Here in rural Hawaii, many of our neighbors own chickens. When they’re laying (the chickens, I mean), we have access to really fresh, delicious eggs–and a lot of them.
Here’s a quick way to turn a dozen eggs into a tasty meal. If you’re watching your carbs, this is a great, keto-friendly dish. If you’re limiting your fat intake, this is probably not the recipe for you.
Preheat oven to 350.
Take
1 dozen eggs
1 pound shredded cheese (cheddar or Swiss style)
1.5 cups heavy cream
2 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic salt
(Optional) 1/2 cup to 1 cup of whatever leftover cooked meat or vegetables you have in the fridge that might taste good. Chopped Spam, for example.
Mix everything together (I use a KitchenAid mixer) and pour into an oiled or parchment-lined lasagna pan. Sprinkle Parmesan cheese on top. Bake about an hour and fifteen minutes. Or if you’re using combination microwave/convection, half an hour at 325.
Calling this a “recipe” might be a little grandiose, but it’s a great way to get a main dish going with minimal effort and maximal deliciousness.
What we call pork butt is actually the shoulder.
Know Your Pig Parts
1) Buy a pork butt. It will probably be somewhere in the 5-10 pound range. If you’re lucky enough to have locally raised pork available, go for it! If you can get a bone-in butt, you’ll get the benefit of all of that glycine,proline, and other bone-y benefits.
2) Drop the pork butt into your slow cooker.
You should have a slow cooker in your kitchen. I like the latching cover for potluck-friendly portability, and the shallow oval shape for access to the food.
I’m very lucky to have access to meat (and other products) from grass-fed Hawaii cattle. Once in a while soup bones become available at the local grocery store. If you see these, buy them. Six big pieces, if you can get them.
Some say bone broth is good for joints, digestion and general health. What I can say for sure is that the bone, meat and marrow will make your soup taste rich and delicious. Now for the second ingredient: Arrabbiata Sauce.
You should always have a few jars of this in your pantry. (I happen to like Mezzetta, but the SF Chronicle’s taste testers preferred Rao’s. Safeway Select is a good inexpensive choice if you have that available.)
Put the bones and sauce into a slow cooker with enough water to reach the top. Add some salt, because you just watered down the sauce. Cook for 12-24 hours.
You’ll get a lot of meat from the bones, and some of the marrow will soften and dissolve in the soup.
The bones are going to fall apart so make sure to fish out the bone pieces before you serve this. You don’t want to get hit with some ungrateful dinner guest’s dental repair bill.
[OPTIONAL THIRD INGREDIENT: A BAG OF FROZEN VEGETABLES]
After you take out the bones, you can dump in a bag of mixed mushrooms or Westpac asparagus stir fry and cook until the vegetables are done.
Obligatory Spam mention: cut up leftover Spam into cubes and boil in the soup for extra flavor.
This is wonderful for a cold day. (The temperature here has plummeted to 71 F /22 C. Brrr!)
In my quest to bring you the easiest (laziest) recipes possible, I present: Thirty-Second Stock. (Thirty seconds to get started, that is. The part where you pick the meat off the carcass at the end takes significantly more time.)
Sure, you could go online and find a respectable recipe like this one, but maybe you don’t want to spend a lot of time chopping celery and quartering onions and trying to figure out where the heck you’re going to find “sprigs of thyme.”
A bonus: You’ll get a lot more meat. When the turkey cooks to the ideal temperature for eating, the legs and breast are perfectly done, but the meat nearest the bone is still tough and hard to remove. When I did this last night (of course my recipes are all kitchen-tested, you think I’m making this stuff up?) I liberated another four cups of meat (!) from our sixteen-pound turkey.
Here we go:
1) Upend the turkey carcass and stuff it into a big pot. It might stick out the top a little. Wash your hands and mash it down if you can. Otherwise, don’t worry about it. It’ll loosen up and collapse as it cooks.
Something like this one.
2) Sprinkle lots of Montreal Chicken Seasoning all over the carcass.
Contains garlic, onion, orange peel, red pepper, and a bunch of other stuff I’m glad someone else put together so I don’t have to
2a) Optional: Add turmeric for color and brain health. Throw in the giblets if you have them.
3) Fill the pot with water and cook on a low boil for at least 3 hours.
4) Wait for it to cool off so you don’t burn your hands (at least a half hour). Lift the carcass into a baking pan or a big platter, pick the meat off and save for later. Strain the broth into a container.
I like glass containers, because I don’t really trust hot liquid and plastic.
4a) Did you remember to throw in the giblets? Now you can eat them! Consuming the heart of the turkey is said to endow the eater with the bird’s legendary bravery and cunning. The liver is delicious. And if you want to do some fancy gizzard thing, more power to you.
5) Obligatory Spam mention: Serve with a side of fried Spam.
Inspired by Leslie at Custard and Clues, I’m going to start posting my favorite recipes. Of course, Leslie is a gourmet chef and I am a lazy (and also terrible) cook, but I do know how to make a few things, and this thing is delicious .
1) Buy Bacon Spam. Not the regular blue can kind, and absolutely not one of those awful low-sodium/chicken parts abominations. Bacon Spam in the red can.
2) Cut it into matchsticks.
3) Fry it in coconut oil on low heat until the edges are translucent
4) Bring it to a potluck and watch it disappear. Try not to eat the whole pile yourself.
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