There’s nothing much easier to cook up as a side dish than these scalloped potatoes. Perfect for any special occasion, or just to compliment an ordinary dinner, scalloped potatoes is a dish you can make with staple items found in your kitchen. Make sure you have potatoes, cheddar cheese, flour, and half-and-half, and you’re good to go.
This is a pretty simple but unique recipe for fruit salad, because of the lemon juice and zest, which give it a pleasant zing. Read More »
These rolls are quick and easy to throw together, and turn out amazingly! They rise quickly, are soft and fluffy, taste great with a bit of butter (and maybe some jam) and make an awesome side to any meal.
Check out the new RECIPE VIDEO on YouTube!
These Egg Muffins are an awesome way to have a quick and healthy breakfast. You can also make these ahead of time, and plan out a few mornings worth.
They are relatively easy and quick to make and require basic ingredients like hash browns, lots of eggs, cheese, and sausage.
Enjoy!
Chow Mein is a great make-ahead-of-time lunch. This recipe uses normal spaghetti noodles, which are easy to find and cook.
INGREDIENTS:
1/2 a head of cabbage, shredded
2/3 cup of soy sauce
1 (16 oz) pkg. of spaghetti noodles
1 Tbs. Brown Sugar
1 medium sweet onion
3 cloves of garlic
4 carrots, peeled and grate
2 tsp. chopped fresh ginger root
DIRECTIONS:
First, peel the ginger root to get skin off. Then chop into small chunks.
Then peel garlic cloves (in picture, note I used a silicone sleeve thingy to peel the garlic cloves, it works really well), and chop into medium chunks, too.
Place Ginger, Garlic, Soy Sauce, and brown sugar into wet-ingredient blender. (you can use a blender, or whatever else works, too.) Blend for 20 seconds, or until everything is finely chopped up.
NOTE: To make things much easier, you could possibly buy cabbage already shredded, and carrots, already shredded, but I just did it manually:
Peel all the carrots with a vegetable peeler, and cut the ends off. Shred with a food processor shredder attachment.
Next, peel outer leaves off cabbage for sanitary reasons, and cut half (the half you’ll be using) into small chunks, small enough to fit in the processor’s chute. If you prefer to chop the cabbage, then do it.
If not, use the easier way: the food processor. With the blade attachment, shred cabbage, and place into a bowl for keeps until you need it.
For onions: Cut onions into inch long thin segments.
Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Break your raw noodles in half before placing them in the boiling water. Cook for the time indicated on the back of your package. (9 min, average).
WHILE your noodles are boiling, pour two tablespoons of olive oil into a large skillet over medium heat.
When heated up, Put carrots and onions in, stirring, until cooked mostly, about 3 minutes. Then place cabbage in, and stir for one or so minutes. Remove from heat–but be sure it’s warm for when you want to use it.
When noodles are done cooking (you’ll know if they are tender when bitten) then take them out, and pour into a colander in an empty sink to drain. Pour into large serving bowl.
Finally, pour soy sauce mixture into Vegetables, and stir until combined. Then pour the whole vegetable thing into the prepared noodles, mixing until combined. If you wish, you may pour more soy sauce in for more flavor.
See my original post of this recipe on instructables
This Sweet & Thick Teriyaki Sauce is a great Asian sauce that works with almost any Asian food.
It works well as a baste for grilling things, and even a marinade.
It also works good on fish, making a plain fish (like mahi-mahi or salmon) more flavorful.
INGREDIENTS:
⅓ cup soy sauce
⅓ cup water
⅓ cup brown sugar
¼ cup avocado oil
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
DIRECTIONS:
In a small bowl, thoroughly mix all ingredients (except for cornstarch) together.
Pour mixture into a medium/small skillet over medium heat, and bring to a boil.
Put cornstarch into a small bowl. Pour a bit of the boiling mixture into the cornstarch bowl, and mix until homogeneous.
Pour the resulting substance back into the skillet, and stir until all combined. Boil a bit more, and then turn to low, and continue to cook, while stirring until the mixture becomes thick like syrup.
Remove from heat and use as a baste, and/or a sauce for your fish (salmon, mahi-mahi, etc.)
Salsa makes a good snack served chips for any occasion with lots of people. This particular salsa instructable makes alot of salsa, so be sure that you plenty of people to eat it!
While this salsa is rather hot and spicy, it is easy to change the ingredients to make it mild or medium.
Ingredients:
1 (14.5 oz) can of tomatoes, with juice
3 whole tomatoes
4 large clumps cilantro
4 large cloves garlic
2 jalapeno peppers (for milder salsa, use 1 jalapeno)
1 medium onion (use less for milder salsa)
½ teaspoon sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 lime, juiced
DIRECTIONS:
Cut your fresh tomatoes into large chunks.
Pour HALF of the tomatoes from the can with their juice into the blender. Leave the OTHER HALF in the can.
Coarsely chop the garlic, as shown.
Remove the leaves of the cilantro from its stems, and throw the stems away. Its the leaves you want.
Cut open the pepper(s), and dump the seeds out. Then cut into smaller pieces.
Also prepare the onion, so that it looks like it does in the picture.
Throw all this prepared produce into the blender.
Now that you’ve combined all the other ingredients, and pulsed them on medium speed:
Dump in all the fresh tomatoes and THE OTHER HALF of the canned tomatoes.
Pulse on LOW speed for a bit until the texture is coarse and chunky. I learned to do this the hard way, and pulverized most of the salsa….
You can store your salsa in the fridge in an airtight container.
Take out to serve at parties, lunches, dinners, breakfasts, and whatnot.
See step-by-step picture instructions on my original post of this recipe on instructables.
These Garlic Spiral Bread Rolls are made like Cinnamon Rolls. But instead of spreading on sugar, you roll in fresh garlic, Parmesan cheese, and parsley. This makes a great savory twist on a dinner roll and is a good side dish to any dinner entree.
Ingredients: (makes 12 rolls)
¾ cup milk
¼ cup butter
3 teaspoons active dry yeast
3 cups flour
¼ cup sugar
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon garlic salt
1 egg
¼ cup water
Filling:
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese
½ cup butter, softened
1 tablespoon minced parsley
3 cloves garlic, minced
DIRECTIONS:
Heat butter with milk in a microwave until butter is melted, stirring in between.
In a large bowl of a stand mixer, combine 2 cups flour, yeast, sugar, garlic salt, and salt. Pour water, egg, and milk-butter mixture into the flour mixture. Make sure that the milk mixture is very warm. Stir into flour mix until sticky and wet. Replace mixer with a dough hook. Add the remaining cup of flour ¼ cup at a time carefully, kneading with dough hook constantly until the dough is wet but doesn’t stick to your hand. It should take all the flour.
Once dough is done, take the dough out of the bowl and hand knead it. Then grease the large bowl, and put the dough back in. Let rise in a warm place for 10 minutes.
Roll dough out on a large flour surface into a 12×9 inch rectangle. Mix the parsley, Parmesan, and garlic in a small bowl until thoroughly mixed. Spread softened butter over rolled out dough evenly. Then sprinkle cheese-garlic mixture evenly over the buttered dough.
Roll dough up, starting at the 12 inch side, until it is a long log. This is very similar to cinnamon rolls. Cut out 12 even rolls from this long log. Grease a 9×13 baking dish. Place rolls face side up in the pan. Cover and let rest for 30 minutes.
After ten minutes of rising, preheat oven to 375 degrees.
After rise time is up, bake the rolls in the pan in the oven for 20 minutes, or until golden. Serve warm.
This Soaked Flour Sandwich bread is healthier than regular bread, in that the flour soaks overnight before baking. This has numerous health benefits, even though it is time consuming. But even though it is ‘time consuming,’ you don’t have to spend a relatively long amount of time in the kitchen; and you can eat healthier. The time is worth it.
Sally Fallon, author of the book “Nourishing Traditions” explains some of the reasons why soaking your flour before baking is healthier:
-activates the enzyme phytase, which breaks down phytic acid (phytic acid inhibits the absorption of calcium, magnesium, iron, copper and zinc)
-provides lactic acid and lactobacilli, helping to break down complex starches and proteins
-increases vitamin content
-makes the nutrients in grains more readily available
-softens whole grain flour, making it more palatable
Ingredients (makes 2 loaves):
2 ¾ cup all-purpose flour
2 ¾ cup whole wheat flour
1 cup buttermilk (or make your own, see directions)
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
½ cup room-temp water (or more if too dry)
½ cup oil
¼ cup warm water
2 ½ teaspoons active-dry yeast
2 ½ tablespoons coconut sugar (or honey)
2 teaspoon salt
DIRECTIONS:
If you don’t have 1 cup of buttermilk, then you can make some; in a 1 cup liquid measuring dish, pour 1 tablespoon of vinegar. Then fill the rest of the cup up with milk. Let rest for a few minutes, or until curdled.
In a large bowl, or stand mixer, combine flours. Then add buttermilk, apple cider vinegar, ½ cup water, and oil. Mix and stir until thick, tough, and homogeneous. Plastic wrap the bowl, and let rest on counter overnight. (12-24 hours).
The dough, after sitting overnight, will be slightly larger, browner, and less tough.
When ready to complete bread, place the dough in a warm oven (170 degrees) to warm up, for 10 minutes.
In a small dish, combine very warm water (¼ cup) and active-dry yeast, and coconut sugar. Mix, and let rest for 5 minutes, or until yeast has bloomed.
Pour yeast mixture into soaked flour dough mixture, and mix/knead in until fully combined. Let rest for 30-45 minutes, in a warm place.
On a floured surface, turn dough out. Sprinkle over with all the salt, and knead and knead for a few minutes, until all the salt is mixed in, and dough is smooth. Separate dough into two smooth logs. Place each of these logs in two greased loaf pans.
Set pans atop the warm oven, and let rise for another half hour.
When you are about ten minutes away from being done with rise time, preheat oven to 350 degrees.
When dough is done rising, place in oven to bake for about 35 minutes, or until golden brown.
Take out of oven, and let cool a bit. Take loaves out of pans, and let them cool some more before cutting into slices and serving.
Once loaf is entirely cool, you can store it in a Ziploc plastic bag.
This post will be showing you how to prepare a gourmet salad ahead of time. This is extremely helpful if you have other things to do on the day you make the salad, and don’t want to have to worry about cutting all the vegetables and other little necessities. In this solution, you will be cutting everything up the day before you plan to serve/eat the salad.
Another benefit with cutting all the stuff up and putting them in separate containers is that you can let your family pick and choose, and essentially create their own custom salad.
If you don’t like the idea of cutting it up the day before, you can do it on the same day, but it is a good idea to make ahead of time the eggs, potatoes, and bacon.
INGREDIENTS:
6 eggs
2 Cups mini potatoes
4 pieces of bacon
3 medium tomatoes
2 bunches of romaine lettuce
2 cups mushrooms
1 cup garbanzo beans
1 bell pepper
1/2 a large cucumber
1-2 cups cheddar cheese
Your favorite vinaigrette or ranch dressing
ingredient note:
Mini potatoes are the easier, quicker way to go, but if you want to stick to regular potatoes, they will boil for longer, and you will have to dice each one into small salad-size pieces–which will take longer, but it certainly is another way to go.
DIRECTIONS:
To prepare eggs and potatoes, in two separate saucepans, one large, and one medium, put in water about ⅔ up the sides of the saucepans. Bring water to an almost boiling state in both. In the large saucepan, carefully place in all the eggs, and set the timer to 20 minutes. In the other saucepan, dump in the potatoes, and set timer to 20 minutes (or just the same time for both) or until potatoes are very soft. When done, take potatoes and eggs out of pan, discarding the water.
Once cool to touch, cut the potatoes in small bite size pieces, and peel eggs. Cut eggs once peeled into thin slices using a wire egg cutter, if you have one. Store potato pieces and egg pieces in two separate sealed plastic containers in fridge until chilled, and ready to use for salad.
To prepare bacon, heat a skillet over medium heat, and put the four pieces of bacon on. Sizzle on both sides until both sides are perfectly dark brown. Place bacon pieces on a paper towel, and press to remove extra grease. Cut bacon, once cool, into small pieces, as shown.
Store in a plastic container in fridge until ready to use.
Cut tomatoes in half inch chunks with a serrated knife, after washing, and also wash lettuce thoroughly, tear into small salad-size pieces, and place in a leaf-dryer, and turn fast until most of the water is wrung out.
Store tomatoes and lettuce in their own separate sealed containers in the fridge (don’t squish the lettuce), at least, if you are cutting these the day before you make the actual salad.
Wash mushrooms if they haven’t already been pre-washed, and cut lengthwise in thin strips.
Strain the garbanzo beans in a colander. and put in a plastic container in fridge until ready to use. Also put the mushrooms in their own container and place in fridge.
Wash half the cucumber. Chop cucumber width-wise as shown into circles. Cut these circles into quarters, and place in container in fridge until ready to use. Shred cheese using the shred attachment on your food processor, or do it by hand. Also store the cheese in a plastic container in fridge until ready to use.
Chop bell-peppers into small pieces as shown. Store in plastic container in fridge.
And you’re done!…almost. Remember to prepare your favorite ranch dressing or vinaigrette. You can buy them or make them. Here’s a good vinaigrette recipe to use: Balsamic Vinaigrette.
Just before you are ready serve your salad (i.e. before your guest arrive :), Take out all the containers you used to store your stuff in, and lay them out on the serving table, to give everyone an option of what exactly they want in their salad. Or, if you want to, you can just throw it all together in a large bowl before serving, it’s your choice.
See pictures below. See my original post on instructables.
This dip is very quick and easy to make. It is good for parties and holidays like Thanksgiving, Easter, and Christmas.
INGREDIENTS:
4 oz cream cheese, softened
4 oz goat cheese, softened
¼ cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup shredded Parmesan
¼ cup shredded mozzarella cheese
½ teaspoon garlic salt
Sprinkling of pepper
½ cup mix of spinach and kale
1 (14 oz) can artichoke hearts, drained
DIRECTIONS:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Spray two small glass baking dishes with nonstick oil.
Mince the artichoke and spinach and kale. Set aside.
In a medium bowl, stir together cream cheese, goat cheese, mayonnaise, Parmesan, garlic salt, and pepper. Throw in the spinach, kale, and artichoke hearts, and stir in until combined.
Evenly spread mixture into both glass dishes.
Sprinkle the tops over with the mozzarella cheese.
Bake in preheated oven for about 25 minutes, or until browned, and bubbling.
Let cool for about 5-10 minutes before serving.
Serve warm.
These mini sliders make a great side dish for parties/potlucks/dinners, etc.
Ingredients: (makes 16 sliders)
2 lbs. Ground beef
16 mini slices cheddar cheese
16 small leaves romaine lettuce
16 small slices of tomato
1 egg
16 mini burger buns
For sauce:
½ cup mayonnaise
⅛ cup mustard
1 tablespoon sweet relish
1 teaspoon lemon juice
For Seasoning:
3 teaspoons Montreal Steak Seasoning
1 teaspoon Seasoned Salt
Additional Things:
Ketchup
Mustard
Butter for Griddle
DIRECTIONS:
Break up with ground beef in a large bowl. Dump in the egg, and mix it completely in to the beef with your hands.
Shape beef into 16 even balls, and then shape into little patties.
Prepare the slices of cheddar, lettuce, and tomato on a serving platter.
For the seasoning, in a small bowl combine steak seasoning and seasoned salt.
For sauce, stir mayonnaise, mustard, sweet relish, and lemon juice in a small bowl for the sauce.
Preheat the grill, and place a cast iron flat griddle over it. Or, you can preheat a flat surface over your stove for the burgers.
When ready to grill patties, take the patties, seasoning, and cheddar cheese out with you to the grill. Spread butter over the hot surface.
Then place down burgers, and press with a burger press, or a dinner plate. But if your patties are already flat enough, you don’t need to press them.
Sprinkle patties with the seasoning.
Let grill on this one side for a minute or so.
After the first side is cooked, flip patties, and sprinkle the cooked sides with more seasoning. Place a piece of cheese over each patty.
When done grilling, take patties off the grill, and on a plate. Cover with aluminum foil.
As you can only probably grill 8 at a time, when you take off the 8, then grill the next 8 patties.
To prepare sliders, place bottom burger bun down.
Spread a small amount of sauce over it.
Then lettuce, then patty with cheese.
Then place tomato on, then ketchup and mustard.
Finally, cap it with the top burger bun, and secure everything with a long party toothpick.
Do this process to the rest of the burgers.
Serve warm.
Michael's Test Kitchen 