The food blog Serious Eats is covering a new cookbook, “The Sriracha Cookbook” under their Cook The Book series. I love this series of articles. They take a cookbook and will cook 5 of the recipes from the book and post the recipes online. It gives you a great deal of information on the book in short yummy bites. They also give you the chance to win one of five copies by simply posting a comment to the article.

Our favorite use for the condiment with the rooster on the bottle is to simply mix it with a little soy sauce to use as a dipping sauce. So good. Check out the article at Serious Eats and give the book a look. The small book with 50 recipes from Ten Speed Press is eliciting rave reviews on Amazon, The Sriracha Cookbook: 50 .

The Columbus Public Library currently owns 9 titles of this book.

Add your own comment here to Cook the Book: ‘The Sriracha Cookbook’ for your chance to win a book.

You could use this technique for turkey sliders, burgers, meatballs etc. We bought lean ground turkey for this recipe. As mentioned in a previous post, ground turkey can have a very high fat content. Check the label.

What! We routinely used it in spaghetti, chili and many other recipes that called for ground beef. Taking my dad to task, I finally looked at the label. Turns out, as usual, he is right.

The common ground beef sold in our grocery stores is 80/20, 90/20 and even lower ratios of fat. The last roll of frozen ground turkey that I bought was Butterball brand ground turkey. The fat content of the roll is 25%. Even more crazy is that they put “50% less fat than beef”. That may have been true in the past with higher fat percentages, but, it simply isn’t true with the commonly sold ground beef in our local grocery stores.

Luckily, you can further reduce the amount of fat in ground beef simply by draining the excess fat after browning and rinsing under hot water. A study by the Journal of The American Dietetic Association recently confirmed that you can reduce the amount of fat by 50% by simply following this procedure.

Make sure to keep reading those labels.

Included is Buffalo Wild Wings Medium, Spicy Garlic, Hot and Caribbean Jerk Sauces.

Original recipe can be found at Meemos Kitchen.

The recipe was from a Vegetarian Times compilation cookbook. They actually have two separate loaf recipes but the only real difference between them is one of them contains cashews. My wife isn’t a big fan of nuts in her food so I decided to make the recipe without nuts.

The recipe is mainly lentils (LOVE THEM) and bulgur. I hadn’t worked with bulgur before but it is quite simple. You can cook it like couscous if you want. Just add boiling water and let sit. This recipe suggested cooking for 15 minutes but was totally unnecessary. Don’t confuse bulgur with cracked wheat. They are different, bulgur is wheat that has been steamed, dried and cracked, making it a quick cooking grain. Cracked wheat on the other hand is simply cracked wheat and requires longer cooking times.

Unfortunately, even with the enjoyment of learning about bulgur, the recipe was disappointing. We served it to the kids who were excited because they thought it was meatloaf. They instantly made horrible faces and announced that it wasn’t very good. I figure that I have a more advanced palate. Unfortunately, my reaction was much the same. It was flavorless. It wasn’t dried out but nothing really helped it taste like anything. I tried to melt cheese on top of one slice and that was unsuccessful. I poured copious amounts of hot pepper sauce over another slice and that was decent, assuming that you like hot pepper sauce.

We wont be making that recipe again, but would love to hear from anyone who has a vegetarian loaf recipe that actually tastes like something.

Recipe: Classic Beef Stroganoff in a Slow Cooker

Recipe is adapted from Classic Beef Stroganoff recipe in Biggest Book of Slow Cooker Recipes by Better Home and Gardens. The recipe can be prepped in less than 30 minutes and be ready for you when you get home. Certainly not as good as my mother-in-law’s Stroganoff, but I will let my wife carry that mantle.

Recipe: Chicken Mushroom Quesadillas

I love cooking. I also understand that all of my attempts will not turn out as planned. Maybe the recipe isn’t really all that great. Maybe my skills aren’t up to a particular preparation method. This recipe is an exception. It is based on a recipe by Ellie Kreiger and is easy to make and super delicious. We made this last night and everyone gave rave reviews. We hope you enjoy.

Cooking time (duration): 30

Number of servings (yield): 4

Recipe: Cincinnati Chili

Summary: This has become a staple in our house. From Ohio or not, this chili deserves a chance in your house. If you haven’t had a Cincinnati style chili before, be warned that this is not your mother’s chili. With chocolate and spices like cinnamon, you will most definitely put this recipe in a category of its own. We hope you enjoy.

Microformatting by hRecipe.

Made a wonderful soup last night using Trader Joe’s 17 Bean & Barley Mix. I did follow their directions to soak the beans overnight, but I want off the map a little after that.

I’m always looking for new vegetarian products that taste good. My sister and brother-in-law are vegetarians and I love having new meals to prepare if they are coming over.

The recipe on the package called for

• 4 cups vegetable stock
• 1 cup diced onions
• 1 cup celery
• 1 cup carrots
• 1 cup bell peppers
• salt, pepper
• 1 tsp dried basil
• 1 can of diced tomatoes
• 1 tsp italian seasoning
• 1 clove garlic

Like I mentioned previously, I left out and changed a few ingredients. We simply rinsed the beans after soaking them overnight and covered with vegetable stock. We were using canned vegetable stock and in the end used 4 15 oz cans. We did not use, the basil, tomatoes, or italian seasoning. We used the food processor to dice our vegetables. We used the following

• 1 large white onion
• 3 large carrots
• 2 large stalks of celery
• 3 cloves garlic
• 3 mild red chiles (I used Colossal Kim)

We sauteed the vegetables for a few minutes after dicing into reasonably small pieces. Mixed vegetables with beans and lentils and simmered for one hour. That’s it.

It was very hearty and the flavor was fantastic, not to mention a very affordable meal.

I’m a stay at home dad which involves shuttling kids back and forth. Traveling in and out of the house constantly. Cooking items like pumpkin that take longer than say 30 minutes doesn’t fit into my schedule very well.

A week or so ago, I noticed that there were still a large number of pumpkins on our front steps. Left over cast offs from decorating for Halloween. As usual I couldn’t bare to throw them away, so I started to formulate a plan. I didn’t have any immediate needs for pumpkin, which left me with cooking it, and freezing it so I could use it at a later date. The problem was that I really didn’t want the oven on when I wasn’t in the house. I needed another way to cook the pumpkin.

The solution: A crockpot. This method does involve prepping the pumpkin by cleaning the pumpkin first, but I could then cook it without worrying about leaving for an hour or so.

1. Cut the top of the pumpkin off and remove all seeds.
2. Cut the pumpkin into wedges. Just continue halving each piece until it is manageable.
3. Peel the wedges.
4. Cube the pieces into approximately 2 inch chunks.
5. Cook the chunks in the crockpot on low for approximately 3 hours. The smaller the pieces, the less time it will take. Just test the pumpkin by poking with a fork.
6. Remove pumpkin from crockpot and mash with a potato masher.
7. Let cool and freeze.