grandmother's recipe - How To Cook Like Your Grandmother

Corned Beef and Cabbage

March 17, 2008 (Updated March 23, 2014) by Drew Kime

Beef, Dinner gluten free, grandmother's recipe

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...]

Pan-fried Chicken in Butter

March 10, 2008 (Updated March 23, 2014) by Drew Kime

Dinner, Fowl Butter, frying, grandmother's recipe

I've been described as something of a "skin freak" when it comes to chicken and turkey. So it always catches me by surprise when someone says that they prefer skinless chicken breasts. Not as a dietary issue -- which is misguided anyway -- but they actually don't like the skin. Baffling. That doesn't mean I can't still do a fabulous skinless chicken breast. Oh, sure, it's cooked in butter. But as long as it's skinless, people seem to be happy. I can work with that. … [Read more...]

Home-made Croûtons

March 3, 2008 (Updated March 24, 2014) by Drew Kime

Bread, Salad Garlic, grandmother's recipe

When I was growing up, the croûtons you got in a box or bag at the grocery store were tiny little cubes, about the size of dice. Only restaurants had those big "fancy" croûtons. Seeing a marketing opportunity, the manufacturers switched to a large size, which is all you can find in the grocery store now. The problem is that store-bought croûtons have always been pretty crunchy. This wasn't a problem when they were small, but the big ones are getting so they aren't even good on salad any more. … [Read more...]

White lasagna — an experiment

February 25, 2008 (Updated March 24, 2014) by Drew Kime

Dinner, Pasta grandmother's recipe, Italian

This week was going to be ravioli, but I had a lot of mozzarella left after last week's chili-cheese fries. I mentioned to my wife that I'd have to figure out something to put it in, and she suggested I do a lasagna. Now I had already done that once before. But I wasn't thrilled with how the top came out, because I neglected to cover it for the first half-hour. So this would be my chance to fix that. But as we were talking about it, my wife mentioned a white lasagna that she used to make … [Read more...]

Chili-cheese fries cooked in beef tallow

February 20, 2008 (Updated March 24, 2014) by Drew Kime

Appetizer, Beef, Side fat, frying, gluten free, grandmother's recipe

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...]