Appetizer Ideas from Chef Aaron

Chef Aaron from the Machine Shed highlights the Shed’s appetizers.  These are great ideas for your upcoming holiday events!

Chef Demo: Cooking Pork at Home

Machine Shed Chef Aaron from Appleton, WI demonstrates how to prepare pork at home.  Chef Aaron also shows you several ways the Machine Shed serves pork and tips on how you can do it at home.

What to do with leftover turkey – 2 Recipes

Wondering what to do with all of that leftover turkey?

Our Machine Shed Chefs recommend that you don’t freeze cooked turkey – the freezing process takes out all of the moisture and will make the turkey super dry when you reheat it.

Chef Tim from the Des Moines Machine Shed has shared two great recipes to use up your turkey.

Roast Turkey & White Bean Soup

Ingredients

1.5 lbs picked turkey
2-lg. carrots (medium dice)
1-lg.onion (medium dice)
3-celery ribs (medium dice)
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 tbsp black pepper
1.5 tbsp Kosher salt
1 tsp poultry seasoning
.5 tsp dried sage
1 tbsp garlic minced
4 Yukon potatoes (parboiled & diced)
2 cans cannalini (15.5 oz)
1 can crushed tomatoes (28 oz)
2 tbsp tomato paste
3 oz cornstarch slurry
1/4 cup Italian parsley (chopped)
3 qts chicken stock

Instructions:

1. Saute celery, carrots, and onions in the oil with salt, pepper, and garlic for approx. 8-10 minutes.

2. Add crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, poultry seasoning, sage, and chicken stock and let simmer for appox. 30 minutes or until the vegetables are tender.

3. Add the potatoes, and beans then bring back to a boil.

4. Add the slurry and allow for it to cook out for 2-3 minutes, then add the turkey and parsley.

Adjust seasoning if needed. Enjoy!

Chipotle Turkey Chili Con Carne

Ingredients:

1.5 lbs picked turkey (medium dice)
2- lg onions (fine dice)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 jalapeno peppers (seeded and minced)
2 green peppers (small dice)
2 red peppers (small dice)
2 yellow peppers (small dice)
2 tbsp garlic (minced)
3 cans crushed tomatoes (28 oz)
3 cans light red kidney beans (rinsed & drained)
2 tbsp chili powder
1 tbsp Chipotle powder
1 tbsp cumin
2 tsp black pepper
2 tsp Kosher salt
2 tbsp Tabasco (optional)

Instructions:

1. Saute onions, peppers, and garlic in the oil with salt and black pepper until tender.

2. Add crushed tomatoes, chili powder, cumin, and chipotle powder and let simmer for approx. 30 minutes to cook out the tomatoes.

3. Finally, add the kidney beans and tabasco sauce.

Enjoy!

Mom’s Traditional Stuffing Recipe

The countdown is here and a frequent request we get from our guests is the recipe for  traditional stuffing.

Here is the Machine Shed’s “Mom’s Traditional Stuffing” Click here to download a recipe card

Happy Turkey Day!

Pantry Essentials – Part 3: Canned and Dry Staples

During the fall, we tend to take a second look at our pantry’s – we help fill up the food pantry’s, we stake stock in what we need to purchase for the upcoming holiday’s or we just want to make a pot of chili.  Chef Tim from the Iowa Machine Shed in Des Moines shares what essentials should be in your pantry for canned and dry staples.

Canned and Dry Staples:

Tomato Paste

Crushed Tomatoes

Diced Tomatoes

BBQ Sauce

Beans, such as; Kidney, Navy, Cannellini, Garbanzo, and Chili

Olives

Roasted Red Peppers

Assorted pastas, such as; Penne, linguini, Orzo, Fettuccini, Elbow, and Spaghetti

Long Grain & Brown Rice

Beef & Chicken Stock

Vanila Extract

Bread Crumbs

Flour

Cane & Brown Sugar

Corn Starch

What do you need to add to your pantry that is on the list?

Kitchen Gadget Winner is….

And the Winner is……Teresa from orr*****@adams.net!  Please send your mailing address to Stacy at schristoffersen@hoari.com to claim your prize.  You must claim by Wednesday, Nov. 21st, 2012.

If you didn’t win, we do have these available for sale at our Machine Shed restaurants!

Essential Kitchen Gadgets

Post by Guest Blogger, Jan Kay, Director of Retail Sales for Machine Sheds and Heart of America Group

My Top 5 Most Essential Kitchen Gadgets

While every cook has their own idea of the most essential kitchen gadgets I am sticking my neck out with my favorites. 

1. Paring knife. Almost a constant in my hand when I am in the kitchen. As my family leans toward unprocessed foods, I am always chopping or dicing something.  If I am going to have a paring knife – I want a fun color. My current one is purple. From Kuhn Rikon.

 2.  Utensil set. You may consider this a set of gadgets but these are magnetic nesting utensils.  Always there and always complete. Individually useful and even fun to look at on my counter. From Joseph Joseph.

 3.  Nesting Cups. Looking for my measuring cups always had me in a tither. Once I found the nesting colorful ones I have an easy grab and measure. From Joseph Joseph.

4.  Sifter.  Maybe it’s boring and maybe I didn’t realize all it can do for my first 10 years of cooking. You can’t beat a sifter for incorporating dry ingredients, volumizing air into flour (for great textured cakes and silky gravies) or making powdered sugar uniform on desserts.  My current one is a five cup sifter from Nordicware.

5.  Cake tester.  My sister always uses toothpicks but I like the way my cake tester keeps my hand away from the heat and can be wiped and used over and over. I also love having the name on it. Something so simply redundant about that.

 I also have a drawer of unessential gadgets – but that is another blog.

 So you have read mine.  What is your favorite gadget? Tell me how you use it!
 

Jan is the Director of Retail Sales for Heart of America Group. She buys all the merchandise for the Machine Shed and has over 25 years of experience “shopping” and picking out new hot trends. She will be sharing with you her latest finds – let her know if you want to learn more about a trend or a product by emailing her at jkay@hoari.com.

Pantry Essentials – Part 2: Oils and Vinegars

How long have you had that bottle of Red Wine Vinegar in your cupboard?  If you don’t know, then it might be time for a pantry makeover. 

Chef Tim from the Iowa Machine Shed shares his list of what basics should be in everyone’s pantry.  Here he focuses on essential oils and vinegars.

 Oils, Vinegars and Misc.

Needed for Dressings & Marinades

 Vegetable Oil

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Soy Sauce

Worcestershire Sauce

Fresh Garlic

DijonMustard

Red Wine Vinegar

Balsamic Vinegar

What would you add to this list?

Are you a Cinnamon Connoisseur?

Post by staff writer Stacy Christoffersen

Did you know there are different types of cinnamon?  While cleaning out my pantry, I found I had 3 different kinds of cinnamon – can you really tell a difference between them????

A few co-workers and myself did a simple taste test of the 3 different varieties I had.

1.  Penzey’s Cinnamon

2.  China Tung-Hing Cinnamon

3.  Ceylon Cinnamon

The regular Penzey’s Cinnamon had a much darker red color too it and it was very sweet, almost like cinnamon sugar.  In fact we checked the ingredients for sugar since it was so sweet, but sugar was not listed.  The second test was on the China Cinnamon, which one taster said tasted like Big Red gum, while another taster said the flavor hits the sides of your tongue.  Finally the Ceylon Cinnamon definately had a more peppery flavor to it.  Overall, we all thought we wouldn’t know a difference if we baked with it.  Our simple solution was to bake with what you got, we are not cinnamon connoisseurs, but we all do a lot of baking.  I plan on using up what I have, if the pumpkin pie tastes better or worse, I’ll let you know.

It might be fun to try some different cinnamon flavors and let us know if you find a difference when it comes to baking or cooking with cinnamon. 

A Favorite Cookbook

 Our best selling cookbook at the Machine Shed is Now That’s Cookin’.  Our chefs and the experts at Successful Farming Magazine created a cookbook with over 125 trusted favorite recipes from the Machine Shed Restaurant. 

We also love this book because it is packed with large pictures of the final product and very easy to read directions. 

Large colorful pictures!

Next time you are at the Machine Shed, flip through this colorful cookbook and see if you agree.  It makes a great gift for newlyweds, new home owners and of course for you! 

Do you have a favorite go-to cookbook?