So I’ve been getting a little bit obsessive lately. It’s not good enough to cook from scratch. First I have to make my ingredients. I make my own grill seasoning, my own mayonnaise for Pete’s sake! (By the way, who’s Pete and why do we care about his sake?)
Recently when I went to make hamburgers I accidentally looked at the ingredients on the can of bread crumbs. Holy crap! Time to make my own, I guess. This was just supposed to be a way to use up stale leftovers. [sigh]
Ingredients
(You may recognize this from the herbed croutons recipe.)
Directions
Start with a stale piece of bread. If you don’t want to wait for it to go stale on its own, just toss it in the oven after cooking something else. Leave it there until the oven is cool and you’ve got stale bread.
Cut it up into pieces that will fit in your food processor.
Tell yourself for the eight thousandth time that you have got to get a big one.
Process until you don’t see any large pieces any more. Then go a bit longer.
Dump the crumbs out into a bowl.
Rap the bowl several times with the heel of your hand. The large pieces will come up to the top.
Scoop the larger pieces back into the processor and process a bit more. When it’s all done, and you’ve used as much as you need for the burgers, put the rest in an air-tight container.
Keep it in the fridge. If you had any moisture left at all, the crumbs will mold.
And that’s it.
I meant to wait two weeks before trying the bread and butter pickles. I couldn’t wait.
So it turns out I wasn’t careful enough with the turmeric. I couldn’t fit the measuring spoon in the jar, so I just dumped it out into the spoon. And got too much. Some recipes include a tiny bit of turmeric for color. But if you use a bunch it has a bitter, peppery taste. That’s why it’s frequently the second ingredient in mustard.
So this batch is pretty good, in my opinion. But they’re more like a hot Polish style than the bread and butter I’m used to.
That’s cool. I like hot pickles. And a couple of people have told me they did this recipe and they came out great. I guess they were more careful with the turmeric than I was.
