fajitas ingredients.

Slice up the peppers and onions. For the jalapeno, if you’re using one, remove the seeds and chop it a bit smaller. Nobody will enjoy a huge slice of jalapeno in their fajitas.

This might take 5 minutes to prepare.

A good guide for size of slices.

Gobble Gobble

As far as the turkey goes, you can definitely use white or dark meat. I used leftover turkey from my apple cider brined turkey. I was worried about the apple flavors not going well with the fajitas, but they were delicious.

No problems at all.

There are some options when it comes to prepping the turkey. You could shred it, but I like my fajitas to have larger chunks of meat so I just roughly chopped my leftover turkey.

I like big chunks in my fajitas.

Cooking the Fajitas

Before you actually start cooking your fajitas, I’d recommend wrapping your tortillas in some foil and sticking them in a hot oven for 5 minutes or so to get them nice and warm.

The fajitas themselves only take about 10 minutes to cook at the maximum.

Start by heating your oil in a large skillet over high heat. Once it’s hot, add your onions and peppers and cook them until they start to caramelize a bit, about 5 minutes. Then add the turkey and spices and a pinch of salt and pepper.

Cook this all for a few more minutes and you’ll be ready to rock.

Really easy dish to pull together.

Cook the fajitas on a high heat is key so you get some browning on the veggies and on the turkey.

While they cook, I always like to get some fun toppings ready. For this meal, I just used some salsa, sour cream, and diced up an avocado.

Can't go wrong with these toppings.

Serve the fajitas with a few flour tortillas and pile on the toppings.

Two or three fajitas is a really good meal.

A good fajita.

There’s nothing tricky or hard about this recipe. It’s just straightforward good food which is all you need when you’re looking for a way to use your leftovers and relax.

If you have some turkey leftover after Thursday (who doesn’t?), try out the Tex-Mex route!

My childhood in a bowl.

There has been some sort of mild plague going around our town for the last few weeks and Betsy’s office has been hit pretty hard with it. It was only a matter of time before one of us woke up sniffling and aching.

I was lucky enough to avoid the sickness this time around but it sure did smack Bets right upside the head.

So I did what I do best when dealing with a sickness: Make soup.

This time around I happened to find these tiny little star-shaped pastas in the grocery store that sent me flying back to my childhood when my mom would always make me chicken and stars soup when I was sick.

So this is my homemade take on chicken and stars soup. It’s soothing and healing and will get you back on your feet again for sure.

Chicken and Stars Soup

Yield: Serves 8-10.

Prep Time: 45 minutes

Total Time: 2 hours 15 minutes

Ingredients:

Stock:
1 whole chicken, cut into pieces
1 large onion, quartered
2 carrots, quartered
2 celery ribs, quartered
1 head garlic, halved
2 Tablespoons olive oil
6-8 sprigs fresh thyme
2 bay leaves
Handful of fresh parsley
20ish black peppercorns
10-12 cups water

Finished Soup:
Stock from above, strained
Shredded chicken from above, remove fat
1/2 onion, diced
2 carrots, peeled and diced
2 celery ribs, diced
1 glove garlic, diced
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 Teaspoon fresh thyme
6-8 ounces star pasta
Salt and pepper
Crackers and/or crusty bread

Helpful Equipment:
Dutch Oven
Strainer

Directions:

1) Chop chicken into pieces and add the carcass pieces and wings to a large sturdy pot over high heat with a drizzle of oil. Let the chicken pieces brown well over high heat for about 8 minutes. Turn the chicken every few minutes to make it browns evenly.

2) Add your other stock ingredients (including other chicken parts) except the water to the heavy pot and let them all sautee for a few minutes. Try to scrape up any stuck-on bits.

3) Add the water to your pot and make sure you have enough water to barely cover the ingredients. Bring to a simmer and turn the heat down to medium. Simmer the stock on medium, partially covered, for about 60-75 minutes.

4) Remove all the chicken pieces from the stock and let them cool briefly.

5) Strain the warm stock into a large bowl. If there's a lot of fat on the surface of the stock, try to spoon off some of it. It's okay though to have a small layer of fat on the stock for this recipe.

6) Once chicken is cool enough to handle, remove skin from chicken and shred it into bite-sized pieces.

7) In your same large pot, add a new drizzle of olive oil over medium-high heat. Then add all your diced veggies. Sautee for a few minutes until they start to soften. Add fresh thyme and a pinch of salt and pepper.

8) Add stock back to pot and bring to a simmer.

9) Once soup is simmering, stir in stars pasta and cook until al dente, about 9-10 minutes.

10) Finally stir in shredded chicken and season with salt and pepper.

11) Serve soup with crackers or crusty bread.

Making The Stock

I do occasionally take shortcuts and use store-bought stock for some dishes, but there’s absolutely no question that the best way to make a good soup is to make a good stock. It does add at least 90 minutes onto your preparation time (unless you have some frozen), but there’s just no debating that it takes homemade soup to another level.

I like to use a whole chicken when I make chicken soup so there’s a mix of white and dark meat. I like to chop up the chicken before cooking the stock which just makes it a bit easier to work with and gives you an opportunity to brown some of the meat.

Use any pieces you want.

If you’re intimidated by cutting up your own chicken, this video is one of the best I’ve seen at showing the process. It’s really not that hard and after you do two or three, you’ll get really fast at it.

Besides chicken and water, there’s a pretty standard list of vegetables that you’ll need to make a good stock. I wrote down a recipe, but it should be a guide. The good news about making stock is it’s a pretty flexible thing. Feel free to use more or less of the veggies depending on what you have and also don’t worry about chopping them up.

I just kind of quarter all of my vegetables.

Nothing fancy here.

To make the stock (and soup), I like to use a big heavy dutch oven. Add a drizzle of oil to the pan over high heat and then add just your chicken carcass and wings to the pot. That’s probably all that will be able to fit in a nice layer in the pan. If you can fit more chicken pieces, feel free to add them.

Let those chicken pieces cook for about 4-5 minutes per side until they are nice and browned. Some bits might get stuck to the pan and that’s just fine. The browned bits will give the stock a really deep flavor.

After your chicken has browned for a few minutes, you can add all your other veggies, herbs, and seasonings.

The start of something great.

Let these guys cook for a few minutes and try to scrape up any bits stuck to the pan.

Then add any other chicken pieces to the pot and cover the whole thing with water. You want to cover everything by about an inch or so. This will probably work out to 10-12 cups of water.

Bring this all to a simmer and let it simmer and turn your heat down to medium. Let the stock simmer, partially covered, for about 75 minutes. Check on it every 20-30 minutes and if there’s a lot of foam on the surface, just scoop it off with a spoon.

The Soup Pieces

One reason why it really makes sense to make your own stock if you’re making homemade chicken soup is because you have to cook the chicken anyway. Making the stock accomplishes that for you!

Once your stock is cooked, just pull out your chicken pieces, let them cool for 5-10 minutes, and then shred them up. Try to remove as much fat and stuff as possible and just shred the chicken into bite-sized bits.

Get it?

For that delicious stock that’s been simmering, I recommend straining it with a strainer to remove any tiny bits of vegetable or whatever.

If there’s a lot of oil on your stock, try to spoon off some of it. A little bit definitely won’t hurt the soup at all.

This was my strained and finished stock that I used for my soup.

Liquid gold.

For the actual soup, take your time dicing up some veggies so they are roughly the same size. You don’t need a ton of vegetables to make a good soup at this point.

Half an onion, a few ribs of celery, a carrot or two, and a clove of garlic should do the trick.

Chopped nicely...

And, of course, you’ll need some stars. You could obviously use noodles or whatever, but I just think these are fun.

Love stars!

Making the Soup

I didn’t even bother washing out my pot from making the stock. I just added a new drizzle of olive oil, set the pot over medium-high heat, and added all my veggies to it.

Just a few minutes...

Cook the veggies for a few minutes until they start to soften and then add the thyme and all the stock. Bring that all to a simmer and then add your stars.

A Note on Over-starring. I actually added the full 16 ounces of stars to my soup because they looked so tiny! Like any pasta though, they swell! I think my version ended up a bit star-heavy! Six to eight ounces of the star pasta should be enough.

The stars will need to cook for about 9-10 minutes and then you can stir in your shredded chicken and season the soup with salt and pepper.

Done deal. Really not too much work.

Serving the soup

I really like soup like this with crackers, but I know that super-crusty bread is also a hit. Any way you scoop it, this is just a good bowl of soup.

So good.

Betsy ate this for a few meals (I did too just to ward off the germs) and she was feeling much better after about 24 hours!

I take full credit for her recovery.

A mess of awesome.

Have you ever had something that you know you should be doing regularly but you just can’t find time to get to it? I call this my procrastithing. I have many of them.

I think most people would say their procrastithing is something like going to the gym.

I have a bunch, but one of my procrastithings these days is listening to The Splendid Table podcast. That might sound ridiculous, but as a food blogger, it’s something that I should really be listening to every week. For some reason though, I have a hard time finding the time.

Of course, every time I do listen to it, I freakin’ love it. They talk about everything I want to hear about. I especially like the part of every show where listeners call in with super-random food or cooking questions and the host, Lynn, always has an amazing answer for every problem.

Recently, a guy called in and said something like, “I’m cooking brunch for 50 people. It needs to be filling, fast, hot, and all that good stuff.” It was a tough one. Her answer was something I had never thought of: Savory bread pudding.

As soon as the words came out of my speakers, I knew I had to make it.

Savory Bread Pudding

Yield: 8x8 dish.

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes + Chill Time

Ingredients:

4-5 pieces of stale bread, torn into large pieces
1.5-2 cups various cheeses, I used cheddar and goat cheese
1-2 cups vegetables, I used a roasted red pepper and 1/2 an onion
4 large eggs
2 cups milk
1 Tablespoon butter, for dish
Pinch of nutmeg
Salt and pepper

Directions:

1) Butter an 8x8 baking dish. Tear pieces of stale bread into large chunks and layer them in the buttered dish. If you don't have any really stale bread, toast your bread for 10 minutes in a 300 degree oven to dry it out.

2) Add any sort of grated or crumbled cheese to the top of the bread until it just barely covers the bread. Two cups will be more than enough. I used a mix of cheddar and goat cheese.

3) Add a few handfuls of leftover veggies (or meat) to the dish. You can use almost any fresh vegetable. I used a roasted red pepper and 1/2 an onion.

4) In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs and milk and pour the mixture over the bread and vegetables.

5) Cover the dish and let it rest for at least 15 minutes or up to overnight in the fridge.

6) Season the dish with salt and pepper and a tiny pinch of ground nutmeg.

7) Bake the dish at 350 degrees covered for 20 minutes and then uncovered for 30 minutes. The dish is done when the custard in the center are set.

8) Let cool for a minute or two and then serve immediately!

Recipe adapted from a Splendid Table recipe.

What the Custard?

Just like any bread pudding, you need a good custard. Depending on the size of your dish and how much bread you have on hand, you might need more or less custard than the recipe above.

Always shoot for two eggs for every one cup of milk. That’ll make for a really good custard.

Just milk and eggs, baby.

Just whisk the eggs with the milk and set it aside until you need it.

The Pudding Parts

The best part about this recipe is its flexibility. I’ve only made it once, but I could tell immediately that you can put almost anything in it. You can use almost any kind of bread, any kind of cheese, and any kind of vegetable.

It’s the perfect leftover dish.

The one key to the dish is to make sure you have really stale bread. This will make sure that the bread can absorb a lot of the custard mixture. If you don’t have stale bread, no big deal. Just stick your bread in a 300 degree oven for about 10 minutes and it’ll dry it out quickly.

Then just break your bread into pieces and layer it into the bottom of a buttered baking dish.

Then cover the bread with whatever cheese you’re using. I went with cheddar and some goat cheese I have left over from my macaroni and (goat) cheese recipe.

Toast that bread if it isn't really stale.

The Vegetables

As I mentioned, you can shove almost any veggies you have around (cooked or raw) in this dish. I went with 1/2 an onion and a roasted red pepper. I’m having a hard time thinking of something you couldn’t put in this though. Almost anything goes.

Just dice up whatever veggies you want to use and toss them on.

You can use almost any veggie.

Then just pour your custard mixture right into your dish!

Action shot!

Give it a Rest

It’s very important to let this dish sit for at least 15 minutes, but ideally an hour, before baking it. You could make it the night before you needed it and just stick it in the fridge overnight. That would be fantastic.

When you are ready to bake it, season it well with salt and pepper and a pinch of ground nutmeg. The nutmeg will really bring out the cheese flavors. It works well, trust me.

Nutmeg is a secret ingredient.

Baking the Dish

Bake this awesome thing at 350 degrees. I recommend baking it for 20 minutes covered in foil and then uncovered for about 30 minutes or until the custard is set in the middle. It should get slightly crusty and browned around the edges.

This will make your house smell awesome!

Let this rest for a few minutes once it comes out of the oven and then scoop into it.

It’s absolutely packed with flavor.

This is a really great dish.

I could easily see how you could feed a bunch of people with this method. Just make these the day before the event and toss them all in the oven.

Done deal.

Does anyone else listen to The Splendid Table podcast? They do good work!