Tag Archives: tomato

What’s the non copyrighted or trademarked name for Beefaroni?

Posted on by Standard Reply

I’m gonna call it beefaroni anyway, because these names are just ridiculous:

The dish commonly sold as “Beefaroni” (a trademarked name owned by Conagra Brands) has several regional and generic names. Depending on where you are in the US, the most common non-trademarked names for this ground beef and macaroni tomato skillet are American Goulash, American Chop Suey, Slumgullion, or Johnny Marzetti. [1, 2, 3]

Right?

A white bowl full of homemade beefaroni - spiraling pasta with ground beef.
Boy are deez tasty.

At any rate, I was hungry for it… and I am not a fan of the Chef Boyardee stuff/ (Sorry, Chef!) We would have this occasionally when I was growing up, and it’s a comfort meal I guess. It’s easy enough, and safe for the beef part these days, pretty economical.

Below is how I do it. How do you do it, & what do you call it?

Stuff yinz need:

How to do it:

  1. Bring 4 quarts water to boil in a stock pot, ad the bouillon cubes, Italian blend, & Dash.
  2. Brown the ground beef in your skillet, hit it will all those spices… or whatever you got or like. We don’t measure here. Season until you think it’s too much, then keep going a little bit.
  3. Drop that Cavatappi or whatever pasta shape you dig into that water for 7 minutes or the recommended time on the box. Make sure you stir it up every once in a while.
  4. Drain the pasta, leave a lil’ bit of pasta water, return it to the warm yet off burner.
  5. Dump in the ground beef, the tomato soup, and stir like you practiced with the pasta.
  6. Put it in a bowl and eat it.

Notes?

  • Yeah, tomato soup! Not tomato sauce, pasta sauce, tomato paste, crushed tomatoes, or any of that for me. This is cheap.
  • Obviously if you would prefer any of that, do it.
  • Sauteed onions, diced tomatoes, some type of beans, or even bell peppers would probably be great in this.
  • This is a memory I’m not messing with though. I’m keeping it basic and cheap.

There you have it. I know it hit the spot for me.

A close-up photo of a pot containing delicious spiraling cavatappi pasta with ground beef covered in condensed tomato soup. It's red and warm image overall.
Comfort Food / Struggle Meal

Pizza Pockets

Posted on by Standard Reply

So, a while back I made some things, and I don’t know if they were calzones or stromboli because no one can seem to fully agree on the definitions of either. Yes, I know definitions exist, but restaurants are all over out here calling them the wrong thing and people will confidently give you their contradicting hyper-regional opinions as gospel. Maybe it’s a turnover? I like alliteration, so Pizza Pocket it is.

[ Just The Recipe | Cooked Wiki | Only the Recipe ]

The first ones I made were not pretty. They were more half-moon shaped, one was not sealed well. They were delicious, but not awesome. I used pizza dough balls from Aldi and I did not do a great job stretching it.

This time I made some for lunch, and they looked pretty good. I put fillings in to order for each of us, and put our initials on top so they didn’t get mixed up. I got a resounding seal of approval on these, so I’m putting it here to make it again.

A top-down view of a parchment paper lined baking sheet holding four large, crispy, golden-brown pizza pockets. Each pocket features a personalized family initial carved into the top crust to identify the different fillings, with hints of glorious melted cheese peeking through.
Pizza Pockets!

Here’s what I used:

  • Giant Eagle pizza dough pop-tube
  • Jarred pizza sauce
  • Shredded Italian blend cheese
  • Shredded Mozzarella cheese
  • Parmesan cheese (the powdery shake kind)
  • 2 eggs
  • ½ stick butter
  • “Toppings:” (Fillings?)
    • canned mushroom stems & pieces
    • canned black olive slices
    • jarred roasted red peppers
    • diced ham
    • mini pepperoni
  • Spices:
    • garlic powder
    • onion powder
    • paprika
    • Italian blend
    • parsley
    • Dash table blend

Here’s how I made them:

  1. Preheat the oven to 400° (Or if you’re weird like me, preheat it to 425° then crank it down to 400° after you put the food in.)
  2. Put down some parchment paper on a large baking sheet because washing dishes sucks.
  3. Put any wet toppings like the mushrooms, olives, & red pepper on a paper towel or two do drain & dry off a bit.
  4. Melt the butter in a microwavable bowl, add in spices to taste.
  5. Crack the eggs into another bowl, whisk (or fork), and add spices again.
  6. Pop open the scary dough tubes with a spoon, roll them out, and cut them in half the short way.
  7. Put down the Italian cheese blend on half of the half. I didn’t measure, but I did use the whole bag. Leave room on the edges so you can seal the dough.
  8. Spoon on a very little bit of the pizza sauce.
  9. Add your preferred toppings, keeping track of who gets what. I took ’em all!
  10. Sprinkle some parmesan cheese.
  11. Top with a little bit of Mozzarella.
  12. Hit the edges with some egg wash.
  13. Fold over the dough to make a nice rectangle, and use a fork to crimp the 3 “open” edges.
  14. Brush the egg wash on top, then brush the melted butter on top of that.
  15. Add extra spices on top if you think it needs it, and go for more parmesan too.
  16. Cut slits in the top shaped like everyone’s initials so you know whose is whose.
  17. Pop that in the oven at 400° for 20 minutes and you get what I got in the picture.

Suggestions/Substitutions/Advice:

  • I measure with my heart. You should too. Trust your judgement. Season until your ancestors tell you to stop.
  • It’s also fun to make mountain pies (if you have a campfire going) or pizza grilled cheese.
  • You could get fancy and do all kinds of stuff like green peppers, pepperoncini, sausage, onion, Ricotta, anchovies, spinach, basil, whatever.
  • Of course use whatever dough or cheese fits your fancy, fits your budget, or is simply what’s available.
  • You can skip the pizza sauce. I also wouldn’t overdo it… you want vents up top to let steam out so it doesn’t stay too wet.

So, do you make something similar? I am way too impatient to make dough, and I seem to even be too impatient to stretch a dough ball properly. These rolled canned tube things were perfect.

Hit me up on the comments or social media replies with some conversation:

  • What would your toppings of choice be?
  • Is this a Calzone, Stromboli, turnover, or what?
  • What would you do different?

Regardless, when making a pizza, calzone, stromboli, you gotta listen to my Punk Rock Pizza Party playlist. Oh and, hey… Did you try and make a meatball club yet? You don’t have to do stuff the same boring way as everyone else. If you did make one, you should get a T-shirt (or at least a button).

I will continue to make weird stuff, and leave pizza to the experts. You could wear this T-shirt while you make pizza 0r eat pizza.

Bunny Rabbit | Garden & Easter Mazes 🐰🥚🧺🥕🫑🥦🥬🐇

Posted on by Standard Reply

You should really buy my maze book. It has mazes like this, only in black & white. It has all the solutions, too.

Of course, you can just enjoy these here for free too, just like all the other ones on my blog. I really like it when people share their solutions in the comments or by tagging me on social media.

You can use my maze book like an adult coloring book too. Some people color in all the dead ends until the path is revealed. I fully support maze solution anarchy.

Maybe print these out & try them while you’re waiting for Easter dinner to cook, passing time before your seder meal for Passover, fasting for Ramadan, or you’re contemplating what to plant in your vegetable garden.

If you do celebrate Passover, Ramadan, Eid al-Fitr, Beltane, Ostara, Imbolc, Chaitra Navratri, Ram Navami, Vishu, Ugadi, Vaisakhi, Baisakhi, Hanamatsuri, Qingming, Walpirgis, just Spring Equinox… or some other holiday… Would you like a maze themed for that? I try to approach everything with a mix of reverence & levity. I like to learn about other people’s holidays and the meaning & traditions behind them.

A hand-drawn maze where the object is to help a rabbit eat all of the vegetables in your garden.
It's a hand-drawn Easter egg hunt themed maze.

I may have to do a guinea pig themed maze soon…

Oh yeah, you can get the vegetable garden one on a T-shirt or a bunch of other stuff at TeePublic or RedBubble if you’d like to wear it while you garden or hang it on your wall.

Culinary Anarchy | You don’t have to parboil the lasagna noodles!

Posted on by Standard Reply

A slice of lasagna on a white plate, showcasing layers of pasta, ricotta cheese, meat, and marinara sauce.
Leftover Lasagna – about to be re-heated in the microwave.

I have seen it out there on the internet for years, and I was afraid. Surely the ready-to-bake lasagna noodles are drastically different from the regular ones, right? I’m not talking fresh pasta that needs no prep… I mean the dried boxed stuff that food snobs will tell you is inferior.

I did it. No one died. Everyone seemed to like it. I’ll put my recipe down here first & the shenanigans after that… because Threads gave me some shenanigans. Trigger warning for Nonnas worldwide: I put brown sugar in jarred sauce. Proceed with caution.

Here’s what I did…

Ingredients:

  • (3) 15 oz. containers ricotta cheese
  • (2) 8. oz/2 cups bags shredded Mozzarella/Provolone cheese
  • (1) 2.41 lbs. package 90%/10% ground beef
  • (1) small zucchini, shredded (maybe 2 cups?)
  • (3) 24 oz. jars marinara sauce
  • (1) 1 lb. box Barilla lasagna noodles
  • (2) eggs
  • ½ cup grated Parmesan/Romano cheese
  • shredded parmesan (to taste)
  • fresh curly parsley (to taste)
  • Italian seasoning (to taste)
  • dried parsley (to taste)
  • brown sugar (to taste)
  • jarred minced garlic (to taste)
  • garlic powder (to taste)
  • onion powder (to taste)
  • black pepper (to taste)
  • paprika (to taste)
  • Mrs. Dash table blend (to taste)
  • salt (to taste)

Method:

  1. Preheat oven to 375° (Next time I may do 350° for a longer time, but we were in a but of a hurry.)
  2. Brown the beef in a pan on the stove with some of all your spices to taste. (I could/should have included onion here.)
  3. Mix the ricotta, one bag of the shredded cheese, the grated parmesan, a bit of the shredded parmesan, the eggs, fresh parsley, & shredded zucchini in a large bowl, again with all the spices including the garlic.
  4. This filled two 9×13″ glass baking dishes for me. I think I layered them both a bit different. Follow your heart. Put sauce on the bottom, sprinkle in some brown sugar, the dry lasagna noodles, the ricotta mixture, the ground beef, some more shredded cheese, more sauce, more noodles, and just keep going. I did put a very little bit of water in the jars of sauce to swirl around & empty more.. and put that into the dishes too. Sprinkled cheese and made sure there was lots of sauce on top of each.
  5. Cover them tightly with foil & put them in the oven for 50 minutes.
  6. Take out, sprinkle on some more of the shredded parmesan, cook for another 10 minutes.
  7. Pull out, rest for a bit, then serve.
A serving of lasagna on a white plate, showcasing layers of noodles, marinara sauce, ricotta cheese, and ground beef.
Two glass baking dishes filled with baked lasagna, topped with melted cheese and marinara sauce, resting on a wooden surface.

Notes:

  • Like I said, lower & slower next time. Maybe 350° for an hour then uncover & go for another 15 minutes?
  • Carrots may be good in with the ground beef… and/or mushrooms?
  • Maybe spinach in the cheese mixture or as another layer. Let’s get some fiber up in here.
  • I don’t generally like sausage, but if you do it’d be good here for sure.
  • What would you do?

🍝

Readers, let me tell you… people have feelings about calling that strip of pasta a “lasagna noodle.” There is also the fact that “American” lasagna has ricotta, but traditional does not. I was even told that because I added shredded zucchini it is no longer lasagna. I have made it replacing the pasta with long thinly-sliced zucchini planks and still called it lasagna.

People have lost their damn minds. No one knows that food and language evolve over time and across regions and even households?

I did plug my ingredients list into Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity, & Copilot to see what they would churn back out, but honestly I didn’t follow through with any of their advice.

I also make wedding soup incorrectly and put beans in chili. Clutch those pearls! Enjoy a meatball club. Hell, join the meatball club!

I look forward to your thoughts about lasagna, your tips, tricks & recipes, and the nuance of semantics involving pasta naming conventions in the comments. How do you layer yours? I feel like I need a way deeper pan. Do you go “traditional” and eschew ricotta? Do you call lasagna noodles lasagna noodles or are you pretentious?

I leave you with the discourse:

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Stuffed Cabbage Recipe

Posted on by Standard 1

So, recently I was hungry for stuffed cabbage. I had never made it before, so after Googling a few recipes and soliciting advice from a Facebook food group and Nextdoor, I came up with my own. You can put this URL into Just The Recipe or do the Cooked Wiki “hack” to skip all my bullshit up here.

I’m not a huge fan of rice in meatballs like you typically see with stuffed peppers or stuffed cabbage, so I was googling recipes without it and kept finding stuffed tagged as “keto,” or with other grains substituted in. I think it’s a texture thing for me, so I opted to go my own route. Also, get out of here with your sweet/hot sausage, I’ll add my own spices. Keep your veal/beef/pork mixes. Maybe ground turkey would be cool. Keep the lamb away.

It seems that many are tied to their family’s traditional way of making it, and that’s pretty cool. I always thought of it as an Eastern European type dish, but lots of cultures have their own spin & own words for it according to Wikipedia. The thought of omitting rice, or using condensed tomato soup instead of a tomato sauce or V8 sent some people into a tizzy. I even learned that lots of people include sauerkraut, and some people like it served with sour cream. Some people make it like a casserole. We always had the tomato soup version growing up, so that’s what I like/expected. Who knew? I’ll probably make it different next time… but both kids & the wife liked it, so I won’t experiment too much.

I used glass baking dishes covered with foil, but got advice that a roasting pan, an electric roaster, the crock pot, a Dutch oven, a soup pot on the stove, or a pressure cooker all work well, too.

Although, I would like to wrap a piece of bacon around the rolls and throw them on the smoker…

At any rate, check out the recipe, and give me your recipes. tips, tricks, advice, and heavily guarded family recipe secrets in the comments.

Also – What do you call them?

3 stuffed cabbage rolls & mashed potatoes on a plate, with a side of bread.
A close up of the inside of my stuffed cabbage roll
A collage of my ingredients putting together the stuffed cabbage.

Here’s what I did. 🤷

Get It:

  • 1 head of cabbage.
  • 4-ish lbs. of ground beef. (I used 3 lbs of 8/20 & 1 lb. of 90/10)
  • 2 eggs
  • ½ Yellow Bell Pepper
  • ½ Spanish Onion
  • 1 cup shredded carrots (I bought a bag and I’ll use it for other stuff too.)
  • 1 beef bullion cube
  • 1 stick of butter
  • 3 23.2 oz. cans condensed Tomato Soup
  • Bread crumbs (Do I look like I measure stuff? Probably a cup and a half?)
  • Shredded Parmesan Cheese (in the ‘lil fancy container by the expensive cheese)
  • Minced Garlic (just have the jar ready I’m lazy and don’t crush/mince my own)
  • Spices. I used salt, black pepper, white pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, Season All, & Table Blend. (I just throw it on at every step indiscriminately with complete abandon and total anarchy.)

Do it:

  1. Preheat Your oven to 400°.
  2. Get a stock pot, fill it enough to cover your cabbage. Drop in the bullion cube, and salt, minced garlic, and whatever seasoning your heart desires, and crank it to high with the lid on.
  3. Chop your onion in half. Toss half in the boiling water, but take the lid off first & then put it back on.
  4. Mince the rest of the onion.
  5. Cut up the yellow pepper. Feed half to your kids, the dog, or your significant other. Or just eat it. That’s the perk of being the cook. Mince the other half.
  6. Pull out a handful of the minced carrots, a big knife, and what them up until they are tiny pieces of shredded carrots. Our dog loves carrots, so I sprinkled some on her food bowl.
  7. I greased 3 glass baking dishes with the stick of butter. I used a 9″x13″, an 8″x9″, & a 9″x9″ because that’s what I had. I swear we broke like 3 glass dishes last summer.
  8. Melt what can surely be described as an obscene amount of butter in a skillet and sauté the onion, then the pepper & carrots on medium heat. I was sure to hit them with onion powder, garlic powder, salt, & pepper. I like to cook onions slow & low.
  9. Drop the head of cabbage in your now boiling water while you’re doing all that. Yes, remove but do not replace the lid.
  10. Put the sautéed veggies aside and let them cool a bit while you get the meat mixture ready.
  11. Set up a colander or strainer over a large bowl, & get your tongs ready.
  12. Beat your eggs, & add spices.
  13. Mix the meat, eggs, breadcrumbs, some cheese, sautéed veggies, some minced garlic, and lots of spices. I do it by hand. I wash my hands very well before & after, so you probably should too. But hey, you do you.
  14. By this time, hopefully your cabbage has been boiling 10-ish minutes. Use tongs to gently peel one leaf at a time and place it lovingly in your colander. Don’t go too quick with it and splash/burn yourself, because I would definitely never ever do that.
  15. Open the cans of tomato soup and cover the bottom of your baking dishes.
  16. Get the leaf, cut out the bottom tough part of the leaf rib if so inclined, slap in your meat mixture, and wrap it like a burrito – folding in the ends part way through. I didn’t measure, I eyeballed the meat to leaf ratio.
  17. Fill the baking dish(es), pour on & season the rest of the condensed tomato soup, sprinkle on some more parmesan cheese, cover in foil, and bake for an hour.

Tips/Lessons Learned/Parting Thoughts:

  • I was going to bake it at 375° and I probably should have, taking the foil off for the last 15 min. They were well over the recommended 160° internal temp for ground beef. Maybe some browning/caramelizing would not be a bad thing?
  • I saw a lot of tips for freezing the cabbage instead of boiling it, but I also read just as many responses saying that it can drastically affect the texture and not in a good way.
  • I may put in back next time. Maybe inside? Maybe wrapped outside?
  • Hear me out… Reuben cabbage rolls. Corned beef? Sauerkraut? Thousand Island or Russian dressing? Rye breadcrumbs? (We make non-traditional stuffed peppers sometimes, too.)
  • If you like rice, by all means include it. Or barley, or any other grain. I considered those tiny lil’ pasta balls… but maybe I just like to say Acini de Pepe way too much. Some people recommended cauliflower rice, also.
  • Check out all my other recipes and let me know what you think!
  • I got some thoughts from more tips & feedback when I posted photos on the FB food group & Nextdoor, too.
  • Are you still reading? Check out the recipe, and give me your recipes. tips, tricks, advice, and heavily guarded family recipe secrets in the comments.

Vegetable Garden 2021 🌱 II: The Wrath of Fawn

Posted on by Standard Reply

Damn deer ate my tomatoes.

Think they’ll come back from this, or is it just best to replace?

Also, we planted some swiss chard from my daughter’s school science class, some snap beans, some yellow onions, and garlic. We also had 1 volunteer squash pop up in the yard, and 4 back by the compost pile. Not really sure what they are. I have had some WEIRD hybrid stuff in the past. When you grow multiple varieties they can cross-pollinate and the seeds can make some wacky stuff. They could be that wacky stuff or just pumpkins, butternut squash, acorn squash or zucchini.

Gorillas in the Mint

Check out the original blog from this year for a nice embedded chart.

Revised Garden Map & Harvest Dates:

Follow my instagram for all the latest stuff, and some other plants around the yard.

Vegetable Garden 2021 🌱

Posted on by Standard 1

This year, I had some big help in the garden! These two have been gardening since they could walk, and I think they’re enjoying it and really getting the hang of it.

The kids have their own YouTube channel now, with a little hep from some old guy that blogs occasionally. Check out their gardening how-to:

I also made a map, and decided to make a chart of the suggested harvest dates on the tags just to see how accurate they are. I have been gardening since I can remember, and don’t know if I ever paid attention to that. We just picked stuff whenever it appeared & ripened.

Garden Map & Harvest Dates 2021

We made sure to get all the tags & try to document it all. The kids are loving math & science, so why not incorporate it into the garden? We can see if the harvest dates noted on the tags are anywhere near when the plants are actually ready.

I’m excited to see how it turns out! And, yeah, we got some more jalapeño since they liked it last year… and this time we’re trying some poblano too!

Whoa, Instagram is a trip down memory lane with these kids and gardening!

Kids, Gardening, & Jalapeños. 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦🌱🌶️

Posted on by Standard 1

The kids like to garden. They helped plant once again this year, and have been great at watering, upkeep, & harvesting. They really did most of the planting work this year, and are learning about how to keep weeds out and when to pick ripe peppers. (They’re already pretty good at tomatoes.)

Molly & Ian try a jalapeño from the garden! 🌶️

This year, by accident, I picked up a jalapeño plant when shopping at Home Depot. I meant to get 2 each of yellow bell peppers, orange bell peppers, and red bell peppers. I came home with a jalapeno and only one yellow pepper. We also planted some sweet banana peppers.

When I brought it home, Ian was determined to plant it & try some. He was true to his word! Molly & Ian did both try it! I put the video up on YouTube and IGTV.

Decide for yourself if you think they liked it:

I haven’t ever grown hot peppers despite all my years growing tomato, pepper, & a slew of other stuff.

I asked on various social media platforms on how to tell if your jalapeno is ripe and I got a handful of differentiating opinions. I got…

  • When they turn red. (Was told they turn black before they are red.)
  • When they start to get little brown lines/wrinkles.
  • At around 3″ long.
  • At around 6″ to 8″ long.
  • Look at the photo on the plant tag.
  • bury match heads to make them hotter.

So, how do you tell when they’re ripe?


Share your hot pepper ripeness tips & any other tricks below on the comments.

Have an recipes to share too?  I would like to hear your thoughts on gardening, jalapeno peppers, or the video below!

This has been a fun gardening journey.  It is exciting to see them learn about composting, growing food, and then trying it & even cooking with it.  We have had plenty of beautiful snap beans, sweet banana peppers, & a few varieties of cherry tomatoes so far.

How yinz make your chili? 🌶 [Chili à la AiXeLsyD “Recipes”] 🌶

Posted on by Standard 33

Yinz like chili?  I do.  I haven’t made any for a long time.  I may need to change that.  I stole this (& modified it) from my never-used Cookpendium blog.  My writing has hopefully improved since then.  Maybe not.  I like a tamer chili that would appeal to a wide variety of people to add heat as they like.  I like it thick enough to make a spoon stand.  I can take or leave the beans, and I reject your debatable elitist visions of chili or what it ought to be.

I ought to try and make a new batch using only stuff I buy at Aldi.

How do you make yours?

[Originally from a post at (the now defunct) PittsburghBeat.com, here’s a few consolidated chili recipe/methods…]

Recipe 1:

I’ve never made chili before, and in researching, I came across 50 billion recipes. So, this morning I made my own in the crock pot…

  • 2 cans of condensed tomato soup
  • 1 can of tomato paste
  • 1 packet of chili mix
  • about ½ cup of water
  • 1 tsp. of beef bullion
  • 1 can light red kidney beans
  • however much ground meat was leftover from last night
  • 1 tsp. cumin
  • 1 tsp. black pepper
  • a dash of cayenne pepper
  • a dash of paprika
  • a dash of garlic

…and I slapped it into the crock pot on low for 8 hours.

Hope it tastes good when I get home. I’ve got shredded cheddar cheese for the top of it, & Super-Pretzels to go along with it. They always served pretzels & chili in my elementary school cafeteria so they belong together in my warped mind.

Most of them use tomato paste, soup, sauce, juice, or diced tomatoes as a base… I even saw one that called for Spicy hot V8… and I think my mom always used soup. Tomato paste is usually bitter, so I figured the tomato soup would counteract it. All of the spices should be rockin’. I like my chili thick.

Oh yeah, about 1/2 the ground meat was cooked w/ some seasoning salt & A1.

Recipe 2:

Here’s what basically went into my chili. I’ll probably eventually make a blog about it with a narrative so I can remember what I did this time for next time… to see what I wanna change or what I wanna do again.

I ended up only using the one can of diced tomatoes (the one with jalapeños) and still kind’ve overflowed the pot by a small amount. So, next time I may cut out one can of tomato soup or a can of beans. Also, I want to try garbanzo beans in my next batch… and I’ve heard chocolate powder goes good in chili some times… so I wanna try that one day too.

I also tossed in 2 slices of Velveeta ripped apart, a dash of spicy brown mustard, and a drop or 2 of A1 Cracked Peppercorn Steak Sauce.

I think the meat that I used was too fatty or I didn’t drain enough fat (…even though I got a about ⅔ of a regular sized plastic cup full of fat out of it). I had to skim some excess grease off of the top when I popped it open this morning.

I’ll let you know the general consensus after it’s been consumed.

[Edit:  It was good.]

Recipe 3:

I must have pinned this at some point, too.  Someone re-pinned it here…

I think it was a joke about Pepto because this chili killed my guts, even served over mashed potatoes.

Share your chili recipes with me in the comment section below.  Don’t be a jag and sit on your secret ingredient(s).  Is it cocoa powder?  Chocolate bars?  Corn?  Zucchini?  Cinnamon?  Potatoes?  Steak?  Instant potato flakes?  Cornmeal?  Chupacabra?

How do you serve it?  In a bowl?  Over baked or mashed potatoes, rice,or spaghetti?  With soft pretzels or cornbread?  With tortilla chips or crackers?

How do you cook it?  Crock pot?  Dutch oven?  Stove top?  Over a campfire?

Do you like the Hormel canned stuff or the stuff from Wendy’s?  Who makes your favorite?

Spill it!

#MeatballSub #Recipe

Posted on by Standard 8

So, I’ve been hungry for meatball subs.  They’re so simple to make, but we just never seem to do it at home.  I shared the photo on social media, because I’m weird like that and it annoys people, and some people seemed to dig it.  wanted to share how easy it was with a minimal amount of effort.

So, the wife got a pound of ground meat from Aldi the other day, and I picked up the rest of the stuff that we didn’t already have at Giant Eagle on my way home from work.  I probably could have gotten all of this from Aldi.

So this is what I used…

  • 1 lb. of ground beef
  • a handful or two of finely shredded fancy 6 cheese “Italian” stuff – I started with a 2 cup bag.  We always have this or something similar around.
  • Whatever “shake cheese” you put on spaghetti. I have Parmigiano-Reggiano because they think it needs to sound fancy.
  • A handful of crackers.  We had “club” crackers from Aldi
  • Italian Dressing (we seem to really dig Kraft Roasted Red Pepper Italian)
  • A jar of cheap-ass pizza sauce  (I probably should have used some better marinara sauce)
  • Spices (Season All, cracked black pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, Italian seasoning, paprika …whatever floats your boat.)
  • Brown sugar
  • Sub buns (I like the Cellone’s or bakery ones, but I was being cheap this shopping trip and got some weird mass-produced ones.)
  • EVOO
  • Butter

And this is what I did…

Meatball Subs

MEAT.

Turn the oven on first so you don’t have to worry about it later.  Put it on 375° because that’s always what they seem to say to put it on.  I don’t know why.  I don’t even know who they are.

I made some meatballs with the meat, some hand-crushed crackers, a dash of the pizza sauce, a dash of Italian dressing, a dash of whatever spices I grabbed off the rack (probably pepper, season all, onion powder, garlic powder, and paprika), a bit of the Parmesan shake cheese and the mysterious “six cheese Italian” stuff.

I put some spices on the outside because why not, and tossed them into a frying pan with EVOO and a small pat of butter on the bottom.  I pre-heated it to high, then turned it to 6 before I tossed in the balls.  6 is at about 6:00 on my stupid electric stove top.

I melted a bit of butter in the microwave.  I quickly cut open the buns, put them on a baking sheet, spread on some melted butter with a brush and added… garlic powder, onion powder, a dash of shake cheese, and “Italian seasoning” to the buns.  No Italian seasoning for my wife, and no garlic powder for my 2½ year old.  I popped them in the 375° oven on the middle rack for a bit.

I used tongs to turn the meatballs over & popped a lid on the pan.

I dumped the remaining pizza sauce into a soup cup (it was a little jar), and added a sprinkle of brown sugar.  I nuked it for 45 seconds or so.  Why?  I like sweet sauce, and grandma always said “it cuts the acid.”

I turned the meatballs on to an undone side, and got the sub rolls out of the oven.  I knew they were done because… I didn’t even look at them.  I just took them out.  They looked fine.  Plus, we’re not totally finished.  I added some pizza sauce and some of the finely shredded awkwardly named cheese to the buns.

I made sure the meatballs weren’t going to kill us with the food thermometer.  They weren’t.  I put those on the buns and added more sauce, shredded cheese, and shake cheese.

I set some meatballs aside for my 10 month old.  The sandwich was a little much for him, but he will eat just about anything you put in front of him.  Seriously.  even if it’s not edible.

I put the now built subs into the oven and cranked the knob to 400° because I am impatient and my 2½ year old kept asking if lunch was ready.  I turned the light on in the oven and watched the cheese melt.  Not only was that fun, I could also make sure I wasn’t going to burn the bejesus out of things.  I didn’t.  I took it out in time.

Well, some of the cheese that fell on to the baking sheet burned, because I made a mess.  Oh well.

These were pretty good, although next time I will use different/better sauce.  That squeeze stuff isn’t bad.  Maybe I can make a simple marinara.  Also, homemade-ish deli rolls or Cellone’s are worth it… and I would cut a little triangle out of the top like Subway used to, before we were over-saturated with them and they started to serve terrible cream-of-deathfish.

At any rate.  This is easy to do.  You could buy your own meatballs or bake your own bread or use cheese slices to make this as easy or as difficult as you like.  I cut my 2½ year old’s into 3 sections so she had sliders.  I cut my wife’s in 2.  I ate the whole thing in one big sandwich like a hungry hungry pig.  I refuse to apologize.

Share photos of yours or links to your own blogged recipe in the comments!