How To Make Barbecue Pork Spareribs

I've tried lots of different marinades for my ribs, thinking I would get some great flavor into the meat before even cooking it. But with ribs it's all about the sauce. So now I go with a simple preparation to get the tenderest meat, and then finish with a good sauce either under the broiler or on the grill.

For this batch I'm using the apple cider sweet onion sauce from yesterday's post. I've heard from a friend that I re-discovered North Carolina BBQ sauce. I went looking and I can't find any of them that are mostly onion, as mine was. If anyone knows of an onion-based sauce, tell me about it in the comments below, I'm really interested.

In any case, today isn't about the sauce, it's about the technique. This will get you great ribs with a great finish every time. And in my experience any sauce cooked well is going to beat any sauce cooked badly.

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Ingredients

1 rack pork spareribs
salt and pepper
1 cup your favorite barbecue sauce

Directions

Unlike baby back ribs, spareribs will not be all the same length when you get them. They're less expensive and taste just as good, but they do take a little more prep work before you cook them. If you really want to do it yourself, here's a great tutorial on trimming spareribs. If you have a good butcher, which I do, you can ask him to trim it for you.

I didn't trim the skirt meat from the bone side. The extra pieces that look like skirt meat above are actually a couple of "western style" pork ribs. Basically they're pork chops cut in half. I got two of the boneless side for the girls. They like ribs, but they don't like eating off the bone (yet), and I hate trying to handle a knife while I'm eating ribs.

It's very difficult to do ribs on the grill unless you have a really good grill, or even better, a smoker. So the first step will be braising the ribs low and slow in the oven. Line a cooking sheet with a piece of heavy-duty aluminum foil -- the extra-wide kind -- that is about six inches longer than the slab. Give the top of the ribs a generous coating of salt and fresh ground black pepper.



You can add whatever dry rub you prefer at this point, but as I said above, for me it's all about the sauce. Put the seasoned ribs upside-down in the center of the foil.



Don't crowd or stack the meat. Every piece should be on the bottom of a pack so it will braise in the liquid that comes out of the meat.

Fold both sides of the foil up and pinch them together above the ribs. Roll the ends down tight against the bone side.



Roll the ends up and pinch tight so that steam won't escape from the package.



Make sure one end is tight, but the end is still exposed so you can open it up later.



Make sure the package is well sealed and somewhat tight, but not squeezed tight all the way around. The idea with braising is to cook the ribs about halfway submerged in liquid. As long as the foil is tight, the ribs will give up enough liquid that you won't need to add more.

Put the pan in the oven at 200° for a half-hour. By that time there will be enough liquid for the braising, and you can turn the temperature down to 160° and leave it there for at least two hours. Four or six would be better. The longer you can go, the more tender the ribs will be.

About a half-hour before you want to eat, take the pan out and open up one end of the foil. Aim the opening away from your face when you open it. (Steam. Lots of it.)



The liquid in the bottom will be about half collagen, which we will add to the barbecue sauce to make a glaze. Pour the liquid into a small pan ...



... and add the barbecue sauce.



Stir well and put over medium heat to start warming and reducing the glaze. Turn on the grill to start warming up while the sauce reduces.

When the grill is nice and hot, open up the foil.



You'll notice that the ribs are completely white and don't look at all appetizing. That's OK, we'll fix that right up.

Carefully -- remember, this has been in the oven for several hours -- place the ribs on the grill.



Add whatever other cuts you have around the ribs.



If your grill has a side burner, put on the pot with the glaze. If you don't have a burner, try to make room on the grill to put the pot or pan.



Turn the ribs over the first time as soon as you start seeing it form a crust, then brush a coat of the glaze onto the ribs.



Keep turning the ribs over every two minutes or so, adding another coat of the glaze after each turn. Keep going like this until you've used up all the glaze on the top ...



... and bottom.



You're done when there's no more sauce, and the last bit added is cooked on but not burned.



Bring the finished ribs inside and call everyone together to "Oooh" and "Aaah" over your magnificent rack.



Cut the ribs into two- or three-rib sections.



Serve with old-fashioned macaroni salad.



And that's it.

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Cleanup

You may remember back near the beginning of the macaroni salad recipe where I said that the ribs were going to take a lot of attention and you might want to stick with the store-bought mayonnaise. Well ... normally I clean as I go, and by the time the food hits the table the only thing left to clean is the serving dish. With this meal, I had everything finishing up all at the same time. I was a little behind on the cleaning.

How To Make Grandma's Apple Cider Sweet Onion Sauce

Last week my wife was making hamburgers for dinner, and grilled some onions for them. She added a little sugar, something she learned from her father. As I was eating, I thought, "This would be really good on ribs." I went looking and found a bunch of recipes for onion-based babecue sauces, but all of them had at least as much tomato paste, ketchup or chile peppers as they had onion. What you see below is the experiment that came from that.

Was the experiment a success? Let's just say it's a good thing I made so much of it. My wife is already planning on using it on chicken and pork chops in the next couple of days. It's just as good for dipping as it is for a glaze.

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Ingredients

4 large sweet onions, a little more than 4 pounds (Vidalia are good, I used Texas Sweet this time)
2 whole heads garlic
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup apple cider vinegar
2 teaspoons ground cardamom
1 teaspoon cumin
4 tablespoons rendered bacon fat (see first paragraph below)
salt and pepper to taste

Directions

One great timesaving tip when you cook from scratch is plan meals for the same week where you can prepare part of one meal at the same time you're doing another. What I did here was to make the sauce for my weekend cookout after I finished cooking the bacon for BLTs. I was going to need some of the bacon fat anyway, and doing it in this order meant I only had to clean that pan once instead of twice.

I could also prep the onions while waiting for the bacon to cook. Since I wasn't dicing the onions, I did a quicker technique. Slice off the stem and root, set the onion on one of the flat spots you just cut, and slice it in half.



This makes it really easy to peel the outer, papery layer off. Then slice from one side across until the un-cut piece is tall and skinny and wants to tip over when you try to cut it.



Lay this piece down and slice the rest of the way across.



I was able to do all four onions in about two minutes, without even doing that crazy-fast chopping all the TV chefs do to show off. (Although if anyone had been watching, you better believe I would have gone as fast as possible.)



I put the sliced onions in the large pot instead of in a bowl because I was going to be reducing the sauce in that pot after cooking the onion. No reason to dirty an extra bowl if you don't have to.

Now comes the time saver I mentioned above: the pan I just cooked the bacon in.



I just finished a pound-and-a-half, done in four batches, in the largest stainless steel pan I had. Normally I'd go with either cast iron or non-stick for bacon. But since I was going to be doing the onions, I wanted to get a bit more of the bacon flavor. Besides that, as the onions give up their moisture, it deglazes the pan making it easier to clean. Bonus.

So I set up a little workstation with the frying pan, the onions, and the rendered fat I had just poured out of the pan and filtered. Make sure there is a generous coating of melted fat still in the pan.



You want to use the largest pan you have. The onion caramelizes better when it's in contact with the surface, so work in batches and don't crowd it.



While the first batch is sautéing over medium-low heat, peel all the garlic.



Don't chop, mince or crush the garlic.

Cook the onions, stirring occasionally, until they are dark brown and very soft. Remove the onions, and put the whole garlic cloves in the pan along with another tablespoon of bacon fat. Cook the garlic, shaking the pan frequently, until it is well browned and soft to the touch.



Add the next batch of onion in with the garlic and cook as before, stirring occasionally until the onion is dark brown and very soft.



At this point the onion should already be very sweet. I had my wife taste it and she stood there eating it until I made her stop so I'd have some left for the weekend. She said it was like candy.

Transfer all the onions and garlic to a heavy-bottomed pot.



Since this will be simmering for a while you don't want the hot spots you get with thin pans, or the onion will burn.

Deglaze the pan with the cider vinegar and add that to the onions.

Using a stick blender, process the onion directly in the pot. If you don't have a stick blender, you'll need to do this step in a food processor before returning it to the pot.



You're done when it's a smooth, even consistency.



It will look almost like applesauce and, thanks to the cider vinegar, it will even taste surprisingly like applesauce.

Add the cardamom and cumin ...



... and the brown sugar ...



... and process again until the seasonings are mixed in well. Check the flavor and add salt and pepper as needed. Making this for myself, I'd go very heavy on the black pepper. Since this was going to be for the whole family I left it more mild, maybe only one or two teaspoons. Since I had used a pan that still had the bacon drippings, I only needed about a teaspoon of salt.

Now cover the pot with either a vented lid, or with the lid partially open, over very low heat. The bubbles from this will make a huge mess if you don't keep something over the pot, but you want the steam to escape. Simmer until the sauce has reduced and thickened. How thick, exactly? Enough to stick to ribs when you put them on the grill. Shoot for the same consistency as whatever store-bough barbecue sauce you usually like.



Compare this to the photo up top where I had just sliced the onions, and you can see how much it cooked down. Transfer the sauce to a sealed container and store in the refrigerator until you use it.

And that's it.

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NOTE: This sauce was made to go on grilled ribs. Subscribe to my feed with the link in the column to the right to see the recipe for that as soon as it comes out. You'll see it in time to do the cider sweet onion glazed ribs -- with the old-fashioned macaroni salad -- this weekend.

How To Make Old-Fashioned Macaroni Salad

I've never liked the pre-made macaroni salad you get at the grocery store, with over-cooked noodles swimming in in runny, watery dressing. This version comes out nearly dry, the pasta soaking up most of the dressing, and with a bit of crunch from the veggies. You can easily substitute cooked, cubed potatoes for the macaroni and have a really good potato salad.

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Ingredients

one pound elbow macaroni
1/2 sweet onion
two stalks celery, green part only
one cup mayonnaise
three tablespoons white vinegar
one teaspoon celery seed
4-6 large hard-boiled eggs (see note on presentation)

Directions

Boil the eggs and cook the pasta the way you normally do. When the pasta is done and you have drained it in a collander, mix it under cold running water until it is completely cool. If you use your hand to mix it, you'll be able to tell when it's cooled down.

While the pasta is cooking, dice the onion and celery according to the directions for making mirepoix.



I've made this salad a hundred times using store-bought mayonnaise, so that's what I showed in the ingredients. If you're serving this with a main dish that's going to take a lot of attention, like the ribs I served them with, you might want to save yourself the trouble of making the mayo. (Subscribe to my RSS feed in the column to the right to get the recipe for the ribs and home-made cider onion sauce as soon as I finish writing it up.)

Since you already have the eggs and vinegar out, though, you'll never have a better time to give it a try. Just use:

1 extra large egg
1-1/2 teaspoons white vinegar
1 teaspoon mustard powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
3/4 cup olive pomace oil

Put the ingredients in a tall, narrow cup or jar in the order listed, lower a stick blender in, turn it on and slowly pull it up to the top. Instant mayonnaise. Pour it into the macaroni.



Or add one cup of prepared mayonnaise.

Add the onion, celery, vinegar and celery seed and mix well. Scoop down along the side using a silicone or rubber spatula, and lift from the center.



Here's a quick clip showing what I'm talking about.



Dice four of the eggs according to the directions for how to dice hard boiled eggs. It's easiest do the third slice directly over the bowl.



Mix again, gently so you don't mash up the egg. You want both the white and yellow bits to stay whole.



And that's it.

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Presentation

If you are taking this to a potluck, the traditional presentation is to slice a couple more eggs and place the rings on top, the way I did in potato salad with bacon and egg.

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A note about personal taste

I brought some of this over to my in-laws, and my father-in-law noted how much drier it was than what he is used to. There's two parts to this. First, yes it is drier. That's how I like it. Second, the macaroni will soak up a lot of the mayonnaise overnight. I usually add more when I'm having leftovers.

Chicken Nachos with Mango Salsa

I'm pretty sure my grandmother never ate nachos, much less made them. And I'd be willing to bet she never saw a whole mango. But this recipe hits all the important points: it's all from scratch, with fresh ingredients, and it tastes at least as good as it looks.

As I said in the mango salsa recipe, this dish was inspired by the Leftover Queen's Royal Foodie Joust for May 2008. Next time I make it, it'll just be because it's so darn good.

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Ingredients

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
2 cups mango salsa
1/4 pound extra sharp cheddar cheese
tortilla chips
red onion (optional, whatever is left over after making the salsa)
1 tablespoon rendered bacon fat or olive oil

Directions

Slice the chicken breasts into thin strips across the grain. If you cut in the same direction as the fibers in the meat, it will get tough when you cook it.



If the breasts were especially thick, cut the slices in half lengthwise. You want the pieces to be bite-sized.



Combine the chicken with all the dry ingredients ...



... and toss with tongs to combine.



Let the chicken rest for a few minutes while you heat a frying pan. The salt will draw out some moisture and dissolve the sugar, turning it into a light sauce. Melt the bacon fat in the frying pan and add the chicken.



Add the onion, if you are using any ...



... and toss lightly to coat with the fat.



Keep stirring as you cook the chicken so the sugar doesn't burn. It's done when the sugar starts to caramelize and the chicken is cooked all the way through.



Fill a plate or shallow bowl with tortilla chips. Have the salsa and shredded cheese ready to assemble each plate.



Top the chips with half the cheese. One new thing I tried, which worked out really well, was to not melt the cheese.



Top the cheese with half the chicken.



(Notice that I'm using different tongs here than the ones I used to handle the raw chicken. People have been getting the point that you can't use the same plate to hold cooked meat that you used for the raw meat. This is true for the rest of the tools, too.)

The heat from the chicken will partially melt the cheese. The part-melted/part-unmelted cheese gave a great contrast of textures.

Top the chicken with some salsa.



Serve immediately, while the chicken is still hot and the salsa is still cool.



And that's it.

Bonus:

This mango salsa goes great with black cherry soda, especially one made with real sugar.

How To Make Mango Salsa

Unless you live in the southwestern U.S. -- or even farther south, but for an English-language blog "southwestern U.S." is a pretty safe bet -- then it's unlikely your grandmother ever made mango salsa.

For one thing, salsa didn't really take off in the U.S. until the 1970s. For another, annual mango consumption in the U.S. was 0.05 pounds per person in 1970 vs. 2.01 pounds per person in 2004. So it's statistically unlikely that your grandmother ever made mango salsa.

But to me "cooking like your grandmother" has never been about the specific recipes. Oh sure, there are a few classics that I include on general principle. (Pot roast for example.) It's really about cooking from scratch, with fresh ingredients that you got at the market that day. And it's not about fussy presentation, where you're more worried about how it's going to look than how it's going to taste.

And, in the interest of full disclosure, the reason I did this specific recipe was for the Leftover Queen's Royal Foodie Joust for May 2008. The full entry includes the chicken nachos, which will be coming up shortly. (Subscribe using the link to the right to get an update with the finished product.)

(Update:The chicken nachos are done.)

Now on with the show.

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Ingredients

2 cups diced mango (about two whole mangoes)
2 Roma tomatoes, seeded and diced
1/2 cup diced red onion (1 small or half a large one)
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon grated lime peel
1/4 cup lime juice
2 tablespoons fresh cilantro
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
[Adapted from Epicurean]

Directions

If you don't have a lemon zester, you can use the small holes on a cheese grater to grate the lime peel.



Don't go too deep into the white part of the peel. Just get the green part from the outside.



Roll the lime around on the counter, or between your hands, to break up the pulp before cutting into it. Once you don't feel any solid pulp inside, make a small cut near one end and squeeze all the juice out.



Mince the garlic.



Add the garlic, salt, cumin and cardamom to the lime ...



... and whisk them together.

Remove the cilantro leaves from the stems ...



... and chop the leaves roughly.



Add the cilantro to the lime mixture and mix briefly.

Dice the mango.



Plan on getting a lot of juice on your hands, so use a knife with a non-slip handle if you have it. Otherwise your hands will be too slippery to take pictures of what you're doing. (Which should only cause problems if you're trying to write it up for a blog post like this one. :-/ )



Since I wasn't able to get the pictures, I'll refer you to this great page on three ways to cut mangoes (and one way to serve it without cutting it up).

Dice the onion.



Quarter the tomatoes and cut out the seeds and stem.



For a tomato sauce, you'd keep the seeds and process it all together. In a salsa, you just want the meaty part.



Discard the seeds, and dice the flesh.



Combine the mango, tomato and onion. This is about one part mango, one part tomato, and slightly less than one part red onion.



Add the lime dressing and cilantro and mix well.

Remember the brown sugar you were supposed to add to the dressing and add it. (Oops. Should have done this ten pictures back.)



Toss lightly together and allow flavors to blend in the refrigerator for an hour or two before serving.



And that's it.

[Note: I have no idea how long this will keep in the refrigerator. I've never had a batch last longer than two days before I ate it all.]

How To Make Onion Rings From Scratch

This version has a very simple, very light tempura style batter. It's about the simplest batter possible, and I can guarantee that if you cook at all, you've already got everything you need in the cupboard.

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Ingredients

1 large onion per 2 servings
1 cup flour
1 large egg
1 cup ice water
salt
pepper

Directions

While preparing the onions and batter, set your cooking fat on medium heat to warm up. I prefer beef tallow, but would use lard or olive pomace oil in a pinch. Vegetable oil -- corn, soybean, etc. -- has too low a smokepoint and turns rancid too easily. Plus it's not reusable.



While that's heating up, peel the onion (or onions) and slice into wide rings.



The best onions to use are very large diameter and wider than they are tall. This gives you more large rings than small ones.

When you get to the end with the root, stick a paring knife in at an angle toward the center ...



... and spin it around until you get the whole root out.



Pop out the center pieces of each slice that are either not round, or too small to make good onion rings.



Some onions hold on really strong between the layers. If you have one of these, you need to break the layers loose before trying to separate the rings or they'll all break. Place the ring between your palms, squeeze in enough to make it a little bit oval, and roll it back and forth a few times.



Once it's loosened up, pop the rings apart, starting from the inside.



Once it's all separated, one onion makes a surprisingly large pile of rings. I completely underestimated the size of the bowl I'd need to hold it all.



Now mix up the batter -- that's the flour, egg and water -- according to the directions in the flounder tempura posting, and salt and pepper. Set your onions and batter up next to the hot fat.



Using metal or high-temperature plastic tongs, dip the rings one at a time into the batter. Make sure each ring is covered all the way around. This batter is very thin, so let the batter drip off for a second before putting it in the fat.



Don't crowd the pan. Work in batches or they'll all stick together.

TIP: Use two sets of tongs for this, one to dip the rings and put them in the fat, and the other to turn them over and take them out. You'll keep the batter cleaner and you won't get raw batter back onto cooked rings.

Flip the rings over once when they start to show a golden color just above the level of the fat. The second side will be done a little quicker. Don't set a timer and walk away, this is not an exact process. You need to check frequently so you don't burn them.



Serve with the spicy dipping sauce and the buttermilk ranch dressing.

And that's it.

How To Cook With Beef Tallow

If you're reading this, you've probably already decided that cooking with animal fat is not the worst thing you can do. So I won't bother going into an explanation of how trans fat from hydrogenated vegetable oil is the real killer. But I will point out that there are several people who will explain it all in great detail.

So, now you're interested in how to do it. If you don't already have some frier-ready tallow, rendering your own is cheap and (fairly) easy.

Rendering suet into tallow

Start with three pounds of suet. You can get it from your local butcher. They probably won't have it at the grocery store.



You would think from looking at it that this would be a flabby, sticky, greasy, nasty mess. It's actually very dry, stiff and waxy. You don't want to handle it too much or it can start to melt. Keep it in the fridge until you're ready to start cutting and it should be fine.

Dice everything into pieces about a half-inch square and put it all in a deep pan.



The one in the pictures is an 11-inch pan. Three pounds of suet filled this pan about two inches deep.

Fill the pan with enough water to just barely cover all the suet.



If you compare the photo above to the previous one you might think it looks much more than "barely covered". You would be right. Suet floats. Fill slowly and pay attention.

Put over high heat until the water starts boiling, then turn down to medium. Cook until the water is boiled away then turn heat to low. By this point you should have lumps of mostly-rendered suet floating in hot liquid fat.

Set a second large pan or pot next to the first, and place a colander in it. Place a paper towel in the bottom of the colander, or line it with cheesecloth. Using a slotted spoon, scoop the floating suet out and into a potato ricer.



If you haven't seen one of these before, it's just like a garlic press but much larger. It will take quite a few loads to get everything through the ricer. Squeeze the suet out into the colander, then scrape the remains out of the ricer, also into the colander.

Once you've processed all the chunks through the ricer, press the fat through the colander with the back of a spoon. Remove the paper towel and all the scraps left in it and dispose of them. Put a clean paper towel in the colander and pour the fat from the first pan through it.

NOTE: You'll be working with extremely hot fat, which can cause serious burns. Don't try to do anything else at the same time ... like take pictures. Yep, I took a break from shooting pictures. I didn't want a repeat of the tempura flounder incident. Next time I do suet I'll get help with the camera work.

Re-using tallow

If you're re-using tallow, you should have stored it in a wide-mouth container, not something with a narrow opening. Otherwise you'll have to melt it in the container to get it out. As you can see in the next photo, I kept mine in two small bowls.



A half-minute in the microwave softened up the edge of the tallow just enough to slip out of the bowls.

With the frying pan over medium heat, the tallow started melting down within a minute or two.

Cooking with tallow

Tallow has a smoke point of about 420°. About the only cooking fat you're likely to find at your local grocery store with a higher smoke point is pure olive oil -- not extra virgin -- or olive pomace oil. But olive oil is about twice as susceptible to rancidity, so you can't re-use it the way you can with tallow.

Try to stay well below the smoke point. About 350° if you want to put a thermometer in it. Without the thermometer, you'll know you're getting too hot when it starts to look like water boiling. You want it more like this ...



... than like this.



Set up the stovetop so that you don't have to reach across the hot oil for anything.



You don't want to be reaching across the pan when the tempura pops.



If you're using a batter, like in the onion ring photo above, bits of it will keep coming loose from the food. Try to keep fishing them out as you go. If you leave bits of batter in until they burn, they can cause the entire batch of oil to go rancid.

Filtering and storing

When you're done frying, you need to filter the oil before storing it. If you've cooked something with a flavorful coating, put a slice of potato in the oil for about five minutes after you take it off the heat. The potato will absorb most of the flavor out of the oil.

While the oil is still hot, set a metal colander over the bowl you'll be storing in.



There are probably some plastic colanders that would stand up to this, but I'm not going to try it.

I have the colander at an angle so I can get the edge of the pan inside when I pour. The paper towel is a simple filter to catch all the bits of batter that were too small to pick out while you were cooking.

Carefully pour all the oil through the paper towel.



Using a silicone or wooden spatula, scrape as much of the oil out of the pan as possible. Anything you leave behind will harden like candle wax and be harder to clean. Scrape quickly, as the tallow in the paper towel will start to harden almost immediately.

Remove the colander and let it drip into the bowl ...



... then lift the paper towel out by the corners and let that drip into the bowl also.



Let the tallow cool until it is hard and white, cover tightly with plastic wrap or a tight-fitting lid, and store in a cool dark place until the next time you need it.

How To Make Onion Ring Dipping Sauce

I won't say this is exactly like the sauce at either Outback Steakhouse or Burger King. Why would I, they're both chain restaurants? That's not setting the bar very high. This is better than either of those, and made with better ingredients. (Funny how those two things always seem to show up together.)

This is based on a Russian dressing recipe. In fact it's exactly the Russian dressing recipe, except with added horseradish. You can also check out the recipe for onion rings. The recipes for the chili sauce and Dijon mustard will be coming soon.

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Ingredients

3/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 egg yolk
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon chili sauce
1 tablespoon prepared horseradish
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 ounce onion, diced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper

Directions

This one's going to be really easy. Separate the egg and add the yolk and vinegar to a tall, narrow container. The skinniest one your immersion blender will fit into. (Hopefully yours came with a cup, like mine did.) Blend it until it's smooth. Add the oil and blend again.



Depending on the oil you used, and the speed of your blender, this might turn into mayonnaise. I've seen plenty of videos of people doing mayo exactly this way, but mine always stays a bit too thin to be a proper mayo. I suspect it's because I'm using extra virgin olive oil, but I don't know for sure. If you've got any tips on this one, please share in the comments.

Anyway, whether you've got mayo or still just a thin sauce, add all the rest of the ingredients and process again until smooth.



And that's it.

How To Make Pizza Sauce From Scratch

Part of cooking from scratch is knowing just how "from scratch" it needs to be to feel good about what you're making. The other part is knowing where to buy the parts you're not going to make for yourself. This time it was getting a pizza crust from Alesci's and doing the sauce from scratch.

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Ingredients

28 ounces (one large can) crushed tomatoes
1 cup diced onion
2 tablespoons basil pesto
2 tablespoons dried oregano (3 tablespoons fresh)
1 clove garlic (two if they're small)
2 teaspoons kosher salt

Directions

Start out by dicing the onion ...



... and mincing the garlic.



Heat some fat in a pan over medium heat -- butter, olive oil, or like I did, rendered bacon fat.



Sauté the onion until it just starts to turn clear ...



... then add the garlic and keep stirring until the garlic starts to get darker, but not brown.



Add the tomatoes ...



... and the pesto and oregano.



Simmer over medium heat for about 15 minutes, stirring frequently, until the sauce is warmed through.



Remove the pan from heat and blend with an immersion blender (AKA stick blender) until the sauce is smooth.



If you used a large pot, like I did, you'll need to tip it up to keep the end of the blender submerged. Otherwise you'll spray tomato sauce all over the stove ... the wall next to the stove ... the front of your shirt ... If you've read any of my other posts there's a good chance you've seen the phrase, "Don't ask how I know this."

Once it's smooth, put one large ladle full on the crust ...



... and have your daughters spread it around.



Wait, hold on, back up. Doesn't that title up top say "How To Make Pizza Sauce From Scratch"? And I don't see any "pizza crust" in the ingredients list. What's up with that?

Yeah, well, a picture of a bowl of tomato sauce would be pretty boring. So I helped the girls make the pizza and included the rest of the steps here.

So ... have the girls spread about a half-pound of shredded mozzarella and provolone cheese (Alesci's sells a 50/50 mix).



Make sure the cheese goes right up to the edge, but not over. You don't want it melting and dripping over into the inside of the oven.



Have the girls add whatever toppings they want. In this case, pepperoni on half, the other half plain cheese.



Think about how you're going to cut it -- six cut, eight cut, etc. -- and make sure the toppings are evenly distributed.



Bake at 450° for 15-20 minutes, until the cheese is bubbling and starting to get just a little brown around the edges.



And that's it.

Silly chain-mail memes and you

This one has nothing to do with food. I just got tagged by Ryan of Ryan's Recipe Blog for one of those silly chain-mail type memes, but I liked this one so I'm doing it.

Rules:
1. Write your own six-word memoir.
2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like.
3. Link to the person who tagged you in your post.
4. Tag five or six (choice is yours) more blogs with links.
5. Remember to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play.

My memoir:

Drew is starting to get it.

People getting tagged:

• Rachel at Mommytalk


• Pat at Mille Fiori Favoriti


• Stephanie from Life At Our House


• Jennifer from From The Land Of Milk And Honey


• Judith from Think On It! Philosophy from an Umbrian farm

Tuna Puffs

This is the kind of dish you might be embarrassed to serve to company. You could probably fancy it up by using some kind of artisan bread, and going with seared ahi or tuna steaks or something with better foodie cred than canned tuna. But when you're not worried about impressing anyone, this is comfort food that will take you straight back to your childhood.

And in honor of childhood, this recpie is being submitted for the Food for Plastic Challenge III. Tupperware will be donating some of the sales to the Boys & Girls Clubs. Head on over and vote for this if you like it.

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Ingredients

2 small cans tuna (6 ounces each)
4 hamburger buns
2 large eggs
1/2 cup mayonnaise (don't measure this, see below)
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

Directions

Before starting, turn the oven on to 450°, and set the rack at least 9-12 inches from the top. Open the tuna and drain well.

Set the tuna aside and separate the two eggs. No, this does not mean put one egg on the left side of the table and the other egg on the right side of the table. (Smart alec.) It means separate the white from the yolk.

There are lots of tools that are supposed to help you with this, like this one:



You're supposed to crack the egg into the separator, and the white will drain out through the hole while the yolk stays behind. But I can't figure out which hand to hold it with while I'm using both of mine to crack the eggs. I think you're supposed to crack the eggs one at a time into a cup, then pour it into the separator thing. But if you do that, you end up with an extra cup -- and the separator -- to wash when you're done.

That's why I do it the way I learned growing up. Crack the egg in half, then pour the yolk back and forth between the two halves, letting the white run over the edge.



Do this for both eggs and you should have about a quarter-cup of egg whites and two yolks.



If you want to really go all out, take the two yolks and make your own mayonnaise. If not, either give the yolks to your dog or dump them down the drain. Eggs are about a dollar a dozen, you can afford to dump out two yolks.

Mix as much mayonnaise as you like into the drained tuna. Some people like it nearly dry, some like it soupy. If you've never made tuna fish and you're not sure exactly how much mayo you need for two cans, just mix in one spoonful at a time until it looks right. Although if you've really never even made tuna fish, I don't know that you should be playing with the oven.

Now we're going to turn the whites into a meringue. That just means whip it until it gets light and fluffy. Put the whites in a large bowl and go at it with a beater.



If you're going fast enough, you should see them starting to foam up almost immediately.



Keep going until you have a bowl full of white fluff.



Now you're ready for assembly. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. (It doesn't make a difference to the food, it just makes cleanup easier.) Lay out the hamburger buns, and divide the tuna evenly among them.



Top each one with a spoonful of the whipped egg.



Then a little of the mozzarella.



Now switch the oven to the broiler setting and put the pan in. Don't worry if it hasn't finished pre-heating yet, you just want it to not be cold when you start cooking. Don't walk away. The cheese will start to bubble in less than a minute. You'll get a really good idea of where the hot spots are in your burners by looking at the tops of the tuna puffs when you pull them out.



If you want them to be evenly finished, swap them around on the pan to put the less-finished ones under the hotspots. As long as you don't have any completely raw, though, you can plate them up with a little variety in done-ness. Let the kids pick which ones they think are "better" and you take the rest. Really, though, they'll all be good.