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Soups & Stews

Slow-Cooker Red Beans and Rice

Posted Mon, 05/11/2009 - 12:12pm by Corey


Red Beans and Rice

We have long heard stories of traditional New Orlean’s red beans and rice but the closest that either of us had ever come to trying the dish was a box of Zataran’s rice. This particular recipe arrived at our door in the latest issue of Cook’s Country and was a perfect opportunity for us to try red beans and rice because it was a relatively hands-off crock-pot version of the dish. Cooking on low, this dish took 4 hours in the crock-pot to fully cook, which means it definitely called for the time available to us on the weekend. We served our red beans over jasmine rice (our favorite long grain white variety) and enjoyed the dish for two dinners and many lunches. Our only complaint for this simple recipe is that it was not nearly as spicy as we had expected, next time we may incorporate a little cayenne red pepper to kick up the heat.

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French Onion Bread Soup

Posted Mon, 05/04/2009 - 12:24pm by Corey

French Onion Bread Soup

Rachel Ray is quite famous for making twists on classic dishes, and this soup is a perfect example of that theme. A basic (and somewhat uninspired) French Onion Soup is dressed up here with cubes of bread that are dropped into the soup, a change from the classic crouton on the top of the bowl. These cubes are then topped with an outstandingly large amount of cheese and are crisped up in the oven as you would do with a traditional recipe. The result is a bready soup, entirely composed of the hydrated bread that commonly sits on the surface of French bread soup. Although this is idea is appealing in theory, we found that eating a whole bowl of the soup was almost impossible and we were left longing for the soup in the French Onion soup. Perhaps some classics just should not be modified.

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Pennsylvania Dutch Corn and Chicken Soup

Posted Mon, 03/30/2009 - 12:21pm by Leslie

Pennylvania Dutch Corn and Chicken Soup

This soup, like many other 30 minute soups, capitalizes nicely upon the inherently creamy nature of corn to provide a base from which to build a flavorful dish in a quick fashion. By cooking the corn with chicken stock and running it through the blender once the flavors have had time to meld, we were left with a creamy and filling soup. Paired with drop biscuits, this soup made for a nice, quick, dinner, suitable for a weekend or weeknight meal.

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Easier Chicken and Dumplings

Posted Wed, 03/25/2009 - 8:30am by Corey


Easier Chicken and Dumplings
Cook’s Illustrated often publishes specialty compilation magazine’s featuring what they view as the best, most successful, recipes from their myriad of publications. We found this recipe for Chicken and Dumplings in a recent compilation highlighting soups and stews. One of the challenges of cooking a good stew is simply finding the time to execute the recipe properly; many of us live busy lives and taking all day to cook a stew is often just not possible. One thing that drew us to this particular recipe was the relatively short duration of cooking that it required. Do not get us wrong, we did invest an hour into the process, but that paled in comparison to other recipes that require all day cooking. Like other Cook’s Illustrated recipes, there were many steps to the process of making this stew, but also like other recipes from this outlet, the results were outstanding! The gravy was velvety smooth and had the perfect level of viscosity to stand up against the dumplings and tender chicken (which surprisingly came from chicken breasts). We enjoyed this stew so much that we both walked away with burnt mouths from attempting to eat it before it had cooled. We will definitely be making this recipe again.

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Eating Down the Fridge Chili

Posted Tue, 03/10/2009 - 1:12pm by Corey

 Empty the Fridge Chili

This is the first dish that we made as part of the Eating Down the Fridge Challenge. This dish is really easy to make, and will feed a small army.  Chili is one of the dishes that you really can't go wrong with, no matter what you put in the recipe. Keep in mind the key ingredients of cumin (that gives it's chili smell and flavor) and chili powder. If you are finding that you chili needs more of a kick, you could always had a jalapeno or more hot sauce. When I'm working with chili, I like to keep it a bit mild, and kick up the heat as I go along. It's a lot easier to go hotter than it is to bring it back to palatable.

You will notice that we had cornbread too. We had a mix in the pantry, to spice it up a bit, we added some of the frozen corn to the batter. Most times when we have chili I like to top it with cheese, but we didn't have any to use for this recipe, so sour cream did the trick.

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