Best Big Game Chili Ever!

September 13, 2019January 29, 2019 by Michel

4 batches of Turkey Chili were eaten during my Food Demo at Page Hardware in Guilford, CT last Saturday! That’s a lot of chili! This chili has the right amount of spice so as not to be too spicy or too bland but packed with tons of flavor. I do like my chili extra hot but I kept the amount of spice to a minimum so all could enjoy it.

There is a secret ingredient in this chili, cinnamon, and it’s in such a small quantity it should not be left out! This 1/2 tsp. of cinnamon gives it a warm, underlying flavor that your guests won’t be able to figure out. I test a lot of recipes in terms of spice quantities and this recipe has the perfect combination of smokiness and heat! I think it may become your “go to recipe” once you give it a try. Food for thought, If you were to have any leftovers, highly unlikely that is, it freezes really well.

As for my monthly food demo at Page Hardware in Guilford, CT it’s a win-win no matter how you look at it…free sampling foods and free demo on how to make the dish! I am there every 3rd Saturday of the month. If you haven’t become a regular yet I don’t know what you’re waiting for. We have so much fun during these demo’s you and you get to eat all the delicious dishes while I am demonstrating how they’re made. Can’t wait to see you next month! You can call Page Hardware to confirm the dates or look on my Events Schedule on the side bar of my website. After my demo you can always shop Page for what ever gadgets your kitchen is missing, they have everything you can think of.

After this chili you may want something a little sweet for dessert like Lemon Mousse Cups with Ginger Cookie Crumble, Death by Chocolate Meringue Pie, Chocolate Crackle Cookies or even my Chocolate Chip Cookies which have over 60,000 views on my YouTube Channel where you can watch how I make them! Enjoy!

INGREDIENTS:

2.5 lbs. ground turkey (I used Perdue dark turkey meat in the demo, but both light & dark meat work great)
1 can small red beans
½-1 can black beans
1 28 oz. whole peeled tomatoes chopped up
1 3/4 cup red wine, 1/4 cup each time you deglaze the turkey 3x
1 cup beer
1 lg. red/orange or green pepper diced
1 lg Vidalia sweet onion diced
1/4 cup finely diced celery
1-2 jalapeno finely diced
3 garlic cloves grated or garlic press
1 tbsp. chipotle chili powder
1 tbsp. pink Himalayan salt
½ tsp white pepper (black pepper if you don’t have the white pepper)
1 tbsp. garlic powder
1 tbsp. onion powder
½ tsp cinnamon
A few splashes of Tabasco
Shredded cheddar cheese, sour cream and sliced scallions for topping

DIRECTIONS:

Add olive oil to a large pan and sauté on med/high ground turkey, deglazing a few time with ¼ c. red wine each (Note: turkey meat is moist, it won’t brown as well as beef and that’s ok!)
Keep mashing turkey with a fork to break up clumps as you are cooking it
Remove turkey into a bowl and set aside
Add in 1 tbsp. butter and the chopped peppers, onions, celery and jalapeño and sauté on med/high for 5 minutes more until veggies are soft
Add in grated garlic, diced up whole peeled tomatoes, beer, wine, cooked ground turkey and all the spices
Bring to a low boil on med/high, TURN DOWN heat and simmer for approx. 25-45 minutes
Stir in the rinsed beans, then simmer for 20 minutes more on low
Serve with shredded cheddar, a dollop of sour cream, a sprinkle of sliced green onion and a squeeze of Siracha…yummm!

CT Style with Ryan & Teresa making my “Pulled Pork While You Sleep” recipe!

March 18, 2020August 24, 2018 by Michel

CT Style with Ryan & Teresa making my “Pulled Pork While You Sleep” recipe!

Wow! I can’t even begin to tell how much I look forward to doing The Traveling Epicurean cooking segments on “CT Style” at WTNH, Channel 8 in New Haven, Connecticut! Everyone down at the studio is really wonderful and it’s always exciting cooking with Ryan Kristafer and Teresa Dufour! Being in the Bender Kitchen with them is so natural, everything seems to fall in place. The improv conversation, the banter back and forth and the laughs are undeniably my favorite. That’s what cooking should be all about. That’s what The Traveling Epicurean is all about, sharing family recipes in the kitchen, working together and enjoying each others company!

I came up with this “Pulled Pork While Sleep” recipe because I’m usually juggling my time during the week with all the different events and obligations going on between my kids and I. You coat the pork butt with a brown sugar and spice mixture, lay it on a bed of sliced onions and celery, add 2 cups of Coke, cover tightly with foil and bake at 275º for 8 hours, in the oven at 11:00pm and out at 7:00am! Violà!

What I love about this dish is it’s simpicity and that there’s enough for several different meals during the week or you can freeze the left overs for a later date! If you are wondering where to buy your pork butt for this “Pulled Pork While You Sleep” recipe you ought to check out Ferraro’s Meat King. They carry everything you can imagine, have incredible customer service and professional butchers that can help you out with any questions you might have! I am certainly grateful for their sponsorship on this CT Style cooking segment.

If you like pulled pork you may want to try HOMEMADE BBQ SAUCE that’s to die for with this recipe, Pulled Beef Taco’s with Mango Salsa, Mediterranean Chicken Kabobs, Chicken Piccata and, or some desserts like Death By Chocolate Meringue Pie or my Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies!

INGREDIENTS for Pulled Pork While You Sleep:

8-14 lbs. Boneless Pork Butts, Bone in it ok too
2 cups light brown sugar
1 tbsp garlic granules
1 tbsp onion granules
1 tbsp SMOKED Paprika (Spanish)
1 tbsp Chipotle spices
1 tsp Colemans dry mustard
1 tbsp salt
1/2 tsp finely ground pepper
1tsp finely ground Italian seasonings
2 cups coke & rootbeer OR 2 coke OR 2 rootbeer
1 lg vidalia onion sliced into 1/2″ slices
1 stalk celery cut up into 3″ pieces
1 Mango Salsa Recipe
1 pkg shredded sharp cheddar
1 pkg flout tortillas
2 cups shredded iceberg lettuce
1 Broccoli Slaw reicpe
OR my HOMEMADE BBQ SAUCE

DIRECTIONS:

Pre-Heat oven to 275º
Add all dry spices and sugar to a bowl and mix thoroughly
Place onion and celery pieces in the bottom of a lg 18″ x 13″ x 3″ approx. and place the pork butt(s) on top
Rub brown sugar/spice mix all over pork butt(s) and lay the pork so the fat side is facing up
Cover tightly with foil for 8 hrs. WHILE YOU SLEEP!
In the morning remove from oven and let cool so you can handle the meat
Remove all the fat and place in a bake dish
Skim fat off pan juices and add 1-2 cups of the juice back to pork to desired moistness
Wrap in tortilla’s with cheese, lettuce and Mango salsa OR
Add Homemade BBQ Sauce to desired texture if you are making BBQ slider and top with Broccoli slaw…enjoy!

Best Baked Beans! – Show 101

March 13, 2019October 29, 2017 by Michel

Best Baked Beans! – Show 101

Every time there’s a get together in my neighborhood the first thing that comes to mind, “I hope Linda brings her baked beans!” That’s how good these baked beans are! My friend and neighbor, Linda, graciously offered up her recipe so that I may share it with all of you. Linda titles the recipe “Sue’s Baked Beans” because she got the recipe from her sister Sue who got the recipe from their mom! No matter what the title it’s one great family recipe.

Just the thought of bacon, sauteéd onions and creamy beans and you’ve got my attention. These are a few of the ingredients that go into this Best Baked Beans recipe. Other key ingredients are brown sugar, honey mustard, garlic granules, and to balance out the whole dish apple cider vinegar, of course.

It’s really fairly simple especially since the recipe calls for canned beans. Shhhh …no one has to know that, lol! These beans, in my opinion, taste like they are made from scratch. Our time is very valuable and if you can make baked beans that taste like this you’re one step ahead of the game. These best beaked beans are creamy, flavorful, and a wonderful balance between sweet and tangy making a great addition to grilled fish, chicken, pulled pork or sausages. These will become your go to baked bean recipe once you taste them!

For some other fun BBQ ideas, Homemade BBQ Sauce, Grilled-Marinated Steak on Skewers, Seared Sea Scallops or Stout Braised Pulled Beef Short Ribs and don’t forget to end the meal with some Homemade Hersheys Perfectly Chocolate Chocolate Cake topped with GHOST Peeps!

Ingredients:

Bush Beans – Vegetarian (large can undrained)
Black beans- 15 oz. can (drained and rinsed)
Kidney beans – 15 oz. can (drained and rinsed)
Butter beans – 15 oz. can (drained and rinsed)
Cannelloni beans – 15 oz. can (drained and rinsed)
Bacon – 8 slices Boars Head
2 to 3 onions (chopped)
½ cup cider vinegar (add more if you like tangy vs. sweet)
2 to 3 tbls. honey mustard
¾ cup brown sugar
½ tsp. garlic powder
Ground pepper to taste

Directions:

Add the 5 cans of beans to a large mixing bowl
Cook bacon in skillet until crisp, drain on paper towels and then crumble into small pieces–save 2 tbls grease
In the same skillet cook chopped onions in the 2 tbls bacon grease until soft
Then add in the crumbled bacon, cider vinegar, brown sugar, honey mustard, garlic powder, and ground pepper and simmer for 10-15 minutes
Pour this mixture over beans and mix well.
Pour into baking crock or dish and bake at 350 degrees for one hour….delicious!

CT Style with Ryan & Kat Making Mediterranean Chicken Kabobs!

March 13, 2019October 4, 2017 by Michel

CT Style with Ryan & Kat Making Mediterranean Chicken Kabobs!

I’m always thrilled to be back on CT Style and that’s where I was this past Friday with Ryan Kristafer & Kat Cosley sharing one of my favorite recipes, Mediterranean Chicken Kabobs made with Greek yogurt. This recipe originated from a show I taped at a beach house right here in Madison two years ago with my friend Maria. It’s delicious on the grill outside and I show on easy it is to grill indoors using my “Lodge” reversible cast iron grill-pan.

I had a wonderful time in The Bender Kitchen meeting Kat Cosley, and as always, with Ryan Kristafer’s quick wit sense of humor he takes it up a notch! Having two little ones of her own Kat totally gets the convenience of being able to make different versions of these flavorful Mediterranean meals which can be made ahead for a busy family,

The Mediterranean Yogurt Chicken Kabobs are one of my all time favorites because it’s such a simple process and just so good for you! Marinate, skewer and BBQ…thats it! This recipe oringially came from Epicurious but as I always do, I tweaked it a bit when it was given to me adding in Spanish smoked paprika, a mild, sweet yet smokey spice thats gives a wonderful addition to the recipe.

The sides that go with the kabobs, the homemade tzatziki, hummus and green goddess sauce can be a great compliment to grilled steaks, pork or veal chops, scallops or any fish! These flavors really brighten up any dish.

You can click on the links above to get to the recipe pages on my website that go with this live cooking segement on CT Style and they are also offered on the CT Style website as well.

You may be looking for something sweet after all these savory dishes so you should check out some of my other recipes like authentic Baklava, Chocolate Crackle Cookies, my own Chocolate Chip Cookie Creation, Drunk Blondie Bars, or Chocolate Pecan Pie

Easy Pulled Pork Sliders on CT Style!

August 24, 2018May 30, 2017 by Michel

Easy Pulled Pork Sliders on CT Style!

Showing you how to make summer sauces, a Bourbon BBQ & a Green Goddess Sauce, to go with Easy Pulled Pork Sliders topped with broccoli slaw is what I was doing today on CT Style! Teresa has that baby glow going on and Ryan always with the funny one liners, doing the cooking segment on CT Style is one of my favorite things about being The Traveling Epicurean.

The Easy Pulled Pork Sliders are made with tenderloins instead of a giant pork shoulder. The reason I love to do this is it’s so darn EASY! The tenderloins are cut in 1/2 then coated with a mixture of light brown sugar, Colemans Dry Mustard, onion & garlic granules, s & P. Placed into a large baking dish with a small 7.5 oz. can of cola poured into the dish. The Coca-Cola helps to keep it moist and gives it a little caramel flavor. It’s baked for 1 1/2 – 1 3/4 hours, cooled and shredded apart. At that time the Bourbon BBQ Sauce has finished simmering and just waiting to be poured of all the pulled pork and warmed thru…YUM! This recipe can easily be duplicated in your crock-pot as well!

I featured my homemade BBQ sauce on CT Style today because I really wanted to emphasis how easy it is to make your own BBQ sauce at anytime and not have to worry about making a trip back to the store when you can whip it up yourself! Add in some Bourbon and wow, how great does that taste. It’s definitely an adult taste so if you need to you can easily divide up the sauce for the kids adding in bourbon to the adult sauce only.

Now the green goddess sauce goes with out saying and once you taste it you’ll understand. This sauce will jazz up just about any dish you are making, grilled swordfish, salmon, chicken, beef, lamb, pork or veggies. It’s made all in a blender and when it sits in the frig for a few hours the flavors only get better.

The best way the make the broccoli slaw, in my opinion, is to buy the pre-packaged broccoli at the store and then just add mayo, cider vinegar (I also throw in some “seasoned” rice wine vinegar) and sugar and violá!

You’ll see how amazing these 4 recipes go together once to taste them in a slider…oh boy! Not to mention how gosh darn easy they are to make. You be the BBQ Slider King of the summer! Don’t forget to check out my oh so chocolatey homemade Hershey chocolate cake for dessert either…Enjoy!

BBQ Sauce – BEST Homemade Sweet & Tangy!

May 26, 2017June 9, 2016 by Michel

BBQ Sauce – BEST Homemade Sweet & Tangy!

It’s like BBQ sauce candy! My Homemade BBQ Sauce is the perfect balance of sweet, tangy and a little spicy! This recipe is one of my versions of a classic “Kansas City” style sauce, meaning it is a tomato based sauce with a sweetener and a vinegar. Ketchup, dark Molasses, brown sugar, cider vinegar and spices are the core ingredient’s that make up this delicious blend of barbecue sauciness. It’s not too sweet or too tangy and it has just a pinch of heat to remind you that it’s a BBQ sauce. It really can’t get any easier to make BBQ sauce then this here recipe. It will definitely make it hard for you to go back to the bottle stuff with the high fructose corn syrup. In fact, I guarantee that you will find yourself dipping that spoon back into the pot to get one more lick of this homemade sassy sauce!

One of my favorite things to do with this sauce is adding a couple tablespoons of bourbon in the last 5 minutes of simmering. Everyone will be asking you for the recipe for sure! If you have a mix of adults and children spilt the sauce into 2 portions, keeping one with bourbon and one with out.

Using the liquid smoke, which is simple to find at your local grocer now a days, is ideal for emulating that smokiness you would get with outdoor barbecuing. I have you adding in chipolte chile powder and a Spanish smoked paprika too which gives off a delicate flavor to the sauce without being too overbearing.

The 3 basic BBQ sauce type’s out there are a tomato based, a vinegar based and a mustard based. Believe it or not, there actually is a mayo based as well. The “Kansas City” style is the tomato based and probably the most popular through out the U.S. There’s a “Memphis” style similar to Kansas City with the tomato base but a thinner, more vinegar type sauce. The actual vinegar and mustard type sauce’s are quintessential to the Carolina’s. South Carolina being partial to the mustard type sauce and North Carolina to the vinegar type sauce. Then there’s that white BBQ sauce that’s mayo based, a signature sauce of Big Bob Gibson out of Alabama.

Once you see how easy it is to make your own delicious, sassy BBQ sauce I have a feeling there will be no stopping you! Enjoy your summer with this introductory BBQ sauce recipe! You might want to tag team all this barbecuing with some crab cakes, zucchini spaghetti, or spanakopita, and end with my amazing blueberry pie made with my perfect pie crust in 5 minutes!!

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zucspaghetti

blupie

blueberrypie

Ingredients:

2 cups Ketchup
2/3 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup dark molasses
1/2 cup cider vinegar
2 tbsp canola oil
2 tsp liquid smoke
1/2 tsp garlic granules
1/2 tsp onion granules
1/2 tsp chipolte chile powder (If you can’t find “chipolte” chile powder just use chile powder it will still be wonderful)
1/2 tsp Spanish smoked paprika
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp finely ground black pepper
2 dashes of Wocestershire sauce
2 tbsp of Bourbon – If you are a party of adults …it’s AMAZING!

Directions:

Put all above ingredients into medium sauce pan and whisk to combine
Bring to a low simmer 20 minutes
The sauce will be delicious in only 5 minutes – delvelops more depth of flavor by simmering longer!
Basting your grilling meats in the last 3-5 minutes with BBQ is deal so as not to burn and oven cooking meats in the last 10 minutes (the sugars in the BBQ Sauce will burn if you put it on too early)

Maurice’s Piggy Park BBQ

March 14, 2019April 8, 2015 by Michel

Maurice’s Piggy Park BBQ

Maurice’s Piggy Park BBQ is real fine homemade gourmet BBQ with a mustard base sauce that makes you pucker, all awhile biting into a succulent piece of pork rib that just melts in your mouth. The savory hickory smoked flavor of their ribs is something you will definitely be back for with out a whole lot of time lapsing in between visits. The mustard-vinegar based sauce just grows on you and you can’t really put your finger on it so you just keep dipping into this sauce for another lick. I recently had the opportunity to eat here when my son Reilly and I met up with his tennis team in South Carolina for his National Team competition.

Well, I tell you, when I travel I want to visit places to eat where their heart and soul is served up to you on a plate. To taste different foods from other regions is one of the most wonderful opportunities we get when we travel. If you are not into this kind of thing you ought to open your self up and try to appreciate new tastes and ways to prepare foods that have become traditions for people in that region. That’s what makes the world such a diverse place with so many different flavors to soak up.

I decided that during our stay in South Carolina I wanted to accomplish a few of things before heading back. First off, was having Southern BBQ, of course! The second was to get my son, Reilly, to Carowinds Amusement Park in North Carolina which would be an easy task since we were flying in and out of Charlotte and the third was to get in a couple rounds of golf! My friend Luanne, one of the other tennis mom’s, had the same point of view as me on the whole Southern BBQ thing and tasting new foods from where ever you happen to be traveling especially if you are miles away from where you live. On one of the afternoons at tennis practice much of our group was ready to hit up Chic-fil-A AGAIN! I am happy to say that didn’t even enter my mind nor did I go there during our stay in South Carolina. I looked at my friend Luanne , we began to laugh and said lets go, lets do REAL BBQ. She had already looked it up on her phone and it wasn’t far from The Cayce Tennis Facility so off we went in my rental car.

It was the tastiest meal I had on this trip to South Carolina and it totally lived up to my BBQ standards. I ordered the pork ribs, collard greens, and coleslaw and needless to say I wore much of it that mustard based BBQ sauce all over the front of my white with navy blue pinstripe cotton dress I had on. Too funny but it was definitely worth it…should have gotten a picture of that 🙂 The ribs were moist and falling of the bone tender slathered in their mustard-vinegar sauce and I can’t help but love that hickory smoked flavor. The collard greens were delicious, earthy but not too bitter and the chopped style coleslaw was a refreshing balance with the mustard sauce from the ribs. Each item complemented one another very well! I did buy a bottle of Maurice’s Piggy Park BBQ sauce to take home with me. They have quite the assortment of sauces to choose from (shown below) but I bought the one I had that day. To my surprise I was able to get the yellow mustard stain completely out of my dress before it dried.

On the last day Reilly and I headed to Carowinds Amusement Park and he had the time of his life bravely riding on several loop coasters over and over again! We actually found another gourmet BBQ eatery in downtown Charlotte which was a bonus. I was also able to get in two rounds of golf during our stay so it was a wonderful trip all around. Don’t you forget to treat yourself to Maurice’s Piggy Park BBQ when you are in Cayce, South Carolina …you won’t regret it!