Sazon blend I like

This is a Sazon or seasoned salt that I love to use where I need a touch of flavored peppers to re-enforce the salt flavor on a meal

Ingredients:

• Course Pink Himalayan sea salt  (50% of resulting mixture)
• Other 50% should come from a mixture of:
• Grains of Paradise
• Brown Mustard seeds
• Black Tellicherry Peppercorns
• Ground Ancho and Guajillo Pepper

Instructions:

• Using a spice or coffee blender, blend the salt, Grains or Paradise, mustard seeds, and peppercorns.   Once well powdered, add the ground ancho and guajillo peppers and pulse in spice blender for a second or two to combine thouroughly.

Lettuce wrapped chicken with quick BBQ Rub

Originally posted by me in MyWholeFoodsLife Facebook group on Feb 26, 2015

 

If you have 5 minutes and a cheap coffee/spice grinder make your own BBQ Rub. I like making new blends all the time so as not to get bored with the flavors.

 

 Ingredients for BBQ Rub: 

• Grains of paradise
• Ancho
• Gaujillo
• Brown mustard
• Urfa
• Aji Amarillo
• Aleppo
• Honey powder
• Himalyan sea Salt
• For spicier mix add a touch of ghost or habanero to mix.

Ingredients for Meal:

• 5 diced small boneless/skinless chicken thighs
• Lettuce to be used as lettuce cups/wraps
• BBQ Rub for the chicken

Instructions:

• Using a Spice/Coffee Grinder mix up the seeds and berry's and other whole dried spices for 30 seconds or until powder
• Add powdered spices and pulse a couple times to mix thoroughly
• Coat the diced chicken with the rub.   Any leftover rub bottle for a future meal.
• Put a tablespoon of coconut oil and bring to heat
• Drop in the chicken into the oil should be sizzling and cook on high continuously moving the chicken around ensuring the chicken is browned on all sides.  This should be roughly 5 minutes at high heat.
• Deglaze pan for one minute with a splash of lime juice.
• Put in a bowl to add to wraps as a finger food as you go.

Recommended sides to cool down the spice:

• Homemade Gaucomole.
• Homemade Mayo

BBQ spice blends I love

These are my BBQ blends I love to use when smoking, grilling, or just cooking on the stove when I want a BBQ flavor.

Smokey BBQ blend:

• Crushed Urfa
• Aleppo Red Pepper
• Freeze Dried Scallion
• Roasted Garlic Powder
• Toasted Onion Powder
• Alderwood sea salt
• Honey Powder

Spicy BBQ Rub:

• Szechuan seeds
• Aleppo Red Pepper
• Crushed Urfa
• Guajillo Powder
• Ancho Powder
• 4 corners peppercorns
• tellicherry peppercorns
• Garlic and Onion Powder
• Fine Pink Himalayan Sea Salt
• Powdered Ghost Pepper
• Hot Oriental Mustard Seeds

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. 

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.