My favorite Homemade BBQ sauce

Simple BBQ Sauce Ingredients

• 5 dried Chile de Arbol
• 1 smoked dried Ancho Chile
• 1 dried Chile Panca
• 4 Cups Water
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1 1/2 cup blackstrap molasses
• 4 tablespoons blueberry jalapeño jam (bought from local farmer)
• powdered garlic and onion to taste.
• Salt and Pepper to taste
• 2 tablespoons Honey Powder
• 2 pieces bacon chopped real fine and rendered/browned on stove.

Making the Sauce:

• Put Chiles (seeds and all), bacon (with rendered fat), and water in a medium size pot and simmer for 1 hours with top on
• Once the Chiles have been sufficiently rehydrated (1 hour simmering should do it), using an immersion blender completely liquefy the Chiles and bacon.
• Add the honey, molasses, Jam, and spices.
• Pulse a couple times with immersion blender again and ensure that the sauce is smooth with no grittiness from the powdered products. 
• This is where you taste for the first time.  You should get heat, but you should also get a solid BBQ style flavor.  If still too bitter more honey or jam/fruit. If too sweet balance out with garlic and onion powder.
• Low Simmer for another 30 minutes to let the flavors come together and give the sugars (molasses, honey, and jam) to thicken up the sauce.  Warning it HAS to be slow and low, this sauce can go bad at high heat due to to sugars added.  Burnt sugar tastes bad. 

This can be made vegitarian friendly by omitting the bacon.  Instead of bacon use a fresh onion and brown them slow and low until browned but not black deglaze the pan with a touch balsamic vinegar to add about same taste profile.  

To reduce the spice level.  Either remove the seeds from the chiles used.  Or choose different chiles.  2-3 each ancho and gaujilo peppers is a milder taste.  For spicer add one ghost pepper minus seeds. 

Another substitution is to use any sweet berry jam in place of the jalapeño blueberry I used.  The jam I used for this sauce was a special item I found this past weekend from a local farmers market.  Or use fresh fruit like blackberry or blueberry.  If you avoid processed sugar like I do this may limit your choices if you don't have a local farmers market or know someone who makes jams. 

Simple veggie soup

Originally posted by me in MyWholeFoodsLife Facebook group on January 21, 2015

Ingredients:

• 1 fennel bulb (save stalks to make a future veggie stock)
• 4 med-large leeks (save leaves to make a future stock)
• 1 bag carrots (or 4-5 large carrots, I had a bag of baby carrots that needed to go)
• 5 celery stalks

Instructions:

• Clean and roughly chop veggies.
• Put in pot and cover with water.
• Med-boil for an hour with cumin seeds, celery salt, dill, black pepper, and turmeric.
• Immersion blend result should be really thick depending on how much water.
• Remove 1/2 pot for later soup.
• Add 1 quart of coconut milk to what's left in pot. and simmer for 30 minutes. 

Note repeat last step with the 1/2 pot you took out. I prefer storing prior to adding coconut milk unless you consume within a couple days. Preference I think, you could probably make the whole thing at once.

This should serve one person for a week at least one meal a day if you make both batches.

Shrimp Pad Thai

This rendition of Shrimp Pad Thai comes out of my love of the more saucy Indian dishes and has more sauce than your average Pad Thai, but all the flavors.

Serves: 2
 

Ingredients:

• 1/2 pound fresh large shrimp cleaned, deveined, and chopped roughly
• 2 small heads of bok choi roughly chopped
• 1/2 cup rough chopped snow peas
• 2 tablespoons cashew nut butter (peanut butter, any nut butter to taste. )
• 1 cup coconut milk
• Vietnamese sweet lemongrass curry
• 5 Korean pepper threads 
• Salt and pepper
• Soy sauce (GF)
• Pad Thai rice noodles (GF)

Instructions:

• Place a pot of water on stove to get it to start boiling for the noodles while you do prep. 
• Get the shrimp cleaned, deveined, and roughly chopped in a bowl and salt and pepper them
• Combine the nut butter, coconut milk, curry blend, and pepper threads in a bowl and mix until a thick liquid consistency.  Works better when nut butter is room temp.  
• Chop up veggies and place in bowl.  
• Now that prep is done.  Check water. If boiling put noodles in water and follow package directions.  For the ones I get this involves taking pot off heat for 10 min. 
• Get a pan with some coconut oil hot enough so that when you drop in the shrimp it sizzles.
• Drop in shrimp.  
• Cook on high 1-2 minutes until shrimp turn pink.  
• Add the sauce and stir quickly.  Add the veggies and turn down heat to a low medium and simmer for 3 minutes.   Add a couple tablespoons of soy to deglaze the pan a little stir quickly and remove from heat.  
• Spoon over noodles once noodles done and removed from water.  
• Enjoy. 

Note:  this could be made vegetarian by replacing the shrimp with a few more veggies.
Alternate Veggies I like and have used:

• 1/2 can sliced water chestnuts and another 1/2 can bamboo shoots
• 12 fresh snow peas
• Carrots roughly chopped, or chopped real fine as garnish 

Alternate Sauce method for a much more flavorful sauce:
Ingredients for Sauce:

• 1 cup flavored coconut milk
• 2 tablespoons cashew butter
• 2 tablespoons crushed cashews...
• 1/2 lb shrimp shells
• 1 lemongrass stalk, roughly crushed using back of knife
• 1 piece of fresh ginger about double size of thumb diced extremely fine.
• 1 teaspoon roughly to taste Cambodian lemongrass curry (savory spice shop)

Instructions for making a flavored coconut milk

• At very low heat put the coconut milk, shrimp shells (Omit if vegetarian), lemongrass and ginger in pan and let the milk warm up at just below simmer for an hour. This will put the ginger and lemongrass flavor into base sauce
• Remove lemongrass stalk and add the curry and cashew butter. At low heat mix for 10 minutes ensure the sauce is smooth. Remove sauce from pan and mix in cashew pieces.

Salt blends I love.

First of the spice blends I wanted to mention are some basic flavored salts (Sazon).   I use these frequently do I make a quick blends to save time from having to mix in small batches as needed for meals..

Simple salt and pepper:

Fill spice grinder 1/2 way with tellicherry black pepper berries and grind until powder

Mix with Himalayan pink sea salt fine ground
Great for basic meals that ask for Salt and Pepper.   Can be used as a table mix as well once balanced to your taste with pepper to salt ratios.

Szechuan salt and pepper:

Fill spice grinder 1/2 way with Szechuan pepper berries and grind until powder

Mix with Himalayan pink sea salt fine ground
Great for Stir Fry's or any meal that requires a bit of Szechuan flavor.  
 

Mixed peppers salt:

Fill spice grinder 1/2 way with a four corners blend (mix of white, black, pink, and green) and grind until powder 

Mix with Himalayan pink sea salt fine ground

Great for basic meals that ask for Salt and Pepper.   Can be used as a table mix as well once balanced to your taste with pepper to salt ratios.  I personally prefer this to just tellicherry black pepper berries due to the complexity of flavor.
 

Garlic and onion sea salt:

If you get onion and garlic flakes or even the scallions or dry the green tops of a scallion.  Fill up spice grinder and create a powder.  Not you can buy onion and garlic powder as well no need to grind. 

Mix with Himalayan pink sea salt fine ground
Great for mashed or roasted potatoes, vegetables, and even making a garlic bread from scratch.

Rosemary flavored sea salt:

Same as garlic and onion but add in dried rosemary. 
Great for mashed and roasted potatoes or fries.   Because rosemary can be a stronger flavor that does go well with potatoes in my opinion I primarily use this for my potato dishes as appropriate.

Spicy Grains of Paradise finishing salt:
Fill up spice grinder 1/2 way with the Grains of Paradise seeds and grind until powder.
Mix with Himalayan pink sea salt fine ground.
Great for a floral spicy note to food.  Use as a finishing salt to add another layer to African or middle eastern style meals.

Meatballs in a Simple BBQ Sauce

Meatballs in a Simple BBQ Sauce
This recipe is scaled as a party or potluck size.   I will provide hints at end to make this a bit smaller and geared to a serving size for two people.   This should assist in scaling this to your family size.

Meatballs Ingredients:

• 4 lbs ground 93% lean beef
• 2 lbs ground pork
• Salt and Pepper
• Ian's Gluten Free Panko Italian Style Breadcrumbs
• 4 duck eggs

Simple BBQ Sauce Ingredients

• 5 dried Chile de Arbol
• 1 smoked dried Ancho Chile
• 1 dried Chile Panca
• 4 Cups Water
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1 1/2 cup blackstrap molasses
• 4 tablespoons blueberry jalapeño jam (bought from local farmer)
• powdered garlic and onion to taste.
• Salt and Pepper to taste
• 2 tablespoons Honey Powder
• 2 pieces bacon chopped real fine and rendered/browned on stove.

Making the Sauce:

• Put Chiles (seeds and all), bacon (with rendered fat), and water in a medium size pot and simmer for 1 hours with top on
• Once the Chiles have been sufficiently rehydrated (1 hour simmering should do it), using an immersion blender completely liquefy the Chiles and bacon.
• Add the honey, molasses, Jam, and spices.
• Pulse a couple times with immersion blender again and ensure that the sauce is smooth with no grittiness.
• This is where you taste for the first time.  You should get heat, but you should also get a solid BBQ style flavor.  If still too bitter more honey, if too sweet balance out with garlic and onion powder.
• Low Simmer for another 30 minutes to let the flavors come together and give the sugars (molasses, honey, and jam) to thicken up the sauce.

Making the Meatballs:

• Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees
• Mix all ingredients by hand.    The end result you want is when you pick up a portion of the meat the whole sticks together.   Add more Panko until you get a good sticky consistency that does not immediately let go of it's neighbor.   You should be able to pick up the whole batch by grabbing a handful at the top at least for a few seconds.   Salt and Pepper sparingly, the main flavor for these meatballs will come from the sauce, there should be adequate Salt and Pepper to provide them an initial flavor when removed from oven, but they will be slightly bland.
• Roll into a ball that is small enough to be cupped in both hands, roughly an inch or two across.   These are good size meatballs that if you put four on a plate of spaghetti they would be a full meal for a big eater.  You can make smaller meatballs but then you will be spending much more time making meatballs and will need to adjust the cook time and heat.
• Using a good metal baking pan line up the meat balls on the pan, space them out, but no need to leave too much space.   Note for easy cleanup a good heavy aluminum foil like what you would use for grilling would help.
• Place the baking pans in the oven for 20 minutes if working with the larger size meatballs recommended.   If the meatballs are smaller then reduce to 10 minutes if roughly half the size recommended.
• You may need to run multiple batches through oven, if planning this for a party.
• Once their 20 minutes in oven are done you should have a firm meatball, cooked through that has a nicely browned exterior.
• Place in Slowcooker.
• Pour in the completed Sauce and place slow cooker on warm for two hours and wait for your guests.

Total active time in kitchen:  Roughly an hour and most of that is due to batch size, if making this for two servings about 15 minutes active time work needed.
Total Cook time:  Roughly 3 hours.  Note the longer that the Meatballs soak in the sauce in the slow cooker the better the flavors.
Serving Size:   2-3 meatballs per person.   I had 10 people over yesterday and I still have 10 servings left for myself as leftovers.   We also had other items on the potluck including a salad for non-meat eaters and as a side to the meal, as well as some samosa's that were brought from a local restaurant.
Sizing this for families:   I would cut the measured ingredients by 4 to serve this for a family of four.   You should be roughly coming up with 2-3 meatballs per person and with other sides this should be a good size meal.
Spice Level:  This recipe should be considered spicy for the average person.   To reduce the spice level stick with dried ancho or guajillo chiles.