We tried to find some out-of-the-ordinary recipes for our leftover turkey this year. This soup recipe is amazing and definitely different. It’s very similar to a chicken tortilla soup — hearty with tomato and complex flavors, but with diced up turkey instead of chicken. Really good, and something new to try if you get tired of turkey sandwiches. Since we were only cooking for the two of us, we prepared a half recipe. Continue reading “Tex-Mex Turkey Soup (with leftover turkey)”
Category: Main Ingredient
Baked Chicken Chiles Relleno (with leftover chicken)
We have a little garden at home and this is our second season of attempting to grow some of our own food. Certain “crops” fared better than others, especially this summer when it was so hot. We ended up with quite a few poblano peppers and have been looking for recipes to use them. One of our favorite Tex-Mex places has a really good baked chicken chile relleno, so we decided to attempt to recreate it, using our very own homegrown peppers. We also thought it would be a good use of leftover chicken. Continue reading “Baked Chicken Chiles Relleno (with leftover chicken)”
Simple Roasted Chicken
We don’t roast chicken often enough. It’s a really easy and inexpensive way to get several meals out of one protein. We have tried roasted chicken lots of different ways, but recently found the most simple way yet, that was also the most delicious we have tried so far. Rather than stuffing the cavity with anything, applying a rub to the outer skin, or adding compound butter under the skin (all methods we have tried in the past), we just trussed the chicken, generously seasoned it with dried thyme, salt & pepper and roasted it in a cast-iron skillet in the oven. Seriously simple, and super delicious. Continue reading “Simple Roasted Chicken”
Celery Salad
We recently tried a new side dish from Ina Garten’s latest cookbook “How Easy is That?” We have to say, it was pretty darn easy. And delicious. So good, in fact, that we are going to serve it at Thanksgiving this year. Celery salad is not something we ever would have thought to make, but as Ina recognizes, celery can serve as a starring role and should not always be relegated to tuna salad support. This is definitely a side dish we will keep in the rotation. Continue reading “Celery Salad”
Moo Shoo Pork (with leftover pork)
The other night, Dan grilled 2 GIANT pork chops, and we needed a good recipe for the leftovers. We consulted one of our most-used cookbooks for week-night cooking, “The Best 30 Minute Recipe,” and found a great one. I’ve never tried Moo Shoo Pork from a Chinese restaurant, so I wasn’t quite sure how it would turn out. But the ingredients looked good and we liked that it seemed really easy, so we decided to give it a shot. Plus the name sounds funny.
{Spooky} Shrimp and Sausage Gumbo
For Halloween this year, we wanted to make something that could be cooked ahead of time and would be easy to eat in between answering the door to hand out candy. We ultimately decided to make gumbo, which Dan hadn’t made in quite a while (and we’ll be honest, the last batch wasn’t our favorite). Maybe it was a better recipe, or more cooking experience between this night and the prior gumbo, but our Spooky Shrimp and Sausage Gumbo was delicious! So good that we’re considering having this gumbo be our new Halloween tradition. Continue reading “{Spooky} Shrimp and Sausage Gumbo”
Beer Brined Pork Chops
Brining pork is a good way to take a lean (and more healthy) cut of meat and cook it such that it stays juicy and delicious. Using beer in the brine adds a subtle layer of flavor — Dan says it’s a hoppy flavor, but his palate is way more sophisticated than mine. Beer-brining is a good way to cook pork that you may want to use later in the week in a different dish. It’s flavorful, without being tied to any particular flavor profile (e.g., Asian, BBQ, etc.) Continue reading “Beer Brined Pork Chops”
Sauteed Okra
Although summer is the peak season for okra, it is still available in grocery stores here in Texas, so we thought we’d share a really, really quick, easy and delicious recipe for sauteed okra. Until we found this recipe, okra was a vegetable that never made it into our rotation (I’m not a big fan of vegetables, so our rotation typically consists of veggies that Dan cooks in such a way that they don’t taste like vegetables). This recipe earned okra a spot among our usual broccolini, green beans, zucchini, and asparagus side dish favorites. Continue reading “Sauteed Okra”
Stuffed Shells with Italian Sausage Tomato Sauce
Today we present two recipes in one (long) post, mostly because our last post was pretty much devoid of any culinary content. (This is a food blog, after all, folks!) First, we made a tomato sauce with spicy Italian sausage, and in the past we’ve served this meaty sauce over simple pasta. On this night, however, we decided to make some stuffed shells — a favorite Italian meal from when I was growing up. Our recipe made enough for leftovers this week, plus additional shells for the freezer for yet another meal later. Continue reading “Stuffed Shells with Italian Sausage Tomato Sauce”
Spicy Turkey Paella (with leftover turkey)
With the holidays rapidly approaching, we’ve been looking for recipes incorporating leftover turkey. We wanted to try something different than the usual leftover turkey dishes, like pot pie and turkey soup (although they are delicious!). The Epicurious website came through for us yet again — with the recipe for Spicy Turkey Paella. We made just a few small changes and the resulting dish was really good. We look forward to making it again with our turkey from Thanksgiving.
Continue reading “Spicy Turkey Paella (with leftover turkey)”