5 sweet foodie gadgets you can’t live without

September 14, 2014 by hillarystarbright

I should preface this by saying that I am not, in principle, a gadget person. I have a small apartment on the beach with a kitchen befitting my apartment’s size (you don’t even want to know my square yardage), and frankly I don’t need a lot of things that take up a ton of space and are only good for one thing. Although, as you can see by this list, I totally broke my own rule for a few items.

I get a lot of questions from readers about what sort of products I would recommend, so I decided to make a quick list of the gadgets I use regularly. Since as you know (and much to my mother’s chagrin), I do not get paid to write this blog or to recommend or advertise any product. If I tell you I like a thing and that you should buy it, it’s because I own it myself and I like it.

Also, I eat a lot of yogurt and rice, so I have a yogurt maker and a rice cooker as well. They take up very little space, and the yogurt maker especially saves me a lot of money in store-bought yogurt with who-knows-what added to it.

1) Everyone needs a slow cooker.

I use my crock pot for about a third of the meals I make — from pork carnitas to beans and greens to smoked chicken stock to every kind of chili or soup you can imagine, to apple butter for canning (or not) and bacon jams for just about everything.

Plus, a crock pot, or slow cooker, isn’t technically a gadget, right? Everyone should have one. They’re cheap, they last a long time, they don’t require anything fancy, and most slow-cooker recipes are pretty fool-proof.

Even if you buy a really fancy and expensive one, it’s worth it. The first time you enjoy a hot, homemade soup that has been cooking slowly all day while you’ve been at work, the thing will have paid for itself.

2) Princess.

I bought a Masterbuilt M7P 7-in-1 Outdoor Cooking system a few years ago. I bought it on Overstock, which for certain purchases gives you free shipping, and I paid about $160 total (although I have seen it on other websites for similar prices or cheaper). I paid another $40 for a used propane tank and another $30 or so for a fancy digital thermometer (which I would recommend regardless of the smoker).

The M7P use both charcoal and propane, and can be a grill or a smoker. It can also be a campfire grill (you simply remove all but the base and you can lay firewood on it) a boiler (use the giant pot in the kit on the flame without the drum-shaped piece), and a steamer (add the big steamer pot to the other pot).

My M7P 7-in-1 Outdoor Cooking System. Best $150 I ever spent.

In addition to the insanely amazing smoked turkeys, chickens, hams, and grilled foods, I have been known to make a pretty kick-ass crab boil using my M7P.

Even if you opt to not buy this particular model, I think everyone should have the ability to smoke their food … or at the very least, grill it outdoors. Don’t just use that propane grill or that charcoal smoker for special occasions, or even just for meat. Try roasting some pumpkins or squash for soup in it, or smoking some garlic and peppers to use for other dishes. Try smoking your wings.

3) I kill plants. Yet I love this mini-garden for non-gardeners.

How about THIS thing? Cool birthday present, a four-level seed sprouter. As you can see below, it takes up very little space on your countertop and it’s easy-to-clean plastic.

It’s also very simple to use … you get some seeds. A few come with the kit, plus I got a few more as part of my present, but they generally cost less than $4 a pack. You soak the seeds for a few days, then spread the seeds on the sprouter.

Once it’s done, you have a great pile of sprouts, perfect for sandwiches, salads, and a myriad of other dishes.

4) Farmcurious fermenting set

I won this set in a cool contest from Killer Pickles this spring, and I’ve been using it pretty much nonstop. It’s basically a set of caps and airlocks.

This was my first use of the kit … some red cabbage, fermented with green garlic and green apple.

It made its debut with some Bratwurst at a Memorial Day party this summer, and it was SO AMAZING that I had to go buy some half-gallon-sized mason jars, which is the largest size jar you can buy and still fit the airlock caps. So … I’m not new to fermenting, but I needed to try all of my previous recipes using these bad boys.

Since then I’ve made some amazing pickles …

… and tepache …

… and now some peppers are fermenting for sriracha.

I also fermented some pears with spicy peppers. I think they’ll be amazing on a cheese plate.

5) Preserving on a different level with a food dehydrator.

I’ve been making homemade jams and pickles and preserves for a few years now, and I had been focusing on them so much that I neglected one of the best and oldest forms of preservation – drying. I scored a Nesco brand dehydrator — a promotional version of the 4-tray dehydrator called a “Jerky XPress” that comes with a jerky gun and spices and curing salts for making jerky.

Of course, it can be used to dehydrate anything … lately for kale chips with parmesan cheese, fresh berries, and spicy peppers.

Check back later to see what I’m making with those dehydrated peppers. 🙂

Summer Favorites

July 22, 2014 by hillarystarbright

If you are a regular reader of this blog, thank you. Sometimes my daily or weekly food projects aren’t much more complicated than “hey, I smoked this tasty chicken,” so I don’t always do a full blog post on everything I make. I do not post often enough, so I thought I would remedy that by sharing with you some of the foods that have been pleasing crowds at Casa de Starbright all spring and summer long.

Also, if you are so inclined, I encourage you to check the links on the right of this page and follow me on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter, which are updated far more often.

First up is the old standby: beer-can chicken. I do this all the time. It takes only a couple of hours to smoke, and every time it’s perfectly juicy and tender. if you have a vertical smoker like I do, you don’t even need one of those fancy racks … just manipulate an empty aluminum can snugly into the inside the bird, make sure you can see the tab through the top (see picture below) and then when you set the whole thing on your smoker you can work the chicken’s legs around so it’s sitting up on the can. Then you fill up the can with the liquid of your choice (pretty much anything except really strong liquor as that will just be a fire hazard), coat the outside with a dry rub and a bit of oil, and smoke it til the internal temperature is at least 160.

This is the chicken I smoked on the Fourth of July, alongside a homemade pastrami brisket (just a corned beef brisket coated in brown sugar, black pepper, coriander and paprika, and then smoked), and a foil packet full of garlic, onions and other items.

I usually have a packet of something random smoking alongside of my meat. If I have a few extra cloves of garlic or jalapeno peppers, those will always get smoked. Sometimes if I have a huge surplus of onions or other fruits I will smoke those for a BBQ sauce, and sometimes I will also smoke the sauce ingredients with the meat the sauce will be used on, which is always delicious.

Here, I smoked a nice rack of baby back ribs … this is the “after” photo when they came off of the smoker, and before smoking they only had a very basic dry rub. On the top rack of the smoker I had a few small foil packets, containing red onions, whole heads of garlic, and two ripe peaches.

After about an hour I took the fruit, onions and garlic off the smoker, and put it all in a pot on the stove with a large can (14 oz.) of crushed tomatoes, 2 cups apple cider vinegar, 2 tbsp. kosher salt, 2 tbsp. brown sugar, and 1 tbsp. each of black pepper, oregano, paprika, cumin and chipotle chili powder. The smoked peaches and onions had the same smoky flavor as the ribs, so it wasn’t too sweet, and the sauce complimented the meat perfectly.

And a couple of days later on some BBQ chicken breasts, served with roasted corn and some warm greens.

Of course, one cannot forget the cocktails! Homemade tepache is getting to be one of my favorites … it’s so simple, it’s delicious and unique … and it impresses the hell out of your friends when you tell them you just made your own alcohol.

Check out my first blog post here about tepache, back when I was just discovering it, but know that this is just as adaptable as any fermented drink like beer or kefir … adapt it to your tastes and style. I’ve tried it with a whole pineapple (you can re-use that boozy fruit later) or just the core and peel, and I’ve also added whole peaches to the mix. Te-peach-e is definitely something you should try.

I’ve also tried making it in my Korean fermenting crock, and lately with my new Farmcurious airlock cap set (see below), and if you are into fermenting at all, I would definitely recommend one of these cap sets. It makes fermenting anything really simple.

Of course man cannot live by meat and boozy fruit alone, so we must also make somewhat healthy snacks. I guess. Sorta healthy. It has fruit in it.

I subscribe to a number of websites wherein people send me samples of things. Like, all the time. At any given moment I have no less than a dozen sauces, glazes, toppings, jams, jellies, pickles, and various other things in jars, most of which I have not made myself. One of those jars happened to contain a salted caramel sauce for desserts, so I decided to see what it could do with some grilled fruit.

Pineapples and blueberries happened to be both ripe and in my kitchen, plus a single slightly underripe peach. They made very lovely skewers, and were topped with the salted caramel glaze right at the end for a little extra sweetness. It was perfect.

I also got to enjoy a number of awesome food festivals so far this summer, including a Greek festival … where I may or may not have bought a hunk of homemade feta cheese the size of my head. There were no witnesses who are talking. However, I did entertain my guests with many, many, many feta cheese dishes for the next few days, including this … well, can you even call this a “recipe” or a “dish”?

Slice a watermelon. Crumble some really good feta on top. The end.

Seriously, that’s really all there is to it, and I could totally eat that entire plate right there. The slightly salty flavor of the feta is so perfect with the melon. I have also seen a number of variations on this dish, but all of them seem way too complicated to me. One called for freezing the slices of feta, then coating them in breadcrumbs and frying them, then serving those fried cheese squares in the most picturesque, Pinterest-worthy plating with the perfectly molded hunks of watermelon you’ve ever seen.

However I am a simple girl. Like my adorable niece right here. All she needs is some fruit to match her outfit, and look at that smile! She doesn’t even need the cheese! (But don’t omit the cheese unless you are also a baby.)

This summer, I also started cooking with orzo for the first time, and I think it is going to be my go-to starch for cold salads from now on. Orzo is actually made of barley, so it’s extremely healthy for you. It also cooks up in no time, chills really quickly, too, and then takes whatever flavor you give it. And it holds its own with hearty veggies. What more can you ask for?

This tasty salad is a 1-lb packet of orzo, boiled about 6 minutes in salted water, then cooled, and tossed with extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, green peas, diced carrot, sautéed yellow squash, sliced red onion, and bits of leftover pastrami.

Epic wings are so … epic.

July 9, 2014 by hillarystarbright

I have found the dish that will forever be the star of your outdoor dinner party. I first tried these at a friend’s house (he was trying to copy some wings from a local bar) and I have made them a few times. I’m in love. And I am no slouch with party snacks.

It’s a fairly simple recipe, taking a total of about 2 hours, only about 1 1/2 of them are hands-off (unless you are making your own sauces). It can be adapted for size, tastes and ingredients. It also showcases two of the best ways to add flavor to some meat: smoking and frying. Lastly, you drown those delicious wings in lots of epic sauce, and you can get really creative with the toppings.

Very simply, epic wings are so F*^%^% epic because of the easy, yet profound cooking process.

Step 1: Season the wings. I use a simple herb mixture. Try to keep the salt content low so it doesn’t dry out the meat during smoking.

Step 2: Smoke the wings. Of course I use my awesome Masterbuilt 7-in-1 smoker/grill, which is well-seasoned and smokes pretty quickly. Use any type of wood, for at least an hour. If you smoke it longer than one hour it will add more flavor, but they’re already fully cooked after about 45 minutes on 250 degrees.

Step 3: Fry the wings. A good flash-fry, in hot oil. Preferably in a cast-iron skillet with bacon grease.

Step 4: Toss the wings in sauce. This is a great time to get creative, or even (especially at a BBQ or party) to do a few different types of flavors.

Get ’em saucy. They can take it; that flash-fry got them nice and crispy, so they won’t get soggy.

When my friend tried this recipe for the first time, he tried to re-create the local bar’s “dirty sauce,” which is all four of their sauces — Buffalo wing sauce, sweet and sour sauce, BBQ sauce and ranch dressing — and it was really amazing.

Those were using generic, store-brand sauces, except for Sweet Baby Ray’s brand BBQ sauce and Hidden Valley Ranch from the packet.

I also made this same recipe and dirty sauce using my own homemade BBQ sauce and homemade Buffalo wing sauce (traditionally made with Frank’s Hot Sauce and butter, instead of Frank’s I used my own homemade, lacto-fermented sriracha).

October Unprocessed: Kicked-up Oktoberfest Soup

October 13, 2013 by hillarystarbright

I have found some truly amazing recipes for October Unprocessed (check out my Pinterest board for them all here), but there are a few that are fast becoming my favorites. I am particularly happy to work with other things I make from scratch (even before the OU challenge), like homemade, nitrate-free bacon, and sauerkraut I made in my own fermenting crock.

I found this excellent recipe by Sweet & Sauer for a bacon, potato and sauerkraut soup, and I had to try it … although I kicked it up a little. I like my soups to be nice and chunky, and I generally use vegetable stock or chicken stock, where this recipe calls for water.

I added some German favorites like dill and beer, so call my kicked-up version “Oktoberfest Soup.”

Kicked-up Oktoberfest Soup

8 ounces bacon (my recipe for unprocessed, nitrate-free bacon is here)
1 medium onion, diced
2 large carrots, cubed
3-4 garlic cloves, minced
4-5 new potatoes (about 1 pound)
1 large sweet potato
2 cups sauerkraut (my homemade recipe is here)
1 tablespoon dried dill
dash of hot sauce or sriracha (my homemade recipe is here)
lots of black pepper
half a bottle of good beer
just a little bit of salt*

I rendered the chopped bacon with the onions and garlic, then added the hot sauce, the chopped carrots and potatoes, and the dried dill and pepper.

Then I added the beer (be sure to scrape up all the good bits stuck to the bottom of the pot) and the water. Bring it to a boil and then let it simmer for about 30 minutes. Add the sauerkraut at the end — *and salt to taste, ONLY if you need it. There is a lot of salt in the bacon and in the kraut, so taste it first and make sure — you don’t want to overdo it.

The hot sauce, the dried dill, the good beer and the bit of sweet earthiness from the sweet potato make a huge difference in the flavor of the stock. Make sure you use a tasty beer, as the flavor of it will concentrate as the soup cooks.

A quick note about adding the sauerkraut at the end: I found the best result when I put cold sauerkraut on the bottom of my soup bowl, and then ladled the hot soup on top. If you heat the kraut over 110 degrees, the probiotic goodness of the sauerkraut might be compromised … although it will still taste very good. 🙂

After October Unprocessed is over, I think I will try a slightly processed, slightly spicier version … I want to get some good marinated pork belly (my local Korean grocery has the best stuff in their deli, but I am sure it’s processed on some level) and make a stew from it with noodles, then add my homemade kimchi at the end. I think it would be fantastic.

Stay tuned.

October Unprocessed: 1 week out

September 24, 2013 by hillarystarbright

Just one more week until I start the October Unprocessed Challenge and I am getting ready. Turns out, there’s a reason why they don’t call this “Walk in the Park October” or “Super Happy Fun Shopping Trip October.”

It’s a Challenge with a capital “C.”

I don’t know if you guys ever noticed this, but in America, we are pretty spoiled when it comes to food. We can find (and usually/ hopefully afford) most any type of food, yet the cheapest, most plentiful and most available type of food is processed and, in most cases, grossly unhealthy. We have now reached the point where The Challenge (and I am going to continue to capitalize that) is to find something NOT processed. It’s madness. And it’s seriously a challenge. It’s a challenge for me and I live in an urban area in southern California, where I can access a dozen weekly farmer’s markets, organic food co-ops, community gardens, and more. Yet even in a place that is the opposite of a food desert, still, food that is not as good for you is easier to obtain in every way.

This also requires a serious review of what it means for something to be considered “processed.” Technically, if I pick an apple from a tree and then take it into my kitchen and slice it up, I have just processed that apple. Right? However, this challenge isn’t quite so strict — it goes by “the kitchen test,” which means that any food that a competent person could make in their own home kitchen, with whole food ingredients, is considered unprocessed. Hey, I know people who make beer and cheese and tofu from scratch in THEIR kitchens, so that actually means I can eat a lot more stuff than I thought.

I really only have two teeny exceptions to The Challenge going into this. I have an addiction to caffeine and a job that requires me to be alert and working coherently on both computers and phones, so eliminating my daily Diet Coke would not be an option. Eventually I’d snap from caffeine withdrawal and lose my job. So, although the sweet elixir is processed, the first rule is I get to drink it anyway.

The second is for a couple of special occasions … a baby shower and a wedding are on my calendar for next month, and it’s no fun to sit back and watch everyone else munching on diaper-shaped cakes and sipping cocktails while you drink water and try to find something unprocessed. Those days will have to be exceptions, too.

The goal here — and I think Andrew at Eating Rules for saying this — is not perfection. Thank goodness. But eventually, you become more aware of what you eat on a daily basis.

Here goes.

Tepache

September 18, 2013 by hillarystarbright

Many of you may remember my last blog post (or you can read it here) about all of the fantastic things I discovered I could make in my awesome fermenting crock. In the few months since I have had the crock and have been researching cool things to make in it, I discovered two very important things.

1) Fermented food is awesome; and

2) Alcohol is technically a fermented food.

Yeah. I know. I practically found out about some drink called Tepache by accident, and then I didn’t believe that the only ingredients were pineapple and sugar. I was literally standing in my kitchen, carving up the fresh pineapple, shaking my head and thinking to myself that this was a waste of a perfectly good fresh pineapple. Luckily they happened to be on sale for like a dollar, and they were insanely sweet and fresh, so I figured what the heck. I put the chopped pineapple in my crock, with the peel and core and all. Not the spiky part on top, though.

I simmered in a few cups of water (depending on how big your vessel is, see below about what sort of containers you can use**) with some piloncillo (again, adjust this to your tastes, how much you are making and how sweet that pineapple is) until the sugar had dissolved. Then I waited until it cooled and poured it into the crock. I added a cinnamon stick, a nutmeg seed and a few whole cloves to the crock as well.

Four days later, it was bubbly, foamy, and smelled like booze. I strained out the fruit (oh yeah, keep it for a garnish or something, cause it’s pretty boozy, too) and ladled it into a few jars for easy serving. It was delicious!

Especially in early summer in southern California, all of the ingredients for tepache are readily available and pretty darn cheap. I found the fresh fruit for about $1 each, and those packets of piloncillo and spices were about a buck each.

I should point out here that there are literally hundreds of different ways to make this. A lot of people only use the pineapple rind and core but not the soft fruity part — personally I like it better with the fruit, so I can eat the yummy fruit later. It’s wonderful. You can also add spices — the first time I made it, I went a little too heavy on the whole clove (it can be a little overpowering if you’re not careful), and so I had to adjust the spices. But I definitely recommend one or two whole cinnamon sticks, and a whole nutmeg seed, too.

The first time I made tepache, it took four days to be fully bubbly and ready (your nose will know). The second time, it was considerably warmer in my kitchen and the fermenting process only took three days. Just keep an eye on it and if it looks like it’s fermenting too fast, move it to a cooler spot.

I also found some recipes for making tepache by only fermenting it for two days, then adding beer to the mixture, letting it sit one more night, and then drinking it immediately. It just speeds up the fermentation process to add the beer, so do it if you need to, but otherwise, there is no need to rush it.

I also tried it once with one of those big, juicy, fresh peaches chopped up along with the pineapple and spices and sugar. It had a distinct peachy flavor and it fermented a little faster, in three days instead of four. I assume that had to do with the additional sugar from the peach.

I used my awesome fermenting crock, but there is no reason you can’t make this with a regular mason jar. Of course, you’d need a pretty large one, or several smaller ones, and make sure that the fruit, spices and sugar/water mixture is evenly distributed among all of the containers if you use more than one.

If you use a mason jar, don’t seal it completely — cover the lid with a cheesecloth, or put the two-piece lid on the jar but don’t screw it in and let it sit loosely. In 3-5 days, you’ll notice the foam.

This drink is delicious by itself, but it’s perfect for a hot summer day, over a glass of ice, mixed with a light Mexican beer (Tecate or Pacifico, etc.), and with a twist of lime.

Cheers!