Archive for February, 2009

Freedom Buns

Monday, February 16th, 2009

Of the many things that can ruin a good hamburger, I think that the bun is most often overlooked. Imagine this: you’ve just picked up some beautiful coarse ground beef—or maybe you ground your own. And maybe you’ve also got some really good apple wood smoked bacon. You’ve got nice fresh buttery boston lettuce and maybe a few homegrown tomatoes from the farmer’s market. You’re going to have burgers with all the fixin’s. And you’re thinking that you had better get home so you can start making your burgers, but, oh wait! You forgot the buns. Without much thought, you go to the bread isle and grab whatever is cheap.

STOP! Stop right there! You are one step away from turning a possibly award winning burger into a mediocre one and I just can’t let you do it. Now think of the restaurants where you love to get a burger. How are the buns? They’re probably really good right? They’re probably shiny, golden and toasted with some butter. They’re probably rich with eggs or milk and maybe they’re flecked with sesame seeds. They are anything but bland. Now think about the buns you’ve got in your hand. Why would you put your ingredients that you selected so carefully in between two texture-less, tasteless, chemically-fortified so-called pieces of “bread”? Because it’s easy! Don’t be easy! This may come as a surprise, but you don’t have to use those buns.

Free yourself from the confines of tasteless supermarket buns and try making your own for a change. It’s not that hard, it takes very little active preparation time and the result is well worth it. I recently made some very good buns with this recipe from Annie’s Eats. The process was really simple.

You dissolve some sugar, instant yeast and warm water in the bowl of a stand mixer and then you add milk and oil. You gradually add some flour and knead it to the right consistency. Then you let it rise. You form the risen dough into discs like this:

If you like soft-sided buns (I do) you put them closer together on the pan for the second rise. After the second rise you paint them with an egg wash and sprinkle some poppy seeds or sesame seeds on top if you want. They look something like this:

Then you just pop them into a nice hot oven and when they are done they might look like this:

If they don’t look like this, well, sorry. But try again! And now that you’ve got some nice soft buns, all you have to do is figure out what to put between them (sorry, I couldn’t resist).

Making your own hamburger buns is probably not feasible if you decide you want hamburgers like, right now. I won’t say that I will only use made-from-scratch buns from now on, but I will make them more often when I have the time. And when I have to buy them at the store, I’ll be thinking the whole time about how much better my burger would be with one of these babies.

Budget Recipe Info

You could argue that you won’t save any money by making your own buns at home. You can go to the store and pick up a bag of buns for like 99 cents. If you already have the ingredients on hand it costs very little to make hamburger buns, but it takes time (albeit very little active time). But if your hamburger buns come out really good, you could argue that to buy buns of equal quality you would have to go to a bakery where the buns would be more expensive, or you might have to drive further to get them. So it may or may not save you money, but I do know I have paid $3.99 for some organic hamburger buns before that weren’t even that good. The choice is yours, but I encourage you to try it once.

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Posted in baking, beef dishes, bread, budget recipes, main dishes | No Comments »

Carne Guisada—Homesick Texan Style

Sunday, February 15th, 2009

I love carne guisada, but I almost never order it in a restaurant. Why? Well, for the same reason I don’t go to a restaurant and order beef stew—because it’s simple comfort food and it’s just something people cook at home. Besides that, I have rarely had good carne guisada in a restaurant. It’s often dry or bland or tough. Sometimes it has a thick gravy that you can see through, which is no bueno in my book.

I was super excited when Lisa of Homesick Texan decided to put up her recipe for carne guisada. Even when I think I have a great recipe for something Tex-Mex, it seems as though the Homesick Texan can always inspire me to take it a step further.

Lisa has a couple of rules when it comes to her carne guisada. The first rule is that no potatoes go into the pot. It is my opinion that potatoes ruin carne guisada. This is very serious and if you choose to ignore this rule, well, there is probably no hope for you or your carne guisada so you should just give up right now. The second rule is that sweet bell peppers are for wussies and old ladies (my words, not Lisa’s). I know, I know, I love them too, but no matter how much you may love delicious sweet bell peppers roasted on a sandwich or in your hummus, please keep them far away from your carne guisada pot. Instead choose spicy green chilies like serranos and jalapeños. I took this a step further and added some roasted poblano peppers because, well, I like poblano peppers in my carne guisada and I think they give it extra depth of flavor. The last rule is that the meat should not look like the contents of a can of Prime Cuts in Gravy—it should be cooked until it’s tender enough to string and fall apart. Enough said. I was able to make this happen very quickly on a Friday evening in my pressure cooker. If you have one I recommend using it.

So I followed Lisa’s rules and when I took that first bite of rich, spicy goodness nestled inside of a warm corn tortilla, my eyes got wide. I had found carne guisada perfection and I knew I would never go back to my old ways. I also knew I had to share this with everyone I know. So here it is: my version of the Homesick Texan’s carne guisada.

Carne Guisada

Inspired by this recipe by the Homesick Texan.

Serve with fresh flour or corn tortillas, salsa, pico de gallo and cilantro. Great with mexican rice (check out this stellar recipe) and charro beans on the side. This makes a big old pot of meat so invite your friends. It also makes great leftovers. Scramble some up with an egg the next morning—it makes an awesome breakfast taco.

6 pounds of beef chuck roast, trimmed and cut into 1-inch cubes (you will end up with about 5 lbs)

2 tablespoons neutral oil 

1 medium onion, diced 

2 jalapeño peppers, minced 

2 serrano peppers, minced 

2 poblano peppers, roasted and cleaned of stems, skins and seeds, diced or cut into strips 

6 large cloves of garlic, minced 

1 tablespoon cumin 

1 tablespoon dark chili powder 

1 teaspoon mexican oregano 

2 bay leaves 

2 1/2 cups of water 

1 14-oz can of diced tomatoes with juice 

1 12-oz bottle of beer (Lisa recommends dark mexican beer, but even a nasty Bud Light will impart more flavor than water alone)

1 tablespoon of flour mixed with 1/4 cup of water to make a slurry

1. In a large heavy pot, pressure cooker or dutch oven, heat 2 tablespoons of neutral oil on medium high until it shimmers. Brown the meat in small batches and set aside. NOTE: This is the most important step of the whole recipe. Make sure the pieces are well caramelized. Areas of the pot and meat drippings will become a dark brown color as the meat cooks. Don’t be scared. This will give the gravy its flavor. 

2. Add the onion, jalapenos and serranos to the meat drippings and cook until soft, scraping the browned bits from the pot. Add the garlic and seasonings and cook until fragrant. 

3. Add the meat, poblano peppers, water, tomatoes, beer and slurry. Bring to a simmer. If you are using a pot or dutch oven, simmer covered for about 3 hours or until the meat becomes tender and begins to fall apart. If you are using a pressure cooker, cover and bring to pressure and cook for 45 minutes on high.

Budget Recipe Info

Carne guisada is normally made with beef chuck roast which is a very inexpensive cut of meat. I bought mine at Costco for $3.99/lb, but it sometimes goes on sale for $1.99/lb in our regular grocery store. Served with rice and beans (also inexpensive), carne guisada is a very economical meal.

We fed six guests the night we made this and we still had enough for lunches and breakfasts all week long. I normally tire of leftovers after eating them once or twice, but for some reason I never get tired of tacos. So carne guisada was a great choice for our second week of eating on a budget, and nothing went to waste.

Budget Tip

Buy spices in bulk if possible. Bulk spices are much cheaper than those pre-packaged in little jars (because you’re not paying for the packaging) and grocery stores usually go through them faster so they will be fresher. You can also use them to make your own inexpensive seasoning blends instead of buying the pre-made ones. Often pre-made seasoning blends are mostly salt anyway.

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Posted in beef dishes, budget recipes, main dishes, mexican | 2 Comments »

Good news about the Economy and $75 a week

Wednesday, February 11th, 2009

I don’t have to tell you that the economy sucks right now. Everybody knows that already. You can’t watch TV without hearing it, you can’t open a paper or a magazine without reading it and we talk constantly about who is going out of business or who has lost a job. And I don’t have to tell you that people have been cutting back and saving their money to prepare for the worst. It’s all a little extremely depressing and scary.

But, for me, there has been a bright side to all of this gloom and doom. In an effort to scale back our budgets and pad our savings accounts a little, I have put a limit of $75 a week on our grocery spending. According to the IRS, the national standard for food expenses in a two-person household is $528 a month. That’s about $132 a week. In contrast, some people claim that $62 a week is the poverty level for two people (I’m still not sure how that figure was determined and it seems a little high). In any case I’ve decided that $75 a week is a realistic amount for us and we are now two weeks into our $75 a week experiment. 

Okay, okay, I know what you’re thinking. Cutting back your food budget? That’s not good news. Hang in there while I explain. Cutting back would be difficult (and possibly detrimental to our health) if we had to sacrifice quality. So instead, I decided that I can continue to buy the quality ingredients I love if I swear off most prepared foods. The key here is to buy ingredients. And with that in mind, I began making cuts with some guidance from this list.

The good news in all of this mess is this changes how we eat for the better. Here’s why:

1. Foods made from scratch are generally healthier than prepared ones. They only include what you choose to put in them, and all of those things will have names you can pronounce.

2. Cooking from scratch does require some extra effort, but most of the prepared foods you can buy are far inferior to what can be made at home from scratch, so to me, they are well worth the extra effort (think homemade mayonnaise, homemade yogurt and fresh-baked bread).

3. Buying food with a limited budget also limits the amount of meat you can buy. You’ll get more food for your money when you spend the bulk of your budget on things that come from plants: fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and beans. We should all be eating more of these anyway:

Fresh fruits and vegetables

This means fewer meals will be centered on meat and as a result you’ll likely consume more fiber and plant derived nutrients and fewer saturated fats. Doesn’t that sound great? Sure does! Sign me up!

So what does this mean for the blog?

Well, as I begin to learn how to make some of the prepared foods I normally buy at the grocery store, I’ll write about it so you can learn right along with me. I’ll also be working on a list of tips that will help you eat well on a limited budget. It will soon be located to the right under “Pages on De Nacho.” Stay tuned folks—good things are coming up!

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Posted in fruit, vegetables, vegetarian | No Comments »

Unsung hero? Maybe.

Friday, February 6th, 2009

Tyler Florence calls cauliflower “the unsung hero of the vegetable world.” I would have to say the phraseology “unsung hero” is pushing it. I do agree, however, that cauliflower doesn’t get the attention it deserves. You don’t just sit around and wish you had a big steaming bowl of cauliflower to snack on (maybe not unless it’s used as a vehicle for eating liquified cheese). And it’s not always the most appealing choice in the produce isle, especially when it’s surrounded by so many other pretty vegetables that don’t resemble a brain.

When I came home with a head of cauliflower last week, and Shawn declared, “I hate cauliflower,” (surprise surprise) I knew I was going to have to puree that sucker. So it became soup. And you know what? He ate it. He said it tasted sort of like potatoes. He loves potatoes. Maybe the idea of heroic cauliflower isn’t so far-fetched.

Creamy Cauliflower Soup

1 medium head of cauliflower, cut into florets
 
1/2 of a large onion, sliced
 
4 sprigs fresh thyme (or 1/2 tsp dry)
 
1 bay leaf
 
3 Tablespoons butter
 
4 cups of chicken or vegetable stock
 
1/3 cup half and half, cream or whole milk
 
salt and pepper to taste (white pepper if you have it)
 
fresh herbs for garnish (optional—I used dill)
 
1. Simmer cauliflower, onion, thyme, bay leaf and stock until the cauliflower is very tender (about 15 minutes).
 
2. Remove the bay leaf and thyme stems. Puree the soup with an immersion blender (or puree it carefully in a regular blender)
 
3. Reduce if necessary to get desired consistency. Add the cream and remove from heat. Season with salt and pepper to to taste. Garnish with fresh herbs.

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Posted in budget recipes, soup, vegetables, vegetarian | 1 Comment »