cooking tips Archives

5 Graduation Party Menu Ideas

April 23, 2013 by Tiffany

It’s that time of year! Graduation season is right around the corner. I’ve got a son graduating from high school this year. I’ve been working to come up with a menu for his party. In the process, I’ve got 5 different menus to share with you. I hope these ideas will help you plan your celebrations.

Read to the bottom for all the dessert ideas! I wanted to add them separately, instead of one for each menu.

Easy and Casual BBQ Feast

BBQ Pulled Pork in the Slow Cooker

Potato Salad

Homemade Baked Beans in the Slow Cooker

Asian Broccoli Salad

This is the menu I am most likely going to use for my son’s party. It’s easy. The pork can be made ahead of time and frozen, then heated in the crockpot. The baked beans cook in the crockpot and are easy to put together. The only thing that will have to be done the day of the party is toss the dressing on the Asian Broccoli Salad.

To this, I’ll add desserts and probably potato chips. I may also add cut fruit.

Nice Family Dinner [Read more...]

Filed under: cooking tips, tips Tagged with graduation, party3 Comments

Easy Meals for After Church

April 10, 2013 by Tiffany

What do you do for dinner after church?

We usually come home to eat, but everyone is always starving. If I don’t get some food on the table quick, their bellies aren’t the only things grumbling.

There are lots of options for quick meals after church. Here are a few tips on choosing your menu items. [Read more...]

Filed under: cooking tips, Crockpot, tips Tagged with church5 Comments

10 Ways to Cook Ground Beef – No Recipe Required

March 13, 2013 by Tiffany

It’s been a while since I’ve added a post to this series. In the past, we’ve covered:

Sometimes, you just don’t feel like dragging out a cookbook or even looking something up on the computer. For those days, try one of these easy ideas.

I love to have ground beef browned out and stored in the freezer. It makes it really easy to pull together a meal. If you’d like to cook it in bulk, try using your crockpot to cook ground beef.

1. Hamburgers

There are a million ways to top a burger. And you can choose to cook them on the outdoor grill, a George Foreman type grill or in a skillet. Easy and classic.

2. Tacos

Season the cooked ground beef with your favorite homemade or store-bought seasoning. Stuff in your favorite shells. Top with your favorite toppings. Chances are, this meal is a staple in your house.

3. Add to Spaghetti Sauce

This is a quick way to beef up your favorite spaghetti sauce.

4. Meatloaf

Another classic with a million ways to fix it. Try this method:

1 egg per pound of meat
1/2 cup tomato product (ketchup, BBQ sauce, chili sauce etc) per pound
1/2 cup bread crumbs per pound
onions (and peppers and/or celery if you want), diced
salt and pepper

5. BBQ Sandwiches

Stir your favorite barbecue sauce into a pound of cooked ground beef. Serve it on buns.

6. Quesadillas

Add cheese, tomatoes, salsa etc. Fill soft tortillas and toast in a skillet.

7. Gravy Topped Potatoes

Add a jar of beef gravy to one pound of browned hamburger. Top baked potatoes for a hearty meal.

8. Cheeseburger Baked Potatoes

Add your favorite grated cheese or Velveeta to a pound of cooked hamburger. Top baked potatoes. Add diced tomatoes and bacon bits too.

9. Top a Pizza

I usually think of pepperoni or sausage for topping pizza, but ground beef is tasty too.

10. Poor Man’s Steak

Add 1/2 cup bread or cracker crumbs, salt and pepper to a pound of raw hamburger. Pat into patties and fry in skillet. Pour 1 can cream of mushroom soup mixed with 1/3 can of water over the patties. Heat and serve.

What’s your favorite way to use ground beef?

Filed under: cooking tips, Main Dish, tips Tagged with ground beef, hamburger, no recipe required4 Comments

Freezer Cooking – Ground Beef in the Crock Pot

February 12, 2013 by KimM

One thing I like to do to help cut down on meal prep time is have pre-cooked meats in the freezer. I will usually buy chicken, ground turkey, and ground beef in bulk. I often use my crock pot to cook my chicken, that I will shred and freeze for use in recipes/casseroles/soup. However, I have always cooked my ground beef and turkey on the stove top, usually only a pound or two at a time. It never occurred to me that I could use my slow cooker, until I saw it on Pinterest! (Pin source) One of the many reasons I am addicted to pinning

This is not a recipe per se, just a shortcut for cooking in bulk. The above picture is 3 lbs of 90/10 lean ground beef, with seasonings (salt, pepper, McCormick Grill Mates Hamburger Seasoning, and dried onion) and about half of a large chopped onion. You could easily add taco seasoning, Italian seasonings, or leave it plain. My crock pot could have held much more ground beef too, but this is what I had on hand. I cooked this on high for 4 hours (this may vary depending on your cooker and the amount of beef used, and if it was fresh or frozen), giving it a stir once an hour. You may not need to stir it that often, but it will need to be stirred on occasion and the clumps broken up. After the meat was cooked, I drained the meat (which was pretty lean and didn’t produce a lot of grease) and allowed it too cool. Then I divided it into 3 equal amounts (since I used 3 lbs.) and placed it in freezer bags. SO much simpler than standing over a stove top!

I hope you find this little tip as helpful as I did. {Looking for ideas to use all that ground beef? Check out Eat at Home Ingredient Spotlight: Ground Beef!}

KimM is a contributing writer for Eat at Home. See more from her at her blog Makin’ it Mo’Betta, and follow along on Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter!

Filed under: cooking tips, Crockpot, freezer cooking menu, frozen food, tips Tagged with bulk cooking, freezer cooking, ground beef, slow cooker10 Comments

How to Freeze Wine the Easy Way

January 15, 2013 by Tiffany

I love to cook with wine, but I don’t love drinking it. I’ve tried to like it. Pairing wine and with food (especially chocolate!) sounds like foodie fun. But I just can’t seem to acquire a taste for it.

That means when I buy wine to cook with, I have a lot left. I’ve been in the habit of freezing wine for several years, but I’ve never found the perfect container for freezing. Ice cube trays are too tedious. Zip top bags sometimes leak.

I’m not sure why I never thought to just pour it into a plastic container before. The wine doesn’t freeze solid. You can scoop it out with a spoon and pop the container back in the freezer. Perfect!

Do you like cooking with wine?

Filed under: cooking tips, frozen food, tips Tagged with freezer tip, wine7 Comments

4 Ways to Make Chicken and Dumplings

December 4, 2012 by Tiffany

The all-time, most popular recipe on Eat at Home is for Chicken and Dumplings. It doesn’t matter what time of year, people want to make this classic dish.

Chicken and Dumplings is a little like chili, in that there are a gazillion ways to make it. Some like it with veggies added. Some keep it simple. Some folks prefer drop dumplings, others like them rolled.

I like it all those ways. They all have their places in the recipe box.

Here are four ways you can make them.

The bowl above is the classic, homemade chicken and dumplings. They are really very easy to make and so, so good. I think these are the best of the bunch. Probably the best chicken and dumpling recipe you’ll ever try. They’ve been featured on Tasty Kitchen Blog. As of this writing, they’ve been pinned on Pinterest over 49,000 times.

If you haven’t tried them yet, you really must. Cook them for people you love and they will hug you and kiss you and love you forever.

The blue bowl above is Chicken and Drop Dumpling Stew. A hot bowl of this on a cold evening is a perfect winter supper. Easier to make than the rolled dumplings, this dough is stirred together and dropped into boiling broth. Carrots, onions and celery add to the hearty flavor.

You know I love slow cooking, so next up are two recipes for the crockpot. First is Chicken and Dumplings in the Slow Cooker. This recipe uses flour tortillas for the dumplings. Super simple and good too. Not only that, but the chicken cooks in the slow cooker, so you don’t even need to have cooked chicken on hand.

Another slow cooker version of Chicken and Dumplings. This one uses frozen gnocchi. The seasonings are different than the other versions. Garlic and Italian seasoning change things up a bit. I’ve made this recipe on the stove top when I failed to plan ahead and it worked perfectly.

So there you go. Four ways to make the best comfort food in the world. Try them all!

Filed under: Chicken, cooking tips, Crockpot, Main Dish, tips Tagged with Chicken, chicken and dumplings, comfort food, dumplings1 Comment

How to Cut a Head of Cauliflower in 1 Minute

October 21, 2012 by Tiffany

I am not a perfectionist.

Not by a long shot. I like to keep things quick and simple, and that includes dinner prep. To that end, I don’t believe you need to spend a lot of time chopping veggies.

As long as you give up any ideas of having perfect, uniform pieces you can chop a head of cauliflower (or broccoli) in just 1 minute. It cooks just fine and works great for weeknight suppers.

This post has more photos than most of my posts and I apologize for the weird, blue color going on in the pics. [Read more...]

Filed under: 31 days of cooking cheats, cooking tips, Side Dish, tips Tagged with broccoli, cauliflower1 Comment

DIY Programmable Slow Cooker

October 14, 2012 by Tiffany

The other day, I posted a photo on Instagram of two crockpots set up. One with our dinner and a smaller one with dessert. Someone noticed that the small one was hooked up to a timer.

This is a cheater tip I shared about a year ago. I’d still love to have a fancy programmable slow cooker, but this $4 hack does the job.

Here’s the original post, but the basic idea is to plug the cooker into a timer, so you can delay the start of cooking and set it to turn off at a certain point too.

I’ve used it for overnight oatmeal and also dessert. It would work great for some side dishes too. I don’t think I’d use it for cooking with meat or other highly perishable foods though.

Filed under: 31 days of cooking cheats, cooking tips, Crockpot, tips Tagged with Crockpot, slow cooker, timer5 Comments

How to Cut a Cake into More Slices for a Crowd

October 9, 2012 by Tiffany

We’re going to get cakey this week. Today, I have a tip for cutting more slices out of a layer cake.

Tomorrow, we’ve got Ingredient Spotlight: Cake Mix (I can’t wait for this one!)

And Thursday, I’ve got a recipe for cake mix cookies that’s lightened up a bit to make them less of a splurge, but still a delicious treat.

How to cut a cake for a crowd

Have you ever had a large group of people over and only had one layer cake to serve?

If you’ve got enough warning, you could make cupcakes instead. Or bake two cakes.

But I prefer this tip instead.

My dad was raised in a family with 10 kids, so they always needed a way to make food stretch. In order to get plenty of slices, they used this method of cake cutting.

And if anyone in that family is reading this post, you’re wondering why I didn’t make banana cake and if that is coffee icing on the cake in the photos. My grandma’s homemade banana cake is a pain in the patootie to make, so I tend to make this sheet cake with coffee icing instead.

The cake and frosting in these photos is from The Cake Mix Doctor (Mom’s Yellow Cake with Fluffy Chocolate Frosting – it’s one of my favorites). [Read more...]

Filed under: 31 days of cooking cheats, cooking tips, Dessert, tips Tagged with cake, cake mix, crowd2 Comments

4 Qualities of a Cheater Recipe

October 7, 2012 by Tiffany

We’re talking about short cuts this month, so I’ve been pondering what makes a good short cut recipe. I’ve come up with a few qualities that excellent cheater recipes share.

1. Fresh garlic

If the recipe calls for garlic, using fresh instead of garlic powder (or even the stuff in the jar) will make a huge difference on taste.

I’m not totally against ever using powder or jarred garlic, but if you have a good garlic press it’s a quick process to crush your own. I think it’s especially useful in recipes that use other canned or boxed products.

2. It may start with a mix, but it doesn’t end with the mix.

I love a good cake mix or dressing mix or brownie mix or… But the way they taste best is by being dressed up a bit with other ingredients.

3. Skips steps strategically.

A good cheater recipe skips steps, but it skips the right steps. Some things can be skipped and not have a huge effect on the outcome of the dish (like marinating frozen chicken, instead of thawing first). Other steps are crucial to the outcome of the recipe and shouldn’t be skipped. A great cheater recipe knows the difference.

4. Makes use of key kitchen tools.

What are key kitchen tools?

A great knife and a sharpener to keep it sharp. Nothing can be quick, if you’re struggling to make the knife chop.
A good garlic press.
A slow cooker. Some of the best cheater recipes are also slow cooker recipes.

What qualities do you consider essential in a good cheater recipe?