Showing posts with label recipe. Show all posts
This past Sunday, I was looking for something I could cook that wouldn't take half the evening. I love to cook but sometimes I just want something quick and easy. This recipe for Grilled Pork Loin is just that, quick and easy.
First, let's start with the marinade. I'll go ahead and warn you now, I'm not good with measuring ingredients out. I normally just sorta throw stuff together. I'll try, for the sake of others, to give an approximate amount of what I used.
Marinade:
1/2 cup of olive oil
1 Tbsp. garlic salt
1 Tbsp. garlic powder
1 Tbsp. onion powder
1 Tbsp. cajun seasoning
1/2 Tbsp. meat tenderizer
1 Tbsp. parsley
Put your pork loin in a gallon size freezer bag. (When I say pork loin, I'm not talking about the huge ones, I mean the small individually wrapped ones.) Add all the above listed ingredients to the bag and seal it. Try to make sure you've squeezed as much of the air out of the bag as you can and make SURE you seal it TIGHT. Otherwise you will have an oily mess. Roll the pork loin around in the bag. You can tell when everything has distributed itself somewhat evenly. Stick it in the fridge for about an hour. Longer is better but an hour works if you are pressed for time.
Light your grill about 15 minutes before your hour is up. If you use a charcoal grill, you may need to light it about 30 minutes before the hour is up, though. You'll know best how long it takes for your own grill to heat up, so use your judgement for this part.
When the grill is ready, take bag and all out to your grilling area. I would strongly suggest using a pair of grilling tongs to get the loin out of the bag, otherwise you might end up with a mess. Put the pork loin on the grill and shut the lid. Once again, you'll need to use your own judgement on cooking times, because all grills vary. It took about 30 - 45 minutes for mine to cook, but I use a gas grill. You'll need to flip the loin a couple of times during your cooking times.
I don't have any pictures of the loin I cooked because as soon as I cut it, it disappeared. I think I managed to snag two pieces out of the whole thing. *shrugs* Growing kids and all that. :) If you decide to try this recipe leave me a comment and let me know how it turns out. I love comments. :)
What started out as a recipe in an old Easy Microwave Recipes cookbook, turned into quite an excellent dinner. When I say an "old" microwave recipe book I mean it probably came out when microwaves looked like this.
So that gives you an idea of what I was working with as far as recipes go. I'm a food experimenter. I love recipe books, be they old, new or somewhere in between and I really enjoy trying out new things. Anyways, the recipe was for veal scallopini. I don't typically have veal hanging out in my freezer (it's to bloody expensive), but I do have pork chops. LOTS of pork chops to be exact. (I buy the whole pork loins, bone in or boneless, whenever they are on sell and cut them myself. MUCH cheaper that way.) So, I grabbed a pack of what I thought was pork chops and set about thawing them out. Turns out they were pork steaks. *shrugs* A little late at this point, so I figured what the heck, I'll make do with these. Before I go any further into this recipe, let me just state that I did NOT use the microwave, but my electric skillet instead. I don't think it's actually scallopini but I kept the name all the same.
Pork Steak Scallopini:
4 pork steaks or pork chops (It's up to you and won't make much difference other than cooking time.)
1 can mushroom pieces and stems or a container of fresh mushrooms, sliced or chopped
1/2 of a medium sized onion, diced
Butter
salt & pepper
Put about 2 heaping Tbsp. of butter in a skillet and while it is heating up, remove the bone if you are using bone-in pork. (I don't suppose you have to remove the bone, but I do because I've never been good at cooking bone-in meat.) Salt & pepper both sides of the chops/steaks and cook until the juices run clear. About 5 - 8 minutes per side for steaks. This step may take a bit longer for chops. Once the chops/steaks are done, remove them to a plate and put in the microwave to keep warm. Put your onions and mushrooms into the skillet you used to cook your chops/steaks. You may need to add a bit more butter. Saute' the mushrooms and onions until they have soaked up almost all of the butter that's left in the skillet. You will still have a little bit of liquid but that's fine. Before serving, spoon the mushroom onion mixture on to the steaks/chops. (I chopped the steak up before I put the mushrooms and onions on top to make it a bit less messy.) You can make a brown gravy to go with this as well, but I didn't. (I'm not a big gravy person.)
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| Don't you just love my fine china? :D |
I served the steaks with stuffing, but this would also go very well with rice. As a matter of fact, you could cut up the steak and layer it and the mushroom onion mixture over the top of the rice and have a complete meal in a bowl.
Enjoy!!!
In the South, Fried Chicken isn't just a food, it's a way of life. Most every southerner you ask will tell you that it is one of the most common foods down here. Anyways, I was talking to a friend the other day, and we got to talkin' about what I was gonna cook for dinner. I knew I wanted fried chicken, so I got to lookin' online for a nice little recipe to make regular ol' southern fried chicken. I ended up finding 3 recipes that all sounded good, so I posed the question to my friend, "What KIND of fried chicken? Regular, Cajun or Ranch?" His answer sorta surprised me, although I'm not all that sure why. "Why don't you do all 3, together?" Hmmmm, yea I can do that. Especially seein' as though folks in the south have a penchant for spicy foods and ranch dressing as well as anything fried. When someone tells you, people in the south fry everything, they ain't lyin'. And what whether we fry it or not, we put ranch dressing on it. I'll post a recipe for fried pickles once I find one I like enough to eat. LOL.
I like to experiment with recipes and different kinds of foods. I don't have a lot of room in which to cook but that doesn't stop me from likin' to do it. So I got to haulin' out all the ingredients and ended up not really going by the recipes I had in my hand, but improvisin' my own concoction.
Pan Fried Cajun Ranch Chicken:
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (I rarely buy bone in chicken)
1 cup all purpose flour
1 Tbsp. cajun seasoning
1 Tbsp. ranch powder (Hidden Valley sells it in a shaker)
salt & pepper
paprika
cooking oil (I use Olive Oil)
Put about an 1 or 2 inches of oil in a skillet and let that be heating up while you get the chicken ready.
Combine the flour, cajun seasoning and ranch powder in a mixing bowl.
Sprinkle salt, pepper and paprika on both sides of each chicken breast, then dredge them in the flour mixture. Put the breasts in the oil (which by now should be hot).
Let each breast cook about 5 minutes on each side or until the juices run clear.
We had Candied Baby Carrots and Mashed Potatoes as side dishes. The carrots are super easy to do.
Candied Baby Carrots:fresh baby carrots
2 large spoonfuls of butter (sorry I rarely measure butter)
1/4 cup brown sugar
salt & pepper
Boil your carrots in salted in salted water for about 20 -30 minutes. You don't want them mushy. After you've boiled them strain out the water and let them sit off to the side.
Combine the butter and brown sugar. Once the butter has melted down a good bit add the carrots. Stir the carrots and the butter/sugar mixture together well. Let cook until the sugar is bubbly.
And this was the result:
I cheated on the taters and used instant. In my defense though, the fresh potatoes had fell off their shelf in the pantry, so I thought we didn't have any. If I had of known we did in fact have real potatoes I would have made homemade mashed potatoes, too. :D
I hope y'all enjoy this recipe as much as we all did. If you get a chance to make it, leave me a comment and let me know what you think.
