• Bulgogi Mac and Cheese

    For this mac and cheese I used a creamy mild mix of colby and muenster cheeses to create a perfect backdrop for the bold, savory and stringent flavors of bulgogi and kimchi.

  • S’mores Burgers

    At a recent grilling party with some friends, someone had taken the liberty to break into the s’mores a little prematurely. Watching the marshmallow perfectly brown I happened to be standing in just the right spot that the marshmallow was directly in front of a burger on the grill in my eyeline. I laughed to myself thinking that the gooey browned marshmallow looked like cheese on the burger. I then stopped laughing and took out my phone for a quick note-to-self. MAKE S’MORES BURGERS IMMEDIATELY it read. And why not? Marshmallow, chocolate, and graham are one of the best flavor combinations in the world, and it’s no secret that chocolate and burnt sugar go great with a bit of salt. I showed up at my friends place this weekend with the ingredients and about 5 options for how we might do this. We narrowed it down to the 2 best ideas and got to work!

  • Roast Beef With Crispy Shallots

    The second meat at my meat slicer party last weekend was roast beef. Roast beef is insanely simple to make at home, especially when you have a meat slicer to cut it paper thin. If you make this same exact recipe and try and cut it with a knife it is going to come out a little chewy unless you really are able to cut it very thin. Anyways, roast beef is roast beef right? Yea it was perfectly cooked and seasoned, and really fresh, but still just roast beef. What made these sandwiches truly memorable though, was the crispy shallots and hint of horseradish mayo, along with fresh baked onion rolls from a local bakery near my friends house who hosted the party.

  • Flank Steak Hummus Roll Ups

    Hummus and beef may sound like a weird combination to us westerners who mainly use hummus as a dip for pita, but it’s actually a fairly common combination in middle eastern food. In this flank steak recipe, the hummus is used not only as a seasoning for the meat but also as a glue to help bind the steak together. It’s national hummus day on the 15th, and Sabra is really going all out for the day, I will give you some of the details on their fun giveaways at the end of the post.

  • Rice Bun Burgers

    This burger uses two rice patties as the buns. For toppings, cucumber, mint, peanut, and sriracha.

  • Veggie Loaded Meatloaf

    I was craving meatloaf. This is a sentence I have said as many as never times in my life, but it was the case the other night. If you are following along, you probably noticed the trend of healthy, mostly meatless, and pretty inexpensive dishes recently, because that is how I try to cook this time of year. Plus I keep having to make mac and cheese stuffed burgers for the cookbook publicity so I am trying to counteract some of that. That all being said, I wanted to make a vegetarian or mostly vegetarian “loaf”. I did some research, but most veggie loafs were loaded with grains and tofu, and not actual veggies like I wanted. I decided to just wing it and do mostly veg with a little beef and some cheese, sort of like a veggie heavy lightened version of a regular meatloaf.

  • Italian Chili

    A chili recipe that uses Italian ingredients and flavors, and is topped with grilled polenta

  • Arepa Burger

    A double smash burger served on an arepa with guacamole and cilantro

  • Thai Inspired Sloppy Subs

    Some of you guys might remember “Bro Week” from a few years back, where I made an effort to cook really simple recipes for a whole week, while maintaining my unique style and still using mostly homemade and fresh ingredients. Well my sister is a junior in college this year and has a kitchen in her apartment for the first time, so I decided to do another week of easy recipes geared towards her and other college students who want a break from the caf and aren’t in the mood for takeout. I know in reality, Jello shots is probably the only recipe of mine that will be happening in that kitchen, but I’d like to think that maybe Joanna, or other college students might benefit from this week of recipes.

    For the first college week recipe, I have a sloppy sub that is influenced by a Thai dish that features ground meat in a light chile-basil sauce. The slow cooker was perfect for this dish, as I was able to let it do it’s thing for 4 hours only stirring it twice through the process. I may be wrong, but I think tastes have changed a little in the 10 years since I was in college, and more and more students are into a little more adventurous cuisines like Thai, but still maybe can’t get any near campus, so I thought that this would be a fun and easy way to satisfy that craving.