We all have some favorite recipes that are our GO TO recipes. The ones that are tried and true, that we like to use over and over again. These are recipes I found on Pioneer Woman's blog over the last few years that have made my GO TO list. Try them out---- I truly hope you like them, too. Just click on the recipe name to be taken to the recipe on her website!
1. Molten Chocolate Lava Cakes by Pioneer Woman. Do I really need to say more? Unless it is that I like this recipe better than the ones at Flemings??? Wow. That is what I thought when I first had them. They are rich enough that instead of using individual ramekins, I just make them in my muffin tin, so one recipe makes 12 small-but-still-plenty-since-it's-so-rich individual cakes. Just be sure to spray the pan rather heavily with Pam. You want to be able to get the little suckers out! :) Also, to further simplify things, I just substitute chocolate chips for the semi sweet baking chocolate since I never have baking chocolate on hand. 2 cups (or one 12 oz. package of semi sweet chocolate chips equals 6 squares of semi sweet baking chocolate....or so the wonderful Internet tells me....and I believe it because this turns out yummy!) If using a muffin tin, just bake for 8-10 minutes instead of 13-14. You want to make sure the outside is fully cooked, but the inside isn't yet cooked. If you cook it too long, you'll have a brownie instead of a lava cake!
2. Onion Strings also by Pioneer Woman. I thought of my other favorite go to from Pioneer Woman. I love onion straws/strings/blossoms....whatever you call it, they are amazing. Wonderful in salads, green bean casserole, on hamburgers with BBQ sauce, on sandwiches, oh how the list goes on. When I first tried this recipe, I was doubtful. I didn't think I could make something that turned out to be even close to what you get in a restaurant. But I was wrong. These are delightful, crispy, and add just the right touch to turn something ordinary into gourmet. Amazing. And, what she says about letting them sit in the buttermilk....she's right. It's very important. It changes everything. The only changes I make to this recipe is to swap out half of the salt for Lawry's seasoned salt. So, that's about 1/2 Tbs. regular salt with 1/2 Tbs. Lawry's Seasoning Salt. Because I was taught from a young age to absolutely love Lawry's Seasoning salt. We go through that stuff like water in a desert.
3. Restaurant Style Salsa by Pioneer Woman. I love chips and salsa. My family loves chips and salsa. And we all love this recipe. Long, boring story to follow:
For years and years we faithfully planted tomatoes, hoping to can some really delicious salsa that my family would get to enjoy all year long. Then life happened as it always does, and for various reasons, it didn't get done. Again and again. One year the tomatoes had this weird sugar? crystallization that made it feel like you were chewing glass until the crystals dissolved. I still get that weird, yucky, grossed out shudder thinking of it. It was like, well, chewing shards of glass. Horrible. Shudder. The next year I didn't stir the salsa enough so the bottom burned and all umpteen (actually more upwards of 30) quarts and pints had a gross BBQ salsa taste to it. AKA Burned salsa taste. I should have just called it roasted salsa and pretended it was on purpose. I dumped them all out, after processing them. Bah! I wouldn't have processed them if I had known just how gross they were! Another year I prepped all the tomatoes, put them in the fridge to cook the next day, and forgot about them until they went bad. Another year I tried two different official recipes that were tested as safe to home can.... you know that most frequently used salsa recipes don't pass the proper acidity ratio for safe canning, don't you? I learned this in my classes at BYU to become a Home Ec. teacher. Which basically resulted in me being completely freaked out about home canning. That was not the point of this class, but there you have it. If you are curious about your recipe, you can call the USU home economists, give them your recipe, and they will evaluate the acidity of it and call you back to let you know if it's safe. Cool, huh? But then you'll feel bad/guilty when you can it anyway, because most likely it won't be considered safe. So maybe you don't want to call them. Just like my microbiology class made me freak out about washing romaine lettuce in a salt water bath to get the tiny microscopic buggies off.....but, I digress (as usual). Both of the official recipes used a ton of vinegar or lemon juice or citric acid to make it be the proper acidity. Let's just say that if it's a safe recipe to can for salsa, it's going to be disgustingly vinegary. Almost like Tabasco without-the-heat vinegary. Yuck. Those batches were thrown out, too. But at least I learned from my past mistake and tasted them before processing them. You see a pattern here, year after year. Please tell me I am not the only one who does this! Finally, my husband told me that we were NOT going to plant tomatoes (not more than one plant) anymore unless we really did can some. So I promised him that that year was the year. And it was.....because he canned it (I did help a little). Pitiful, I know. In the 18 years of our marriage, I have canned tomatoes several times, but salsa only (successfully) in 2009. It was the great salsa year of 2009, and I bet you didn't even know it! We took pictures to commemorate it. And we haven't planted tomatoes for salsa since.
I think I lost the desire to can salsa because I found this recipe (in Jan. 2010) that we all really like. It uses already canned tomatoes, and you don't have to cook it, so there's no risk of a burned taste. No house smelling like salsa for days (another plus in my book). And only a few minutes of preparation. This recipe is a good match for me! Some days I think that maybe next year I'll can salsa again. I don't like feeling like there is something out there that I have failed at again and again and haven't figured out how to conquer it. (Crocheting is one of those things. Grrr. I am too uptight and only succeed in making knots. Getting back to subject again....) But the thing is.... I actually like this (PW's) recipe better than my favorite homemade salsa recipe. So, I'm sticking with this for now. Maybe I should try making salsa verde instead. Just don't tell Matt. He wouldn't be able to stop laughing! Or crying. No, it would be laughing. Definitely laughing.
4. Beef With Snow Peas by Pioneer Woman. Just looking at her picture makes me salivate. Seeing the delicious brown sauce.... yummy! The two keys to this recipe that come to my mind are: 1. You do want to use low sodium soy sauce. The first time I made it, I used regular and it was SALTY! Still yummy, but too salty. The other key is that when she says to just let it sit there until it's good and cooked on one side, she means it! Imagine that! I always thought that stir-fry meant you had to constantly stir it! After trying out her recipe and following her instruction on letting it sit, I discovered that letting it sit makes it get that really dark caramelized color that adds so much flavor. Absolutely wonderful! It changed the way I stir fry now, with a lot less stirring. Which is really nice because I can work on the rest of dinner instead of being stuck stirring at the stove!
5. Oven Roasted Asparagus by Pioneer Woman. I actually haven't made her recipe...because my friend Michelle taught me how to make oven roasted asparagus. And I use Pam instead of drizzling Olive Oil... and of course, Lawry's Seasoned Salt instead of regular salt.... but when I saw that PW had this recipe on hers, I thought I would include it because I love oven roasted asparagus, and this way I don't have to show you how to make it, PW does! Yay! It is wonderful how baking it is able to bring about the right texture.... crisp, but tender. Yummy. It was a toss up between posting this and PW's Knock you Naked Brownies. Which I also already had the recipe for- I've had that recipe for 20 years.....only they were just called boring 'ole Caramel Brownies. I think I like the Knock you Naked title better. Although since my friend, Kodi, gave me her recipe for homemade caramel, I am spoiled and can't use the square caramels in recipes anymore. So, the asparagus won! :)
What are your favorite recipes from the Pioneer Woman??? It is always delightful to get to laugh at her sense of humor while finding and making good recipes!
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