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Episode-535- Cooking With Garden Bounty, Game Meat, Preps And More

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A few weeks back I had Chef Keith Snow on the show and that seemed to be a big hit so I decided to do a show of my own today on cooking.  We will discuss some of my favorite recipes, some traditional base techniques you can use in many aspects of your cooking, some unique things about using really lean meat like many types of game and more.

Join me today to discuss…

  • Cooking is universal and a great way to spread prepping
  • Today what is in our food is more dangerous that what we are eating
  • Techniques that you can use for many dishes
    • Mirepoix
    • The Holly Trinity (not Father, Son and Holly Ghost)
    • Rice that is never sticky
    • Braising “Greens”
    • Bone Stock
  • Some of my favorite recipes using the garden or my preps or game
    • Beer Bread (and many variants)
    • Irish Soda Bread
    • Bruschetta
    • Pasta and Arugula
    • Tortilla Pizza (do as thou wilt with this)
    • Bacon Jalapeno Dove
    • Rabbit/Squirrel/Venison Stew
    • Grilled Roasted Potatoes
    • Baked Summer Squash Casserole
    • Roasted Winter Squash
    • Quick Homemade Chicken Soup
    • Bean Sausage Soup
    • Potato, Sausage and Kale Soup
    • Grilled Deer Heart
    • Bacon Wrapped Deer Back-strap
  • Tricks of the Trade
    • Get pots, pans, gills etc. hot before adding food
    • Allow food to come to room temperature before cooking it
    • Rest beef and most meats at least 10 minutes before cutting it
    • Red meats should never be “well done”
    • Dry age meat if you can
    • Prepare ingredients in advance
    • Add items with great flavor or that cook fast at the very end
    • Gas it the way to go if you have the option, glass top stoves second
    • Parsley isn’t just a garnish, cook with it
    • If something seems like a good idea, try it
    • Watch cooking shows for techniques about recipes
    • Remember traditions exist for a reason

Resources for today’s show…

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

Comments

Episode-535- Cooking With Garden Bounty, Game Meat, Preps And More — 21 Comments

  1. Jack, GREAT show today. I love it when I get to hear how other folks fix garden bounty. I don’t eat red meat but I found your comments very interesting on how to not cook red meat! I’ve learned to use pork, chicken or turkey in any recipe that calls for red meat! I had beet greens and kale for the first time (in my CSA basket this year) and didn’t like them, but I plan to try them again using your method of braising. Thanks for sharing your knowledge!

  2. Interesting show today Jack. My mother never taught me or my sister how to cook (shame on her) so I was in uncharted territory when I got married. I didn’t have the courage to just get in the kitchen and start throwing things together, so recipe books were a godsend for me. As the years have passed, I rarely find a need to measure ingredients in the conventional way when I’m cooking my regular dishes and would be hard pressed to write down one of my own recipes .. a handful of this, a pinch of that.. no dish ever turns out the same way twice, but it’s usually pretty good! 🙂 I do, however, still get a lot of pleasure from perusing recipe books and magazines and trying new recipes exactly as written to get a sense of the flavor that the author is trying to present.. and then later on I may embellish if I feel the need to offer my own flavor and flair (which usually means to make something more hot or spicy..) I think there are lots of folks who start out like I did with very little experience under their belts and in those cases, there is no harm in sharing ideas in the form of recipes. It’s a good starting point.

    On gas vs. electric: I MISS my gas appliances so much! Our new home is all electric and even though I have the glass top stove, it just isn’t the same.

  4. Jack,
    This was a great episode. I would truly enjoy offering some assistance with future shows in this same direction. I am a professional chef and certified dietary manager. Thanks to you I will be starting my own website/online business teaching folks the basics of technique and preparation of food items. Anyways I just wanted to say thanks for all you do for the survival community.

  5. Jack,

    Please, please don’t do this kind of episode again. By the time you got done with it, I was ready to eat my arm off! 😉

    Great show, as always! I can’t wait to try some of these. I would like to suggest you write up these recipes, if you haven’t already. It doesn’t even have to be a precise recipe, just “add a little basil”, etc. I make pizza from scratch and I could not tell you exactly how I do the dough with precise measurements, but it turns out good every time.

    Thanks again!

  6. I couldn’t help myself. I went home and made my first batch of beer bread. Can’t wait until it gets out of the oven.

  7. Jack,

    Learning how to properly cook rice the way you mentioned is great, and everyone should do it at least once. There are TONS of different types of rice, basmati, white, brown, etc.

    The easiest and most fullproof method? Spend $15 and get yourself a rice cooker. A rice cooker will make a perfect batch of rice every single time and they are DEAD EASY to use. Basically just add rice and fill the water to the fill line. They turn themselves off when the rice is perfect.

    There is a reason that every home in Japan has one of these as a standard appliance (source: Japanese cookbook)

    Also on another note, brown rice is much healthier for you and you don’t need to rinse it after cooking.

    -Nick

  8. The reason i mention above the various types of rice is brown rice takes much longer than white rice, and wild rice will also have a different cooking time… so if you have a rice cooker you can just “set it and forget it”

  9. Great show – learning new basic techniques really helps expand the range of what is possible in the kitchen and offers many ways to use available ingredients. Tried the pasta and arugula last night. Although we eat a lot of arugula raw in salads I had never used it as a cooked green before. Also threw in some chopped late garden tomatoes and steamed green beans at the end. Turned out great, so easy and simple, was a big hit with the family.
    Thanks!

  10. Thank you Jack – I’ve already listened to this show four times (I get a lot of interruptions). I loved and will use all of it. I made my first mirepoix just this morning for a black bean soup I am making. Great stuff. So aromatic, ha ha.

    Thank you for the tip on the Orrington Farms soup bases. I am going to order a bunch of that stuff for my preps, although I don’t think I will use it in my day-to-day cooking. It’s really kinda full of a lot of chemicals, but the nice thing is that it doesn’t require refrigeration.

    In my daily cooking, I will continue to use Better Than Bouillon bases, which have a lot less yucky chemicals in them, but do require refrigeration once opened. They are the consistency of that natural peanut butter – kinda gooey.

    Here is the ingredients list for the Orrington Farms chicken base: Salt, Dextrose, Food Starch-modified (Corn), Beef Fat (Beef Tallow, BHA, BHT, and Citric Acid Added to Protect Flavor), Monosodium Glutamate, Onion Powder, Soybean Oil, Chicken Fat, Turmeric, Garlic Powder, Pepper, Disodium Inosinate and Disodium Guanylate, Oleoresins (Celery, Paprika, Sage).

    Here is the ingredients list for the Better Than Bouillon base: Chicken meat including natural chicken juices, salt, sugar, corn syrup solids, chicken fat, hydrolyzed soy protein, dried whey, flavoring, disodium inosinate and guanylate, turmeric.

    Better Than Bouillon has tons of different varieties and sizes.

    If you are unable to find either brand locally, I would choose my favorite source (both are available), with low shipping cost or free if over $75.

    http://www.soupsonline.com/c-142-broths-bases-and-bouillon.aspx

    Thanks again for the show. I encourage you to do more, especially on how to cook with our dried and dehydrated prep foods.

  11. Wild rice is technically a grass, brown a grain. This is a great show topic that I will look forward to seeing many times again!
    Jack: here is a cooking method that I would really like to see you go into: “sous vide”. Good article on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sous-vide, but would love to hear the Spirko version.
    Here’s a little tip on something I do; save your onion skins and throw them in your soup stock for a nice brown color.

  12. You said to tell us if we liked this show: I did. A lot of the foods that store well are things that I don’t really know many tasty things to do with so more shows like this would be much appreciated. I also liked the general cooking tips you included, I don’t suppose many fresh steaks will be around if the TSHTF, but it was still really good to get some ideas that’ll make me a better cook.

  13. P.S. Hope Mrs Spirko’s operation went without any complications and she’s recovering fast.

  15. @Spaghitti,

    Thanks for that, it was not that big a deal. Lasted about an hour, turned out the implant had shifted and that allowed an infection to get in. That sucked because it was impossible to fully numb her during the extraction.

    She got through it though, I made her chicken soup and by that afternoon she was pain free and her happy self once again.

  16. Great show! I would like to see more about cooking from our preps, garden, or wildlife. This is one area I am really lacking. Thanks,
    Dave

  17. Finally got a chance to listen to this show last night as I was driving back from Arizona to California. Love the topic and all the great tips! In fact, as soon as I got home I made a loaf of beer bread which turned out great!

  18. Love the show! And I love how you don’t give exact measurements. Its how to cook – to taste, experimentation and all the stuff you like, none of the stuff you don’t like! Hope you do more of these shows – Youtube cooking channel? Hope to see the TSP cookbook Delta Victor Echo mentioned.

    BTW, hope you do a pie cooking show (TSP style, of course!) for the guy who asked “What next? Teach us how to bake a pie?!”

    You Rock Jack!

  19. Keep the cooking showing coming Jack! I love your focus on techniques rather than recipes. This is how you really advance as a cook.

    I too am anxious for the how the bake a pie episode. 😉

  21. Jack, GREAT SHOW!! You need to make more of these. Cooking is one of the basic homesteading skills that often gets overlooked and you made it simple and tasty! THANK YOU!!!

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