Intro: Hey. Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can always get on the table. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich.

Susie Weinrich: Hi. Happy Thursday everybody. We are back again for another wonderful dinner recipe that I hope you will try. This summer we are making a roasted cherry tomato pasta that is perfect for all of those delicious summer tomatoes.

Tips and Tricks: Okay, just a couple of tips and tricks for this recipe today. The first one is you’re going to use pasta and you’re going to need to boil water and cook your pasta. Best tip, kitchen tip. Please, please, please always salt your pasta water. You want your pasta water to actually taste like seawater. So if you’ve tasted the ocean a little bit, it should taste pretty salty before you put your pasta in. That is your one chance to actually flavor the pasta. So it will absorb some of that salty water and be super delicious. 

The other ingredient is your extra virgin olive oil. You want to make sure that you’re using extra virgin olive oil because that’s the one that has a lot of flavor. Regular olive oil is basically flavorless, so use that extra virgin olive oil and it imparts such a nice flavor to the pasta. It’s a huge part of the sauce for this pasta.

The last ingredient that I want to talk about is the garlic cloves. So it calls for four garlic cloves. What I recommend here, not mincing, chopping, or pressing your garlic, I recommend very thinly slicing the garlic. It makes such a delicious garlic flavor in this dish, and then you get little pockets of garlic.

Those are all of the tips and tricks that I have for this recipe. Everything else is pretty much straightforward and it’s a very, very simple recipe. 

Cherry Tomato Pasta Recipe: So let’s go ahead and get into making your roasted cherry tomato pasta, that’s perfect for all of your summer tomatoes. You’re going to start by cooking one pound of either spaghetti or spaghetti, which is basically just angel hair pasta. So start with that in salted water, as we said. Once that’s cooked, go ahead and drain that and you can just save that for the sauce. 

Now for the sauce, in a large skillet over medium-low heat, you’re going to add about half a cup of really good extra virgin olive oil. Let that warm up, and then you’re going to add about one and a half to two pounds of cherry or grape tomatoes. You don’t have to cut them here, just pop them in whole.

The one thing I will tell you is that as these cherry tomatoes start to warm up, they may pop and burst, so it’s great to have a lid nearby so that you can pop it on once they start popping. You’ll let those warm in the pan just stirring occasionally for about 15 minutes. What I recommend here is for the last five minutes, take a wooden spoon and just lightly press on those tomatoes and they’ll start to release their juice into the oil and it makes this delicious sauce.

Also, for the last five minutes, you want to add four thinly sliced garlic cloves and let that simmer for the last five minutes. You’re going to go ahead and take that off the heat and stir in one and a half teaspoons of kosher salt, two teaspoons of balsamic vinegar, and one teaspoon of sugar. Give that a really good stir, and then you can add the pasta to that sauce and just give it a really nice toss. You can add in a little bit of fresh torn basil, maybe some fresh grated Parmesan cheese, toss that up and then put it into a large bowl for serving. 

Now, this is an optional part, but it’s very delicious. In that now empty pan, you can add one tablespoon of butter and half a cup of Panko breadcrumbs and just brown them over, I don’t know, low heat, low to medium heat until they’re golden and they smell like toast. Then when you serve this Roasted Cherry Tomato Pasta, you can top it with a little bit of the toasted breadcrumbs and fresh grated Parmesan cheese, and a little more basil and it is so good. My mouth is watering. It is a wonderful summer dish. This also makes a great side dish. So if you’re having chicken Parmesan, Pork Milanese, or even Chicken Spadini, this would be an excellent side dish for any of those. I will link all of those recipes for you right in the show notes. But like I said, it also makes a wonderful dinner. You could add a little Caesar salad on the side, maybe some garlic bread. 

All right, so that does it for this full recipe. As I said before, I will link all of the recipes in the show notes so that you have access to the recipes and can make them for dinner when you’re ready. 

Outro: So until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner, makes your dinnertime a little easier. See ya.

Double Dip: All right guys. Now it’s time for your double dip. I’m so glad you stuck around and you can hear what we’re making next week. If you want to make dinner with me next Thursday, we are making Grilled Barbecue Pork Tenderloin, and this is a knockout recipe. You are absolutely going to love it. 

Here’s what I’ll tell you though. You do want to marinate this ahead of time. I like to do it for about 24 hours, but you can marinate this pork tenderloin anywhere from four hours to 48 hours. So get it ready when you can, and then you can grill it up on Thursday. 

So, here are the ingredients you need to make your Grilled Barbecue Pork Tenderloin. Two pork tenderloins, extra virgin olive oil, Worcestershire sauce, and black pepper. Then a few spices from your spice cabinet. You’ll need chili powder, garlic powder, onion powder, kosher salt, ground cumin, and smoked paprika. Now, of course, you can use your favorite barbecue sauce that you love, that you buy at the grocery store. But if you want to try your hand at making barbecue sauce yourself, you can absolutely do that. I have a link to the recipe for homemade barbecue sauce that I will put in the show notes as well. For that, you’re going to need butter, onion, garlic, ketchup, brown sugar, Worcestershire sauce, chili powder, and smoked paprika. Black pepper, kosher salt, and then maybe some hot sauce if you want to add that little high note and maybe a little bit of heat.

So I hope you’ll join me then and make dinner, especially because it’s summer. If you’re listening to this real-time, it’s summer. It’s summer, and you can get that grill out and grill up some delicious pork tenderloin. So until then, I hope you guys have a wonderful week ahead.

Intro: Welcome to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can always get on the table. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich. 

Susie Weinrich: I am so glad that I am finally recording. I tried to record this episode three times. The first time I didn’t have it set to record. The second time my microphone was not on, and here we are, third time. Third time’s a charm. We are ready to go.

Happy Thursday everybody. We are making such a delicious side dish today. I know that normally I go over dinner recipes, but this time we’re going to talk about a side dish that’s going to complete your meal. I am an Iowa girl, so I feel like I have authority to talk about corn on the cob. We’re not just making corn on the cob, we’re actually going to make creamed corn. Maybe some of you say cream corn. When I was actually publishing this recipe and trying to get all the words right and everything, I realized that some people say creamed corn, and some people say cream corn. In my house where I grew up, we say creamed corn with a D on the end. So that’s how I’m going to say it. I hope you’re not bothered, and I hope you’ll stick around for the full recipe. 

Tips and Tricks: So before we get to the full recipe, let’s talk a little bit about the ingredients. You actually only need five ingredients to make really, really delicious homemade creamed corn. Of course, the main ingredient here is going to be fresh corn on the cob.

I want to go over how to find really fresh corn on the cob. Of course it has its season. Corn on the cob is really great in late June, July and August, that’s when it’s going to be in season and fresh and super sweet. Like, so sweet that if you eat it on the cob, you don’t need any butter or salt. It’s its own beast. It’s so delicious. So, of course, in that timeframe, if you can buy corn on the cob from a local farmer, do it. Absolutely do it. So a lot of times, at least in Iowa, farmers will come in town and set up on a corner with their truck, and the back bed of the truck will be open and it will just be heaped full of corn on the cob. You go and you buy it by the ear, and it is usually absolutely delicious. So that’s how we do it. So if you can find somebody that’s selling it local or from a local farmer’s market, do that. It’s going to be really, really sweet and delicious. 

Now if you’re buying it in the grocery store and it still has the husk on, here are some things to look for to make sure that you’re getting really good sweet corn. So the outside husk should be really green and vibrant and not dry and dead. The silk that’s coming out of the top should be a yellow tan color and be kind of damp. It shouldn’t be dry and dead. Now you’re going to want to grab an ear of corn and you’re going to peel back just the very top so that you can see that point of the corn cob and the kernels on that corn cob should be nice and juicy and go all the way to the top.

The tip of the corn should not be dry and dead with shriveled up little kernels of corn. This is going to be gross. I know we’re talking about recipes, but when you peel back the silk of the corn, look for bugs or worms on the corn cob. It’s very possible. I mean, it was out in the dirt. It was out in the country. So just look for that because you don’t want to get home and find bugs in your corn cob. Always use your nose when you’re in the produce aisle. Give it a smell. If it smells sweet, it’s going to be delicious. This is the true test. I don’t usually recommend this, but if you know you’re going to buy it, pluck a little kernel off your corn cob, taste it. If it’s sweet, the whole thing is going to be delicious. 

Now that you’ve picked super delicious corn on the cob for your creamed corn, you’re going to need to remove the corn from the cob. There are two ways that I’m going to recommend you do this. The first way is using a bundt pan. So if you have a bunt pan, you know that you would make a bundt cake in, pop that on your countertop. Take a corn cob, pop it right in the, you know that center hole that comes up in the bundt pan? That’s a great little holder for your corn cob. Then hold it there and run the knife all the way down the corn cob and the bundt pan catches all the corn. If you can’t quite picture what I’m, what I’m talking about here, there will be a link to the recipe in the show notes. You can click through that link and there’s actually a picture of me using this method right in the post, so you can check it out. 

The other way is actually just to lay the corn cob on a rimmed baking sheet and run your knife down the side of the corn cob. So you’re not standing the corn up, you’re actually laying it down, cutting the corn off, flipping it over, cutting the corn off, flipping it over, and cutting the corn off. That way works really well too, and I definitely recommend doing that on a rimmed baking sheet because when you do it, some of the corn kernels are going to fly all over the place, and by using the rimmed baking sheet, it contains all of that corn for you.

The other thing, when you’re cutting the corn from the cob, after you have all the corn off of the cob, turn your knife over to the blunt side and run it down the corn cob and the cob will actually release what is called corn milk, or at least that’s what I call it. It’s a super flavorful juice that is in the cob underneath the corn kernels. So that just adds a little bit more corn flavor to your creamed corn. We actually use this method in our corn chowder as well. 

Creamed Corn Recipe: All right, so now that we’ve got those little tips and tricks out of the way, you need to grab your five ingredients, which are going to be 12 ears of fresh corn on the cob with the corn removed like we just talked about, one cup of buttermilk. Four tablespoons of butter, one teaspoon of kosher salt, and half a teaspoon of onion powder. So let’s get started. You’re going to start by removing all of that corn from the cob. Then in some boiling salted water, you’re going to boil that corn for about 10 minutes, and that’s just going to get it cooked and tender.

You’re going to drain that just like you would pasta, and then scoop out two cups of that corn and add it to a blender. Pour in one cup of buttermilk into the blender, and then blend it up until it is smooth. That’s your cream part of your creamed corn. So we’re not diluting that really delicious sweet corn flavor. We’re actually adding to it. That kind of high tangy note of the buttermilk is what is going to really enhance the flavor of your corn. 

Now pour that mixture back in with the whole corn, and then you’re going to add in the four tablespoons of butter, the one teaspoon of kosher salt and a half a teaspoon of onion powder. Warm that over low heat for about five minutes and it is ready to go. Oh my gosh, you are going to love this. This is not your canned creamed corn. This is so incredibly delicious. 

So now that you have your side dish, here are some things that I recommend serving with the creamed corn. Really, anything that comes off the grill is going to be perfect here. You’re talking about a grilled pork tenderloin, barbecue ribs, hamburgers. We love a roasted chicken or rotisserie chicken with this creamed corn. Or pulled pork sandwiches with a little barbecue sauce on top is excellent. 

All right, so that does it for this full recipe. As always, I will link all of the recipes that I talked about in this episode, right in the show notes so you can find it, you can pin it, you can cook right from the recipe card. You can even print the recipes. Or if you’re going to the grocery store and you’re on your phone, you can even text yourself the full ingredient list and a link back to the recipe. 

Outro: So until next week y’all, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner makes your dinner time a little bit easier. See ya. 

Double Dip: I am drinking coffee, y’all, and it is knocking my socks off. I am 100% addicted to coffee, and this coffee is freaking delicious.

All right everybody. Welcome to the Double Dip. Every week, you can stick around after the episode and hear what we’re going to make next week on Let’s Make Dinner and then you can have the groceries ready and know what we’re going to make. You’ll be ready to make dinner with me next Thursday. So since we are in summertime, if you’re listening to these episodes real time, we are taking advantage of all of the summer bounty. Next week we are making a pasta with a roasted cherry tomato sauce. Really good, really fresh. If you grow tomatoes, this is a perfect recipe for you to take advantage of all of those yummy, fresh tomatoes. 

So what you’re going to need is one pound of spaghetti or spaghettini, angel hair pasta, some kind of pasta that you like. One and a half to two pounds of cherry or grape tomatoes, half a cup of delicious, extra virgin olive oil. Four plump garlic cloves, one and a half teaspoons of kosher salt, red pepper flakes, two teaspoons of balsamic vinegar and one teaspoon of sugar. Then optionally, when you serve this, you can make a little breadcrumb mixture for the top. If you want to do that, you’ll need half a cup of panko breadcrumbs, one tablespoon of butter, some fresh basil. Fresh grated Parmesan cheese and just a little bit of extra virgin olive oil to make everything nice and crispy. So that’s it. I will link this recipe in the show notes for you. So if you want to take a look at it before you make it for dinner, you can go ahead and click through that link. But until then, I hope you guys have a wonderful weekend and week ahead and I’ll talk with you next Thursday.

Intro: Welcome, welcome everybody, to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can always get on the table. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich. 

Susie Weinrich: All right. Hello. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode here. I’m so excited you’re here. It is Thursday and I am ready to think about making dinner.

So last week we did a salad recipe for a Grilled Chicken Caesar salad. We’re going to double dip here, and we are going to make another salad for dinner tonight. We are making a Frito Taco salad. This is going to be a meatless Monday-type recipe. This is a meatless salad. However, you could add some grilled chicken or some ground beef if you’d like. But if you like to do a meatless dinner every once in a while, this is going to be a great option for you. I mean, a really, really good option because it’s super flavorful. It has beans, which add a little bit of protein, and it has chips. I love chips. It has Fritos in it, and I think that that just makes this salad. It is so delicious. 

Tips and Tricks: So let’s get into a couple of tips and tricks for this salad. There’s not going to be a ton today, and actually, the recipe goes really quick too, so we’re going to be in and out really quickly. 

First of all, let’s talk about the lettuce you’re going to use. It is made traditionally with iceberg lettuce. It’s what I use. I know there’s not a ton of nutritional value in iceberg lettuce, but it is a great base for the salad. It’s nice and crispy. But I know that a lot of people have very strong opinions about whether or not they eat iceberg lettuce. So if you prefer to use a romaine, absolutely you could sub that in. I probably wouldn’t go with a spring mix or any kind of really tender lettuce here. You need something that’s hearty that’s going to hold up to the dressing, the beans, the sauce, the cheese, the crunchy Fritos. So romaine is probably a better secondary option. 

Now if you do choose to go with the iceberg lettuce, I love this tip. When you chop up iceberg lettuce, there is a large core that’s at the bottom, and that’s basically the stem end of the iceberg lettuce. To remove that, I love this tip. You take the whole entire head of lettuce. Make sure you have that core side on the bottom and hit it really hard on the countertop. That pops the core up into the lettuce, and then you can just pull it right out and all of the hard bits come with it. Perfect tip. Definitely use that in your kitchen. 

Now, another ingredient that you need is called Catalina Dressing. It’s an orange dressing that looks like French dressing, but it doesn’t quite taste the same. It is the perfect sweet, tangy, tart dressing for the salad. Now you don’t need a ton, so if you’re not going to use it again or you’re not going to use it for a while, I would just buy one of the smallest little bottles that they have. They usually come in a small little bottle that just has a few ounces in it, and I would grab that bottle at the grocery store. 

Another ingredient you need is chili beans. For chili beans, you want to make sure that you buy the chili beans in sauce. You want it to have that sauce because that actually becomes kind of part of the dressing of the salad. When I was growing up, we always used Brooks’s chili beans, and so that’s usually what I look for in the grocery store, and I like to just buy a mild chili bean in sauce. Now, if you like it spicy and your family likes it spicy, then kick it up a notch and go with the hot. You do not want to drain all of the sauce off of those beans. Maybe there’s a little bit of extra juicy, loosey juicy on the top. You can get rid of that, but then once it starts to get thick, you want to make sure you save that and that goes into the salad. 

All right. So I think those are all of my tips and tricks for this recipe. So let’s go ahead and get into making the full recipe for your Frito Taco salad.

Frito Taco Salad Recipe: This is going to take about two minutes. Are you ready? So you’re going to start by washing and prepping your lettuce. Whenever you’re making a salad, you want to make sure that the leaves are nice and dry so that the salad dressing actually adheres to the leaves of the salad. Go ahead and wash, dry up the lettuce, and then pop that in a large bowl.

Then you’re going to take the can of chili beans, pour that over the lettuce, and then pour in your desired amount of Catalina dressing. Then go ahead and toss that all together. That is the base of the salad, which is basically the lettuce and the dressing. 

Next, you’re going to add two cups of Fritos. For this salad, I do like to just use the classic Fritos. You know, they have all sorts of different flavors of Fritos now, and different sizes like the scoops. I just like the regular old Fritos. But if you’ve got something else or your family likes a different type of Frito, use whatever you guys like.

So add in two cups of Fritos and one cup of fresh chopped tomatoes. I like to use just the cherry tomatoes. You could use a Roma tomato, but then you’ll want to make sure you chop it into bite-size pieces. One cup of shredded cheddar cheese and half a cup of chopped green onions. So toss that all together, and that’s the complete salad. Your dinner is ready. Now you can add in some other items if you’d like. It’s not necessary by any means. If you want to add in some meat, you could certainly top it with some crumbled ground beef, maybe seasoned with a little taco seasoning. You could do some grilled chicken, maybe black olives, corn, cilantro, maybe salsa, or sour cream. Whatever kind of taco toppings you like, you could add in here. But that’s it. That’s the full recipe. Really, we don’t do a lot of side dishes with this. We usually just serve it up as is, and everybody eats a heaping bowl full of Frito Taco salad. 

As always, I will link this recipe in the show notes for you so that you can click through and go to the recipe. You can pin it, save it, make it, you can even text the recipe to yourself, well, not the recipe, a link to the recipe and all of the ingredients. So if you’re on your phone, right in the middle of the recipe card, there will be a button that says, text me the recipe link and all the ingredients. So that if you have to go to the grocery store, it makes it super user-friendly for you to have the list of ingredients that you need. 

One last thing before we end this episode, I would love to have you guys subscribe to my weekly newsletter. It goes out every Thursday and Sunday. On Thursday I send out this podcast episode, and on Sunday it’s the full newsletter that has all of our new recipes, kitchen tips, and tricks, dinner ideas for the week, and everything that we’ve got coming up. So I would love to have you guys subscribe. You can click through the link right in the show notes, or you can go to momsdinner.net/subscribe and just sign up with your email and you’ll start to receive our emails.

Outro: So, until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner, makes your Dinner Time a little easier. See ya.

Double Dip: All right, guys, now it’s time for your double dip. Woo-hoo. Thank you so much for sticking around. Every week if you are enjoying these episodes and they’re helping you get dinner on the table, you can stick around for the double dip and hear what recipe we’re making the next week so that you can have the ingredients be ready and cook along with me.

So, next week, next Thursday, you can join me and we will be making homemade creamed corn. I love creamed corn. I’m from Iowa and we grew up with really great sweet corn in the summer, and I love creamed corn as a side dish. So obviously we’re not making a full dinner. We’re making a side dish. But creamed corn goes along with just about anything summery. So grilled chicken, grilled burgers, hotdogs, even barbecue ribs. If you want to pick up some barbecue ribs from Costco or your local grocery store, or your favorite barbecue, make some creamed corn and have a wonderful dinner. 

So, For the cream corn, you don’t need much. Let me tell you what you need to make this wonderful, wonderful side dish. So this actually makes a lot. So you could also half this recipe if you’ve got fewer people that you’re feeding. But you’ll need 12 ears of fresh corn on the cob and remove that corn from the cob. One cup of buttermilk, and four tablespoons of butter. One teaspoon of kosher salt and half a teaspoon of onion powder. That is it. So be ready to make that creamed corn with me next week and plan out what main entrée you want to have with your creamed corn. So until next week, I hope you guys have a wonderful week ahead, and I will see you then.