Category: Recipes
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Transforming Thanksgiving Leftovers
So it’s the day after Thanksgiving and your fridge is exploding with a mangled turkey carcass, half a pan of stuffing, gobs of gelatinous cranberry sauce…and you’ve got no idea what to do, right? Don’t microwave another paper plate filled with stale leftovers. Transform the leftovers into something different and better! TURKEY MEAT Tamales Coming…
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Ben’s Legendary Green Chile Stew
A video tutorial is located at the end of this video! This is the most delicious of all stews. A regional specialty of New Mexico, the favored chiles for this stew come from farms near the town of Hatch. If they are not available in your area, you can buy them online fresh in season,…
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MasterChef Pork Butt Chili
This recipe is meant to be made in a pressure cooker, which reduces the cooking time to 1 hour (or so). True chili purists will want to make this in an enameled cast iron Dutch oven, and home chefs without either one can feel free to make it in the biggest pot you have. Follow…
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Ben’s Life-Altering Cajun Turkey
The Cajun-spiced deep-fried turkey has become very popular since Emeril introduced it on Food Network several years ago. Most of us don’t have a fryer large enough for a turkey, nor do we want to spend $50 on a fryer and another $50 on peanut oil, so an alternative is to “brine” the turkey from…
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Perfect Thanksgiving Turkey (brined)
For this recipe, you will need three 10-pound bags of ice, 1 gallon of apple cider vinegar, 1-2 boxes of Morton’s Course Kosher Salt (see the recipe below for different types of salt), white sugar, canola oil, aluminum foil, a cooler, a roasting pan, a meat thermometer, and, of course, a turkey. Do not brine…
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Spicy Goat Cheese Crab Cakes
So I love crab cakes. They were just about the only seafood I could stomach, growing up in West Texas so far from the sea. Needless to say, the seafood we got out there wasn’t very fresh. Exceptional crab cakes can be made with canned crab meat, and now they have the new vacuum-sealed packages…
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Ben’s Recipe for a Happy Life
1 generous handful of laughter. Laugh every day. If you find yourself not laughing frequently, something is wrong. Offer to walk your neighbor’s puppy dog, and let him lick you all over your face and stick his cold nose in your ear. That’ll get you giggling! 1 reserved teaspoon of religion. Spirituality is important for…
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Whole Grain Low Fat Banana Bread
My parents raised me on a whole grain diet with NO processed sugars. I’m talking course whole wheat and cornmeal, brown rice, with honey as the only permitted sweetener. Needless to say, many of my mom’s dessert recipes, particularly cakes and quick breads, suffered as a result. The texture was never comparable to recipes made…
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Pumpkin Apple Gingerbread
I made this recipe for a demonstration at Le Cordon Bleu’s campus in Scottsdale. An instructional video is at the bottom of this recipe. This is a loaf-style gingerbread, with enormous depth of flavor thanks to molasses and coffee in the mix, lightened and brightened with bits of apple, earthy with pumpkin, and spicy with…
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Cranberry Pumpkin Muffins
I’m famous for cooking with pumpkin, and I use it all year, not just during the holidays. This is a recipe that always brings them running. The sweet spiciness of the pumpkin bread is countered by the tartness of the cranberries. While canned pumpkin is available year-round, fresh cranberries are not. So I buy about…