A simple tutorial on how to roast garlic.

Start with a whole head of garlic, or just a few cloves (my opinion is more is better, I love roasted garlic).  Using a serrated knife or kitchen shears, cut off the bottoms of each clove.  Some people keep the whole head of garlic intact and cut off the hard bottom piece, but I find that I end up wasting too much garlic that way.


Place the cloves of garlic on a sheet of aluminum foil (no need to peel the cloves) and drizzle or spray on some olive oil (you don't need much, about a teaspoon or less).  Fold the foil around the garlic and bake at 350F for 30-45 minutes (I use a toaster oven for this, no need to heat up the big oven for a small packet of garlic).


After about 15 minutes, you will start to smell roasted garlic but keep it in the oven the whole time until it softens.  (This is my favorite house freshener.  I just have a small apartment and it makes the whole place smell great.  I joke with my husband that I'm going to rub some roasted garlic behind my ears like perfume...I love this stuff and my husband does too.)  Remove from oven, or turn the heat off, and let cool until it is able to be handled.  Then open the foil packet.


The garlic should be soft and slip out of the papery peel with just a squeeze on the top of the clove.  The soft garlic can be easily mashed once it is out of the peel and is ready to be added to any recipe.



Enjoy.

For recipes using roasted garlic check out:


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A simple tutorial on how to roast sweet red bell peppers at home.

Re-post of original from 1/7/13 (90 views 1 +1) updated pictures, edited for content and grammar, pinnable image, tweetables, other post/recipe links.
I love roasted red peppers.  I put them on homemade pizzas, sandwiches, in sauces and eat them by themselves.

Roasted red bell peppers are expensive to buy so I make them myself.  It's messy, but the results are amazing.

This tutorial is for people, like me, who do not have gas stoves (apparently you can char the pepper skins directly over the flame).

Start with whole, clean red bell peppers.


You can roast just 1 or as many that will fit on your baking sheet.  Place them in the oven as close to the broiler as possible and broil for a few minutes until the skin chars, flip the peppers and repeat on all sides.  (I used my toaster oven because my regular oven broiler has been broken for a while.  It worked wonderfully and I set the timer to the dark toast picture and it was the perfect time.)



As the peppers char they will blacken, the blacker and more burnt looking the skin the better (this adds great flavor and makes the skins easier to peel off).  Take out of the oven and immediately place the hot peppers into a zipper bag  and seal (sometimes I use a Tupperware).  Allow peppers to sit and steam for at least 1 hour until they are cool enough to handle.


Now for the messy part.  Using your hands and a knife or fork, pull off the stem and squeeze out the seeds.  Then begin to peel the charred skin off the peppers (the knife or fork helps pull up the skin so you can get your fingers under it to peel).


Once peeled, cut or slice the pepper into pieces of desired size or leave whole and place into a jar or Tupperware.  Cover with olive oil and store in the refrigerator or use right away.  I have kept these in the fridge for up to a week, but they will probably be eaten long before that.




Enjoy.

Use Roasted Red Peppers in these recipes:


Linked to:  2 Cup, Treasure Box, Lou Lou Girls, Tickle My Tastebuds, Wake Up, Full Plate, FunSummerFinds, Pretty Pintastic, Best of the Weekend

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A tutorial that shows you how to turn ground pork into chorizo with some fairly common spices.

When I lived in Houston, TX there were a ton of small, family owned Mexican grocery stores.  Chorizo was so easy to find as well as dried chilies, and pre-marinated fajita meat.  Now that I live in Hawaii, Mexican groceries are harder to find but I have Chinatown with new flavors and foods to explore.  While I love experimenting with new food sometimes I like to revisit old comforting food and recipes.  So when I wanted to make a dish that needed chorizo I set out to figure out how to turn ground pork (easily found in Chinatown) into chorizo. I found this recipe and was happy to note I had all the spices I needed.

What better recipe to repost for Cinco de Mayo.  I hope this inspires you to try making your own chorizo.



Repost of origial from 9/16/13 added new cover pic, 'check out' pics/links, click to tweet, minor editing. 

For recipes using chorizo check out:


For more Cinco de Mayo recipes check out:

Chicken Burrito Bowls

Black Bean Soup

Chicken Enchiladas

Tequila Lime Shrimp Tacos

Linked to:  Empty Your Archive, Saturday Dishes Tex mex, Empty Your Archive, Treasure Box, 2 Cup, Lou Lou Girls, Tickle my Tastebuds



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A recap of my most popular blog posts of September

Happy Halloween everyone.  I added a couple of skull and crossbones to my best of the month picture to celebrate.

Anyway, I had another great month for my blog.  I'm still doing what I've been doing with a couple of additions.  I learned this month how to properly post on G+ so that all of my +1's show up (only have 1 link in your post).  I also started sharing my blog posts on a few different food blog/blogging communities.  Most notably G+ Share Tribe a community that encourages the sharing of others' posts thereby getting your own shared more.  I'm sharing more of others' work and meeting new people and making more friends.

The thing I am most proud of from this month's posts is that Foodista chose one of them for their blog of the day.  I'm so honored by this and many more people saw my blog...how cool.

A simple tutorial on how to hard boil eggs. 

To many I'm sure this tutorial is something you already know.  However, for those, like me, who do not boil eggs often this is good stuff to know.  I don't hard boil eggs very often and I always have to look in my 'Better Homes' cookbook to remind me how to do it right.  One day recently a friend even texted me asking how to hard boil an egg so that sealed the deal and I decided to make this tutorial.  If you boil the eggs too long the yolks turn an unattractive grey color, they still taste the same but just don't look as great so with that in mind here is my tutorial.

Place eggs in a single layer in a sauce pan or pot.  Fill the pan with cold water until the eggs are covered.


Add a little salt, thought to make the eggs easier to peel, and vinegar to help keep the egg whites from leaking if there are any cracks (some people think this affects the taste, I usually only add the salt but both are optional).  Bring the water to a boil and immediately remove from heat and cover.


Let eggs sit, covered, for 15 minutes (it may take a little longer if you are boiling a lot of eggs).  Drain and rinse in cold water until cool enough to touch.


Peel and eat, chop, or slice.  You can also refrigerate, unpeeled, until ready to use.


**New tip (6/25/15):  For easier to peel eggs start the water boiling first.  Add cold eggs to the boiling water and boil for about 12 minutes.  Place the hot eggs into an ice water bath to quickly cool them and stop the cooking.  When cold crack all over and remove peel under running water.
Did you forget to mark your boiled eggs before putting them in the refrigerator?  Having a hard time telling the difference between the boiled eggs and the raw?

Try spinning the eggs.  The hard boiled eggs will spin faster than the raw (and the raw have a difficult time spinning).

Shine a flashlight through the egg.  If the light shows through it is raw, the light will not pass through a hard boiled egg.

Gently shake the eggs, you can feel the raw egg insides slosh.

Mark the boiled eggs with a pencil or marker.