I’ll admit until I went on my low-carb diet a few months back, I couldn’t stand cottage cheese. It was something they served in hospitals for sick people and I was not sick. Even the name sucks: Cottage cheese. Whenever I think of cottages I can’t help but think of those shitty paintings by Thomas Kinkaid. “Painter of light” my ass. You paint ugly pictures of imaginary places for old women.

But then I went on my low-carb diet and found that there isn’t a damn thing to snack on! So I settled on cottage cheese a couple of times and found that the stuff is pretty tasty.

I thought I’d take a shot at making it myself and I must say there is nothing as luxurious as homemade cottage cheese. It’s got a super fresh taste that can’t be matched by anything at the supermarket.

*A side note: While it tastes amazing, making cottage cheese at home is a lot of work. It take a long time and it’s more expensive than buying it from the store. So if you’re cheap, lazy and generally busy, you should buy your cottage cheese.

Homemade Cottage Cheese

1/4 Tablet Junket Rennet
1/2 Cup Water
1 Gallon Skim Milk
1/4 Cup Buttermilk
1 teaspoon Salt
1/3 Cup Heavy Whipping Cream

 
1. Crush Your Junk(et) – Rennet is a enzyme found in the stomach of calves that enables them to break down the milk from their mother. We’re gonna use it to do the same thing here. Adding this to our milk is going to separate the curds from the whey.

Take one tablet out of the package and cut it in half. And cut it in half again. With your 1/4 of a tablet, take the back of a spoon and crush it in a small bowl. Then add the 1/2 Cup of water to dissolve the rennet. Set aside.

2. Pump and Dump – In a stainless steel stockpot big enough to hold a gallon of milk, add your gallon of skim milk. Turn your stovetop onto medium heat and stir the milk. We need to get the milk to 70° and we need to know when it gets there so using a thermometer is crucial. I use a probe thermometer with a pot clip to ensure the temperature is just right. Stirring will prevent scorching on the bottom.

Once you’ve hit 70°, stir in the 1/4 of Buttermilk and your Rennet mix from earlier. The live cultures in the buttermilk will help to flavor the cheese, but it and the rennet need some time to work. Take your pot off of the stove, cover with a towel and let sit at room temperature for 12 – 24 hours.

3. Little Miss Muffet was a Trollip – With any luck you should now be left with something that look like a big jello blob in clear liquid. That my friends is curds and whey. You can ensure you’re reached proper curds by using a knife to make a slice in it, if the line you make stays visible, you’re good to go.

We want to have multiple curds and not just one big one, so we’re going to have to do some slicing. Get out your longest, thinnest knife for this task, it will make things a lot easier. Starting on one side, slowly slide your long knife in to the soft warm curd until you hit the bottom. Then, keeping your knife on the bottom, run your knife all the way across the pot. Take out your knife and do this same motion every half inch until you get to the other side of the pot.

Once you finish one direction, turn the pot 90 degrees and do the same thing this direction. You should have a cross-hatch pattern on top of the curd, but don’t worry if it’s not perfect, your cottage cheese will turn out just fine.

4. Catcher – We’re soon going to be separating the curds from the whey, so get a strainer with some cheesecloth in it setup over the top of a bowl. Leave this for a minute while we heat the curds.

5. It’s Gettin Hot in Here – Turn on your stove to medium and put your curds back on the burner. You’ll need a thermometer again here as we need to get the mixture to a temperature of 110° and keep it there for 20 – 30 minutes.

Prior to heating, if you pick up one of the curds it will practically disappear in your hand and it’s easily crushed into oblivion. That’s because the curd has not yet set. The process of heating for 20-30 minutes at 110° will set, or cook, the curds, firming them up so our cottage cheese has the delicious texture we know and love.

Heat the mixture to 110° and stir gently to distribute the heat evenly. Be very gentle though or you will demolish all your curds.

After 20 minutes you’ll see that when you stir your curds have real body now. This is what we’re looking for. If your curds haven’t firmed up, keep the heat on for a few more minutes and things will come together.

6. Splashdown – Pour your curds and whey into the cheesecloth lined colander, lifting the colander once you’ve poured it all in. Save the whey if you’d like, but otherwise pour it off and fill the bowl with ice cold water. Put ice in, if you have it.

7. Teabagging – I don’t know why, but this picture always reminds me of this. This should take all of your fraternity guys right back to college.

Grab all four sides of the cheesecloth and pull them together at the top. Now take your curd sack and dunk it repeatedly in the ice cold water. The goal here is to cool the curds down to 40° or so. If you’ve got to stick your hand in there to stir them up a bit, that’s fine, just make sure all of the curds are cool before moving on to the next step.

8. Creamin – You can keep your cottage cheese as it stands now, but you’re probably used to a much creamier version. That’s because commercial cottage cheese has cream or half and half added. I like using cream, because seriously, if you took two days to make cottage cheese that shit better be the most luxurious damn cottage cheese ever made.

Add your salt and cream to the cottage cheese curds, stirring to combine.

That’s it, you did it. You made homemade cottage cheese from scratch. That’s quite the accomplishment. Now mind you, none of your friends or family will give a shit when you tell them, but you’ll know how awesome you are. And that’s what really matters.

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Perfect for a light appetizer or a creamy salad topper, these baked goat cheese rounds are ridiculously easy to put together and can make it look like you really know how to cook.

Oh and another great part about this dish? Only four ingredients. Four! Children could make this!

Baked Goat Cheese Rounds

4 oz. Fresh Goat Cheese
1 Tbls Honey
3 Tbls Olive Oil
2 C Breadcrumbs

1. Ohhh Honey – Preheat your oven to 350°. Place your goat cheese in a bowl and pour a tablespoon of honey over cheese. Mix the two together with a spoon until well blended. In addition to adding a depth of flavor, the honey will help to balance out the tartness of the goat cheese.

2. You Spin Me Right Round – Scoop a couple of tablespoons of your goat cheese mixture into your hand and form it into a round patty. Do this until you run out of cheese, you should get 6 rounds out of this recipe.

3. You’re Gonna Need a Little Lube – Pour your oil into a small container that will allow for easy coating of the discs. Coat each disc evenly and let any excess oil run off.

4. That’s Crumby – Spill your breadcrumbs out onto a plate. One by one, place each cheese round into the breadcrumbs, making sure to coat it evenly on all sides. You can then set the finished round onto a baking sheet, I like to cover mine with a silicone mat.

5. Lets Get Baked Doood – Bake the sheet of rounds in the oven for 6 minutes. This will be plenty of time for the breadcrumbs to crisp and the cheese to get super-soft. Let them sit for a few minutes on the pan before removing them or they’ll end up in 100 pieces.

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Yes, yes. You read that right, cherry ketchup. I recently found myself with some excess cherries and instead of going the boring jam route, I thought I would mix it up a bit. This cherry ketchup has a rich and spicy flavor you won’t find in a Heinz bottle; you’ll want to use it on everything.

This recipe makes a small amount (only a 8 oz.), but it could easily be doubled or tripled if you wanted to make a big batch. And believe me, you will.

Cherry Ketchup Recipe

1/2 Pound Stemmed and Pitted Cherries
1 Dried Ancho Chile – Cut into pieces
1 Clove of Garlic – chopped
1/4 t Salt
1/2 t Allspice
1/8 t Cinnamon
1/8 t Black Pepper
3 T Cider Vinegar
1/3 C Brown Sugar
1 1/3 C Water
1 T White Vinegar

1.Toasty – Heat the tablespoon of olive over medium heat and add the garlic, ancho chile, allspice, cinnamon, salt and pepper to the pot. Cook everything for a minute or two. This will wake all of those flavors up so they are at their maximum for the finished product.

2. All In- Add the cherries, brown sugar, water and cider vinegar. Stir to combine everything and bring the mixture to a boil. Turn the heat down to low and let it simmer for 1 hour. This will break down the berries and soften the pepper so that we can blend everything in the next step.

3. Chameleon (Get it, a “blender”) -  After simmering, set the mixture aside for 20 minutes so that it can cool. Don’t be a dumbass and put hot shit in a blender, OR YOU WILL PAY! Once it’s cooled, pour the mixture into a blender and puree until smooth.

4. Play Moses - Pour the ketchup back into the pot and cook on medium-high until it has reached the thickness you would like. If you’ want ketchup consistancy, you should be able to run your spatula through the pot and see a nice big line, like in the picture above.

5.Push it Real Good - If you’d like a perfectly smooth ketchup (the cherry skins and ancho seeds can be a little obnoxious on the teeth) run it through a strainer, but be sure to push some of the solids through. If you don’t, you’ll be leaving half of your ketchup in the strainer, and you’ve worked so hard. You deserve better.

6. Finishing Touch – Right as your about to be done with your ketchup, add the white vinegar. This will give it a nice fresh taste and bit of tang that can be lost after all the simmering. You can store your new favorite ketchup in the fridge for a month or two without any problems. Or if you’re feeling adventurous, you can make a big batch and can it for long-term storage.

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A 20 Minute tomato soup recipe, huh? What’s the big deal how long it takes?

People are lazy these days. Really freakin’ lazy. I’m quite sure that most people would much rather pop the top on a can of Campbell’s tomato soup than take time to make their own tomato soup.

And you know what? That’s completely f’n dumb.

Did you know Campbell’s tomato soup has high fructose corn syrup in it? What about 480mg of sodium or 20% of your suggested daily sodium intake? FOR A HALF CUP! When was the last time you ate half a cup of soup?

I’m certainly no health nut, but if you can make your own delicious tomato soup in about the same amount of time it takes to open and heat up a can of Campbell’s why wouldn’t you?

20 Minute Tomato Soup Recipe

2 Tablespoons Butter
1 Medium Onion, diced
28 oz Canned Crushed Tomatoes
6 Cups Chicken Stock (homemade, please!)
Salt
Pepper

1. I’m Getting Soft – Over medium-high heat, melt the 2 tbls. of butter and toss in your onions. I like to season these with salt and pepper now, but that’s up to you. Cook these until they become soft and translucent. Keep an eye on them though, you don’t want them browned.

2. Take a Dump - Dump in your tomatoes and stir to combine with the onions. Those tomatoes have good flavor, but we want to concentrate it further so that when we add our stock our soup still has a tomato punch. Cook these until you can pull a spoon through them and see the bottom.
 

3. Everyone into the Pool -  Once your tomatoes have concentrated into more of a paste add your chicken stock. Let that cook for a few minutes so that everyone can mingle.

4. Pure,eh? – If you have a stick blender, go to town and puree your soup until it is completely smooth. No stick blender? You can do this in a regular blender but be very careful, putting hot liquid in a blender is ridiculously dangerous, so make sure you don’t fill it up more than half way and hold a kitchen towel over the top to be 100% safe.

5. Finish Him – Some people like to strain the soup at this point so that no peel ends up in the final product, and you can do that if you want, but I prefer a more rustic soup. It is soup after all.

Taste your soup before serving and adjust seasonings to your liking.

This 20 minute tomato soup is great by itself, but being a 6 year-old at heart, I’ve got to have a grilled cheese with it. This soup freezes very well because there are so few ingredients. I love having a couple in my freezer in case I have a busy night. 

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This one isn’t for the feint of heart, but it is highly recommended for those that enjoy incredibly delicious pieces of animals. This idea came to me one day after I had roasted a chicken for dinner and stood there picking off the tasty pieces of crispy skin.

“Why the hell don’t they sell pre-cooked chicken skin?”

And then my wife gave me that blank stare where I knew she was thinking to herself “Why did I marry this guy?”

And that is when I knew I had a hit. Because if my wife thinks it’s ridiculous, it’s got to be tasty. 

Making chicken bacon is super easy, it only costs about $5 and you’re left with a whole chicken to do with what you wish. Well, maybe not what you wish. I mean, it is kinda slippery and has a cavity and all…so use the chicken for food, please.

Chicken Bacon Recipe

Whole Chicken
Salt
Pepper

 
1. Nekid Time: Preheat your oven to 350°. You need to get this little fella into his birthday suit which is easy to do if you start on the breast. At the bottom of the breast, seperate the skin from the meat and slide your fingers between the two. Get as much off the breast as you can.

With a sharp knife or kitchen shears, slice the breast skin down the middle. Then just start pulling the skin off the rest of the chicken. You may need to use a knife in a couple of places to cut through some fat that’s holding the skin on, but go slowly and do more pulling than cutting. If you don’t get it off all in one piece, it’s not a problem.

2. Nice Rack: Lay your freshly obtained skin onto a cooling rack that’s on top of a foiled lined baking sheet (make sure it has sides!). You’ll be amazing how much grease comes out of this little piece of skin.

Now’s also the time to season your skin. I like to keep it simple with salt and pepper, but you can use whatever spices you’d like, just remember to keep it light so that it doesn’t overpower the final product.

3. Bakin’: Place your rig into the 350° oven and let cook for 15-20 minutes. After 12 minutes, keep an eye on it as your chicken bacon can go from golden to burnt in seconds.

4. Cool Down: You’ll want to let your bacon cool down a bit or risk burning the shit out of your fingers (I’ll admit, it might be worth it), so let your bacon sit for 15 minutes on the rack. The rest will also make it easier to get off of the rack.

Once cool, you can pull the chicken bacon off of the rack. It will probably crack into pieces but if you’ve got some large pieces, you can cut them down with shears.

In addition to being awesome eaten out of hand, chicken bacon is also great crumbled into a salad or a soup. So many times when we buy a chicken we don’t use the skin and that’s a shame, because it is delicious. Make use of what you buy, make some chicken bacon with your next chicken.

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Nobody bakes bread anymore. Well, maybe a couple of blue-haired old ladies do, but that’s just because they don’t have jobs and must do something to justify their existence. 

People think that making bread to laborious and time consuming, but that’s not the truth at all.  Bread making is not only easy (especially with the help of a food processor or mixer), but it also produces some kick-ass product that you can’t buy at the grocery store. Filling your house with the aroma of baking bread isn’t a horrible thing either.

This is a fantastically simple recipe from Mark Bittman. There’s only 5 minutes of real work on your part, the rest of the time lively little yeasts are doing the heavy lifting for you. And your work consists of turning the knob on a food processor and rolling a doughball, so quit being a lazy S.O.B. and get to making bread.

Easy Homemade Bread Recipe

3 1/2 Cups Bread Flour (or All-Purpose)
2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 teaspoons of Instant Yeast
1 Cup of Warm water

1. Mix the dry ingredients – Put all of the dry ingredients into your food processor and pulse a few times to combine them.
 
2. Warm and add the water – Take your cup of water and put it in the microwave for 40 seconds. You want it warm, but not hot. This will help to wake up those yeasts that have been sleeping off their bender, if it’s too hot though, it will kill them off. Turn your food processor on and slowly pour your water through the fill tube. 

As the water is added, the flour will begin to clump and form a dough. Once all the water is added the dough will clump into a ball and begin dancing around the sides of your processor bowl. Let it dance for a minute or two (you might have to hold onto it) and then turn off your processor.
  

3. A Little R&R – It’s time for your dough to rest. Do this for at least one hour at room temperature, if you can hold out for a few hours though you’ll get a much better tasting finished product.

4. Shape your dough – Pre heat your oven to 375° and lightly flour a flat service to work the dough. Take your out of the bowl in which it rose and knead it a few times on the counter to get it back cohesive again.

Using your hands, form your dough into a ball. Pull the sides to the bottom to create a taught surface on the outside of the loaf and let it rise again. Cover it with a towel while it rises for 30 minutes. I like letting the dough rise on the pan I’m going to cook it on, that way you don’t lose any of those precious air bubbles trying to transfer it from one surface to another.

If you’d like to, you can slash the top of your loaf of bread a few times, it’s a purely cosmetic maneuver, but a nice addition.

5. Shake and Bake – Place your bread into the oven and cook until golden brown on the outside. The internal temperature should be 210°. A loaf this size should take about 45 minutes to cook, but everyone’s oven is different so using a thermometer is important.

Another nice thing you can do tell help get an even crispier outside on your loaf is to throw a cup of water on the bottom of your oven when you put the bread in. Not only does it make a totally kick-ass noise, but more importantly it produces a ton of steam. This steam sticks to the outside of the loaf, gelatinizing the very outer layer, that when cooked gets extra crispy. It’s a great technique and it makes you look like a true baking mastermind.

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The picture above is 1 cup of absolutely delicious homemade gravy. Guess how long it took me to make it? 5 minutes. It’s so easy to make homemade gravy with this recipe that you will never, ever buy gravy again. Ever!

Easy Homemade Gravy Recipe

2 Tablespoons Butter
2 Tablespoons Flour
1 Cup Stock (chicken or beef)
Salt
Pepper

1. Have your ingredients ready – This recipe moves quick, so make sure you have all 3 ingredients measured and ready to go.

2. Melt the Butter – Over medium-high heat, melt the two tablespoons of butter in a pan. The butter should be completely melted before proceeding.

3. Stir in Flour – Sprinkle the flour evenly over the melted butter and with a non-stick spatula, stir to combine the two. You should eventually get something that looks kinda like oatmeal. Keep letting it cook, this gets rid of that raw flour taste. It should soon begin to darken slightly and separate a bit.

4. Pour in Stock – Turn the heat down to low. Slowly pour the stock in slowly and continually stir breaking up any lumps you see. You should now see what looks a lot like gravy. If it’s still too loose, you can increase the heat and cook of a bit more of the liquid, but remember it will thicken as it stands.

5. Bask in your Gravy Greatness – Add salt and pepper to taste, then you’re finished. You’ve now got a fantastic homemade gravy to enjoy over chicken or chicken. If you need to make more than 1 cup, the recipe easily doubles.

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I get a text from my wife at work yesterday: “You got a package from Jamaica”. How exciting! A package from Jamaica, I wonder what it could be? So I spent the rest of the day pondering the package’s contents based on its tropical origins.

I got home and I sprinted (total lie) to the box only to see the sticker on the top that said: “Jicama”. That’s not Jamaica! It is however a delicious root vegetable from a plant of the same name that is grown mostly in Mexico. They are going to be selling them at Giant Eagle now which is how I ended up with one. I can’t wait till they start sending me steaks to review.

If you’re unfamiliar with Jicama, it looks a lot like a potato, although they are generally much larger and less starchy. The flesh is crisp and juicy like an apple with a nice crunch when you bite into it.

Being on a low carb diet, I thought I’d try to make a dish with the jicama that could be carb friendly. Maybe too remind me of the good old days when I could eat potatoes. I settled on jicama hash browns, while they do have some carbs, the levels are no where near that of a potato. They are easy to make and quite delicious.

Jicama Hash Browns Recipe

1/2 Jicama
2 T Butter
Salt
Pepper

1. Peel the Jicama – The skin on a Jicama is thick and it’s needs to come off before you can work with it. Using a vegetable peeler or a knife, peel the jicama.

2. Grate the Jicama – Using a box grater, shred the jicama into hash brown size. I used the biggest holes on my grater. Please be careful of your fingers.

3. Brown the Jicama – Melt the butter in a pan on medium heat, then place the jicama in the pan in an even layer. After 5 minutes, check to see if the jicama on the bottom is browned, if so, flip all of the jicama. If not, give it another minute and check again. Once you’ve got everything browned nicely, go ahead and take it off the heat and sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste.

I really like these jicama hash browns, they maintain a nice sweetness and a little crispsness that potato hash browns just don’t offer. They make for an excellent change of pace to any breakfast routine. Also, jicama is loaded with Vitamin C and Potassium, with about half the carbs of a potato.

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Candied Lemon Slices Recipe

3 Lemons (cleaned very well)
Water for boiling
Bowl of ice water
2 C Sugar
2 C Water

1. Put a pot of water (doesn’t matter how much) on the stove on high. That will come to boil while you are slicing the lemons very thinly. Slice all three lemons.

2. In a separate pot, combine the 2 cups of water and the 2 cups of sugar and place on medium-high heat.
3. Place all of the sliced lemons in the pot of boiling water, turn down the heat a bit and let the lemons simmer in the water for a minute or two. This process softens the toughness of the peel and removes some of the bitterness.

4. Remove the lemon slices and place them in the bowl of ice water to cool down.

5. Once your sugar/water pot comes to a simmer, add the lemons. Do not boil this mixture! Keep it at a low simmer for 1 hour and 20 minutes. This amount of time will allow the sugar/water mixture to permeate the lemons and candy them.

6. Before you take your lemons out of the solution, setup a few baking racks. Place your lemons on the racks and let dry. Drying can take up to 24 hours and even then they may remain a bit sticky.

Once you’ve got your candied lemon pieces there are a number of things you can do with them. You can get them dry and crispy by putting them in a low oven for a few hours. You can coat them in sugar or if you’re really looking for something tasty, you can dip them in dark chocolate.

Whatever you decide to do, store your candied lemon in an airtight container for best shelf life.

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