Braised Short Rib
I might have mentioned this before but a while back Jimmy and I went in on purchasing half of a cow. We wanted to cut the trips to the grocery store and have access to all different types of cuts. This resulted in the welcomed challenge of trying to make things we typically don’t, like short rib. I’ll be honest, at home we typically eat very simply. A good ribeye or NY strip and some veggies is a solid weeknight meal.
The short rib was always eyeing me from the freezer though. If short rib is on a menu anywhere, it’s usually my go-to. The first time I made it though I realized how easy it actually is to make – as long you have the time. I have seen a lot of Instant Pot recipes online (and tried a couple), and I can see the appeal of trying to speed up the process. I personally think baby back ribs are better suited for the Instant Pot. If you want that restaurant style, fall-off-the-bone, short rib though you’re best braising it. Braising just means you will sear the meat before letting it slow cook in a stew until fork tender. What I love about this dish is that it feels fancy, but it’s really a one-pot type of meal. It’s chef’s kiss, perfection.
Things to note ahead of time:
- Do not rush a braise! If you’re going to invest the hours to let this slow cook, don’t rush it in the last hour. The steps are simple: Prep your vegetables, sear your meat, throw everything in the pot and wait. When the meat is done you can take it out and reduce down the sauce. I’ve made this in a rush and the sauce is okay if not fully reduced, but that thick reduction is truly amazing.
- Making this dish for more than 4 people? Don’t overcrowd the pan. Overcrowding can result in the overall pan temp going down, allowing for moisture to escape and making the meat soggy rather than getting that perfect crust. If you’re making this dish for more than 4, take the time to sear it in batches.
- Like to prep ahead of time? You can chop the veggies and sear the meat the night before!
- A sieve makes all the difference! All the veggies will get cooked down and pushed through a fine sieve at the end to add that liquid gold flavor to the sauce. Don’t sleep on this step, this will get you to restaurant-level goodness.
- Start by roughly chopping your vegetables and setting them aside. This is a classic mirepoix base commonly found in stews. While the traditional ratio is around 2:1:1 (onion:celery:carrots) it doesn’t have to be exact, so if you have 1/4 onion vs a 1/2, life will go on. Roughly 1/2 large brown onion, 2 celery stalks, 2 medium-sized carrots (or half a small 12 oz bag of baby carrots).
- Chop your head of garlic width-wise so that you’re exposing each clove. No need to remove the skin, this will be strained out later.
- Rinse and dry off the short ribs. Be sure your ribs aren’t wet as they’ll be going into hot oil and will cause much more splatter if wet. Your ribs might come pre-portioned. If it comes intact with the bones still connected by the meat, go ahead and portion each rib separately. Start by using a sharp knife and cut between the bone. Season all sides of each rib with a generous amount of salt and pepper.
- Preheat the oven to 350˚F
- Heat a dutch oven or large oven-safe pot on the stove on high heat, once the oil is hot and ready to go, gently place one rib in at a time, careful not to overcrowd the pot. Sear each side until you have a deep brown crust (2-4 minutes each side). Set the meat aside when all pieces have formed a nice crust.
- In the same pot add a little more oil if needed (some ribs might render down some of the fat from the ribs and won’t require any additional cooking fat). Pour in the mirepoix mix and cook down until the onions are soft and a little translucent.
- Add 1-2 tablespoons of tomato paste to your pot. I like to use paste from a tube so just a good hearty squeeze, then mix evenly with a wooden spoon or spatula.
- Throw in the garlic and fresh herbs. I use rosemary and thyme because that’s what I have in the garden right now, but you could also add oregano.
- Place the meat back into the pot.
- Pour in about 3/4 of a bottle of red wine. A dry red works best here but I always have a random bottle laying around so use what you have. Pour in 24oz of beef broth. You want everything nearly covered so adjust accordingly to the size of your pot. I’ve tried this a few different ways and have found that the more wine to broth, the faster the sauce reduces down later. With this ratio, I would check on the stew periodically to ensure it doesn’t reduce down too quickly. If you don’t have 3/4 of a bottle of wine, no problem! Just give yourself 30 more minutes in the end to reduce the sauce.
- Cover the pot with a lid and place it in the oven for the next 3 hours. If you played around with the liquid ratios, check the pot every hour or two to see how it’s reducing – you can always add more broth if it’s thickening up too quickly.
- When done, gently remove the meat from the pot and set it aside. Using tin foil make a tent to keep in the heat.
- Pour the remaining stewing liquid through a fine sieve into a bowl. You’ll be left with all the veggies and herbs in the sieve. Using the back of a metal or wooden spoon, push the soft veggies and garlic through the sieve and into the bowl. Use the spoon to scrape off the thick pressed juice from the bottom of the sieve, this burst of flavor is liquid gold and key to an amazing sauce. This is a great time to taste and add additional salt and pepper to your preference. If you want to thicken up your sauce you can pour it back into the pot on low heat until it reduces down.
- These pair great with mashed potatoes or rice and your veggie of choice; ours is broccolini! Spoon on the sauce and enjoy!
5-Minute Spicy Cold Tofu
The best meals are truly the ones that take next to no time or effort (see: Instant Pot meals that you set and forget), and this one is both! I’m always buying a block of tofu for Shin Ramen but only end up using a fraction of it because of all the other things I throw in. I then struggle to think about what to do with the remaining tofu and honestly get weirded out because I don’t know how long you can really keep tofu after opening it. I saw someone make something similar to this but without the spice, saying it’s perfect for the summer because of the tofu being cold, but it’s December and I want something that has a little bit of a kick to it. Let me introduce you to my new favorite meal – and I can whip it up in 5 minutes?? Yes, please!
- In a small pan, heat up the oil (2 tablespoons) until hot.
- Mince the garlic (3 cloves) then chop the green onion (2-3 stalks) and add them into a small bowl.
- Add the chili powder (1 tablespoon) and the sesame seeds (1 teaspoon) to the same bowl.
- Pour the hot oil into the bowl – this will pull the fragrances out of these ingredients without burning them.
- Add the soy sauce (1 tablespoon) and the sesame oil (1 teaspoon) into the bowl and mix everything until incorporated.
- Cut the block of tofu out of the packaging and let all the liquid drain out. You can cut this into individual size portions if you’re preparing this as an appetizer, or just use the whole block for a meal.
- Pour your sauce on top and enjoy!
Peep the cutest chopstick holders I just snagged from Wing On Wo and Co
Chrissy Teigen’s Twitter Famous Banana Bread
One of my biggest pet peeves is when a recipe is not upfront with all the necessary steps you might want to consider before starting. We were devastated when we first attempted to make the KitchenAid Strawberry Ice Cream because we had our fresh strawberries, cream and pasteurized eggs from the store and we were ready to go! Only to realize that to actually make ice cream you needed to freeze the bowl for 12 hours before, duh. So here’s what you’ll want to know before making this banana bread.
HERE IS WHAT YOU MIGHT WANT TO KNOW BEFORE STARTING:
The recipe below is meant for a bundt pan, which I prefer because it ends up being moister but I have made this in a loaf pan, and I recently even made it in cupcake tins to cut down the batch. If you want to half the recipe, I recommend using cupcake tins as it makes roughly about 12 cupcakes.
ALSO, you do not need to have ripe bananas for this, we can turn your regular bananas into banana bread ready bananas with just an extra 20-30 minutes! More on that below.
You might be familiar with this recipe, maybe you were like me and watched the whole thing go down on Twitter. If you didn’t, go Google it. The tldr; is that she needed 6 very ripe bananas to work on this recipe, but as you know you can not just buy overly ripe bananas at the store, so she went to Twitter and called on her followers. She had to trade: one of her signed cookbooks, a pair of John Legend’s underwear, and a makeup palette to make this recipe happen. Now, this recipe, while straight out of Chrissy Teigan’s cookbook, has a reduced sugar level by half a cup, and honestly, it didn’t make a difference at all so why the heck not.
MAKE YOUR BANANAS RIPE IN 30 MIN
As I mentioned before, while banana bread is a great way to use up too-mushy-to-eat bananas, if you are hankering for banana bread but your bananas haven’t caught up to match your craving, that’s okay! A quick hack is to lay down a silicone mat or some parchment paper on a rimmed baking sheet, place your bananas down with the peels still on and bake at 300˚ for 20-30 minutes depending on how ripe your bananas are – you’ll know they’re done when the peels have turned black. It’s okay if they ooze out of the bananas a little too. I recommend doing this a little ahead of time if you can to allow your bananas to cool a bit before starting to work them into this recipe.
The last thing I am going to say is that the whole reason we started making banana bread was that back when we were still traveling, we took a trip to Maui and did the Road to Hana; a beautiful scenic drive around the island that is known for its views but also its legendary banana bread. We tried stand after stand and came home with high banana bread standards that we knew were going to be difficult to find. After making many different recipes, we came across this one and I am telling you, the coconut and vanilla pudding MAKE THIS! It’s so good that I can’t imagine trying to top it, and thus, we just wanted to highlight someone else’s recipe because it is the banana bread to end all banana breads. If you make it, let me know if you agree or if you’ve found better anywhere!
- Preheat the over to 325˚
- In a large bowl take your ripe bananas, eggs and oil and mash them together.
- In another bowl, combine the flour, sugar, pudding, baking soda and salt and mix thoroughly before adding it in slowly to the wet mix. Mix again gently until fully incorporated. I’ve done it both by hand and on a low standing mixer setting – do not over mix!
- Fold in the chocolate and shredded coconut.
- Grease and flour your bundt pan – lightly grease with a little oil on a paper towel then lightly dust with flour, rotate your pan to coat with the excess flour, then tip it upside down and tap out the excess flour. It’s important to have every inch floured to ensure you can release it from the pan when done. I’ve made this recipe in a loaf pan as well as cupcakes tins, bundt pans are my favorite because I feel like they are moister.
- Bake for 55-60 minutes for bundt or loaf pans. For cupcake tins, bake for 20 minutes. The timing is much shorter for cupcakes because they are less thick and don’t require as much time to cook through. Don’t forget to always poke with a toothpick though as cook times can vary by oven – always be sure your toothpick runs clean!
- Let it cool for 10 minutes and then with a knife, loosen the cake from the edge of the pan. Using a plate, place it on top of the pan, then flip it over to release it.
- Let cool again then serve! I’ve recently been introduced to banana bread with salted butter and I will say, while this recipe is delicious without, it should come as no surprise that it’s even better with butter.
- NOM!
Half batch in a cupcake tin:
Social Distancing Series – Jerk Jackfruit Tacos
Jerk Jackfruit
- 2 young green jackfruit in brine (20 oz cans)
- 2 tsp onion powder
- 3 tsp garlic powder
- 2 tsp thyme
- 2 tsp paprika
- 1 1/2 tsp cayenne
- a dash of each cinnamon and nutmeg
- 2 lime
- 3 cups water
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1 tsp salt
Caribbean Black Beans and Corn
- 2 cloves garlic, chopped
- 1 yellow onion, diced
- 1 can (15 oz) black beans
- 1/2 tsp thyme
- 1/4 tsp cayenne
- 1 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/4 cup water
- 1 1/2 tbsp orange juice OR (1 squeezed lime + 1/4 tsp sugar)
Other Items
- 1, chopped or sliced brown onion, medium
- 9 corn tortillas
- 12 oz mango chunks
- 1 jar of mild to medium spice salsa
- sour cream (optional)
- guac (optional)
- cheese (optional)
We’re back! Went on a little break the last few weeks – honestly I thought we’d be cooking way more now that we are all home but I have to confess we just ended up ordering in a lot of Chipotle and picking up from local restaurants.
A part of it is also that our grocery stores are looking a bit grim these days; dairy, produce, and meat are hit or miss causing our trips to the store to be less about what we want to make and more about what they have available. Growing up I remember my mom always buying canned food in bulk from Costco, our garage would have shelves of soups, chili, pasta, rice and we never ran out of anything because when the backups ran low, we’d buy some more to take its place. Looking back at it, my mom really had. Millennials don’t stock up the same way, they tend to buy what they need when they need it and love exploring new recipes often. If this blog wasn’t evident enough, opening our pantry it was clear the only thing that was going to be helpful during this time was my one jar of almond butter and enough pasta sauce for a single meal.
Seeing that there are only so many times you can order out got me thinking. How do I buy items with longer shelf life, that will taste good and that I won’t get bored of? Welcome to my Social Distancing Series where I’ll be putting together recipes with items you can keep stored in your pantry, that you might already have in your pantry, or fresh items that won’t go back immediately (sorry avocados.)
Why I love this recipe: You can get everything here from Trader Joes, most of the items were already in my pantry, it’s meat-free so if you don’t eat meat, can’t eat meat, or can’t find meat, you are good to go! The only fresh produce we used (onions and garlic) have a pretty long shelf life compared to other produce (see above mention of avocados). The ingredients are also very versatile so you won’t end up with a bunch of leftover stuff you can’t use for anything else. Jackfruit was a new ingredient for me but I’ve been hearing so many people talk about how it imitates carnitas, pulled pork, and shredded chicken so I had to see for myself and it did not disappoint. Green jackfruit doesn’t have much flavor on its own and takes up the flavor of spices REALLY well – and I’m a huge critic when it comes to meat replacements. I absolutely will be hoarding up cans of this stuff next time I’m in TJs!
Jackfruit
- Drain the jackfruit, remove the seeds, squeeze as much liquid out of them with your hands then using a kitchen towel or paper towels, press out as much of the remaining moisture. You can use your hands to shred the pieces up or use a large knife to chop them down.
- Place all the dry herbs and spices into a small bowl and mix evenly.
- Heat a tbsp of oil in a pan on medium heat and add the shredded jackfruit. Coat the jackfruit evenly with the mixed dry spices. Stir to mix and cook for 2-3 minutes.
- Add lime juice, water and sugar, and cook with a lid partially covering the pan for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Caribbean Black Beans and Corn
- Heat a tbsp of oil in a pan on medium heat. When the pan is hot, add the garlic and onions – cook until the onions are translucent.
- Add the can of black beans, corn, dry spices, water and your orange juice. If you don’t have orange juice, you can use a lime and some sugar.
- Simmer for 10 minutes, stir occasionally.
Other Sides
- To make grilled onions, place a tbsp of oil in a hot pan and cook a diced onion down until translucent. Add a quarter cup of water, it’ll sizzle and continue to cook down until there is no water left. Repeat until your onions are your preferred texture, this process allows your onions to caramelize naturally.
- Chopped mangos compliment the jackfruit really well. I recommend chopping them into small chunks for the tacos.
- A mild jar of salsa works great for this! We accidentally went a little too spicy on the salsa here, whoops!
- We just happened to have some sharp cheddar in the fridge, it was a nice add but not necessary.
- Not pictured: Sour cream and guac would be fantastic on these, but seeing as those aren’t options right now they don’t make the official Social Distancing Series.
I like to throw my corn tortillas on a small skillet on high heat, just for 30 seconds on each side to warm up the tortillas but not for too long that it makes them hard and crunchy. Then on with the beans and corn, onions, jackfruit, salsa, mango and cheese!
If you guys have any good recipes you’ve been making at home, I’d love to hear about them! Shoot me an email at hello@forevernomday.com 🙂
Instant Pot Zuppa Toscana
Prep:
- Chill the can of coconut milk in the fridge overnight (or at least 12 hours). This allows the coconut cream to separate and solidify at the top – making it easy to scoop out when you’re ready to start.
- Prepare your kale by folding the leaves in half over the stalk in the center; you will want the darker shinier part to be on the inside. Take a sharp knife and cut the stalk off as close to the leaves as possible. You are just trying to end up with leaves as the center part is tough to eat. If you don’t have a knife available you could even just rip it off, but cutting it off is actually a bit easier.
- Chop your onions, halve the potatoes and mince the garlic. Set these aside for now.
- Start by setting your Instant Pot to “Saute” and add the olive oil. When the pot is hot, add and brown the ground sausage until fully cooked (no pink left), roughly 3-5 minutes.
- Add the garlic and onions and continue to saute to pull out the flavor, another 3-5 minutes.
- Add potatoes, chicken stock or broth, oregano, salt and pepper. Mix everything around and be sure nothing is sticking to the bottom of the pot.
- Close and lock the lid, turning the valve to “Sealing”.
- Press the “Pressure Cook” button and set it for 10 minutes. Pressure should be set to High.
- When the 10 minutes have passed, press the “Turn Off” button, cover the valve with a towel, and with a wooden or silicon spatula turn the valve onto releasing. I’ve found adding a towel (not a paper towel because it would just blow off) helps a lot to avoid getting liquid splattering around the kitchen.
- Once the steam has completely stopped, carefully open the lid, add the coconut cream and kale to the pot. Turn it back to “Saute” and cook another 3-5 minutes. If there isn’t enough cream to fill half a cup, you can use the coconut milk to compensate.
Stovetop Instructions
- In a medium to large pot, follow steps 1-3 above.
- Cook for 20-25 minutes over medium heat.
- Stir in the kale and let cook for another 2-3 minutes until the leaves are bright and tender.
- Stir in the cream and simmer for at least 2 minutes or until ready to serve.
Strawberry Cheesecake
I absolutely love making cheesecake. Why? Cheesecake is so versatile and can be made for any occasion! Need a cheesecake for a bunch of kids? Great! Make the crumble crust out of Oreos! Sub out the strawberries with any other fruit that you like! Use any kind of graham cracker you like, dress it up, dress it down, the possibilities are endless!
Last minute Christmas dinner plans led to needing to whip up a dessert for 8-10 people and I couldn’t think of a more fitting dish. Not a whole ton of added sugar (it’s actually only in the crust) leaves the cheesy part of the cheesecake light and fluffy.
Well enough about the fluffiness and how amazing cheesecake is, on with the recipe!
- Preheat the oven to 300˚
- Grind/blend the graham crackers until they are crumbs, add the sugar and mix evenly. Add the butter and mix until they look like moist crumbs
- Pour the mixture into a 9 or 10 in. spring form pan and press it down to form the crust. Place the pan in the fridge for 30 minutes.
- While this is happening, prepare the rest of the cake. Blend the strawberries and add in the cornstarch. Boil on the stove until everything is fully mixed then set aside to cool.
- In a large mixing bowl add the creme cheese and condensed milk. Mix thoroughly with a hand mixer (make sure you pre mix them with a spoon or something so that you don’t send giant chunks of creme cheese flying all over the place. Also before turning on the hand mixer, have it already sticking into the cheese to form a little resistance).
- Add in the lemon juice and eggs then mix again with your hand mixer.
- When the crust is done pour in the creme cheese mixture then drop small spoonfuls of strawberry puree to make dots all over the top of the cake. Take a chopstick from the center, spiral out and make swirls!
- Bake for 50-55 min. If it’s a little jiggly it’s okay, it’ll firm up in the fridge.
- Let it cool and then place in the fridge for a few hours.
Nom!
Instant Pot Chicken Noodle Soup
It’s officially fall which means a couple things, I’ve dusted off the sweaters and flannels, leaves are changing (well, everywhere but here), and it’s time to get cozy! Soup is one of those things that just feels inevitable in the colder seasons, just like cider and pecan pie. Though sometimes it actually becomes inevitable when the colder weather brings… well, colds. Jimmy caught a cold a couple weekends ago and so we thought to whip up some chicken noodle soup but you know, the other part about being sick is you don’t want to wait all day to get something warm in you. And it really can’t require that much energy.
There is no shame in not making a dish from scratch, sometimes you don’t have time, sometimes let’s face it, it’s just not worth the time. But there is something nice about making dishes at home, knowing exactly what went into a bowl, being able to make a batch of something for the week, or just creating something that you can say, yea, I made that. Welcome to my ‘scratch-ish’ series.
Rotisserie chicken might be one of my favorite items to buy at the store because it’s so versatile! And of course by “the store”, I mean Costco, I think we can all agree they made the best rotisserie chicken! It’s already cooked and seasoned so immediately toss it on a salad, throw it in pasta, add it to a soup, heck I just eat it right off the bone with a fork when I first bring it home. But the best part is that once you strip it of all its meat you can still cook down the bones to make soup! Even better if you have an Instant Pot, throw everything in and be enjoying a rich bowl of soup in an hour or less!
Weird, why does your soup look so brown? Because we added grilled onions!
For this recipe we kept it scratch-ish by using store bought rotisserie chicken and broth, I actually prefer using 100% chicken broth here instead of making it from scratch as many recipes call for added butter and way more salt than I’d like to use this early in the recipe (and that’s coming from someone who loves salt, I rather salt to taste at the end.) One after effect of doing the Whole30 is that I feel like I have gotten crazy about any unnecessary ingredients that often get added to processed foods – I promise you, this soup has tons of flavor we’re just going to pull it out of the bones!
- Start by stripping the meat off of the bones and toss the bones into the Instant Pot (don’t worry about getting every little bit off).
- Pour in the chicken broth until it’s just nearly covering the bones.
- Add the dried herbs – I have thyme growing in the yard so we went with fresh herbs here.
- Ensure the pressure valve is set to Sealing then hit the Soup button – it’ll cook for about 30 minutes after the pressure has built up in the Instant Pot.
- Optional: I like the rich flavor of caramelized onions in soup, so while the soup is pressurizing, add a little oil to a small saucepan on medium-high heat. Cook the onions down until there is no excessive oil left on the pan, then add a little water (the pan should sizzle) and the onions should be cooking in the water until all the water gets cooked off, then repeat until they are caramelized to your preference. This technique keeps your onions from burning, and browning slowly as it pulls the sugars out from the onion to caramelize.
- When done, you can let the Instant Pot naturally release pressure, or if you want to speed up the process, flick the pressure valve from Sealing to Venting – this will cause steam to come shooting out so I recommend placing a towel over the valve to avoid any spurting and to make sure you don’t burn yourself in the process!!
- Open the lid and with a slotted ladle, sift out the bones and bay leaves.
- Add the noodles, chicken, and onions, then press Soup again.
- Repeat the pressure release process again when done. Salt and pepper to taste, serve, and enjoy!
Instant Pot Whole30 Baby Back Ribs
First off, never having done a diet, cleanse or reset before, Jimmy and I decided to take on the Whole30. It was a rollercoaster of emotions, which we broke down in our Whole30 Timeline but definitely well worth it now having been through it all. We were set on not having the same boring meal for 30 days straight and had to figure out a way to eat the things we like, in a healthy way of course. There was no way I was going to make it eating chicken breast and steamed veggies every night.
Cue baby back ribs.
But not just any baby back ribs. We, like many others, ended up buying an Instant Pot on Prime Day and wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Hailing from St. Louis, Jimmy is always in the mood for ribs, but I’m not always in the mood for a meal that is going to take me all day to prep and cook. Enter, the Instant Pot. I’m typically pretty hesitant with anything assuring me of a “quick and easy” yet still delicious meal – I’m old school in the assumption that things need to simmer in the crockpot for half a day to really pull out all the flavor that you want. Also – I was pretty firm on believing that you can’t just throw liquid smoke into a dish and call it ribs. I will admit that I still believe that when making real ribs, but come Sunday night and you haven’t started meal prepping for the week… this is now my go-to alternative. Be sure you look for a non-sugar/molasses liquid smoke like Lazy Kettle’s. Perfect for a last-minute lunch with friends, potluck, dinner, meal prep, it’s fantastic as a hearty meal or even just as the protein to top a simple salad. These ribs are the most versatile and truthfully one of the easiest things we’ve ever made.
Ribs
- 1 rack baby back ribs (spare ribs)
Spice Rub
- 2 tablespoons chili powder
- 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 1 teaspoon cumin
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon pepper
Smoking Liquid
- 1 cup water
- 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
- 1/4 teaspoon non-sugar or molasses liquid smoke
BBQ Sauce
- 1 cup whole30 ketchup
- all of it leftover smoking liquid from the instant pot
- Start by removing the skin off the bottom of the rack of ribs. Sometimes it’s easier to use a paper towel to grip the fat/skin as you use a knife to separate it from the meat and bones
- Rub the ribs front and back with the spice rub.
- Make sure your Instant Pot has the metal rack inside to allow the juice from the meat to drip off and stay separate (you will use this later to make your BBQ sauce!) Curl the ribs around the instant pot, with the meat side facing out and that the rib bones are facing up.
- Add the ingredients for the Smoking Liquid to the Instant Pot – try not to let it touch the ribs as it might take off some of the rub. This is where the magic happens.
- Secure the lid and select the Meat button, set for 25 minutes and when done, let the pressure naturally release for about 10 minutes then quick release the remaining pressure.
- Remove the ribs carefully with tongs. The ribs are going to be super tender so you will want to do it carefully and keep them flat as you move them to a roasting pan.
- Take the remaining liquid in the instant pot and mix in a cup of ketchup and allow it to simmer until slightly thick. Pour some of the sauce over the ribs and coat the top evenly. Save the rest of the sauce for dipping or coating your ribs later for a more wet finish.
- Place it in the oven to high broil for 5-10 minutes until somewhat caramelized but keep an eye on it to ensure it doesn’t burn.
Whole30: Pot Roast
Aaaaaaand we’re back!
After a very long hiatus we’re back and hungrier than ever! To add on to it, Jimmy and I have decided to do the Whole30 this month which for those of you who don’t know is all about eating clean, cutting out excess sugars, inflammatory foods, and just pressing the reset button and seeing what your body truly loves (and what it doesn’t.) We’re cutting out sugar, grains, dairy and legumes, which means less eating out, and more cooking at home! So here’s to eating clean but keeping things 100% nom-worthy!
Part of the process so far has been realizing that there are added sugars in EVERYTHING. Even things that don’t taste sweet at all – eliminating most of the things we can eat in the office. So dear god, meal prepping has never been so important. Not being able to eat sugar, dairy and soy has ruled out almost every sauce out there that isn’t made specifically for people making it through the Whole30, so tough luck finding a restaurant on the quick when you start getting those lunch time tummy grumbles.
But it’s not all bad, you still have meats, chicken, fish, bacon, I mean any diet that says bacon is okay, is👌 in my book. So, recipe #1 for the month, let’s get that roast in a pot and get to it already!
Ingredients
- 2 lbs (32 oz) ribeye or chunk roast
- to taste salt
- to taste pepper
- 1 tablespoon garlic (minced)
- 2 cups yellow or white onion (chopped)
- 1 lb carrots (peeled & chopped)
- 1.5 lbs red potatoes
- 2 bay leaves
- 2 teaspoons chili flakes
- 48oz Trader Joe's Organic Chicken Stock
- Preheat the oven to 350˚
- Cut up the steaks into 1 inch cubes – you can cut off any excess fat and muscle that you don’t want but you don’t have to be exact. I used ribeye for this because it was on sale, but you can use boneless chunk roast too.
- Oil an oven safe pot or dutch oven and brown your meat on medium high heat. Season with salt and pepper as you’re browning.
- Remove meat from the pot once all sides have been browned and place the meat on the side.
- Add minced garlic to brown and release the aromatics.
- Add onions to the pot and sauté until tender and translucent, adding a little water if you see the onions are drying out.
- Return the meat back into the pot, along with the bay leaves, red chili flakes, salt and pepper, and the chicken stock (be sure when you are buying stock to check the ingredients – I recommend Trader Joe’s Organic Stock made with free range chicken). Let this simmer for 10 minutes.
- Add the carrots and potatoes to the pan, then place in the oven for an hour.
- Remember to remove the bay leaves before serving or packing it away for lunch!
Copycat In-N-Out Double Double Animal Style
Double Double Animal Style
- 1 pound ground beef, 80/20
- 2 Sara Lee, Soft & Smooth buns
- 2 thick slices beefsteak tomato
- 2 leaves iceberg lettuce
- 4 slices American cheese, sliced
- 1 onion
Living in California you take advantage of many things – french fries in your burritos, avocado available year round, great weather.. I have definitely found myself in that spot when someone asks me how the weather is out here assuming it’s amazing and it I say something along the lines of, “Actually it’s pretty crummy today.” Only to get a pretty a deserving, “What, is it like 50˚? 60˚?” Oh. right. You’ve had snow for the last 2 weeks? You couldn’t drive on the roads it was so bad? I’ll be over here not saying anything else, ever again.
But probably the one thing that we take advantage of most… is In-N-Out.
I heard that the reason there are no In-N-Outs outside of the West Coast and Texas is that none of their locations have freezers or microwaves and because of that, their ingredients comes fresh from one of their two distribution facilities (One in California and one in Texas). Unfortunately for my best friend, she came to this realization when she landed in her new home, Seattle. Having lived in California her entire life, can you imagine not having prepared for an In-N-Out cold turkey? This sounds like my worst nightmare. We’ve been friends since high school and during our sophomore year an In-N-Out opened up in our town and it was a big deal. Before that the closest In-N-Out was 45 minutes away which was quite the trek for a $3 burger. When it opened in town we would race over and get in line before it got out of control, this was the only way to ensure you could get food, slam it down, and get back to class on time. We’d spend late nights in that In-N-Out, chatting over that gooey goodness, realizing that pepper ketchup was a thing that goes really well with fries and that those little cups you put ketchup in are meant to be pulled apart so you have a shallow bowl of ketchup. (This still blows my mind!) Without realizing it, we were slowly becoming high functioning burgerholics. I mean, how does a double double just hits the spot every time??
When she came down to visit a couple weeks ago I promised her 2 things. 1) We’d go to In-N-Out and 2) we’d get drunk off wine and try making double doubles ourselves! I had seen a few copycat recipes online, one specifically by Kenji Lopez Alt and one by iamafoodblog and thought, well, we should just try to make them now because it would be way worse if you attempted it when you had a double double craving, thinking you could replicate it, only to end up like a Pinterest fail.
We decided to take the commoners approach, for those who don’t have a meat grinder or butcher shop nearby, we only used ingredients you could find at a major grocery store. When we went to the butcher counter at our local Vons (Safeway for all of you up north), we excitedly told the butcher we were attempting to make In-N-Out burgers for dinner. He then told us that he ate at In-N-Out every day for the first 2 months he lived here. He so obsessed with the Spread that he started taking packets homes and putting them in the fridge, disregarding the clear packaging that says, “Made for immediate consumption.” He informed us that the packets exploded in his fridge after a few days. We didn’t have the heart to tell him that it was just thousand island and likely could be made with things already in his fridge. Kenji did a great job at breaking down the exact ketchup to mayo to relish ratios, having overnight shipped the burgers from the west coast, so instead of reinventing the wheel, we gave it a go with our ingredients. Honestly, we were pretty sure it wasn’t going to end up the same. While we were confident we would be making delicious burgers, that exact “aaah” feeling that comes from the first satisfying bite of a true In-N-Out felt like it would be impossible to replicate. Either way, we cracked open a bottle of Boochcraft and went for it.
To start, I need to preface that you will be flattening these patties out to be thin, real thin, a lot thinner than I thought they would be so the first batch was a bust because they came out as meat nuggets rather than patties. We also found it best to set up a little assembly line so that we could get both of our burgers done around the same time. I tried this recipe once on my own and for 6 people and it was a bit more difficult. Now, on with the recipe.
- One of the most signature ingredients of the animal style’d burger are the caramelized onions. This is something you can prep well in advance and refrigerate or just before you make the burgers but since they require a decent amount of simmering, start first with the onions – the longer they cook the sweeter they will be. Dice up the entire onion and saute in a pot with a little oil on medium-high heat, deglaze the pan with a little bit of water and repeat that method for the next 20 minutes or until they become so soft and the deep brown we know caramelized onions to be. This method allows the water to cool the onions so you can cook them longer without burning them! (If you have two people have someone on onion duty and buns.)
- Spread is super easy, just put all the ingredients together and mix until smooth.
- Butter the buns with softened butter (you can even do this ahead of time, but you want to give your butter enough time to soften so you can spread it evenly.) Heat up a pan on medium-high and toast 2-4 buns at a time until golden brown and crispy.
- We measured the patties out to be 37 grams (1.3 ounces) each and pounded each of them flat on a sheet of parchment paper. It is key to make them as flat as possible, I’m talking almost paper thin, they shrink quite a bit so aim for them to be a little bigger than your buns. Salt and pepper both sides generously – the parchment paper will help you peel the patties off easily to flip and season. I made a little bit extra because I wanted to be able to just cut up the parchment paper they were on, stack them, and throw them in a bag in the freezer, ready made patties for later in the week!
- We went the mustard grilled method – if you haven’t ordered this before it’s actually part of the animal style burger and just adds a little extra something to the taste of the meat – on a hot pan place 2 patties in the oil, leave it for 2-3 minutes until you get a good dark caramelized brown. Dollop a spoon of dijon mustard to the top uncooked side of your patty. Do not fidget with it either, you’re trying to only flip it once! Flip your patty and let it cook for 1 more minute in the mustard. iamafoodblog’s recipe removes the patty and places the cheese on to melt but the second time we made this recipe I let the slices of cheese melt on top of the patties in the pan and they came out way gooier!
- While you’re grilling, slice your veggies – you’re aiming for 1 thick slice of tomato per burger, and if your lettuce is much bigger than your buns, just tear them into the appropriate sizes.
- If you have someone helping you, while you man the meat, have them stack the burgers in preparation for your patties. We stacked the burgers in this order: bottom bun, spread, 1 thick slice of tomato, 2 pieces of lettuce, first patty, a generous helping of caramelized onions, second patty, top bun. Done!
*This was really reminiscent of a game we recently discovered called Overcooked, which is essentially a coordination game that tests your ability to create food like burgers in a busy restaurant kitchen – essentially you need to chop all your ingredients, cook your patties, stack your burgers, serve your dishes and wash your plates but if you don’t have a system you suddenly have orders stacking up, fires in your kitchen and lots of angry customers. I think we’ll stick to real cooking because at the end, we got to eat our burgers and I will say… they were damn good. I feel confident that if times get tough, she’ll be able to hold her own!
I wish I would have taken another photo a few minutes later because this doesn’t look like a great copy cat! But once the cheese melted it was perfect and we just couldn’t wait to eat it! It was heaven 🙂