Big Batch Cookin'

About three times a month, I turn our kitchen into a crazy mess and knock out huge batches of meals that I freeze for later. Our family is small, so these recipes last us longer than they would otherwise, but all the recipes are easily doubled, or even tripled, if you have the right pots. They're also great if you're single. I cooked the spaghetti sauce and stew when I was single and just put them in smaller freezer containers.

I generally cook and prep from one huge metal bowl (about 8 inches deep and 15 inches wide), one stew pot, one crock pot, and Pyrex for microwaving. I do steam veggies in the microwave without water. I know some people don't like to do that and will roast them in the oven instead, but I've found for some things, it's just easier and makes the house less hot. For example, I'll cut a spaghetti squash in half, microwave each half for 15 minutes, and let the oven roast all the sweet potatoes instead.

Here are the recipes I promised some of my Facebook peeps, with links and suggestions for tweaking. All but one recipe are other people's, but I've used most of them for years (the granola and cookies are an exception). Hope someone gets some good meals out of them!

Soup

"Jewel's Favorite Soup Jill Makes" is a white kidney bean and chicken broth-based soup that we LOVE. I make it with two boxes of chicken broth, three cans of white kidney beans, one big can of diced tomatoes with nothing added, and one container of mire poix from Trader Joe's (you can cut up a cup each of onion, celery, and carrots yourself; I just love a shortcut!). The secret is to add the rind of a parmesan wedge and let it cook for an hour. Take the rind out for serving, but don't forget it. It's frickin' magical. Just dump it all in and walk away. Coddling the veggies beforehand by sautéing doesn't make much difference.

If you like a thicker soup, let the soup cook at a rolling boil for a bit to break apart the beans and let the starch out, but watch it so it doesn't scorch. If you like a thinner, clearer soup, set the simmer to low and don't cook it more than an hour. I like this soup thicker, so it gets a good rowdy roll in the pot and sits there for hours. If I need to leave the house, I turn off the heat and leave the soup until I get back. Then I'll turn the heat back on.

Serve with crusty bread and olive oil. And white wine!

Stew

This beef stew is old school. There's nothing hippie about it, and I haven't tweaked it in 15 years. You just have to accept that some great things are still based on two cans of Campbell's mushroom soup and one packet of Lipton Onion Soup mix. But it's EASY, and there are no real measurements. The cream of mushroom soup doesn't make it "creamy" at all, but it makes a really good gravy. This stew is probably the only red meat we eat inside our home. If you don't care for too much beef, add less. If you go grass-fed, make sure it's decently marbled, because you need it all to get tender.

I don't add potatoes to this because I like to serve it over mashed sweet potatoes, which sounds wrong but is oh so right. You could also serve it over regular potatoes, egg noodles, or nothing.

You can go heavy on the veggies. The stew tolerates them very well.

Here's the general list:

--Some chuck roast, fat-trimmed and silver-skin-trimmed and cubed, or "beef for stew" at the supermarket. We buy ours at Costco right now, and it makes two batches.

--Two cans cream of mushroom soup, low fat is totally fine and is what I use.

--One packet of Lipton onion soup mix.

--One chopped onion.

--One bag baby carrots

--One bag frozen peas (or fresh, but not canned because they'll go mushy)

--Whatever else you want (think leftovers). I've added leftover rice (white, brown, and wild) before; celery; wine; garlic; anything you like.

Spaghetti Sauce with Chicken Sausage and Ground Turkey


I love this sauce. Probably because it's mine. :) It's rich and meaty like other sauces, but the chicken and turkey keep it leaner. I use canned marinara because it's faster, but if you have a recipe you like, use it! Again, put the rind of a parm wedge into it and let it simmer for as long as you have time for. This is great with spaghetti squash.

--One container of mire poix at Trader Joe's (or one cup each carrots, onion, celery)

--One package sweet (or spicy) Italian chicken sausage, casings removed, broken up and cooked in a pan

--One package super-low-fat ground turkey, cooked

--One little can of tomato paste

--Garlic to taste

--Two or three cans of your favorite marinara (I like Trader Joe's, of course, and Rao's is lovely if you've got money to burn)

--Red, green, and/or yellow bell peppers, any kind. You can used fresh, jarred, or frozen (and may want to set your preferences in that order :))

--Leftovers, whatever you like. Zucchini works well.

Add olive oil to stew pot. Let it get hot. Dump in veggies. Let them get hot. Dump in everything else. Set to simmer. Walk away. Come back hungry. DONE.

Cauliflower Puree

Sounds decidedly not awesome, but is. The recipe is here. No tweaks; just eat. Could be good with the stew, but I haven't tried that yet.

Baked Sweet Potatoes

There's obviously not much to this recipe, but I do have some hints that will make it less annoying:

1)  Cook as many as you can cram into your oven, but space them at least two inches apart so they cook evenly. 15 pounds of potatoes (the crate at Costco) fit into my standard oven.

2) Put aluminum foil over your baking sheet. All over it. Sweet potato juice is a nightmare to clean.

3) Oil your foil if you want to retain the skins. If all you want is the delicious inside, then it doesn't matter.

4) Clean off the skins, then place the potatoes on two baking sheets: one for skinny potatoes, one for fat ones.

5) Bake at 400 degrees. One hour  to one hour and fifteen minutes for the skinny ones. An hour and a half for the fats. Make sure a knife runs all the way through each potato, easily and with NO RESISTANCE! If it tugs, the tater ain't done. It's hard to overcook them, so err on that side. Undercooked potatoes taste raw and yucky.

6) Store the insides in Pyrex or Ziploc bags, whichever you prefer. The plastic bags peel away from the frozen potatoes easily, and then you can microwave them from frozen (cook on high until warm, but stir often, about ten minutes depending on chunk size). You can also let them thaw in the fridge, which could seriously take DAYS (though we keep our fridge pretty cold), then cook on the stovetop in a pot.

Granola

My friend Katie makes her own granola because she lives in Northern California and she's a total cliche. But I now I live here, and I want to fit in. So I started making my own granola. I will never go back. It's that good. And like my favorite recipes, you can play with it. Example: I use almonds instead of walnuts.

The recipe calls for baking the granola for one hour at 275. I found this too much. I think the problem isn't the temperature, but the time. Be sure to watch your batch starting at about 45 minutes. My batch is wonderfully edible, but I'll probably take it out at 50 minutes next time. I also recommend almond slices instead of slivers (the little sticks), because the slivers, counter-intuitively, didn't handle the heat as well. I used rolled oats from Trader Joe's because they're FAT. Fat oats are GOOD. There are plenty of other fat oats, but Quaker's are a bit thin.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Classic Betty Crocker recipe. I doubled the recipe and used my big-ass bowl. Prep took 30 minutes (the recipe says 55 minutes. What??). These are seriously loaded with butter, which can be a good thing and a bad thing. If you're worried about dying instantly from a Western disease, cut the butter by a 1/4, and the sugar by a 1/4 too, or use something like agave instead, though I don't know the amount. The butter isn't great if you like to eat your cookies right out of the oven, but if you're serving them later, the butter makes them delightfully crispy on the outside, and rich, so that if you listen to your body, you won't eat more than two. Because of the insane amount of butter.

I plopped the dough onto six sheets of parchment paper and rolled them up, wrapped them in foil, and put them in the freezer. Thaw and slice (you may have to reassemble broken bits--the oatmeal makes them a little crumbly) and bake, but change the cook time to 14-16 minutes, more if you like crunchy cookies.

Show up at the potluck. Be a hero. :)