Oconee Bell Studios - Oconee Bell Studios

Summer 2018 Favorites

6/1/2018

New, trending product: Bone Broth

Cooks work hard to create stocks and broths. (See “What to do with a Deli Bird") When family offers to clean up after dinner, I always say, “Never throw away the juice!” If there’s any liquid left over from cooking, it needs to be saved. It almost always has flavor and nutrition that can be added to tomorrow’s recipe. You can even pour this juice over ice and drink it!

Most commercial stocks don’t cut the mustard. Too thin, too much seasoning, too little nutrition and genuine flavor. “Better than Bullion” pastes-in-a-jar are better than the typical can or box of chicken broth, at least for flavor.

Now there’s Bone Broth. It is a fad right now among the health foodies. You’re encouraged to drink a cup in the morning instead of coffee, because a cup has 10G of protein. There are claims it will help your skin, nails, joints/bones and hair because of the collagen, and that does make sense.

But what a great addition to recipes! This is the exciting promise of bone broth.

What is Bone Broth?

Poultry bones or beef bones are simmered at low heat over many hours to coax every bit of collagen and into the liquid.

Bone broth has a slightly thick, gelatinous feel, thicker than broth or stock. The flavor is rich and savory, and tastes almost as good as homemade stock, and is available at the more high-end grocery stores like Publix. (Listening, Ingles?)

Uses that I have tested:

Rice—When cooking rice, use half Bone Broth and half water. Rice becomes remarkably tastier with bone broth, it has a nice richness. Next, I’m going to try it with Risotto. Of everything I tested, bone broth improves rice the most dramatically.

Ramen—instead of water, use bone broth and you’ve bumped up the nutrition of a humble bag of noodles by quite a bit. I still use the flavor packet, but then, I’ve never accepted the bad press of MSG. Drink every drop.

Gravy and velouté sauces—so much better than ordinary commercial broth

Grits—Use a mix of equal parts bone broth, whole milk and water to make very smooth and creamy grits. Use “Hagood Mill” stone-ground white grits.

Braising meats, pot roasts—bumps up the flavor, makes for a richer, smoother gravy

Pasta—have not tried this yet, haven’t figured out how to do it economically, as these bone broths are expensive, and pasta water is discarded. But adding a splash to spaghetti sauce or Alfredo is recommended.

Any time you add liquid to a recipe is a potential use for bone broth. But when you have leftover “juice”—don’t throw it away!

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Spring 2018 Favorites

3/1/2018

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What to do with a Packaged Corned Beef Brisket

Cooking this is a snap, but you should know about shopping for one. If your store has several, look at the brisket from the sides. The ideal brisket is a thick piece of meat with a fatty top. The less than ideal brisket has a layer of fat in between two layers of meat. However, if all that you have to choose from are layered briskets, go ahead and buy it. It will be delicious; it’s just that it will be a little more work when you go to slice it.

I like to cut the brisket out of its package in the sink, with the crock pot insert near the sink ready to slide the brisket into the insert. Take note of the little bag of spices that usually comes with the brisket. Don’t discard any fluids or liquids, but include them. The brisket should be fat side up. Sprinkle spices on top. Add no more than a cup of water. Cook on the higher setting for 6 hours.

Do you like to cook vegetables with your crockpot? Sometimes that is problematic if you want to leave you crockpot to go to work, etc. If you put the vegetables in at the start, they will either overcook or undercook. When at home all day to check on the cooking, put in the vegetables after the brisket has shrunk and there is considerably more liquid present and bubbling/simmering. Check them every half-hour for doneness. Otherwise, remove the finished brisket, pour the liquid into another pot at stovepot and cook the vegetables in the broth.

Potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips are great. To complete the classic Irish plate, also cook cabbage, quartered or in slices in the delicious broth.

Don't Discard the broth!

Strain and save it, with leftover meat, to make a fantastic bean soup.

Recipe: Simple Bean Soup

-Three total strained and washed cans of beans made up of a combination of either Goya cranberry beans, Goya pink beans, Goya small white beans, and/or Bush brand black beans

-Left over corned beef, minced fine

-Cup minced onions

Add three cans beans to broth in pot with meat and onions, cook until onions are tender. You might need to add some water.

Or try this:

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Winter 2018 Favorites

1/1/2018

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What to do with a Deli Rotisserie Bird

They are so thrifty, and can be delicious when you deal with the problem of being tough and dry, and not too flavorful.

Place in large pot, and don’t leave behind any of the congealed juices in the bottom of the box. Add about 4 cups water, a small quartered onion, roughly cut carrot, and bring to a boil. Reduce to simmer, cover, and cook for 30 minutes. The idea is to steam the meat, which makes it moist.

Remove bird to a colander over a bowl. I use two tongs to take it out of the hot broth. Allow to cool to the touch. You can taste some of the meat, and will find it more tender and juicy than when you removed it from the container.

Strip the meat from the bones and skin and gristle. I can’t pretend that this is much fun. Put on some music or get someone to talk to you.

Get a container to hold the meat, and drop the bones, skin and gristle back in the pot of broth. Doing this by hand is the best way, and learn to feel for the tiny bones so they won’t come back and haunt you later in the soup or a casserole.

When the carcass is back in the liquid, bring to a boil and then reduce to simmer for about an hour. Then strain everything and you now have a quality stock that cannot be equaled for soup, gravy and sauces. The easiest way to remove the chicken fat from the broth is to set into refrigerator. When chilled, the fat solidifies and can be easily removed. (You can use this fat mixed with cracker crumbs to make a dumpling). Not only do I make stock this way, but I also save the bones from a fried chicken dinner to make broth.

Now you have meat ready for a casserole, chicken salad or soup!

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End of Year 2017 Favorites

12/1/2017

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Olive Oil

At one point, I started keeping track of how much of my food budget went for olive oil, and realized I was spending a lot of money for empty glass bottles that I threw away.

About the same time scandals were emerging about imported oils from Europe that weren’t olive oil at all, but cheap vegetable oil with a little beta carotene added for color and flavor. So I stopped buying olive oil at the big-box stores.

At a street fair in Charleston, SC there was a booth representing a California olive oil producer. I tasted the oil and found it excellent. They packaged their oil in gallon jugs and 2.5 gallon boxes. Eventually I figured out that the 2.5 gallon box was perfect for a year of cooking, and the saving was impressive by buying a large quantity at a time in only one container, even with the shipping charges.

The boxed olive oil is a lot like boxed wine in the packaging, with no outside air getting into the plastic bag inside the box, so it stays fresh longer. It is stored in my cool basement, and I have a bottle with a spout next to my cooktop. It’s fun to go down to the basement to refill the bottle, almost like a restaurant supply cabinet.

No tiny bottles to recycle, high-quality oil at an everyday price—per ounce, that is. After a few years of purchasing and using oilive oil in this way, there has been no spoilage or rancidity.

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October Favorites

10/1/2017

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A Favorite Ingredient

Fish sauce is a recent addition to my pantry of flavorings.   I use canned anchovies for flavoring, but end up wasting the rest of the fishes in the can for recipes that call for just one anchovy. This sauce will add the flavor of one anchovy with a teaspoon of convenient fluid, and store the opened bottle in the refrigerator.

Did you know the yummy, savory, “umami” flavor of A1 Steak Sauce and Worcestershire Sauce is anchovies? Look at the list of ingredients. Yes, both those sauces are fish sauces, along with other ingredients.

Anchovies, when cooked in some oil and mashed, lose their “fishiness” and take on a buttery, meaty flavor that ramps up recipes like Pasta Puttanesca.   It’s also the flavoring in Caesar Salad.

Try putting a shake (has a shaker lid) of this sauce to any recipe that you want to add a meaty flavor to.   Are you making Shrimp and Grits? Shake a little into the cooking grits, and a little into the Shrimp mixture. Try it with your salad dressings and dips.

This is “Red Boat” brand fish sauce, recommended by America’s Test Kitchen, Cook’s Illustrated.

Recipe: Mushroom Sauce

1 box sliced baby bella mushrooms, roughly chopped
Butter
1 clove minced garlic
1 cup wine
Fish sauce
A1 Steak Sauce

Put mushrooms in medium hot skillet with no butter or salt, yet. Let them sear and lose moisture until they look drier and smaller, then add red wine, which should bring up the “fond” in the bottom of the skillet. Add a quarter cup of the steak sauce, the garlic and a couple of pats of butter. Cook and reduce by almost half, add one full teaspoon of fish sauce.

A Favorite Tool

You’ve just bought a thick Rib Eye Prime steak from the glass case at Ingles. $18.98 a pound, for a special occasion. If you ruin it, or if the steak doesn’t live up to it’s potential, that’s when the price of this thermometer (around eighty bucks) won’t seem so high. The ability to quickly, easily take the temperature of meat will assure the best results.

If you spring for a digital thermometer, I strongly recommend a probe Thermapen as pictured. This was the thermometer used in a week-long class of cheesemaking at the John Campbell Folk School. It is known for being the most reliable and long-lasting. Cheesemaking demands constant accuracy in temperature.

Recipe: Rib Eye Steak, medium rare

1 pound prime rib eye steak, 2 inches thick
Salt, pepper, butter, one teaspoon sugar

A few hours ahead of time, take the steak out of the refrigerator, salt heavily and wrap in a couple of paper towels. Let sit on a plate at room temperature. If the towels get too wet, change them.

Heat oven to 350. Wipe the steaks dry (the towel will take most of the salt with it), put on pepper and a little more salt.

Using a cookie sheet with a wire rack, place the steak in the middle so air can circulate underneath. Put a pat of butter on the top of the steak. Take temperature before putting steak in oven. After ten minutes, start checking the steak at 5 minute intervals. Put a little butter on top each time you check.

Place a large cast-iron skillet on stove. When steak is between 120-130 degrees remove from oven and let sit. Heat the skillet until it makes a small amount of butter sizzle. Sprinkle half of the sugar on top of the steak, with tongs place steak sugar side down on the skillet. Sprinkle rest of sugar on the other side.

The sugar will carmelize and make for a nice, brown, quick sear, which will only will be about 20 seconds for each side.
You baked your steak! Now, butter it again, let it rest for ten minutes with foil tent. With a sharp knife, slice the steaks into about eight slices, and notice how beautifully pink it is. You may never grill a steak again. I learned to make steak this way from Cook’s Illustrated.

This is very good with my Mushroom sauce recipe

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September Favorites - Cookware

9/1/2017

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It goes without saying that I love my 12 inch cast iron skillet, and I bet you love yours, so I didn’t bother to post a picture. One new thing I do with this skillet is preheat it in the oven for searing meat—at least I do this in the winter when I don’t mind heating up the kitchen. Heat your empty skillet in a 4-500 degree oven for fifteen minutes and remove it (oven mitts) to the working cooktop to sear a steak. Cast iron stays hot longer than other cookware, but it has “cool spots” because it does not conduct heat quickly. You’ll notice this when cooking pancakes; one side gets done faster than the other. Preheating it will make it cook more evenly.

Mauviel solid copper, steel-lined, 5-quart stockpot

Here is one of my prized possessions. Copper heats quickly (cools quickly) and doesn’t have cool spots like cast iron. I have to warn you, this pot is very spendy. I didn’t buy this retail; I bought it slightly used on ebay at a steep discount. For months, I’d do searches on ebay and put bids on this brand/make many times. Finally I won an auction, and here it is.

Have you ever made a big pot of chili or spaghetti sauce or soup, with the idea that you are going to freeze leftovers for future meals—only to have your hard work scorch on the bottom and impart a scorched taste to a lot of food? I’m not going to say that this pot will never scorch, but it hasn’t yet for years of big-batch spaghetti sauce-making. This pot also served a long obsession with cheesemaking. You can bring milk to an 190-degrees quickly and accurately.

You have heard that solid copper is hard to take care of, but that depends on your expectations. It’s hard not to want a fine copper pot to look new, beautiful, and unblemished. This stockpot always goes into the dishwasher. It gets discolored and after a few weeks the “Barkeeper’s Friend” clean. it up. This has made a lot of tiny, interlaced scratches which don’t bother me. It did get a good polishing for the photo!

All-Clad cooper core 4.5 qt Essential Pan

Here is the workhorse of the kitchen; hardly a meal goes by without it being pressed into service. It is the copper-core (yes, more copper) All-Clad 4.5 Quart “everything” or “essential” pan from Williams Sonoma. I bought this pan a long time ago, when Rachel Ray’s Thirty-Minute Meal show was on the Food Network and she was always demonstrating one-pot meals. The family calls this the “Mom’s Pot of Food” pot. It is capacious without feeling tall like a stockpot, and the inside walls are rounded to allow for whisks and spoons to get at the ingredients. Stainless steel sandwiches the copper, and the copper goes up the sides instead of just at the bottom.

You need a pot like this to love. You can stand at this pot and brown the meat, remove, make the sauce, add the vegetables/meat and maybe pasta and rice and be done. I use metal implements, don’t baby it at all, and don’t mind it looking well-used.

Rice and Pasta Pots

The cast iron skillet, the Mauviel Stockpot, and the All-Clad Copper-core have one disadvantage. They are heavy, which can be hard on the hands and arms of a weaker cook. The plus side is that you can’t knock them over easily. The Mauviel is not good for cooking plain pasta, because carrying this heavy pot to the sink with boiling-hot water is dangerous. Have some cheaper, light pots for cooking rice and pasta. Here is the pasta pot, from Rachel Ray’s line back in the day, with a quirky shape to accommodate long spaghetti, and a non-stick lining. Use a pot like this with silicone tipped tools.

Sauces and Gravies

Here is the favored pan for making sauces and gravies. The brand is not available, but it is an anodized aluminum with a steel lining. If you recognize this pan, let me know! It is very light, so a weak-wristed cook can lift it off the heat quickly if the sauce is cooking too hot or too fast. Its sides slope steeply like a wok’s, which enhances the evaporation; there is a small flat bottom, which gives good control of heating the sauce. This is a good pan for a tricky egg-yolk sauce like Hollandaise.

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August Favorites - Butter & Yogurt

8/1/2017

3 Comments

KerryGold Butter (spendy)

This is the butter you spread on warm cornbread, a baked potato, or steamed broccoli: that is, KerryGold is butter for the table. It has a higher butterfat content than typical butter and a lower water content, which makes it stay more solid at room temperature. I keep my butter out of the refrigerator in a glass container. This is not recommended by the pros, but I have never had butter go rancid. I like softened butter when I want softened butter, don’t like to wait! I believe if butter is soft for spreading, you actually use less.

If you bake your own bread, it deserves this butter.

It is expensive, and I keep butter from Sam’s on hand in the freezer when I use butter for cooking, to economize.

KerryGold has a pretty foil covering, but it’s not just to be pretty. Foil is an effective preventer of the transfer of food odors which can hurt the flavor of butter. When you see that big roll of Amish butter at the Farmer’s Market, wrapped in wax paper, keep this in mind. Suggestion to the Farmer: wrap that butter in foil. Most European style butters are wrapped in foil. And, yes, I’ve tried all the brands! KerryGold is best.

Cabot Full Fat Greek Yoghurt (great value)

Read the label carefully, because there are a few kinds and you want the full fat. Food companies don’t like to admit that their dairy products might contain butterfat! This yoghurt is made from 4% whole milk, and by the time it is turned into yoghurt, the product is 10% butterfat.

This makes this particular yoghurt wonderful, because it is better and tastier than sour cream! Sour cream is generally close to 50% butterfat and has little protein. So by substituting this for sour cream, you get less fat and more protein. But it tastes beautifully creamy. I use it in stroganoff, on baked potatoes, chip/dip, smoothies, any recipe calling for sour cream or even whipped cream. Use it instead of crème fraiche and mix it with some soft cream cheese for a not-bad mascarpone. I can’t be without this product now.

Tip: to make this yoghurt look more like sour cream, just put it in a little bowl and stir it up to break up the curds and make it smooth. It will actually seem creamier than sour cream.

Quick Spread:

Mix half cup yoghurt with a couple tablespoons mayonnaise, salt and pepper and a good drizzle of olive oil. Add your flavorings of choice—herbs, taco seasoning, crumbled bleu cheese, or chives, or cooked onions. Mix well, crushing up the ingredients. Drizzle in buttermilk (best for flavor) until desired consistency. This is really better if you make it, cover it, and let it sit around for a few hours in the refrigerator while the flavors develop.

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Summer 2018 Favorites

New, trending product: Bone Broth

What is Bone Broth?

Uses that I have tested:

Spring 2018 Favorites

What to do with a Packaged Corned Beef Brisket

Don't Discard the broth!

Recipe: Simple Bean Soup

Or try this:

Winter 2018 Favorites

What to do with a Deli Rotisserie Bird

End of Year 2017 Favorites

Olive Oil

October Favorites

A Favorite Ingredient

Recipe: Mushroom Sauce

A Favorite Tool

Recipe: Rib Eye Steak, medium rare

September Favorites - Cookware

Mauviel solid copper, steel-lined, 5-quart stockpot

All-Clad cooper core 4.5 qt Essential Pan

Rice and Pasta Pots

Sauces and Gravies

August Favorites - Butter & Yogurt

KerryGold Butter (spendy)

Cabot Full Fat Greek Yoghurt (great value)

Quick Spread:

Author:
Kathy Garriott

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Categories

Archives

New, trending product: Bone Broth

What is Bone Broth?

Uses that I have tested:

What to do with a Packaged Corned Beef Brisket

Don't Discard the broth!

Recipe: Simple Bean Soup

Or try this:

What to do with a Deli Rotisserie Bird

Olive Oil

​​A Favorite Ingredient

Recipe: Mushroom Sauce

​A Favorite Tool

Recipe: Rib Eye Steak, medium rare

Mauviel solid copper, steel-lined, 5-quart stockpot

All-Clad cooper core 4.5 qt Essential Pan

Rice and Pasta Pots

Sauces and Gravies

KerryGold Butter (spendy)

Cabot Full Fat Greek Yoghurt (great value)

​​Quick Spread:

Author: Kathy Garriott

​Categories

Archives

A Favorite Ingredient

A Favorite Tool

Quick Spread:

Author:
Kathy Garriott

Categories