Crooked Kitchen

When I made my chili, I ate some of the leftovers with toasted de arbol chiles. The great flavor of those chiles made me want more. I wanted to find a way to use the de arbol chiles as a snack, with a lot of the grassy, aromatic chile flavor. As they’re dried chiles, eating them on their own without cooking isn’t very pleasant - not to mention they’re pretty hot.

I’d been following Rick Bayless on Twitter (@Rick_Bayless) ever since his Top Chef Masters win, and though he claims to spend only 20 minutes a day Twittering, he’s very good at responding to questions. So I posed a question: what can I do with chiles de arbol to enjoy the flavor, aside from salsa? He responded with the recommendation to saute peanuts with garlic and chile pieces.

I’m not especially big on peanuts (though I did eventually try his idea), but I thought the idea of frying the chiles was a good one. The first thing I did was to stem and seed some de arbol chiles, and fry them in olive oil until they were darkened, then sprinkle with salt. They turned out crunchy and salty, and the heat was tamed a bit. The high notes of the chile flavor were mostly gone, however. It was more toasty than grassy. (If you want to understand what I mean by grassy, open up a packet of red pepper flakes from your nearest pizzeria and take a big whiff. That’s the flavor I’m going for.)

But whole chiles aren’t much of a snack. They’re so hot you can’t eat a lot, and they don’t have much substance. So I had an idea of my own: throw some de arbol pieces in with the popcorn in a stove-top batch. The de arbols will toast in the hot oil before the popcorn pops, and quickly spread their heat to the popcorn via the oil.

These days, people seem to think that the old-fashioned method is difficult and messy. It really isn’t. It’s just as fast as microwave popcorn, and not difficult at all. Rather than launch into a comparison of modern society to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, I’ll just show you the process.

Stovetop Popcorn

1. Start heating a heavy pan on medium heat. There’s a difference of opinion in whether to start all the ingredients cold, or add them to a preheated pan. I preheat my pan.
2. Add oil to the pan. Use an oil with a high smoke point, like peanut, sunflower, or canola. Add enough to cover the bottom of the pan.
3. Add the popcorn kernels to the pan. 1/4 cup of popcorn kernels wil make about 5 cups of popped popcorn. Adjust the number of kernels for you pan size. Don’t worry about how much you want to eat - no matter how much I’ve made, I always end up mowing through it all.
4. Add large flavor additions. At this point, if you prefer, add any large additions - dried chile pieces, garlic chips, nuts, whole spices. Do not add any ground spices or powders - they’ll burn way before the popcorn starts popping.
5. Shake the pan, and partially cover. Shake the pan to coat the kernels with warm oil. Partially cover the pan - you want to prevent the popcorn from popping out all over the kitchen, but you don’t want to hold in the steam.
6. Continue heating until the first pop. Keep the flame on medium, shaking every once in a while, until you hear the first pop. Then the real work begins.
7. Shake well every 10 seconds. The idea is that the smaller, denser kernels will easily fall down between the popped kernels to rest on the hot pan bottom.
8. When half the kernels have popped, drop the heat to just above low. You don’t want to continue to heat the oil, or it could start to smoke and break down, leading to acrid- or oily-tasting popcorn. Continue shaking every ten seconds.
9. When the popping slows, remove from heat. With a space of two or three seconds between pops, remove the pan from the heat. Keep it partially covered, as kernels will continue to pop from the heat of the pan. Wait until the popping has completely stopped.
10. Pour the popcorn out and season it. Pour the popcorn into a large bowl. While it’s hot, sprinkle on salt and any powdered seasonings you want to use. Toss the popcorn in the bowl and repeat sprinkling until it looks (and tastes!) the way you want it.

I have a bad habit.

It’s a habit a lot of people have. A habit that drains money faster than cable TV. Faster than broadband internet.

My name is Matt, and I’m addicted to Starbucks. (Hiiii Maaaatt.) That’s right. I pay $2.65 every weekday morning for a large (fine, venti) iced coffee.

But now I’m trying to get off that habit. I’m going back to making my own coffee (which, I have to admit, tastes much better than Starbucks’). Today I’ll cover my method for making hot coffee. Later I’ll write about cold-brewing, which is good for both hot coffee and iced coffee.

Continue reading to learn about The Beans, The Grind, and The Brew and see my method for hot coffee »

Over on The Simple Dollar, Trent writes about Eating What You Have On Hand. He knows that eating at home saves a lot of money over eating out, but what do you do when you’re too tired/sick/lazy to really cook dinner?

Along the same lines, I’ve come to realize that I tend to snack on and eat whatever’s convenient. For lunch, I’ll usually eat leftovers because it’s easy - it’s sitting in the fridge and usually only requires a bit of pepper and a trip to the microwave. At snack time, I’ll look at the fruit bowl and flip open the refrigerator door and grab whatever’s quick and at hand.

So why not combine the two and really crunch your food budget?

…

By a lucky coincidence, many of the healthiest foods are also quite cheap in their raw form.

So what I decided to do is start cooking some healthy and very inexpensive staple foods once a week in bulk, store them in containers in the fridge, and utilize them all throughout the week in various dishes.

He suggests cooking a big batch of a staple - something like beans, rice, or whole grains - then using that bit by bit through the week. You can combine it with any quick-to-cook vegetables you have on hand.

I like to do this too. I tend not to eat most leftovers, but if I have precooked base ingredients I’m happy to transmute them into something new.

Trent doesn’t mention meat. While cooking vegetarian meals is a really good way to save money, it’s not an option for me - not only because I’m a zealous omnivore, but I also need lots of protein from meat sources. In addition, his staple recommendations aren’t the best for me (I should be leaning more toward refined grains than whole grains), but for the average healthy person, his advice is very good.

One of the things I love is fragrant rice, either basmati or jasmine. When I cook rice, I’ll cook a big batch and save the extra rice. Reheated in the microwave with a bit of water, it comes back to life well enough to eat again plain. But my favorite thing to do with leftover rice is make fried rice. That uses up a good amount of rice, and little bits of leftover meat, vegetable, or practically anything else. Fried rice will be fully covered in another post soon.

Eating What You Have On Hand has made me think about what I currently have on hand. Tomorrow I’ll take a full inventory of my pantry, fridge, freezer, and spice cupboard, and see what I can make of that.

Salivary glands, lips, and lymph nodes: the ultimate breakfast meat.

The last couple days, I’ve been eating chorizo con huevos (chorizo sausage with eggs) for breakfast. Mexican chorizo is sausage made from finely ground pork, vinegar, lots of ground chile, and spices. It’s typically packaged in plastic casings, which are removed to cook the paste-like sausage inside.

Chorizo con huevos is one of my favorite scrambled egg dishes. The chorizo has more than its fair share of spice and flavor, and it’s happy to share with the eggs.

Continue reading to see how I make chorizo con huevos, and why the nationality of your sausage matters »

It seems to be a very basic thing, but many people find it hard to cook rice without it being hard or getting gummy or mushy. Using a rice cooker is the easy way to make rice - in most cases, just set it and forget it - but rice cookers take up counter space and their function can be duplicated with a single pan with just a little bit of skill and practice.

I cook rice in a saucepan with a tight-fitting lid. My method is very simple, but results in perfect rice every time. The method varies slightly depending on the type of rice used. This is different than the pilaf method, which is often used to produce rice with things added - vegetables, spices, and herbs.

Continue reading for guidelines and a series of steps to create perfectly cooked rice »

Out of all the cookware I own, the ones I like best are made out of cast iron. They’re the most versatile cooking vessels I have. I started using cast iron 4 years ago, when I moved in with someone who preferred cast iron for a lot of his cooking. I had been wanting to try it out ever since watching Alton Brown use it to cook a ribeye. In 2006, I got my own cast iron skillets and began using them daily.

Photo by Southern Foodways Alliance / CC BY 2.0

Continue reading to find out why you should use cast iron, how to choose it, how to season it, and how to cook in it »

I’ve had meatballs in my freezer for a long time now, and never got around to using them. Today I decided it was time to use them for a quick lunch.

With canned plain tomato sauce on hand, making a tasty sauce to go with pasta, bread, or meatballs is really simple and fast. Today I chopped up the remains of an onion, and smashed and roughly chopped three garlic cloves, then sauteed those in some California Estate olive oil.

Once they started to get fragrant, I added a good amount of red pepper flakes, some pepper, and a bit of dried oregano. I let it continue to saute until the onions just started to brown, then I added one small can of plain tomato sauce, just enough water to rinse the sides of the can, and a glug of balsamic vinegar. I let that simmer uncovered for ten minutes.

After simmering, I tasted it, and decided it needed some sugar, a bit more vinegar, and more oregano. Once that was stirred in, I added the frozen meatballs and about 1/2 cup of water, and partially covered the pan to let the meatballs cook for 20 minutes.

When the meatballs were done, I removed the lid and raised the heat to thicken the sauce. In the meantime, I toasted some pieces of sourdough bread. It all finished at about the same time. I put the meatballs and sauce on one side of the plate, and the bread on the other. The whole meal required about 15 minutes of active work, including cleanup (nonstick pans, while not great for everything, make cleanup of simple meals very easy).

Recently I had a craving for Southern-style vegetables: cooked for a long time with a cured pork product. I saw some nice Romano beans at the market, and decided they’d be just the thing. I had wanted to cook some when they were in season last year, but never got a chance.

Romano beans are a type of broad, flat snap bean. Depending on when they were harvested, they could be suited for either fast cooking, like most green beans, or long cooking. The Southern style for snap beans is to cook them for a long time with cured pork. This recipe is my take on a standard, simple Southern recipe for snap beans.

Continue reading for a method to check if your beans need stringing, and a recipe for romano beans »