I love baked beans. It’s a great and satisfying side when you’re out camping or bbqing some hot dogs. For years, I’ve made my own baked beans, usually with a slow cooker or in the oven, but cooking them on my grill has brought them up a notch into a truely amazing dish. This recipe simplifies many of the steps involved to get the flavour without the effort.
Yorkshire pudding is an incredible side when served with roast beef, but did you know that if you stuff it with sausage and smother it in gravy that it’s a meal in itself! In England they sometimes call this recipe Toad in a Hole. I have seen mini versions of this recipe; muffin tin sized ones and I have seen it where you leave the sausages whole. We are doing a large version where you cut the sausages up into bite sized portions, because it’s easier to serve to my children that way. If you want to try one of the other ways mentioned here, it would only be small changes, let us know how it turns out!
This recipe is so good it will make you cry twice! First when you are chopping the onions and then again when you get a bite of the hot, sticky, gooey ooey cheese and bread with the delectable soup! French onion soup is one of my favorite meals. I love it because it can basically be made with kitchen scraps and yet it’s widely considered to be gourmet. The way the onions release their natural sugars with a little bit of help from the seasonings we are going to add makes this dish absolutely wonderful for a cold winter day.
Nuts and Bolts is one of those time-honored Christmas traditions that everyone loves. I haven’t been able to have nuts and bolts in the house for the last couple of years due to allergies in the house, so this year I decided to come up with a new recipe for nuts and bolts that is gluten free! Let me tell you, they did not disappoint. I got all the crispy, spicy salty goodness of all the ingredients and didn’t feel like it was missing a thing. If you are really into gluten, you can still add your favorite regular nuts and bolts ingredient like Shreddies or regular cheerios, but this one was designed for the Celiacs in my life.
Potatoes Gratin is a very similar dish to Scalloped potatoes, which was one of my favorite dishes growing up. Potatoes Gratin is usually a richer dish with more flavor and more cheese than scalloped potatoes, so get your tastebuds ready because this dish will knock your socks off. A very popular dish for pairing with roast beef, Turkey or ham dinners, this dish is great because it goes a long ways and potatoes are inexpensive. This dish is also called Potatoes Dauphinoise because they originate in Dauphine France in the late 1700’s. So, when your guests ask you what’s for dinner, just let them know that you are making them a classical French dish with black truffle, and they will be very impressed.
Mac and Cheese is one of those meals that you grew up eating, and you loved it smothered in ketchup. This recipe is NOT that. There is no ketchup required with this gooey cheesy meal. The trick to making good mac and cheese is to use big noodles and good cheese, and lots of it. We like adding leftover BBQ meat to give it that amazing rich flavor. So throw away your KD and start making your smoked mac and cheese from scratch by following this recipe.
