Formula cooking is the idea that behind every recipe there is a formula.  The formula dictates what kinds of things go into a recipe and roughly what’s done with them.  That formula might be the same for literally hundreds or thousands of similar recipes but with each combination of specific ingredients yields something unique.  The easiest way to illustrate is with an example.

Here is a recipe for Macaroni and cheese:

• 1lb elbow macaroni, cooked al dente
• 8oz sharp cheddar cheese, grated
• 1/2cup milk
• 2T flour
• 1t salt
• 1cup seasoned bread crumbs

Mix first 5 ingredients and pour into a small baking dish.  Cover with bread crumbs and bake at 350F for 30 minutes or until bubbly.

This is a simple recipe but specifies exactly what goes into the dish and in what order.  Here is a formula for Macaroni and cheese:

• Some kind of pasta
• Some kind of cheese
• Some kind of sauce
• Some kind of seasoning
• Some kind of topping

Mix in some order and heat until all ingredients are cooked.

With this formula, you can create a practically unlimited number of dishes that could be called macaroni and cheese but are distinctly different from the first recipe.  You already do this when you happen to be out of cheddar cheese and substitute monterey jack instead.  Now, think about every part of a recipe being replaceable and your now using formula cooking.  This flexibility will allow you to create your own variation that might be:

• Healthier
• More suited to the tastes of your family
• Easier to prepare
• More interesting
• Better matched to another dish that this will accompany
• Best of all… Less expensive to make!

Now let’s say that I’m planning to make a Cajun meatloaf for dinner tonight.  The meatloaf is already in the oven and I need to make a quick side dish.  There are some chopped vegetables left from making the meatloaf.  I have some left over rotelli pasta that’s already cooked and some mild cheddar I got on sale because my family doesn’t like sharp cheddar.  Why not make a Cajun macaroni and cheese to go with the Cajun meatloaf?  Here’s what I come up with.

Cajun Stove top Mac & Cheese

• 1lb Rotelli pasta, cooked (pasta)
• 6oz mild cheddar, grated (cheese)
• 2T flour (sauce)
• 2T butter (sauce)
• 1/2 cup milk (sauce)
• 1/2 cup onions, chopped (seasoning)
• 1/4 cup bell pepper, chopped (seasoning)
• 1/4 cup celery, chopped (seasoning)
• 1/4 cup andouille sausage, diced (seasoning)
• 2t Cajun seasoning salt (seasoning)
• 5 dashes Tabasco (seasoning)
• 1/2 cup stale goldfish crackers, crushed

Cook the butter and flour over medium heat in a large sauce pan until the flour turns lightly brown.  Add the onions, bell pepper and celery and cook about 5 minutes or until soft.  Add the andouille and seasoning salt.  Add the cheese and milk and stir until it forms a sauce.  Add the pasta and tabasco.  Turn off the heat and let sit for 5-10 minutes for it to thicken.  Sprinkle with the crushed crackers.  Serve with Cajun meatloaf!

I’ve never made the above recipe, but bet it would be good!  It’s just an example to show how when you use the formula you can come up with something completely different that you can be pretty certain will still be recognizable, and probably delicious.  Next time you’re looking at a recipe, see if you can figure out the formula.  If you do that, I bet you’ll immediatly come up with ideas to make your own version that’s probably even better!

The article offered up some great general tips for making frugal food choices.  I’ve summarized them here.  A link to the full article is below:

1. Choose less expensive cuts of meat like whole chicken and whole pork loin
2. Add grains and legumes to stretch out a meal
3. Go vegetarian a few times a week
4. Stick with simpler recipes and avoid buying spices that you won’t use again
5. Cut down on food waste by freezing and cooking leftovers into new recipes

The full article has a lot more detail along with some frugal recipes at the end.

I used to avoid buying fresh herbs because even though they were cheap, I still felt bad about throwing away half a bunch.   To fix this, I came up with lots of ways to use up fresh herbs so I can enjoy them regularly without feeling guilty.  Below are some of my favorite ways to use up fresh curly or flat-leaf parsley.

• Sprinkle on everything! Parsley has a strong flavor that holds it’s own against heavy meats and strong spices.  I love parsley chopped and added to meaty soups and stews.  I sprinkle it on everything from chicken and dumplings to sauted squash.  I usually chop about 1/3 of the bunch and store it in a container in the fridge (for up to a week) so it’s ready to use at a moments notice.
• Add to leafy salads! Fresh parsley goes great in salads.  You can chop it and add it directly with the lettuce or try blending it with your salad dressing.  Either way it adds a very nice flavor.
• Add to picnic salads! Add fresh parsley to tuna, chicken, potato and macaroni salads to turn them into something amazing.  Use your regular recipe but add just enough at the end to leave some small bits of green.  It’s also delicious in cole slaw.
• Pesto! Fresh parsley can be added to traditional pesto along with, or instead of, basil.  You can also make your own pesto variations.  Instead of the traditional basil and pine nuts with olive oil, try parsley and walnuts with walnut oil.
• Parsleyed vegetables! Fried potatoes are made even better with some fresh parsley added near the end.  This works for many kinds of sauteed and fried vegetables.
• Blend with olive oil! Try blending fresh parsley with olive oil and then drizzling over grilled or sauted vegetables.
• Chimichurri! This traditional Argentinian marinade and sauce for grilled meat is full of flavor.  Serve this on the side with your next barbeque.  For a real South American barbeque, baste the meat with nothing but salt water while grilling.  You won’t believe the flavor!
• Freeze it! If there’s any left after all the above, chop it and freeze it.  It won’t be as good for sprinkling on just before serving, but will still add great flavor when added near the end and stirred into a dish.

I hope these ideas inspire you to pick up a bunch of fresh parsley on your next trip to the market.  Let us know if you have an idea of your own to share!

It’s no surprise that we crave sugar.  Our bodies still have built-in mechanisms that helped our ancestors survive regular cycles of feast and famine.  Those mechanisms now tell us to shovel in the sugar.  When we do, our brains reward us with a release of beta endorphins, which makes us feel good.  We then crave that good feeling sugar gives us and the cycle repeats.  The craving-reward cycle turns into an addiction, not unlike smoking or alcohol abuse.

You can break this sugar cycle, but not overnight.  Simply swapping out fruit for Oreos is likely to cause rebellion in your household.  Done gradually, reducing your family’s consumption of sugar using the tips below can get your kids to reach for fruit and healthy snacks without them even noticing.

Read food labels.  Mayonnaise has added sugar.  Ewwww… Why?!?!?!  There is sugar in a lot more food items than you may realize.  Reading labels will help you know what foods are adding to your family’s sugar consumption.  Look for things like sugar, high fructose corn syrup, dextrose, glucose, etc…   Consider cutting down on those foods or making them yourself so you can control the ingredients.

Make more things from scratch- especially food items that normally contain a lot of sugar, like cookies, cereal, granola and other treats and desserts.  Making thses items from scratch help you control exactly what’s in the foods your family eats.

Reduce the amount of sugar in recipes.  If a recipe calls for 1 cup of sugar and you cut that down to 3/4, in most cases, no one will even notice.  There are ways to make EVERYTHING with less sugar that will still make your family smile.  Slowly cutting down on the amount of sugar and sweetener will get your family’s taste buds reset so items with less sugar will taste just as sweet.

Use healthy sugar substitutes. Natural substitutes like fruit juice, stevia and agave can be used along with or combined with sugar to create treats that are amazingly delicious without adding tons of sugar OR chemical sweeteners.

Substitute healthy treats. Once your family starts getting used to foods that are less sweet, fruit will taste much better.  Try combining fruit with your treats to get your family used to eating fruit again.

When you’ve cut down on your family’s sugar consumption you’ll be rewarded by knowing you’re helping them be their best and live long, healthy lives.

You may have figured out that I’m a little obsessed with healthy ingredients.  I like to make substitutions like brown rice for white, whole wheat flour for white and agave for sugar.  The following bread recipe is no exception, but the techniques work equally well with white flour with only slight variations to the amount of water added.

If you remember from part 2, the secrets to good bread are:

• A wet dough
• TIme
• Balancing the amount of yeast

I’m going to use all three of these techniques in the following recipe:

Whole Wheat Bread

Using 100% whole wheat flour in bread making can be a little tricky.  It has a lower percentage of glutin and the wheat bran tends to puncture the bubbles.  These two factors can result in a dense, heavy loaf.  To help this, I’ve added a little extra wheat gluten.  I’ve also added some brown rice flour because I’ve heard it helps to make a crisper crust.  We’ll see!

• 3 cups 100% whole wheat flour + 1 cup for use later (photo 1)
• 1/4 cup wheat gluten
• 1/4 cup brown rice flour
• 1/4t yeast active dry yeast (photo 2)
• 1t salt
• water

Day 1 (remember that time is one of the secrets?)

Mix 3 cups of the whole wheat flour with the gluten and rice flour.  Add the yeast and salt and blend well.  Add enough water to make a wet dough somewhere between regular bread dough and cake batter.  If you’re using whole wheat flour it will probably take about 2 to 2 1/2 cups of water.  Just add water slowly until you end up with the right consistency.  I use a Kitchen Aid mixer with the paddle attachment (photo 3).  You want a dough too wet for the dough hook to do anything.  Scrape down the sides of the mixer bowl, spray the top with some non-stick spray and cover with a towel (photo 4).  Let rest somewhere until tomorrow.  I keep it in the oven.

Day 2 (or about 12 hours later)

Your dough should be even looser than before and more than double in size (photo 5+6).  At this point you want to gently knead in enough flour so the dough will hold a loaf shape but still be very soft.  Add a good 1/2 cup of flour to your work area and pour out the dough onto the flour (photo 7).  Fold the dough over onto itself until you’ve added enough flour for it to stay together in a round loaf (photo 8).  Dust the top well and cover with a towel to let rise for another couple of hours.

After a couple of hours you’ll have something roughly double in size (photo 9).  Preheat the oven to 450F.  If you have a cast iron enamed or ceramic dutch oven, put that in the oven to preheat.  Baking a loaf in one of these pots has many advantages.  Check out the NY Times article on this.  My dutch oven is a little big so I’m going to end up with a flatter loaf, but still just as tasty.  Once the pot is heated thoroughly, carefully turn the dough out into the pot and cover (photo 10).  Bake covered for 30 min.  After 30 min remove the lid and bake another 15-30 min until done.  It should have a hollow sound when thumped (photo 11+12).

Let the finished loaf cool thoroughly on a wire rack or stove grate.  My loaf was still pretty dense, but incredibly tasty (photo 13).  The crust was thin and crisp.  The interior was incredibly moist and chewy with irregular air pockets.  Swapping some of the whole wheat flour with white flour would have helped.  I love the idea of using whole wheat with nothing removed so I will probably keep making it this way.

I hope your loaf turns out as good!  In the next part, I’m going to take an existing recipe and modify it to use these bread baking secrets.  If you have a suggestion for a recipe to start with, post a comment.  Maybe I’ll use your recipe!

I came up with this idea while I was making a recipe of pork chops and pan sauce with vegetables.  I sometimes make a vegetable ragout using white beans and the sauce never needs any additional thickening.  The beans add this lucious thickness that makes the sauce come together perfectly.  For the pork chop recipe I didn’t want any beans in the sauce but still wanted the same silky texture as the ragout.  I always keep cans of refried beans around so figured that might work.

Refried beans do have some whole beans in them so I smashed them with a spoon until they were nearly completely smooth.  A few tablespoons of beans added into the sauce rewarded me with exactly what I was looking for- a rich, creamy sauce without adding fat or starch.  I did need to cook the sauce a few minutes for the beans to fully incorporate into the sauce.

In addition to adding a silky texture to a sauce or stew, beans add welcome fiber that is lacking in nearly everyone’s diet.  Fiber helps keep your insides moving and is shown to reduce cholesterol.  Some people complain of gas caused by beans, but that only happens with people that don’t get enough fiber already.  If you eat beans regularly, the gas problems will go away and you’ll be left with a very well-functioning gastro-intestinal tract.

As I’m typing this, it occurred to me that I might be able to grind dry beans to use as an instant thickener similar to Wondra flour.  I’ll definitely try this in the future and post about the experience.

Do use beans as a thickener?  How else do you use beans?  Post a comment!

Last night I was waiting to get into a restaurant in the Little Saigon area of Westminster/Garden Grove and wandered into a Vietnamese supermarket.  They had the best looking ribeye steaks I think I’ve ever seen for $2.99/lb.  I was blown away.  This must not be a very popular cut of meat among the regulars.  Even the beef short ribs (sawed across the bone for Korean galbi) were $3.49/lb.

If you’ve never been to your local Asian market, you should definitely give it a try.  It’s certainly different from most American markets but you’ll be rewarded with some great deals and special items you can’t find elsewhere.

Here are some great deals I’ve come across at my local 99 Ranch:

• The freshest ginger you’ve ever seen for dirt cheap.  I didn’t know ginger could be this good.  Great produce, in general, although I don’t know what to do with many of the items.  I usually pick up the various bok choy varieties and stir fry them.  I also pick up green onions, fresh chiles, black mushrooms, melons and sometimes jack fruit.
• Seafood is fresh and cheap.  Much of it is alive.  This is the only place to pick up crab and lobster.  I can’t remember seeing live lobsters for more than $9.99/lb- not that I buy lobster that often.  Many fish counters will also clean and deep fry a fish for you.  They usually have a big chart above the back wall showing what they can do.
• Meat in all sorts of cuts, some I don’t even know what to do with.  I’m definitely going back for some ribeyes!
• Sauces and spice mixes are cheap and better than what the American market carries.  Check out how many different types (not brands) of soy sauce there are.  My favorite is the dark superior- it’s much less salty and as dark as kitchen bouquet.  It has a much better flavor for stirfrying than Kikkoman.  Many spice packets have directions in English so try something new!
• A butane burner for $13.  I love Sichuan hot pot and you need one of these burners.  I also got three large butane canisters for $5.  I’ve made hot pot quite a few times and haven’t even gotten through one.  They also have all the ingredients for hot pot.  I’ll post about my hot pot experience some time soon.

Well, I’m sure there are many more deals there.  I’ll try to get some specifics on my next trip and post some photos too.  If you shop at your local Asian market let us know what you buy by posting a comment!

Caramelization, that results in that luscious brown color, is the oxidation of sugars in the meat by applying high heat.  This is the same process that causes other foods to turn brown by applying heat, such as cooking table sugar into caramel.  While meat doesn’t have a lot of sugar, it has more than enough to caramelize.

Not every food benefits from caramelization, but for those that do, more is better!  So, now how do we get as much caramelization as possible.  Here are the secrets:

• Start with a dry piece of meat.  Nothing ruins the potential for caramelization like water.  Use a paper towel to make sure anything you want to brown is as dry as possible.
• Use high heat.  Whether you’re using a skillet, broiler or grill, you want the heat up high.  Preheat your pan or grill and make sure it’s hot before putting the meat in.  Then, keep the heat high enough so any moisture that comes out of the meat evaporates immediately.  If the heat is too low, moisture will collect in the pan and you’ll end up steaming.
• Use a heavy skillet.  The heavier the better.  This helps the pan keep its heat when you drop in the meat.  Cast iron or heavy stainless steel is a good choice.
• Bring the meat to room temperature.  This will keep the pan from cooling down too much when you first put in the meat.  Don’t leave it sit out all day- just let it warm up a bit.
• Balance the heat and time.  You’ll also need to adjust the heat based on the total cooking time.  Balance the heat and time so that the meat has the perfect amount of caramelization when it’s just done inside.  One easy way to do this is to start something in a pan or on the grill on high heat and then finish it in the oven (maybe 350F).
• More surface area.  The larger the surface area, the more room there is for caramelization.  Butterflying cuts like chicken breasts or pork loin creates a larger area to brown.  In the case of chicken, this also creates a flatter surface so browns more completely in a skillet.
• Add some sugar.  A little sugar added to your rub or brine will promote better caramelization.  Rubs can go on meat just before cooking, while brines typically take 1-3 days to do their job.  Heck, do both!

You can apply these techniques to anything that benefits from caramelization.  Now that you know those secrets, I’m going to leave you with two tips and one recipe.

The first tip is to NEVER discard the brown bits left in the pan after caramelizing meat.  The French call this “fond” and it’s worth more than gold.  I’ll write a future post up on this.  If you’re not sure what to do with this stuff now, add a little water while the pan is hot and scrap the bits until they dissolve.  Put it in a container and freeze it until I get around to writing that blog post- trust me on this one.  You’ll thank me later. 

The second tip is to NEVER put meat into the crock pot without first browning.  This can make the difference between something blah and something really spectacular.  It’s definitely worth the effort.

Now for the recipe.  I like putting beef chuck roast into the crock pot because it’s easy, inexpensive and is big enough to make a dish that will last us for several meals.  I pack it up in portion sizes and freeze them for lunch or a day I don’t feel like cooking.  I usually just throw in whatever I happen to have and in the mood for.  Here is a simple recipe I decided to make today:

Simple crock pot chuck roast

• 1 – 3-4lb beef chuck roast
• 1 14oz can of whole tomatoes
• 2 small onions, diced
• 2t dried thyme
• 2 bay leaves
• salt and pepper

Use the first four caramelization tips above to get that roast good and brown.  Don’t even think about skipping this step!!! While that’s going on, put the rest of the ingredients into the crock pot and set it to low for 8-10 hours or high for 4-6 hours.  Put in the very brown meat, put on the lid and go kill a few hours.  I also deglazed the skilled used to brown the roast with about a cup of water and added it to the crock pot.  When it’s done, skim off any excess fat and season with salt and pepper before serving.  The end result will have a very thin and light sauce.  You can thicken this up with some flour mixed with milk or water and then bringing to a simmer for a minute or two.

Another nice addition to this would be any root vegetables like carrots, parsnips, rutabegas, etc…  Celery and/or leeks would also be nice.  Fresh chopped parsley added in just before serving would be wonderful.  This is also a great opportunity to clean out anything getting old in the fridge.

If you have a good variation to this or decide to make this recipe, post a comment!

• The My Favorite Pain au Levain recipe
• Jim Varasano’s NY pizza recipe page
• The NY Times article on the Sullivan Street bakery

The methods in these articles break away from the traditional bread making techniques that seem to fill nearly every cookbook published.  It wasn’t obvious to me first, but these recipes have three main things in common that really make them special.  These three common items are the keys to good bread baking.

The first secret is a very wet dough.  By wet dough, I mean a dough that has a lot more water than most recipes.  The first pain au levain recipe calls for making a “levain” starter that is very loose and then combining with more flour and water.  The other two recipes call for making a base dough with a lot more water than normal.  The wet dough allows for the gluten in the flour to be more mobile in the dough.  This mobility allows the gluten to develop more fully, which is otherwise done by kneading for a long time.  A wet dough eliminates the need for the long kneading time but still yielding an even better structure.

The second secret is time.  All three recipes require much longer than most recipes.  This extra time could be one day in the case of the Sullivan Street recipe or up to six days in the case of Jim Varasano’s pizza recipe.  This extra time or “aging” helps the flour develop a much richer and more complex flavor.  This is largely responsible for the elimination of the common “homebaked” taste that most recipes yield.  If you want to make great bread, it’s going to take at least a day.

The third secret is less yeast.  This is largely possible due to secret #2 above.  With this aging period the yeast will have more time to multiply and create CO2 so you won’t need nearly as much.  You’ll also get some naturally occurring yeast from the air which will add additional complex flavors and structure.  The resulting loaf tastes more like store-bought bread and less like yeasty homemade bread.

So now that you know the secrets, how do we use them to make the best bread ever?  There are a few tricks to apply these techniques into your breadmaking.

The first trick is to adjust rise temperature so you can age the dough as long as you like without the yeast burning out.  For aging a day or less, I’d let the dough sit at cool room temperature.  For aging longer than a day, I’d keep the dough in the refrigerator and take it out at least a couple of hours before baking.  After some experimentation, you’ll learn how much yeast you need and how long to age the dough to get the results you want.  It’s going to be different depending on whether you’re trying to make a sandwith loaf, ciabatta, french loaf, etc… I often make small batches of dough and keep them aging in the fridge so I can make a small loaf any time I feel like it.

The next trick is to knead in enough flour near the end to make a dough of the right consistency for baking.  The wet dough is great for aging but doesn’t always bake well.  Ideally, you want to very lightly knead in some flour and then let the dough rest for 20-30 min before baking.

Finally, the baking technique is the last trick.  I’d usually go hotter than your recipe calls for.  Baking at 400F yields a nicer color and crust than you’ll get at a lower temperature.  The baking technique described in the Sullivan Street recipe yields a loaf with an amazing crust.  You should definitely try it!  Sometimes I will even bake flatbreads on the grill.  You can also try baking in a pre-heated cast iron skillet.

All of these techniques require a little practice, but once you get the hang of them, you can turn any recipe into something better than any bakery.

You’re going to want to have some flour and yeast on hand for the next installment because it’s time to bake some bread!  I’ll provide a general formula recipe you can use right away to make your best loaf ever.  I’ll go into exactly what your wet dough should look like and how to get it ready for the oven.  I’ll also provide some hints for how to modify an existing recipe to use these techniques.

If you’d like to be notified when part 3 is posted, take a look at the Why Subscribe? page for a list of all the ways you can sign up for notification of new posts.

Let me start by saying that the secret doesn’t involve any special ingredients.  In fact, the best loaf I’ve made had nothing but ordinary flour, water, salt and yeast.  There is also NO one secret recipe.  The secret is all in the technique and can be used to make any number of different types of bread.

I first have to give credit to this bread recipe I came across.  I think it was on a Martha Stewart TV show or web site.  This recipe is responsible for my one miracle loaf that actually tasted like amazing bakery bread.  The recipe is incredibly complicated and takes a long time, but did yield incredible results.  It was so complicated that, in fact, I only made one loaf.  At the time, I didn’t realize why this recipe worked so well, but I do now.

I next credit Jim Varasano for writing the best page on homemade NY-style pizza.  The first “lightbulb” went on when I read this on his page:

There are about a hundred books and internet recipes that claim to give an authentic or secret pizza dough recipe. Oddly, while many claim to be secret or special, they are practically all the same. Here it is in summary. If you see this recipe, run screaming:

Sprinkle a yeast packet into warm water between 105-115 F and put in a teaspoon of sugar to feed it. Wait for it to foam up or  ‘proof’. Add all your flour to a Kitchen Aid heavy duty mixer, then add the yeast and salt. Now mix until it pulls away from the side of the bowl. Coat with oil and leave in a warm place until it doubles in bulk, about 1-2 hours. Punch down, spread on a peel with some cornmeal to keep it from sticking and put it on the magical pizza stone that will make this taste just like Sally’s in your 500F oven.

I assure you, this will not make anything like a real pizza. It’s weird – even chefs whose other recipes all come out pretty good, like Emeril, simply pass around more or less this same terrible recipe.

I instantly realized that this was also true of bread recipes- they’re all the same!  Now Jim goes on to break down every possible detail of dough making and ingredient selection.  He definitely has mastered the art of pizza making!  I knew making good bread couldn’t be this complicated but I could see his results were impressive.  His recipe was completely different from the recipe in the link above but there were some similarities in the techniques.

Soon after I discovered Jim’s pizza page, my sister sent me a link to this NY Times article on Jim Lahey and the Sullivan St Bakery.  Now this is one recipe I followed to the letter.  Their technique is amazingly simple AND yields incredible results!  Check out this video:

Now I was really starting to see a pattern in these recipes.  Have you figured out what it is?

Stay tuned for the next episode where I’m going to itemize these secrets to bread baking and show you how to apply them to any bread recipe.

If you’d like to be notified when part 2 is posted, take a look at the Why Subscribe? page for a list of all the ways you can sign up for notification of new posts.