We were upstate for President’s Day weekend and decided to roast a chicken to serve with mashed potatoes. Unfortunately mom forgot to buy potatoes. Fortunately we had made baked potatoes the night before and had some left so we decided to turn those into mashed potatoes….slightly unorthodox but pretty delicious.
For the chicken, we removed the liver and neck and washed the chicken in cold water. Then we patted it dry with paper towels and put it in our pan. (Then we washed our hands). Normally we would put lemon slices and herbs inside (but again, mom forgot to buy them…to be fair we didn’t tell her, and since we in the country, we couldn’t just run to Trader Joes or Whole Foods to get them). Anyway, we just decided to do a good salt and pepper of it, and stuck it in the oven. (note the photo of the liver…we didn’t cook or eat that!). We cooked the chicken at 350 degrees for about 60 minutes: until it was golden brown and the thigh juices were clear.
About 45 minutes into the cooking time for the chicken, we tackled the potatoes. First we peeled the already baked potatoes. Then we chopped them up, added milk and butter and heated in the microwave. And then we mashed them. Pretty simple, right. If you want mashed potatoes, but don’t have time to boil potatoes for 30 minutes: just bake a potatoe in the microwave and add butter and milk and mash, just like we did.
We also made biscuits (but from a Pillsbury package): They were very good but we can’t really claim credit. The only skill involved there was NOT burning them
While Max was working on the chili for the SuperBowl Party (see blog entry below), I decided to make pulled pork in the insta-pot. The hardest part of this recipe was cutting the fat off the pork shoulder…there was a lot of it and it took a while. After that it was easy: rub a good spice mix on the pork, sautee it and put it in the insta-pot for about 60 minutes. Usually this takes hours in the oven or crock pot, so it was amazing how quickly it cooked. We served it with brioche buns.
The ingredients are pretty simple: whatever spices you want to rub in (I used paprika, cumin, onion powder, garlic powder and salt and pepper); vegetable oil to sautee the pork in, tomato paste, brown sugar and apple cider vinegar to cut the pork in (along with water)…and that was it. Like I said the hardest part was getting the fat off the pork though.
(Me cutting away) After I finally got the fat off, I decided to cut the shoulder up into a couple pieces so it would be easier to sautee…and would fit in the insta-pot.
Then I rubbed my spice mix on, gave the pieces of pork a quick sautee. After Imixed the tomato paste/brown sugar/vinegar/water mix in the insta-pot, I added the meat. One key thing to remember when using an insta-pot is that you have to use rubber utensils so you don’t scratch the non-stick surface of the pot (we even bought a special teflon whisk since all the other whisks we had were metal.)
The pork cooked for 63 minutes, then I removed it and shredded it. The last step was to separate the fat from the cooking liquid (so I could add the cooking liquid back to the pork if necessary). I served it with barbecue sauce on the side.
Tonight we had our friends, the Coronas, over to watch the SuperBowl. We decided to make turkey chili because a) that’s what you do for the SuperBowl and b) you can make it ahead of time and not worry about it during the game. Unfortunately the game was pretty boring. Fortunately the chili was really good and the Coronas brought home made guacamole that was delicious! We also had pulled pork on the side (see related blog entry) for those few people who don’t like Chili!
Our recipe for turkey chili is pretty easy: ground turkey, onions, tomato sauce, chopped tomatoes and 3 kinds of beans (black, red kidney and cannelini..but you can use whatever kind you like. We also added frozen corn (not pictured).
First step is to chop the onions, then you sautee the turkey and the onions.
Next step open all the cans, add the turkey/onions to the crock pot and then add all the other ingredients…let cook for 4-6 hours on high and, if you want to add corn, add it during the last 1/2 hour of cooking.
We served it with rice, grated cheese, sour cream, chopped scallions and sliced avocados…sorry no photos: we were watching the half time show.
Welcome to kidscookdinner.com: a website/blog dedicated to kids cooking (usually dinner, but not always) and also to draw attention to the fact that a lot of people don’t have enough to eat. And thanks for all of you who watched us compete on Chopped Junior on Food Network which first aired on Tuesday, October 3rd, 2017 and then ran again on Tuesday, June 19, 2018. We were thrilled to compete to raise awareness (and hopefully money) for Action Against Hunger, an international hunger relief charity that we have supported since we first won a prize for our website domain name: kidscookdinner.com. If you want to find out more about Action Against Hunger, or donate to this charity, please click HERE. But if you just want to see what we cooked this week or other weeks, just scroll up or down!
As you may know, we (Max and Alex…the kids) started cooking dinner for our family once a week back in 2015. We realized how fun it was too cook and we wanted to share our experiences (and encourage kids to cook), so we started this website. We also randomly entered the website in a national domain name contest. Amazingly enough we won the contest and $35,000! Click here for more about the story of our domain name.
But because we have plenty to eat, and millions of people around the world don’t, we donated half of our prize ($17,000) to Action Against Hunger–a charity dedicated to saving the lives of malnourished children and helping vulnerable communities become self sufficient. We were lucky enough to get to visit the Action Against Hunger office in New York and meet some of their amazing staff. (Below we are sitting with Alex Cottin, Director of External Affairs, and Andrea Tamburini, CEO of AAH-USA, in August 2015)
We hope you enjoyed watching us compete on Chopped Junior and we hope you are inspired to cook more. Let’s all try to take the time to enjoy what we cook together. And, at least for our family, let’s be thankful for what we have and try to help those in need.
Hi all, since we are half Swiss, one of our favorite meals to make and eat is cheese fondue, and it’s super easy. Over MLK weekend we went skiing and what better cold weather/ski meal is there than cheese fondue? We also roasted some vegetables for Mom (she’s not Swiss so she doesn’t love cheese as much as we do).
The first step was to set the table with our Swiss napkins and placemats. Then we grated a lot of gruyere and cut up a baguette into chunks. Sometimes we use half gruyere cheese and half vacherin (that is called moitie-moitie…or half-half, but we didn’t have vacherin.)
Then we cut a piece of garlic in half and ran it around the inside of our swiss pot (called a caquelon) and we added the cheese (and a little white wine) and stirred constantly. (We also chopped the veggies and put them in the oven with a little olive oil.) When the cheese was completely melted and at the right gooey consistency, we transferred the pot to our fondue stand with a little heater underneath and enjoyed! You don’t want the cheese to burn but you do want it liquid. Dad (who is Swiss) particularly likes the crust at the bottom of the caquelon…sort of like a cheesey cracker. It’s called “la religieuse”, which means nun in french and none of us could figure out why.
Tonight we contined our adventures with the instapot…this time trying to make chicken parmesan, using another of Melissa Clark’s recipes. The ingredients were pretty simple: chicken breasts, garlic, mozarella, parmesan cheese, olive oil and tomato sauce. (The only fresh mozarella we could find was fresh mozarella sticks so we chopped those up.) We also started some water to cook pasta on the side.
First step was to slice the garlic and sautee it in olive oil (on the sautee function of the instapot) ( and this was probably the hardest part of the recipe!)
Next step was to add the tomato sauce and the thin sliced chicken breasts…we also added some grated parmesan on top, and used the pressure cooker function to fast cook the chicken:
After 5 minutes of pressure cooking, we manually released the steam, stirred the chicken and sprinkled with the fresh, chopped mozarella sticks (we also put some mozarella in our salad). We just let the mozarella melt into the tomato sauce for a few minutes (top on).
Finally, it was ready to serve (pasta ready too). It was pretty good but we kind of missed the breadcrumb topping that usually accompanies chicken parmesan. The good news was that the chicken was PERFECTLY cooked…super most and delicious. We probably like Melissa’s meatballs recipe better though (just being honest) but we will continue to experiment!
Tonight we had so much fun making spaghetti and meatballs in our equivalent of an InstaPot. It was so much easier and faster than making normal spaghetti and meatballs and delicious as well. We followed a recipe we found in the New York Times by Melissa Clark (and took a few shortcuts because it was a school night (and Mom was working late). The ingredients are simple: dried pasta, parmesan cheese, ground beef, mozarella cheese, panko bread crumbs, chopped garlic, one egg, and a bottle of good tomato sauce (or if you have time, you can make your own tomato sauce in the instapot thingy).
So the first step (if you are using bottled tomato sauce) is to make the meatballs: chop the garlic and then combine ground beef, chopped garlic, bread crumbs, parmesan cheese and one egg and form into balls a little bigger than one inch. Don’t forget salt and pepper too.
The next step is to pour the tomato sauce in your InstaPot and then put uncooked spaghetti on top. Then you drizzle olive oil on top of the spaghetti noodes and spread it around (so they don’t stick while they are cooking). Finally add the meatballs and one cup water.
The you cover and cook on high pressure for 5 miuntes. When that’s done, let the pressure out and stir to separate the spaghetti (if you have a plastic pasta fork, that’s the best thing). Sprinke grated parmesan on top and let sit for 5 minutes and then add slices of fresh mozarella (Melissa Clark said ricotta but we decided mozarella would taste better) and let sit for another 5 minutes with the top loosely on.
Finally, serve it up on a nice plate and enjoy! (Add more cheese if you like!)
Happy New Years! One of our New Years resolutions was to post more. (Believe it or not, we are cooking a lot, but we haven’t been very good about taking pictures and blogging about it….so we will try better.). Las tnight we flew back to NY from San Francisco where we had a great time visiting friends and family (and eating very well…more on that later). Mom ran to Trader Joes to get milk and a few vegetables but there was almost nothing left in the store for New Years Dinner, so we looked in our freezer and our fridge and we got lucky. We found a frozen leg of lamb in the freezer and even better, from our wonderful house guests (thank you Jay, Jean and Camilla!) over the holiday break: fresh lemon, garlic and rosemary in the fridge. So of course, we thawed the lamb, made a marinade of olive oil, lemon, garlic and rosemary and accompanied it with pearl cous cous (from the pantry) and a salad (thanks to mom’s late night run to Trader Joe’s). We finished up the meal with fancy brownies. Here’s the finished meal:
Here’s the ingredients and the first step: making the marinade: we chopped the garlic and rosemary, slice the lemon and combined it with lemons.
Then we unrolled the leg of lamb and butterflied it a little more (so it was a flatter piece of meat that could absorb the marinade and also cook faster). Then we put it skin side up in the marinade
Meanwhile while the lamb was marinading, we sauteed the pearl couscous (otherwise it sometimes gets a little soggy.) Once it was a deep brown, we added chicken stock and let it slowly simmer.
After the lamb had marinade 3/4 hour on one side, we flipped it to the other for 1/4 hour. Then we put in on a high grill to get a good sear.
Then we finished it in the oven (and for serving sliced it up into smaller pieces). We served it with our yummy pearl cous couc:
For dessert, we made our famous brownies (just butter, chocolate, eggs, sugar and a little bit of flour) but fancied them up with whipped cream and raspberries.
Final version, with final plating (sorry we missed the crumbs by the brownie…)!
Tonight we decided to try something different. We like Indian food but not if it’s super spicy so we decided to make Indian food our way…slightly milder. However, we added extra heat to the veggies for mom and dad. We made Chicken Tikka Masala with rice, raita, spicy vegetables and naan.
The first step was to chop the chicken and marinade it in a yogurt marinade for at least an hour. The marinade was simple: plain yogurt, chopped ginger, lemon juice, cumin and salt and pepper.
After we mixed the chicken and marinade together, we put it in the fridge and rinsed the rice. We always rince our rice 6 times (till rinse water is clear) and let it sit in water for at least 30 minutes. It makes it fluffier.
Once the chicken was ready, we sauteed it about 5 minutes each side, and then removed it from the pan. Then we made the sauce which consisted of: tomato sauce, chopped garlic, cumin and paprika. Finally, we added the chicken back in and let simmer for 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, we went to work on the spicy vegetables and the raita. For the vegetables we had red onions, green beans and cauliflowers, which we tossed with olive oil and salt and pepper. For our parents’ half, however, we added the cayenne pepper that we didn’t add to the marinade (hahaha). For the other half of the veggies: just the olive oil, salt and pepper. For our raita, we combine plain yogurt, chopped cucumbers, chopped tomatoes, finely chopped red onions, cumin. and salt and pepper. We like having something to cool off any spiciness, and mom and dad really needed it with their vegetables. We didn’t make the naan: we just bought it and reheated it for about 2 minutes in the oven.
Everything was delicious, and it just shows that the best way to eat what you want to eat is to MAKE IT YOURSELF!
Tonight I wanted to eat roast beef and yorkshire pudding but I knew I didn’t have enough time to make a whole roast beef. Instead I bought sirloin steak (which cooks much quicker) and made yorkshire pudding on the side. I also made a big salad for mom and dad (using every veggie in the fridge!). Yorkshire pudding is just so delicious! It’s like a giant pancake (or giant popover). We always make it for Christmas dinner but it’s so good, I decided we needed to make it more often.
Yorkshire Pudding
The ingredients are really simple: eggs, milk, flour and salt. You whisk those together until smooth and then cook in a hot oven in a preheated bowl in which you have melted butter (or if you are making roast beef, you put in some of the drippings from the roasting pan). It puffs up incredibly (you have to eat it right away after its finished cooking.)
Salad
For the salad, I combined spinach, arugula, shredded broccoli, tomatoes, avocado and goat cheese. I also roasted some veggies as a side.
Steak
Cooking steak is pretty straightforward. Slat and pepper both sides, get the pan hot (grill pan preferable) and cook away!
