My youngest requested pulled pork sandwiches and pork shoulder was on sale! I like it when requests line up with sales!  I’ve done a few pulled pork variations in the past, including this pulled pork in the slow cooker where you basically make your own barbecue sauce with onions, garlic, chili powder, black pepper, chili sauce, brown sugar, cider vinegar and Worcestershire sauce. But the other day I had some barbecue sauce in the pantry I’d bought on sale and wanted to use up, so I “cheated” and used it up.

Cut whatever fat you can off the pork shoulder or pork roast. You won’t get it all for sure, but you can eliminate the big pieces of it.  If yours is tied together with twine, as mine was, just cut the twine away. You WANT the pork to fall apart!  Pour about a cup of barbecue sauce on it, your favorite bottled variety or your own homemade, and cook on high for 4-5 hours or on low for much longer. You want to be able to pull it apart with two forks, so you want it really well done and soft and falling apart.

To serve, I usually add more barbecue sauce as the sauce in the slow cooker has been thinned down so much. Stir in the sauce and heat through, then serve on buns. Goes great with coleslaw on the side or in the sandwich.

I’ve got this recipe for coleslaw without the mayonnaise or you can mix up some dressing along the lines of:

• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 2 Tbs cider vinegar
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 Tbs celery seeds

Adjust the sugar/salt/vinegar ratio to suit your tastebuds.

I experiment now and then but I keep coming back to this one. It’s so simple. I always have the ingredients on hand. It goes together quickly. I usually serve it with ribs, slow cooked over a 300 F grill for a few hours, turning every 45 minutes.

• 1 cup ketchup
• 1/2 cup cider vinegar
• 3 Tbs brown sugar
• 3 Tbs Worcestershire sauce
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp liquid smoke (optional)

Mix it all up and simmer very slowly, stirring now and then, for 30 minutes or so.

I had some rib eye steaks in the freezer, a shame to freeze them I know but they were vacuum packed. I’d bought a Max Pack when they were on sale. After defrosting them, I marinated them in a  mix of steak sauce, balsamic vinegraitte and minced garlic.

• 1/2 cup steak sauce (I used Country Bob’s but I think A1 would be similar)
• 1/2 cup balsamic vinaigrette (make your own or I used Paul Newman’s)
• 2 cloves minced garlic

I marinated them for just an hour or two, then grilled about 4-5 minutes per side (about 1″ thick). Yum!

Served them up with:

• marinated cucumber salad
• sliced tomatoes with olive oil and some herb mix sprinkled on top
• microwaved corn on the cob (leave it in the husk, microwave a few minutes, then husk it. The strings will come right off!)
• baked potatoes

A fantastic summer dinner. I forgot to take pictures though…

Chicken leg quarters are on sale these days, 77 cents a pound around here. That’s about as low as chicken goes these days.  I bought a max pack and split them up and am doing two different things with them.  First, I cut them all into leg and thigh pieces because none of us will eat more than one piece of chicken so it makes more sense for us to separate them. If you’ve got folks with larger appetites, just leave them attached.

Lemon Butter and Herb Chicken

lemon butter chicken

For tonight, I’m doing a quick twenty minute marinade in a butter, lemon juice and herb sauce then basting and barbecuing. This came from an Orlando Sentinel article with 5 recipes for chicken quarters.   There are several good sounding recipes there so go check it out. I’m using fresh rosemary just picked from the garden. Mmm…. the scent alone makes you hungry!  I roughly halved their recipe and am cooking 2 legs and 3 thighs.

• 1/4 cup butter or margarine
• juice from half a lemon
• 1 tablespoon dried parsley
• 1 tablespoon garlic salt
• 1 teaspoon fresh rosemary, chopped
• 1 teaspoon dried savory
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• a healthy sprinkling of black pepper

Barbecued lemon herb chicken

Melt the butter, add the seasonings. Reserve some for basting and pour the rest over the chicken. Let sit 20 minutes or so, then grill until done, basting now and then. Cook over medium heat for about an hour.  It took me years to learn that chicken barbecues better over a lower heat for a longer time.

El Pollo Loco Chicken

This is another recipe from America’s Most Wanted Recipes: Delicious Recipes from Your Family’s Favorite Restaurants. I’ll let you know tomorrow how it turns out, as I’m marinating the chicken pieces overnight and will grill them tomorrow.  The marinade reads well though!  And smelled good…  The recipe called for 1 cup olive oil. I’m not sure I would use good olive oil, or that much, if the cost is a consideration.  This made a LOT of marinade, more than enough for a whole chicken cut up into 8 pieces.  I’m using 7-8 chicken legs and thighs.

• 1 cup white vinegar
• 1 cup oil
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 1/4 tsp oregano
• 1/4 tsp thyme
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2-3 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
• 1 1/2 tsp Tabasco sauce

We’ve got fresh tomatoes for salsa, ripe avocados for guacamole and fresh cilantro in the garden so I’m planning on some nice chicken with tortillas, guacamole, and salsa tomorrow tonight. I’ll probably cook up some beans and rice too.

Related recipes:

• pinto beans
• black beans
• Spanish rice
• salsa

When you’re entertaining, you need to balance money, time and taste.  I just had a grad night party for my eldest and I won’t say it was the cheapest I could have done, but it was reasonable and balanced the time I had available with the money I had available.

My daughter wanted a “simple” barbecue, that is hot dogs and hamburgers. But we were inviting lots of adults, including a few vegetarians and a few who eat no pork.   So first off, I bought all-beef hot dogs. I also decided to buy preformed hamburger patties to save time since we had a few other things going on around the same time.  I decided to add some chicken breasts and a few portobello mushrooms as well.  The hardest part was deciding about how many of each thing to plan on for 45 – 50 people. I figured two hot dogs per person and figured on about half hot dogs, slightly more than half hamburgers, half a dozen mushrooms, and a large tray pack of chicken breasts. (Note: I marinated the chicken breasts in my favorite chicken marinade and split them into two bags. I had one bag left over at the end so just froze them in smaller packs of 2 breasts per bag with some marinade in each bag.  I also had leftover hamburgers, still frozen, and leftover hot dogs, easy to throw in the freezer for later, so those will all get used up.)  We cooked a bit more than we ate last night but had hot dogs for lunch and green salad with sliced chicken and the leftover mushroom sliced up for dinner.

The menu I ended up with was:

• hot dogs
• hamburgers
• barbecued chicken breasts
• barbecued portobello mushrooms
• vegetarian baked beans
• potato salad (homemade and brought by my niece)
• pasta salad with veggies (homemade and brought by my niece)
• Chinese chicken salad (homemade and brought by my girls’ stepmom by request)
• fruit salad
• green salad

For appetizers we had:

• hummus and crackers (brought by a friend)
• chips and salsa (brought by a friend)
• veggies wraps (olives, red peppers, cream cheese, spinach leaves, grated carrots)
• spinach dip (bought at Costco) and French bread cubes
• pretzels and crackers and various dips and cream cheese (my youngest talked me into some raspberry chipolte sauce we sampled at Costco and I had some wasabi mustard dip I’d bought a while back)

And I bought a large sheet cake for dessert. This ended up at about $1 per person and was far better tasting and looking than I could have done! For smaller groups, I would have made dessert but for larger ones this works out great.

Oh I also made two large relish plates for the burgers which included a head of iceberg lettuce, sliced onions, sliced pickles, and sliced tomatoes. Ended up with leftover onions and tomatoes but those will easily get used up in various things or I can always just chop and freeze the onions.

I haven’t added up the cost but my main point was that you need to balance the time you have availalable and figure out what things might make sense to buy pre-made. While I normally make our namburger patties, for a large party I felt good about my decision to buy the preformed ones. Likewise the spinach dip. But I bought fresh fruit and made the fruit salad based on what looked good and ripe at the store (strawberries, blueberries, pineapple, watermelon, grapes and nectarines).  A neighbor was kind enough to loan me some fridge space (as well as outdoor table and chairs) so I made the salad up in the morning and refrigerated it till the party started. I did the same with the relish plates for the burgers.

Oh, for the bean dish I took this four bean casserole recipe in the crockpot and modified it to use vegetarian baked beans intead of the pork and beans and then left out the bacon. It was just as delicious as the original I think and might become my new standard since it’s a bit healthier.

Any of you have tips to share for large parties? This was fun but the largest one I’ve done that wasn’t a total potluck, although I did have some help as noted.  I don’t have an extra frig or freezer as some folks do so the neighbors’ offer of their spare frig space was a lifesaver. Same with the tables and chairs I borrowed. Oh, we did buy plastic table cloths to cover all the tables so they looked coordinated by the time we were done!  We bought a dozen helium ballons and tied a few to each table.  We lucked out with fantastic weather and I think the party was a success.

It was just youngest and I for dinner tonight so we opted for a great salad with some sliced barbecued steak.  She’s been into nibbling walnuts lately so I thought some candied walnuts would be a nice addition.   I found this recipe and they came out great. My only issue was that the wax paper stuck to some of the walnuts. Maybe I should have stirred them in the pan a bit more before dumping out to cool…  Hardly a recipe for the rest of the salad. It was:

• chopped red lettuce
• alfalfa sprouts
• sliced radishes
• chopped avocado
• sliced mushrooms

The steak was a small tri tip strip I’d frozen previously. After thawing it, I put a bit of olive oil on it, then sprinkled both sides with seasoned pepper and garlic salt.  Barbecued about 4 minutes each side, let rest while I finished the salad, the sliced thinly.    I have some bottled dressings left over from various parties so I didn’t even make the salad dressing.

Great quick and filling dinner.  Plus I’ve got leftovers for lunch tomorrow, always a bonus.

Roasted garlic is one of those things that seems to have some underserved mystique about it. The mystique about the flavor is well-founded. It is deliciously soft and smooth and wonderful.  But any mystique about its preparation is not.  Set aside half an hour or so and know that you can roast garlic ahead of time, then cool it, bag it, and store it in the frig for 2-3 weeks.

For each head of garlic, cut the tips off to open up the cloves.  So if you don’t grow garlic, you may wonder “What are the tips?”  The opposite of the root end!  Basically, the cloves grow up into a point and the green shoots rise up out of the ground from the pointy end. So the tips you want to cut off come to a point. (And if you haven’t grown garlic, try it!  it’s so easy! Where I live, in the SF bay area, we plant towards the end of October and harvest towards the end of June. Each year, I set aside my largest heads to replant so I basically haven’t bought garlic in however many years I’ve grown it. I’ve yet to run out before the next crop is ready.)

So preheat the oven to 375 and cut enough off the tips of the bulbs to expose most of the heads. Find a baking dish just large enough to fit all the heads you want to bake. Rub a bit of olive oil along the bottom of the dish and place the heads cut side up in there. Pour just a bit of olive oil across the top of each head.  Bake 20-30 minutes, testing that the cloves are done by poking a toothpick into the exposed side. They should be soft.

Use in dishes like Potato Soup with Roast Garlic, use for a softer garlic bread, make a fantastic baked Brie appetizer by spreading some roast garlic, olive oil and pine nuts across the Brie, barbecue some fish with roast garlic and butter and lemon juice in a foil pan, mix in with some mashed potatoes, …  The options are nearly endless!

What’s your favorite way to use roast garlic?

I’m gearing up for a large graduation party and am trying to figure out what to fix. I’m also trying to clear out my frig and freezer so as to make room for party food. By my current guess, we’ve at least 5o coming for an open house/barbecue.   I’m thinking hot dogs, burgers, and maybe ribs (cook those first as they take a few hours).  I was browsing through the book Desperation Entertaining! and got some great ideas. You can also browse through their site for new recipes at Kitchen Snoop.

So tonight I thought I’d experiment with their Carolina Chili Dogs. These were very good and I think a nice option to add for a cookout when you’re doing burgers and dogs.  They suggested that Southeners preferred their chili finely ground. To get this texture, they suggested cooling the mixture 20 minutes or so and then using your blenders or food processor. I just pulled out my immersion blender (love that thing!) and it did the trick just perfectly!  I used a pound of ground beef rather than their 1.5 p0unds because that’s what I had. And I upped the Worcestershire from 2 tsp to 1 Tbs because (a) I’d just used the tablespoon and b) we like Worcestershire.

• 1 pound ground beef (extra lean)
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 2 cups water
• 1 can (6 oz) tomato paste
• 1/2 cup ketchup
• 1 Tbs chili powder
• 1 Tbs Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tsp vinegar (cider or white)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp ground black pepper

Put the water and ground beef in a Dutch oven or soup pot over high heat and bring to a boil. Peel and chop the onion while waiting for this to boil.  Add the onion, reduce the heat to medium, and stir to break up the meat a bit.

Add the tomato paste, ketchup, chili powder, Worcestershire, vinegar, salt and pepper and stir until the tomato paste is dissolved and everything is mixed well, breaking up the meat chunks as you go.

Simmer over low heat about 15 minutes, until very thick, stirring now and then.

Serve on hot dogs with grated Cheddar cheese if you want chili cheese dogs. They didn’t suggest that so maybe it’s not a Carolina thing, but around here you get chili cheese dogs if you get chili on hot dogs.

NOTE: If you like boiling ground beef, I’d think you could reduce the water a bit and skip the blending because the ground beef will already be fairly fine.

You can definitely make the chili ahead of time and freeze in portions that your family will find useful. They suggest 2 Tbs per hot dog, so maybe 1/2 cup for a family of 4-5.

My old gas grill gave up the ghost and I bought a new one the other day, another Weber. It’s not got all the fancy gizmos and gadgets but it’s solidly built and since my old low-end Weber gas grill lasted 11 years outside with no cover and year-round use, I was inclined to go that route again.   I couldn’t resist the Weber’s Real Grilling book they had conveniently sitting next to the new grills!

The new grill has 3 burners instead of 2, making it much easier to do the indirect cooking. I tried it out with some chicken leg quarters the other night, which had been marinated in my favorite chicken marinade, and they came out superb!

In addition to good tips and general advice, the book is filled with recipes and with a picture of each one for those visual types.  I tried the artichokes, which were a bit disappointing. Call me boring but all I need to do with artichokes is trim ‘em, simmer ‘em, drain ‘em, and serve with a bit of mayonnaise mixed with lemon juice.

The corn on the cob recipe however is to die for!  I cheated a bit, because I hate husking corn. So I microwaved the corn a few minutes first, which makes the husking oh so easy. Then I spread their flavored butter on:

• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 Tbs chopped fresh basil
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 1/4 tsp granulated garlic

Now, I only have granulated garlic on hand because a client gave me a gift pack from Penzey’s with some. I’ll just use fresh minced garlic once I run out.

Anyway mix all this together with a fork, then spread half of it on 4 ears of husked corn. If you don’t cheat and start with raw corn, grill over medium heat 10 – 15 minutes, turning now and then. If you cheat like me and microwaved the corn a bit to make the husking easy, grill until done.   I probably microwaved about 4 minutes, let them sit and steam a bit, then grilled another 5-8  minutes.

Serve with the remaining butter.

Good fresh corn is good totally plain, of course. Simmer it or microwave it or barbecue it. But this cheese and herb butter really adds a nice touch. I will definitely be doing this again!

Last night I hosted a surprise birthday party for a friend. We had about 25 friends and neighbors gather. It was pot luck and folks brought all kinds of delicious appetizers and baked beans and salads.

I grilled chicken breasts and burgers–well actually some nice guests volunteered to man the grill so I can’t take credit for the actual cooking. But I got more compliments on these chicken breasts and everyone wanted to know what was in the marinade. So here you go!

This is from The Freezer Cooking Manual from 30 Day Gourmet: A Month of Meals Made Easy. It has some really good recipes and some great advice and worksheets for those of you who want to cook ahead and freeze dishes or prepped food, like this chicken marinade. You can freeze chicken pieces in this marinade, then grill or bake or use in fajitas or stir fries. I took frozen boneless skinless chicken breasts and popped them bags with this marinade and let them marinate while they thawed overnight in my frig.

This makes about 3 cups of marinade. I cut back a bit on the soy sauce as it seemed like a lot of salty stuff. The chicken does not taste salty though, just very flavorful. And the grillers cooked the chicken perfectly!

• 2 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
• 2 Tbs dry mustard
• 1 cup oil
• 1/2 cup red wine vinegar
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 1 tsp pepper
• 1 tsp minced garlic
• 2 tsp dried parsley

Just delicious!  Mix it up and pour over chicken pieces in a gallon freezer bag. Freeze and pull out later, or pour over frozen chicken and let marinate while it thaws.