Creole Bourbon Butter Injection.

I'm always coming across new things and new ideas for things to do with turkeys and ways to inject and marinate them. One of my favorites is a Creole bourbon butter marinade that makes a delicious injection for any kind of meat. It's quick and its easy to make and is more cost efficient in the long run if you mix it in advance and save the rest for a rainy day. Here are the things you need.

1 food grade injection syringe
1/2 pint of bourbon whiskey
1 cup of melted butter
1/4 cup honey
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp Cajun seasoning mix (I use Zattarains)
1tbsp garlic powder

Mix ingredients together in an old ketchup bottle or something sililar while warm and shake well until all spices are dissolved. Pour into separate cup if not using all of it and save the rest. This will avoid cross contamination with different kinds of protein. This is absolutely wonderful and all together delicious for Thanksgiving or any other special occasion roast. Enjoy!!!

Quick Garlic Dill Pickles

One thing that I always loved growing up was the crisp bite of a good Claussen Kosher Dill Pickle. It's raw, flavorful, fat free, and other than the salt content, good for you. Something however started getting to me a couple of months ago though...I always liked the chip style pickles over the sandwich slices. You can't find the chip style of pickles anywhere in the refrigerated section where all the Claussens are. Also, I'm not spending $5 a jar on those things. So I spend 69 cents on one cucumber or a buck for some pickling cukes and started making them at home. The secret is the brine. That is the only cooking that you will ever have to do. The other stuff goes into the jar. And this is the basic gist of it.

2 cups of water
1/2 cup white or cider vinegar
2 tbsp kosher salt (has to be kosher)

2 cloves of minced garlic
1 tsp crushed red pepper flake
1-2 sprigs of dill or a tsp of dried dill
1/2 tsp mustard seed
1 tsp black peppercorn
1/2 tsp coriander seed
1 tsp hot sauce (optional)

3 small pickling cucumbers or one large cucumber.

1 large container or glass jar

Put top three ingredients into a small saucepot and allow to reach boiling. Remove from heat for 1 minute. While above mixture is heating up do the second step.
    Put 2nd list of ingredients in a sanitized jar. Cut the pickles into 1/8" to 1/4" slices and fill up the jar or container as much as you can and still be able to apply the lid. Pour hot mixed brine until the container is filled. Cover mouth of jar or container with plastic wrap and screw on or apply a lid. If you do put them into a canning jar, you can follow the instructions to seal your jars for later use, but I personally put them in the fridge and they stay good for about two weeks. Make sure that you allow these to marinate for at least 6 hours before tasting. I always wait 24 hours. These come out perfect for frying by the way. Just another reason improve on the fried pickle.

Pot Stewed Bbq Beans

Although I do love baked beans, sometimes I just don't have time to do them right. So, I have a fast simmer method that is pretty darn tasty in their own right. These are very easy to do and basically involve the same flavors as my baked beans. Here are the things you will need.

1 large can Pinto Beans
3 strips Bacon
1/2 cup ketchup
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
2 tbsp Dried Onion Flake
1 1/2 tbsp Garlic Powder
1 tbsp Chilli Powder
3/4 tbsp Paprika
1 tsp dry mustard powder
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp salt

In a saucepan add 3 strips of chopped bacon and cook until slightly crispy. Combine all the other ingredients together and start simmering on medium high heat. Bring to a fast simmer and cook for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, cover and reduce heat to mid-low for 10 minutes and serve. It's a quick 20 minute fix and goes well with grilled foods and an by kind of Bbq. Quick sides can bring a meal to another level with flavor profiles going on your tongue to offer some great combinations of tastes. Just remember to have fun with these. Add tomato, green chilies, cheese, onion, jalapenos, chipotles, or other peppers to try different flavors. Love the food. It loves you.

Creamy Honey Mustard

By now you realize that I'm a sauce and dressing guy. One of the best things I've ever come across is a delicious and sweet honey mustard that rivals those like restaurants make. It goes well with fried chicken salads, chicken fingers, chick fila sandwiches, and other things involving chicken. This is very similar to Marzetti's, Ken's, and O'Charlie's. Here are the things you will need:

1/2 cup mayo
1/3 cup yellow mustard
1/4 cup honey
1 tbsp white/cider vinegar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp black pepper

Mix ingredients together in a container or small bowl. The theory of this recipe makes sense in these terms. Mayo and mustard to make the dressing, honey to provide the sweetness, vinegar for the twang, and spices and salt to promote the depth of flavor. It's easy, fast, and quick to make this and keeps quite well in the fridge. Also if you combine this with Hot bacon dressing, you have a combo that will knock your socks off. I'll include the hot bacon dressing recipe soon. Just remember to just experiment in the kitchen. Cooking great things it's easy. Find flavors you like, add a little bit of this and that, and maybe a dash of something else. Great flavor is not that hard to create. Food is awesome and makes us happy.

Mushroom Beer Gravy

I've made this stuff many times for many different dishes and decided to tell everyone how easy it is. Gravies are usually very easy to make and are quick sauce solutions to go with meats and potatoes. You basically mix equal parts of fat and flour, mix into a roux and pour water, stock, or your choice of alcohol over it. What you get is a creamy, delightful collision of happy flavors. This particular one is great on beef and pork and is a pretty good sauce on chicken. This particular instance I was building the best mushroom burger that my wife could muster. It's her favorite burger everywhere she goes. So I think gravy on a burger. Yum was the answer I was seeking and it was awesome. The gravy alone grants its own blog entry. Here are the things you'll need:

1 package of sliced button or Cremini mushrooms
1 beer
1/2 stick of butter (unsalted)
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup chopped green onion
1 tbsp course grind Black Pepper
1 tsp salt
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (optional)

In a skillet, melt butter on medium high heat and add the entire package of sliced mushrooms. When mushrooms are slightly browned, pour in Worcestershire and stir. Add in the flour and stir until gloppy. Roux should be medium brown color. Add beer slowly in stages and stir constantly (Guinness is the best beer for this, but any beer will work). Once gravy is a creamy consistency, turn heat to low. Add remaining seasonings and simmer for 3 minutes. Add green onion for color and flavor and you're ready to roll. Start to finish takes about 5-7 minutes once the butter is melted. This stuff is delicious on anything and is wonderful on mashed potatoes. As a burger, I had to use very dense absorbent bread so French bread is what I used. That way the bread soaked up the gravy without destroying the integrity of the roll.This stuff is great and I hope everyone can enjoy this recipe. Awesome sauce idea.

Grilled Italian Roasted Chicken Melt

Looking at things I really like, I pick the thing that I've always thought of as holy. That one thing is a chicken parmesan sandwich. But doing the normal chicken parmesan sandwich is passe. How about I roast the chicken instead of it being breaded. How about making a grilled cheese out of it. Yes and yes!! Here's your ingredient list.

2 whole split chicken breasts (bone in)
1 jar of tomato sauce.
2 tbsp Italian Seasoning
On hand garlic powder
Shredded mozzarella cheese
Sliced bread
Butter

Preheat oven to 375°F and prepare the 2 chicken breasts by topping them with melted butter, Italian seasoning, and garlic powder (Add red pepper flake if you like, I did). Cover with foil and roast in oven for an hour. Once hour is over, remove from oven and let rest for 5-10 minutes. Remove chicken from oven and separate from bone. Dice the chicken and put in pot on medium heat with the fire roasted tomato and garlic sauce and mix together. While the chicken and sauce mix is simmering. Melt a 1/2 tsp of butter in skillet and sprinkle in garlic powder and place 1 slice of bread in coat it in the melted garlic butter and let grill in skillet. Top with chicken/sauce mix and top with cheese. Melt another 1/2 tsp of butter and sprinkle garlic powder. Flip and coat in melted butter and garlic and finish grilling until crispy and cheese is melted. Repeat and it'll make 5 sandwiches. I feel like dinner at my place is a creation of an episode of Chopped somehow. Awesome how something so experimental can turn out so freaking good.

Devil Sauce

One thing I do well is come up with good quick sauces that are delicious and set off flavors on the meat. One night, a long time ago, I mixed a sauce that was just money on chicken. Since it was just fiendishly evil to the pallete, I dubbed it devil sauce. There's nothing hard to do to make it. Here are the ingredients:

Ketchup
Jack Daniels Mustard
Sriracha Sauce
White Vinegar
Worcestershire Sauce
Soy Sauce
Agave Nectar
Chilli Powder
Paprika
Garlic Powder
Cumin
Red Pepper Flake

Take 1/2 cup of ketchup and place in a bowl with 1/4 cup of whiskey mustard. Add a tbsp each of all other wet ingredients. Add tsp each of all dry ingredients and mix together vigorously. Easy 5 minute recipe that will rock on any poultry and its also very good on fries. Enjoy!!

Garlic, Red Pepper, and Apple Quick Pickles

Hey again everybody. I'm just wanting to share my experience with the pickles that I previously made that actually blew the lid off the first attempt...which was actually very successful (or so I thought). This time I didn't focus on the vegetable as much I did the brine. I thought and contemplated about the flavors that I wanted out of the pickle and watched YouTube videos to see if I could've improved over the last batch and I noticed one that did quick pickles. Its an awesome way of making pickles and it is much easier. Without the need of sealing and canning ball jars, its as simple as heating and setting the brine and slicing the vegetables. I've got to work a little bit on the ingredients in the dry set which I'll explain here in a short while. Here are the things you will need to make these delightful pickles:

2-3 Cucumbers depending on size.
1 plastic container
Plastic wrap
1 cup water
1 cup apple juice
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1/3 cup kosher salt
1 tsp sugar
Black peppercorns
Coriander seed
Mustard seed
2 whole sprigs of fresh dill
4-5 cloves of garlic (minced finely)
2 tsp red pepper flakes
2-5 shakes of cayenne pepper sauce
1 tsp lemon juice

The one major component of doing the pickles is the wet brine. Its very simple...mix the water, apple juice, vinegar, salt, and sugar and heat to the point of boiling in a pot on the stove. While slicing the cucumbers into chips, stir the liquid mixture to make sure that the flavors marry. Once boiling, turn off the heat. Place the other ingredients into the container and add the cucumbers to the brim, leaving about a 1/4 inch at the top of the container. Pour the hot brine into the container to cover the pickles, cover with plastic wrap and pop on the lid. Let the pickles marry for a good 3 days and dig in. Sure, its a test of patience for those 3 days. However, its a labor of food love. If you want the typical dill pickle, reduce the garlic down a little, take away the apple juice and sub it with more water, and use white vinegar instead of cider vinegar. I just like the sweet punch that the apple juice adds. Also...these will only last about 2 weeks after opening the container...use them up quickly. My suggestion? Fry some up.

Yummy, Cheesey, Spicy Pimento Cheese

Ahhhh...pimento cheese. How I've missed thee. I didn't start eating it until way later in life until I found a brand that had some flavor. The downside to that is the truth that i can't afford $6.50 a pound for it. If you can catch the ingredients on special at the friendly neighborhood grocery store, you can get the cost down to about $2 a pound. A lot of people use cheese that has no bite. They use miracle whip which makes it sour. Then, I found the secret and tasty combination of ingredients. Here's a fantastic recipe for a classic dip, stacker, topper, and otherwise beautifully tasty southern delicacy. Here are the ingredients.

2 cups of shredded extra sharp Cheddar Cheese
1 cup of light mayonnaise
1/2 cup of sour cream
1/4 cup reduced fat cream cheese
2-3 pieces of jarred marinated red pepper (diced)
1/2 onion (diced)
1 tbsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp Cajun seasoning (or 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper or red pepper flakes)

Best thing to do is to have the cheese very cold for mixing purposes. I personally freeze it overnight and let it sit and thaw for about 20 minutes before mixing. Put the ingredients in order into a mixing bowl and mix until fully distributed wet to cheese. It will be decently firm and you won't be able to see any shreds of cheese. Its creamy, its spicy, its sharp. Its everything that's good about pimento cheese with a third of the cost and twice the taste of the cheap Ruth's brand that has no flavor. Hope you enjoy it. Another variation of this is pepper jack pimento cheese. Just sub the cheddar with shredded pepperjack and reduce the pepper. It's delicious

Homemade Sauces

One thing that we've had to do lately with the events of Laura's health with hypertension is monitor sodium intake. She's also developed a bad reaction to high fructose corn syrup, which we all should eliminate from our diets. Making a lot of the sauces we would normally buy has been both a money saver and a great idea all rolled into one general purpose. Cut the junk, quit eating fake ingredients, and stop eating artificial chemicals like preservatives. We have to control the garbage that enters into our bodies, know the ingredients that we are eating, and start controlling the amounts of stuff in our food. I love mustards, BBQ sauces, dressings, and many other things that are easy to make and we save a lot of money by making them at home. I've even ventured into making my own ketchup, mayos, and salsas. I've started pickling and canning to save a little because I can either spend $4 on a jar of pickles in the grocery store or I can spend $4 and make 4 jars of pickles using natural ingredients. That's right. No artificial garbage. And how does it taste? Much better than the stuff in the store. The main thing is finding a master recipe that works and just mess with it to tweek its characteristics to your liking. It might take a little experimentation, but overall, the idea is great. Spend $3.59 to $4 on a bottle of ketchup or spend less than 50 cents to make some of your own. I choose to spend the 50 cents. I have recipes for at least 30 BBQ sauces, 8 different dressings that we use all the time that include ranch and thousand island, ketchup, 6 mustards, mayo, teriyaki, buffalo sauce, hot sauce, a couple of sweet pepper sauces, and others. None of them have artificial garbage and they taste much better than what comes from the store. I emplore everyone to try making some of these ideas for your own. It's quite easy. Nothing is difficult. If you have questions about where to start, email me or send me a message on Facebook.