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Scott’s Easy Baked Onions

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Here’s a great side dish to accompany grilled or roasted tri-tip – baked onions. There are a couple of ways to make this dish – one in the oven ahead of grilling the tri-tips on the Weber BBQ, alongside the tri-tips if you roast them in the oven, or ahead of time by cooking the onions in the coals of the BBQ fire.

It couldn’t be simpler – just takes a bit of planning and a bit of time – but it can overlap with cooking the tri-tips if you first start by getting the onions going.

I like to use just plain yellow onions – available everywhere. A rule of thumb might be 1 medium onion per person – but we really like onions so we usually double up the recipe and keep any left over to warm up along with the left over tri-tip later in the week.

To roast the onions in the oven, begin by pre-heating the oven to 425º F. Then, take a baking sheet or glass baking dish with aluminum foil (to ease the cleanup chores) and simply place the onions on the sheet or into the dish. Put them into the oven and wait – about an hour or so. Test to see if they’re done with a knife which should go in easily and come out cleanly. Remove them from the oven and let them cool down so that you can handle them.

To serve, use a knife to cut off the top and, optionally, drop a pat of butter into the onion – seasoning with salt and pepper.

For an alternative technique – cooking the onions in the coals of the BBQ – see this Weber video about “Melted Onions“.

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My Favorite Memorial Day BBQ Recipes

Hard to believe we’re into Memorial Day weekend and the unofficial start of summer! It’s a perfect weekend for firing up the BBQ and doing some grilling! Here are a couple of recipe ideas to tempt your appetite:

For a great side dish to go with the tri-tip, try my recipe for Scott’s Easy Baked Onions – or the Melted Onions actually cooked in the charcoal coals of the BBQ.

Fire up that grill – and have a great holiday weekend!

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Scott’s Wintertime Beef, Mushroom and Barley Soup

A favorite of mine this time of year is a hearty beef, mushroom and barley soup.

Some might call it a “beef stew” – and they’d be right. But it’s got a lot of liquid – assuming you use all of the liquids called for – yet has the great flavor of a beef stew. We made this for a second time today – using an amalgamation of one of Mark Bittman’s recipes along with a slow cooker recipe from Cooks Illustrated.

Ingredients

  • 1 oz dried Porcini mushrooms
  • 1.5 – 2 lbs beef chuck roast – cut into 1 inch cubes
  • 8 oz fresh Cremini mushrooms
  • 28 oz canned diced tomatoes
  • 8 oz mini carrots
  • 3 yellow onions – chopped
  • 4 oz tomato paste
  • 8 oz mini carrots
  • 2 oz Penzey’s shallots
  • 2 oz Penzey’s garlic
  • 1/2 cup red wine
  • 1/4 cup tomato paste
  • 28 oz can of diced tomatoes
  • 2 cups beef broth
  • 2 cups chicken broth

Directions

  • Soak the dried Porcini mushrooms in a cup of hot water.
  • In a Dutch oven, heat the olive oil and add the beef – brown for 10-15 minutes. Remove using a slotted spoon. Discard most of the fat remaining.
  • In a separate pan, brown the mushrooms – first dry and later adding a bit of olive oil.
  • In the Dutch oven, add the onions, salt and pepper. Add in the tomato paste, carrots, shallots, and garlic. Add in the mushrooms. Add in the porcini mushrooms – and the liquid while being careful to avoid any grit. Saute for 10 mins. Add the red wine. After 10 mins, add the tomatoes, beef broth and chicken broth.
  • Bring mixture to a boil.
  • Reduce heat to low – cover the Dutch oven and continue cooking for 1.5-2 hours. Taste the beef for tenderness to determine when ready to serve.Serve in large soup bowls – perhaps with crusty bread! Enjoy!
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What’s for Christmas Dinner? Pork Loin w/Apples!

Tonight, we’re making a pork loin roast for Christmas dinner – using one of our old favorite recipes but tweaked just a bit for this year’s event. (Isn’t recipe tweaking what fun cooking is all about?)

We’re trying dry brining the pork loin for a few hours in advance of cooking. The advocates of dry brining suggest that a day or so is the ideal timing for it – but I didn’t decide to try it until just a few hours before we need to serve dinner! So, it will be an abbreviated version.

To do the dry brining, I covered the pork loin (a 3.3 lb roast this year) with salt and put it into the refrigerator uncovered. When it’s time to cook, I’ll rinse the salt off the roast and then season it with salt, pepper and Penzey’s Bavarian Seasoning. From there, it’s back to our original recipe!

This pork loin roast turned out REALLY GREAT! Even though the dry brining was abbreviated, the roast came out great – moist, not dry at all – and a perfect compliment to the apple/cream/mustard topping. To add a bit more complexity to the topping, I also included a couple of rosemary springs and a layer of sliced red onion. This combination added beautiful flavor and complexity to the topping.

We’ve cooked this recipe many times over the years – although not much if ever during 2012. Today’s treatment makes us want to come back to it again soon. Try it for your family – it’s a huge favorite with ours!

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A Perfect July 4th Tri-Tip BBQ

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Are you planning a July 4th BBQ get together with family and friends this year? If so, the perfect BBQ treat is a tasty, well seasoned tri-tip roast – and you’ll find the preparation and cooking to be super easy:

Either way, you’ll end up with a perfect BBQ treat that your friends and family will really enjoy. Be sure to season the tri-tip well an hour or so in advance. I prefer just kosher salt, coarse ground pepper and a bit of Montreal steak seasoning.

Mix in a few burgers, sausages and hot dogs on the grill for the kids and you’ve got everybody covered!

Have a wonderful 4th of July!

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How to Cook: Easy Tri-Tip Roast on the Gas Grill

Here’s last night’s Tri-Tip finishing grilling on the gas grill. So simple to do!

This was a 2 lb tri-tip roast (smallish as they go) that we cooked on a gas grill last night.

Seasoned ahead of time with lots of kosher salt, lots of ground pepper, and a touch of Montreal steak seasoning

Fired up the grill to preheat for 15 minutes, then 7 minutes per side over the direct burners followed by 20 minutes with the fatty side up.

Let rest for 5-10 minutes wrapped in foil before slicing against the grain Turned out perfect!

This would be perfect for your 4th of July BBQ!

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Easy Oven Roasted Tri-Tips for Super Bowl Sunday

Scott’s Lazy-S Oven Roasted Tri-Tip

Looking for a super easy but delicious treat for your Super Bowl Sunday get together? One of my all-time favorites is my ‘Lazy-S’ Easy Oven-Roasted Tri-Tips recipe first posted here back in 2005.

Whenever we’re having a group get together, this is one of my favorite meats to serve. It’s easy to prepare and cook – less than an hour – and tastes great warm and cool. It’s perfect to put out on a buffet table where guests can come back for me – and they will!

The recipe includes a seasoning step the day before – but that’s optional. If you don’t have that much advance time, just season the tri-tip when you bring it home from the store on Super Bowl Sunday and you’ll be good to go.

Enjoy your Super Bowl – and I hope you share a great tri-tip this year to go along with it!

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What’s for Dinner this Christmas Eve?

This afternoon, we’re hosting our extended family for Christmas Eve. We’ll be serving a Niman Ranch uncured smoked ham along with broccoli, garlic mashed potatoes, and other goodies.

For wine, we’ll be trying a couple of whites that come highly recommended: Eroica’s 2010 Riesling from Washington state and a Sauvignon Blanc from J. For the red wine, we’ve got a couple of great Pinot Noirs from the Duckhorn Wine Company – a Migration Anderson Valley and Decoy Sonoma County.

Hope you’re having a wonderful Christmas weekend 2011 wherever you may be!

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What’s for Dinner Tonight? – Sunday, November 13, 2011

Earlier this week, I stumbled across this recipe for Slow Roasted Beef in Tomato Sauce by Joanne Wilson which I promptly bookmarked as something we might want to make as we move into fall, etc.

Yesterday, I was out shopping and ended up buying a 2 lb boneless chuck roast – knowing that I had this recipe in my head. This afternoon we cooked it – and it was just great.

This is one of those lazy Sunday afternoon recipes. There’s a flurry of activity around 1:30 PM as you sear the beef, sauté the veggies, open the wine, prepare the beef stock, etc. Perhaps 20 minutes of serious cooking and preparation – and then you’re in monitoring mode for the rest of the afternoon.

Our approach was a bit different from Joanne’s. Specifically, we had a two pound boneless chuck roast from our local Safeway. After browning it in a bit of olive oil, we sautéed a container of Mirepoix from our local Trader Joe’s before tossing the chuck back on top and then adding the red wine, beef stock, and seasonings. We brought the mixture up to a boil and then backed it back down to the lowest setting on our stove – and just let it simmer for a bit over 3 hours. Along the way, we poked at it every hour or so – getting more aggressive in the last hour.

The result was just perfect. Falling apart tender, superb flavor from the tomatoes, thyme, bay leaves, etc.. We served it simply – with sautéed haricot vert and garlic mashed potatoes. Wonderful.

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What’s for Dinner Tonight? – Saturday Oct 22, 2011

Tonight, we’re making a pork loin roast using this old recipe from Scott’s Kitchen. This was one of our regular favorites back in the day – but it’s been a few years since we’ve made it. The feel of fall in the air today tempted us to upgrade to this pork loin roast from a quick pork tenderloin recipe we were considering for tonight’s dinner.

I made one addition to tonight’s recipe – adding a hearty coating Penzey’s Bavarian Seasoning and a bit of lime juice as a rub before searing the roast in the French Oven. Sure smelled wonderful when I seared it just a few minutes ago!

After taking the roast out of the oven and wrapping it in aluminum foil, it’s time to remove the apples and then deglaze the French Oven with a bit of wine.

After deglazing, simply put the apples back into the pot, add in the cream and the mustard and you’ve got the perfect sweet/tart side dish to compliment the pork. This is a wonderful combination – love those Granny Smith apples!

Perhaps add a green salad like we did tonight and you’re done. A great hearty weekend meal!