Herb-y Eggs with Easy Freezer Hash Browns

I am not a morning person. I get up early, but let's just say I'm not exactly chipper and cheerful about it. Not right away anyhow. A little time, a little quiet, and a little caffeine... ease into it, you know? So I really don't want to have to think too much about cooking breakfast every morning.

But....... I also want a good breakfast. Steel-cut oats, granola, egg quesadillas, muffins,  smoothies, banana bread, pancakes, scones, yogurt with fruit... I even like breakfast for dinner (I could go on and on). Are you getting the idea that I like breakfast? A lot? And I love hash browns too, but with all the shredding and squeezing, they're too much effort for a regular weekday breakfast. Until now.

Thanks to this method that a friend clued me into, we've been having truck-stop-worthy hash browns whenever we want. They go straight from freezer to frying pan. No fuss, no muss, and no early morning exertion... practically no brain function necessary at all!

Crock, Stock and Two Smoking Hot Loaves Of Bread

Yesterday was the day I dirtied up just about every pot, pan, mixing bowl and measuring cup I own. Two big kitchen projects (plus a few small ones) converged and aligned and generally bumped into each other at every opportunity. I never intend to have days like this. I certainly don't plan them this way, but they sometimes happen. Hey, you do what you gotta do when you gotta do it, right? Well, the lovely turkey carcass in my fridge desperately needed to be dealt with, and I couldn't put off baking the bread another minute. I'd gone far too long without toast.

Slow & Saucy Faked Baked Beans

Not too long ago we had another potluck BBQ to go to. It's not always easy to decide what to bring to these get-togethers, but this time it seemed obvious. With grilled chicken, coleslaw and cornbread already on board, it was like one of those test questions that have you "complete the set". Seriously, what else would go so well with that line-up? Yep, this menu needed baked beans in a "you complete me" kind of way. In fact, what would Autumn barbecues, potlucks, and tailgating be without baked beans? They're such a hearty and satisfying side dish and perfectly complement just about any grilled meat. So how is it that I've never made them before now? Just another of life's little mysteries I guess.

Unconstrained by any set-in-stone ideas of how they ought to be done, I looked through what seemed like a thousand recipes for one that would work within my time frame and (most importantly) my budget. The most promising recipe was made and foisted upon my friends. It was pretty good. But not great. I made a few changes here and there, then cooked up another batch the following week. What I ended up with was a pretty tasty pot of beans. Unfortunately my friends didn't get to taste those. I wish they had. That second batch had just enough sweetness, just enough tang, and a heap of smoky depth. But they'll just have to take my word for it.

 

The real beauty of these Slow & Saucy Baked Beans is that they aren't baked at all; they cook in a Crock Pot while you do other fun things. Unorthodox cooking method aside, they're far more "from scratch" than most baked-bean recipes since they start out with dried beans instead of canned. While canned beans are certainly a convenient choice, that convenience comes at a price.* If you're making a big ol' pot o' beans for a crowd, it just makes sense (or should I say "cents") to start with dried.

Slow & Saucy Baked Beans
Adapted from: Saucy Baked Beans on page 129 in the BHG Biggest Book Of Slow Cooker Recipes (2002)

1 lb. dry navy beans or other small white beans
8 cups water
6 slices of bacon, cut into small pieces
1 onion, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1-1/4 cups water
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup molasses
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp dry mustard
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp apple cider vinegar

1. Pick over the dried beans for any broken ones or any pebbles. Rinse the beans well and drain.
2. Add the beans and 8 cups of water to a Dutch oven or other heavy pot. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 2 minutes. Take the pot off the heat, cover with the lid and let stand for 1 hour. Stir beans occasionally and check for doneness.
3. While beans are soaking, cook the bacon in a skillet. Put the cooked bacon into the slow cooker. Sauté the chopped onion in the leftover bacon fat in the skillet, then add it to the slow cooker. Next, sauté the chopped red bell pepper in the same skillet and add it to the slow cooker too.
4. When the beans are tender, drain them well and add to the slow cooker. Add the rest of the ingredients, except the soy sauce and vinegar. Stir well.
5. Cover the crock pot and cook on Low for 8-10 hours, or on High for 4-5 hours. Just before serving, stir in the soy sauce and apple cider vinegar.

Other baked-bean recipes that look really good...

• CrockPot Boston Baked Beans from AYear Of Slow Cooking 
• The Best Baked Beans Ever at The Pioneer Woman Cooks start with good old baked beans from a can... but that's only the beginning
• Kemp's Black Beans on epicurious.com have a short but intriguing list of ingredients

*For roughly the cost of one can of beans, I can get a pound of dried beans that, once cooked, will yield the equivalent of 3-4 cans. Just how much is that "convenience" worth?

Vegetable Stock for Free or Cheap

Recently empowered by making turkey stock (and desperately needing more space in my freezer), I decided to make some vegetable stock.

I'd been saving up veggie scraps in a big heavy-duty zip-top bag in the freezer for just this purpose: carrot ends, onion ends, chard stems, herb stems, slightly soft squash, potatoes, tomatoes, and wilted greens, among other things. Almost any vegetable scrap is fair game so long as it's not too far gone. The bag was full, so the time was now...

Vegetable Stock
Adapted from Basic Vegetable Stock, page 73, Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites, 1996

Approximately 6 cups of assorted veggies (avoid sulfurous* ones)
1 potato, cut into quarters
2 tsp peppercorns
1 bay leaf
2 tsp thyme
1 clove of garlic, smashed
filtered water to cover

1. Put everything into a crock-pot set on LOW for 10-12 hours. Let crock cool until comfortable enough to handle. 
2. Put a large sturdy metal colander inside a large bowl in the sink** and line the colander with a floursack towel. Very carefully pour the contents of the slow-cooker into the lined colander. Let drain for a few minutes. Gather up the corners and sides of the towel and twist to extract more of the liquid from the vegetables. 
3. Let the stock cool completely. Use within 2-3 days or divide into freezer containers, label, and freeze to use later. Yield: approximately 3.5 pints (7 cups).

My Notes: I divided mine into 1 and 2 cup portions before freezing. Make sure to leave an inch of space at the top of the containers to allow for expansion during the freezing process. (Oops!) From now on, I think I'll freeze them first and then add the lids.

 *These include: broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts. According to the original recipe, it's evidently a good idea to also avoid asparagus, eggplant and peppers. I imagine that's because of their strong flavor compounds. They must not play well with others...the little bullies.
**This way I don't have to lift the big heavy (and hot) crock any higher than necessary. There are enough dangers in the kitchen as it is. Thinking ahead and thinking ergonomically will help prevent pulls, strains and other mishaps.

The Ultimate Thanksgiving Leftover

The other night, we drove home after having spent a wonderful Thanksgiving with our friends. We were fat, happy, warm, and fuzzy... and we were toting the carcass of a 19-pound bird in a plastic bag. It is without a doubt, the ultimate leftover. It is also a very welcome and a generous gift. Wanna know what we did with it? We made turkey stock of course! Lots and lots of gorgeous golden rich turkey stock. It's so good, I may just have to start roasting turkeys... they really are so versatile (and much more flavorful than chickens). In the meantime, I'll just have to rely on the kindness of friends who know how much I value a roasted bird carcass, or to use the more genteel phraseology... a "turkey frame".

My Basic Turkey Stock Recipe

1 turkey carcass

1 bay leaf

2 tsp peppercorns

1 large onion, quartered

1 green apple, quartered

1 Tblsp dried rosemary

2 tsp dried thyme

1-2 pinches of other dried herbs

2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar

enough water to cover

Put all the ingredients into a large pot on the stove and simmer for 3 hours or... put in a crock-pot on low for 10-12 hours (or high for 6-7 hours). Take off heat and skim off fat and any floating bits. Remove large pieces with a slotted spoon and/or tongs, discard. Let cool some more and then pour through a mesh sieve. Optional: line sieve with 2-3 layers of cheesecloth or a flour-sack cloth. Pour stock into storage containers, label and refrigerate or freeze for later use.

My Notes: I planned to do this all in the slow-cooker, but once I got the cut-up carcass in the pot, I realized that there was no way anything else would fit (that was one big turkey!). Dumped everything into my big spaghetti pot with 4.5 quarts of water to cover, simmered it on the stove for 2 hours, then put half in the slow cooker. I continued to simmer the remaining half for another 3 hours on the stove and set the slow-cooker on high for 6 hours. By the time it had cooled down, it was late at night, so I combined it all into one pot, covered it and put it in the fridge, then skimmed and strained it in the morning. Yielded 3.25 quarts total.

Crazy Good Crock Pot Stuffing

This is what results from having to drive 5 hours away for Thanksgiving dinner with the family, not having a working oven at home, no oven-space available at our destination, and yet... still wanting to bring something homemade towards the meal. Sometimes great things are born of these situations, sometimes disasters are. This, thankfully was one of the great things.

I did all the prep the night before we left, bagged it all up according to dry, wet, refrigerated, etc. In the morning we packed it all in the cooler with ice packs, chucked the crockpot in the back of the car and hit the road.

Stuffing saves the day... after!
As it turned out, we didn't arrive in time to heat the stuffing up before dinner. But before you get all weepy and dejected (like I did at first), there was another stuffing already there (yes, I think they were just humoring me) so our Thanksgiving was not stuffing-less. The important thing to note though was that there was none of that other stuffing left at the end of the day. (Can you see where this is going yet?)

...I cooked up my well-traveled crockpot stuffing the day after Thanksgiving and there was enough to keep up with all the other leftovers for the next three days!

Crazy Good Crock Pot Stuffing
Adapted from: Perfect Homemade Stuffing Crockpot Recipe on A Year Of Slowcooking blog; and from another recipe I found on my frantic Google search but can't locate anymore*; and also from various stuffings made over the years by the fabulous women in my family.

Ingredients
1 loaf of bread, lightly toasted in the oven
1 lb. Italian sausage
1 large yellow onion, diced
1 cup celery, diced
1 cup green apple, peeled and diced
1 cup dried apricots, chopped
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped
1 1/2 cup chicken or vegetable broth (plus 1/4 cup, if needed later)
1 T ground sage
1 tsp ground marjoram
1/2 tsp savory
1/2 tsp thyme
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper

Directions
Use a 6 quart crockpot. If yours is smaller, toss everything together in a large mixing bowl, then put into your crockpot later when it's time to cook.

Toast the bread slices in the oven at 300 degrees 15 - 30 minutes, checking often. (I didn't have an oven, so I had to toast the whole loaf in my toaster, 4 slices at a time. (I do not recommend this method except in cases of extreme emergency.)

While the bread is toasting, chop up the onion, parsley, celery, apple and dried apricots. Add parsley, celery apple and apricots to the bowl or crockpot.

Crumble the sausage and brown on the stove. Remove meat from pan and pour off any excess fat. Saute the onion in the same pan just until it starts to show color.

Add sausage and onion, seasonings, and melted butter to bowl or crockpot. Stir well.

When the bread is done, cut into 1/2 inch size-or-so cubes. Add to the bowl/crockpot. Toss it all together thoroughly. Now is the time to transfer the mixture into the crockpot if you've been using a large bowl up to this point. When the bread is coated nicely, pour in 1 1/2 cups of broth. Cover and cook on high for 2 hours.

When done, the bread will have browned a little on the top and around the edges, and it will be hot throughout. It can stay on warm for another 2 hours, if needed. Stir before serving. If you'd like it a bit more moist, you can add a 1/4 cup more or so of broth.

My Notes (Thanksgiving 2008): In the original recipe there was a bit about starting the day before and combining everything on the day of. That was what really sold me on trying this.  Everybody loved it and it was completely devoured. The sausage was plenty spicy, and I think I may use "mild" next time or a combination of the two.

*Oh, I know I've got it somewhere. This is why I started this blog... to put all this stuff in one place!