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Welcome to my new Recipe Blog. I will use this blog to post all my new recipes. All of my old recipes can be found in my original blog by following this link: http://www.ancientclan.com/search/?tags=Recipe Instead of posting any more recipes in my original blog, I have created this one so I can create more specific categories for the recipes themselves. Pork, Chicken, Beef, Italian, Mexican, BBQ, Grilled, etc. As well as using tags, I will have many specific categories just for my blog and some recipes will fall into multiple categories. Tags are useful as well, and will allow us to view everyone's recipes across all blogs on this site. I recommend that anyone that wishes to make their own recipe blog to please type the tag "Recipe" without the quotes, in the tag field of blog entries so they can show up in the combined blog Recipe tag link. (Edited to fix link to recipes)

Instructions to make: A bunch of Tacos for serving 4-6 people. Ingredients: - Ortega taco mix - 2x - Ground beef - 2 to 2 1/2 pounds - Tomatoes - 3x - Lettuce - 1 package - Sour Cream 1x - Taco cheese (preshredded) - 1 package - Taco shells, Tortellias - 1 combo box (8 or more of each) - Ortega Taco sauce - 1 bottle Instructions: 1) Cook meat as per instructions on taco mix packages. 2) Prepare toppings while meat is cooking. Dice tomatoes, shred lettuce or cheese if not already packaged that way. 3) Bake or microwave taco shells and/or soft tacos as per package. Assemble tacos. One or two tablespoons of meat per shell, add toppings to taste, use a little dash of the taco sauce for extra flavor or heat. I prefer the soft tacos. You can also pick up large tortellias for burritos and make large soft tacos out of them instead.. so good.

Instructions to make: 2 Pizzas 4-8 Servings of wings (depending on how many wings you eat) Ingredients: - Pizza crust mix or premade dough - 2x - Pizza sauce - 1 jar - Mushrooms - 2 small cans - Pepperoni - 1 package - Sweet italian sausage - 1 small package - Mozzarella cheese - 1 package - Chicken Wings - 4 or 4 1/2 pounds - McCormick buffalo wings mix - 2 packages - Large ziplock freezer bag - 1x or 2x if two different flavors of buffalo wings Instructions: 1) Break apart sausage and form into small/medium size chunks and brown it. 2) Prepare pizza ingredients and toppings. Cut mozzarella cheese into small chunks or shred it. 3) Once sausage is browned, drain and let sit on paper towels to absorb more grease. 4) Prepare pizza crust mix as per instructions or prepare premade pizza dough. (pizza crust mix is much better. This pic is the premade flattened dough.) 5) Drink a shot of hypnotic/coconut rum to enhance cooking experience. (This step can be skipped.) 6) Rinse off chicken and cut each wing into three pieces at the joints, throw away the wing tips and keep to two meaty pieces for the actual wings. 7) Put half of your wings (2 pounds out of that 4 pound package) into a freezer bag and dump 1 package of buffalo wing mix into bag. Shake the chicken in the bag to coat all the chicken somewhat evenly. 8) Use glass baking pan, line with aluminum foil, place chicken on foil and bake in pre-heated oven according to buffalo wing mix instructions. 9) While chicken is baking, prepare pizza with sauce, and toppings as desired. 10) Bake prepared pizza on the middle rack in your oven. 350 degrees for 15 or 20 minutes or longer depending on the amount of toppings you used. Cheese should start browning on edges. Remove pizza with oven mitts for pan style or use a large pizza spatula if baked directly on rack. 11) When the wings are done, cut into a couple of them and make sure the meat is nice and white with no hints of pink to ensure they are cooked thoroughly. Remove the wings from the baking pan so they can cool on a plate. Prepare the baking pan with aluminum foil and bake the next batch of chicken wings while getting the next pizza ready. 12) Finished wings 13) Finished pan pizza 14) Eat your pizza and wings! The pizza crust mix makes a much better tasting pizza dough. And I highly recommend the McCormick Original Buffalo Wings mix or the McCormick Garlic and Herb Buffalo Wings mix. Both are amazing.

Instructions to make: 2-3 rolls of sushi Ingredients: - Sushi Rice - 2 cups - Nori (Seaweed sheets) - 2-3 sheets - Rice Vinegar - - Sliced carrots - 1 package - Avocado - 1x - Cucumber - 1x - Shrimp or imitation crab meat - 1 small package Instructions: 1) Put two cups of rice in your rice cooker and fill the rice cooker to the "2" line with water, put lid on and set the rice to cook. Remember to leave the lid on the rice cooker through the duration of the cooking and and additional 15 minutes after the rice cooker switches over to 'warm' to ensure the rice fully cooks. 2) While the rice is cooking, prepare your cooking area, get your sushi mat ready, take your nori out of the package so it can air out a bit. Peel your cucumber and slice it into thin length wise pieces (preferably discarding the seed portion or the cucumber but that is not necessary). Peel your avocado and also slice into length wise pieces but keep the avocado thicker for it's texture. Also rinse off and peel your shrimp/crab meat. 3) After the rice is done, you have to add 1 tablespoon of rice vinegar per 1 cup of rice. Since 2 cups of uncooked rice = 6 cups of cooked rice, add 6 tablespoons of rice vinegar to the rice in the rice cooker and fold the rice to mix evenly. Don't crush the rice while folding the vinegar in! Once mixed together, spread the rice out onto a pizza pan or something else covered in aluminum foil. I cover a pizza pan with aluminum foil because it gives you a flat surface for the rice to cool on and it makes cleanup a lot easier. 4) Let the rice cool down for a while and finish any other prep work you have to do. Also, place a piece of clear saran plastic wrap on your sushi mat (makes rolling the sushi easier and less messer, also easier clean up). Place your nori, shiny side down on your sushi mat and spread sushi rice in a thin layer on most of the mat. Leave about a half inch at the top of the nori rice free so the roll can stay together. 5) Place your ingredients length wise at the bottom of your sushi roll. Use a couple large pieces of avocado, a bunch of cucumber, carrots, shrimp/crabmeat, whatever you want to use. Its ok if things overlap too, but you don't want to use much more than what is in this pic or your roll might start falling apart while you cut it or when you pick up the individual pieces. 6) Next, roll the sushi carefully from the bottom up. Apply some light pressure while you roll and tuck the ingredients in with your fingers if it starts falling apart or not staying in place while you roll it. 7) Roll it back and forth a little bit and squeeze the roll slightly while wrapped up in the mat to get everything kind of solidified together. Not to hard tho, you do not want to crush the rice and ruin the texture. 8) The top of the roll had that little empty 1/2 flap of nori, wet your finger and apply a moisture to that flap and push it against the roll. This will make that little flap grip the roll and keep everything together. 9) Place your roll of sushi on a cutting board and use a sharp wet knife to cut your individual pieces. Sushi rice is extremely sticky, you will need to run your knife under water and gently wipe off any stickyness or rice off your knife before cutting each piece. Cut the pieces to the thickness you want, if the sushi starts falling apart on you while you cut, cut slightly larger pieces or clean your knife/wet it more. Let the knife be pretty much dripping wet even while you cut for easier cutting. The end pieces look ugly but are still edible. I usually give them to my kid or eat them myself before presentation. 10) Next roll. Repeat steps above. Notice I used more shrimp? mmmmm. 11) This is the amount of leftover rice I had. I'm pretty certain I made three rolls with 2 cups of uncooked rice, but I probably ate it while making the other two rolls I took pictures off. (I can't remember.) 12) Finished sushi with leftover ingredients. As you can see, you shouldn't waste your time cutting all of that 1 cucumber and 1 avocado like I did unless you have a guinea pig that likes leftover cucumber like me. Probably half a cucumber and half an avocado is plenty for 2-3 sushi rolls. 13) Finished sushi pics! Eat and enjoy! Don't forget you can use a little wasabi sauce or soy sauce or mix them together a bit for dipping your sushi. I sometimes use duck sauce because soy sauce usually tastes too salty for me just like wasabi is way to friggin hot. I'd rather taste the sushi and the different textures in it than have the dipping sauce overtake my pallet. Pickled ginger is usually served with sushi, but its mainly used to 'reset' your taste buds when you have a variety of sushi on your plate. Its best to eat a little piece of ginger inbetween different pieces of sushi or sashimi to fully enjoy the taste and texture of each different piece. If all your eating is just the one sushi roll like I have made here, I'd pass on the ginger and just enjoy the flavor of the sushi.

I made chicken wings last night and I figured I'd share my latest recipe. Instructions to make: Honey BBQ Chicken Wings Ingredients: - Package of Chicken Wings - 2 to 2.5 lbs - A couple cups of flour - 3 eggs - KC Masterpiece Original BBQ Sauce - 1 1/4 cups - Honey - 1/4 cup - Soy Sauce - 1/8 cup Instructions: 1) Rinse off the chicken winds and cut them into three pieces, discarding the tips. I'm using a 4.5 lb package of chicken wings because half of this package are used for my Honey BBQ wings and the other half I used a McCormick Buffalo Wings Garlic and Herb dry rub. 2) Pat the chicken wings dry with paper towels. 3) Crack 3 eggs into a bowel and wisk it up to make an egg wash. 4) Once the chicken wings are mostly dry, dip them in a ziploc bag of flour to coat them, then coat both sides into the egg wash and then put them back into the flour so you have a double coating of flour. 5) Put your wings on your grill at a low temperature and cook them for about 15 minutes, flipping them once. Notice that the other half of my chicken wings look different (the ones on the left), those are the ones I patted dry and coated with the McCormick mix. 6) While the chicken wings are cooking, mix the three sauce ingredients together. You can add more honey or soy sauce to taste. With the mix I made it turned out to be a bit more of a honey/sweet&tangy sauce. 7) After the first 15/20 minutes take your flour coated wings off the grill (I did it right at the grill, one at a time) and dip them in your honey bbq sauce. Then put them back on the grill and turn the temp up to medium. Keep flipping them every 5 minutes or so and cook your wings until their internal temperature is 180 degrees. It takes about a 1/2 hour to 40 minutes. To do this easier on a grill, cook only a 2 - 2.5 lb of chicken wings at a time and place them on the top far left of the grill. Turn off the burner directly below the wings, the left one and crank the temp on the right burner to full. Because the chicken wings get cooked with indirect heat you don't need to keep flipping them constantly and they should cook faster. 8) Finished Honey BBQ Wings. They look burntish, but they taste good to me. The only problem I had was that the wings just weren't crispy. I think breaded wings cook best fried, but in the end grilled wings turned out pretty decent and the sauce tastes quite good. 9) Finished McCormick Garlic and Herb Wings. Cooking these on the grill, they turned out very crispy and tasty. Of course being a dry rub, there was no flour or sauce involved to moisten the skin. I honestly think for cooking wings on the grill a dry rub has a much better result.

Instructions to make: Onion Steak Burgers Ingredients: - Package of ground beef round tip roast (you could substitute 90/10 or 80/20 hamburger if you want) - 2 to 3 lbs - 1 packet of onion soup mix - A splash of worcester sauce - Cheese (I prefer extra sharp cheddar or maybe colby jack) Instructions: 1) Gather your ingredients. 2) Hand mash the meat with the onion soup mix until thoroughly mixed. 3) Splash some worchester sauce onto the mix and mash that in as well. You don't need worchester sauce, but the meat I'm using is less fatty than the usual 80/20, so I want some more liquid in the mix to offset the dry onion soup mix. If you are using 90/10 or 80/20 go ahead and skip this if you want, but I'd leave it in for flavor. Just make your burgers slightly thicker in the end so the meat doesn't fall apart when you go to cook it. 4) Use a small plat to make to make your hamburger patties with. Using a small plate instead of just your hands makes a more even patty and you can round the edges easier. 5) Plate of finished patties. These are pretty thick burgers. When hamburgers cook, they loose alot of fat and thus the finished hamburgers are much thinner than the initial patties. But I'm using steak meat so these bad boys won't loose much size. hmmm.. 6) If cooking on the grill, get your grill nice and hot first, then put your burgers on for a good initial searing to get those grill marks. Turn the grill down to low and close it up. Let them cook about 6-7 minutes on each side. If you are pan frying, Cook 1 or 2 of these at a time, because you'll probably only fit 1 or 2 of these on a pan. Cook about the same amount of time. You could also use a george forman grill, but burgers taste best when they are cooked on the grill. 7) After 6 minutes my burgers look like this, and that means its time to flip: 8) Look at those grill marks. mmmm. 9) Cut some cheese for you burgers, I'm using colby jack today. 10) Give your troublesome cat some cheese so he'll leave you alone. 11) You'll know when your burgers are done and safe to eat when you stick a thermometer in one and its at 170-180 degrees. 12) Put the cheese on your burgers, close that lid and turn the grill up to full heat for about 1 minute to melt your cheese. 13) Finished burgers! Enjoy!

Instructions to make: St. Louis style ribs Ingredients: - Package of St. Louis style ribs - 2 to 3 lbs - 1/2 to 1 bottle of KC Masterpiece Original BBQ Sauce - 1/2 shot of Maker's Mark whiskey - Tablespoon of honey Instructions: 1) Boil your ribs in water, they'll boil faster if you keep it covered. Once the water starts boiling, boil the ribs about 15 minutes to a 1/2 hour until they are mostly cooked. Or all the way cooked if you want. For these ribs, I boiled them about a 1/2 hour until their internal temperature was 175 degrees. Pork is fully cooked at 170 degrees, so these ribs were already fully cooked before I put them on the grill. (I use my little meat thermometer all the time now. ) 2) While the ribs are boiling, turn your grill on to start heating up and also, get your sauce ready. Usually I use just plain KC Masterpiece because when that sauce is cooked on the grill, alot of the moisture cooks out of the sauce and it thickens up perfectly for ribs. For this recipe, I used half a bottle of the sauce, squeezed in about a tablespoon of honey, and added half a shot glass of whiskey for a little kick. The alcohol will cook right out of the sauce, so it just adds flavor, like I said, a little kick. 3) Once the ribs are finished boiling, remove them from the pot and let them cool off a little. You can refrigerate them for 15 minutes if you want, but I just let them sit out at room temperature about 5 minutes. 4) Now that the grill is nice and hot, turn off the burner you'll be putting your ribs over (left burner is off in this pic) and keep the other burner on high. This will let the ribs cook with indirect heat. Put your ribs on the top rack of your grill, coat one side, flip it and then coat the other side. Close the lid and let the grill heat up those ribs for a good 10 minutes. 5) Flip the ribs over and this time, heavily coat the top with sauce, let it pool up on it so it'll be really thick. Close it up and let it cook another 10 minutes. Flip the ribs again and repeat another thick layer, this time turn on the left burner on low to add more heat. Keep repeating this process one or two more times if you have enough sauce. 6) Take the ribs off the grill, the sauce should be really thick now. Let the ribs cool down a couple minutes before you cut them. 7) Look at those ribs. Enjoy! After eating these, the sauce does need a bit more sweetness to it. Add another tablespoon of honey or dissolve about a 1/4 cup of sugar into the sauce before putting them on the ribs.

Read my recipe for Sushi for my sushi instructions, except substitute spring rolls aka rice paper sheets for the nori. With spring rolls you can enjoy sushi without having any fishy or seaweed taste. To use the spring roll sheets, get a pie plate and fill it with warm water, take one sheet of rice paper and soak it in the pie plate until its completely soft. Usually this takes about 15 to 30 seconds. Then place the rice paper on your rolling mat, make sure you use plastic wrap on your mat to keep the rice paper from sticking to it or ruining it. Then make your sushi just as you would according to my Sushi recipe. Heres some pics: Spring roll package purchased at local Wegmans: Sushi with spring rolls. I thought my spring rolls were too thin, so I used to sheets at once, but that wasn't necessary, the paper was strong enough with just a single sheet: Heres some pics with grilled chicken in them. Yummy. Also, if you want to add extra flare to your spring roll sushi, put a couple drops of food coloring into the water you'll soak your rice paper in. As the rice paper softens up, it'll absorb some of the color too. I think next time I make sushi, I'm going to change up the amount of rice vinegar I use in it. The vinegar just overpowers too much. And yeah, use just a single spring roll sheet. The rice paper itself is quite starchy and two sheets means too much rice paper flavor in your mouth and that overpowers the overall sushi taste too.

Instructions to make: 3 different flavors of Grilled Chicken with Grilled Corn on the cob and a baked potato. Serving size: 3 people. Ingredients: - Package of boneless chicken breast, with two breasts - 3 ears of corn - 3 large potatoes - Italian seasoning - Basil seasoning - BBQ seasoning - Italian dressing Instructions: 1) Rinse off your chicken breast and cut the two breasts so you have four separate pieces. 2) Rub italian and basil seasoning on both sides of two of the pieces of chicken. (I had a request for two italian/basil ones.) 3) Put a piece of chicken in a bowl and pour a bunch of italian dressing on it to marinate it. Make sure you move the chicken around in it a little to ensure its coated good. You can then put this in the fridge for a 1/2 hour or more, but it really only needs to sit about 5 to 10 minutes in it. 4) Rub BBQ seasoning on both sides of your last piece of chicken. This seasoning from KC Masterpiece is actually pretty good on chicken as well as hamburgers. 5) Set your grill on a low flame on both burners and place your chicken on the top rack. And feel free to pour the italian dressing thats still in the bowl over that italian dressing chicken breast. 6) Let them cook for about 20 minutes and then flip them. 7) About 10-20 minutes later the chicken should be around 170 degrees inside. Use your thermametor to make sure the temperature is right. If you get it much higher than 175 or 180 the chicken will start drying out. 8) Take your corn and cut off both ends of the ear and peel away a couple layers of the husk. Then soak the corn in water for 10 minutes, making sure to move them around in the water every once in a while. 9) Have your grill on a low heat and place your corn on the bottom rack. Flip them every five minutes and let them cook for about 15-20 minutes. Because the husks were soaked, the moisture prevents the husks from catching on fire and burning, and it also provides the humidity to cook the corn. 10) Now that the corn is done, you can take it off the grill and then peel away the husk and rub butter all over it and maybe give it a dash of salt. Very tasty. You could also, remove the husk and place the corn back on the grill for another 2-5 minutes to add a little smoky flavor. 11) I forgot to start cooking baked potatoes on the grill at the beginning of all this, so I cooked 3 potatoes in the microwave. (ah, baked potato button, how I love thee, even tho each potato needs to be cooked twice.) Don't forget, you can cook the corn on the cob on the grill after your first 20 minutes of cooking the chicken so they'll be done at the same time. You could also rinse off your potatoes, wrap them in aluminum foil with some butter and cook them on the top rack of your grill alongside your chicken. Or just cook them in the microwave like I had too. And unfortunately, I do not have a picture of the completed meal. I was so hungry I forgot to take a picture. The italian dressing chicken was the most moist, because it was a liquid marinade. The other chicken was a little more dry because the dry rubs absorbed some of the moisture out. Because of that, they could a little faster and they got up to about 182 degrees. Oh well, a little Chicken & Ribs sauce for dipping took care of any noticeable dryness. mmmmmm...

Instructions to make: Sirloin Steak with Bourbon Marinade Serving size: 2 people. Ingredients: - 1 Sirloin Steak (probably 2 pounds) - DX's Marinade Instructions: 1) Make the marinade as per DeathscytheX's marinade recipe. 2) Rinse off your steak, stab it with a fork about 10 or so times on both sides and place it in the marinade, then cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate it for about 6 hours or more. I pan seared this steak on the stove. Normally I would have grilled it, but it was too damn cold outside (its winter atm) and I thought the steak might burst into flame because of the alcohol content. X'D 3) To pan sear it, pour some of the marinade in the pan and get the temperature up really high. 4) Place your steak in the pan and let it cook for about 5 minutes. 5) Flip your steak and cook it for another 5 minutes. 6) Flip it again and its already done at this point, but I wanted to make sure it was well done (which it probably was at this point already), so I turned the stove off and covered it for another 2 minutes. 7) Take the top off and the bottom side will be more done looking than the top. Here is what it looks like on both sides. 8) While the steak was cooking, I threw a potato in the microwave on the baked potato setting a couple times for a side dish. Here is the completed steak with baked potato: I think I'd recommend only 1/4 a cup of bourbon for the recipe, even tho DX's recipe calls for 1/2 a cup. I swear there was enough alcohol left in the marinade after cooking that I got buzz after eating this. X'D It has a good strong flavor and no real need for a bbq sauce. But I'll grill this next time as the house smelled like a bar for a couple days after i cooked this inside. X'D

Instructions to make: BBQ Beef sandwiches out of leftover beef roast. Serving size: About 5-6 sandwiches per 1-1/2 pounds of beef. Ingredients: - Leftover beef roast. (1-1/2 pounds) - 1 bottle of BBQ Sauce Instructions: This recipe is for how to make your leftover beef roast into bbq beef. If you do not have leftover beef roast or do not know how to cook it. You can still do this recipe, just upscale it. To make a beef roast, buy a beef top round roast, rinse it off and put it in a crock pot. Put water in the crock pot so the roast is about half covered in water and put a couple beef bouillon cubes in it. Sprinkle pepper and garlic salt on the roast, cover and set the crock pot on low and let it cook for about 8 hours. After 8 hours, follow this recipe at step 3. 1) Take your leftover beef roast and put it in a mini crock pot, or full size crock pot. (If you are using a full size crock pot, cut your leftover roast into smaller pieces to fill the bottom of the pot more so you'll use less water. 2) Fill your crock pot so its about halfway covering the beef. Then cover the pot, turn on your crock pot to low. Or if it doesn't have a low setting like my mini crock pot, just plug it in for its regular cooking temperature. Let it cook for about 4 hours. Obviously, since I'm cooking a leftover roast that has already been cooked for 8 hours previously, this is going to be extremely tender meat. 3) Take your beef out and place it on a plate. It should be cooked enough that its practically falling apart. 4) Use two forks and break apart all the meat. You can also take out any large pieces of fat at this point too. 5) Place the shredded beef back into the pot and completely cover the beef in water. Cover it back up and let it cook another 2-4 hours. I did 4 more hours. The longer it cooks in the water, the more tender it will be. 6) Strain all the water out, but leave the beef in the pot. And pick out a bottle or two of bbq sauce (I recommend KC Masterpiece Original for this). If you are cooking an entire roast for this, you'll probably need 3-4 bottles depending on how big your roast is. 7) Gradually mix in about half a bottle of bbq sauce for each pound of beef you are cooking in the crock pot. Now cover the crock pot again and let it keep cooking for another 20 minutes to an hour. If longer than 20 minutes, stir about every 20 minutes. I let it cook for almost another 1. It will need 20 minutes of cooking at this point so the bbq flavor really permeates into the beef. Cooking longer than an hour at this point might just start burning your beef. So keep an eye on the clock at this point. 8) Scoop up some BBQ Beef and put it on a bun. Enjoy! And make sure you have a paper towel or napkin, because it has a similar consistansy as a sloppy joe. 9) Eat! Its so good.

Instructions to make: Lasagna Serving size: 12+ Ingredients: - 1 package of Lasagna noodles - 2 1/2 pounds of hamburger meat (browned) - 2 cans of pasta sauce - 1 can of diced tomatoes - 1 jar of parmesan cheese - 2 eggs - 1 1/2 - 2 pounds of mozzarella cheese Instructions: 1) Gather your ingredients. 2) Brown your hamburger meat and strain it. I like to break the meat up pretty fine while it is browning. I don't like meat chunks too big in a lasagna. 3) Start boiling your lasanga noodles as per the instructions on the package. 4) Use a mixing bowl and combine the browned meat, 2 eggs, 1/4 to 1/2 of your parmesan cheese, and diced tomatoes (strain the liquid from the tomatoes first). 4) This sauce is thick and good for a single pan of lasagna, but I like it a but saucier so add another can of pasta sauce. 5) Don't overcook your lasagna noodles! If they are still slightly firm, good. Strain them and then place the noodles in layers on a plate in a criss cross pattern so they can maintain their shape while you are making your lasagna. 6) Lightly spray some pam or another non-stick spray on your bakeware so your lasagna does not stick to your pan. Also, start pre-heating your oven to 350 degrees. 7) Start off your lasagna with a layer of meat sauce 8) Then a layer of noodles. Then repeat with another layer of meat sauce and noodles. 9) Usually around the first or second layer of noodles I add a layer of mozzarella cheese. You can use pre-shredded cheese, but like all pre-shredded cheeses, the little pieces of cheese are covered in a layer of wax, and that creates a greasy lasagna. So get a brick and shred it yourself or cut pieces that will melt in the oven. Also, layer some parmesan in there too if you want the extra cheese. 10) Keep repeating your layers until you get close to the top of your pan. If you have extra ingredients, make a second lasagna in a smaller pan like in these pictures. 11) When you get to your top layer, finish off your lasagna with a light layer of sauce, generous amounts of parmesan and a generous amount of mozzarella. 12) Now cover your lasagna with aluminum foil (this prevents your top layer of cheese from burning during the cooking process), wait for your oven to finish pre-heating and put it in the oven on the center rack for about 35 minutes. 13) Take your lasagna out, take off the aluminum foil and it'll look something like this. Now put the lasagna back into your oven for another 10-15 minutes with the foil off to melt down the top layer. 14) And the lasagna is done! If you have a good brand of mozzarella, cutting pieces usually works fine, but the store brand that I was using didn't melt perfectly, but you get the idea... its still incredibly tasty. 15) Let the lasagna sit for about 5-10 minutes to cool and solidify, then cut into pieces and eat! When I have leftovers, which I usually do because this is alot of lasanga... I put individual servings into ziplock sandwich bags and freeze them. To eat them from the freezer, put it on a plate, set it to auto-defrost for 1 pound, break it up with a fork and heat it again for another minute and it should be perfect.

Instructions to make: Sledge's Dry Rib Rub and how to cook some pork ribs with a dry rub, smoke and no sauce! Serving size: 1 (or more if you cook more ribs) Ingredients for dry rib rub (enough for probably 2 or 3 medium sized racks of ribs) - 1/2 cup of paprika - 1/4 cup fresh ground black pepper - 1/4 cup salt (or fresh ground salt) - 2 tablespoons of onion powder - 2 tablespoons of garlic powder - 2/3 cup of firmly packed brown sugar And of course to smoke cook your ribs on your grill you'll need: - 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 pounds of pork spare ribs - A couple handfuls of flavored wood chips - A cast iron smoke box for your wood chips - A piece of aluminum foil Instructions: 1) Gather your ingredients for the rub and add them put them all into a bowl. 2) Mix all the rub ingredients together. Its best to mix it with your hands, a fork, spoon or whisk just wont work as good. 3) Rinse off your ribs and then pat them dry with a bunch of paper towels. 4) Use one hand to grab rub and drop it liberally onto both sides of your ribs, and then use your other hand to rub it in. This way if you have extra rub left over you can save it in a baggie and refrigerate it without any contamination from touching the pork. If you don't plan on saving leftover rub, just dump it all over your ribs and put it on thick! You'll want to let it really permeate the ribs now. Cover it with plastic and refrigerate it, or if your ribs are still cold from the refrigerator, let them sit on the counter for a half hour or so while you warm up the grill and soak your wood chips. 5) Put a handful or two into a bowl of water and let them soak for about a half hour. You can also turn on your grill and let it start heating up. 6) Now that the grill has heated up, put your smoker box on the far right side. Grab a handful of wet wood chips, let the wood chips drain for a minute in your hand and then put the wood chips in the smoker. Not too many tho! Those wood chips need air to burn once you put the lid on. Also, turn off the left burner. You do not want to cook your ribs over direct flame. And turn the right burner down to about a medium flame. 7) Before you put your ribs on the grill, lightly tap the ribs on its sides to get any excess rub off. Excess rub will look like dry patches of rub if as long as you let it soak into the ribs like I said. Now put the lid on your smoke box and put your ribs on the grill. 8) Look at those ribs one more time because you won't be looking at them again for a while Close that grill and walk away for an hour. Within a half hour you'll probably see a light smoke coming out of the grill, you shouldn't have any flare ups because the ribs are not over direct heat. And by leaving the grill down for a full hour the grill will be cooking more like an oven and the smoke from the smoke box will circulate inside the grill filling the ribs with more flavor. 9) An hour later, I flipped the ribs and added another small handful of fresh chips to the now fully burnt looking chips inside the smoke box. And now close that grill and let it cook for 1 more hour. 10) After two hours of total cooking time, your ribs should be fully done. You can check with a meat thermometer, pork is well done at 170 degrees. When you take the ribs off the grill, immediately wrap them in aluminum foil and let them sit on a plate for a good 15 minutes. This lets the ribs reabsorb their moisture and allows more flavor to fully saturate the meat. If you don't wrap it in foil, the moisture will evaporate and collect on the plate. So wrap it! 11) After 15 minutes, look at those ribs! 12) Cut them into portions and look at the juicy results! 13) Feel free to use a sauce on the side, but these ribs have all the flavor and tender flavor you need! 14) Eat! This rub is a good sweet and spicy mix, but next time I cook ribs like this, I think I'll use a full cup of brown sugar to sweeten the rub a bit more. These ribs turned out quite good, but I think I still prefer my other rib recipe over this one... probably because its less time consuming and easier. Heres a link to my other rib recipe: St. Louis style ribs

I got a mini burger grill kit for my birthday and I figured I'd celebrate the new years with some white castle style burgers. Except they turned out nothing like white castle burgers. X'D I didn't do anything special with the meat so there is no fancy recipe, its just basic burgers made small. 1) Heres the mini burger press. 2) I put a couple small meatballs size balls of meat and made some mini patties: 3) Heres what the mini burgers look like compared to regular size: 4) To try and get some white castle flavor, I sprinkled some season salt on the burgers and loaded them with chopped onion: 5) I put the top on the mini burgers and put them on the grill over a medium heat: 6) I had to put it on the grill so the handle sticks out the side. Turns out that the front of my grill has a bit of an over bite to it and pushed the mini burgers up in the air when it closed. With the handle sticking out the side tho, it wasn't nearly as bad. 7) After about 7 minutes the burgers were almost done, so I flipped them over and covered them again for another 5 minutes. 8) Here they are done, you can see how much they shrunk. Next time I'll use 90% instead of 80% meat. They shrunk way too much. 9) While the burgers were still hot, I put some thinly sliced pieces of cheese on them and the cheese melted a bit which turned out great. 10) Heres where they don't taste like white castle anymore. I decided to use potato dinner rolls instead of regular rolls or buns. If I knew they'd turn out this small I would have bought the party size mini rolls. Oh well, I doubled up the burgers and put half a stackers pickle and some ketchup and mustard on it. 11) Instead of french fries, I decided a good side dish would be some ribs and a baked potato. So I tried some dinosaur bbq sauce for the first time on ribs. It turned out really good. 12) And heres my new years eve dinner:

Instructions to make: A marinade that can tenderize beef chuck steaks and other cuts. Amount: Enough for 2+ steaks. Ingredients: - 1 cup corn oil (or vegetable oil) - 1 tablespoon rice vinegar - 2 tablespoons dijon mustard - 3 tablespoon worcester sauce - 1 teaspoon pepper - 1/4 videlia onion sliced - 1 tablespoon garlic powder - 2 teaspoon salt - 2 tablespoons brown sugar Instructions: 1) Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl. 2) Rinse off two beef chuck steaks (or other cuts) and pat lighty with paper towels to take off some of the excess water. 3) Put your steaks in a bowl or in large ziplock bags and pour the marinade over the steaks. Flip the steaks a bit to make sure they are fully covered. Then either seal your ziplock bags or cover your bowl and refrigerate your steaks for at least 5 hours. 4) Cook your steak. I cooked mine at a high temperature on the grill for about 8 minutes or so. If you grill yours, be careful if you pour the leftover marinade on them, the marinade has a tendency to flare up some strong flames. (The woman's plate, she likes hers well, well done.) The steaks turned out quite tender for a beef chuck. There was still a little bit of chew to it, but not nearly as tough without marinade. If anything, let those steaks marinade over night or for 12 hours.

Instructions to make: Juicy Lucy burgers Ingredients: - Hamburger meat - Seasonings - 2 slices of american cheese per burger Instructions: 1) Mix up your hamburger meat with some seasonings like season all, maybe some chopped onions. (look at my other burger recipes in this blog) 2) Make some small hamburger balls to form into patties, one slightly bigger than the other. You have to make them smaller than normal because you will need two hamburger patties per burger. 3) Use the larger ball of meat and make hamburger patty, then break up two slices of american cheese per burger and put it in the middle. 4) Now make another patty and place it over the cheese and work the edges so the two burgers will cook together as one. 5) Cook those burgers over a medium to high heat to make sure the inner part of the burger cooks all the way through. 6) The burgers will shrink when cooking and the cheese will get very hot in the middle helping to cook the inside of the burger. One of my burgers busted at the seams. Instead of using 80% I should have gone with a 90% to reduce meat shrinking. 7) Let the burgers cool a little so you don't burn yourself on the hot inner cheese. I spread the cheese around so you can see the cavity in the burger that is created when cooking them like this. If you can eat these burgers at the perfect cheese temperature, the cheese will flow with every bite and taste great.

Instructions to make: Sledge's Sweet and Spicy Rib Rub This dry rub can be used on pork or beef ribs, chicken, chicken wings, beef, pork, steaks, etc! Ingredients: 1 1/2 cups brown sugar (firmly packed in measuring cup) 1/4 cup white sugar 1/3 cup paprika 1 tablespoon ground black pepper 1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder 1/4 cup + a little over.. half seasoned salt, half bucks seasoning 2 1/2 teaspoons chili powder 2 teaspoon cayenne pepper Instructions: 1) Mix all the ingredients together. If you don't have a food processor to mix it with, then use your hands and really work the mix in a larger bowl to break apart the brown sugar so everything is equally mixed in. 2) This recipe will yield a good sized batch of rub that should last you all summer! Just remember to separate the amount of rub you plan on using ahead of working with raw meats or other foods so you don't cross-contaminate your main batch! So when you are ready to start cooking, set a small bowl of your rub aside and store the rest of your rub in an airtight container. Or do what I do and put your rub mix in a freezer bag and store it out of the way on a refrigerator door shelf. It does not need to be refrigerated, but it will stay fresh longer in the fridge! But keep in mind, regardless of how you store the rub mix, the brown sugar in this rub will cause the rub mix to re-clump after it has sat for a few days/weeks. This is normal, just simply break the clumps apart and its ready to be used again!

Instructions to make: Sledge's Grilled Sweet and Spicy Chicken Wings Ingredients: - Chicken Wings - Sledge's Sweet and Spicy Rib Rub Stuff you will need: - A good knife - Aluminum foil - Ziploc gallon storage or freezer bag - Grill - Tongs Instructions: 1) Prepare your chicken wings! I consider one batch of wings to be about 2 or 2 1/2 pounds. This package is enough for two batches of wings. 2) If you have never cut chicken wings before, start by grabbing the tip and stretching out the wing.. the muscle structure of the wing will stay stretched out while you hold it allowing for an easy cut. 3) If you do not have a sharp knife that will easily cut through bone, then grab the wing and snap the drumette away from the wingette in the opposite direction you were cutting, like in this pic.. the bone will pop out of the cartilage thus separating the two pieces. 4) Now just cut the skin/meat that is still connecting the two pieces. 5) Now cut the wing tip off and discard it. 6) Cut the rest of your batch of wings the same way and place all the pieces on a paper towel covered plate. 7) Get a small bowl of Sledge's Sweet and Spicy Rib Rub ready and get a gallon size ziploc bag for shaking your wings in. Now use paper towels and dry each wing individually and place them in the ziploc bag in rows. Drying the wings can take a while, so go ahead and start your grill and get it heated up and cleaned. 8) Sprinkle one side of the wings with the rub so they are coated, flip the bag over and coat the other side too. 9) Close the bag with a bit of air in it, and shake that bag to make sure the wings are fully coated. 10) You will want to cook your wings on the grill with indirect heat. Line up your wings on the grill on one side, then set the burners on your grill to high, except for the burner your wings are sitting on, turn that one off. 11) After letting them cook for about 20 minutes, you will want to flip them over and let them cook another 20 minutes. 12) Use a meat thermometer if you unsure if the wings are done or not. Chicken is done at 170 degrees. Depending on your grill and the temperature it is maintaining, you may have to cook them longer or shorter. Once they are done, put them on an aluminum foil lined plate and then cover them with another layer of aluminum foil and let the wings sit for a good 5-10 minutes. This way the wings will rest and retain their moisture. And here they are done! Additional tips: 1) You can cook them faster by cooking them over direct heat, but you will have to flip them very often and the more you flip them, more of the seasoning will be burned off onto the grill surface. That is why I cook them slower to retain the most flavor. 2) You can get the wings crispier by turning the burner underneath them on in the last 5-10 minutes of cooking. Just keep flipping them. But because this rub has sugar in it, the wings will want to burn quickly! So keep an eye on them and if they start charring up, lower the heat or take them off the grill!

Ok, so this is a modified version of one offered by Cooks Illustrated. We found that if you make it as they list it, there's not enough sauce! But we made some adjustments with the quantites, and this works out well. Very tasty and tangy, without being really tart. ----------- Ingredients 4 (5- to 7- ounce) bone-in chicken thighs, trimmed 1/3 cup soy sauce 1 (13 1/2-ounce) can light coconut milk 3/4 cup apple cider vinegar 8 garlic cloves, peeled 2 bay leaves 1 teaspoons pepper 1 scallion, sliced thin (optional garnish) Instructions 1. Toss chicken with soy sauce in large bowl. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes and up to 1 hour. 2. Remove chicken from soy sauce, allowing excess to drip back into bowl. Transfer chicken, skin side down, to 12-inch nonstick skillet; set aside soy sauce. 3. Place skillet over medium-high heat and cook until chicken skin is browned, 7 to 10 minutes. While chicken is browning, whisk coconut milk, vinegar, garlic, bay leaves, and pepper into soy sauce. 4. Transfer chicken to plate and discard fat in skillet. Return chicken to skillet skin side down, add coconut milk mixture, and bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, uncovered, for 20 minutes. Flip chicken skin side up and continue to cook, uncovered, until chicken registers 175 degrees, about 15 minutes. Transfer chicken to platter and tent loosely with aluminum foil. 5. Remove bay leaves and skim any fat off surface of sauce. Return skillet to medium-high heat and cook until sauce is thickened, 5 to 7 minutes. Pour sauce over chicken, sprinkle with scallion, and serve over rice.