Category Archives: Comfort food

Appetizers, Comfort food, Sneaky Healthy

Potato Skins

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A game-day classic, potato skins are always a hit. A friend was having a football party, I had a 5 pound bag of potatoes, guess what I made! They are very simple, though time-consuming.
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Ingredients:
6-12 potatoes, washed and cut in half
Butter/margerine
Sea salt
1/2 pound bacon or turkey bacon
Cheddar cheese
Sour cream
Salsa
Green onion/chives

Step 1: Rub potatoes with oil, and poke holes in them with a fork. Microwave potatoes on high for 10 minutes.

Step 2: Cut potatoes in half, cover outside and insidewith butter and sea salt. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.

Step 3: Hollow out the potatoes. Flip upside down, bake for another 20 minutes. You can use the scooped-out part for mashed potatoes, soup, or just eat them because they’re warm and salty and delicious.

Step 4: Flip back over, brush with more butter and bake a final 20 minutes. You’re now ready to top them.

Step 5: Cook the bacon on both sides until brown. Drain on paper towels and break/cut into small pieces. Sprinkle a healthy tbsp into each potato skin. Cover with cheese, a dollop of sour cream, salsa and/or green onion.

Made in your own home and not deep-fried, these are healthier for you than if you ordered them from a bar or restaurant. Leave off the bacon for a vegetarian treat.

Casseroles, Comfort food

Tuna Noodle Casserole

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Simple and filling, tuna noodle casserole has been a mainstay throughout my childhood. With very few ingredients, it is a great fall-back weeknight dinner for when I don’t feel like cooking something extravagant. And it also is a great dorm food, believe it or not. I used to make a super-poor version as an undergrad student all the time! You can use a microwave and a pack of Ramen noodles to make delicious tuna noodle casserole. Just heat the noodles in the microwave for 5 minutes, let cool a bit and drain. Add a can of drained tuna and a can of cream of mushroom, mix it up and enjoy! If you get the soup on sale it can cost less than a dollar. This is the grown-up version, bulked up with extra veggies and baked to a crispy finish!

Ingredients:
1/2 pack egg noodles
2 cans tuna, drained
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 celery rib, diced
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup peas & carrots
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
Garlic salt

Step 1: Open & drain the tuna, mix it in a bowl with the cream of mushroom soup.

Step 2: Boil the noodles for ~8 minutes. Add the diced celery in the last 5 minutes of cooking. Drain the noodles and celery.

Step 3: Mix the noodles into the tuna mush, and add the peas & carrots.

Step 4: Spray an 8×8 casserole dish and pour the mixture into it. Add the 1/2 cup milk and let it sink in.

Step 5: Sprinkle the breadcrumbs and garlic salt on top.

Step 6: Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes, or until bubbly and golden brown on top.

Makes roughly 4 1 1/2 cup servings. Warm and homey, this is a great easy dinner. You can add whatever veggies you feel like, or dried onion and other spices.

Comfort food, Less than 5, Main Dishes, Vegetarian

Easy Mashed Potato Pirogi

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As a Hungarian-Slovak-Polish American, pirogi are a critical part of many holidays. And any day of the week really. I had never attempted making them, but since we had recently made FIVE POUNDS of mashed potatoes, I decided to give it a try with the leftovers.

Since the potatoes are not my recipe, I can’t put the mashed potatoes on here, but they were great! I know it involves sour cream, cream cheese, cheddar cheese and butter…. Anyways, start with any mashed potatoes as the filling. And the dough is super-easy to make!

Ingredients:

  • 1 16 oz tub of sour cream
  • 3 cups of flour
  • Mashed potatoes (~1 cup)
  • 1/2 stick butter
  • 1/2 onion, diced

Seriously, it’s that easy!

 Step 1: Mix the flour and sour cream well until it forms a dough. Roll it out on a floured surface.

 Step 2: Using a small cup or other cutter, cut out ~3inch circles of dough. You can re-roll the pieces about 4 times.

mashed potato pierogi

 Step 3: Place ~1 tsp of mashed potatoes in the middle of the circle of dough. Press the sides together to make a half-moon shape. Crimp the edges with a fork.

 Step 4: Drop into boiling water and simmer for about 5 minutes to cook the dough. Drain.

 Step 5: Melt a half stick of butter (or as much as your arteries can handle!) and cook the onions until translucent and slightly browned.

Step 6: Fry the pirogi in the butter & onions about 3 minutes, until yellow-brown on both sides. Enjoy!

They weren’t quite as good as my grandma’s or mom’s, but pretty darn good for a first attempt! And I have the rest of forever to perfect my techniques.

Casseroles, Comfort food

Extra Creamy Ham & Scalloped Potatoes

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So I had bought a small chunk of ham for sandwiches, and still had a few slices left. I wanted to use them up, and I also had some potatoes, of course my first thought was ham & scalloped potatoes! It’s one of my favorite baked dishes, and sounded like a good idea. In order to get my boyfriend to eat it, I added his favorite ingredient: sour cream. To rationalize it to myself as healthy, I added veggies: green onion and corn.
Ingrdients:
2 small potatoes, peeled and sliced thin
1/4 cup flour
1 cup ham, cubed
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup cheddar cheese
1/2 container sour cream
1/2 cup corn
1/4 cup sliced green onion
Natures Seasoning, or salt & pepper to taste
Step 1: Peel the potatoes and slice as thinly as possible. Lay half in the bottom of a greased 8×8 dish. Sprinkle the flour and seasoning over them.

 Step 2: Layer on the diced ham. Spread a thin layer of sour cream, sprinkle in some green onion and corn kernels.

 Step 3: Repeat potato, ham, sour cream and veggie layers.

 Step 4: Cover with the rest of the sour cream & cheddar cheese. Pour in the milk.

 Step 5: Cover with aluminum foil, bake at 350 for 1 1/2 hours. Uncover, bake another 15-20 minutes, until browned and bubbly.

 Step 6: Serve and enjoy!

This is a perfect hot & hearty full meal for cold fall/winter days. Great for after major holidays too, when ham goes on sale!

Comfort food, Main Dishes, Soups

Hungarian Chicken Paprikush

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This is in my top 5 favorite meals of all time!

A Hungarian (or maybe Slovak?) recipe handed down from my grandmother and mother. It is simple to make, just a few ingredients. It does take a bit of time and some labor-intensive steps, however the end product is so worth it!

Finished Chicken Paprikush

The noodles can of course be bought, but making your own noodles is well worth the effort. They taste so much better than any store bought noodles ever could.

Ingredients:

  • Chicken
  • Water
  • Sour cream
  • Flour
  • Paprika
  • Salt & pepper
For this I used 4 chicken leg quarters, because dark meat gives the soup a richer flavor. You can use white, dark, or a mixture of both. Put the chicken in a pot and cover it with water plus a little bit extra. Maybe a gallon and a half of water.
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Boil for at least 2 hours or until chicken is no longer pink at all. Take the chicken out and pull all the meat off the bone. Throw the bones, skin, fat, and any other non-edible parts away and return the meat to the pot. I did this step the night before and refrigerated it until the next day but you can also just continue right into the next step.
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The second step is creating what I think is called a “zapraska”.
This is how you mix in the sour cream without it curdling. The sour cream should be left out at room temperature. Mix about 1 cup sour cream with 2 tbsp. flour (omit the flour if you want watery soup) in a separate bowl. Then slowly add soup to it while mixing continuously.
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The soup will slowly warm up the sour cream. Continue adding and mixing well until it is warm. Then you add the zapraska to the main soup bowl and mix it all together. Add paprika, salt and pepper to taste.
And now for the fun part! You get to make your own noodles. Trust me, it is super duper easy. Honestly, cleaning up afterwards probably takes longer than making them.
Noodles:
  • Eggs
  • Flour
The ratio will depend on how many noodles you need to make. I only needed a small amount, so I used 6 eggs and approximately 1 cup of flour.  You will also need a noodle maker, we call it a “shusher’. I don’t know what it actually is called. If you don’t have one of those, you can always drop the dough with a spoon into the water; this will create larger dumpling like noodles.
Scramble the eggs in a large bowl. Mix the eggs and flour together a little bit at a time. Keep adding flour until it has a doughy consistency. A spoon left in it should basically be able to stand upright.
Get a big pot of water to a rolling boil. Then pour the dough into the top basket of the shusher. Push it back and forth so the dough drips through into the boiling water.
Make sure to stir a few times throughout so that the noodles don’t all stick together. Keep going until all the batter is used up. Drain the noodles completely.
These will be the sweetest, saltiest, most eggy and delicious noodles you may ever have had! Put some into a bowl, and pour the soup and chicken on top. You can add some extra paprika or salt to taste.

 

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Comfort food, Healthy, Main Dishes, Soups, Vegetarian

Baked Potato Soup

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As stated previously, cold weather is made for soups and stews. But you can only throw meat, vegetables, and some kind of stock together so many different ways. Sometimes I need a soup of a different texture.

Given that the days of grilling and baked potatoes are slowly fading, I decided to make the soup adaptation of baked potatoes. It is creamy, cheesy, thick and filling. Not to mention it is relatively cheap to make (especially if you skip adding the bacon, but I wouldn’t recommend it).

The way I made it, you will make the mashed potato base, and then both thin and thicken it with the broth and dairy and add-ins.

For soup base:

  • 6 medium baking potatoes
  • 3 cups of chicken broth or 3 bouillon cubes (for vegetarian use veggie broth)
  • Approximately 12 oz cheese (I used marbled cheddar and colby jack)
  • 1/2 block cream cheese

Soup additions/toppings:

  • 1 cup milk
  • 1/4 cup cooked bacon
  • Handful of chives
  • 3 cloves garlic
  • 1/2 small onion
  • 1/2 block cream cheese

Step 1: Wash and peel the potatoes. Cut the potatoes into quarters and add to 3 cups chicken broth. Either boil for 1 hour, or put on hot in a slow cooker for 4 hours. Then liquefy the cooked potatoes in a blender and put into a soup pot on the stove. Add the cheese and cream cheese and put on low.

Step 2: While the soup simmers, combine the milk, chives, bacon, garlic, onion and the rest of the cream cheese in a blender. Liquefy all of the ingredients, and then add to the soup pot.

Once the soup simmers and begins to thicken, taste the soup and adjust to your liking. Then if you want to be all fancy, you can serve it with a sprinkle of cheese and bacon, a dollop of sour cream and a piece or two of chives.