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)

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.

Looking forward to next week . . .

Well, sorry for not posting any updates this morning. I hope everyone remembers that I am in college, and that tests are unfortunately a regular occurrence. I had a Differential Equations test this morning and I pretty much spent all of yesterday and this morning trying to learn all about Laplace transforms! How exciting.

Anyways, I'm glad the weekend is here so I can catch up on some much needed relaxation. But, I'm also excited because Friday is grocery shopping day! Some people have been requesting that I post prices for the ingredients I use in my recipes, so I remembered to keep my receipt after getting back from the store so that I could put it up on here.

I think my plan for now is to post what I purchase from the store every Friday so that you can have an idea of what I might be cooking in the upcoming week. This way maybe some of you can go shopping on the weekend and have the ingredients ready for when I post the recipes up during the week. Or at least you'll have you're shopping list ready after you see how amazing the recipe turns out later on in the week.

So, lets see if you can guess what I'm cooking this week. Feel free to comment if you have any ideas. If you guess right I'll make sure to edit this and let you know!

- Cream of chicken soup (11oz can) - $0.82
- Yams (15oz can) - $0.87
- Whole leaf spinach (13.5oz can) - $0.54
- Long grain rice (32oz) - $1.24
- Low sodium chicken broth (14oz can) - $1.22
- Sliced potatoes (15oz can) - $0.58
- Loaf of double fiber wheat bread (20oz) - $3.13
- Hot pork sausage (16oz) - $4.57
- Mini marshmellows (16oz) - $1.16
- One white onion - $0.87
- Brown sugar (16oz box) - $0.86
- 4x chicken breasts - $5.00 ( I actually already had this, but I wanted to include it so you would know it would be in at least one of the recipes next week. Not included in total price below)

I also bought some measuring tools and another, larger tupperware dish.
- 8pc measuring utensils - $0.97
- 14 cup Rubbermaid tupperware - $5.74

Total price with tax came out to around $23.50 . This will probably make about 6-8 meals depending on how hearty of an eater you are. That comes out to only $3-4 per meal. You might be able to get that same price if you eat fast food, but I guarantee it won't be anywhere near as good as what I'm making.

Well, that's everything! I plan on making two main dishes as well as two side dishes. So there should be at least four new posts next week. Hope everyone will be looking forward to them!

Spaghetti with Sausage

Ingredients:

-1/2 lb of spaghetti
-your favorite Ragu Pasta Sauce
-fresh Italian sausage
-salt and pepper

(makes one hefty or two normal servings)


My recommendations for ingredients:
-1/2 lb of whole wheat spaghetti
-Ragu Robusto Parmesan & Romano Pasta Sauce
-fresh Hot Italian Sausage

Step 1: Take your 1/2 lbs of spaghetti put them in a tupperware dish. Cover them completely with water and set in the microwave. I always either put a paper plate or paper towels underneath the tupperware because the water does tend to boil over the top from time to time. For 1/2 lbs of pasta I usually set the microwave to 14 minutes on high.

Step 2: For some reason it seems that everytime I cook pasta in the microwave I end up with the tupperware being covered in some kind of sticky substance. I'm not really sure what it is, but I'm thinking its some weird by product of the starch being cooked by the microwave. Don't worry though, I usually just run water over the pasta and put it either in a new tupperware dish or a microwavable bowl.

Step 3: Take one or two links of sausage from your package and take a fork or knife to poke holes in the casing of each sausage. This will allow a lot of the grease to come out when cooking. Throw them on the already heated George Foreman grill and allow to cook thoroughly for around 8-10 minutes. Your sausage might be a little crispy on the sides that are touching the grill, so if you have the time you can grill them for probably around 20 minutes or so without putting the top of the grill down. I really don't mind the crispiness though and I usually just go for the quicker route.

Alternative Step 3: If you don't have a George Foreman grill you can always get precooked sausage instead. I don't mean hot dogs either, look at a package of any kind of sausage and if it is precooked then it will state it on the label. This just means that the sausage is already cooked and it really only needs to be heated up in order to eat. So all you have to do for step three is take out a link or two of sausage and pop it in the microwave for 3-4 minutes. I would definitely poke holes in the sausage here as well. I know a microwave cooks things from the inside out, so you don't want any exploding sausages on your hands.

Step 4: Once the sausage is done grilling I usually take it out and cut it up into quarter inch pieces and throw it on top of the pasta. I then put about a cup of the pasta sauce and pour that on top of the spaghetti and sausage.

Step 5: Stir everything up together and put it back in the microwave for about a minute. This will allow the sauce to heat up and also pick up some flavor for the sausage.

Step 6: You can cover with some Parmesan cheese if you have any, though it's not necessary.

Enjoy!