Oh My. The goodness that you can get from this:

Combined with this:

These are so good. Here’s what you’ll need:

2 1/2 cups of flour
1 and 2/3 bottles of dark beer (I use Shiner Bock and believe it makes the BEST batter)
3 tablespoons of Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning, plus more for salting onions once cooked
1/2 tablespoon of Cayenne pepper
2-3 large yellow onions, sliced and separated in rings (Vidalia works best)
2 quarts of vegetable oil for frying

I like to slice my onions thick, and typically I pop out the smallish ends and save them for another dish.

Here’s what you’ll do:

Whisk together dry ingredients
Add one beer, and then as much of the second beer as you need to reach the consistency of pancake batter.
Dip onions in batter and cook until golden. Shake off excess oil.
If desired, salt again with more Creole Seasoning. They’re excellent both ways!

Here’s what they’ll look like finished:

Good stuff, right? This will make a plate big enough to serve 6-8 people.

Like any good Southerner, I serve them with ranch dressing, but it doesn’t stop these crazy South Dakotans from eating them with no sauce, or *gasp* (at the horror), KETCHUP!

I’m just kidding, y’all. They’re great no matter how you serve them!

Happy Onion Ringing and Happy Trails!

It’s no secret I’m a fan of Mexican food. I could eat it everyday, and twice on Sundays. I’m just sayin’.

This is one of our household faves, and I thought I’d share it with you. It’s quick and easy if you want it to be, or complex if you want to do it all from scratch. Myself, I never have time to do it from scratch, but you certainly could.

Since I’m 8 times out of ten in a mad rush to hurry supper along, I used all canned goods for this dish.

I used a 12 oz can of chicken (drained), a can of black beans (drained), a can of sweet corn (drained) and a can of rotel with all the juicy goodness added. I threw in some minced onion, and diced garlic as well as Cumin, Chile Powder and salt, to taste.

Here’s how simple this is:

Throw everything into a pan and stir until it’s warmed through.

Yeah, that’s it. Crazy, right?

Once all the ingredients are warmed through and smelling lovely, throw a tablespoon of butter in a skillet and toss on a flour tortilla. Fill half the tortilla with two tablespoons of shredded cheese, top with the filling, add more cheese on top of that, and fold the tortilla over.

Cook until golden on one side, and flip.

Once finished, slice it in half:

And serve with sour cream, guacamole, salsa, rice, or whatever other condiments your little heart desires.

Happy Cooking!

This is going to be food week here on the blog- well, at least there’ll be four days of recipes this week! I hope to get some ranching stories told too, as well as share some stories about last week’s calving. That said, I don’t know if time will allow for all of that because you know, I do have cowgirl’n to do as well!

First up, are some shredded beef enchiladas. It’s a great thing to do with leftover shredded beef- or shoot- you could even make a roast and shred it simply because you were craving these!

What you will need to make this loveliness is:

About 2 cups of shredded beef (slow cook it in the oven overnight- or in a crock pot on low overnight). I’m going to assume that all my readers know how to shred a beef roast!
8 flour or corn tortillas (I will say that corn is more “authentic” but it’s also more time consuming. So flour will work if you’re in hurry and feel like making less of a mess).
7oz can of diced roasted green chiles (or you can make your own)!
1 1/2 cups of salsa verde (or you can make your own). Something tomatillo based would be best.
Garlic Salt and Cumin (to taste)
1/2 cup diced onion
2 tblsp olive oil
1 cup of shredded cheese (Monterey Jack, Cheddar, Pepper Jack or any combination of those)

For the sour cream sauce:

1/2 stick of butter
3/4 tablespoons of flour
1 1/2 cups sour cream
1 1/2 cups half/half (or milk if you want to be healthier)
2-3 beef bullion cubes
1 cup water
cumin, salt and pepper to taste

To make the filling:

Add the chopped onion to a pan with the olive oil. Saute until transparent.

Then add the beef, your green chiles and warm through, adding garlic salt and cumin to taste. I added about a 1/2 tablespoon of cumin and 1 teaspoon of garlic salt, but whatever suits your taste will be lovely. If you had some fresh cilantro to throw into the warmed beef mixture that’d be super awesome too!

Once warmed through, spread the mixture evenly over your 8 tortillas and top with shredded cheese. Tuck them together in a casserole dish and start the sauce. While you do that, it’s best to pre-heat the oven to 350. Doesn’t the temperature 350 get a lot of love in the world of baking? I mean, let’s think about this for a minute- most recipes call for some form of 350 degrees!

Now it’s on to making the yummy sour cream sauce. Usually sour cream sauce is for chicken enchiladas, but it’s so good, I figured that beef should get some love too, you know?

Add your butter and flour to the same pan in which you warmed the beef mixture. Let’s face it. There’s always good flavor left over from something like that, and I figure why waste it. I use a cast iron skillet for these sort of endeavors, so you get added flavor from the pan. You’ll want to make a basic roux and wisk that together that for a few minutes until it turns a golden brown. Then add in your sour cream, milk or half and half, and your bullion cubes- dissolved in the water, and bring to a boil, cooking until smooth. Add your salt (as needed) pepper and cumin.

When the sauce is seasoned to your taste, pour it over the enchiladas and top each with two tablespoons of green salsa and shredded cheese.

Bake it in the oven for about 15 minutes (or until the cheese is melted and the sauce is bubbly).

Yummy, right?

Here’s the little goodie served up. I topped it with another couple tablespoons of salsa verde. If you had fresh cilantro, I’d totally throw some of that on top too!

Now, mix up a margarita and enjoy!

Happy Tuesday and Happy Trails!

I’m sure you’re all thinking, what a strange combination! But I assure you it is a delightful one! I am always looking for new ways to cook old favorites, and Bratwurst is no exception to that! I love them grilled, or boiled in beer with sauteed onions and peppers, and frankly, this recipe is sort of a combination. But since I was low on stuff in my kitchen, which is often the case here since I’m 60 miles from any sort of decent grocery store, this is a new twist on pasta.

Here’s the things I used:

4 bratwurst. Mine were made from antelope and were seasoned with Italian Herbs and Garlic. Trust me, they’re just as good grilled as they are this way! You could just as easily substitute an American classic such as Johnsonville Brats and this will taste just as lovely!

1 med-large onion (diced)

1 red (or green, or yellow) bell pepper (sliced)

Frozen or fresh broccoli or asparagus. I used frozen broccoli because I rarely have fresh veggies, other than asparagus on hand. It’s a drawback to living on a ranch in the middle of nowhere, but we manage, somehow!

1/2 stick of butter

1 dark beer

Penne (or your favorite kind of pasta) cooked as per the box instructions (I always add salt and a couple tablespoons of olive oil to the water).

Canned or homemade vodka sauce. And I know I’ve said I’d post my vodka sauce recipe at some point-this sadly, for those of you waiting, isn’t it. I was rushing around this time, and had to use canned. My favorite canned vodka sauce is Bertoli, in case any of you were wondering. If only I learned how to can maybe I could can my own vodka sauce!?! I digress.

Here’s what you’re going to do:

1. Add the butter to a hot 12 in skillet (in this case it’s my trusty cast iron skillet), then the bratwurst. You want to brown the outsides, but not cook the inside so much. So essentially you’re searing the meat. Once you’ve turned the meat a couple times and you start to see some yummy brown bits stuck to the bottom of the pan, add about 1/4 of the beer. You’re going to do a bit of de-glazing here. Continue turning the meat until all sides are browned, and you’ve used 1/2 your beer.

2. Once seared, you will remove them and cut them into slices, adding them back into the pan. Continue de-glazing until your meat is almost cooked through. you don’t want to cook it all the way, because you’ll overcook it if you do.

Just lookin’ at this makes me hungry!

3. When the meat is cooked until almost all the pink is gone, remove the meat and add the diced onion. They will pick up all the yummy goodness the bratwurst and beer left behind! Don’t be scared to let them get a bit brown. They’re yummier that way! Cook them on medium high heat for just a couple minutes.

Look how yummy the fond in the bottom of this pan is!

Onions:

Yummy!

4. Once the onion has started to turn transparent, add your diced red pepper and fresh or frozen broccoli.

Reduce heat to low, cover for a couple minutes and then stir.

Mmmm… even the broccoli is picking up that brown goodness left at the bottom of the pan!

5. Once your broccoli and peppers are properly steamed, add your diced bratwurst back to the pan.

At this point, as yummy as that looks right now, you could easily stop here and serve it over white or brown rice, or even just as is- it would be super good! You’d want to salt and pepper to taste if you were going to do that!

6. I’m sure this is unconventional, but it’s how I decided, in my rush, to do it tonight. I dumped the can of vodka sauce on top of the meat and veggies, covered it and turned off my pan. There was enough heat in there to warm the sauce well without over-cooking the veggies or meat.

7. In a big bowl add your cooked pasta.

I got this one at Kohls, on sale for $25! I love that store!

8. Now you may add your skillet full of veggies and meat and sauce. Toss well until every last piece of pasta is coated with sauce. It’s the only way to do things.

This would have been especially good served with fresh Asiago cheese, but alas, there isn’t a store within a couple hundred miles of me that believes we should have any kind of fancy cheese other than Parmesan in a container from Kraft Foods. Depressing, I know.

I am so hungry now!

For more kitchen creations, check out IHeartFaces (link below)!

I gave you the teaser for this post here and am just now getting around to sharing the other photos and instructions. I’m getting hungry just thinking about them actually!

We’ll roast our peppers first. I chose poblano peppers for this dish- you could use green or red bell peppers too, but they wouldn’t be as yummy. Poblanos are a very mild pepper; they have an amazing flavor and thick walls which makes them an ideal stuffing pepper. When poblanos have been dried, they become an ancho chili- which is one of my favorite chilis/spices to use.  I’ve also been known to make reduction sauces from them. It is the sweetest of all dried chilis and is commonly used in tamales.

Now back to our poblanos, don’t they look yummy?

To roast them you use your tongs and hold them over the open flame of your gas stove. If you don’t have a gas stove you can put them in the oven for 10-15 minutes at 350 and accomplish the same thing. We want them to look all charred when we’re done with them. As you finish roasting each pepper, place them in a plastic bag until they’re cool enough to handle. This is called sweating. When cool, you’ll remove the skin. I realize that removing the skin is messy.  So plan on getting your hands dirty.

For the stuffing, we need to start with a diced onion and a couple tablespoons of olive oil. I always use yellow onions in my recipes unless specified otherwise. I will occasionally use white, but I find the texture to be softer and I don’t enjoy the flavor as much. But if you have white onions on hand, by all means, they’ll be fine.

We wanna saute them quickly on a higher heat, because we want them brown around the edges. That makes them sweeter, and we’re about to juxtapose that sweet next to some hot. And I love sweet next to hot!

Once those get done we’ll throw in our ground elk. You could easily substitute ground beef, ground pork, or ground turkey. Be sure to turn the heat down.

Then thrown in about a cup of sliced, roasted red bell peppers. You could roast those by hand too, or you could just buy them in the store, which is what I usually do. I’m a cheater. You could actually have used fresh red bell pepper; you’d have just put them in when you cooked the onion. And that would have been just lovely! But y’all that are regular readers to this blog know that it’s not very often I have super fresh stuff in my icebox. And you don’t have to shop at Wal-mart for you groceries. I gotta tell you their produce is more often than not, not really that great. Is it spring yet? Time to plant a garden yet?

Toss ‘em into your now, browned meat.

Mix ‘em in and then since throw in some ancho chili, some cumin, a dash of red pepper and some salt.

And then, you’ll want to throw in 4 ounces of cream cheese. And since I’m such an awesome blogger, I failed to take photos of that portion for you. I know, how dare I forget, right? You can turn the heat off too.

Let’s get these pretty peppers ready to stuff!

First we’re gonna want to cut a slit at the top of the pepper:

Then cut one vertical to the first one:

And then pull out the seeds:

Now your pretty pepper is ready to stuff.

Add some grated Cheddar and Monterrey Jack cheese (note- I cheated and used the pre-grated kind; grating it fresh would be even better!)

Place the four stuffed peppers into a casserole dish because we’re putting them in the oven at 350 to melt this cheese.

They’re ready to go into the oven.

While they get all happy and the cheese gets gooey, we’ll whip up the sauce. I made a sour cream sauce- it’s easy. Butter, flour, chicken broth and sour cream.  And of course you gotta throw in some Cumin.

I think the peppers are happy now.

Oh. My. You. Look. Yummy.

I also made rice to serve with these. Typically, I don’t like Spanish or Mexican rice, but the Pioneer Woman shared her recipe with us, and I thought it sounded good. My usual gripe with Mexican rice is that it’s very dry and bland. But this one, was not! I think next time I make it I’ll throw in some corn and maybe black beans too! You should try it!

Here’s the finished product.

Be sure to garnish with cilantro. Fresh would be best, but if you don’t have fresh, dried will do in a pinch.

Here’s what you need to make the peppers:

Preheat oven to 350.

4 Whole Roasted Poblano peppers
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 med yellow onion (diced)
1/2 cup of roasted or fresh red bell pepper
1 lb ground elk, beef, pork, turkey
1 tablespoon ancho chili powder (or more to taste)
2 teaspoons cilantro (more if you like that tangy, lime-y flavor)
1 teaspoon of paprika
1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper
1 1/2 cups of grated cheese

Sauce-

2-3 tablespoons butter
2-3 tablespoons flour
2 cups chicken broth
1 cup sour cream

Melt butter. Add flour. Stir until mixture thickens- it’s going to be roux-like in consistency. Add the chicken broth stirring constantly until the mixture thickens. Stir in the sour cream.

I hope you enjoy these as much as we did!