How To Cook Like Your Grandmother
A Guide to Cooking with Real Food the Way Your Grandma Used to
As much as I prefer cooking from scratch, there are a few things that require so many ingredients that I'll give in and just buy it. Worcestercire sauce is one of those. (But I'll be fixing that soon. Stay tuned.) Ranch dressing used to be another thing that I'd just buy. Not any more. Now that I've got my technique for fresh mayonnaise down, I don't expect to ever have to buy ranch dressing again. … [Read more...]
I always keep a vacuum-sealed beef roast in the freezer. (Usually there's a pork roast right next to it.) With two hours notice I can have it on the table. Sure, it's better fresh, but it's an easy thing to keep for emergencies. As soon as as you decide you're going to make it, put it in the sink -- still in the vacuum pack -- and fill the sink with hot water. Don't worry that you'll cook it. The center will be so cold that the outside will barely get soft. For a really large roast you might … [Read more...]
I don't know what it is about Irish food, but the leftovers make the best breakfast. With the soda bread it's French toast, with the corned beef dinner it's corned beef hash. This is so much better than the stuff that comes out of a can, it's almost worth doing the whole dinner just to have the leftovers. … [Read more...]
Corned beef isn't really a traditional Irish meal, it's more of an Irish-American one. I don't care about authenticity, I just care about having three days' worth of leftover Reuben fixings in the fridge. This is a great meal for feeding a whole bunch of people without spending a bunch of time in the kitchen. You can cure your own corned beef with a week of lead time, but you can also find a nice fresh brisket at your local butcher. That's what I did here. (See the next post for what to do … [Read more...]
Fries used to be cooked in beef tallow. They were crispy golden pieces of goodness. Restaurants liked tallow because they could use the same tallow for a month as long as they didn't burn anything and they kept it clean. Then the food police decided frying in beef tallow was bad for us. Ask them for the medical studies proving any connection between animal fats and heart disease and all they have is a study where they force-fed rabbits -- vegetarians without the ability to process animal fats … [Read more...]
