Beef and Noodles with Mushroom-Onion Sauce

August 4, 2018Leave a comment

Warning, what you’re about to see below, isn’t pretty. And it isn’t even appetizing. But believe me, in 7 hours or so, you’re going to be serving up something delicious (see above) and a lot better looking than when it started.

This dish started out as a version of beef stroganoff and was headed in the right direction. What I forgot was the important, very last step of removing the sauce from the heat and then whisking in sour cream. Instead of incorporating nicely and making the sauce creamy, the sour cream broke down under the heat and didn’t break up well without the help of a whisk. Still, the flavor was really good. So out with the stroganoff recipe I was going to give you and in with:

Beef and Noodles with Mushroom-Onion Sauce!

Serves up to 10 (serve one batch and freeze the other for tough day when you don’t want to cook)

Ingredients:

2 chuck roasts (I get mine at Sam’s Club where they are packaged in two and when they are on sale)

1 can Campbell’s golden mushroom soup or cream of mushroom soup

1 can Campbell’s onion soup

1 can of water from the onion soup can

1 14-ounce container of full-fat sour cream

1 white or yellow onion, sliced

1 pound white button mushrooms, sliced or mix and match white button mushrooms with baby bellas

1 bag wide egg noodles

Method:

Place half the onion slices in the bottom of a crockpot.
Place one FROZEN roast on top. Pour half of each of the soups on top.
Place the other FROZEN roast on top of the other one, a slightly different direction as your crockpot will allow so they aren’t completely stacked on top of each other. You read right, I use frozen, rock solid hunks of meat because I found that it comes out beautifully tender, more so than if it was thawed.
Put the rest of the onions and the rest of the soup on top. Note, with the cream of mushroom soup, you may need to take a rubber spatula to loosen it and glop it on, spreading it a little bit. It will make a funny sound coming out.
Fill the onion soup can with water and pour it AROUND the two roasts, not over the top.
Put the lid on the crockpot and cook it on HIGH about 7 hours. If you’re home to do so, at around 3-4 hours, carefully turn the meat over and switch their positions if you can, without splashing everywhere. This also helps with tenderness.
Check the meat by sticking a fork in it at around 6-7 hours. It should be very tender.
Carefully remove the roasts and put them in a large bowl. After a few minutes, take two forks and shred the meat, removing any chunks of fat. Season with a little salt and pepper.
Pour or ladle the remaining juice and onion into a pot over high heat. Stir periodically as it boils, cooking down and getting thicker.
Turn off the heat and add the sour cream, a little at a time, stirring to blend it.
Meanwhile, be cooking your noodles. If they get done early, drain them and drizzle with olive oil, mixing to coat them so they don’t stick so much.
In a DRY, heated skillet such as a cast iron one, start cooking the mushrooms. This can actually be done in advance. Turn them periodically until they are brown and a little wrinkly. I learned a long time ago to cook mushrooms dry because they release their own liquid and will have a more intense flavor without the help of butter or oil. Add them to the sauce.
Serve by spooning noodles in the dish, placing some shredded beef on top and then a good ladle or two of the sauce that has the onions and mushrooms in it. Sprinkle with some parsley, preferably fresh, for a dash of color.

Your Kids Will Eat THAT? By Edan Goode

April 14, 2014Leave a comment

Recently, Colorado Parent magazine ran a question on Facebook asking: What’s the most surprising healthy food your child will eat. They were flooded with responses, which, itself was surprising, as were the answers. It got me thinking – maybe all of the hype about how badly kids eat is hyped up? Maybe they are doing a little better than we think at eating foods that are good for them and…actually enjoying them! Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

Readers reported that their kids willingly eat asparagus, brussels sprouts (that was the most popular response), avocado, salad, “raw spinach eaten like they are potato chips,” beets, cold tofu slices (followed by a frowny face emoticon from Mom), green smoothies, radishes, salmon and red peppers with eggs. Wow! Good for them. Truly!

Wouldn’t we all love to be able to tout the many healthy foods our kids eat? For those of us who can’t (the best I can report is salmon, broccoli, tofu and sweet potatoes from my kids), it made me remember a previous blog I wrote, not long ago, that had some expert suggestions for encouraging kids to eat healthy foods. I think it’s worth offering them up again, here, for this discussion:

Offer only healthy foods
Be patient with new foods – it takes offering a food at least 15 times, on average, before a child will even try it. Keep trying.
Let kids decide how much to eat – they have an inborn ability to regulate how much they need to eat. Help them listen to their bodies.
Skip bribes! If you dangle dessert as a reward for eating a vegetable, then the vegetable becomes the hurdle to the reward, which you don’t want it to be.
Instead, reward with praise or a special activity, but NOT food. Keep food in the context it needs to be in.
Have healthy foods easily accessible – a fruit bowl, a bowl of baby carrots with hummus to dip in. The idea is to make it easy for kids to get the healthy foods.
Make it fun and interesting – grow a vegetable garden, cut veggies into cute shapes
Let babies play with their food – it helps them build familiarity with the smells and tastes of healthy food.
Let kids assemble their lunch, grow food, pick from the garden for dinner. Dayle Hayes told us she would give her children a bowl and send them out to the garden to pick peas for dinner. They’d end up eating them before they even reached the kitchen. Smiling, she would send them back out for tomatoes. She knew this would happen and let it be a way to encourage them to eat veggies.

I’ll turn the tables over to E.A.T. readers now – tell us what healthy foods your kids happily eat? And more importantly, how did you get them to do it?

If you have any healthy-food recipes your kids love that you’d like to share, please do! You can share them via email with Edan Goode at ingoodtastedenver@gmail.com. Be sure to include your name and email and let me know if it’s okay to publish your recipe in an upcoming blog.

Go-To Recipes, Part 2 By Edan Goode

March 19, 2013Leave a comment

Finding myself nearing the end of the day with no dinner plans in mind is becoming more the norm than the exception. Although I consider myself a planner (or maybe that’s the image that exists only in my head), I can’t always get my act together enough to plan dinner menus ahead, shop for everything, defrost, etc. so that a fabulous, nutritious meal comes together quickly that the whole family loves. Oh, that’s such a foreign concept to me anymore it makes me laugh (and cry a little) just thinking about it.

So, with your help, readers, I’m trying to put together a repertoire of Go-To meals that can, indeed come together quickly with a minimum of extra shopping, time or stress. Please keep those suggestions coming and I will share them in a future blog. If you are sending a recipe that belongs to someone else, i.e. from a book or website, I’ll need the link so that we can give them proper credit. To send your go-to recipe, email to Edan Goode at ingoodtastedenver@gmail.com. Thanks!

For now, I’ve come up with another Go-To recipe involving very few ingredients and only two dishes. It was a big hit at my house.

Edan Goode’s Half-Way There Chicken Enchiladas – Serves 6 or more

I call these Half-Way There because I took shortcuts by buying a rotisserie chicken plus a couple of canned items (instead of making them from scratch) and a bag of pre-shredded cheese. The whole thing came together in about 15 minutes, plus cooking time.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Ingredients:

• Rotisserie chicken

• 2 cans enchilada sauce (green or red)

• 8-12 tortillas (burrito size) – the number varies depending on how large your pan is and how full you fill them.

• 1 can bean of your choice such as kidney, black bean or pinto, drained and rinsed

• 2 cups of shredded Monterey Jack cheese, divided in half

• 1/2 onion, diced and sauteed

Directions:

1. Take apart the chicken, putting half of it in a zipper freezer bag for another meal. Chop the remaining half into bite-size pieces.

2. Put chicken, the can of beans, one can of enchilada sauce, the onion and half of the cheese in a bowl and mix to get everything coated in the sauce. This is where you can add variations like quinoa, rice or other grains to add bulk.

3. Spray the bottom and sides of a 9-1/2 X 11 baking pan with non-stick spray.

4. Lay a tortilla in the pan and place a couple of spoonfuls of the chicken mixture in the tortilla and roll, with the seam side down. Repeat with as many tortillas as will fit in your pan snuggly.

5. Pour the remaining can of enchilada sauce over the top of the rolls, coating as thoroughly as possible. Use a spatula to help you spread it out evenly if necessary.

6. If there is any leftover filling, spoon it down the center of the enchiladas, lengthwise.

7. Sprinkle everything with cheese.

8. Spray the non-shiny side of a sheet of aluminum foil with non-stick spray and gentle lay that over the top of the dish, sealing the sides.

9. Bake for 20 minutes or longer – until the sauce is slightly bubbly and the cheese is melted.

10. Serve topped with avocado slices and dollops of sour cream or plain yogurt and a cool salad on the side.

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Mix the ingredients in a bowl.

Start filling the enchiladas right there in the pan to avoid another surface to dirty.

Sprinkle any leftover filling and cheese over the enchiladas.

The finished product.

Go-To Meals, Part 1 By Edan Goode

February 26, 2013February 27, 2013Leave a comment

When I’m able to be really organized, I plan a week’s worth of meals on Sunday, shopping for ingredients, defrosting in stages, etc. It’s a beautiful thing and I’m very proud of having my act so together. That scenario doesn’t happen very often.

At best, I scan the fridge, freezer and kitchen cabinets in the morning and come up with a plan for that night. Even then, I still feel pretty good about myself for knowing what I’m going to make that night.

Now, the reality is more like this: no Sunday planning, no time for a quick plan in the morning and suddenly it’s 4:00 and the kids walk in the door asking what’s for dinner. “Um, I haven’t decided yet” is my usual response. I hate that. It takes an already busy, stressful day and tops it off with even more stress. I scramble to come up with something (often the scrambling of eggs ends up being involved, ironically) but it’s haphazard and a tense situation.

What I need to do is come up with a list of Go-To meals (as opposed to To-Go meals!) that I can keep the ingredients on hand for and assemble quickly when need be. In the next few blogs, I’m going to share with you what I’m coming up with in hopes that some of the recipes might help you too. I know I’m not the only one with this problem. I invite you, dear readers, to share your recipes with me as well. I’d love to share them in this blog space so we can help each other out.

Here’s my first recipe, a beef ragu sauce that can be made in the crockpot (which, yes, requires planning from the morning but then it

Beef Stew Ragu doing the hard work for me, in the crock pot. Steamy goodness!

comes together quickly at dinnertime) or it can be made using a pressure cooker in about 20 minutes. Please share your recipes in the Leave A Reply area below. Thanks!

Edan’s Go-To Beef Ragu Sauce

Note: This can be served over pasta, polenta or mashed potatoes

1 large carrot, diced finely

1 medium onion, chopped finely

Go-To Beef Ragu

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 can tomato paste

2 14.5-ounce cans tomato sauce

1 tsp. each thyme, oregano and basil

Salt, pepper and sugar to taste

2 pounds beef stew meat cut into bite-size pieces

Pasta, polenta or mashed potatoes for the sauce

Grated parmesan for serving

In a crockpot:

Combine all ingredients except pasta/polenta/potatoes and parmesan in a slow cooker. Cover and put on low for 6 hours or on high for 4. Check the liquid levels periodically to make sure it isn’t reducing too much. If it is, add ¼ cup water at a time. But no more than that you don’t want to make the sauce too runny.

The sauce is done when the meat and carrots are fork tender. Ladle over whatever base you choose and sprinkle with parmesan.

In a pressure cooker:

Brown the meat and onion, adding the minced garlic after the meat has started to brown. Add enough water to just cover the meat mixture. Put the lid on and cook over medium high heat until the pressure has clearly started to build up (how and when this happens depends on your pressure cooker). Lower the heat to medium and simmer, with lid on, for 15 minutes. Follow the directions for how to release the steam and open the lid. Drain off most of the liquid.

Put the pressure cooker back on the stove and add the tomato sauce, paste and seasonings. On medium heat, simmer until the sauce is heated through. Meanwhile, prepare your base and prepare as above.

Share your Go-To recipe under the Leave A Reply section below.

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Email: ingoodtastedenver@gmail.com

Jack-O-Lantern Dinner: Fortify the kids before trick-or-treating with this fun Halloween-themed dinner

October 21, 2012October 21, 2012Leave a comment

When Halloween comes around, I’m ashamed to say you won’t find me in a clever, well-thought-out costume. I just don’t have the imagination for it. I usually go for my old standby – wearing all black and pinning socks and little t-shirts to myself going as “Static Cling.”

Where I do get into Halloween is in the kitchen. Every year, I try to come up with a Halloween-y twist on something I routinely make. Here are two of my family’s favorites:

Jack-O-Pizza
Makes 4 individual pizzas depending on size of dough ball and size of the pizzas you make.

Pizza dough you make at home or from the store (Whole Foods makes a good one)
Pizza sauce
Mozzarella cheese, shredded
Pepperoni circles cut in half to make half-moons and in quarters to make triangles

Divide the dough into individual portions and roll out on a cutting board dusted with white flour.
Take a table knife and cut a free-form pumpkin shape, cutting out a little dough at the top to make a slight indentation.
Take the piece you removed and shape it into a rectangle and attach it to the indented area as though it is the stem of the pumpkin, pressing the tip of the stem into the pumpkin lightly to attach it.
Spread pizza sauce on the pumpkin but within about a quarter of an inch of the edges.
Sprinkle shredded cheese on top.
Let each person use the pepperoni shapes to decorate their own Jack-O-Pizza face.
Bake at 425 degrees for about 10 minutes or until cheese is melted and crust is looking golden.

Jack-O-Cobbler
Makes 4 mini cobblers

1 Ready-made pie crust
Mini-pie tins or individual-size baking cups
Your favorite apple pie filling recipe (sliced apples, cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar and lemon juice)
Additions of your choice like chopped walnuts or pecans and raisins

Mix the apple pie filling in a bowl and then portion it out into the individual baking cups or pie tins being sure to fill them to the top.
Using a cup or bowl slightly larger than the size of your baking cup, cut out circles from the pie crust. (see photo below)
Using a sharp knife, cut out Jack-O-Lantern faces or other designs like a sliver of a moon or maybe a leaf shape, making sure the design isn’t too large or else the dough will collapse into the fruit.
Place the pie crust over the baking cup, pressing the edges down so that they stick slightly to the baking cup. As the cobblers bake, the edges will release from the edges of the cups a bit but that’s okay.
Bake in a 325 degree oven for approximately 15 minutes or until the crust is golden brown and a knife easily pierces the apples when carefully poked through one of the openings in your design.

Note: these also make good breakfast cups served at room temperature.