Grilled Brisket

The other day I was out shopping with some friends and I knew I was going to be heading home after we were done so I thought it would be a great opportunity to just go all out and spend the rest of the afternoon making a great meal. I thought for awhile about what I wanted and I finally decided I wanted a huge piece of meat, so that is just what I got!

I have never even made brisket before much less tried one on a George Foreman grill. I wasn't too sure it would even cook since it was so thick, but I bought it and decided to try it out anyways. Once I got home I got online and looked at a few recipes to get an idea about what people used to season the meat with. In the process I quickly realized that most people slow cook a brisket over a long period of time, which had me a little worried. I decided to just go on and try it anyways.

It actually turned out pretty amazing. This was probably the best piece of meat I've cooked on the grill so far.

Ingredients
- beef brisket (~32 oz)
- 2 tbsp worcestershire sauce
- 1 tsp garlic
- 1 tsp onion powder
- 1/2 tsp cayenne
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp chili powder
- 3/4 cup brown sugar

Optional Ingredients
- any seasoning you want to use really

This dish will make about four – five servings, depending on how big the portion is. I also have recipes for the sweet potatoes and the rice that can be found on the site in previous posts.

Step 1: Cut your brisket into manageable sizes. I cut mine into about six different pieces so that they would grill up quicker.

Chopped up brisket

Step 2: Throw your brisket into a bowl and throw in all the seasoning with it. Rub the seasoning on the meat and try to evenly coat all pieces of meat. Don't be afraid to get a little messy! Wash your hands when done.

Seasoned pieces of brisket

Step 3: Turn on your grill and wait about five minutes until it heats up. Throw a few pieces of meat onto the grill. I was only able to fit about two pieces at a time because of my grill size. My brisket was about an inch thick and it took about 25 minutes to cook completely through. I flipped it over every five minutes or so, which probably isn't necessary in a George Foreman grill, but the bottom side of the grill always seems to cook faster than the top, so I flip it anyways.

Step 4: Take the brisket off of the grill and allow to cool for about five minutes before cutting it. This will keep the juices inside. Now serve with whatever sides you'd like and enjoy your meal!

Grilled brisket - don't cut them like this, see the juices? You want that to stay inside the meat!

Note: As I was cooking the brisket I was cutting them in half so that I could check if it was done, but this allowed all of the juices to come out of the meat. I didn't think much of this at the time because as soon as I put the meat in a tupperware container, all the juices were coming out and tasted amazing when you pour it back over the meat. But when I went to heat up the left overs later, the meat was pretty dry. So try to avoid cutting the cooked brisket until about five minutes after it's done cooking.

Sorry, I know a lot of you wanted easier recipes to follow, but I just really wanted brisket. I have a lot of good stuff coming up. I've been trying to find interesting casserole dishes to try out and I also have a lot of ideas for yummy side dishes. I've also started trying to find recipes that don't require any cooking at all. So hopefully in the next few weeks I'll have some simpler stuff thrown in the mix.

Sweet Potato Casserole with Marshmallows

Sweet potatoes are pretty awesome, they are basically the candy of vegetables in my opinion. Aside from their great taste, sweet potatoes are known as a superfood, which basically means that they are very healthy.

I think I love this dish so much because this is another thing my mom makes only on special occasions, like Christmas and Easter. It really isn't all that difficult to make either, which is good news for all of us! Typically, this would be made in an oven, which would add a crispy texture to the dish, but unfortunately that isn't an option for us.

Ingredients:
- Sweet Potatoes ( ~15oz can)
- Marshmallows (1 cup)
- Brown Sugar (3/4 cup)
- Butter (2 tbsp)

Optional Ingredients:
- Pecans (chopped, 1/2 cup)

Ingredients

Step 1: Open up the can of yams and drain all of the syrup from the can. Dump the yams into a microwavable dish. try to break apart some of the yams, but try not to mash them up into a paste (I made this mistake and that is why my final product looks the way it does)

Step 2: Throw your butter and brown sugar into the container and mix with the yams.

Step 3: Throw the marshmallows on top of mixture and spread out evenly. If it looks like too much or not enough, adjust accordingly. The marshmallows should just cover up the sweet potato mixture.

I mixed my marshmallows in with everything else

Optional Step: If you are using pecans, throw them in before you throw the marshmallows in.

Step 4: Place dish in the microwave for about 3-4 minutes. Once the marshmallows are melted, it's done.

Step 5: If you let it sit for awhile, the marshmallows might harden a little and form a kind of crust on the top, but I didn't even bother with it. I just stirred it all up together, it still tastes the same, just not as presentable.

Fresh out of the microwave, still bubbly

Enjoy!

Grilled Sausage and Onion Sandwich

Well, it seems as though people are enjoying the simpler recipes so far, so I'm going to try and post more of these from now on. This one really is about as easy as it gets. It involves cutting a few things up and then throwing them on the grill, and that's about it.

Ingredients:
- two links of sausage
- one whole onion
- mayo
- two slices of bread
- 2 tbsp of butter (optional)

Ingredients

Step 1: Cut your sausage links in half and then split them down the middle. You should have about eight even sized pieces of sausage now.

Step 2: First, peel the onion (how to peel an onion) and cut it in half. Now start cutting each half of the onion in thin slices and break it apart as your going.

Chopped onion and sausage

Step 3: If you want to, throw one tbsp of butter on your George Foreman grill and then throw half of the onions on as well. Now throw the sausage on top of the onions and close the lid. After about five minutes open the lid and flip the sausage. After about five more minutes you can take the onion and sausage off of the grill

Step 4: repeat step three for the remaining onions and sausage

Grilled Sausage and Onions

Step 5: Put the mayo on your two slices of bread. take about a quarter of your onions and throw them on one slice of the bread. Take two pieces of the sausage and put them on top of the onions. Place the other piece of bread on top of the sausage and enjoy!

Finished

Hope this one is simple enough for everyone. If you don't have a GF grill and rather use a pan, just throw the two tbsp of butter into a pan and throw all of the onions in as well. Set the stove top to medium-high heat. Cook for about a minute, making sure to stir the onions. Now throw the sausage in as well and brown on both sides. When the sausage is a nice dark brown color and the onions are caramelized you can take it all off of the heat.

Hope this one was simple enough!

Make sure to check out my other sausage recipes(spaghetti, jambalaya) as well as my other sandwich recipes (ham egg and cheese)

Potato, Ham, and Spinach Soup

If you ask any of my friends whether or not I have an adventurous personality, they would most likely say no, but that ended as of this weekend. This is the second time in as many days that I'm trying out a brand new recipe. This one is even crazier than the Jambalaya recipe from yesterday. At least with that I had previous experience making Jambalaya, I had just never made it in a microwave before. But I can honestly say I've never made any kind of potato soup, much less heard of one with these specific ingredients. This was definitely a risk, and while it might not be for everyone, it actually turned out pretty stinking awesome!

I think if I make this again I would probably use diced potatoes instead of sliced potatoes. The sliced potatoes were kind of thick and didn't break down very well. I'm thinking diced potatoes would have broken down a little better. Maybe I didn't cook it long enough? Not sure. I really can't complain too much though, I originally planned to use the potatoes and spinach as a side dish, but I started rethinking it before I made it. It turned out fine as it is though, please feel free to play with the recipe and let us know how it goes.

Ingredients:
- 2 cups of Fat Free Milk [$0.60]
- Cream of Chicken Soup (11oz can) [$0.82]
- Whole Leaf Spinach (13.5oz can) [$0.54]
- Sliced Potatoes (15oz can) [$0.58]
- Three large slices of Deli Ham [$1.00]
- 2 tsp Onion Powder
- 1 tsp Garlic Powder
- 1 tsp Black Pepper
- 1 tsp Salt
- Large tupperware dish (8-14 cup/ 2x 6-8 cup)

Optional/Substitute Ingredients
- 2 cups of any kind of milk
- Cream of Mushroom
- Diced potatoes instead of sliced
- You can cut your own potatoes as well if you'd like
- Any kind of turkey or ham would probably go well with this, doesn't have to be deli slices

Ingredients

This recipe will make around 4 servings depending how much you eat. Total cost comes out to about $0.71 per serving and you really can't beat that. This is about 1/4th of the price of similar soups (I'm looking at you Chunky soup!)

Step 1: Get out a plate and shred the ham with a fork and a knife. I basically did this by folding the ham a bunch of times and then sticking it in the middle with the fork. Take your knife and stick it between each set of prongs on the fork and cut it horizontally. Now cut vertically on either side of the fork. Your ham should be in pretty small sized chunks now, which is what we're shooting for. Throw the sliced ham into your tupperware dish

Chopped up ham

Step 2: Open and drain both the spinach and potatoes. Throw both into your tupperware dish. When I made it a little while ago, I stopped here, but I'm thinking it would have been a good idea to try and chop the potatoes into smaller pieces. If you got the diced potatoes, don't worry about it though.

Potato, spinach, and ham in the dish

Step 3: Open your cream of chicken soup and pour it in the dish.

Step 4: Add your two cups of milk to the dish.

Step 5: Now add all of your seasonings and stir to spread out everything evenly.

Step 6: Put the dish in the microwave for 10 minutes. Take it out and stir every 2 or 3 minutes.

Step 7: Take out and let the dish cool down for about 5-10 minutes. Now pour into a bowl and enjoy!

This picture doesn't do it justice

Like I said earlier, I think this dish is pretty flexible. You can try cooking it longer if you want, maybe that will result in the potatoes being more mushy, making the soup thicker. I think it turned out fine as it is though, but it's all up to you in the end. Since this one turned out pretty well I think in the future I'll experiment with potato soups using other ingredients like cheese, bacon, chives, sour cream, crab, crawfish, ground beef, etc (not all at once of course). I'm thinking I've really got something with this one.

Chicken and Sausage Jambalaya

I'll admit, this was an adventure for me because I had not tried this recipe until today, so I really had no idea how it was going to turn out in the end. Taste and quality wise, I was aiming for somewhere between the boxed jambalaya meals and the home cooked dutch oven variety. I knew it wouldn't be quite as good as the latter, but I was pretty sure it would be better than the former. I did mess up a little bit along the way and I wanted to point that out to everyone so that you all don't make the same mistakes, but feel like I met my goal in the end.

"Great, he can't even get this right, why should I try it?" Well, mine came out just fine, it was just a little over seasoned and a little over cooked. Both of those mistakes could have been corrected had I taken my time to do everything correctly. Which is something I wanted to point out as well. If you are trying to cook this super quick, you might want to quit while you're ahead and go buy the boxed variety and throw it in the microwave, because this probably took me about an hour to prepare and cook. The upside, however, is that I could make about 10 servings of this in one batch if I wanted to (though this recipe is only for 4). So please, take your time, follow the instructions if you want to get the most from this recipe

One last note. I was able to make such a large batch because I went out and purchased a 14 cup tupperware dish. It cost around $6.00 and I feel it was WELL worth it. I can now make huge batches of everything I cook, meaning I don't need to cook as often. It also gives me a lot more options because now I don't have to worry about anything spilling over the side when I stick it in the microwave. So while this isn't necessary, and the recipe below only filled about half of the container, I wouldn't recommend trying the recipe if you don't have at least a 10 cup tupperware dish or something similar in size.

Ingredients:
- One link of hot pork sausage cut up into 1/2 inch chunks (5.5oz) [$1.52]
- One chicken breast sliced up into 1/2 inch chunks. (5.5oz) [$1.25]
- Three cups of white rice [$0.93]
- One can of reduced sodium chicken broth (14oz can) [$1.22]
- 1 tsp of pepper
- 2 tsp of garlic
- 2 tsp of onion powder
- 1 tsp of tony chacheres (or season all)
- 1/2 tsp of cayenne pepper
- 2 tbsp of worcestershire sauce
- 1/2 tbsp of your favorite hot sauce
- 14 cup tupperware dish

Optional/Substitute Ingredients
- One link of any sausage, andouile, duck, etc
- Shrimp in place of chicken
- brown rice in place of white rice
- vegetable or beef broth instead of chicken

Ingredients
(Ignore the chili powder, I didn't use it)

This recipe will make about 4 servings or so. Total price excluding seasoning and tupperware dish comes out to only $1.23 per serving! If you throw in a vegetable side dish of some kind you could probably stretch it out to 5-6 servings.

Step 1: Start out by pouring your three cups of rice into the tupperware dish and run it under some water for a little while to get some of the starch out. Make sure to empty all of the water out of the dish when you're done. Obviously the rice will still be damp, that is fine, we just don't want a ton of water because it will mess up the next step.

*Note*
Now, It's a rule when cooking jambalaya that you want 2 cups of liquid for every cup of rice that you put into the pot (or tupperware in this case). So we need six total cups of liquid to add to our rice. I keep saying liquid because we are going to use chicken broth as well as water. This just gives it a better taste. Normally we would cook the chicken and sausage in the same pot that the rice and water go into, but this isn't the case for us so we are making up for it with the chicken broth.

Step 2: Pour the whole can of chicken broth into your dish. This comes out to be around 2.5 cups of liquid I believe. Then add 3.5 cups of water.

Step 3: Now is the most important part of the recipe!! This is where I messed up today, so please follow these steps. Begin seasoning with your tony chacheres and worcestershire sauce. Next pour in your garlic powder and onion powder. NOW, take a spoon and taste the liquid. The uncooked rice won't hurt you (this is another reason why you washed the rice earlier). Does the liquid taste like something you would want to eat? If so, stop seasoning here!!! Remember that you want the liquid to be a little salty because the rice will absorb some of it during cooking. If you think it needs some more pepper (which I definitely require in my jambalaya) then start slowly pouring the cayenne, black pepper, and hot sauce into the liquid. Make sure to put a little bit of each at a time! You can always add more but you can't take any out

My rice after seasoning

As you can see from this picture, I didn't follow my own directions. I put all the seasoning in at once without trying it as I was going. This resulted in crazy-spicy jambalaya that was tasty, but a little much even for me. I also didn't pour the liquid into the rice first, which I should have done as well.

Step 4: Cut your chicken and sausage into 1/2 inch chunks and throw them on your George Foreman grill for about 10-12 minutes. Make sure to check them every few minutes to make sure they aren't burning.

Cut up Chicken and Sausage

Step 5: Throw the chicken and sausage into your rice/water mixture and put it into the microwave for about 20 minutes. After about 10 minutes I would take it out briefly to stir it up. The seasoning tends to stay at the top otherwise. I know you wouldn't normally do this when cooking Jambalaya, but this isn't a normal way to cook it, so don't worry about it.

Step 6: After 20 minutes, let cool for a second and then take a bite of the rice. If it is still hard (uncooked), stick it in for another minute or two. The perfect consistency is for the rice to come out soft and slightly wet. Once the rice starts cooling off it will absorb a little more of the liquid. So if cook it for 25 minutes until the jambalaya is very dry straight out of the microwave, it will end up even drier in about five minutes, and you don't want that!

After coming out of the microwave

Step 7: Pull out a plate, serve, and enjoy!

Like I said, I made a few mistakes along the way and that is the main reason why this post is so long. I love this recipe and I want everyone to enjoy it, so I'm trying to describe in as much detail as possible so yours will turn out even better than mine does.