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Crock Pot Brazilian Black Bean Stew (aka Feijoada)

The links in these recipes are for products that I use and recommend.  

Brazilian Black Bean Stew over Rice with Collard Greens.

Brazilian Black Bean Stew (Feijoada) is a hearty flavorful dish loaded with meat and spicy or mild smoked Linguica. It is served over rice with a side of Couvé à Mineira (finely sliced and sautéed Collard Greens) and a flavorful crumb topping called “Farofa.”

Farofa is Manioc (Cassava) Flour that is sautéed and toasted in palm oil or the oil that is created when you brown the smoked sausage. If you don’t want to buy Manioc Flour for the farofa, you can substitute cornmeal, fine bread crumbs (though they will get soggy on your plate), or ground peanuts (which add a non-traditional but delicious flavor).

When I graduated high school, I traveled alone to Costa Rica and stayed there for 4 months. This trip was a real turning point in my food journey. Before that, I was a typical American kid of the ’90s that snacked on tons of processed foods. Being in Costa Rica for 4 months, eating only fresh fruits, smoothies, salads, and basic but delicious home-cooked meals from scratch completely reset my palate. During that time though, I ate rice and beans or “Gallo Pinto” for 3 meals a day, every single day. By the time I returned to the states, I really didn’t think I would ever eat rice and beans again.

Then I went to college in Montana and my best friend there was a Brazilian American. And so, it was back to rice and beans again. He made feijoada almost weekly. For a budget meal that can feed a group, or a family for a week, you could do a lot worse than this delicious and hearty stew.

If you are going to make this stew, you might as well make a big batch and freeze it. Beans freeze well. This recipe serves 16-20. I divide it into quart size zip lock bags to freeze for easy weeknight meals.

This version of Brazilian Black Bean Stew is not very spicy. Feel free to spice it up to your liking. Malagueta peppers are used in Brazil. These are really hard to find in most grocery stores so I substituted 1 hot red serrano/jalapeno. You can find Malagueta peppers from AmigoFoods.com. If you get your hands on a jar of malaguetas, the little peppers can be finely chopped and added to your dish and the liquid can be added a couple drops at a time as a hot sauce.

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Feijoada, farofa, rice, collard greens, lime and tomatoes on a white plate.

Brazilian Black Bean Stew (Feijoada)

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  • Author: Kara Taylor- Home Cooks Guide
  • Prep Time: 10 minutes
  • Cook Time: 8 hours
  • Total Time: 8 hours 10 minutes
  • Yield: 18 servings 1x
  • Category: Stew
  • Method: Crock Pot
  • Cuisine: Brazilian
  • Diet: Gluten Free
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Description

This recipe makes a large pot of this hearty black bean stew for less than $2 per person.  Perfect for casual large gatherings or stocking the freezer.  Serve it with rice and garlicky sautéed collard greens for a traditional Brazilian meal.

Ingredients

Scale

4 heaping cups dry black beans

10 cups water + more for soaking

1–2 lb ham hocks

1 large onion, diced

5 bay leaves

1 T dried oregano

6 large garlic cloves

1 t salt

2 lb pork butt, 1″ dice

1 1/2 lb Linguiça, sliced

1 bunch green onion, diced

1 hot red jalapeno or serrano (or more to taste)

salt to taste

1 cup cassava flour or (cornmeal)

salt to taste

Instructions

For The Feijoada

Soak the beans in plenty of water overnight.

The next morning, rinse the beans.  Place in your Crockpot with the 10 cups water, ham hock, Better Than Bouillon, bay leaves, oregano, garlic, and salt.

In a skillet or brazier, brown the pork butt.  Then add the onions and sauté.  Add this mixture to the crockpot.  If there are browned bits in the skillet, use a ladle full of the broth from the Crockpot to deglaze it and add it back into the stew.

Set the crockpot to low and simmer all day (8 hours +/-). 

In a skillet, brown the smoked sausage.  Transfer the sausage to the stew but leave the fat in the skillet. 

Taste the stew and season with salt as needed.

For The Farofa

Add half of the green onions to the skillet and sauté for 1-2 minutes.  Add the manioc flour (or cornmeal) and stir until toasted.  Season with salt and remove this mixture from the skillet.

To Serve

Serve your feijoada over white rice, sprinkled with the Farofa topping and a side of sautéed collard greens.

Equipment

Notes

This black bean stew can also be cooked in a pressure cooker (Instant Pot or the Old Fashion Kind).  Unsoaked black beans take about 25 minutes under pressure with a quick release.  Add the linguica after the pressure has been released.

It’s Time to Ready Your Kitchen for Fall and Winter Cooking!

The links in these recipes are for products that I use and recommend.  

I have always loved Fall. But never ever ever has it been so welcomed and so anticipated as this year in California, in which wildfires have scorched over 4 million acres, it hasn’t rained in over 120 days, and for months the air has been too unhealthy to play outside, all while being home with the family 24/7 due to the pandemic!!

I am so looking forward to cold damp morning, rain, snow, hot tea, soups, and slow-braised dishes that fill the home with warmth and delicious aromas all day long! Soups, braises, casseroles and big roasts to share at family gatherings are my favorite things to cook. As I pace my house and daydream about all the things I’m going to cook as soon as the weather changes, I’ve been noticing, I need restock and prepare my kitchen for Fall and Winter cooking.

This is my 10 Must Have Kitchen Items for the cold weather months. When choosing items for my kitchen, I go for economical, durable and utilitarian. All of these products have been put through the paces in my home kitchen or at the restaurant and have stood up to heavy use.

10 Must Have Kitchen Items for Cold Weather Cooking

A Brazier

A brazier is a short wide oven proof pot (really all cookware should be oven proof) with a lid that is perfect for browning and braising meat, and cooking casseroles or sauces. I have this enameled cast iron one and I love it.

A Dutch Oven

I use my dutch oven primarily for making sourdough bread and during the colder months I do this several times a week. It’s essential! Dutch ovens work for anything you would cook in a crock pot but you can also sauté vegetables and brown meat in it which means you don’t need an extra dish to do this! Running the oven on low all day with your dutch oven in it warms up the home in colder months. I love dutch oven cooking! This one has a lid that doubles as a cast-iron skillet.

A Kitchen Scale

A kitchen scale is a necessity for baking bread and weighing salt for cured meats, sauerkraut and fermented vegetables.

A Pie Pan

A pie pan is essential for the holidays, but really, I don’t make pie often enough for this to make my top ____ list. I do however use this pie pan for cornbread, breakfast casseroles, roasted vegetables, and other side dishes. It’s a perfect size for my family of 3-4 (3 eaters and 1 baby). It retains heat and keeps food warm for a long time, and looks nice enough for buffet lines and serving at the table.

A Spool of Kitchen Twine

I use kitchen twine all the time. I use it to tie herb bundles together that I put in soup pots for easy removal. I truss chickens and turkeys with it. I use it to tie off piping bags, to wrap up my knives in a towel when I travel with them, and for arts and crafts.

A 10-12 Qt Soup Pot

This is my main workhorse in the kitchen, especially in the fall and winter. I use it to make big pots of soup which I freeze for later, to boil pasta, blanch vegetables, steam lobsters or crabs, for canning, and as my biggest mixing bowl. I like this one. It’s economical, sturdy, and oven-proof.

A 2” Full Size Hotel Pan

In the restaurant kitchen, this is a standard item that I used every day. At home, this is what I use for roasting Turkeys, Rib Roasts and Whole Pork Loins. Don’t buy a turkey roasting pan. You’ll use it only once a year! This hotel pan also works great for large lasagnas, big batches of stuffing, cornbread, roasted vegetables and sheet cakes.

1 or 2 Cooling and Roasting Racks

These racks will fit both your sheet pan and your hotel pan (albeit imperfectly) and shouldn’t rust or corrode. These are a must when cooking a roast in your hotel pan or cooling your Christmas Cookies.

A Leave-In Probe Thermometer

A Probe Thermometer is a must for cooking large roasts. I’ve worked with a lot of chefs that acted like they were above using a thermometer and then went on to overcook a $150 piece of meat! There is no shame in relying on a this piece of technology. An instant-read thermometer won’t do. You want something you can set, leave-in during cooking, and it will alert you when your roast reaches a specific temperature. That way you don’t have to open and close the oven door or smoker to check on it and you won’t forget about it when you’re 4 cocktails into Thanksgiving prep.

Over the years in the restaurant, I’ve gone through a lot of probe thermometers. I’ve found ThermoPro thermometers to be the most durable and most accurate without paying a ton for it. (You just can’t leave them out in the rain, whoops!). They make single and dual probe thermometers. I like the dual probe one below.

A Crock Pot

I use a Crock Pot for pot roasts, chili, beans, and making broth overnight. Crock Pots are also great for taking for keeping food warm on a buffet line at your Holiday Feast or pot luck. I like this manual 8 qt Crock Pot. I find that I often use the full capacity. Some come with settings that you can program but what I like about my Crock Pot (versus an InstaPot) is its simplicity. Warm, Low, and High are the only settings you need.

Smoked Salmon Tartare for Easy Entertaining

The links in these recipes are for products that I use and recommend.  

An elegant appetizer in 5 minutes or less!

Smoked Salmon “Tartare” is an appetizer spread that is incredibly easy to make and perfect for holiday entertaining and dinner parties. Spoon a tablespoon of this mixture onto crackers or little squares of dark rye bread with cream cheese and you have yourself an elegant canapé.

This spread can be made in 5 minutes or less from a package of Cold Smoked Salmon (versus Hot Smoked Salmon, which is a whole different thing). One 12 ounce package makes 40-50 canapés or 10-30 people depending on how many other items you are offering in your appetizer course. 10 people if this is the only appetizer offered. Up to 30 people if you have 3-4 other appetizers available.

If you are not entertaining for the Holidays, this spread is still great to make at home and store in your refrigerator for an afternoon snack or your breakfast bagel. This spread will keep for 5 days. Smoked Salmon “Gravlax” on an everything bagel with cream cheese is a quick, easy, and mess-free breakfast that feels extra fancy. A perfect way to start your day!

If you have a Costco membership, I recommend Kirkland Smoked Salmon. If not, this is an easy item to find in any grocery store.

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Gravlax Tartare on Sourdough Cracker with cream cheese and dill

Smoked Salmon “Tartare” Recipe

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  • Author: Kara Taylor- Home Cooks Guide
  • Prep Time: 5 minutes
  • Total Time: 5 minutes
  • Yield: 2 cups (360 grams) 1x
  • Category: appetizer
  • Method: mixing
  • Cuisine: Scandanavian
  • Diet: Gluten Free
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Description

An easy and beautiful appetizer spread that can be made in 5 minutes or less!  

Ingredients

Scale

12 oz package of cold-smoked salmon

2 T capers, rinsed and minced

1/4 cup minced shallot (or onion)

2 T minced dill

Serve with: cucumber, cherry tomatoes, cream cheese, creme fraiche or sour cream, bagels, dark rye bread, and/or crackers

Instructions

Mince the salmon.

Stir in the minced shallots, capers, and dill.

Serve in a bowl with your favorite accoutrements or assemble into little canapes.

Equipment

Notes

Makes about 3 cups of “tartare” or 40-50 cracker canapes.

Easy Chicken Tortilla Soup Recipe

The links in these recipes are for products that I use and recommend.  

Customize your bowl with fun, fresh toppings.

Tortilla soup is one of my all-time favorite soups to make with leftover roast chicken. I love soups that can be individually customized through toppings and Tortilla Soup is a great example of that. Add cabbage, avocado, hot peppers, lime wedges, fried tortilla strips at the table. One can make this soup gluten-free by omitting the tortilla strips in their bowl or make their bowl extra spicy by loading up on the chili slices. If you have kids at home, letting them add their own toppings gives them an opportunity to make decisions at the table and modify their bowl to their own liking.

I make a lot of Mexican food at home and usually have all the ingredients on hand to throw this together: a can of beans, some frozen corn, hot peppers, tomato, cilantro, avocado, tortillas. After making a roast chicken for a different meal, I remove all the meat from the bones and set it aside, and I put the carcass into a Crockpot overnight or Instapot for 4 hours with onion, celery, and carrot to make an easy home-made broth. The meat and broth from this left over chicken will be used in this tortilla soup recipe.

How To Make Tortilla Soup

To make this tortilla soup, start with a sofrito of onions, peppers, and tomato. A sofrito is a paste of sautéed, caramelized onions, peppers, and tomato. This is the flavor base of many Spanish, Caribbean, and Latin American dishes. Making a sofrito takes awhile. It makes up the bulk of the cooking time for this soup.

Once the sofrito is made, add the broth and bring it to a boil. While you are doing that, you can slice and chop all the toppings for your table. Once you are at a boil, add the remaining soup ingredients. Whenever you use leftover cooked chicken for a soup, add it at the very end and heat it gently to avoid that cardboard-y twice-cooked chicken flavor that you can get sometimes….you know what I’m talking about.

If you don’t have leftover chicken and broth to use, you can make this from fresh bone in chicken (whole or pieces). It just takes a bit longer. Simply put the fresh chicken in a pot with onions, celery, carrot, herbs, and garlic and simmer for a couple of hours or until the chicken comes off the bone easily. Remove the chicken and pick the meat off. When you have made the sofrito, set a strainer over that pot and pour the chicken broth in. Follow the remaining steps of the recipe.

#homecooksguide on Instagram with your Tortilla Soup creations and let me know how your soup came out in the comment section.

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Bowl of Tortilla Soup with Tortilla Chips

Easy Chicken Tortilla Soup Recipe

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  • Author: Kara Taylor- Home Cooks Guide
  • Prep Time: 10 minutes
  • Cook Time: 45 minutes
  • Total Time: 45 minutes
  • Yield: 8 servings 1x
  • Category: Soup
  • Method: Boil
  • Cuisine: Mexican
  • Diet: Low Lactose
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Description

This delicious Mexican Soup is gluten-free and dairy-free.  Customize it to taste at the table with fun, fresh toppings.  Using leftovers from a roast chicken, this soup is easy to pull together on a busy weeknight.

Ingredients

Scale

For the Soup

8 cups chicken broth (preferably home-made and unsalted)

2 T oil

1/2 large onion, diced

2 lg bell peppers (any color, I used orange), diced

1 lg tomato, diced

1/2 T – 1 T ground cumin

1 T lime juice

1 T salt (if using unsalted broth, less if using seasoned or store bought broth)

1 can black beans, rinsed and drained

1 cup corn

1 cup frozen or fresh corn kernals

2–4 cups cooked chicken.

For the Toppings

Any combination of: tortilla chips, fried tortilla strips, cilantro, avocado, cabbage, radish, hot peppers, lime wedges, creme fraiche, sour creme, queso fresco or cotija, minced raw onion, fried garlic or onion.

Instructions

Heat the oil in a 4 qt pot.  Add the onions and peppers and sauté until fragrant and tender.  Then add the tomato and cumin and continue to sauté on low, stirring occasionally for a long time.  Until it almost forms a paste.  This is a sofrito, the flavor base to many Spanish/Latin dishes.

Add the broth and bring to a boil.  Add all other ingredients except the corn and chicken.  Bring back to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes.

Add the corn and bring back to a boil.  Add the chicken and immediately turn the heat off.

While the soup cooks, prepare all the toppings.

Equipment

Notes

$2/portion

Making Soup with the Kids: May’s Stone Soup Recipe

The links in these recipes are for products that I use and recommend.  

Girl holding a bowl of vegetable "Stone Soup."
Stone Soup, a lesson in sharing and cooking.

Once upon a time, a hungry traveler happened upon a small cottage in a small village. He knocked on the cottage door and asked the peasant that opened it if he could have some food.

The peasant said, “I’m sorry, but we’ve already eaten dinner and have no food left to cook.”

The traveler said, “Well, could I borrow a soup pot and some water and I’ll make Stone Soup.”

The traveler sat outside by the fire and the soup pot stirring the stone in the water. I passer-by stumbled upon the traveler and said, “Mmm, that smells good. What are you making?”

“Stone Soup,” replied the traveler. “I’d be happy to share it if you could lend me an onion.” The passer-by returned some minutes later with an onion.

Another passer-by noticed the boiling pot and said, “Mmm, that smells good. What are you making?”

“Stone Soup,” replied the traveler. “I’d be happy to share it, if you could lend me a carrot.” And this passer-by returned some minutes later with a carrot.

And so went the evening, with many people returning with different ingredients to contribute to the Stone Soup and at the end of the night, the traveler had made a big pot of Stone Soup to share with the village and they all enjoyed the warm meal together by the fire.

This is a classic children’s story about sharing. It’s also a story about delegating and leadership. All the ingredients were scattered among the villagers. It took the traveler to tell each villager exactly what they could contribute in order to bring the final dish together.

With Covid19, I went from Head Chef at The Farm Table to Headmaster at “Maylen’s Quarantine Learning Center” (No joke, this is my title with the State of CA). Like many parents at home with the kids during this crazy time, I am always in search of ways to incorporate both skills, academics, and moral lessons into everyday life.

My daughter May learned this story in preschool years ago. I don’t know if she is nostalgic for more normal times…. when she had to share with other kids in a school….but this story has been in her head recently and she wanted to make Stone Soup. I had a fridge full of vegetables that needed to be used up. Some floppy celery, the end piece of a cabbage, minced onion left over from taco night. We threw everything in the pot and ate the soup for lunch. I helped her season it with salt (her own instincts are to go way overboard in this department) and we all ate it for lunch. The soup was delicious and she was super proud of herself!!

Cooking the soup from this fable together gave me an opportunity to give my 6-year-old daughter a lesson in using the vegetable peeler and chef knife to chop the vegetables and mince the garlic and herbs. How to adjust the burner flame and some kitchen safety skills. We incorporated some math and measurements and she practiced writing by recording her recipe in her composition book.

This is her recipe.

Please feel free to share it with all the mommas and papas you know looking for things to do at home with the kids. Also, if you have fun cooking projects to do while homeschooling, I’d love to hear about them in the comment section!

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A bowl of vegetable "Stone" Soup in white bowl with large stone in it.

May’s Stone Soup

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  • Author: Kara Taylor- Home Cooks Guide
  • Prep Time: 5
  • Cook Time: 30
  • Total Time: 35 minutes
  • Yield: 3 servings 1x
  • Category: Kids
  • Method: boiling
  • Cuisine: N/A
  • Diet: Vegan
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Description

This recipe is for a vegan “Stone Soup.”  This is a great way to teach children basic cooking and kitchen skills while incorporating a story and an important lesson in sharing.  This version is delicious but feel free to modify this recipe to use anything you find in your fridge.

Ingredients

Scale

6 cups water

1 clean stone

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 celery stalk, diced

1 parsnip, peeled and diced

1 carrot, peeled and diced

1/4 cups diced onion

1 beet, peeled and diced

4 garlic cloves

3/4 cup chopped cabbage

1/2 cup chopped kale

1 large oyster mushroom, torn into pieces

4 sprigs of fresh thyme

2 Tablespoons chopped dill

Instructions

Place the water and stone in soup pot and bring it up to a boil.

Add all the other ingredients as they are cut, tender vegetables and herbs last.

Simmer until all the vegetables are tender.  Taste and adjust the seasoning if needed.

Serve and enjoy!

Equipment

Traeger Smoked Salmon

The links in these recipes are for products that I use and recommend.  

Traeger Smoked Salmon

A friend gave me 4 lbs of this super thick, fresh-caught King Salmon. I hot smoked it on my Traeger and it turned out awesome. This is how I did it…..

First, brine the salmon.

I used the brine and recipe from Hank Shaw’s Hunter-Angler-Gardener-Cook blog. This is an awesome blog that I highly recommend and this link will take you to a detailed how-to on smoked salmon.

I brined these pieces for 14 hours which was perfect for eating it hot. It could have gone for a full 24 hours which would have been a little better for eating it cold. Food tastes less salty when it is eaten cold. Thinner pieces of fish need only around 5-8 hours of brine time.

Form the pellicle.

This is an important step in smoking any kind of meat. Most people skip over it (and even I do sometimes) but it really does make a huge difference in the quality of the finished product. With fish this nice, I wasn’t going to take any shortcuts.

After removing the salmon from the brine, I patted it dry and left it in the refrigerator uncovered for a full day. The surface becomes tacky to the touch when the pellicle is formed. This allows more smoke flavor to stick to the meat.

Because this fish was so thick, I cut about a 1/2 inch into it to increase surface area for smoke and the glaze and to make it easier (and prettier) to cut portions of it after smoking it. If you try to cut fish after it is smoked it will have jabbed edges and the flakes will separate.

Smoke It

There are two kinds of Smoked Salmon. This is a hot-smoked salmon. The salmon is fully cooked. You can eat it hot or cold. It is delicious on its own or in salads, in pasta, and on a bagel. Then there is cold-smoked salmon. If you buy this, it comes pre-sliced in flat packages. This is a salt-cured product and has a raw-er consistency because it is raw. Cold-smoked salmon makes excellent canapés and is delicious on bagels or open-faced rye bread sandwiches.

To hot-smoke salmon: turn on the Traeger, set it on the lowest heat setting “Smoke”. Leave the lid open while it preheats and starts to smoke. After about 5 minutes, close the lid and put the fish on it. Ideally, fish would be smoked at about 140-160 F degrees. It was a hot sunny day and my Traeger bounced between 170 and 200 F. When it crept up to around 200 F I opened the lid to drop the heat down some. I timed this with glazing it.

If salmon is cooked at too high a temperature it will weep a white liquid that will become a white solid on the fish. It’s called albumin and it is essentially coagulated protein. Though harmless, it’s unattractive and makes the fish drier than it should be. You can brush a lot of it off when glazing it, but it’s better just to cook the salmon at a lower temp to begin with and keep all that moisture in the fish.

I smoked this Salmon for 2 hours, then started brushing it with maple syrup every 30 minutes for the last 1 hour to an hour and a half.

Once the fish felt firm to the touch I pulled it from the smoker and let it rest while I made the rest of dinner. I wanted the glaze to be a little bit more set which takes either higher temperatures or longer time so I popped it in the oven at 400 for just a couple of minutes right before serving it.

You could use another smoker and end up with a great result, (follow the manufacturer’s instruction for preheating) but a Traeger is what I have and I LOVE IT!

Enjoy it!

Half of this salmon I ate hot that night for dinner. I threw the other half in a cooler and took it on a 2-day road trip to Montana with the family. We mixed it with Pesto Pasta for lunch and ate it with bagels and cream cheese for breakfast. So delicious!

Beautiful Beet Soup Recipe

The links in these recipes are for products that I use and recommend.  

Pureed beet soup in a white bowl garnished with creme fraiche, smoked salmon and dill.
A beet soup that you can dress up.

This is one of the soups that we served regularly at the restaurant. Even people that don’t like beets like this soup. It is both basic and beautiful. Perfect for a midweek lunch or a special occasion. Ungarnished, this soup is vegan. I usually garnish it with creme fraiche, dill, and smoked salmon or smoked trout.

I learned a couple of tricks for making beet soup on a study abroad in Moscow when I was in college. The secret ingredients in this soup are ketchup, mustard, and vinegar. That’s right, ketchup, mustard, and vinegar. In essence, this is a pureed borsch. This soup is delicious both cold and hot. If you want, you can follow this recipe but skip the last step of pureeing for a heartier vegetarian borsch or add meat.

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Pureed beet soup in a white bowl garnished with creme fraiche, smoked salmon and dill.

Beautiful Beet Soup Recipe

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  • Author: Kara Taylor- Home Cooks Guide
  • Prep Time: 5 minutes
  • Cook Time: 45 minutes
  • Total Time: 50 minutes
  • Yield: 3 quarts 1x
  • Category: Soup
  • Method: Boiling
  • Cuisine: European
  • Diet: Vegetarian
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Description

This soup is both basic and beautiful.  You can keep it vegan by garnishing it with herbs and diced beets or dress it up with creme fraiche and smoked salmon.

Ingredients

Scale

1/4 cup oil (or butter)

1 large onion, diced

2 celery stalks, diced

2 large carrots, peeled and diced

2.5 lbs Beets, roasted and peeled, diced

2 large russet potatoes, peeled and diced

9 cups of water

1 2/3 Tablespoons salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

1/2 Tablespoon Red Wine Vinegar

3/4 Tablespoon Dijon Mustard

2 Tablespoons Ketchup

2 Bay Leaves

Dill Stems from one package/bunch (reserve the leaves for garnish)

Optional Garnishes: creme fraiche, dill, diced beets, smoked salmon or trout, chives, parsley, croutons, etc.

Instructions

Add the water, salt, pepper, vinegar, mustard, ketchup, bay leaves and dill stems.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium-low, and continue to cook on a low boil until the vegetables are tender.  Depending on how large you diced them, this could take 15-40 minutes.

Remove the bay leaves.  Puree the soup with an emersion blender or a stand blender.

Taste it and add salt and pepper if needed.

Garnish and serve.

Beet soup on tray with garnishes: dill, diced beet, smoked salmon and creme fraiche.

Beet soup with garnishes.

Equipment

Notes

If you use a standing blender for pureeing this soup, blend it up in batches and be careful not to overfill.  You don’t want a hot soup explosion.

Cost per serving: less than $2

Fresh Corn Chowder with Chorizo. Yes please!

Corn chowder in a white bowl topped with chili powder and cilantro.
A hearty and creamy soup made with fresh summer corn.

I love making silky, creamy corn chowder towards the end of summer when local corn is still in season and the nights start getting a little colder. This recipe calls for chorizo but you can easily modify it to use salmon, shrimp, chicken, bacon, a different sausage of your choice, or omit the meat for a delicious and hearty vegetarian soup.

The Secret to Making Corn Chowder…..

Or any corn soup for that matter, is to use fresh whole ears of corn. The corn kernels are first cut off the cob and set aside until the last 5 minutes of cooking. The de-kernelled ears get thrown into the pot and boiled with the soup. After 10-20 minutes of boiling, scrape the corn ears with the back-side of a knife. This extracts more corn flavor and releases starches that help thicken the soup.

Key Ingredients and Variations

As with any soup, there is so much room for variations. That is what I love about making soup. Here are some ideas and suggestions:

Corn – fresh is best. Can you make corn chowder using frozen corn, yes but you will loose some of the fresh corn flavor.

Potato – This recipe calls for one yukon gold potato. You can omit the potato and add an extra cup of corn kernals. Either fresh or frozen. Red potatoes also work well and do not need to be peeled. I generally don’t use russet potatoes in soups unless it is a pureed soup because they break down. If you do use russets, its best to peel them.

Chorizo – I used a Chorizo Verde that I made from scratch at The Farm Table. This is a sausage that is loaded with green peppers, spinach, and cilantro. It is hard to find in stores. Regular red chorizo makes a great corn chowder too, as does linguica, andouille, and bacon. You could also add or substitute the sausage for diced chicken breast, salmon, or shrimp. If you do, add those things raw with the corn kernels in the last 5-10 minutes of cooking.

Butter – Butter is used to make the roux that thickens chowder. You can sub the butter for any other cooking fat, corn oil, lard, canola, etc, but why would you want to? This is already going to be a full-fat, full-dairy dish so I encourage you to indulge. That being said, if you are using bacon and you brown the bacon in the pot and have a lot of rendered bacon fat, that is a good replacement for the butter. Half bacon fat and half butter or oil works too.

Flour – In my mind, a good roux and cream are what make a chowder a chowder. Flour is the second half of roux, after butter (or bacon fat). If you want to make a gluten-free chowder and omit the flour, then you don’t need the butter either. You can thicken with a corn starch slurry but the texture will be a little different. Or you can make your broth ahead of time, cook a peeled russet potato in it, and blend it all together and use that for a thickened broth. The result will be different, it won’t really be a “chowder” but you can still make a mean corn soup.

Cream – I am partial to cream in chowders. Growing up in New England where chowder was a staple and everyone made there own version of it, I knew a lot of home cooks that tried to make “low calorie” chowders using milk or heaven forbid, non-fat half and half (what is that?). The results just weren’t as good. Chowders are a stick-to-your-bones kind of soups. We don’t eat them every day. When we do, let’s get the full experience. That being said, if you are lactose intolerant, coconut milk would be your best bet as a substitute for this chowder.

Peppers – There’s a lot of room for playing around here. Roasted or non-roasted sweet red bell peppers, roasted poblano or pasilla peppers, canned green chilis, green bell peppers, jalapenos. This is all up to your personal taste and mood.

Tips For Thickening the Chowder:

This method makes the roux in the pot while sauteing the vegetables. The upside of this method is everything can be done at the same time in the same pot. The downside is that it is easier to scorch the bottom and you need to be attentive to the heat (medium-low) and stirring (all the way to the bottom, every 5 minutes or so).

Another method that is more foolproof but requires prep ahead of time is to add a pre-made roux to the hot soup towards the end of cooking. You can make a big batch of roux ahead of time and store it in the refrigerator indefinitely.

Happy Cooking!

I hope you enjoy this recipe and would love to see your pictures and hear about your variations. Please feel free to share on Instagram or Facebook and in the comments section on this blog. Don’t forget to the rate this recipe!

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Corn chowder in a white bowl topped with ancho chili powder and cilantro.

Chorizo Corn Chowder Recipe

5 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars 2 Stars 1 Star 5 from 5 reviews
  • Author: Kara Taylor- Home Cooks Guide
  • Prep Time: 5 minutes
  • Cook Time: 45 minutes
  • Total Time: 50 minutes
  • Yield: 2 1/2 quarts 1x
  • Category: Soup
  • Method: Boiling
  • Cuisine: American
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Description

This hearty corn chowder made with fresh corn is full of flavor!

Ingredients

Scale

1 lb chorizo

1 large onion

3 ribs of celery

1 large yukon gold potato, diced (skin on is ok)

1/4 cup butter

1/3 cup flour

5 ears of corn, de-kernelled, kernels set aside

4 cups seasoned homemade chicken or vegetable broth (or water with 1 1/2 T Better than Bouillon) 

1 cup cream

1 large pepper, roasted and peeled (for a kick and good flavor, use pasilla)

2 bay leaves

4 sprigs of fresh thyme (or 1/2 teaspoon dried)

1 teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoon cumin (optional)

salt and pepper to taste

hot sauce (optional)

cilantro (optional)

Instructions

Brown the chorizo in a pot that holds at least 4 quarts.  Unless the sausage is really lean, you don’t need to add oil yet.

When the sausage is browned, add the diced onion, celery, potato, and butter.  Reduce the heat to medium-low and sweat these vegetables until they are about halfway tender (10 minutes or so).

Add the flour and stir.  Cook for 1-2 minutes then add the cold broth, corn ears, bay, and thyme.  Bring this to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes.

Using tongs and the back of a knife, lift the ears out of the pot one at a time and scrape the remaining starchy corn off the cob back into the pot.

Cooking and scraping the ears is the secret to a great corn chowder!

When all the ears have been scraped and removed, add the corn kernels, cream and diced peppers, and cook for another 5-10 minutes or until all the vegetables are tender.

Taste and season with more salt and pepper as needed and serve with hot sauce and cilantro if desired.

Notes

Once the flour is added, it’s really important to keep the heat on medium-low while stirring and scraping the bottom frequently.  It’s easy to scorch a chowder.

Spanish Romesco Sauce, Make Your Own!

A bowl of romesco sauce and a plate of grilled vegetables and game hen.
Romesco: A classic Spanish Sauce made with roasted tomatoes, peppers and nuts.

Romesco sauce originates from the Catalonia region in Spain. It is made of roasted tomatoes, garlic, peppers, nuts, bread, oil and vinegar all ground into a paste. This is an extremely versatile sauce that is often served with raw or roasted vegetables, poultry, fish, meat, on bread or sandwiches, and as a component in soups and braised dishes. It’s earthly, savory, tangy, sweet and a little (or a lot) spicy and absolutely delicious.

I first encountered Romesco sauce on a trip to Spain with my family when I was a teen. It was served in a restaurant in Barcelona with some grilled green onions and salty, crumbly cheese and it is one of those food memories that have stayed with me all these years. This is one of my all-time favorite sauces and has found a place on every summer menu I have done at the restaurant.

There is a lot of room for variation within this sauce and I have tasted many renditions over the years. If I see romesco on a menu, I order it just to compare their version to my own.

Traditionally, romesco features tomatoes and garlic that are roasted. Roasting reduces the liquid and adds sweetness. The peppers used traditionally are dried Spanish peppers. These are hard to find in the States so I substitute with roasted red pepper and dried Ancho and Paprika powder. You may use any kind of nuts. I typically use almonds, but hazelnut and walnuts make a great romesco as well. The nuts should be toasted. So should the bread crumbs.

Romesco can be made with a mortar and pestle into a rustic and gritty sauce or blended until smooth. It can also be thinned and used as a dressing for sauteed vegetables, greens or salad.

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Romesco Sauce in a white bowl.

Spanish Romesco Sauce Recipe

5 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars 2 Stars 1 Star No reviews
  • Author: Kara Taylor- Home Cooks Guide
  • Prep Time: 10 minutes
  • Cook Time: 20 minutes
  • Total Time: 30 minutes
  • Yield: 3 cups 1x
  • Category: Sauce
  • Method: mixing
  • Cuisine: Spanish
  • Diet: Vegetarian
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Description

Romesco Sauce originates from the Catalonia region in Spain.  This versatile and delicious sauce is made with roasted tomatoes, garlic, peppers, nuts, bread, olive oil and vinegar.  Use it on everything!

Ingredients

Scale

2 bell peppers, roasted and peeled

2 medium-small tomatoes, roasted and peeled

2 garlic cloves, roasted

2 garlic cloves, raw

1 Tablespoon Ancho chili powder

2 teaspoons paprika (hot or mild)

3/4 teaspoons salt

2 Tablespoons Sherry Vinegar or Red Wine Vinegar

1/4 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1/2 cup toasted slivered almonds (or hazelnuts, pine nuts or walnuts)

1 cup dried toasted bread (about 3 slices of baguette) or 1/2 cup toasted panko

Instructions

In your food processor, pulse the garlic, almonds, and bread crumbs until very finely minced.

Add everything else except for the oil and process on high until fairly smooth.

Slowly add the olive oil while the food processor is running.

Keeps for 1 week in the refrigerator.

Yuzu Kosho Dipping Sauce and Marinade: An Easy Japanese Grill Sauce

The links in these recipes are for products that I use and recommend.  

Yuzu Kosho Dipping Sauce is so delicious and versatile. You’ll love having it on hand!

This spicy yuzu kosho dipping sauce is super easy to make. It takes only two minutes and compliments just about anything you can throw on a grill!

Yuzu Kosho is a fermented chili paste mixed with yuzu (an asian citrus fruit) zest. It comes in red and green. Red yuzu kosho has a rounder flavor, the green yuzu kosho is more vegetal and tangy. You can buy yuzu kosho at most Asian Markets or on Amazon. You can add yuzu kosho to soy sauce for a dipping sauce (as in this recipe), add it to mayonnaise, spoon it into ramen, udon or miso soup, or use it as a rub for meat or seafood.

We cook a lot of Japanese inspired food at home. It is simple to make and super healthy. With the family, it’s fun to cook a variety of skewers over some binchotan charcoal in a yakitori grill set on the picnic table outside. My young daughter will pick out what she wants to eat and grill it herself! This sauce makes for a great dipping sauce or marinade for any Japanese grill meat, seafood, or vegetables. It’s also a great dipping sauce for edamame.

If you don’t have yuzu kosho, you can substitute for any fermented chili sauce and add a squeeze of lime juice. It won’t be exactly the same but it will still be delicious!

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Yuzu Kosho Dipping Sauce with rice, scallops and vegetables on plate.

Yuzu Kosho Dipping Sauce and Marinade Recipe

5 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars 2 Stars 1 Star No reviews
  • Author: Kara Taylor- Home Cooks Guide
  • Prep Time: 2 minutes
  • Total Time: 2 minutes
  • Yield: 1 cup 1x
  • Category: sauce
  • Method: mix
  • Cuisine: Japanese
  • Diet: Gluten Free
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Description

This deliciously spicy, all-purpose Japanese dipping sauce and marinade complements grilled meat, seafood and vegetables and takes only 2 minutes to put together!  

Ingredients

Scale

2 Tablespoons Red Yuzu Kosho

2 Tablespoons Soy Sauce

2 Tablespoon Sesame Oil

4 Tablespoons Olive Oil

2 Garlic Cloves, grated with a microplane

Instructions

Place all ingredients in a mason jar with a lid and give it a good shake.  Alternatively, whisk the ingredients together in a mixing bowl.

This marinade keeps indefinitely in the refrigerator. Use it as a marinade or dipping sauce for vegetables, seafood, beef, lamb, venison, poultry or pork.

Notes

You can substitute the red yuzu kosho for another fermented chili paste and add a squeeze of lime juice for a similar effect.  The result would be a little different but still delicious.