Easy BBQ for You!

Who doesn't love a good plate of barbecue?  I know in our house we love it.  I love it my kids love it and my husband Rick loves it too.  BBQ is one of those very satisfying meals.  No matter what it is, pull pork, shredded beef or chicken, on a bun or on a plate, we all love BBQ.  

There is quite a variety of barbecue, everything from sweet to tangy, vinegar base, tomato base, even mustard base.  Depending on where you hail from, you have your personal favorite.  BBQ is as personal as some other unmentionable things!  People get very defensive about their particular favorite types of sauce and flavors.  In the end, no matter what is your favorite, is what you should enjoy.

We have a favorite commercial sauce in our house but we try very hard to avoid high fructose corn syrup as well as other artificial flavors and preservatives.  The answer is to make your own.  A friend of mine shared her version of our favorite commercial sauce on her YouTube channel and I wanted to give it a try.  I did and with a few tweaks here and there to make the sauce my own and to make it friendly for my family's tastes, we were left with an amazing sauce that we are so excited to have in our fridge!  

The sauce is awesome and starts with things you already may have on hand.  Ketchup, molasses, Worcestershire, dry mustard, paprika, salt, pepper, brown sugar and some liquid smoke.  The other amazing ingredient is pineapple juice!  Of course apple cider vinegar can be subbed out for the juice, but I am telling you, when you try this you are never going to want to go back down the vinegar road again!  I can tell you, I have tried to make my own barbecue sauce for a long time and every time I came up short, too salty, too tangy, too flat, too sharp.  I gave up, but now I have an amazing recipe that I want to share with you!  

Give this a try the next time you want to have an amazing sauce for your cookout or slow cooked pulled meat sandwich!  You are going to love this.  

Almost Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ Sauce

Noreen's Kitchen

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups ketchup 1 cup dark brown sugar 1/4 cup molasses 1/2 cup pineapple juice or apple cider vinegar 1/4 cup water 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce 1 tablespoon ground mustard 1 tablespoon paprika 1 teaspoon garlic powder

1 teaspoon Chipoltle pepper Tabasco sauce 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon cracked black pepper 2 teaspoons liquid smoke Optional for a Thicker Sauce 1 tablespoon corn or Tapioca starch 2 tablespoons water

Step by Step Instructions

Combine ingredients in a saucepan.

Stir well to combine.

Allow to come to a simmer over medium heat stirring occasionally to avoid scorching.

If you would prefer a thicker sauce, mix corn or tapioca starch with additional water and add to the mixture, stirring constantly until the sauce has reached the desired thickness.

Remove from heat and allow to cool.

Store in a jar in the refrigerator for up to 1 month.

I used this in a quick and simple baked BBQ chicken dinner and simply marinated some chicken breasts in 2 cups of sauce then tossed everything in a baking dish covered with foil for about an hour on 350 degrees.  The results were amazing, tender, falling apart chicken, that could have easily been shredded and served on a bun or on a plate and rounded out with some mac and cheese or baked beans and some steamed broccoli or a tossed salad.

I hope beyond hope that you will give this amazing BBQ sauce a try because I know it is going to knock your socks off!

Happy Eating!

If you would like to see how I made the sauce, check out this video!

Here is how I made the Baked BBQ Chicken

Chicken Soup, Quick, Easy, Hearty and Yummy!

I know that the thought of diving into a piping hot mug of chicken soup in the middle of August may be a bit unappealing, with temperatures outside tickling the 100 mark.  However, I am never one to go with the norm.  I am far from normal. I am also reminded of a book from my childhood when I cook chicken soup.  Because I am who I am and I sat down to write this blog entry about chicken soup, I could not forget to quote the wonderful children's author Maurice Sendak:

In August it will be so hot,

I will become a cooking pot.

Cooking soup of course! Why not?

Cooking once, cooking twice.

Cooking chicken soup with rice.

Alright, I know, but  barley just doesn't fit in that poem, so we will have to just take creative license and pretend!  Today' I am sharing a very fast chicken soup with barley.  This is really made from what you may already have in your fridge and pantry.  If you don't have these things, you should.  Really basic stuff that you can use to throw together a great soup when you have some chicken left over from Sunday dinner, or from that rotisserie chicken you picked up at the store last week, but don't have enough to feed the whole family with. You could, in a pinch even use a can of white meat chicken, drained.  I am not adverse to using chicken from a can as long as we use other fresh ingredients to make the rest of the soup good and wholesome.

Soup is one of the best foods around.  You can make anything into a soup.  Have leftover chicken? Make chicken soup, or tortilla soup or hot and sour soup.  Have left over roast beef, make beef barley soup, or Italian beef and tomato soup.  You can even make soup from stuff you didn't think you could make soup from.  Like the bits and pieces in your produce drawer.  Don't throw them away, make them into a wonderful veggie soup.  Whaz it all up with your immersion blender or in your blender, add a little cream or milk and you will have a lovely creamy vegetable bisque.

Soup feeds the stomach and feeds the soul.  Paired with a hearty loaf or biscuits or crackers, soup is a staple that I find myself falling back on over and over again.  Soup is filling and fulfilling.  It makes you feel satisfied, it makes you feel loved. It can be eaten with a spoon or sipped from a mug.  It can warm you up or cool you down, depending on what you choose to make.  You can have chicken soup in the dead of winter or you can have gazpacho in the middle of July.  You can have soup in times of plenty or in times of want.  For instance a big pot of bean soup will feed lots of people with little to no meat and you can share it for days or you can put on the Ritz and pull out the silver and good china and serve Vichyssoise (cold creamy potato soup).  I have my Aunt Linda to thank for my first taste of that silky deliciousness.  

Soup is a part of who we are as people.  There is not a culture on the face of the earth that does not have a soup associated with it.   I think because soup was always a way of stretching the food budget, and if you think about it, probably one of the earliest ways of feeding a cave-person family.  Once they figured out fire that is.  I also am reminded of another story of my childhood that I still read every Thanksgiving Stone Soup.  A great story or fable about how individually we can do great things but together we can move mountains, or for that matter, make soup!  So with that here is how you make Quick Chicken Barley Soup:

Quick Chicken Barley Soup

Here is what you will need to make this soup:


2 cups cooked chicken
5 stalks celery chopped
1 medium onion chopped
2 cloves garlic chopped
1 cup carrots finely chopped
2 cartons chicken stock
4 cups water
4 bullion cubes or enough granulated bullion to make 4 cups
1 teaspoon poultry seasoning
1 teaspoon dried marjoram
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon dried parsley
1 teaspoon Mrs. Dash
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 cup quick barley
Salt and pepper to taste

In a stock pot heat oil.  Add onion and garlic and cook until you can smell garlic.  Add in celery and carrot and cook until softened, about 5 minutes.  Add in dried spices and stir to combine. Add in 4 cups of prepared bullion along with 1 whole carton of chicken stop and 1/2 of the additional carton.  Add chicken and stir to combine.  Bring to a simmer, and add in barley.  Cook covered for 5 minutes or until the barley has cooked completely.  Quick barley should only take about 5 minutes to be done.  Taste your broth and add salt and pepper to taste.  Serve with bread or biscuits or along side a sandwich or salad and you have a complete meal.  

I hope you try this and I hope you enjoy it.


Until next time.....................................See Ya!

What's For Dinner? The Eternal Question and a Recipe for Bohemian Spaghetti

Welcome to my newest blog.  After careful consideration I chose to title this "What's for Dinner?".  I have been vlogging for a couple years now and wanted to expand my possibilities so this blog is just a natural progression.  I hope that you will come with me on this journey.

Admit it, you hear this question every day, and I mean EVERY day.  What's for dinner?  A very innocent question, but for us Moms a question that is asked everyday, sometimes at the same time every day, sometimes multiple times each day.  Nonetheless, it is asked over, and over and over again.  My 13 year old daughter asks this question each day between 5 and 6 p.m.  without fail.  She is predictable, like the sunrise and sunset.  She will text me the question.  I always text back IDK.  Not because I don't really know, but because I like to mess with her.

So the questions goes.  My husband will often ask the question, but he likes to disguise it in this form, he will say, "What were you thinking of for dinner?  This makes it sound like he was doing me a favor by reminding me that it was almost dinner time and he was getting hungry.  And so it goes.

Dinner is an important time of the day.  A time when we can gather as a family and discuss what happened.  A time to be together and know that you are loved.  A time to participate in a conversation that no one else in the world will have today.  And most of all a time to enjoy a meal together.  One that mom or dad made, one that you made all together.  A time to be a family.  Studies have shown that a family that eats dinner together is more likely to have less trouble with drug and alcohol abuse and the children have higher test scores.  I just think that this is a perk.  Studies can say anything, but dinner makes a family!

It is my goal to share with you, some recipes and tips that might help you achieve dinner nirvana.  It will also help you to answer the age old question for your own family.  I will post recipes along with demonstration videos to help you on your journey to the dinner table.   Share with me your ideas and your comments.  Together we can help each other answer the question "What's for Dinner?".

So without further adieu, on with dinner.......................

To start, lets do something that is new to me.  Honestly I just saw this recipe today on Facebook, a friend of a friend posted it.  She said that her grandmother used to make it.  I added a couple things of my own and voila!  Dinner for those nights when the cupboard may be bare, the wallet may be empty and the mental recipe generator is on the fritz.  Bohemian Spaghetti.  Serve this with a large green salad and some bread and you will feel like you just ate at a kings table!

Here is what you will need to make this recipe:

1 pound of bacon cut into dices

1 pound of crimini mushrooms

1 large onion diced

2 cloves of garlic minced

2 cans of diced tomatoes in their juice

1 tablespoon Italian seasoning

1 tablespoon cracked black pepper

1 pound of cooked pasta (I used Angel Hair)

1 ladle of pasta water if necessary when sauteing the veggies and bacon.

Parmesan cheese to taste

Prepare pasta while cooking sauce and set aside.  In a large heavy skillet, cook bacon until crispy but not too brown don't over cook or it will be gross.  Add in onion and cook until translucent (don't remove any of the bacon fat).  Add in the garlic and cook until you can smell it's lovely aroma (around 30 seconds)  Add in the mushrooms and cook until tender and they have rendered some of their liquid.  Add in your Italian seasoning and cracked black pepper and stir to combine  If at this point, you find that your pan is a bit dry, dip into your pasta water and add a ladle full of that water.  It will evaporate mostly, but it will prevent your veggies and bacon from browning too much.  Now go ahead and add those tomatoes, cook until bubbly and stir in your pasta, making sure to distribute the sauce evenly.

To serve, pile onto a dinner plate and  top with  Parmesan cheese and more pepper to taste.  Serve with a green salad and some crusty bread and you will ever forget that this is a meal made from virtually nothing!

I hope you try this and I hope you enjoy it!  Until next time, See Ya.