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: What’s up, everybody? I have to tell you that it has been quite a morning. Okay. I am recording this episode on a Tuesday morning. It’s the morning that my kids went back to school from spring break. If you are part of my newsletter, which you’re not signed up for, there’ll be a link in the show notes for you. If you’re a part of my newsletter community, then you know that we are in the middle of a huge renovation of our basement.

We have a large unfinished basement. We’re putting a full kitchen down there, well, not a full kitchen, a three-quarter kitchen, like a three-quarter bath and a bedroom, a living room, a bathroom. Today there are no construction workers here. So I thought, ah, the perfect time to record a podcast episode. I have been working on recording this episode for over an hour. Something happened with my settings in my recording platform and it all got messed up. So I am hoping, fingers crossed. Please, please, please that this episode comes out okay. Let’s get on to talking about food and not my crazy life.

Okay, so today on this episode of Let’s Make Dinner, we’re going to make a delicious Asian-style meatball with a homemade hoisin glaze that goes over the top. It’s a wonderful kind of Asian-style dinner when you’re craving takeout, but also want to eat at home. This is a great option. I bet if your family loves Asian-style takeout, then everybody’s going to love this one.

The full recipe has two parts. You’re going to make an Asian-style meatball, and then you’re also going to make that homemade hoisin glaze. Just like a couple of episodes back where we made the Veggie Pad Thai, and we said there’s a ton of ingredients involved, but if you buy these ingredients for the veggie pad Thai or for the Asian meatballs, chances are you’re going to have all of the ingredients you need and you can go ahead and make any of these recipes then. So once you buy oyster sauce and sesame oil and soy sauce and ginger, there’s a myriad of recipes that you can make in that Asian flavor family. 

So this recipe is going to make probably around 20 meatballs. I always say you can serve probably about four meatballs per person as long as you have those side dishes with it. With this, we’re probably going to serve something like steamed rice and a veggie. So I would say this recipe is going to serve about five people. It’s going to take you probably about half an hour from start to finish to get this done. You are going to make the meatballs, and then while they bake, you’ll make that sauce. Once they’re done, you coat them in that sauce and then you’re ready to go. So, as I said, probably about half an hour from start to finish. Not bad.

Tips and Tricks: Let’s go over a couple of tips and tricks when we’re talking about making these Asian meatballs. First of all, for the meatballs, any meatball recipe that I have on Mom’s Dinner, which is where I share all of my recipes, momsdinner.net. Any meatball recipe that you find is going to contain some kind of a panade. A panade is basically a starch and a liquid that’s mixed together to keep any kind of ground meat recipe tender and juicy. So for this recipe, we’re going to use a mixture of soy sauce, sesame oil, egg, and then panko breadcrumbs. That’s going to mix together and be added to the ground beef. It’s going to add flavor, but it’s also going to keep those meatballs nice and tender like I said.

Now let’s talk about the ground beef that you’re going to use for your meatballs. What I recommend with almost any meatball that you make that has beef in it, is using 85% lean ground beef, or up to, I would say 90. A 90/10 or an 85/15. What that means is that 85%. Of that ground meat mixture is going to be lean ground beef, and then 15% of that is going to be fat. The fat, you don’t want to go any fat or super low fat, like a 7%. You want a little bit of fat in there because number one, it keeps your meatballs juicy. Number two, it adds flavor to the ground beef. You could also look at 80/20, but when you get to that 80/20, you have so much fat content that you risk it being a little bit greasy. Anytime you’re making meatballs, meatloaf, or anything like that, go for that 85% or 90% lean ground beef. 

Now as far as the Asian-flavored glaze, the hoisin glaze, there are a few ingredients that I want to talk about here, and we’ve talked about a couple of these before. So if you are a listener of this podcast, then you’ve heard me talk about fresh ginger and using fresh ginger. You can absolutely buy the brown knobs of ginger at the grocery store. Peel them with just the edge of a spoon. You take an edge of a spoon and scrape it. Then you can mince it, you can grate it you can chop it however you want to use that fresh ginger. What I like to do in my kitchen is buy something called Dorot Gardens, and they’re little frozen ginger cubes. Just go to the freezer section of your grocery store where they’ll have the veggies. They should have a frozen herb section and buy those little ginger cubes. Each cube is a teaspoon of fresh ginger and it works perfectly. They melt into the sauce really fast and it tastes exactly like fresh ginger. Well, because it is fresh ginger, it’s just frozen. 

Another ingredient that you need is hoisin sauce, and if your grocery store has an Asian foods aisle or section, you’ll be able to find and sauce right there. Basically, it’s kind of a sweet, tart, and tangy sauce that looks like molasses, and it adds a really nice flavor to this glaze. 

Another ingredient is rice vinegar for this sauce. You’ll see in the grocery store, or maybe in your fridge, there’s either seasoned rice vinegar or plain rice vinegar. So seasoned rice vinegar just has a little bit more sugar than plain rice vinegar, and so really either one will work here. The last ingredient that I want to talk about is something in the recipe card called sambal oelek. I don’t even know if I’m saying it right. I apologize right now if I’m saying that wrong. I always just call it sambal. What that is is basically a chili garlic sauce or garlic chili sauce. Again, you could find it in the Asian foods area or section of your grocery store, and it looks like sriracha. It’ll be red with chili flakes and garlic mixed in, and it is so good. I actually like it better than Sriracha. Sometimes the sriracha, at least on my palette, is an off-flavor. I don’t know if it’s the additional garlic, I don’t know what it is, but some ball has a much cleaner chili flavor than sriracha, so I highly recommend you try it. 

Hoisin Meatballs Recipe: All right. I think that’s all of my tips and tricks for this recipe. So let’s go ahead and get into making the full recipe. As I said before, what you want to do is start by making the meatballs, and then while the meatballs cook, we’re going to make the sauce. 

So for the meatballs, You’re going to want to preheat your oven to 400 degrees and then get a large-rimmed baking sheet. Then line that with foil and lightly spray it with a non-stick cooking spray. Then in a mixing bowl for the meatballs, you’re going to combine one egg, three tablespoons of soy sauce, and one tablespoon of sesame oil. It’s a lot of sesame oil, but trust me, it makes the meatballs taste so good. You’ll need a three-quarters teaspoon of kosher salt, a quarter teaspoon of red pepper flakes, and a quarter teaspoon of ground ginger. Two garlic cloves that you mince and then add those three-quarters cup of panko breadcrumbs. Give that all a really good stir. Then what I like to do is let it just sit and soften and come together for just a few minutes. Once those panko breadcrumbs start to absorb all of that liquid, you’re going to add your ground beef and three scallions that are chopped. With the scallions, I like to use white and light green and just a little bit of dark green. Once you get to the top of the scallion, there’s really not a lot of onion flavor there. That seems to be, to me anyways, more of a garnish than an addition to onion flavor. So go ahead and combine the one and a half pounds of ground beef and the three chopped scallions into that egg and breadcrumb mixture. 

Now it’s time to form your meatballs. You will just form them into golf ball-sized meatballs. Place them on your prepared baking sheet, and then you’re going to spray the tops of the meatballs with that cooking spray. That’s just going to help your meatballs get nice and golden and delicious. So pop those in that 400-degree oven and you’re going to bake them for about 15 to 18 minutes until they register about 100 to 165 degrees. I like to use my Thermo Works Thermo pen to just do the temperature really quickly. It’s an instant-read thermometer, so you get that temperature right away. 

Now, while those are cooking, I recommend that you go ahead and make that glaze sauce. We’re going to make this on the stovetop. It comes together super quickly. So what you do is on the stovetop, over about medium-low heat with a saucepan, you’re going to add one tablespoon of vegetable oil or canola oil, two chopped garlic cloves, and two teaspoons of fresh ginger. Let that saute around the pan for about one minute. You just want it to heat through and soften. You don’t really want to brown anything at this point. Then you’re going to stir in three-quarters cup of hoisin sauce, three tablespoons of ketchup, just good old ketchup, two tablespoons of rice vinegar, two tablespoons of water, one tablespoon of that sambal, that chili garlic paste. One tablespoon of soy sauce and one teaspoon of sesame oil. Just whisk or stir all of that together and bring it to a simmer and let it cook for about five minutes. You just want to stir it occasionally so it doesn’t burn to the bottom of the pan. All right. Once your meatballs are done cooking in the oven, you just basically want to toss them in that sauce that you just made. Then maybe garnish them with some more green onions and some sesame seeds and they’re ready to serve. 

Like I said in the beginning, what you want to do is serve these maybe like four per person and serve them with either steamed rice or sticky rice, or my kids really like vegetable fried rice, and I gotta tell you, we buy frozen rice. We love frozen rice. Rice can be tricky. Unless you have a rice cooker, then that’s great. But I love to buy frozen brown rice or frozen basmati rice at Trader Joe’s. You put it in the microwave for three minutes, and I’m telling you it’s perfect. Take these shortcuts when you can get them. Or the fried rice, the frozen fried rice at Trader Joe’s is also amazing. Then for my family, we love to serve this with just roasted broccoli. I’ll either put it in the oven or in the little air fryer that I have on my countertop and make some roasted broccoli and it is an amazing dinner. 

So that’s it. That does it for this episode of Let’s Make Dinner. As always, any recipe that I talked about in this episode or any equipment, in my newsletter, everything will be linked right in the show notes. 

If you’d rather read these episodes, you can actually see the full transcript by clicking through to the show notes. 

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, now it’s time for you on Double Dip. If you are enjoying these episodes of Let’s Make Dinner and you love to cook along with me on Thursdays, then I want to let you know what’s coming up next week so you can be prepared and have the groceries you need and get everything ready. So next week on Let’s Make Dinner, that’ll be on Thursday. We are making an Enchilada Suiza. If you know me if you’ve been here for a while, if you’ve been around the Mom’s Dinner community for a while, you know that I love enchiladas. It’s probably one of my favorite foods. You know, people say like, Ooh, if you were on an island and you had to eat one thing forever, what would it be? Mine would probably be enchiladas. I absolutely love them. So Enchilada Suiza is basically like a chicken enchilada, but instead of a red sauce, it has a creamy, cheesy Verde sauce. Amazing.

So let me go over the full ingredient list so you know what to have for dinner next Thursday. You will need about 10 to 12 yellow corn tortillas. Three cups of cooked chicken. If you have a Costco nearby, go and grab that rotisserie chicken and cut the two chicken breasts off. Shred them up while they’re still warm in your stand mixer with the paddle attachment, and that is perfect. You’ll need half a cup of chopped cilantro, two teaspoons of cumin, one teaspoon of chili powder, half a teaspoon each of kosher salt, onion powder, and garlic powder. You’ll need two four-ounce cans of diced green chilies. A 10-ounce can of Verde or green enchilada sauce, a quarter cup of sour cream, half a cup of heavy cream, and an eight-ounce block of Monterey Jack cheese. Of course, I will link the full recipe in the show notes for you. So if you want, you can go and check out the full ingredient list with your eyes instead of your ears. You can actually, if you’re on your phone, from the recipe card, you can actually text yourself the full recipe or the full list of ingredients and a link back to the recipe. So I hope that makes it super easy for you, and I hope you guys will use that feature.

I just also want to say, you can find all of my recipes at momsdinner.net. We’ve got the podcast, which is called Let’s Make Dinner. But all of the recipes that I share are over on momsdinner.net. So I hope I see you guys over there. If you make any of these recipes, I would love to have you comment on the recipe and if it’s so deserved, give me a five-star rating. 

All right. Until next week, have a great one.

Intro: 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: Hey everybody. Happy Thursday. I’m so glad that you’re joining me today to make a little bit of dinner. I know on Thursdays a lot of people run out of dinner ideas and you’re like, what the hell am I going make for dinner tonight? You know that you can always come to the Let’s Make Dinner Podcast and figure out what you’re going to make for dinner. If you’re a part of my newsletter, then you know that we are in the middle of a huge construction project at our house. We are finishing our basement completely. We’re leaving a little bit of storage left, but the rest of it’s going to be finished. So I’m going to have a large kitchen space down there so that I can start doing some live video and just recorded video for YouTube. We’re putting a living room, kind of a game space, a bedroom and a bathroom down there. So I have my fingers crossed that they will not be drilling cement while I am recording this episode. So if you hear anything that’s herky jerky or me starting and stopping, it’s because they started drilling cement. But hopefully, fingers crossed, we can make it through this episode.
I do want to say, speaking of newsletter, If you are not a part of the Let’s Make Dinner and Mom’s Dinner newsletter, I would love to have you join our newsletter community. So I send out a newsletter every Thursday of course, you know, for the new podcast episode. Then I send out a newsletter on Sunday morning that goes over all the new recipes that are on Mom’s Dinner. So if you’re not familiar, Mom’s Dinner is actually the website where I share the actual recipes. Let’s Make Dinner is the podcast portion.
On Sunday, Mom’s Dinner sends out a newsletter that has all of the new recipes. It has kitchen tips and tricks, it has dinner ideas for the week. So if you want to join that, there will be a link to subscribe right on the show notes of this episode. 
This week since we’re kind of in the middle of Lent, so if you’re listening to this real time, we are halfway through March. So you’ve got just a couple more weeks of Lent to go if you celebrate Lent. We actually don’t give up anything or do fish Fridays in this house, but I know that a lot of people do. So I thought this week we would make some homemade crispy fish sticks. So if your family is a fish lover, then you are absolutely going to love these because it’s like having a really high quality fish stick. So basically like fried fish, right? But instead of frying, we’re actually going to bake these, but since we’re using a Panko breadcrumb, they’re going to get nice and crispy right in the oven. So this crispy fish stick recipe will take, I don’t know, probably about 15 minutes to prep, but the cooking time is super short. We’re talking under 10 minutes here to get them nice and crispy in the oven. So you’re looking at probably around 30 minutes by the time everything is prepped and done and in the oven and then ready to go. So not a super long labor intensive dinner recipe, which is great. How the recipe is written, it will serve about five people. But of course, if you want to double or triple the recipe, you absolutely can. On my recipe card. There will be a little button that says servings. You just hover over how many servings there are, and a little slider will appear and you can just increase the amount of people to serve. What will happen is all of the ingredients will also increase in the recipe cards, so you know how many ingredients you need to serve you know, seven people, 10 people, 20 people, whatever you want. I’m sliding it right now, it looks like it goes all the way up to 20 people. I’m going to slide it right back down to five. 
Tips and Tricks: Now as far as tips and tricks, let’s talk about a couple ingredients that you need for these fish sticks. One of the first ingredients is obviously the fish. The recipe says that you need one and a half pounds of fresh cod filets. You can use cod. If you can’t find cod, or you maybe don’t like cod, or the cod looks terrible at the grocery store, you could also use some other firm white flesh fish. That is so hard for me to say. Firm white flesh fish. You can use a haddock, a hake, or a catfish. Even tilapia will work, although sometimes tilapia filets are awfully thin. 
The next ingredient is the Panko breadcrumbs. When you’re at the grocery store, the aisle where you normally get your breadcrumbs. There will also be an option called Panko breadcrumbs. That’s what you want. They’re actually considered a Japanese style, I think it’s Japanese, Japanese style breadcrumbs. What it is, it’s bread with the crust removed and then it’s dried and ground into a much coarser texture. So traditional breadcrumbs are pretty fine and kind of smooth. Panko breadcrumbs are like if you took a saltine cracker and crunched it up. So they’re perfect for a crispy, crunchy coating. 
Then all of the other ingredients are pretty traditional as far as you know, breading, fish or chicken. You’ll have flour, eggs, seasonings, and then you will need a non-stick spray. 
Crispy Fish Sticks: So let’s go ahead and get into the full recipe for your crispy fish sticks. So when you’re breading an item, my best tip here is to set up an assembly line. So you’ll need three shallow bowls. In the first bowl, you’re going to place a half a cup of all-purpose flour mixed with one and a quarter teaspoons of kosher salt. Then in the second bowl, you’re going to beat together three eggs with one tablespoon of Dijon mustard. This part is optional. If you like a little tiny kick of heat, you can add a quarter teaspoon of cayenne pepper and mix that in there with eggs. Then the third bowl, you’re going to mix those breadcrumbs. So you need two cups of Panko breadcrumbs mixed with one teaspoon of onion powder, one teaspoon of garlic powder, one teaspoon of paprika, or smoked paprika and that’s it. So mix all those together, line up your three bowls. 
Then you also want to preheat your broiler in your oven and place the oven rack right in the middle position. Get a really large rimmed baking sheet. Cover it with foil and then generously spray it with non-stick spray. 
Now you want to take those cod filets and pat them dry with a paper towel. Then you’re going to cut them into about one inch strips. Maybe one inch thick and maybe three inches long. So just a normal fish stick that you would get, you know, a frozen fish stick. That’s kind of what you want them to look like. But, you know, these are homemade, so if they don’t look great, it’s totally fine. They’ll still taste good. 
All right. You’ll start by dipping a cod strip into that flour mixture. Dredge it all through there, and then give it a little shake to shake off any excess flour. Then you’re going to dip it fully in that egg mixture. Then the last step is to dredge it in that Panko mixture. What I like to do is kind of lightly press the Panko mixture onto the fish sticks so that it adheres to the fish. Then you’re going to place that right on your prepared baking sheet, and then repeat that with all of the fish sticks that you cut. 
When all of them are coated and they’re on that baking rack, what you want to do is spray the tops of them with non-stick spray. Again, generously spray them. Spraying the tops and having the foil sprayed on the bottom is going to help that Panko breadcrumbs become nice and golden and crispy.
So you’ll pop them into the preheated oven on that middle rack for about four minutes. Then you’re going to pull them out, flip them over, and pop them in for about another three to four minutes. You’ll know when they’re done when your fish sticks have reached 145 degree internal temperature. That means they are cooked through. You can use just one of those. Instant read thermometers are great. I will actually link the one that I use right in the show notes for you.
For serving these fish sticks, you know, keep it casual, keep it easy. Traditionally, we’re talking french fries, tater tots, kettle chips, fish and chips. Maybe some raw veggies with ranch dip or hummus. If you want to add a little bit more, you could add a green side salad or maybe some roasted vegetables. 
Traditionally, you add a little bit of tartar sauce on the side, and I actually have two recipes for homemade tartar sauce. If you’re like, yeah, I’m not making my own tartar sauce, you can just get some at the grocery store and use that, but my guess is one of the kids in your family will just use ketchup because that’s how it is at my house. One kid uses ketchup, one kid uses mustard. But, if you guys like tartar sauce, I have a classic tartar sauce recipe. Then I also have a jalapeno tartar sauce recipe that’s really good. 
If you are someone who likes to prepare meals and kind of get things ready ahead of time, right in the recipe card, I’m not going to go over it here, but right in the recipe card, there are instructions for making the fish sticks and then freezing them and then reheating them from frozen. So just like you would have frozen fish sticks from the grocery store, you can actually make them to have frozen fish sticks. 
Outro: All right, so that does it for the full episode of Let’s Make Dinner. I hope that you make these wonderful fish sticks for dinner tonight and cook along with me here on this episode.
Like I said before, I would love to have you guys join my newsletter. There will be a link right in the show notes, whatever podcast platform you’re listening on, I’m going to pop a link right in there so you can click it and just send your email address to me and you’ll be signed up for my newsletter.
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, now it’s time for your double dip. Thanks for sticking around, guys. So in the double dip, if you’re enjoying cooking along with me on Thursdays and you’re finding it helpful and that it helps you plan your dinners when you’re fresh out of dinner ideas, you can always listen to the Double Dip and know it’s coming up the next week. Make sure you have the groceries ready and cook along with me right on Thursdays. 
So next week on, let’s see, what date will that be? That will be March 23rd. We are making Asian meatballs with a delicious hoisin glaze over top. These are so, so good. You can serve them up with a little bit of steamed rice or fried rice, which actually we like to buy ours just right at Trader Joe’s in their frozen food section. Super easy, and then I usually get some either sugar snap peas or snow peas and saute them or make some roasted broccoli and it makes just an absolutely perfect dinner. 
Okay, so here’s what you’re going to need to make the Asian meatballs with the hoisin glaze. Hoisin glaze. I have a really hard time saying that word too. Oh my gosh. Okay. Here is what you need. I’m going to preface this just like I did when we made our Veggie Pad Thai. Some of these Asian style recipes have a ton of ingredients, but really once you get some of these ingredients, you have them and you can make a whole lot of delicious Asian style food. 
So for this next episode, you’re going to need one egg, soy sauce, sesame oil, kosher salt, red pepper flakes, ground ginger. I’m talking about like dry ground ginger that you would find in the spice cabinet. Fresh garlic cloves, panko breadcrumbs, one and a half pounds of 85% lean ground beef, three scallions, non-stick spray. Then for the glaze, for the hoisin glaze, you need vegetable oil, garlic, fresh ginger, and this is a little tip about fresh ginger. You can of course buy the big knobs of fresh ginger in the produce aisle, or you can go to the frozen food section and go where they have some frozen herbs and there’s a brand called Dorot Gardens, and they have little cubes of frozen ginger that are perfect and it couldn’t be easier to use. So that’s what I use. You’ll need hoisin sauce, ketchup, rice vinegar, sambal, which is basically like garlic chili sauce, soy sauce, and again sesame oil. So that’s what you need for next week. I hope you’ll join me and cook along with me next week. Until then, I hope you guys have a great week. See ya.

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

Hey Hey everybody. Okay. I’m so excited to be in my office today. It has been a minute, so this last week, if you’re listening to this in real time last week, I actually spent five wonderful glorious days in Chicago with other people in my industry. So content creators, photographers, recipe developers, podcasters, and a lot of those people. When you’re doing the job that I do, you’re just meeting those people online or through social media and to actually meet some of these people in person is just, it’s so inspirational and so wonderful.

So I’m feeling on top of the world today and it’s also good to be home and to be eating in my own house. I’m gonna tell you what, when you’re traveling for five days, the constant eating out gets to be too much. I love a good, rich, yummy dinner, but when you’re eating steak and fries and you know really rich breakfasts every day it gets to be a little bit much and when you’re having all the drink, It can be a little bit much after five days.

So I’m back home. Happy to be here. Super happy to be recording another podcast episode and I bet you’re wondering what we’re making for dinner tonight. So tonight we are making the creamy mushroom pasta. So when I’m in the kitchen cooking, one of my absolute favorite smells in the kitchen, this is kind of weird, but one of my favorite smells is when butter is simmering in a pan and you add fresh garlic and mushrooms. That three ingredient combo, they need to make a candle that is mushroom, garlic, and butter . I would burn it in my kitchen every day. So that’s going to be the foundation of this recipe for creamy mushroom pasta.

I was looking at this recipe because we’re gonna make it for dinner and the recipe calls for eight ounces of pasta and you know, then it has the cream sauce and the mushrooms and I have on there that it serves four people, and I’m like, in what world does eight ounces of pasta feed four people.

So I think I need to go back and make this recipe. Obviously I’m gonna make it tonight, but I need to maybe, adjust how many people this serves. So I think with eight ounces of pasta, I think you could serve that to four people, but you for sure better have a side salad and maybe some garlic bread to go with it.

So my recommendation for right now is that if you make this pasta dish for four people, Double the recipe, and then if you have leftovers, great. You’ll have delicious pasta for lunch the next day. This recipe is going to come together pretty quickly, so probably in the time that it takes for you to cook the pasta, which is probably gonna be, you know, eight to 10 minutes, you can also have the cream sauce with the mushrooms already in another pan. So I would say in total, at like 20 minutes tops to get this done.

Recipe Tips and Tricks

For our tips and trick section, the only thing that I really wanna talk about here are two of the ingredients included in this recipe. One is a 10 to 16 ounce container of Cremini mushrooms. In the grocery store they are going to be the ones that are about the size of button mushrooms, like the white button mushrooms, but they’re gonna be really dark brown in color.

It should say cremini mushrooms on the package, or it might say baby bella mushrooms, because a cremini is basically the same thing as a portobello mushroom, just much smaller and more in the middle of its ripeness. But it still has super delicious, you know, really earthy, hearty mushroom flavor. Of course, any mushroom type will work here, but the cremini or baby bella mushroom is what is written in the recipe.

The other ingredient that I wanna talk about is the Parmesan cheese. So this is going to add quite a bit of flavor to the actual sauce for your pasta. So my recommendation is that you get a really good Parmesan cheese. So if you go to your grocery store and they have, you know, the really processed commercial Parmesan cheese, it’ll look like a little triangle that’ll work, absolutely.

But if you want that really kind of tangy, rich aged Parmesan flavor, look for something that comes off of a full wheel of Parmesan. It’ll look really craggy, kind of dry and rustic that is going to have way more flavor than your, you know, really processed Parmesan. So that’s it for ingredients and tips and tricks.

Creamy Mushroom Pasta Audio Recipe

Let’s go ahead and just jump right into the full recipe for the creamy mushroom pasta. So, like I said before, you’re gonna need eight ounces of pasta. Just cook that per package instructions to like an al dente. The tip here though, is that you always, always wanna cook your pasta in a salted water. Your water, it’s gonna take way more salt than you think.

So add that kosher salt. You can actually taste the pasta water, and if it tastes like salty sea water, then you’ve salted it enough. So go ahead and cook your eight ounces of pasta. If you’re doubling the recipe, go ahead and use a whole pound. You can use penne pasta, any kind of like tubular noodle, like a rigatoni, a cavatapi, anything like that will work really well.

So while that is cooking, you’re gonna go ahead and get the mushrooms sauteing and make that cream sauce. So in a large skillet, something with taller sides melt three tablespoons of butter over medium to medium low heat. Then you’re gonna stir in those 10 to 16 ounces of sliced cremini mushrooms. And three, at least three, plump garlic cloves that have been chopped.

If you like more garlic, add more garlic. Then get that sauteing around the pan for about 10 minutes and inhale that smell. The smell of butter and garlic and mushrooms is like heaven.

Now at this point you’re gonna add one more tablespoon of butter to the pan. we do this because we’re gonna make a roux to make the sauce thick, and when you cook mushrooms and butter, they generally will absorb all the butter, which is great.

Makes it super delicious. But you need a little more fat in the pan to thicken your sauce. So add one more tablespoon of butter. Then you’re gonna stir in an entire teaspoon of salt and two tablespoons of all-purpose flour. You’re gonna stir that around the pan. It’s going to coat the mushrooms, and it’s going to start to kind of thicken up a little bit.

Then you’re going to pour in one cup of heavy cream and a half a cup of milk. That milk can just be 1% milk, whole milk, skim milk. It just slightly lightens up that heavy cream. Stir that really well so that there’s no lumps left in your sauce and simmer it lightly until it starts to thicken up. And this will just take a couple minutes.

Now you’re going to remove it from the heat, you’ll add in your cooked pasta, and then you’re going to add in a half cup of shredded Parmesan cheese. You stir it until the pasta is completely coated with that melted creamy cheese sauce. So good. My mouth is watering right now.

Serving

And then give it a taste. We always recommend that you taste before you serve. Make sure that you don’t want to add a little more salt or if you want to add some fresh garlic at the end or if you want some parsley in there.

The other nice thing about this recipe is you can absolutely add some extra mix ins, so if you want, you can add some fresh spinach in there and just wilt it down to add a green note. You could add some sauté or grilled shrimp or chicken. You could also add some asparagus in there when you add the mushrooms. Or this is another great idea at the very end, you can stir in a couple tablespoons of pesto, fresh pesto. Super, super delicious. It add adds a really bright note.

Now, when you taste it, if you feel like the dish is a little heavy, you can also squeeze on a little bit of lemon juice, and that always adds a little bright note. I always say if you taste a recipe and you feel like there’s just something missing to the recipe, it’s usually an acid. And what you add for that is, you know, vinegar, balsamic vinegar, citrus. Any of those things will work to add that high note.

Side Dishes

Like I said before, when you’re serving this, I definitely recommend adding a side salad.

This is such an easy recipe that, you know, just a really good bagged Caesar salad from the grocery store will work perfect. You wanna put a little more effort in? You could absolutely make my big old Italian salad (podcast episode for Italian Salad) with fresh pesto vinegarette, but that’s a little more work. If you’re making this during the week, on a Thursday, you might wanna just like grab a bag of.

If you have a Trader Joe’s nearby, they have an excellent salad that would be perfect with this, that I’m actually serving tonight. It is an arugula salad that has a lemon vinaigrette and it has like almonds or maybe it’s pistachios in it. Look for it at, um, Trader Joe’s. Super delicious. And then of course, warm bread, like a ciabatta bread or breadsticks or garlic bread would be perfect here as.

Tips for Cream Sauces

Now since we’re making a cream sauce, I’m gonna talk through just a couple points here about troubleshooting cream sauce. And this is gonna be, you know, whether you’re making an Alfredo, if you’re making this creamy mushroom pasta. Sometimes cream sauce can give you problems.

So if you’re making cream sauce and you’re feeling like it’s not thick enough, you can simmer it for longer, but you always wanna make sure that you’re stirring cream sauce because that cream that fat can burn to the bottom of the.

If you are simmering your cream sauce and it didn’t thicken up at all, and you’re like, this is still like milk . What you can do is mix a heaping tablespoon of corn starch with about one and a half tablespoons of cool water. Stir that together, and what that is called is a slurry. And then while your sauce or your liquid is simmering, you pour that in, whisk it, and it should thicken up right.

Now if you don’t want to use a corn starch, there’s another option called a beurre manie, and that is a French word, fanciness, for kneaded butter. And what you do is you take a tablespoon of softened butter, a tablespoon of all-purpose flour, take a fork and mash it together completely. And then while your sauce is simmering, whisk it in and that will thicken it perfectly.

Now if you’re done with your cream sauce and you’re like, this is light glue, it is too thick. What you want to do is just whisk in a little more milk. Maybe you want to whisk in some more cream, chicken broth, water, whatever you wanna use, just whisk in a little bit more liquid.

All right. That does it for our full recipe for creamy mushroom pasta today.

I hope you make it for dinner on this Thursday night. If you’re listening real time, it’s Thursday! You can always look for a new recipe to come out on Let’s Make Dinner podcast every Thursday morning, and then hopefully you’ll grab the ingredients and make it for dinner that night.

Of course, all of the recipes I talked about in this episode will be linked right in the show notes, so you can click through and go to the recipe hit jump to recipe. Jump right down to the recipe card. Cook from my website. If you’re on your phone, there’s a little button in the middle of my recipe card called Cook Mode, and it’s a little toggle switch. Toggle it on and then your screen will not go dark, like best invention ever. So when you’re cooking, you don’t have to continually turn on your screen.

It will just stay on for you the whole time and you can cook. You could also print out the recipe. You can pin it, you can actually, if you’ve got to go to the grocery store and you’re on your phone, you can text yourself all of the ingredients and a link back to the recipe right from my recipe card. So check it out I hope you’ll use that feature. It is so slick.

All right, we’ll see you guys next week, and as always, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner Makes your Dinner Time a little easier.

Double Dip- Next Weeks Episode

And now it’s time for the double dip. . I love the double dip. Double dip is so casual. Here we are.

What a double dip is, is where you are enjoying making these recipes and cooking along with me on Thursdays when you’re fresh out of dinner ideas. You can come here, make the recipe, and then listen to the double dip and figure out what we’re making next week.

So next week on the Let’s Make Dinner Podcast, we are going to make crispy fish sticks. So if you’ve ever had fish sticks from the grocery store, then you know that a lot of times it’s actually minced and pressed fish. It’s like a chicken McNugget . It’s just pressed. So if you want something a little bit better, something a little bit fancier, but doesn’t take a ton of time, then you can actually buy a really nice filet of fish into, you know, sticks.

Bread it with some Panko, get it really crispy in the oven and serve that up. You can make your own tartar sauce. You can bite it at the grocery store, whatever you wanna do. , but that’s what we’re making next week. So I want you to be prepared and have the ingredients that you need to make your crispy fish sticks.

So let me go over all of the ingredients that you need to grab to have on hand for next week’s episode. All right? There’s not a lot. Most of it’s going to come from your spice cabinet. You need:

• 1.5 pounds of codfish, filets
• all-purpose flour
• three eggs
• Dijon mustard
• Kosher salt
• Cayenne pepper
• panko breadcrumbs
• onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, or smoked paprika.
• non-stick spray
• Foil

I hope that you’ll join us next week and make the crispy fish sticks with us, and I’ll see you then.

Have a great week you guys.

Intro: 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: Okay, I’m going to have to apologize for my little bit of froggy voice today. So in real time as I’m recording this, I live in the Kansas City area and the Kansas City Chiefs just won the Super Bowl. It was so exciting. It was an excellent game. Super fun. Had a big party and actually had perfect timing. I made this Instant Pot Buffalo Chicken Chili for our Super Bowl party, and it was delicious. It is perfect game day food. So unfortunately, the football season is over, but you can use it for other parties, for baseball, for just a fun weeknight dinner or for next football season.

So of course for this recipe, you’re going to want to have an Instant Pot. I actually currently have two Instant Pots because I love it so much and I do a lot of Instant Pot recipes on PinterestTV. So I need two pots so that I can make a recipe and then make a recipe during the show. The pot that I have is the Six Quart Instant Pot Duo Plus, and then I have a seven in one and a nine in one. I have to say that the seven in one is plenty for me. I don’t really use the nine functions. In fact, I don’t really use the seven functions. I use about four of the functions. So save a little bit of money, get the seven in one Instant Pot, if you don’t already have one, it’ll save you about 30 bucks.

The most important feature is that you want to have at least a six quart Instant Pot. Most recipes are going to be written in either a six quart or an eight quart pot. This recipe for Instant Pot Buffalo Chicken Chili is going to serve about, it’s tough to say because it depends on, if you’re at a Super Bowl party and you have a lot of other food, it’s going to serve a lot of people. But if it’s just a dinner that you’re doing, it’s going to serve probably about six people. You can double the recipe, but I think if you have just a six quart pot, doubling the recipe is going to be hard because it will fill the pot to the brim. If you’ve worked with an Instant Pot before, you know that in the inside of the pot, there’s that max fill line, and you don’t want to go over that when you’re cooking in the Instant Pot.

Total time to make this recipe is going to be probably about a good 20 minute prep time just because you have chopped onions and peppers and garlic and then the actual pressure cook time is only 12 minutes. Now not calculated in there, of course, is the time it comes to bring your pot to pressure and then the release time. 

Tips and Tricks: There’s not a ton of tips and tricks that I’m sharing before the recipe today, but there are two ingredients that I want to talk about briefly. So the ranch packet, it’s that little one ounce envelope of Dry Ranch Mix. I have tried the Aldi brand or off brand or store brands, they’re not quite the same as the Hidden Valley brand. I’m not sponsored by Hidden Valley. I just think that it is definitely a better flavor. So if you see the Hidden Valley ones, grab that. 

Then also the buffalo sauce that goes into this recipe. Number one, if you don’t like spicy things, this is not the recipe for you. After the Super Bowl this year, I had somebody email me and tell me that my Buffalo Chicken nachos were too spicy. I’m like, if you don’t like buffalo or you don’t know about buffalo, or you don’t like spicy things, then this recipe is not going to be for you. But the buffalo sauce, Frank’s Red Hot Original, is always good. But I will say I’ve tried the Aldi one and it is just as good, truly. Now you’ll also see buffalo sauce and then you’ll see wing sauce. They will both work, but the buffalo sauce is not going to have as much like oil and butter in it as a wing sauce. The wing sauce is ready to be put on chicken wings and stick to the chicken wings. Like I said, they’ll both work. But if you can find the Frank’s Red Hot Original, it’s delicious. 

Instant Pot Buffalo Chicken Chili Recipe: All right, so let’s get on to making this full recipe for Instant Pot Buffalo Chicken Chili. You want to start by setting your Instant Pot on saute mode. Once it reads hot, you’re going to add one tablespoon of oil to the pot. Then, you’re going to add in one yellow onion that’s been diced. Three garlic cloves that are chopped. One cup of chopped celery and one bell pepper that’s been chopped. You can use any color; red, green, yellow, orange, they’ll all work here.

So let that saute around for about five to eight minutes. Then you’re going to turn the saute mode off. You’re going to add in two large chicken breasts, and what I like to do here is cut them into four pieces each so that they cook all the way through in your cooking time. Then you’ll sprinkle in that one ounce packet of ranch dressing mix, and then pour in four cups of chicken broth or chicken stock and then three quarters cup of buffalo sauce that Frank’s Red Hot Original that we talked about. Now if you are like, I just want a little bit of spice, you can absolutely adjust this to a quarter cup all the way up to the three quarters. So just add as much buffalo sauce as you think you want. Of course you can always add more at the end if you want to taste it and then see what your heat level is.

Now you’re going to place the lid on your Instant Pot. Turn it, lock that pressure valve to seal and set it to cook either on manual mode, high pressure for 12 minutes, or you can do the meat and stew mode, which is basically the same thing for 12 minutes. After the pressure cook is done, you’ll do a quick release of pressure, which just means you turn that pressure valve to vent and all of that steam will escape.

So at this point we’re going to finish the soup. What you want to do is fish out all eight pieces of that chicken breast and you can chop it or shred it. My very favorite tip for shredding chicken is putting it in your stand mixer with a paddle attachment and it needs to be warm or hot chicken to do this. So put it in your Kitchenaid with a paddle attachment. Buzz it on medium speed for about 15 to 30 seconds and it shreds it beautifully and it’s so, so easy. So shred that up. Set that aside. 

Now, in the Instant Pot, you’re going to add your cream cheese. It’s an eight ounce block of cream cheese. I like to cut mine up into one inch blocks so that it melts down into the soup a little bit easier. Usually I’ll take a whisk and whisk it in so that it breaks up and melts down into the soup. Then you’re going to finish the soup by stirring in the shredded chicken. A 14 and a half ounce can of diced tomatoes that’s been drained and a 15 and a half ounce can of great Northern beans that’s been drained. One and a half cups of frozen corn. A third cup of fresh chopped cilantro and then one tablespoon of honey. The honey just balances that flavor and balances all of the spiciness and the tanginess. You’ve got a lot of tanginess in this soup, so that honey just balances everything out. So give it a really good stir, mix it all up, and then let it cool for about 15 minutes and it will start to thicken up as it cools.

So that is the full recipe. Now, in the recipe, I do have troubleshooting for spice levels. If you don’t like things too spicy, like we said, dial back the buffalo sauce. If it’s too late and you already made it too spicy, what you can do is add more cream cheese, or you can stir in a little bit of heavy cream or half and half.

Now, if you have just started the recipe and you’re like, give me all the spice, I want more spice than just the buffalo, you can add one or two chopped jalapenos in the beginning when you’re sauteing the onions and celery and bell. 

Now if you’ve already made the chili and you want more spice, of course you can add in a little bit more buffalo sauce. You can add in some ground cayenne pepper or a couple dashes of your favorite hot sauce. You can also serve it with fresh jalapenos. That will be nice and spicy.

Now when you’re serving this Instant Pot Buffalo Chicken Chili, what I like to do is have all of those buffalo toppings ready. So blue cheese, cheese. My favorite is to crumble up some tortilla chips into the soup. I like to have celery sticks, carrots sticks, maybe some cornbread, some different corn breads or Fritos, sour cream, avocados. All of that is delicious piled on top of this soup. 

All right, so that does it for today’s recipe for Instant Pot Buffalo Chicken Chili. Of course, all of the recipes that I talked about in this episode can be found on momsdinner.net. That is my website where I share all of my recipes. You can save them, print them, and cook right from my website. I would love to have you check them out. I will put links to all of the recipes right in the show notes for you.

Outro: If you are loving these episodes and it’s helping you in the kitchen, I would love to have you rate and review this show in your favorite podcast player. Until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner makes your dinner time a little easier. See ya.

Double Dip: Now it’s time for your Double Dip. So if you are enjoying cooking along with these episodes, then I want you to be prepared for next week’s episode, which of course, comes out every Thursday. So next week we’re making a Veggie Stir Fry. So it’s going to be really similar to a vegetable Pad Thai that you would get from a Thai restaurant.

Yes, you can absolutely make it at home. It’s pretty easy to do and it’s absolutely delicious. However, it does have a longer list of ingredients, but I want to give you all of the ingredients now so that you can have everything you need and cook along next Thursday. I will also put a link in the show notes to next week’s recipe so that you can check it out. You can actually even text yourself the ingredients from the recipe so that when you go to the grocery store, you have it right in your text. There’s a big button right in the middle of the recipe that says, text me the ingredients. So you can use that, especially if you’re on your mobile phone. 

All right, so let’s get to these ingredients. You’ll need eight ounces of rice noodles. I like the Thai Kitchen brand. Vegetable oil, broccoli florets, a red pepper, garlic cloves, kosher salt, two large eggs, one cup of bean sprouts and green onions. Then for the Pad Thai sauce, of course you could buy a Pad Thai sauce at the grocery store and be good to go. But if you want to make your own, you’ll want vegetable broth or chicken broth, tamarind paste, fish sauce, soy sauce, brown sugar, creamy peanut butter. Again, garlic, fresh ginger and red pepper flakes. A note about the fresh ginger. So I usually don’t use fresh ginger. What I use are the little frozen cubes. They’re, I think they’re called Dorot Gardens, I get them at Trader Joe’s and they’re little frozen cubes. Each cube is a teaspoon of fresh grated ginger. It couldn’t be easier. 

All right, then for the garnish, you’re going to want to have roasted peanuts, cilantro, and fresh lime wedges. That’s it. So I hope you join me next week and make some Pad Thai for dinner on Thursday when you are fresh out of dinner ideas and you’re like, what am I going to make for dinner? You can come back to this podcast, Let’s Make Dinner and cook along with me. I’ll see you then.