Category: Cooking

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Cooking

Emeril’s Better-Than-Takeout Beef and Broccoli

I used to enjoy PF Chang’s on a regular basis, but sadly my experience with their carryout lately has ranged from underwhelming to gag-inducing. And why bother when you can make restaurant-quality stir fry from home in not much more time than it takes to place an order and pick it up?

This may just be my favorite recipe of all time. I make it once or twice a month. As usual, it’s from Emeril’s Sizzling Skillets cookbook, but you can also find the recipe on Emeril’s site.

We like extra peppers and sauce, so I like to make a few tweaks to the recipe (keep in mind that, with these alterations, if this were on a restaurant menu, it’d be accompanied by a High Sodium Warning):

  1. Use 1 green and 1 red bell pepper instead of just 1 red bell pepper
  2. I am always heavy on the garlic, ginger and scallions. There is no such thing as too much in my book. (Thankfully, Jessica agrees!)
  3. Use full-sodium soy sauce instead of low-sodium. (Your cardiologist will shame you, but your taste buds will thank you.) I tried low-sodium soy sauce before and thought it didn’t taste as good, although Kikkoman’s site makes me think maybe I’m crazy and should try it again.
  4. Increase sauce ingredients by 50% (so 1/2 cup oyster sauce becomes 3/4, 1/4 cup soy sauce becomes 3/8, and so forth)
  5. Increase corn starch by 50% to properly thicken extra sauce
  6. Flat Iron Steak works just as well as Flank Steak. I’ve used Sirloin before but it gets dry, so prefer the texture of the other two.

Also, I’ve only ever tried this with Lee Kum Kee (Panda Brand) Oyster Sauce. It’s great, so I’ve never tried any other brand. Don’t buy it on Amazon; you can easily find it for about $3 per 9 oz bottle in the Asian section of most grocery stores.

Panda Oyster Sauce
Categories
Cooking

Emeril’s Grillades And Stone-ground Grits

Emeril's Grillades with Stone-ground Grits

Today I cooked another recipe from my favorite cookbook, Sizzling Skillets and Other One-Pot Wonders, by Emeril Lagasse.

For anyone wondering, it’s pronounced GREE-ahds. (Keep in mind New Orelans’ French heritage and the links Creole cooking has to French cuisine.)

This dish is traditionally a breakfast or brunch dish, but definitely filling enough to be served as a dinner. I expect the leftovers will be just as good, if not better, the next day.

It’s definitely a dish to make on a weekend. We got back from Kroger and I got straight to work by 6 PM, but we weren’t eating until after 11 PM. The pot was in the oven by 8:30 for the two-hour braising period, but I got lazy on the couch and didn’t realize the grits needed an hour to cook properly. (I’m a newbie when it comes to cooking grits – this was only my second batch.)

You can find the recipe online here: https://www.emerils.com/127825/grillades-and-stone-ground-grits

Or purchase the cookbook on Amazon – you won’t regret it!

Categories
Cooking

Emeril’s Pork Schnitzel With Creamy Shiitake Mushroom Sauce

Recipe from Emeril’s Sizzling Skillets and Other One-Pot Wonders:

Pork Schnitzel With Creamy Shiitake Mushroom Sauce

Kroger was completely cleaned out of Shiitake and gourmet blend mushrooms, so I had to make do with Portabella mushrooms. The dish turned out nicely, although I over-reduced the sauce and overcooked the pork slightly.

7/10, would make again.

Categories
Cooking

Emeril’s Kicked-Up Jambalaya

This Emeril recipe is from the Food Network, Essence of Emeril era. You can still find the recipe online here. Jambalaya makes a nice & quick weekday meal, compared to gumbo which requires dedicating a full day to put together properly.

I tend to omit the shrimp, since Jessica will only eat shrimp if battered and fried or smothered in butter, scampi-style. I use Aidells Cajun Style Andouille, since that’s the only nitrate-free option we can find at Kroger. (Jessica has found nitrites and nitrates to be a migraine trigger for her.)

This time, I went with boneless, skinless chicken thighs and breasts. Leaving this in the whole ~1 hour cook time will result in shredded chicken – which is fine by me, but not everyone likes it that way.

“Salt and pepper” in the ingredients leaves the seasoning balance up to you. In retrospect, every time I made this before I didn’t add nearly enough salt, leading to bland and boring rice. When seasoning at the start of cook time rather than later, it can be tricky to judge the salt level; seasoning and then reducing when making sauces can lead to overly-salty results.

In this case, the rice also soaks up the liquid and expands, so it seems the water should taste as salty as you want the rice. This time, I added 1-2 tsp chicken base along with the water, plus roughly 1 tsp of Kosher salt.