Cooking with KP: December 2020

Simple Salsa Rice Side Dish

We were having Taco Tuesday and wanted a quick and easy side dish other than refried beans. I didn't have any Spanish rice mixes in the house, so this recipe was born. It is easy and quite tasty.

1 cup chunky salsa

1 1/2 cup water

1 Tablespoon butter

1/4 teaspoon pepper

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

2 cups instant rice

Chopped green onions or parsley to top.

Pour the first 5 ingredients in a saucepan or large skillet that has a lid. Stir and bring to a boil. Add instant rice. Stir a couple of times. Remove from heat and cover with lid. Rice will be ready in 5-8 minutes. When done, stir and place in serving bowl. Sprinkle with green onions/parsley.

Note: You can toss in a handful of frozen corn kernels when you add the rice to the salsa mixture.

Cheesy Cauliflower Casserole

Not only is this a tasty casserole, it is super easy to make. Even people that don't like cauliflower will love this! It is so good and creamy. It is wonderful side dish instead of potatoes. It is great dish for covered dish get-togethers/potlucks.

1 ½ large heads cauliflower or 2 16-ounce packages of frozen cauliflower
½ cup heavy cream
4 Tablespoons butter
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups grated white cheddar
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan
½ Tablespoon dried thyme
Freshly ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large pot of salted boiling water, cook cauliflower until tender, 8 minutes. Drain well. Slice butter into thin slices and then divide each slice into four pieces. Mix the cheddar and Parmesan cheeses in small bowl. Butter a large baking dish. Add half the cauliflower and pour over half the heavy cream. Dot with half the butter, sprinkle with half the garlic, pepper, thyme. Top with half of the cheese mixture. Make a second layer following the directions of the first. Bake until cheese is melty and deeply golden, 30-40 minutes. Let cool 5 minutes, then serve.

Easy Chicken Pot Pie

If you are looking for a quick and easy comfort food dinner, here you go. I love pot
pies and wish I had the talent to make my own crusts, but store-bought crusts are what I use. If you want to make them yourself, feel free.

2 deep dish pie crusts—thawed
3 Tablespoons butter
1 ½ pounds of chicken
¼ cup diced onion
1 can of mixed vegetables, drained or 12 ounces frozen mixed vegetables, slightly thawed
1 can of cream of chicken soup
¼ tsp. pepper
½ tsp. garlic powder
½ Tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
¼ cup of milk

1 egg for egg wash on crust

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Dice chicken into bite size pieces. Melt butter in a large skillet. Add in chicken, onion, pepper, and garlic powder. Sauté until chicken is completely done. Add all other ingredients except egg, and mix well. Pour mixture into one of the pie crusts. Take other pie crust out of aluminum pan and flatten, pieces together to make a top crust. Beat egg in a small bowl and lightly brush the top crust. (This will help in browning the crust.)Cut 4-6 slits in the top crust. Place pie on a baking sheet and bake for 25-30 minutes until top crust is golden brown.

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Cheaper Cuts of Beef Don't Have To Be Tough

Most people avoid the cheaper cuts of beef because they tend to be tough. With 8 children and three adults in our home, my mother had to find ways to tenderize the cheaper cuts of beef. One way to cook "down", as my mother used to say, a tough cut of beef steak is to season both sides of the steak with garlic powder, seasoned salt and pepper. Lightly brown the steak in a large skillet and on top add a diced green bell pepper, medium onion, a bay leaf, parsley flakes, a few dashes of Worchestershire sauce, and a can of diced tomatoes. Cover with lid. Let the steak simmer for 30-50 minutes. Remove lid and thicken juices by cooking 5-10 more minutes. You can also do the same with a cheap beef roast in a crock pot. Add all the ingredients in crock pot and cook on low for 6-8 hours. The flavor is simple, amazing and great with mashed potatoes.

Fall Vegetables for a Healthy You

As the fall approaches, we will all start to stay indoors more hours. This will lessen our vitamins, such as vitamin A, D, and K, which are enhanced by sunlight. Below are a few vegetables you might want to increase in your diet as the fall and later winter days approach. Besides, they are very tasty. In fact, in the next few weeks, I will be posting recipes that incorporate many of these delicious veggies.

Sweet potatoes and yams are very rich in carotenoids, vitamins A, B6, C, potassium, iron and fiber and are delicious when baked and eaten plain (without butter) or used in soups, casseroles or stir-fries.

Bell peppers are great sources of potassium, manganese, fiber and vitamins A, B, C and K. These sweet peppers are flavorful additions to salads and healthy stir-fries. You can choose from a rainbow of colors, including: green peppers,yellow peppers, orange peppers,and red peppers.

Summer and winter squash are rich in carotenoids, vitamins A and C, potassium, magnesium and fiber and can be served alone or added to many dishes.

Just a few tips for you...

Spray your Tupperware with nonstick cooking spray before pouring in tomato- based sauces. No more stains!

Use lifesavers candy to hold candles in place on your next birthday cake! Kids love them.

Stuff a miniature marshmallow in the bottom of a sugarcone to prevent ice cream drips!

Zap garlic cloves in the microwave for 15 seconds and the skins slip right off!

If your celery begins to wilt in the fridge, fill a large cup half full of water and place celery in the cup. Put back in the fridge for two hours--it will be crisp. (Learned this from my mother).

Cooking Myth Busted

A Potato Can Save a Salty Soup or Stew. True or False? False. "This is an attractive idea, but it doesn't work because potatoes are not particularly absorbent," says Wolke, who conducted his own soup-and-potato experiment for his Cooking Myth Busters book. "There is no reason they would attract salt." If you remove the raw potato from the soup, the potato will taste salty, but so would a sponge — it has simply soaked up some of the salty liquid. Still, there is hope for salty stews: Adding a bit of vinegar or sugar can "cancel out" the saltiness by giving your taste buds competing flavors.

Super Moist Turkey

If you are looking for a way to get a moist turkey, you might try one of these family hints:

1--bake the turkey upside down--breast down for the first half of the cooking time. It will help the darker meat cook more thoroughly and the fatty juices of the darker meat will drip down to the breast and add moistness. Use a deep roasting pan for this.

2--bake the turkey with the breast up, but rub it with butter, garlic powder and pepper only. Do not salt the skin. Instead, mix salt in a cup of warm water and pour that cup of salted warm-not hot-water inside the cavity of the turkey. The salt water will steam up into the turkey, making it very moist.

3. bake the turkey with the breast up and slice two lemons and one orange in halves. Place the halves inside the seasoned turkey and the juices will steam into the meat, adding moisture and flavor.

Hint of the Week

Here is something I learned from my wonderful Mother, the greatest cook I have ever known. When you have just a small serving of cooked vegetables leftover from dinner, don't throw them away. Keep a large plastic container in the freezer and put the vegetables in the container. Mix them--carrots, corn, green beans, broccoli, etc. When the container is full make a pot of soup or stew. Also, if a recipe calls for 1/2 a chopped onion, chop the whole onion and add the half to the freezer container. My mother made the best vegetable soups from this idea.

Hint for the Week

With Fourth of July quickly approaching, you might be thinking of making Deviled Eggs. If you want perfectly boiled eggs, place eggs in a large pot and completely cover with cold water. Do not layer eggs on top of one another. Bring water to a rapid boil for 2 minutes, reduce to simmer and let eggs simmer 8 minutes, return to boil for 2 minutes. Remove from heat and empty hot water and fill pot with cold water. Let sit for 5 minutes. To peel easily, slightly crush shell in your fist and roll on counter with a firm grip. Of course, you don't want to push through the egg, but by making the shell crack in many small pieces, it is easier to peel. My father saw this on a cooking show years ago and taught me this. It truly works.