by Jesse Sartain ~ August 6, 2008
By: Sandee Lembke
When I host parties, I always have at least 2 or 3 hot appetizers for my guests to choose from. I am not a “throw-a-can-of-peanuts-on-the-table” kind of gal!
It’s important to me that I take the time to select satisfying party appetizers that:
Are simple to make
Have few ingredients
Hold up well over time
Are pleasing to look at and of course,
Taste great!
Over the years, I have tried out a lot of easy party appetizers on my friends and family and hands down, the three below are my “Top 3 Most Requested Hot Appetizers” (in no particular order).
Number One Most Requested Hot Appetizer–Warm Chipotle Cheddar Dip
2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese
1 cup shredded Monterey Jack or Mozzarella cheese
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1-8 oz. can whole kernel corn, drained (3/4 cup)
1-4 oz. can chopped green chili peppers, drained
2 teaspoons finely chopped canned chipotle chili peppers in adobo sauce (or to taste)
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1 medium tomato, seeded and chopped (3/4 cup)
1/4 cup sliced green onion
2 tablespoons snipped fresh cilantro
Vegetables, crackers or chips
I found this dip when I was on a low carb diet and was looking for a party appetizer that would work well with vegetables. Something with a robust flavor that would perk up the veggies.
Well this one definitely fit the bill. This appetizer has become a favorite among my friends. It’s served multiple times throughout the year at various parties that I either host or attend.
You can make it as smokey and spicy as you want by adjusting the amount of chipotle peppers (smoked jalepenos) but watch out. You can easily go from mildly spicy to blow-your-face-off hot by adding too much!
Steps to Make Cheddar Chipotle Dip
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Stir together cheeses, mayonnaise, corn, green chili peppers, chipotle chili peppers and garlic powder in a large mixing bowl. Spread mixture into a 1 quart, covered dish.
Bake for 30 minutes until bubbly. Top with tomato, green onion and cilantro. I like to make a pattern out of the toppings so I put the tomatoes all in the middle, make a ring around them with the green onion then sprinkle the cilantro over all.
Serve with vegetables, like red, green and yellow peppers. Tostido and Frito Scoops work well too.
Number Two Most Requested Hot Appetizer–Boneless Buffalo Wings
1 large bag of popcorn chicken, thawed (I buy mine at Sam’s Club)
1 package dry Good Seasons Italian dressing mix
1 bottle Frank’s Red Hot Sauce (or to taste)
1 stick margarine (butter will separate)
2 teaspoons lemon juice
Pinch dried basil
In a saucepan, combine dressing mix, hot sauce, margarine, lemon juice and basil and cook until margarine melts, stirring constantly.
Place chicken in a large bowl and pour sauce over it. Stir until well combined, then pour all into a Crock Pot. Cook on low 4 hours. Crack the lid to keep down the steam and prevent wings from getting soggy.
Serve with celery sticks and blue cheese dressing (do not use the reduced fat variety).
Number Three Most Requested Hot Appetizer–Warm Green Chili Dip
8 oz. shredded mozzarella cheese
8 oz. shredded mild cheddar cheese
2 cups mayonnaise
1 small sweet onion, minced
1 can (4 oz.) chopped green chilis, drained
1-1/2 oz. chopped pepperoni
1/2 cup sliced ripe olives
Assorted veggies (baby carrots and peppers are great!)
Tostidos or Fritos Scoops
by Jesse Sartain ~ July 4, 2008
By: ArticleBoss
Chinese cooking has healthy, well balanced recipes that can very well fit in almost any dietaty regiment. Today, I am sharing with you two of these healthy recipes for your enjoyment.
Chinese Recipe of Beef Fried Rice Recipe
Ingredients:
2 Tbs. soy sauce
1/2 tsp. sugar
1 Tbs. vegetable oil
2 eggs, well beaten
1/2 lb. ground beef
1 medium carrot, finely chopped
1 celery rib, finely chopped
1 scallion, chopped
1 tsp. fresh ginger, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
2 cups cooked rice, cold
Directions:
Combine soy sauce, sugar and salt and pepper to taste in a small bowl and set aside. Heat oil in a heavy nonstick skillet over medium high heat. Cook eggs about 45 seconds, stirring constantly, until eggs are just set. Transfer eggs to a bowl and set aside. Add ground beef and next 3 ingredients to same pan over medium heat. Saut about 3 minutes, stirring often to break up meat, until browned. Stir in ginger and garlic and cook 1 minute. Discard excess fat. Increase heat to high and add rice. Stir-fry about 1 minute, until heated through. Stir in soy sauce mixture and eggs and stir-fry 30 seconds longer.
Per serving:
calories 338, fat 15.7g, 43% calories from fat, cholesterol 133mg, protein 16.8g, carbohydrates 31.0g, fiber 1.6g, sugar 2.5g, sodium 547mg, diet points 8.3.
Classic Chinese Chicken Teriyaki
1/4 cup lite soy sauce
3 tbsp prepared spicy brown mustard
1 tbsp firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 tbsp sesame seeds
1 sliced thin medium onion
1 cut in half garlic clove
2 tbsp vegetable oil
4 skinned boned chicken breast halves, each about 4 oz
1 spinach and pepper saute (see recip, e for this)
Directions:
In medium bowl, whisk together soy sauce, mustard, sugar and ginger;
set aside.
In large, nonstick skillet, over high heat, toast sesame seeds until golden brown, about 4 minutes; remove from pan and set aside.
by Jesse Sartain ~ June 28, 2008
NAPA, Calif., March 21, 2008 –Victor Cornelius was selected as a superior product in the “Restaurant Menus” category for foodservice. Superior Gold winning products included their “Menu Product Line”. The judging was conducted “triple blind” in Napa, California by a panel of Masters of Taste. The Chef du Jury was famed Mâitre du Goût (Master of Taste), Jesse Sartain.
“We commend the culinary commitment of the staff of Victor Cornelius for the excellence and innovation of their product lines. We applaud them,” commented Jesse Sartain.
The protocols of “triple blind” judging include the following ground rules to ensure accurate and fair judging results. Evaluators do not know:
Who the manufacturer is.
What the product variety or appellation is.
What the other evaluator’s scores and comments are.
The judging was a part of the ongoing U.S.A. Taste Championships founded in 1989 with the establishment of the Chefs In America Awards Foundation, whose professional Board Members gather weekly to conduct taste tests on a myriad of foodservice and retail grocery products.
by Jesse Sartain ~ May 2, 2008
Author: Michael Sheridan
Judging by the comments in some cookbooks, you would think recipes are chemical formulas to be measured out and carefully mixed. It just ain’t so.
A favorite line of editors always refers to the measurements used, which are often given in both metric and Imperial. You are cautioned to use one set of measurements or the other, but never to mix them. The implication is that if you do, disaster will be the result. It’s a bit like the exhortation which goes something like “three free-range eggs”, as if the dish cannot be produced with any other type of egg.
This is the sort of thing that has inexperienced cooks quickly turning the pages, looking for a recipe with less ingredients or abandonning the idea altogether and heading for the takeaway. I call it ‘the tyranny of the recipe’. It’s as unnecessary as it is silly.
If you are one of those who ignore a recipe simply because the list of ingredients is too long, or looks too complicated, please keep reading. You don’t need to change your cookbook. You just need to change your mindset.
The first thing to remember is that recipes are written by people trying to pass on a method they use to cook something. They are a convention for exchanging information which has developed over many years and which, on the whole, work very well. But that’s all they are. You are not dealing with chemical formulas that will blow up in your face if you measurements happen to be a few grams out, or you change one ingredient for another.
In just about any recipe you can not only change ingredients around, alter the amounts used and so on, you can also leave them out altogether. You may not achieve exactly the same dish as the cook who wrote the recipe, but so what? Who’s to say that your version won’t be just as good, or even better?
Good cooks, and that really means experienced cooks, will read through a recipe, grasp the general idea, and proceed to put it all together using previous knowledge and their own tastebuds. How things taste to you, and even how they look, are far more important than any written instruction and far more liberating.
Try this simple test. Open two different cookbooks at the chicken recipe section and compare the recipes. It will very quickly dawn on you that the recipes in one are simply variations on the listings in the other, the biggest variation being in the flavorings used. So the conclusion must be, if the recipes can be varied in flavors and quantities between cookbooks, you can do exactly the same thing and still come up with some stunning dishes for your friends and family.
Using cookbooks as a source of ideas only is an enormously liberating experience for most people, turning a chore into a pleasure. As a bonus, it often produces far superior results as well. For example, did you know that many of the dishes published in cookbooks have never actually been cooked? They are frequently just rewritten from notebooks and archives. That’s because the professionals know that the contents are not critical. It just makes us look more highly skilled if we pretend they are.
Don’t be trapped in this way. One of the most influential cookery writers of her day, Elizabeth David, put only the barest of information in her recipes and often didn’t bother to mention quantities at all. Beginner cooks might have struggled a little, more through nerves than anything else, but more experienced cooks were quickly at home creating their own versions of classic French recipes.
And that’s something to bear in mind when you are cooking for the family. Professionals did not invent cooking, ordinary people did. Many of the classic Italian and French dishes are not the results of swanky restaurant posing, but simple food prepared from fresh ingredients with many regional variations. They have nothing to do with the culinary antics of celebrity chefs.
by Jesse Sartain ~ April 26, 2008
NAPA, Calif., April 5, 2008
Sea Gold was selected as a winning product in the “Fruit Dip” category for both foodservice and retail. Superior Gold winning products included their “Lemon Fruit Dip”, their “Chocolate Fruit Dip”, their “Pina Colada Fruit Dip” and their “Chocolate Mint Fruit Dip”. The judging was conducted “triple blind” in Napa, California by a panel of Masters of Taste. The Chef du Jury was famed Mâitre du Goût (Master of Taste), Jesse Sartain.
“We commend the culinary commitment of the staff of Sea Gold for the excellence and innovation of their product lines. We applaud them,” commented Jesse Sartain.
The protocols of “triple blind” judging include the following ground rules to ensure accurate and fair judging results. Evaluators do not know:
Who the manufacturer is.
What the product variety or appellation is.
What the other evaluator’s scores and comments are.
The judging was a part of the ongoing U.S.A. Taste Championships founded in 1989 with the establishment of the Chefs In America Awards Foundation, whose professional Board Members gather weekly to conduct taste tests on a myriad of foodservice and retail grocery products.
by Jesse Sartain ~ April 25, 2008
Author: Diane Watkins
If you haven’t used your crock pot recently, its time to pull it out of the cupboard. Crock pots are perfect for those busy weeknights. Here are 3 different chili recipes for a chilly evening.
Mom’s Favorite Chili
1 pound ground beef ; browned, drained
1 can pork and beans
1 can chili beans
1 regular can tomato sauce
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon chili powder
Red pepper ; to taste
Salt ; to taste
Mix all ingredients in crock pot. Cook on LOW for 3 to 4 hours.
Navajo Beef And Chile Stew
3 pound lean beef stew meat ; cut 3/4 ” cubes
1 large onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 can ready-cut tomatoes with juice - (14 1/2 oz)
1 can diced green chiles - (7 oz) drained
1 can whole-kernel corn - (8 1/2 oz) undrained
1 teaspoons dried oregano leaves, crushed
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground red pepper
2 tablespoon yellow cornmeal
Combine all ingredients, except cornmeal, in a slow cooker, mixing well. Cover and cook on LOW for 7 to 8 hours or until meat is tender.
20 Minutes before serving:
Turn control to HIGH. Stir in cornmeal. Cover and cook on HIGH 20 to 25 minutes.
No-Bean Chili
2 pounds ground beef
(or cubed lean stew beef)
1 can tomato sauce - (8 oz)
1 can tomato paste - (6 oz)
1 can stewed tomatoes - (16 oz) ; (optional)
2 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon hot pepper sauce ; or more
Combine all ingredients in slow cooker. Cover and cook on LOW for 8 to 10 hours. (Add a can of your favorite beans if you wish, but then it wouldn’t be No-Bean Chilli.)
by Jesse Sartain ~ April 23, 2008
Author: Janis Etsell
For the working family these recipes work a wonder. Come home, relax, and enjoy a meal you only slaved 10 to 20 min prep in the morning.
Recipe #1:
To Die For Pot Roast
3 1/2 to 4 LB Rump Roast
1 Bag Of Baby Cut Carrots
3 Large Onions
5 Potatoes
1 Can Of Cream Of Mushroom Soup
1 Packet Of French Onion Soup Mix
1/4 Cup Water
Place rump roast in the crockpot. Place the baby carrots around it. Chop up onions into quarters. Slice up potatoes into small chunks, and place around the beef. Add mushroom soup and the onion soup mix. Mix about a 1/4 cup of water into the crockpot. Depending upon how thick you like your gravy mix you can add more water. Place crockpot on low for 8 hours. Stirring occasionally. Beef just pulls right apart. Serve with a nice side salad or some garlic bread. You will be coming back for seconds, thirds and fourths.
Recipe #2:
Moist Meatloaf In the Crockpot
2 Eggs
3/4 Cup Milk
2/3 Cup Seasoned Bread Crumbs
2 TSP Dried Minced Onion or Garlic
1 TSP Salt
1/2 Teaspoon Marjoram
1-1/2 Ground Turkey
1/4 Cup Ketchup
2 TBSP Brown Sugar
1/2 TSP Worcestershire
In a large bowl, combine the first 6 ingredients. Crumble the beef over the mixture and mix well. Shape into a round loaf; place in the crockpot. Cover and cook on low for about 6 hours. In a small mixing bowl, combine the ketchup, brown sugar, and worcestershire sauce. Gently pour it over the meat loaf. Cook for about 15 minutes or until heated through. Let stand for about 15 - 20 minutes before cutting. Serve with some garlic mashed potatoes and your favorite vegetable, and your family will think it was the best meatloaf ever.
Recipe #3:
Cheesy Chili Dogs
1 full pack of hotdogs
2 cans of chilli
1 can condensed cheddar cheese soup
1 can chopped green chillies
2 - 3 Dashes of hot sauce ( if you like it spicier judge accordingly)
10 hot dog buns
1 large onion chopped
Toppings:
Shredded cheddar cheese
Sour Cream
Salsa
Place the hot dogs in a slow cooker. In a bowl combine the chilli, soup and green chillies; pour completely over the hot dogs. Cover and cook on low for about 4 - 5 hours. Serve the hot dogs in the buns, you then top it with the chilli mixture, and onion. Then add the toppings you want. Great for kids.