How to Make and Use Roasted Garlic Cloves

March 21, 2020Leave a comment

Why roasted garlic? Baking it removes the harshness of raw garlic, (kind of) reduces the likelihood of garlic breath (remember, friends don’t let friends eat garlic alone). Roasted garlic also gives that umami sensation that’s so sensational in foods. And, because of its spreadable texture, it can be used in interesting ways. Give our suggestions below a try. The coronavirus travel ban has meant everyone is doing a lot more cooking at home. These tips will come in really handy as you get creative with your cooking.

You can roast garlic in a Garlic Roaster or in just aluminum foil.

How to Make Roasted Garlic Cloves:

Ingredients:
Note: Choose whole heads of garlic when their outer peel is white and snug against their bulbs (as opposed to darker and loose and falling off which means the bulbs are getting old).

Our Garlic Roaster holds about 8 bulbs but you can make fewer or more by wrapping them in aluminum foil and resting them in a shallow, oven-proof dish. We love our Garlic Roaster though, because we can store the roasted cloves in there too.

Method:
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Most recipes tell you to slice the tops off of the garlic bulbs and drizzle olive oil but you don’t really half to. We like the more rustic look of them uncut and we like to add olive oil in the recipe in which we use the cloves. Add the bulbs of garlic to the roaster or put them in in a pouch of aluminum foil, folding over the top of the foil. Some recipes also call for sprinkling roasted garlic with salt at the beginning when you drizzle olive oil on them. I don’t do that because I want to control the amount of salt in the food I’m putting the cloves in.

Roast the garlic bulbs in the oven for approximately 40 minutes. Your house will smell a-mazing, full of all of the possibilities for ways to use the garlic.

Let them cool about 10 minutes before squeezing out the bulbs which should be yellowy and squishy.

You can keep the roasted garlic at room temperature for a day or two. After that, you should refrigerate it. Don’t make more roasted bulbs than you would use in about a week.

Spread roasted garlic cloves on buttered toast for a great snack or addition to a meal. — *Spread roasted garlic cloves on buttered, toasted bread – including a simple English Muffin.* Photo courtesy E.A.T. Blog editors.

How to Use Roasted Garlic:

Basically, use roasted garlic cloves the same way, and in the same measurements, as you would raw garlic. You’ll still get that garlic flavor without the harshness, and without having to saute it.

Toast or grill a good, crusty bread, drizzle it with olive oil and spread a clove or two of the garlic over that. Place the toast in the bottom of a bowl and ladle pretty much any soup or stew over the top.
Do the spread-on-toast method above and lay a sunny side up egg over the top, breaking the yolk so that it mixes and mingles with the garlic and nooks and crannies of the bread for a hearty brunch. I love to do this with garlic on an English Muffin.
Put some softened cloves in a small bowl with a knife for spreading and add it to a charcuterie board. Spread the garlic on crackers and top with cheeses, meats, olives, or cornishons.
Top toasted bread with garlic cloves, topped with lightly-mashed white beans, drizzle with olive oil and top with diced cherry tomato and a sprinkle of thyme for an easy lunch or snack.

Easy Pot Roast Stroganoff

December 19, 2016Leave a comment

Let me say, right up front, I don’t typically cook with cans of soup. Usually the sodium levels are really high and it just seems like a bit of a cheat to take advantage of all of the ingredients the soup companies have included. But once in a while, I give it a go and darn it if the meal doesn’t turn out really good. Curse you, convenient cans of soup!

Recently my local grocery store had a big sale on Boneless Beef Chuck Pot Roast, my favorite cut. It’s large, thick, well-marbled and lends itself beautifully to slow cooker cooking. With a can of Cream of Mushroom soup lurking in my pantry, I decided to throw it over the top and see what happens. Turns out, some magic happened in that Crock Pot, creating an easy version of the Beef Stroganoff I usually make (that takes a very long time). This dish was a big hit with my family.

My daughter loves the Stroganoff meat and sauce part so much, she doesn’t want mashed potatoes to get in her way, as pictured above. But I love having the taters underneath the meat and sauce to absorb every drop so I don’t miss any of that yummy flavor!

Ingredients:

Note, you can double this recipe with two roasts, layering all crock pot ingredients and cooking 8-10 hours on “low.”

1 Beef Chuck Pot Roast Boneless, 2-4 pounds (or larger or smaller depending on the size of your crockpot)
1 onion, sliced
1 can Cream of Mushroom soup plus one can of water
1 teaspoon of Tone’s Beef Base paste
A handful of mushrooms of your choice, sliced
2-3 TBS sour cream

Potatoes for mashed potatoes

Directions:

1. Place the onion slices on the bottom of the crock pot and place the roast on top of it.

It’s not pretty – yet. This is the soup spread over the meat.

2. Open the can of soup and pour it over the top of the roast, spreading it across the top. Fill the empty soup can with water and pour that around the edges of the roast – not over the condensed soup. Make sure there is enough liquid to go about half way up the side of the crock pot.

3. Put the teaspoon of Beef Base paste somewhere on the side too. It will dissolve and spread around in the liquid.

4. IF you are doubling the recipe, place more onion slices on top of the soup-covered first roast and repeat the process.

5. Cover the crock pot and cook on low around 8 hours or on high for 5 (but it works best

Thank you, Crock Pot, for making such tender beef!

slow and low).

6. You’ll know the meat is almost ready when you stick a fork down into it and it doesn’t resist at all. It should be incredibly tender. If it’s approaching dinner time and you feel resistance, turn up the Crock Pot to “high.”

7. Closer to dinner time, make the mashed potatoes the way you like (I use the shortcut of pre-cooking cubed potatoes in the microwave just to soften them a bit.)

8. Remove the roast from the Crock Pot and put it in a large bowl. Let it sit a bit. Pour the

easy-pot-roast-beef-stroganoff-crock-pot-sauce

Yum! Delicious sauce for your stroganoff.

liquid into a pot over medium-high heat to reduce down and thicken slightly. Leave the onions in or strain them out – they will have flavored the broth. Add the sour cream at this point.

9. In a small skillet, add the mushroom slices with NO oil or butter. They will release their own moisture and will brown beautifully. Saute only until the edges start to brown then add them to the sauce.

10. Using two forks, shred the beef in the bowl.

11. To serve the meal, place a bed of mashed potatoes down first, then beef shreds, then a generous ladle or two of the mushroom sauce.

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Autumn Muffins

November 8, 2016Leave a comment

One of our most popular recipes in this blog, and in my house, is for Harvest Pumpkin and Chocolate Muffins. We make them every year around this time. And, when my kids were little, I’d stock up on cans of pumpkin in the fall so that I could make these muffins when it was my turn to bring snack to school or for a soccer game. This year, I’m proud to say one of my daughters came up with a variation on my muffins that is delicious and very pretty! They’d be wonderful to make for holiday brunches or to give as gifts.

My daughter used my recipe but instead of putting the full 1 cup of chocolate chips, she used 1/2 cup chips and 1/2 cup fresh, chopped cranberries. She also recommended throwing in 1/4 cup chopped walnuts or pecans.

You could also experiment with an orange glaze on top, made of powdered sugar with some orange juice. If you do this, apply it immediately after taking the muffins out of the oven, while they are still in the muffin tin so that the glaze melts and seeps into the fresh muffins.Orange goes great with both chocolate and cranberries but if you prefer one over the other with an orange glaze, just stick to 1 cup of either chocolate chips or cranberries. Mmmm, that would smell so good!

In The Kitchen with Chef Dan

April 22, 2016Leave a comment

Weeknight Kale and Italian Sausage Pasta. Photo courtesy Mad Greens.

Getting kids into the kitchen is one of the easiest and most fun ways to get them excited about cooking and eating better. That’s why Chef Dan Long, MAD Greens Co-Founder and Chief Culinary Inventor, has come up with some easy-to-prep and prepare recipes that are great for busy families who may not always have a ton of time to make a healthful meal.

The dish below is designed to be easy – incorporating a pre-made sauce base that saves time during the cooking process. The sauce can be made in advance and portioned out to be used in various recipes throughout the week.

“In addition to being easy to prepare, another goal with this dish was to incorporate vegetables in a fun and tasty way to help get kids excited about what they’re eating,” says Long. “The recipe can be used as a starting point for both kids and adults to play around with. Feel free to change up the ingredients to match the taste preferences of everyone in the family.”

Weeknight Kale and Italian Sausage Pasta

This pasta dish combines fun-shaped noodles (seriously, who doesn’t smile when they scoop up a spoonful of farfalle noodles?), a hearty dose of Tuscan Kale and a delicious homemade pasta sauce and makes any weeknight meal just a little more awesome. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

Chef Dan prepares the kale. Photo courtesy Mad Greens.

1/2 lb. Pasta – farfalle or another interesting shape

1/3 lb. Mild Italian sausage – you can substitute spicy sausage

1 bunch Tuscan kale (also known as black or lacinato kale) – cut into ½ inch strips. Discard the stems

1 ½ c. Dan’s homemade pasta sauce (recipe below) or whatever pre-made pasta sauce you have on hand

1 c. Reserved pasta cooking water

Parmesan – to taste

3-4 leaves Basil – cut into very fine slivers

Steps:

Start cooking pasta according to directions on package.
While pasta is cooking, break apart sausage and cook in a large saute pan. Once sausage is nicely browned and cooked through, add kale. Cook until kale starts to wilt and then add about ½ cup of pasta cooking liquid.
Add tomato sauce, allow to come to a boil. Lower heat to a simmer.
When pasta is done, reserve ½ cup of the water and then drain the pasta. Add the pasta and reserved water to the sausage and kale. Mix everything together until pasta is well coated. There should not be much (if any) loose sauce in the pan.

Top with freshly grated Parmesan and basil. Serves 4.

Chef Dan adds shredded Parmesan to the dish for a finishing touch. Photo courtesy Mad Greens.

Chef Dan’s Zesty Homemade Tomato Sauce

This flavorful tomato sauce can be used as the staple ingredient in several recipes. It is a base that can be made in advance, frozen and subsequently used for several different dishes over time.

Ingredients:

4 Cans “San Marzano” style whole peeled tomatoes – drain off the juice

2 Onions – medium dice

4 Cloves garlic – finely chopped

1 tsp. Salt

1.2 tsp. Fresh ground black pepper

1 tsp. Dried oregano

4-5 Sprigs fresh thyme

1 TBS. Balsamic vinegar

1 TBS. Honey or agave – adjusted to taste

Steps:

Over medium heat cook onions until they start turning translucent.
Add garlic, let cook an additional 1 min. Add tomatoes.
Add the rest of the ingredients.
Let cook for 2 hours over very low heat the sauce should be barely bubbling. Stir occasionally to keep the sauce from burning.

After the sauce is cooked you can use an immersion blender to make the sauce smooth or you can leave it as is. This is entirely a personal preference. Use within 3-4 days or freeze.

About Chef Dan

Chef Dan Long is the Co-Founder and Chief Culinary Innovator at MAD Greens. Long and business partner Marley Hodgson founded Colorado-based Mad Greens – Eat Better in 2004. They were intent on addressing the lack of fresh, fast and healthy fare available to the average American consumer.

Ravioli “Lasagna”

January 27, 2016Leave a comment

Making lasagna is an arduous task. All those ingredients. All those layers. All that baking time. Totally worth it, don’t get me wrong. But it’s not the stuff of an easy, weeknight dinner. Here’s something that is, “cheating” a bit with ravioli, which takes care of two of the elements of lasagna in one cute, pillowy package – the pasta and the meat. You augment with a few other things and you’ve got dinner in a jiffy! As with many of my recipes, the measurements are more by feel and the customizations are encouraged and totally up to what your family likes.

Ravioli “Lasagna”

Ingredients:

1 bag frozen beef ravioli (or with other fillings, per your tastes)
Approximately 3/4 jar of pasta sauce of your choice
1 cup of shredded mozzarella cheese (or more to taste but there’s already cheese in the ravioli)
A few shakes of grated Parmesan cheese or 1/4 cup hand-shredded
Dried basil, oregano and rosemary to taste
Additions if you like: Shredded zucchini or other squash and/or wilted spinach or other greens to up the nutritional value. See also, how we served it at the bottom of this post.

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Pour a little pasta sauce in the bottom of an oven-proof dish with a lid, like a casserole dish.

3. While I’ve seen some recipes where you just throw the frozen ravioli in a dish, I haven’t had great luck doing this. The moisture created by thawing while cooking seems to dilute the sauce. Instead, I take the extra step of boiling the ravioli, per package instructions, but cut off the cooking time by one minute. Drain them well and pour them into your baking dish.

4. Cover with the rest of the sauce and distribute your seasonings of choice evenly over the pasta/sauce by rubbing them between your fingers to release the aromas and oils.

5. Sprinkle the mozzarella cheese evenly over the top and then the Parmesan. Add a little sprinkle of parsley for looks.

6. Cover and bake for approximately 20 minutes. Because you aren’t really going through layers and layers, and because the pasta was already hot, you are really just melting the cheeses, heating up the sauce and melding all of the flavors together.

7. Serve, spooning out the raviolis, making sure to capture sauce and cheese. This meal is delicious with a crusty bread and a big, crispy salad. We served ours over a bed of shredded kale. It made it pretty, provided a variety of textures and lots of good nutrition.

Coconut Curry Chicken

October 12, 2015October 12, 2015Leave a comment

I have a few picky eaters under my roof which makes it a real challenge to figure out what to make for dinner. I would be a much more adventurous cook if I could just make what I want and know that the kids would eat it. But, tra-la-la, that’s the lament of most parents, am I right? My pickiest-eater child has suddenly decided to take pity on me (after all of his ultra-picky years) and is willing to try more things. But then the kid who used to eat anything has suddenly decided he doesn’t like rice, pork, steak or chicken. Great. Swapped one for the other. Undeterred by this, and noticing I had a can of coconut milk in the pantry, I set out to create a dish everyone would at least be willing to try and came up with a great one.

A dish even my pickiest eaters loved! If I’d had some peas, I would have added them. Wouldn’t that have looked nice?

Coconut Curry Chicken with Rosamarina Rice

Serves 6

Six boneless, skinless chicken thighs (I buy them frozen at a big box store)
1/2 a large red onion sliced top to bottom
1 small potato, diced (this just extends the meal but doesn’t add any real flavor)
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 can of coconut milk (13.5 ounce)
1/2 t. coriander
2 T. curry powder
Salt and Pepper to taste, added just before serving
Add on: 1/2 a cup of frozen peas
Rosamarina Rice to serve it with (recipe below)

Method:
In a small pan, melt about a tablespoon of butter, then add the coconut milk, coriander and curry powder. Gently whisk until blended. Turn off the heat and set it aside.

The sauce with coconut milk, curry powder and coriander. Don’t add the salt and pepper until you are simmering the sauce and chicken together.

In a large skillet or dutch oven, drizzle some olive oil and heat up the pan. Add the onion slices and saute until they begin to be translucent. At that point, add the garlic and stir for a few seconds. Be careful because the garlic will burn quickly and become bitter.

I love the look of red onions! I sliced them the long way so that the kids who didn’t want onion could easily pick it out (turns out they didn’t!).

Add the diced chicken and turn everything over with a spatula to get the onion and garlic off the bottom of the pan and get things mixed up a bit. Do this periodically until the chicken is beige on all sides. It doesn’t have to be cooked through at this point.

The mixture will thicken as you let it simmer. Don’t cover it or the drops from the humidity that builds up on the lid will drip back down and water down the dish.

Pour the coconut/coriander/curry mixture over the chicken and stir again. Switch out your spatula for a large cooking spoon at this point because the spatula has raw chicken juice on it. Always do this when you are cooking – as soon as all sides have started to cook, ditch the raw-stuff utensil for a clean one to finish the dish to avoid cross-contamination.

Lower the heat and let the whole mixture simmer and thicken until the chicken and potatoes (if used) are cooked through and tender. In the last minute or so, add the peas, which I would have done with my dish if I’d had any. It would have added a nice bit of color and another element of flavor. Serve over the rice (or quinoa or nothing).

Rosamarina Rice

Every time I make rice, I make it this way, with rosamarina because it just tastes so darned good!

1/4 cup rosamarina, also called orzo, found in the pasta section of the store
2 cups rice
4-1/4 cups water (or chicken stock)*
3-4 bouillon cubes (if using water instead of stock)

Method:
Melt about 1 tablespoon of butter in a pot. Add the rosamarina and stir almost constantly until it starts to brown. At this point, it will burn quickly so before that can happen, pour the rice over it and stir to prevent the rosamarina from continuing to sit on the bottom of the pan. The butter that’s still in the pan will lightly coat the rice/rosamarina, adding some flavor.

Add the water/bouillon and stir. Let the mixture come to a boil. As soon as it does, cover the pot, turn the heat to low and let it sit to start absorbing the liquid. This usually takes about 20 minutes so I try to time the coordination of making rice with making the entree so they are done around the same time. Resist the urge to lift up the lid or stir the rice because it will effect how the rice turns out.

* Because the rosamarina needs to absorb the water to cook, I either lower the amount of rice I put in or add a little water/stock to compensate.

Easy Sunday Morning Breakfast

July 22, 2015July 22, 2015Leave a comment

To quote the song, this recipe is “Easy Like Sunday Morning!” My husband and I have a weekend tradition of turning on CBS Sunday Morning and having breakfast in bed. I don’t want to miss a second of this wonderful show by slaving over the stove, yet we want something that’s a little special to go along with our little tradition. Last week, I came up with this idea, using some bits and pieces we had in the fridge. It was delicious!

Avocado Toast with Cheesy Egg – an easy way to make breakfast feel special and also healthy.

Cheesy Eggs on Avocado Toast

Ingredients:

1 egg per person
1 piece of toast of choice (I used a sprouted grain bread substantial enough to hold up to the avocado)
1 avocado half (or some guacamole)
About two tablespoons of a strongly-flavored, favorite cheese like cheddar, Asiago or Parmesan, grated
Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Fry an egg sunnyside up in some olive oil or butter. While the egg is cooking, toast the bread. Spread half of the half avocado on the toast like it’s thick butter. Or treat the guacamole the same way.

When the egg is done, carefully lay it atop the avocado toast and sprinkle the cheese over the top to taste. You aren’t trying to smother it, just add a little something extra! Salt and pepper to taste.

Break the yolk and help it spread all over the avocado toast so that every bite has cheesy egg, avocado and toast in it. Yum!

Variation: You could also do a poached egg (if you are that talented, which I am not) or just a scrambled egg so that you could even pick it up and eat it like a slice of pizza. But then you don’t get that oozing yoke deliciousness. Your choice!

How to Make Roasted Garlic Cloves:

How to Use Roasted Garlic:

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