For those who don't know, pasties are basically single-serving pies with a complete meal inside. They were popular with miners in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan as well as on the Iron Range in Minnesota because packed in a lunch-tin, they would still be warmish after a morning's worth of work. There are ton of pasty recipes on the web. Here’s mine. Makes a whole bunch.
Ingredients
5 pounds beef chuck or “stew meat”
4 pounds red or gold potatoes
2 pounds carrots
2 medium yellow onions
1 pound turnips
1 pound parsnips
1 pound corn and peas mix
eightteen 9 inch pie crusts (they’re usually 2 per package)
3 tbsp parsley
salt and pepper to season
Instructions
Bring the pie crusts to room temp
Grind the meat as coarsely as you can, or cut it into ¼ inch cubes
Cut all the veggies into ¼ inch cubes
Mix everything together in the biggest bowl you have
Use a 1-cup glass (i.e. liquid) measuring cup to scoop up the mixed filling and place onto one half of a pie crust
Place about 1 pat of butter on top of the filling
Fold over the crust and crimp
Score top of each pasty a couple times
Place at least ½ inch apart on a baking sheet
Bake at 350°F for 40 minutes
Let cool, covered with a towel, for at least ½ hour before serving
Optionally serve with ketchup or gravy.
Preparation time
a hour or two, depending on how many breaks you take
Cooking time
40 minutes
Feeds
18+
This is a huge batch, but I liked the flavor.
Reheating directions for frozen pasties: Pre-heat oven to 500°F and put pasty in on a pie-plate or cookie-sheet. Immediately turn the temperature down to 350°F. Let heat for 40-60 minutes, until warm through. They definitely want ketchup or gravy when re-heated.
Not exactly authentic, but it seems about right to me. And it fits the spirit of “a mess of leftovers cooked up together” that happens in so much of my cooking.
Ingredients
3 chicken thighs or two thighs and two legs (about a pound)
2 strips bacon
12 baby carrots, sliced thinly
2 celery stalks, sliced thinly
1 medium yellow onion, sliced thinly
1 lb andouille sausage, cut into ½ inch slices
2 yellow wax peppers, and about a half-dozen tabasco or similar peppers, chopped
14 oz. can stewed tomatos, chopped coarsely (just run a knife through ’em a couple times while they’re still in the can)
1 quart chicken stock
2 boxes Zatarain’s jambalaya rice & spice
1 lb frozen, pre-cooked, pre-peeled, no tails shrimp
½ tbsp liquid smoke
salt to taste (took about 1 tsp in my case)
Instructions
Broil the chicken – you’re aiming for about 30 minutes, and just want to get it done – crispy skin is fine.
Start bacon frying.
Slice the carrots into thin coins (penny-sized), and as soon as there’s visible grease in the pan, add the carrots and cover the pan.
Start slicing the celery (about the same thickness as the carrots), and when it’s sliced, add it to the pan, giving everything a flip to mix, and re-cover.
Start slicing the onion. When it’s sliced, into the pan, toss, and continue to fry, covered, until the onions go translucent. Heck, you can even caramelize them a bit.
Set aside vegetables, leaving grease in frying pan.
Slice 1lb andouille sausage into slices smaller than ½ inch (but not too much smaller).
Fry andouille in the frying pan, then set aside, keeping the grease in the pan.
Chop peppers, and fry briefly in the andouille grease (just enough to soften them up) – add to the other vegetables.
Add tomatoes and juice to the rest of the veggies.
Pull the chicken out of the broiler and break into bite-sized pieces.
If you’re not cooking immediately, you can pack things up in quart containers – one of chicken and sausage, and one of veggies (for example if you’re taking it to a pot-luck). Throw the containers in the fridge until you’re ready to go.
When you’re ready to go, throw everything but the shrimp into a 5qt slow-cooker (crock-pot), meat first, then rice, then veggies, and finally the chicken stock.
Set it on low for most of a day, or high for a couple hours.
Check on it periodically, give it a stir, and add a little water if it looks too dry.
Add the shrimp when there’s about 15 minutes to go.
Put some Hank Williams on the stereo, or get out the fiddle and accordion.
Serve with french bread.
Enjoy!
Preparation time
30 minutes
Cooking time
2 hours in the slow-cooker
Feeds
a whole mess of folks (it’s over a dozen one-cup servings)
Served for the first time at the 2005 holiday pot-luck at work. People seemed to enjoy it, eating about a gallon of it, and leaving me with less than a quart to bring home for a future dinner.
I also preserved my peppers in sherry this year, so there was about a half-cup of sherry got into the pan when I was frying the peppers. It seemed like a good addition.
So named both because it’s one of the dishes I routinely use for pot-lucks, and also because the ingredients can vary based on what I happen to have on hand at the moment. See also last year’s recipe, which is fairly different, and yet very much the same.
Ingredients
2 boxes Zatarain’s Jambalaya mix (rice, not pasta)
1 qt chicken stock
1 12-oz can tomato paste
1 lb cooked shrimp
1 lb browned burger (I prefer venison, but beef will work just fine)
1 lb andouille sausage (Johnsonville makes a surprisingly good one, but better is, well, better)
1 large or 2 medium green bell peppers (toss the seeds and stems)
1 baseball-sized or ½ softball sized white onion
4 ribs celery
1 leftover cooked carrot
1 tbsp smoked paprika
1 tbsp black pepper, ground
1 tbsp kosher salt
1 tbsp garlic powder
1 tbsp red pepper flakes (not dust – cut back to 1tsp if it’s finely ground and not flakes)
1 tsp oregano
Instructions
Dice vegetables, and sauté in bacon drippings, butter, or (as a last ditch) olive oil. Celery goes in first, then the onions, then the green peppers, and finally the (already cooked) carrot. Total time should be just until the onions start to go translucent. Throw into the bottom of a pot, and then pour any grease back into your sauté pan.
Cut andouille into ¼″ thick slices and brown in the leftover grease from the veggies until both sides of the medallions are dark brown. You want to be into serious maillard reaction here. Dump it into the pot, and pour the grease back into your sauté pan.
Brown the burger in the leftover grease from the andouille, seasoning it with about half of the spices. Into the pot with it once it’s all browned. If you use venison, you’ll have very little grease left at this point, but drain any excess grease.
Dump both boxes of Zatarain's, the tomato paste, the chicken stock, and the remaining spices into the pot. Add two cans’ (from the tomato paste) worth of water.
Turn it on low for a couple hours and cover it tightly. You want the water to go into the rice, not out into the air. If you have a crock pot (5 quart is the absolute minimum size), you can set it on high for the first two hours, especially if steps 1-3 were the previous night. If you’re doing it all in one shot, set the crock-pot on low. Keep it at a low simmer for up to 2.5 hours, or as little as an hour if you’re on a stove-top. Stir it about every half hour and check on it. When the rice has absorbed all the liquids, it’s ready to eat.
Add the shrimp. It’s already cooked, and you just want it in there long enough to warm up. Fluff the rice as you mix in the shrimp, and turn off the heat. Let sit for five minutes so nobody gets a cold shrimp or burns their mouth.
Preparation time
about an hour
Cooking time
1 – 3 hours
Feeds a whole mess of people. Ten as a main dish, or up to forty at a pot-luck where everyone brought too much food.
I think of steps 1-3 as “prep” can be done the night before if you’re doing this for lunch at work. Just put everything into either a 1-gallon zip-top freezer bag or some tupperware, and fridge it overnight.
You can also use other vegetables, too. I used a carrot this time because I had one leftover from Monday’s supper. You can substitute a can of spam (cubed into 1/2″ pieces and browned) or a pound of chicken (thighs are best, also browned) for any of the listed meats. If you don’t use andouille, you will want to double the red pepper and paprika. You can cut the salt back to as little as 1tsp since the Zat’s mix has salt, but 1 tbsp is about what I end up using when I “season to taste”. Spice amounts are a good place to start, but taste the liquid every time you stir, and adjust if you think it’s missing something.
I like cooking pork butt-roasts (shoulders), especially on the grill. And since I’m often cooking for one or two, I have the butcher cut me small roasts, usually under two pounds. They’re plenty tasty relatively plain, but every once in a while a guy feels a need to get fancy. That’s how I came up with this recipe.
Ingredients
One unsalted pork butt roast (2 lbs or so, but bigger will work, too)
Kosher salt
Black pepper
One bunch spring onions, or one small to medium yellow onion
Three cloves garlic (you could go with as many as six)
1-2 tbsp. Soy sauce
Small can mandarin oranges (in light syrup)
Small can pineapple chunks
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 325°F, or get your grill fired up
Start a 12″ cast-iron skillet warming on a medium-high burner with a thin layer of olive oil in the bottom of it
Season the roast, rubbing salt and pepper on all sides
Sear the sides of the roast in the skillet
While the roast is searing, dice the onions and garlic
When you’ve seared all sides of the roast, shut off the burner, lift the roast, and toss the onions and garlic into the pan, setting the roast back on top of them
Pour enough soy sauce over the top of the roast to lightly coat it
Pop the skillet and roast into the oven with a meat thermometer in the roast
Drain the pineapple, and dump it, the oranges, and the syrup from the oranges into a blender. Buzz it up, and toss it into the fridge for now
When the roast hits 140°F, pull it out, and dump the citrus blend over it — in my case, it came about halfway up the side of the roast, which seems about right
Pop it back into the oven until the roast reaches an internal temp of 155°F
Pull the roast out and drain the juices from the pan
Cover the roast with a piece of tinfoil, and let it rest until it reaches 160°F
Slice and serve
Preparation time
15 minutes
Cooking time
An hour or two (30-45 minutes per pound)
Feeds:
6-8
One thing to watch about a pork-butt is that there are “seams” of fat running through it. It’s easy to hit one of these seams with the meat thermometer and get false readings on the temperature, so don’t be afraid to check in more than one spot (just make sure the thermometer is clean).
Add some ginger and chilies to the citrus puree if you want a more Asian flavor to the pork. Or a little cinnamon, nutmeg and clove (go light on them!) to give it a festive holiday feel. This is a pretty simple recipe to start with, so there’s lots of room for playing around. Me, I think I like the recipe as written. It’s got good flavor, but there’s still plenty of room for the flavor of the meat to shine.
Not something you’d usually think of cooking on the grill, this works well and small roasts are quick enough to cook that there’s no reason not to take them outside.
Originally written in late 2009
Ingredients
3 pound (or so) pork roast
4 yukon gold potatoes
1 large white (or yellow) onion
1 head garlic
salt & pepper to season
Instructions
Toss the roast onto the hottest part of the grill, and rotate it to sear the outside. Needs just a couple minutes per side, seasoning lightly with salt and pepper each time you turn it.
Ready a piece of aluminum foil, about two feet long.
While the roast is searing, slice the potatoes into ½″ slices, and place them on one end of the foil.
Slice the onion into thin slices, dropping them on top of the potatoes.
Mash up the entire head of garlic, throwing the slightly broken cloves on top of the potatoes and onions.
Sprinkle a little salt and pepper over the potatoes and onions.
Place the roast on top of the potatoes and onions, and roll it up in the foil, trying to keep a layer of potatoes between the foil and the roast, all the way around.
Seal the foil up as best you can. You don’t want any of the tasty juices to escape if you can help it.
Place the foil package on the cooler end of the grill, and close the lid. You’re roasting, so you want to avoid opening the grill more than absolutely necessary.
Rotate the foil package about every 15 minutes. After the first 15, you can place a meat thermometer into one end of the roast (right through the foil) to monitor the temperature.
When the roast reaches 145-150°F, pull it from the grill, and rest it on a heat-proof cutting board, keeping the foil and thermometer in place. Get your plates ready at this point.
When the roast reaches 155-160°F, open the foil, place the roast on a cutting board, and plate the potatoes. They should have absorbed most of the juices, but any leftover juice can be set aside for use with any leftovers. If the potatoes are a little stuck to the foil, just peel them loose as best you can. Some of them will get a little broken, and that’s okay.
Slice the roast, placing slices on top of the potatoes.
Preparation time
10 minutes
Cooking time
about 20-25 minutes per pound
Feeds
8
The leftovers from this will make pretty tasty sandwiches the next day, too. The small amount of juice that didn’t get absorbed by the potatoes will keep the roast from drying out in the fridge overnight.
3 or 4 quart round porcelain casserole with heavy domed lid
Instructions
Pre-heat oven to 275°F
Saute onion in a couple tablespoons cooking oil.
Place in bottom of 3 quart round casserole.
Brown beef in pan used to saute onions.
Add to casserole.
Add curry sauce mix, and one quart boiling water, which should be enough to cover the meat.
Stir to break up curry bricks and make sure everything is in the water.
Lid and place into oven for 3-4 hours, stirring hourly.
When meat is falling apart, remove soup-bone (if present), any gristle, and skim off whatever fat you can. Make sure the meat is in bite-sized chunks.
Add carrots and potatoes.
Re-lid, and put back in the oven for another hour, or until the carrots and potatoes reach a consistency you like.
Season to taste, and serve over rice.
Preparation time
20 minutes
Cooking time
5 hours
Feeds
6
Pretty simple. Tasty. Hearty fare. All things I like when the morning low temp is below freezing. And the house smells pretty darned good while it’s cooking. It’s also better after the meat has had a chance to cool and re-set the gelatin, so any leftovers won’t last long.
This is a manually-curated collection of the recipes I've written here. Using the #recipe tag might find more, but they'll be in reverse order of publication. This will almost certainly be in some different order.
Note that many of these recipes will feed quite a few folks. I don’t throw huge dinner parties. Instead, when I cook up something like spaghetti sauce, I make enough for a few meals, and freeze the leftovers for when I’m feeling lazy. There are other notes on how I deal with leftovers in my colleciton of tips for cooking for one.
Also, some recipes will have a small grill icon to the right of them. Like this: Those recipes were written to be cooked on a BBQ grill, but can usually be adapted for indoor use, as well.
This recipe was originally in a cookbook my sweetie had which called out all sorts of Name Brand ingredients. It also called for making kebabs of the mix and grilling them. We decided we'd rather have a stir-fry or fry-up all in one pan. I ate mine with a slice of bread, but over pasta or rice would also work.
Ingredients
12 ounce smoked ring sausage (Hillshire Farms Smoked Turkey Sausage is what we used, but use what you like), cut into ½ inch pieces
1 C dried apricots, halved
1 can beer (12 oz)
¾ C apricot preserves
1 Tbsp mustard (we used dijon, but yellow will also work)
2 – 6oz cans sliced mushrooms, drained or ½ pound fresh mushrooms, sliced
Directions
Simmer sausage & apricots in beer in a large saucepan or skillet for 10 minutes
If using fresh mushrooms, add them about 5 minutes in
Combine apricot preserves, mustard, chile and Worcestershire sauce in a microwave-safe measuring glass, and heat briefly (enough that the preserves liquify) in microwave, then stir and set aside
Add apples & mushrooms to sausage mixture
Add sauce to sausage mixture
Simmer until apples are going soft and sauce has thickened to desired consistency.
Our neighbors had a bumper crop of peaches this year, so we got a couple dozen fresh peaches yesterday. We figured putting them in a crumble with some raspberries we already had in the house would be a good use.
Ingredients
A dozen fresh peaches
A pint of fresh raspberries
1 Tbsp flour
A couple tablespoons of sugar
150g all-purpose flour
100g butter
85g sugar
Directions
Peel the peaches and cut into wedges
Toss with a couple tablespoons of sugar and a tablespoon of flour and dump into a glass 8x8 baking pan
Put a pint of raspberries over the peaches
In a medium bowl, cut the butter into the flour.
When the butter/flour mixture looks like bread crumbs, toss the sugar over it.
Sprinkle the crumble mixture over the fruit
Bake for 35-40 minutes in a 400F oven,
Cool for a little bit before eating. Don’t burn your mouth!
Those recipes were written to be cooked on a BBQ grill, but can usually be adapted for indoor use, as well.
