Frozen Sweet Corn

We picked this up at the Farmers Market in the morning...

I feel rather lame with this "recipe". It's not really a recipe, but I've had enough people ask how we got our frozen corn to taste so delicious that I really don't have a choice. No, we don't cook it or add any other ingredients prior to freezing. There is no magic. But, this method is delicious and we've been doing it for a few years. The only change this year was the addition of our vacuum sealer we bought early in 2014.

The key to freezer corn is, well, the corn. Old starchy corn on the cob will give you starchy freezer corn. I know many people that wait until they've had their fill of fresh corn in the summer before they start to freeze. By then it's too late. Of course, it is a matter of preference, I guess. I just prefer the sweet, crisp kernels. 

We froze 12 dozen ears over the course of 2 separate weekends. We ended up with about 48 pints of corn. For us, it made sense to freeze in 2-cup batches. A little leftover if we have dinner as a side, but plenty for recipes. An important note: smaller ears yield less corn. That seems like a no-brainer. But, we got about 16 packages out of the first 6 dozen. Yes, your math is correct. Our second 6 dozen yielded more than 30 pints of corn. We bought from the same farmer two weeks apart.

Our process for preparing the corn for freezing is simple. We remove the husks and as much of the silks as we can. We aren't as freaked out about removing EVERY.SINGLE.STRAND.OF.SILK!!!! Yes, you might find a couple of silks in the corn you eat at our house. It will not hurt you. After shucking the corn, we sanitize the sink, then fill it with cold water for rinsing. I know: why are you sanitizing the sink when you're going to wash corn? Because we use the sink for everything, we won't be cooking the corn before freezing, and sanitizing makes sure there's no residue from raw meat in the sink.

Harry is the knife man. We don't have any fancy gadgets for slicing the corn from the cobs. When I was a kid, Mom, Gramma, and Aunt Brenda would use their electric knives to cut the kernels from the cob. We don't even have an electric knife anymore. If your knife is as sharp as it should be, you'll have no trouble cutting the corn kernels from the cob.

The picture at the top is a pretty accurate representation of how we work. Harry cuts the corn into a pan, then it's transferred into a big bowl. I measure two cups of corn into the prepared vacuum bags. After we have it all bagged, Harry runs each bag through the sealer. Because I had so many packages during the second round of freezer corn, I divided them among the deep freezer and two refrigerator freezers until they were frozen. By doing it this way, I didn't introduce such a mass of room temperature food at once.

Now, you don't need to vacuum seal this sweet corn for the freezer. We didn't own the sealer until this year and we always used zip bags in the past. The square freezer containers work great, too. 

If you DO have a vacuum sealer, you can count on your frozen sweet corn tasting like summer in November or December. Our bags are designed for boiling. So, I cook the corn by putting the sealed bag into boiling water. I'm not water-logging the corn and it tastes just picked.

So, that's it. No special equipment. No added salt. Summer during the winter. Will you be freezing sweet corn next summer?

...and it was in the freezer by late afternoon.

Homemade Chicken Stock

It's no secret that Harry is the primary hunter when it comes to the meat in our kitchen. He has an eye for the bargains. Whenever he's in the store, he always checks the meat department and looks first for the orange markdown tags.

There is nothing wrong with the meat that has been marked down. By law, grocers have to sell fresh items by a certain date. To cut their losses, grocers will mark down the price, sometimes by as much as half. We've been stocking our freezer this way for years.

Last week, Harry found chicken leg quarters at a stupid low price. He even said later he should have bought more. But, he brought home 11 pounds of quarters for around $5.25 - that's a great deal. We stuck them in the freezer immediately until we could make chicken stock on Sunday.

All you need to make homemade chicken stock is time. Prepping the vegetables took him about five minutes. The time needed is inactive - you just have to let it simmer, skim it occasionally and add more water as needed. Whether we're using whole chicken or quarters, we always pull the meat out when it is cooked - usually after 45 minutes to an hour. Harry picks the meat from the bones and the bones go back into the pot.

For this batch, we used carrots, celery, shallots, a leek, bay leaves, kosher salt and crushed peppercorns. We like pepper, so you might not want as much in your chicken stock.

This stock pot - a gift from my mom - holds three gallons and the only time we use it is to make stock. The technique is simple - put the chicken in the pot, cover it with cold water and bring to a simmer. Add the vegetables and seasonings and let it cook over medium with a slow boil until the chicken meat is cooked. Usually, unless you're serving chicken salad with breast meat, you're going to cook the meat again. It isn't necessary for it to be "cooked" cooked.

After Harry picked the meat from the bones, we have about 3 1/2 pounds of dark chicken meat. In the bowl is the meat I'm going to use to make Chicken & Dumplings and the rest of it will go into the freezer for Chicken Pot Pies, stir-fry, soups or whatever I decide. The skin and the bones go back into the simmering broth.

In another pot, I've added the picked meat to about 4 cups of chicken stock to make the chicken and dumplings. We were running short on time so I didn't chop up any extra vegetables to saute for this batch. Our stock is generally very strong and flavorful, so I also add about 2 cups of water.

Harry will generally let the stock and bones simmer for about two hours to draw as much flavor as possible out of the bones. Sometimes, he needs to add more water and let it cook down. We probably use 4 to 5 gallons of water to make two gallons of stock. The slow cooking and evaporation helps create a sturdy stock that will kick the pants off of anything you buy on the shelf.

When the stock has cooled enough for Harry to handle the pot, he strains it into containers. We let it chill overnight in the fridge, allowing the fat to rise to the surface. Then, I scrape the fat off and put the chicken stock into the freezer for future use.

We made two gallons of chicken stock and the total cost - including pantry items - was about $6. A quart-size box of chicken stock costs around $3 on sale. Plus, we also have three pounds of picked chicken meat in the freezer. I'd say it's worthwhile to make your own.

And these are the Chicken and Slippery Dumplings I made while Harry was finishing the stock. More on that later.


Two Gallons of Chicken Stock
8 to 10 pounds of chicken leg quarters OR
one whole fryer chicken, thawed
3 carrots
3 celery stalks
1 leek
1 shallot
1-2 teaspoons Kosher salt
1 tablespoon cracked peppercorns
3-4 bay leaves


Clean and slice the vegetables in half. All you're trying to do is create a surface for the vegetable flavor to come out of - you don't have to be precise.

Place the chicken in a large stock pot, and cover with at least 2 gallons of water. Bring to a strong simmer over medium-high heat, then add the vegetables and seasonings. Continue to simmer over medium heat for 45-60 minutes until the chicken is cooked.

Remove the chicken to a plate and reduce the heat to low. When the chicken is cool enough, using your hands or forks, pull the meat from the bones, cleaning the skin away from the meat.

After the chicken is pulled, add the bones and skin back to the stock and increase the heat to medium. Continue to cook at a strong simmer for one to two hours, adding water as necessary to concentrate the stock. Adjust the seasonings to taste.

Allow the stock to cool at room temperature until you can safely strain it through a fine sieve or a colander layered with cheesecloth. Pour into containers the size you desire and refrigerate overnight. The next day, skim the chilled fat that has risen to the surface and freeze the containers. We've kept frozen chicken stock for nine months with no flavor issues.

Harry's Mom's Meatloaf

For some people, meatloaf is boring but for many households, it's a fairly easy go-to dinner when time is tight. We we make meatloaf, it's always two loaves - Harry loves sandwiches and sometimes, we don't even eat it for dinner but make it specifically for meatloaf sammies.

I love my mom's meatloaf - when she makes it. Mine never turned out the same for some reason. I failed HUGE with a meatloaf recipe in 1984 that caused my then-husband to turn green at the slightest mention of meatloaf for dinner. OK, ok, the sausage wasn't quite as thawed as it should have been and that was long before I learned the joys of a digital thermometer. When Harry and I started The Wright Taste, my ex-mother-in-law - more than 20 years after the fact - chirped "You can't even make a meatloaf and you expect people to buy food from you?"

Harry wasn't, in general, a fan of his mother's cooking. We both have memories of the same general meals and these days, I'm not a fan of the way my mom cooked a lot of things when I was a kid. I still loved them - the only place I'll eat Ragu on my spaghetti is when Mom makes it - it's kind of hard to explain. And I STILL can't get my Boiled Dinner (corned beef and cabbage) to come out the same way Mom does, even if we buy the same brand of corned beef at the same time!

But Harry did like his mom's meatloaf and the first time he showed me the recipe, I thought "ICK!" But, this is the best meatloaf recipe I've ever tried. It's never dry and it's the perfect sandwich meatloaf - it doesn't get crumbly when you slice it and it also freezes beautifully.

This is the "normal" recipe - plenty for dinner for six plus leftover for sandwiches. Save yourself a little time and double the recipe. Freeze one loaf whole to heat for another dinner or freeze it in slices for sandwiches later. I don't know where Mrs. W got the recipe but since Harry was eating this as a kid in the late 50's, early 60s, I don't stand a chance of tracking down the original source.

Harry's Mom's Meatloaf

2 pounds ground chuck
1 cup plain bread crumbs
1 can evaporated milk
3 tablespoons ketchup
2 tablespoons dried minced onion
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon granulated garlic
1 teaspoon Frank's Red Hot
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium bowl, combine the evaporated milk, ketchup, dried minced onion, eggs, granulated garlic, Frank's and salt. Mix it well and set aside. In a large bowl, combine the ground chuck with the bread crumbs - take your time to work all the crumbs into the meat.

Now is when it will get really messy: Have Harry pour the liquid mixture into the ground beef mixture. As you squeeze the liquid into the meat, it will originally appear to be very soupy. Mix it with your hands until the liquid and meat are well-combined, then allow to rest for five minutes. The resting time will give the bread crumbs time to absorb the moisture, so it's possible to form it into loaves.

Add the cooled melted butter and mix well. Now it's time to shape your meat loaf. Only shape it into two loaves if you have doubled the recipe.

This is where I deviate from Harry's mom's recipe: I love ketchup baked onto my meatloaf. Harry's mom always covered it with American cheese slices - the choice is yours.

Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees for about an hour. I check the temp and try to keep it between 170 and 180 degrees inside.

Remove from oven and let rest for five minutes. Then, remove to a serving platter (to get it out of the grease), cover with foil and allow to stand for another 10 minutes - this will help the meatloaf "stiffen up" so that it's easier to cut without crumbling.

With four black thumbs, why would we try to grow a garden?

We tried to make a go of The Wright Taste this year, but Harry's work schedule is more important. I can't possibly ask him to roll out those cinnamon rolls after he's been inside that hot factory all day. That doesn't mean we still won't support our local farmers markets. After all, there's a much larger variety than what we could ever hope to produce.

I guess we aren't complete black thumbs. We have managed to grow a few tomatoes and last year's cucumbers were a huge success. We can easily search the net and ask more experienced gardeners for advice. But, there are several reasons we want this garden to be successful.

In our advanced years, we've been embracing more sustainable food sources. We've also become rather snobby when it comes to the produce to be found in the middle of winter. After my success with processing tomatoes for the freezer last year, we were reminded in the middle of winter how good a spaghetti sauce can taste when it's made from home-grown tomatoes.

Freezing takes some time, but I can do it without adding salt. If our tomatoes grow properly, I won't have to buy a single can of tomatoes ever again. The cost savings will add up, and it's one more thing that we will do to reduce our carbon footprint.

Spaghetti Sauce by the Gallon!

I love to cook but sometimes we're a little short on time. I love stocking the freezer with the good stuff so we don't fall back on mass-produced crap or think we have to pick up fast food. Double-duty cooking means you take a few extra minutes when preparing one meal to make enough for a second or more.

Hopefully, we'll have luck with growing our tomatoes and maybe score a deal like we did last year. Harry got an amazing price on about 120 pounds of tomatoes from a vendor at the Pataskala Farmers Market in August - $25. I turned most of it into Bloody Mary Mix but also made a couple of quarts of tomato sauce and froze some tomatoes after I peeled and seeded them. They were so good this winter but I'm completely out.

I'm already planning to make this sauce when the tomatoes come in and popping it in the freezer. If you aren't adventurous enough to start from fresh tomatoes, this version of spaghetti sauce uses the canned variety. Quit paying Ragu and Prego and whatever other companies are out there. Homemade spaghetti sauce is a breeze to make. My version makes one gallon for about $5 - how many meals will that make for your family?

Yeah, there's steam coming off of the onions, shallots and garlic. I forgot to take a picture when I used the red wine vinegar to deglaze the pan. Deglazing gets the yummy bits off of the bottom. Be careful to not scorch the garlic.

Here's the spices - seems like such a small amount for so much sauce. Do you know how hard it was for me to actually measure something while I wasn't baking?

After you add the tomatoes and the tomato sauce, throw in the spices. Stir it up, bring to a simmer and leave it on low heat until it's yummy.

I added our homemade meatballs to the mix. You can add browned ground beef or Italian sausage. My friend Trish uses meatballs, Italian sausage links cut into chunks and browned boneless country style pork ribs. Harry was in heaven when I described it to him!

Spaghetti and meatballs with a fresh-tasting sauce - even from canned tomatoes.

Get all the specifics for Double-Duty Cooking: All Purpose Italian Red Sauce by following that link.

Meatballs, meatballs, meatballs - subs & spaghetti!

A good meatball sub is hard to find. Harry loves them but doesn't like how the spheres roll out when you try to bite into it! These little beauties are perfect for spaghetti or subs.

I wrote this recipe and left out the veal for anyone who freaks out about eating baby cows. My preferred blend of meat is 2 parts ground beef, 1 part Italian sausage and 1 part ground veal. But, in the interest of all, no baby moo-moos were harmed in the making of this blog post. The photos you see are beef & sausage.

I prefer making a bunch at once and freezing them. Double-duty cooking is huge around here. Why just cook for one meal when I can put something in the freezer for a night that we might not have 2 or 3 hours to spend in the kitchen.

There it is in a big ol' bowl. Ground beef, sausage, our own homemade bread crumbs, some egg and spices and just a bit of Frank's Hot Sauce. I use granulated garlic for these so I don't have to worry about scorching garlic bits while I'm sauteing the meatballs.

All squished up and ready to be rolled. I wish I could find that picture of the mountain of meatballs in my food porn file. This recipe makes about 40 meatballs.

FOUND IT! YAY! It only took about 10 minutes to roll all these by hand.

 I love my collection of cast iron. The "youngest" I have was one that Mom gave me when I first got married in 1983. I needed it to make corn bread and it honestly took about 5 years before I could say it was truly "seasoned" properly. All of the rest of my collection is at least 70 years old.

Sorry - back to the meatballs. My friend Trish showed me how to make them years ago and how to keep them semi-round. Don't overcrowd the skillet - you need some room so cook them in batches. Roll each meatball into the skillet and shake the pan to keep them moving. You're not trying to cook them all the way through. I have another friend who has gotten the method down to not even brown the meatballs before adding them to her sauce. Must mind-meld with Pam Gaulin.

Isn't that pretty? No, I'm a dork and each time we've had meatballs subs, I keep forgetting to take a picture.

For all the ingredients follow the bouncing ball to Double Duty Cooking: Italian Meatballs

Yes, really. Frank's Original Red Hot DOES come in one gallon jugs! I try to catch it on sale at GFS Marketplace for around $10. If you don't have a GFS around you and you put that sh#t on everything, you can order it here.

Vietnamese Egg Rolls...Harry's Way!

Without too many details, let me just say that Harry knows Vietnamese food! Last winter, we finally decided to really test our kitchen chops several times with Asian cuisine and the results were great. As usual, when we get into our "experimental research" phase, we will spend hours making dinner.

The difference is visible on the nights when we are making Vietnamese food - I chop a few veggies and sit back with a glass of wine while Harry takes control! This recipe for Vietnamese Egg Rolls doesn't really take long, we take a long time. We always make a full batch so we can have some in the freezer - even with great effort, we can't come anywhere near eating 30 large Vietnamese Egg Rolls in one night.

Vietnamese Egg Rolls differ a bit from the more common Chinese Egg Roll is the meat - our version contains salad-size shrimp and pork with some veggies and noodles thrown in for depth.

Still didn't have my new kitchen light - in the back are our two dipping sauces. I made a sweet lemongrass sauce and Harry's Nuac Cham is the light-colored sauce.

I chopped all the veggies - some shallot, garlic, sweet pepper, Napa Cabbage and Bean Sprouts.

Ready for the freezer. We freeze them on a pan to keep the Vietnamese Egg Rolls from sticking together. Then, we can just pull out a few at a time to fry when we get a craving.

The expert! Harry puts about two tablespoon of the egg roll filling on the diagonal wrapper...

Then, fold the bottom up, close in the sides and finish rolling. He dips in fingers in the little bowl of water to seal the edges of the finished egg roll.

 You can find the complete recipe for our Vietnamese Egg Rolls right here!

Another pumpkin shortage? Not really!

A lot of people might remember last year's shortage of canned pumpkin in the stores - the entire 2009 Libby's harvest was processed, delivered, stocked and sold by Thanksgiving. Heavy rains in Illinois prevented the tractors from getting in and out of the fields and the pumpkin disappeared from store shelves faster than you can bake a pumpkin pie.

We always process real pumpkin - you know, those big orange things you cut funny shapes into every Halloween and stick a candle inside? My frozen supply ran out early during this year's farmer's market season and I was a little worried. No fears - I've been buying #10 cans of pure pumpkin puree at GFS Marketplace since July. In fact, I've never seen the shelves empty until my friend and fellow vendor Denise mentioned the store we both buy supplies at was out last week.

Part of this is because of memories of last year's shortage. People are panicking and buying more than what they normally would "just in case". Libby's has assured everyone the pumpkin harvest is fine this year, but it takes a little time to process those orange beauties and get them into the stores. E-bay sellers are scoring should-be-illegal prices. I'll admit to feeling more than a little bit of glee at seeing the price on a listing I was watching for research drop by over $20 since Libby's made their announcement - especially because the seller stated "They are already predicting a pumpkin shortage" in the listing.

So...I did rant a little bit:

The Great Pumpkin Shortage of 2010?

On to how to...

It really doesn't take any special skill to process your own pumpkins at home to use to baking anything pumpkin - pumpkin bread, pumpkin rolls, pumpkin pies. Canned pumpkin IS one of the few products out there that really is nothing but - no fillers, preservatives, additives, just pure pumpkin. But, with some time you can save a lot of money by buying pumpkins at the farmers market and making your own frozen pumpkin puree.

How to Make & Freeze Homemade Pumpkin Puree

Plenty of pumpkin in 2010 - Photo courtesy www.sxc.hu/dbgeorge

Tomatoes Coming Out of Your Ears???

Harry scored a great deal on tomatoes in Pataskala a couple of weeks ago. I now have jars of Bloody Mary Mix that hopefully won't kill us mid-football season. I have 3 quarts of tomato sauce in the freezer and 3 quarts of peeled, seeded tomatoes in the freezer - those will make yummy cream of tomato soup in the winter.

I hope we can come across another deal before the tomatoes disappear for the season. Of course, our own tomatoes won't be ripe until October, but that's another story.

If you are overwhelmed with tomatoes and the thought of pressure canning gives you the heebie-jeebies my Bloody Mary mix is a water bath process. I've also written a simple tutorial explaining how to get those red beauties prepped for canning or freezing.

Don't let your tomatoes go to waste! 

How to Prepare Tomatoes for Canning and Freezing

Summer's Tomato Bounty www.sxc.hu/edmondo

 Oh - the Bloody Mary Mix? Perfect for Ohio State Football Saturdays!

Bloody Mary Mix for a Water Bath Canner

Copyright Debbie Henthorn