Cooking with KP

Kay's Crockpot Pork Loin

I changed a few things around from recipes online and add a few KP touches to create this recipe. It is so very easy and so very tasty.

2-3 lbs. pork loins (I had two in a package)
1 cup of pineapple preserves
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
3 T Worcestershire sauce
2 T apple cider vinegar
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1 T. garlic powder
1 medium onion, diced
1 green pepper, diced
Extra garlic powder and pepper to rub on pork loins

Spray inside of crockpot. Season pork loins with garlic powder and pepper--rub to coat thoroughly. Place pork loins in crockpot. Top with diced onions and green peppers. Mix all other ingredients in mixing bowl and pour on top of meat, onions, and peppers. Cook on low for 4-5 hours. Remove from crockpot and let rest 15 minutes and slice. Pour some of the juice from crockpot on top and serve.

Easy and Tender Beef Tips with Gravy

2 lb. beef tenderloin tips, stew meat, chuck roast or chuck eye, or sirloin, cubed
1 10.5 oz can cream of mushroom soup
2 packets brown gravy mix
1 large onion diced (You could use a packet of onion soup mix but I find it too salty)

Garlic powder and pepper, to your taste
1 4 oz. can mushrooms, drained
1 cup ginger ale soda (If you don’t have ginger ale, don’t substitute lemon-lime soda. It is too sweet. You can use beef broth or water.)

Crock pot directions:

Spray crock pot with cooking spray. Add meat and top with onion. Mix all other ingredients in a large bowl and pour on top of meat and onions. Cook on low for 4-6 hours.
Oven directions:
Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Place beef and onion in sprayed baking dish. Mix all other ingredients in a large bowl and pour on top of meat and onions. Cover with foil. Bake for 3 hours.

Serve on noodles, rice, biscuits or mashed potatoes.

Root Beer BBQ "Pulled" Chicken on a Bun

This is very tasty and can easily be doubled or tripled for picnics.

4-5 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (I don't recommend using tenders or thin cut) or 6-8 boneless, skinless thighs
1 cup of root beer (not diet)
salt, pepper, and garlic powder
1 onion, diced
1 16-ounce bottle of your favorite bbq sauce (Sweet Baby Ray's is our favorite)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon black pepper or cayenne if you want to kick it up

Rinse chicken and pat dry with a paper towel. Season with garlic powder, salt and pepper. Place in crock pot that has been sprayed with cooking spray or use a liner. Add diced onion and root beer. Cook on low for 4 hours. Remove chicken and throw away any liquid that remains in crock pot. You can hand shred or pull the chicken before returning it to the crock pot or you can try what I do. Put chicken back in crock pot and using your hand electric mixer on low-to-medium speed, you can shred or pull it quickly. Once chicken is shredded/pulled and back in the crock pot, stir in bbq sauce, pepper, and brown sugar. Continue to cook on low for 2-3 hours. Serve on buns with light mayo and pickles or slaw.

Kay's Chicken and Rice Delight

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts or 8-9 chicken tenders

1 can of cream of mushroom soup
2 cans of cream of chicken soup (you could use one can of cream of celery and one can of cream of chicken)
1 bay leaf
1 onion, diced
2 ribs of celery, diced
2 T parsley flakes
3 T Worcestershire sauce
½ cup of either diced carrots or frozen green peas (You might want to try broccoli florets too).
Garlic powder
Black pepper
3/4 cup of chicken broth
2 cups long grain rice (works well with brown or wild rice)

Rinse chicken and season well with garlic powder and pepper. Spray crock pot with cooking spray. Pour rice, chicken broth, and soups into the crockpot. Mix. Place chicken on top of rice mixture. Add seasonings and vegetables. Cover. Cook on low for 5 hours. Remove lid and mix ingredients, slightly shredding chicken as mixing. Continue to cook for one hour. If you don’t have long grain unconverted rice but have instant rice, you can mix the soups and pour on top of chicken, vegetables, and seasonings in your crockpot. Do not use chicken broth. Instead, after chicken has cooked 5 hours. Pour 2 cups of chicken broth in a pot and bring to a boil on the stove. Add 2 cups of instant/minute rice. Cover and let sit 5-10 minutes. Pour into crock pot and mix well. Cook one more hour in crockpot to meld flavors.
Note: Because I like a lot of garlic powder and pepper in my foods, I also sprinkle some in the soup mixtures.

Cabbage Roll Casserole

I found a recipe online that I “KPed” to make my own. If you like cabbage rolls, you are sure to like this—cabbage rolls the easy way.

1-1 ½ pounds of ground meat

1 onion, diced
1 T garlic powder
1 tsp. black pepper
1 cup cooked rice
1 bag shredded cole slaw mix
1 can diced tomatoes (16 ounces)
1 can tomato sauce (16 ounces)
1 can tomato sauce (8 ounces)
1 T Worcestershire sauce
1 T sugar
2 cups shredded Italian blend cheese
3 T grated Parmesan cheese (shaker kind)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Brown ground meat with onions, ½ T of garlic powder, and ½ tsp. pepper. Drain any fat. Mix in cooked rice. In a mixing bowl, mix canned tomatoes and sauce with ½ T garlic powder, Worcestershire sauce, ½ tsp. pepper, and sugar. In 9x13 casserole that has been sprayed with cooking spray, spread ½ the bag of cole slaw mix. Top with half of the meat mixture, then sprinkle 1 ½ T Parmesan cheese on top and then 1 cup Italian cheese. Spread half of the tomato mixture on top. Repeat cole slaw, meat mixture, tomato sauce, and Parmesan cheese. Cover with foil and bake for 80 minutes. Remove foil and top with remaining Italian cheese. Bake for ten more minutes.

Three Cheese Ham Casserole

Here is a recipe that I altered from a chicken recipe. It is perfect for using up the last of your Easter ham.

2 ½ cups diced ham
2 cups pasta, boiled and drained (I used small sea shells)
1 can mixed vegetables, drained
1 can cream of mushroom or cream of celery soup
½ cup mayo or sour cream (I use mayo because my husband doesn’t like sour cream)
2 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. pepper
1 ½ cup shredded cheddar cheese
½ cup shredded mozzarella cheese
½ cup grated Parmesan or Swiss cheese
½ cup Italian bread crumbs

1/2 stick butter, cut into slices and cut into fourths

Because ham, canned soup, and cheese can be salty, I don’t add salt, but if you like salt, go for it!

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Boil and drain pasta. While pasta is cooling, mix all other ingredients, except bread crumbs, in a large bowl. Add pasta and mix well. Place in casserole dish that has been sprayed with cooking spray. I often put a handful of cheese on top of the spray before adding the casserole mixture; it seems cheesier that way. Sprinkle bread crumbs on top of casserole. Scatter the fourths of butter over the top of crumbs. Bake for 25-30 minutes until bubbly.

Taco Tater Tot Casserole

Here is a recipe I found online and KP-ed! It is good, quick, and easy.

1 pound ground meat or 2 cups of shredded cooked chicken (leftover chicken is perfect)
1 medium yellow onion, diced
1 medium green bell pepper diced
1 package of taco seasoning mix
1 jar of salsa
2 cups of Mexican Blend/Fiesta Blend Cheese
1 small bag of tater tots
2 green onions, sliced
1 can sliced black olives
Sour cream

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
If using ground meat, put meat, onions and bell pepper in skillet and brown until no pink remains. If using chicken, put 1 T olive oil in skillet and saute onions and bell pepper for 4 minutes, add chicken to skillet. With either ground meat or chicken, add taco seasoning and 2/3 cup water to meat mixture. Bring to a boil and then simmer 5 minutes.
In a 9x13 casserole pan, spread about 1/3 cup of cheese on the bottom. Pour meat mixture on top of cheese. Spread salsa on top of meat. Sprinkle 1 cup of cheese on top of salsa. Top with tater tots and place in oven. Bake 25 minutes. Remove and top with remaining cheese and olives. Bake 5 minutes and then remove from oven and sprinkle on green onions. Serve with a dollop of sour cream.

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.