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)!

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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!

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I know that lots of you have probably had roasted potatoes. But since we eat lots of steak and potatoes around here, I’m always looking for new ways to spice them up. And since I’m 65 miles from the nearest WalMarts well, I have to sometimes be creative- if I’m out of the things I typically use.

I’m going to show you the basis of the dish, and then you can take it and run with it.  I do things differently when I have different ingredients on hand, but the idea of the dish is the same.

Here’s what we’ll need to get started:

About 5 medium sized, Red potatoes (note, I had red and gold, as that is what my future sister-in-law shared out of her garden, but I believe red potatoes to be better for roasting. It’s the texture folks.)

5 TBS Olive Oil

Fresh Ground Salt

Fresh Ground Pepper

Onions (minced or fresh)- yellow onions are really the right thing to do. I promise.

Garlic (minced or fresh)

Hidden Valley Ranch Seasoning

Bacon (optional)

Trust me,though,  you’ll want to add bacon. Bacon makes all things taste yummier. (Please note- I was out of both bacon and fresh onion for purposes of this lesson. I apologize. I need to get to the store!)

Begin by taking that tasty, freshly washed potato and cutting in half, length-wise.

And then cut into half again.

Now place all those sliced potatoes into a bowl and add your olive oil, along with about 4 tablespoons of Ranch Dressing Mix.

Give it a good stir and make sure to coat the potatoes with the olive oil seasoning mixture really well.

Then, since we don’t have any fresh onion, we’ll substitute in some dried minced onion.

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Sprinkle in about 4-6 tablespoons. Don’t be shy. Do it! If we’d used real onion, I’d have had you put in about 2/3 of a cup.   But we’re improvising today!

Look how lovely it is:

Now throw in some garlic powder or minced garlic, or fresh. Whatever you have on hand. Fresh is best. But I don’t have any so I used some minced garlic that came out of the icebox. Two teaspoons should do it.  Add your freshly ground salt- more than you think you’ll need and some fresh ground pepper. If we had bacon, this would be the time we’d add 3 diced slices, of the salty goodness and then you could sprinkle in less salt.

Let’s put the mixture in a 9×13 casserole dish. You’re gonna wanna roast this goodness for about 25 minutes in a 425 degree oven.

About half-way through the roasting you’re gonna wanna stir this around.

When it’s done, it should look something like this:

Can you say yum? We like to serve it with fresh grated cheddar or Monterrey Jack cheese, sour cream, and chives on top. But you could serve it however you wanted. And there’s nothing wrong with serving it just like that. Because it’s all kinds of good on its own.  So next time you’re bored with plain old potatoes, try roasting some. I promise you’ll be glad you did!

Have fun in the kitchen-