I am Somer Canon: Shiftless lay-about, blog enthusiast, and more importantly, food lover. This blog will share my favorite recipes, cooking techniques, adventures in eating, and just about any subject pertaining to cooking and eating.
It is officially the Fourth of July holiday weekend. My family and I kicked off the weekend by going to my mother’s house (she and my stepfather are out of town for the weekend so we had the place to ourselves) and swimming. I also decided to take along a picnic of fried chicken. Fried chicken is so great as a picnic food because it can be eaten hot, warm, or cold.
As I was taking the chicken out of my refrigerator, I realized that I had yet to do a post on fried chicken. And I was ashamed. What the hell kind of “home cook” am I if I’m not bragging about my abilities to wow your socks off with my fried chicken? Oh, the humanity!
Folks, I am here to remedy the situation. The first wonderful thing about fried chicken is that it doesn’t need a recipe. That’s right, I’m not going to add a nice little formatted recipe for fried chicken. There are so many ways out there to do it that I’m not even going to waste your time. Well, I might waste it a little bit by giving you a few measurements and ingredients on MY particular version, but I completely understand if you want to skip over those parts.
To begin, let us talk about buttermilk. Almost all traditional fried chicken recipes call for marinating the meat in buttermilk. I had always assumed that it was to tenderize the meat and to keep it moist, but for the sake of looking like I know what I’m talking about, I searched the internet to find the reason. While tenderizing the meat is the reason cited the most, others also claim that it flavors the meat, helps the breading stick to the skin, and some other reasons that don’t ring all that true with me.
The fact is, if I have buttermilk I marinate the chicken. If I don’t have buttermilk, it isn’t marinated at all and still tastes awesome. You can take it or leave it. I just stick to the tradition because, hey, generations of grannies can’t be wrong. (You can also marinate your chicken Indian style with yogurt!)
Now let’s talk about which parts of the chicken to fry. If you’re making chicken for many people, I suggest buying either a whole chicken or a whole cut-up chicken and using all parts. I wouldn’t think to mention this if I hadn’t seen more than once someone making fried chicken for a crowd and serving only drumsticks or thighs. No. No. No. Some people like wings. Some people want breast meat. By golly, you better have all parts of that bird fried and accounted for if you want to please everybody.
Now let’s discuss hardware. Fried chicken is made in cast iron skillets. Period. There IS NO VALID DEBATE on this issue. Sure you can make your chicken on a sheet pan in the oven, but it’s not fried chicken, I don’t care how much pretzel crumbs you put all over it. Real fried chicken is made in cast iron.
Every good kitchen should contain at least one well seasoned cast iron skillet. It is a multi-purpose num-num maker. Also, if well cared for, that sucker will outlive your grandchildren. Good cast iron is one of those things bequeathed to younger generations and accepted with pure enthusiasm. Also, don’t treat cast iron cookware like you’d treat all your other cookware. Cast iron is special and needs special love. The internet is full of articles written by people fully prepared to beat you with your own cast iron skillet if word ever got out that you wash it with soap. Get a good skillet, season it, love it, RESPECT it. And make lots of fried chicken with it.
Method. Oh geez. The method is just as varied as the recipe themselves. Do you use a wet or dry coating? Do you fry in vegetable oil, butter, or shortening? It can get crazy.
As for me, I use a dry coating and I fry in canola oil. You can certainly add a few pats of butter to the oil for a little more richness, but I usually leave that out because of all the fat in the chicken skin.
My dry coating is mostly flour. I season the chicken meat directly with salt and pepper because those two things can tend to get lost in a coating and you really want to make sure that the meat is still flavorful. For a whole chicken, I use about a cup and a half of flour. To that I add some onion powder and garlic powder (about a teaspoon of each). I also add just a teeny bit of dried dill (I have a recipe for Chicken Kiev that calls for dried dill in the coating and it’s surprising the little zing it adds).
I’ve known people to use crushed up potato chips or cereal as their coatings for fried chicken. Play with it and have fun. Just make sure that if you make your own dry coating to be careful of ingredients that burn. That chicken has to fry for a while and too much of a delicate ingredient can put the whole dish in the trash.
My own chicken can have a few dark spots from that tiny bit of onion and garlic powder that I add to my coating. It’s not burned, I assure you. Like I said, it has to cook for quite a while to make sure all the meat is cooked through and the coating sometimes can’t take it. It’s a delicate balance. But boy that stuff tastes gooooood.
My grandmother was always nervous about undercooked chicken so she always boiled the chicken before coating and frying it. She would then throw egg noodles in the broth made from boiling the chicken and it made for a damned good meal. I know that the thought of boiling the chicken before frying it horrifies some people, but if you’re nervous about undercooked chicken, it’s a great way to make sure your meat is cooked and reduced the frying time. Sometimes when I get to missing my grandmother, I make that very dish, the chicken with egg noodles, just so I can feel close to her. And it still makes for a damned good meal.
Even if you’re dedicated to be a healthy eater, I really hope that you don’t forget about fried chicken. I don’t expect you to eat it more than once or twice a year, but it has such history in our country. Its grassroots run deep and many of us who were born to “salt of the earth” families treasure it as a family tradition. Like apple pie and hotdogs, fried chicken is AMERICAN.
I’m starting to feel better and am venturing back into my kitchen to start cooking for my family once again. Because we knew to expect the same drama with this pregnancy as with my first, when I first got pregnant my husband went to the grocery store and basically bought a bunch of junk that would be easy for him to prepare for himself and for our son. As it turns out, he ended up mostly eating takeout and beef-a-roni right out of the can (gag). So now I am left with a kitchen and a freezer crammed with a bunch of crap that I wouldn’t normally buy, but in order for me to make room for my usual cooking staples, I need to try to use up some of this stuff.
While looking at the shelves in my kitchen that I use for a pantry, my eye was caught by the large stack of tuna cans. “I’ll make a tuna casserole to use up some of that, ” I thought. I’ve never had tuna casserole before…unless you count Tuna Helper. I’ve certainly never made a tuna casserole before, so I consulted cookbooks and the internet for a recipe. There’s certainly no shortage of Tuna Casserole recipes on the world wide web, but to be honest, none of them really got me excited. Each one had the same structure and basically the same ingredients and I just was not wowed.
First of all, most of these recipes called for peas. I hate peas. They are too sweet and when they hit the back of my mouth, I start gagging just as I do when I try to eat sweet potatoes. I just can’t stand that weird starchy sweetness.
Second, most of these recipes only contained a sparse sprinkling of cheese. Umm, excuse me, I thought Tuna Casserole was supposed to be a cheesy dish! Why are these recipes telling me to skimp? Not me. No way. I decided it was time to play mad scientist of the casserole community (ok, not really but I like that title) and make up a casserole recipe of my own. It wasn’t a terribly ambitious undertaking. It’s Tuna Casserole for crying out loud. My two-year old could do it with relative ease.
Cheesy Tuna Casserole
My Recipe
2 cans of albacore tuna in water
1 can of cream of mushroom soup (cream of chicken will also work)
2 cups frozen chopped broccoli
2 Tblsp. butter (NOT margarine, you need real butter)
1-1/4 cup milk
1 tsp. onion powder
1 tsp. garlic powder
salt and pepper to taste
6 slices American cheese
1-1/2 cups uncooked rice
Shredded cheese to top (about 1-1/2 cups)
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.
Cook your rice. You can use quick cooking or instant rice, but I use regular old rice that takes about 15 minutes to cook. Because it’s cheaper and comes in bigger packages. That’s not only economical, but keeps me from having to buy rice every time I go shopping.
In a large pot melt butter. Add condensed soup and milk. Stir to break up the soup. Add salt, pepper, onion powder and garlic powder. Add frozen broccoli and heat through. Drain tuna and add. Add American cheese one slice at a time.
Beware! This smells really freaking good.
Now add your cooked rice and stir to combine. Pour into a casserole dish.
Sprinkle shredded cheese over the top. Be as sparse or as liberal as you like. I like the top pretty much covered.
Place in your oven and bake for 15-20 minutes.
Mmmmm. Melted cheeeeeese. Mmmmmmm.
Trust me on the addition of the American cheese. It adds a very mild “cheese” flavor, but more importantly it adds a rich creamy flavor. It’s just something extra.
I used rice instead of egg noodles….mostly because I had rice and not egg noodles. Boy am I glad that it worked out that way. This whole casserole was super creamy and smooth and was just so palate pleasing. It really was very good and tasted much more interesting to me than a lot of the recipes that I looked at seemed.
I don’t have a final product picture because, well, it’s a casserole! It basically just plopped on the plates and sat on the plates in a very un-pretty lump (delicious, but not pretty). I do, however, have this picture:
Because I’d rather look at that than an overly thought out presentation of culinary mastery any day. Also, I suck at pretty plating and I thought a picture of my beautiful family would be better!
I hope you try this recipe. It’s easy, quick, and very economical. It’s also a classic dish that anybody would appreciate at a potluck dinner. Have a friend who just had a baby? Make this for them. You’ll be the best friend they have for like a year! Enjoy!
When I was little, I used to spend my summer vacations going to a nearby lake and swimming all day. When we would come home, my brother and I would eat those individual frozen microwavable pizzas. My favorite was the cheeseburger pizza. It was complete grubbing food and I loved it after a full day of swimming and horse-play.
Then last week I noticed that all of the internet was abuzz about superbowl parties and the food served at these parties. A superbowl party is nothing more than an excuse to be completely hedonistic food-wise. Nobody is going to a superbowl party and having a mesclun salad with a slight squeeze of lemon. People go to superbowl parties to eat chili, chips, 40 different kinds of dips, wings, burgers, hot dogs, and pizza. Now, I didn’t attend a superbowl party. I stayed home and cleaned house. The next day, I got on the internet and Googled, “Who won the superbowl?” However, I was thinking that if I were to attend one next year or some unassuming internet surfer should be looking for an interesting recipe to take to a superbowl party, then this cheeseburger pizza would be a great thing to share.
When thinking about how to formulate a recipe for a cheeseburger pizza, I first asked myself what I like to eat on cheeseburgers. I like gooey cheese. I like bacon. I like onions. I like tomato. And I like perfectly cooked, juicy meat. That is how this recipe came to be.
A while back, I wrote another post about a homemade pizza. Contained in that post are recipes for both homemade pizza sauce (it couldn’t be easier…don’t buy it. Make it.) and pizza crust. Check it out.
Cheeseburger Pizza
(My Recipe)
-1 recipe prepared pizza crusts (if you use the recipe I provide, it makes 2 thin crust pizzas)
-1 recipe pizza sauce
-1 lb. ground beef
-6 strips bacon, cut into small pieces
-2 cups thinly sliced onions
-1 large jar of yellow cheese product (Cheez Whiz)
Preheat oven to 500 degrees F.
Roll out pizza dough and place it on either a pizza stone or a pizza baking sheet.
Spread pizza sauce on the dough.
Add uncooked hamburger and bacon. I used thick sliced peppercorn bacon, but any bacon will do fine.
Add onions. As you can see here, I add quite a lot of onions. Keep in mind that they cook down, but you can absolutely cut back on the onions on this pizza if that is your taste.
Glob on the “cheese” product. Look, when it comes to a pizza like this, you want a cheese that is smooth, savory, and completely unlike any real cheese. This stuff works perfectly and, trust me, it is really shamefully delicious.
Bake the pizza for 15-17 minutes.
This recipe yeilds 2 medium pizzas. It’s an easy recipe to double if you have a lot of people or big eaters to feed.
Gooey. Savory. Delicious. Totally worthy of a kickass football game. Or any televised sporting event, for that matter. I hope you try this recipe. It’s really delicious.
My husband has been griping for the past few days about wanting a chocolate cake. I kept deflecting his belly-achings and going about my business. Today, however, I decided to humor him and make a chocolate cake.
At any given time, I always have the ingredients handy to make several different baked goods. It’s a nice way to put a peaceful note on a stressful day and, hey, sometimes you just want some warm cookies. So I was very not worried when I went online to look for recipes on how to make a wonderful chocolate cake and chocolate icing. What I came upon was a recipe that, at first glace, appeared to be the recipe for your average run-of-the-mill cake. I had all of the ingredients on hand and decided to try it anyhow. Besides, I trust Hershey. It’s the only chocolate (Besides Ghirardelli and Neuhaus) that I really like.
The recipe was super easy. The icing was super easy to make. When we had finished our dinner and I served this, my husband looked at me after his first bite and said, “I hope you’re keeping this recipe.”
I took a bite and WOW. It’s a REALLY good cake. It’s almost like brownies but in cake form. VERY chocolate-y and VERY moist. Give it a try.
No, there are no pictures of this. I had no intention of making a blog post about a simple Hershey’s chocolate cake, but after eating it, I knew I had to share it. Seriously. If you like chocolate, try that sucker. You will thank me.
I’ve eaten chili all my life. My mom makes a mean chili and I’m always happy to eat some. Not until maybe 5 years ago did I become aware of the fact that there is a heated debate over whether or not a true chili contains beans.
I grew up eating chili with beans. I think that in the beginning of this style, the beans were used as a way to stretch the use of a single pound of meat. It was economical and it grew into an acquired taste. There are people who will smack the teeth right out of your face if you question their usage of beans.
I make chili without beans. It’s not that I don’t like chili with beans, I just honestly like it a little better without. I used to always make my chili with beans because it’s the kind that both my husband and I grew up eating. Then one night my husband was complaining incessantly (if you know my husband, you know that incessantly is the only way that he knows how to complain) that he wanted chili for dinner. I didn’t have beans on hand and you know how much I hate those small trips to the store. So I made him chili without the beans and I added a few new spices just for kicks. As it turned out, we were both stunned at how much we preferred this style over the previous style.
Chili (No Beans)
My Recipe
-1 lb. 80/20 ground beef
-2 15-oz. cans tomato sauce
-1 medium onion, diced
-3 cloves garlic, minced
-1/3 cup brown sugar
-1 tsp. salt
-1/2 tsp. black pepper
-1/4 cup chili powder
-1 tsp. cumin
-1/4 tsp. coriander
-1 tsp. dried oregano
-1 tsp. dried parsley flakes
-1/2 tsp. cinnamon
-1/8 tsp. ground cloves
-5 good shakes of Tabasco Sauce
-1/4 tsp. Cayenne pepper
Brown the ground beef in a skillet. Don’t drain. Chili, somehow, is better greasy. Trust me.
Heat a dutch oven over medium heat. Heat 1 Tblsp. olive oil in the dutch oven. Add onions and cook until translucent. Add garlic and cook for 30 seconds.
Add the two cans of tomato sauce. Stir. Add ground meat and juices. Stir.
Add brown sugar and stir well. Then add the rest of the ingredients. Stir and let heat through. Once the mixture is heated, give the chili a taste and adjust the seasonings to your taste. Once the seasonings satisfy you, lower the heat and cover. Cook for 30 minutes.
I like to serve this with homemade cornbread. Sprinkle some shredded cheese and minced white onion over the chili. YIELD: 4 large servings.
I know that a few of those spices seem a little out of place in a chili, but trust me when I say that it adds a new level of spice to the mixture. Sometimes I like to add some chopped bell peppers of banana peppers to this as a little extra.
If you insist on beans, add two cans of drained chili beans and omit the cinnamon, cloves, and coriander. They don’t have the same magic with beans.
I think the only chili that could possibly ever really offend me is a runny chili. I like a thick and hearty chili. Runny chili is just, well, disgusting. So work on that, you runny chili people! Otherwise, cook on! Chili is great in cold and hot weather and is a great dish to make for company since most people love it.
I am Somer Canon: Shiftless lay-about, blog enthusiast, and more importantly, food lover. This blog will share my favorite recipes, cooking techniques, adventures in eating, and just about any subject pertaining to cooking and eating.
