My Tacos Can Beat Up Your Tacos

You know what gets a bad rap? Pork. People act like they're scared of it for some reason. Some of the largest major religions in the world have outright banned it! Me, on the other hand, I'm Catholic and fearless. I ain't scared of no pork. If you avoid eating pork products for religious reasons, I support you 100%, man. Rock on with your devout self. If you're scared of pork for whatever nightmares the big bad network news man gave you, I urge you to give it another go. The meat packing industry has come a long way, baby. Why not try it with the help of The Pioneer Woman's spicy pulled pork?

It's a staple around here. Why, just last week I made it for BBQ pulled pork sandwiches topped with homemade coleslaw. Great dancing icebergs, was it good! Tonight, though, we tweaked it just a little bit and made these amazing shredded pork tacos.



C'mon, man. Put away your pork prejudice just for a minute so you can admit you want a bite. I didn't take pictures of the process for three reasons:

1. I made the rub late last night after work when I was tired and crabby.
2. My loving husband put the pork in the oven while I was at work this afternoon and therefore unable to photograph.
3. I was drunk off the smell of delicious, slow-cooked pork when I got home from work today that I pretty much blacked out until I had a mouthful of the stuff.

There are plenty of pictures on PW's website, though I'm noticing now that the ingredients she lists there differ from what are published in her cook book, and they differ even further from what I put in mine. Here is my take on it:

1 4-lb pork shoulder (confession: I used regular pork roast today because it's all they had, and it turned out fine)
1 whole onion, quartered
1 TBL chili powder
1/2 cup brown sugar
4-6 cloves of garlic, peeled (I always use more because I'm a freak and I love garlic)
1 tsp dried oregano
2 tsp ground cumin
2 TBL salt
generous ground black pepper, to taste
3 TBL olive oil
2 TBL vinegar
1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
Sriracha chili sauce to taste (I squirted it into the food processor with a pretty liberal hand because I love the stuff. I probably used about a TBL or so.)

Combine all ingredients (except the pork) in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse until totally combined.
Place pork in a casserole or dutch oven.
Pour the rub all over the meat and rub it in. Flip it over, scoop more rub on top of it, rub it in. Get all the sides, all the crevices, all the flaps, EVERYTHING.
At this point you can cover the dish tightly and refrigerate it overnight. If you're ready to cook, though, pour 2 cups of water into the dish, cover tightly, and place into a 300 degree oven and cook for about 4-5 hours, flipping the meat over at least once, but ideally every hour or so. After 4-5 hours, take the casserole out of the oven, place it on the counter, and walk away for about 30 minutes. After the meat has rested, shred it to smithereens with two forks. The meat will soak up all the pan juices faster than the thirstiest sponge you've ever seen. And your family will gobble up the meat faster than the hungriest high school football team you've ever seen. Cross my heart.

If you want the pulled pork perfection pictured above, smear a light layer of sour cream on a corn (pictured) or flour tortilla. Add a generous serving of pulled pork. Top with a sprinkling of shredded cheese. Top with a few slices of fresh avocado, and, because you can't ever leave well enough alone, a few more squirts of Sriracha chili sauce. Divine.

Omelet Pie

Okay, so it's quiche -- a damn good one, too -- but I was all set to write a post about how making delicious quiche is an easy way to feel fancy, I hear my brother downstairs. Pure amazement and the excitement that only those not yet of legal voting age can capture in his voice, he exclaims, "Is that an omelet pie?!" My parents tried to teach him to have refined tastes and explained that it is a quiche on the counter -- a damn good one, too. But my brother is not one to be fooled where food is concerned, just like every other teenage boy. He reviewed the ingredient list thusly:

"Eggs? Cheese? Ham? Pie crust? Yeah, like I said, OMELET PIE!"

Having reached his threshold for culinary semantic nonsense, he cut himself a generous serving of omelet pie (codename: quiche), and happily went back to his video games.

Whether you are refined and enjoy quiche for brunch or you take a more direct approach to life and gobble up some omelet pie in between role playing game adventures, make this quiche today. It's fast, easy, scrumptious, and as simple or as fancy as you want it to be.

Preheat the oven to 350, then start with your favorite pie crust:


I confess that I'm not super great at making pie crust from scratch. I usually use the premade stuff from the grocery store. I was feeling adventurous tonight, though, and I made The Pioneer Woman's recipe. It took a little more patience than I'm used to having, but I managed to make it.

Dump about one cup of the leftover ham from dinner (cut into bit-sized chunks) into the crust. Try to get it into as even a layer as possible at the bottom.


Sprinkle one cup of shredded cheese evenly over the ham. I'm using cheddar because it's what I had available, but let the sky be the limit here. Swiss is most traditional, but if you love cheese like I do (and who doesn't?), you'll want to try whatever you've got.


In a separate bowl, combine 3 eggs, 2 TBL flour, 1 cup of half & half, a tsp of salt, black pepper to taste, and a tsp of that dried minced onion from the back of your cabinet that your dad sprinkles all over pot roast. Whisk it all until combined, then slowly and evenly pour the savory custard over the ham & cheese.


My custard just barely covered the ham and cheese, which means I'll end up with a quiche with a very high filling-to-custard ratio, which I like. If you like your quiche more eggy and less fillingey, add another egg and nother splash of cream, or don't be so generous with your filling.


Mmm. Starting to look like quiche now. A normal person would say this baby is ready to go into the oven. But I've always been a person who can't leave well enough alone, so I grated about a half cup of super sharp white cheddar and sprinkled it on the top.


NOW you may put it in the oven. Leave it there for 45-55 minutes, won't you? It's ready to come out when the eggs are "set", which means they're no longer jiggly and runny. Just say those two words out loud, and you'll know why you don't want to take it out before it's done.

I let mine cool for just a few minutes (it's supposed to be served warm, after all), before helping myself to a slice.


Great bouncing icebergs, was it ever delicious. It (like everything else I like to eat) is very high in calories when you count all the egg yolks, cheese, and - mother of all saddlebags - pie crust, but quiche has this magical way of making you feel like you're eating light. Maybe it's the fluffy texture of the filling. Maybe it's our society's penchant for dieting denial. Whatever it is, it's heavenly. And oh so versatile. Spinach and feta quiche. Bacon and Swiss. Mushroom and tomato. Anything you've ever wanted to put in an omelet (but were scared to try) can go into a quiche. It is, after all, just an omelet pie.

Omelet Pie! Quiche!
2 TBL flour
3 eggs
1 cup half & half
1 tsp dried minced onion
1 tsp salt
black pepper to taste
1 prepared, unbaked pie crust
1 cup diced ham
1 cup shredded mild cheddar cheese
1/4 - 1/2 cup shredded sharp cheddar (optional)

Preheat oven to 350.

In a bowl, whisk together flour, eggs, half & half, onion, salt, and pepper until combined. Set aside.
Place prepared pie crust into pie tin. Spread ham evenly in pie shell.
Sprinkle mild cheddar cheese evenly over ham.
Pour custard slowly and evenly over ham & cheese.
Sprinkle sharp cheddar over the top.
Bake for 45-55 minutes until eggs are set.
Serve warm in slices, just like pie. Omelet pie.

Make Like Elvis . . .

. . . and gitcha some o' that gravy.

It was a dreary, rainy morning today in the Chicago 'burbs. They type of morning that makes it really difficult to leave the warm snuggliness of your bed and even more difficult to lead a productive day when you do. The type of morning where making a sensible, healthy choice for breakfast (brunch, actually, when I'm being honest about how long it actually took me to get going today). So I did what any reasonable, health-conscious grown adult would do: I made biscuits and gravy.

Biscuits and gravy ("B&G" from here on in) are a gift from the heavens. This recipe is actually a gift from my dear Aunt Linda, who got it from her dear southern grandma. Aunt Linda shared her southern breakfast secrets with me the last time she was in town, and I've been itching to practice them since. As if it wasn't bad enough that I made my whole family partake in the caloric smorgasbord, I'm gifting this recipe to you, too. I plan dragging as many people down with me as I can, frankly. Be careful how much of this you eat unless you plan on having the mass to drag down lots of things in the near future, actually.

Anyway, the first step to biscuits and gravy is to actually make the biscuits. Aunt Linda didn't show me how to make them from scratch, so now I'd like to introduce our hero:


Have no fear, Bisquick is here! I made the biscuits according to the package directions; it made 7 biscuits instead of the 9 it claimed it would. Lying Bisquick bastards. Oh, and because I'm a caveman (as I've mentioned), I don't have a biscuit cutter. I do, however, have a drinking glass. Several, actually, and it works just as well as your fancy-pants biscuit cutter. Oh, and if you're too fancy-pants to use Bisquick, feel free to make biscuits from scratch, just don't think you're going to find a recipe for them here. And if you're super fancy and just want to make biscuits out of that exploding canister, feel free. I won't tell on you. The point is, make some damn biscuits.

Now that we've got the B, let's work on the G. Here's the REAL hero of our show:


One pound of regular breakfast sausage! When you go shopping, please have the good sense just to buy regular sausage. Save the hot, sage, and maple sausages for another day. Oh, and Aunt Linda's advice here is to buy the cheapest sausage you can find because that tends to have a higher fat content than the fancy brands. And for this recipe, fat is good. Fat is very, very good. So fry it up!



Just keep flipping it around and chopping it with the spatula while it cooks over medium heat. Wait until the sausage is pretty much all done before you decide if it's rendered enough grease. If it hasn't, don't freak out. Just wait 'til no one's looking, and . . .



Throw in a couple tablespoons of butter. Stir it around until it's all melted, then grab your all-purpose flour.



Throw it in. Now, Aunt Linda didn't measure how much flour she put in, and neither did I, but I would feel safe in saying this is about one sparse cup of flour. Stir it around so everything gets spread around evenly. The flour will absorb the fat and start to form a roux as it cooks. The roux is the base for the gravy, so you want to make sure you take good care of it so it can take good care of you.



See that golden brown goodness bubbling toward the bottom of that photo? That's roux. Most gravy recipes tell you to cook it 'til it's golden brown. Aunt Linda says the trick here is to cook it until it's "almost burnt". That's what her granny said, that's what she does, and you can't beat the results. If you're afraid of going from "almost" to "fully" burnt, cook it until you get that rich, golden-brown color those other recipes are always talking about, then cook it for a full minute or two longer. Trust Aunt Linda. Trust her granny.

Let's turn this roux into gravy, shall we? Take some milk (2% or whole is best, but we'll talk about that in a minute), and pour, baby, pour.



Seriously, let it go. It'll feel like WAY too much milk, but trust me. Trust Linda. Trust Linda's granny. Again, I didn't measure because neither did Linda, and neither did Linda's granny, but I would estimate I added about 4 cups of milk. Now, Linda (and Linda's granny) say that 2% or whole milk is best, but don't fear if you're a caveman like me and only have skim milk. The only difference between them is fat, so you know what I added? Yup, MORE butter. A added a couple more tablespoons with the milk. If the thought of this is simply too sinful to bear, you probably shouldn't be making b&G you can add a splash of cream or half & half to make up the difference.



Now it's time to take your whisk, and - while continuing to cook over medium heat - whisk, baby, whisk. Make sure you scrap all that flavorful goodness off the bottom of the skillet as you go along. The flour will start to soak up the milk pretty quickly to become thick, delicious gravy. Here is a good time to salt and pepper generously. And I mean GENEROUSLY. Undersalted gravy is just about the worst thing that can happen to a person.

Here's a neat trick to see if it's thick enough:



Dip a spoon in the gravy, pull it out, and swipe your finger across it. If it all falls down and you can't see your finger swipe anymore, it's too thin; keep whisking! If it runs just a little, you're in good shape. This was actually a little thicker than I wanted (notice how it didn't run, like, at all), so I just added a little more milk. That's one of the greatest things about gravy: it's almost never too late to fix it if something goes wrong.

After optimum thickness and seasoning level was achieved, it was time to grab a plate, a biscuit, and the biggest ladle I could find.



You can leave the biscuit in tact, split it in half (shown here), or rip it into bits ("chewed") before dousing the whole operation with delicious gravy. Either way, run (do not walk) to the table and get this in your face as quickly as possible before you have a chance to begin to calculate how many calories you're consuming (please don't calculate it. Some things are better left unknown).

Now as this is just about the worst thing a person could eat if they're watching their health, I advise you to exercise restraint with how often you add this to your meal plans. And by restraint, I mean try to keep it at or below twice a day. Hey, those leftovers aren't going to eat themselves, right?

Aunt Linda's Granny's Sausage Gravy
1 lb regular breakfast sausage
2-4 TBL butter as needed
1 sparse cup all-purpose flour
4 cups milk

In a large skillet over medium heat, cook and crumble sausage until done. Add butter if needed to add grease.
Add flour; stir to coat evenly.
Cook, stirring frequently, until roux turns a rich, deep, golden-brown.
Add milk and salt and pepper to taste. Whisk frequently, taking care to scrape the bottom of the skillet, until desired thickness is achieved.
Serve hot over biscuits.
Join a gym.

Awesomesauce!

Applesauce, dudes. That's the word of the day. I love applesauce, but it's so hard to find the good stuff in the stores. It's usually so sweet I feel like it should say Hershey's on the label. Or the "strawberry applesauce", which -- upon a closer look at the ingredients -- is actually just applesauce with Red #40 in it. Mmm . . . Red #40! Just like mom used to make! And don't even get my started on the ingredient list! Even the supposedly unsweetened natural applesauces have an ingredient list so foreign that I might as well be reading my shampoo bottle. All science aside, it really burns my ass when the first ingredient in something this simple is water. Um, helloooo! APPLEsauce. Not WATERsauce with apple flavoring. Jerks.

Anyway, I was pissed about this a while back so I decided I was just going to make my own. I mean, how hard could it be? It's apples and sauce, right? Well it turns out I was dead wrong. It's not made up of apples and sauce. It's actually just apples, and it's actually way easier than I ever imagined. It's simple, fast, and so wholesome you can feel good about eating it all the time. And best of all, YOU are the captain of the SS Applesauce when you decide how much of what to add to enhance your delicious, rustic applesauce. Shall we begin?

Take ordinary apples and peel them with an ordinary vegetable peeler.


I'd like to draw your attention to something here: you don't have to be perfect when you peel the apples.

Leaving a little skin (just a little) on the apples makes for a more interesting look and texture in the finished product. Just don't go crazy. You're looking for "rustic", not "nasty".

Next, give your apples the potato treatment and cut them into fairly equally-sized chunks. Make sure you cut the core out. If you have one of those things that looks like a wagon wheel that cores and slices your apples at the same time, now would be a good time to get it out. I'm a caveman and don't have one, so I just used a knife. Anyway, just cut up the dang apples, and throw the cores in the trash.

Just like potatoes, throw those evenly-sized chunks into a pot large enough to hold them.


Unlike potatoes, do not add any water! Take them to the stove and cook them over very low heat.


Make sure you take your NCAA bracket off the stove before you start cooking. Safety first. Don't be like me. Anyway, the only real tricky thing here is resisting the temptation to add water. Apples are approximately 99.999% water, so they don't need any extra. If you start them cooking on low heat, you'll start to draw enough water out of them that it won't scorch the apples on the bottom of the pot. If you're a fraidy cat, go ahead and add a tiny amount of water (just enough to cover the bottom of the pot) before you put the apples on the stove.

As more water gets drawn out of the apples, you can turn the heat up to a medium-low setting. Just toss them around occasionally until they soften up some. How soft, you ask? Soft enough to use this:


It took me just about 10-15 minutes of slow cooking to get the apples soft enough to mash. I like to mash with the heat still on for the first minute or so. The reason for this is because mashing squishes out even more water, and the heat will cook it off. We don't want to lose all the moisture, obviously, so take the apples off the heat after about a minute and keep mashing.


It's a good way to let go of some aggression. Mash away until the applesauce is the consistency you want it to be. If you like you applesauce a little on the chunky side, stop sooner. If you like it more on the puree side of town, keep going 'til the neighbors complain. That's the beauty of this: it's completely up to you.

Ta-da! Applesauce!

Ingredients: Apples

Spoon some into a cup and enjoy it plain, like this:


Believe me when I tell you, friendo, that there are few things better than warm, fresh applesauce. OR you can try it like this:


Ingredients: apples, cinnamon, nutmeg

Mmm, that's the good stuff. Play around with additions. My personal favorite thing to do is add a dash of ground cloves. I like to pretend it's a little more sophisticated. Now, if you feel bound and determined to add sugar, I would recommend adding it during the cooking process so you don't end up with a gritty (nasty) finished product, but do yourself a favor and try it in its pure form first. You'll thank me later.

Best of all, from start to finish, it took me less than a half hour to eat applesauce. I made this when I should have been getting ready to go to work. It's such a low maintenance recipe that I actually made it while I was making and eating breakfast and then making my lunch for the day (which you can bet your boots included homemade applesauce). Top dry cereal with it, add it as a snack to your sack lunch, whip it out when you're having pork chops for dinner. People will be very impressed, just so long as you never, ever tell them how easy it is.

I won't tell if you won't.

Awesomesauce
Ingredients:
Apples (yield approx. 1/2 cup of sauce for every apple)
Cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, etc. to taste

Peel, core, and slice apples.
Cook over low heat for 2-5 minutes, increase heat to medium-low. Cook, stirring occasionally until apples are tender, 5-10 minutes.
Mash approx. 1 minute.
Turn off the heat and continue mashing until apples reach desired consistency.
Optional: mix in desired spices in desired amounts to taste.
Devour. Feel good about life.

Promote & Run

Hello, lovelies! I know I haven't been putting much up, but there truth of the matter is that there isn't much to put lately. My excuse up until last Wednesday is that I'm in a show, so here's a little shameless self-promotion.

If you're in the Chicagoland area (and if you're reading this, you probably are), come see my show! It's an intimate, true-natured telling of William Inge's famous Bus Stop (made famous in the mid-50s by Marilyn Monroe herself). You want details? I got your details right here! No really, right here:

The Guild Theatre presents: Bus Stop by William Inge
3/25 - 4/17
Friday & Saturday - 7:30pm; Sunday - 3:00pm
$18 general admission; $15 students and seniors
At The Des Plaines History Center
781 Pearson St.
Des Plaines, IL 60016
For tickets, please call 847-420-8079 (be sure to call ahead as seating is very limited)

***

So there's that. I was an actor once, a million lifetimes ago, and now -- by chance -- it seems I am one again. I'm like the Michael Jordan of acting retirement. Or something.

Anyway, the new excuse that took over last Wednesday is that we are now in the throes of Lent. I'm one of those Catholics who only goes to church on Christmas and Easter but who also feels guilty if she doesn't give something up for Lent. My second-biggest vice (second to Diet Coke, and - let's be honest - I am nowhere near ready to give that up) is obviously sugar. I obviously love to bake. I love to find recipes, make them, taste them, improve upon them, and taste them again. And again. And again. Once I caught myself wondering why there weren't any desert options for after breakfast, I decided I'd give it a rest until Easter. Sugar is impossible to avoid completely, so I've cut out anything where sugar (or its evil twin, high fructose corn syrup) are among the first three ingredients.

Goodbye, cookies. Goodbye, pop. Goodbye spoonfuls of sugar directly out of the canister. Kidding about that last one, but don't think I haven't seriously considered it on some of my more desperate days.

So with nothing to bake and no time in which to bake it, this blog has been collecting a little cyberdust. Not to worry, though. You're only bored if you're boring, right? And the Domestic Motherfucker is NOT boring. So until Easter comes, you can look forward to more than just cookies and brownies. I'm going to put an effort into making and posting more savory recipes fit to feed a family of hungry Irish Catholics and beyond. I'm working on pursurading my Aunt Linda to let me share her closely-guarded homemade recipe with you. She finally cracked and gave it to me, and it's just too good to go undistributed. Barring that, I'll come up with something. I'm going to have to find a way to replace all the calories I'll no longer be getting from a steady diet of Peeps and day-old sweet rolls, anyway.

As for this weekend, though, I'll be hanging up the first part of my moniker to become the Traveling Motherfucker. I'm heading to Las Vegas this weekend, and I can't wait to share my adventures with you.

Viva Las Vegas!

My Greatest Contribution to Mankind

If you or someone you love is a fat kid at heart, then you or her or she probably loves French Silk pie -- "Fat Kid Pie" (FKP) as its known around my house. If you're like me, you've probably noticed that your local Baker's Square has probably closed down because of the economy (or whatever), so you had to gain Fat Kid Pie independence. If this hasn't happened to you yet, hold onto your butts because I'm about to make them a little bigger.

A quick note before we begin: I make my FKP on store-bought graham cracker pie crust for two reasons. One is because my husband prefers graham cracker pie crust to any other pie crust in the known universe. Two is because I'm lazy and nothing in the known universe is easier than a store-bought graham cracker pie crust.

To begin, take your unsweetened baking chocolate -- make sure it's unsweetened -- and grab 4 oz.


You can melt them in the huge squares, but I find it easier to cut those big squares up into smaller pieces. Anyway, get all 4 oz. into a microwave-safe dish.


Microwave for 30 seconds, stir, and repeat until the chocolate is melted and pourable.


Remember when we discussed the importance of letting melted butter cool before adding it to a mixture? The same is true for melted chocolate. Melt it first so it has time to cool down for a bit before you let it join the rest of the group.

Throw two sticks softened salted butter and 1-1/2 cups white sugar into the bowl of your electric mixer and beat at a medium speed until fluffy.


I hate to say it and risk excluding anyone, but a stand mixer is a non-negotiable necessity for this recipe. Sucker your sweetie into buying you one for V-Day if you don't have one. Promise them this pie, and they'll buy you anything.

With the mixer on low, pour in the melted (and cooled!) chocolate along with a teaspoon of vanilla.


Now this is the most important part of the recipe, so listen up. This is one part where the technique is of utmost importance, so no skipping anything! Put your mixer on a medium speed, and leave it like that. Don't stop it, don't scrape the bowl, don't second-guess the texture of what's inside. Just take some deep breaths and go with it. While the mixer is mixing away at medium speed, you are going to add 4 eggs. You are going to add them one at a time, and you are going to add them over the course of 15-20 minutes.


Add an egg, wait five minutes, add another egg, etc. For this recipe it is particularly important to listen to your grandmother's advice about never cracking an egg directly into the bowl. Since the finished product contains raw eggs, you want to be very particular about which eggs you use. The moment before it goes swirling away into what would have been delicious FKP filling is the wrong time to find out you got one of those gross bloody eggs, am I right?

While we're on the subject: THIS RECIPE CONTAINS RAW EGGS. While this is fine for most of us, please be aware that there are some people who should avoid eating raw eggs such as the very old, the very young, the pregnant, the immunocompromised, etc. But that's ok -- more for you.

Five minutes after the last egg has joined the fray, the filling is ready. If you're a normal person who's perfectly happy to leave well enough alone, you can pour the filling into the prepared (prebaked if you're using standard pie crust) pie shell of your choosing and refrigerate for at least two hours (but overnight is by far better) before serving. If you're decidedly abnormal like yours truly, go find your jar of this stuff:


And do this with it:


Spread it around gently into a mostly-even layer. The Fluff is very sticky, so it will pull up the pie crust in places if you're not careful. I didn't let it bother me, though, since the Fluff is like glue so I know it would hold onto whatever graham crackers it grabbed. NOW you can pour the FKP filling into the pie shell.


Use the back of your spoon to even out the top a bit.


Lick the spoon. And the bowl. The pie needs to be refrigerated before it can be served. Two hours is the absolute minimum I would ever settle for, but I almost always let it chill overnight. Trust me. Cut into it the next day and you get this:


Graham cracker crust held together by gooey, sticky marshmallow topping with an inches-thick layer creamy, chocolately, and oh-so-rich FKP filling, all being overseen by tiny cute dollops of whipped cream. Life just doesn't get any better than this, friends.

***

Fat Kid Pie with S'more Crust
4 oz unsweetened baking chocolate
2 stick butter, softened
1-1/2 cups white sugar
1 tsp vanilla
4 eggs
Marshmallow Fluff
Graham cracker pie crust

1. Melt chocolate in microwave; allow to cool slightly.
2. Beat butter and sugar in the bowl of electric mixer with whisk attachment until fluffy.
3. With mixer running on low speed, add the melted and cooled chocolate and vanilla.
4. With mixer running on medium speed, add eggs over the course of 15-20 minutes.
5. Spread Fluff over the bottom of pie crust in a semi-even layer.
6. Pour FKP filling into pie shell; even out top with the back of a spoon.
7. Cover & refrigerate overnight before serving.
8. Serve in thin slivers.

Blackies

Whether you're a hopeless romantic, a curmudgeonly old bastard, or something in between, Valentine's Day is coming up. And no matter where you fall on the spectrum, if you're anything like me, you've never turned down a brownie. Sure, I've met lots of brownies I didn't like (I'm talking to you, all brownies with nuts!), but that never stops me. I'm a glutton committed, man.

I've been on a quest for years to find the perfect brownie recipe. My luck has been such that I've never used the same recipe twice. The consistency is too much like cake, or - if they're the right fudgy consistency - they're way too thin. OR, if they're not too thin nor too cakey, they're not nearly chocolatey enough. (Cue infomercial announcer voice) There's gotta be a better way!

Enter Alton Brown, host of Good Eats and all-around food smartypants. Good Eats was on the other night while I was trying to fall asleep, and it's was awfully difficult to drift off to dreamland while Alton's voice was coming in and out, telling me the secrets to amazing brownies. I did some googling this morning to find that the recipe featured on the show was indeed on Food Network's website, so I wrote it down, went to the kitchen, and now I'm going to share my success with you. Make them for Valentine's Day whether you've got a Special Someone with whom you'd like to sleep or you're going to spend the day alone, bitter, and looking to eat your feelings (I've been there, man).

Alton Brown's Cocoa Brownies (original recipe here)
4 large eggs
1 cup sugar, sifted
1 cup brown sugar, sifted
8 ounces melted butter
1-1/4 cups cocoa, sifted
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup flour, sifted
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt (I used regular salt, and I used a full tsp of it. Go with it.)

Any time a recipe calls for melted butter, melting the butter is the first thing I do after I preheat the oven. The reason for this is that melted butter must also be cooled before it can be added to anything containing eggs. If the butter is too hot when you add it to the batter/dough/whatever, it will slightly cook the eggs. No one wants to bite into a brownie to find little bits of scrambled egg. Nasty. So, preheat the oven to 300 and start melting the butter. Cut it into chunks, put it in a microwave-safe cup, and nuke for 30 seconds at a time. Stir between each trip back into the microwave. If you find that it's all melted except for just a few pieces, don't bother putting it back in; just stir it for a minute and the last pieces will melt. This will also help ensure it won't be too hot when you add it in.


Hello, beautiful.

You may have noticed that every dry ingredient in the recipe has the word "sifted" after it. No sifter? No problem! I placed a strainer on top of my mixing bowl, poured the dry ingredients in, and shook the strainer like I was panning for gold.

White sugar!


I did the brown sugar next, but it was too moist to go through my sifter. I added it directly to the bowl and used a whisk (another poor man's sifter replacement) to combine it with the white sugar.

Cocoa!


Flour! Salt!


I took my whisk out again at this point and gave the bowl a final stir just to make sure everyone was getting along nicely.

Get the eggs into the bowl of your electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Beat the eggs on a medium speed until fluffy and light yellow.


This should take a minute or so; be careful not to overbeat the eggs or your whole life will suck forever and your house will burn down. Then, with the mixer on a low speed, gradually add in all the dry ingredients. Mix until just combined. I didn't take a picture of this because I was too busy making sure my eggs weren't overbeaten.

Then add that sweet, delicious, melted-and-cooled butter:


Again, keep the mixer on low speed while you do this. Now would be a good time to add the vanilla extract, too. As soon as you see everything is well combined, turn that mixer off. Overmixed brownie batter will ruin your life in so many more ways than overbeaten eggs ever could. Your dog will run away from home. You'll get shortchanged by a nickel at Dunkin Donuts. Your TiVo won't record the new episode of Jersey Shore because it's too full of Law & Order: SVU reruns, even though you've seen them all at least three times. Seriously -- BAD THINGS HAPPEN. Those unspeakably catastrophic horrors aside, overmixed batter gets too much air incorporated into it, resulting in brownies with air pockets, a too-tough texture, and an uneven, cakey consistency. If that happens to you, anonymously leave them in the break room at work and act like you don't know who put them there.

Most brownie recipes actually call for you to mix everything together with a spoon to avoid these horrors, but Alton trusts us with a mixer. You can do it!

Anyway, dump the delicious batter into a greased and floured 8" baking pan.


Bake for 45 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Turn over onto a cooling rack and cut while they're still hot, then allow them to cool on the rack.


Note: if the batter and brownies look exceptionally dark to you, it's because they are. I have an enthusiastic preference for dark chocolate, so I made these brownies with Hershey's Special Dark cocoa powder -- feel free to use the regular stuff. The finished product was so dark my husband called them "blackies". But he also called them "delicious", and he was soooo right. They're moist, thick, chewy, extremely chocolatey, and so rich they buy a new Aston Martin every time their current one runs out of gas.

In summation, my quest for a good brownie recipe has ended by finding a GREAT brownie recipe. Make it today for yourself. Make it on Valentine's Day for your sweetie. I don't care why you make them, just make them! And soon! You'll thank me, I promise.