Intro: Hey, hey everyone. 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: Hey everybody. All right, so if you’re listening to this in real time, then it is New Year’s 2023. Welcome to the New Year. Time to reset, refocus, kind of a clean slate. Doesn’t it Feel fresh? It feels fresh and new to me. It feels like I have a chance to restart. I mean, it’s still the same old me, same podcast, all of that, but it feels like a clean slate. I’m super pumped for this year, the first podcast episode of 2023, we are making homemade chili. It’s the perfect winter food. When it’s really cold out, or like if it’s going to snow, you know, I’m making chili.

The chili recipe on mom’s dinner is definitely a classic. I would say maybe Midwestern chili, so it includes ground beef, it has celery, onions, garlic. It has a chili flavored tomato sauce, and then of course it has beans. I know that’s super controversial for some people, whether you have beans or not in beans and chili. But for this recipe, we are pro bean. If you do not like beans in your chili, this will not be the recipe for you. You’ll want to move on, make something else. Search no bean Chili on Google.

Tips and Tricks: A few tips for this recipe. You definitely want to start with a really flavorful ground beef. When I say flavorful ground beef, that just means that you’re going to use a higher fat content beef. So an 80/20 or an 85/15, will be perfect. 

The other part of this recipe that can be up for debate is the beans, which we talked about. In my recipe, I use a canned chili bean in sauce, and for me and my family, I like a mild one. It also comes in hot, which you can just find at the grocery store. For my chili beans, I love Brooks chili beans. Those seem to be the best, if you can find them, that’s what we prefer here. And I would definitely recommend you give them a try. The other beans that we add are Northern beans, and it’s like a white bean. I think it might be similar to a cannellini bean, so you could use those as well. Or you could use more of a kidney bean if you prefer that. A light or a dark red kidney bean will work here as well. As well as like pinto beans, really, the second bean, the chili beans in sauce, you want to keep just how it is, but the second bean that you add, that really is up to you. 

Homemade Chili with Beans Recipe: All right, so let’s get started with this full recipe for homemade chili. You’re going to start with a large pot. This makes a good amount of chili, so you want a big pot. I of course love a glazed dutch oven. You’re going to start over medium high heat, and you’re going to saute three minced garlic cloves and one large onion that’s chopped, and then two celery stocks that are chopped. Saute those in one or two tablespoons of oil until they start to soften a little bit. So this is going to be about five minutes. Then you’re going to add one pound of ground beef, and again, try to use something like an 80/20 or an 85/15 and just crumble that up while it cooks through. Probably about another five minutes.

Then at the end of that process, if you have quite a bit of grease at the bottom of your pot, what I like to do is scrape all of the beef and the veggies to one side of the pot and then tip the pot up and sop up just a little bit of that grease with some paper towels and a pair of tongs, and then discard the paper towels.

Now you’re going to turn the heat to medium low and you’re going to add in one four ounce can of chopped green chilies. A 15 ounce can of diced tomatoes, 16 ounces of tomato sauce, one cup of water, a 15 ounce can of chili beans in sauce. You want to make sure you don’t drain those because you want that chili sauce in your chili. However, you’re going to add another 15 ounce can of beans and the recipe calls for Northern beans. But like I said, you could use cannellini, you could use pinto beans or kidney beans. You want to drain those. 

Then for all of the spices and seasonings, you’re going to add one and a half tablespoons of sugar. It may sound weird to add sugar to your chili. Your chili’s not going to be sweet. What that’s doing is balancing the tartness and the acidity of all the tomatoes. You’ll add one bay leaf, one heaping tablespoon of chili powder, one teaspoon of dried oregano, one teaspoon of cumin. One teaspoon of kosher salt and half a teaspoon of black pepper. Now we’re going to add some spices you may not normally add to your chili, but they add such a warm flavor to your chili. So add a pinch of ground allspice, and a pinch of ground clove. Then if you like it spicy, you can definitely add some red pepper flakes or some cayenne pepper. 

So stir all of that to combine, and then you’re just going to let it simmer over low heat for about 30 minutes, stirring it occasionally. That’s the whole entire chili recipe. Of course, before you serve it, you’ll want to remove the bay leaf and just discard it. If you know or if you don’t know, chili actually gets better with time. It’s like the flavors develop and meld together. So if you can make this chili a day ahead. If you can’t, it’s going to be super delicious just as it is.

If you do make it ahead and you’re going to reheat it the next day, you may want to loosen it up just a little bit with a little water or chicken stock, or maybe even beef broth or even red wine would be really good. 

Now, when you serve your chili, we like to add all of the toppings and make it more of like a loaded chili. So we’ll put out maybe Fritos, sour cream, green onions, jalapenos, shredded cheddar cheese, or shredded pepper jack cheese, maybe some hot sauce. Fresh, chopped avocado or just saltine crackers or cornbread. So I have a lot of cornbread recipes on Mom’s Dinner that I will link in the show notes for you as well as a recipe for this chili made in the Instant Pot. So if you love your Instant Pot, you could pop over and make it in your Instant Pot instead. 

So that’s it. That does it for the full recipe for our classic chili. I hope that you will make this chili and enjoy it on a super chilly night with the blankets and maybe a good movie. As always, I will link all of the recipes I talked about in this episode right in the show notes for you so you can find them, pin them, save them, make them whenever you’re ready. 

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

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: Woohoo. Happy holidays, everybody. If you’re listening to this episode or you’re looking at this recipe, then it’s probably close to Christmas time. Because today we’re going to make a really quick and easy Christmas dessert called a chocolate Christmas trifle. Super delicious, super easy. It’s not quite a traditional trifle. If you’ve ever had a trifle before, it’s kind of a traditional English dessert that’s made in one really big bowl that’s usually stemmed. It’s going to have layers of a pudding or a custard or a whipped cream and cake and fruit. But we’re going to sub out some of the flavors or something a little bit more festive. So we’re going to use peppermint cream cheese whipped cream. We’re going to use brownies, fudge and these little peppermint chip baking chips things that are so delicious, layer it all together in individual cups and it just makes a super impressive dessert. Perfect to stand up to the expectations of Christmas. 

Tips and Tricks: Let’s get on to making this delicious recipe for a chocolate Christmas trifle. Like I said, it’s not going to be totally traditional, so instead of using the stemmed trifle bowl, we’re actually going to make them in individual cups and just about any small cup will work here. What I like to use is something called a bodega glass, and I actually get them at World Market. They’re super affordable. I think they’re like 2.99 a piece or something, and it’s just a very thin plain glass, but it looks beautiful. Another option would be to go to a thrift store or an estate sale and find a set of really unique little glasses that you could serve your trifle in. But for the Bodega glass, I will link that in the show notes so you guys can take a look at it.

Christmas Trifle Recipe: To start this recipe, you’re actually going to need some prepared brownies. There’s two options here. Of course, you can make some brownies cool them completely, and then cut them up into little half inch pieces. Or you can go to your local grocery store bakery, buy a pan of brownies, chop those up, and that works too. So once you get those chopped up into little half inch pieces, you can just set that aside. 

Now in a large bowl of a stand mixer, or you can use just a large bowl and a hand mixer, you’re going to whisk together one quarter cup of cold heavy cream and four ounces of softened cream cheese. It’s really important that your cream cheese is completely softened at room temperature so that the cream layer is nice and smooth, and there’s not little chunks of cream cheese in it. I will tell you that cream cheese actually softens really, really quickly at room temperature. You can actually just cut it into smaller cubes and it should come to room temperature within about an hour. Once that quarter cup of heavy cream and the four ounces of cream cheese come together totally smooth and soft, you’re going to pour in one teaspoon of peppermint extract and a half a cup, this is a heaping half cup of powdered sugar. Then you’ll continue to whisk that until everything is combined. Now, to finish this off, you’re going to slowly stream in an additional one and a quarter cups of cold heavy cream. You’re going to whisk that until soft peaks form. So what a soft peak is, let’s say you’re using a stand mixer and you pull that whisk up out of the cream cheese mixture, a little peak and it will slowly sink back into the bowl. That’s a soft peak. The whipped cream cream cheese mixture should be about the texture of a thick pudding. 

Now another ingredient that you’re going to need is hot fudge. What I like to buy for this, there’s a brand in the grocery store called Mrs. Richardson’s, and we love that fudge. So you could just buy a 15.5 ounce jar of hot fudge. Take the lid off because the lid is metal. Take the lid off, pop that glass jar in the microwave for just a few seconds and let it warm through and then it will be ready to use. 

Now it’s time to assemble your individual chocolate trifles. So for this part what I like to do is put all of my glasses onto a rimmed baking sheet that will fit right in the fridge. Then in each glass, you’re going to start by putting about three to four pieces of brownie down on the bottom. Then you’re going to drizzle in one to two tablespoons of fudge sauce. Then you’ll cover that with a layer of that peppermint whipped cream. Then you’re going to do a generous layer of this stuff called Andes Peppermint Crunch chips. They sell out like hot cakes this time of year. So if you are going to make this, you’re going to want to run to the store and see if you can find it. You’ll either find it in the baking aisle near the chocolate chips, or you’ll find it in the candy aisle near all of the Christmas candies.

So put a generous layer on that, and then you’re going to repeat all those steps one more time. So three to four pieces of brownie, one to two tablespoons of the hot fudge, a layer of the peppermint whipped cream, and then you’ll finish it off with the Peppermint Crunch chips. Then you’ll put all of those glasses right into the fridge. That’s why I like to put them on that rimmed baking sheet because you can put them all in there at the same time, about 12 to 24 hours in the fridge for everything to set up. Then you serve those cold. They go perfect with a candy cane on the side and a nice hot cup of coffee. 

So that does it for the full chocolate Christmas trifle recipe. I hope you’ll make this for Christmas. If you do, I would love to have you rate and review the recipe right on momsdinner.net. 

So as always, I will link all of the recipes I talked about right in the show notes for you so you can save it, find it, pin it, use it whenever you’re ready. 

Outro: Until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner makes your holiday time a little sweeter. See ya.

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

Susie Weinrich: Hey everybody. Welcome in. Have you guys ever wanted to make a full roast chicken, but it just feels so daunting to roast a whole chicken? What if the skin burns before the meat’s done? What if it doesn’t get crispy? What if I cut the chicken and the meat’s not cooked? There’s so many variables when you’re cooking an entire chicken, and so today I’m going to share with you my entire post on how to make the most perfect, crispy skin chicken that you’ve ever had. The breast meat and the thighs and the legs. They’re all going to be juicy and delicious and flavored, yet the skin is going to be brown and golden and crispy from top to bottom. You’re absolutely going to love it. However, this recipe does take at least two days to do the entire process, but that time and that care is what results in the best, most delicious chicken you’ve ever had.

With this audio recipe, I’m just going to kind of walk through the entire thing. You’ll get all of the tips and tricks along the way, so let’s go ahead and get started. 

Tips and Tricks: First, let’s talk about buying really quality chicken. If you’re going to take two to three days to make roast chicken, then this is the time that you want to buy really quality chicken. In my experience, your best bet is going to be air chilled whole chicken. Then from there you can go with your organic or your grain fed or free range or whatever the other terms are that you’re looking for. But the most important one that has the biggest effect on texture and taste is air chilled. This is a more expensive process, so if a chicken company uses air chilling, they absolutely will put it right on the front of their packaging. I live in the Midwest and the brand that I always look for because I know it’s air chilled, is called Smart Chicken. If you have that in your grocery store, you can absolutely bet that it’s going to be perfect and delicious.

There are also a couple sneaky terms that people put on their chicken packaging that definitely mean nothing. The first one is all natural. All natural means nothing. It basically means your chicken is not made of plastic. Well, duh, right? The other one has no hormones added. It’s actually been illegal since the fifties to add additional hormones to the chickens. If you see both of those terms, pay no mind, they mean absolutely nothing. 

Perfect Roasted Chicken Recipe: The next steps are going to take a couple days, so one to two days. So if you want to make this roast chicken, you definitely want to plan ahead. What you’re going to do is take your chicken out of the packaging and if it came already trussed, which means it’s tied up with string, go ahead and take that string off right now because what we’re going to do is salt the chicken and then we’re going to put it on like a drying rack and put it in the fridge for one to two days. The skin is going to start to dry out, which is going to make it super crispy in the oven. Then what’s going to happen is that kosher salt is actually going to start to make the bird like sweat kind of. It’s going to pull some moisture out, but then that moisture is going to mix with the salt and sink back in and flavor the actual meat of the chicken. This is a great way to get flavor all the way in your chicken. 

Tips and Tricks: So what you’re going to do is take a large rimmed baking sheet, and then if you have a cookie sheet or a drying rack or something that will fit into that baking sheet, put that in there so that the chicken will be raised up off of the surface and air can circulate all the way around it. So pop your chicken on top of that rack, and then you’re going to salt your chicken on all sides and even inside of the cavity too. You’re going to want to do this with one tablespoon of kosher salt. Do not use iodized table salt for this process. You definitely want that coarser more delicate flavored salt. So kosher salt is where it’s at, and I use either Morton’s or Real salt, or my very favorite is Diamond Crystal. 

So once you have that all nice and salted up, you’re going to put it in the refrigerator uncovered, because we want the air to circulate all around the chicken for 24 to 48 hours. What’s going to happen is the skin is going to start to darken and it’s going to start to dry out in the fridge. But that’s exactly what you want. 

Okay, so after the chicken has dry brine in the fridge for one to two days, you’re going to now prepare it for roasting. First you’re going to start by stuffing herbs, lemon, garlic, all of that into the cavity of the chicken. So I like to take a whole entire garlic clove and just chop the top of it off, shove that in there, shove a little rosemary, thyme, parsley, and a few lemon wedges down into the chicken.

Then you’re going to truss, and I’m going to try and explain this as best I can. When you truss a bird, basically you’re pulling the legs and the wings up close to the bird so that it all cooks together and the legs and the wings don’t burn before the rest of the bird is cooked. You’re going to set the bird breast side up and you’re going to cut a really long piece of kitchen string. It’s also called butcher’s twine, or kitchen twine. You’re going to snuggle that right underneath the tail of the bird. Then you’ll bring each end up and around the outside of the legs, and then meet them up at the top, cross them and pull them down under and around the legs. So it’s like you’re circling the legs, and then when you bring that string back up, you’re going to pull it and it’s going to pull the legs right into the bird exactly where you want them. Then what you’re going to do is take that string and pull it up around to the top side of the bird and tie it right at the front. That’s it. That’s trussing. It’s pretty easy. If that sounds confusing, I’ve got some great pictures on the post that show you exactly how to do it. 

Now, what you’re going to do is brush the skin with olive oil and be generous here. Make sure you add a lot of olive oil. That’s going to help the skin get nice and crispy in the oven. Then you’ll season with a little kosher salt and some black pepper, and then it’s ready to roast. 

You’re going to preheat your oven to 475 degrees, and while the oven heats up, you’ll want to have your chicken out at room temperature. This is called tempering and it will take the chill off the chicken so that it cooks a little bit more evenly in the oven. So while all that’s happening, you’ll want to go ahead and prepare your roasting pan. What I like to do is put some veggies down at the bottom of the pan that I will actually serve with the chicken. Some things that I like to add in there are large carrots, red potatoes, onions, fennel, turnips, or even brussel sprouts. You’ll just put them down into the pan, coat them with a little bit of extra virgin olive oil, a little bit of salt, little pepper, and give them a good toss. Then you can kind of move those veggies around to the outside and then pop that chicken, breast side up right into the middle of the pan. Then you’ll take that entire pan and roast it in the oven at 475 degrees, and this is uncovered, for about 25 minutes. Then you’re going to turn the heat down to 400 degrees and roast for another 45 minutes. At the end of that time, what you’ll want to do is check that the bird has reached at least 160 to 165 degrees at the thickest part, somewhere between the breast and the thigh. But you don’t want to touch a bone when you’re taking the temperature because you’ll get a false reading of temperature if you actually put the thermometer on a bone.

Our very favorite thermometer that we use is the Therma Works. I think it’s called Instant Read ThermaPen. I’ll link it in the show notes for you. It is the best piece of equipment. I use it all the time.

While your chicken is roasting, if at any point you feel like the skin is getting too dark, you can always tent it really loosely with foil. That will just stop that browning process. The chicken will still cook just from the ambient hot air, but it won’t have that direct heat to continue to brown that chicken. 

All right. Once it is completely roasted, you’ll want to let it rest uncovered for about 20 minutes before carving. If you’ve never carved a chicken before, what you want to think about is that the chicken is in eight pieces. There are two wings, two breasts, two thighs and two legs. You’ll first of course, want to take the trussing off the chicken, so just clip that little string in one spot and it should just unravel from the chicken. Then what you want to do is carve your chicken up into those eight pieces. 

How I like to do it is start by taking off the two breasts at the top and right in the center of the top, right in between the two breasts there runs the breast bone. What you can do is run your knife right along either side of that and then down and around the breast, and it should just literally pull away from the chicken carcass. 

Then the wings up top will literally just pull away from the chicken and you can bend them in the opposite direction and they should just crack right off from the main chicken carcass. The next part is the thigh and the leg. These two usually come off as a combo really well. So the thigh is going to be underneath the chicken. Then of course the leg is the iconic piece of chicken that people hold. Those two should come off together really nicely. Then of course, you can take that leg off of the thigh or keep them attached and serve them as one piece.

Now what you’ll have left after you take all of that off is the chicken carcass. You can absolutely use this again. What I like to do is put the chicken carcass in a freezer safe baggie. Pop it in the freezer and then I will make chicken stock in my Instant Pot a few days later, a few weeks later. Sometimes I’ll even just pop that chicken carcass in the fridge and then make the chicken stock the next day. So I of course will link that recipe for you in the show notes. 

Some great side dishes for roast chicken. You know, roast chicken is like a classic. Roast chicken, maybe make a little no drippings gravy. I’ve got a wonderful, wonderful recipe on momsdinner.net that I will share with you in the show notes. Maybe some mashed potatoes, and then just serve all the veggies that you cooked right underneath the chicken. It would be a beautiful dinner. So as always, I will link all of those recipes right in the show notes for you. So they will be there for you to pin, save, print, or make whenever you are ready. That does it for today’s episode. 

Outro: Until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner, makes your dinner time a little easier.

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: Happy holidays everyone. If you are looking at this recipe today, then you are probably in the mood for a little Christmas or holiday baking, and that’s exactly what we’re doing today.

Today we are going to be making a fruitcake cookie. Don’t be turned off. Don’t turn off the podcast episode by the word fruitcake. This is an old fashioned, updated version of fruitcake, so you’re going to be eating it in a cookie form. It’s still full of all of those holiday fruits, so candied cherries, dates, pecans, maybe some pineapple depending on what kind of candy cherry mix you get. It’s all baked as a drop cookie. They are absolutely tender, sweet and delicious, and I love them. I actually grew up eating these at my grandma’s house when I was little, and I hope that you absolutely love them.

Tips and Tricks: So usually I go over lots of different tips and tricks. Before we get into the full recipe. I only have a couple things to say before we move on to the recipe. Then within the actual recipe, I’m going to share all of the tips and tricks and things that you need to know to make the recipe perfect.

But when you are in the grocery store looking for the candied cherries, sometimes people have a hard time finding these at the grocery store. During the holiday season, a lot of times they are kept actually on an end cap because they’re very popular for fruitcake and these cookies. So you can maybe find them there. Sometimes if you’re at more of a Target or a Walmart situation, you’ll find them on a holiday baking display. So you can look there as well. But they’ll be in little clear plastic tubs. They look like neon red and green cherries because they’re candied cherries. So it’ll be like a maraschino cherry, but really sticky. They are so good in this cookie, I swear to you. Delicious. 

The other thing that you’re going to need are dates. So I like to buy the pitted dates, and a lot of times I’ll just find them whole in the produce section. But if you can find chopped dates, maybe near the raisins, then go ahead and buy those.

The last ingredient I want to talk about are the pecans. There’s an option in the recipe to place a whole pecan on the top of the fruitcake cookie, and I actually love how that looks. I like the extra texture and crunch on top of the cookie. So I like to buy whole pecans, chop part of them to mix into the batter and then leave some of them whole to put on top. But if you don’t want to use the pecan on top of the cookie, then you can just buy chopped pecans in the bag. 

So those are all of my ingredient tips. Let’s get on to making this entire recipe. 

Fruit Cake Cookies Recipe: This recipe makes a ton of cookies. You’re going to have around 50 cookies by the time you’re done with this recipe. So this is a great one to take to cookie exchanges or to take to your neighbors or you can even pop some in the freezer so you can save some for the actual Christmas week, if you make them ahead.

You’ll start by preheating your oven to 400 degrees and then you’ll grab a large cookie sheet. What I like to use always when I’m baking cookies is either a reusable silpat, but I got to say, here’s what I’m going to say about these. When people use reusable silpats, and they wash them with soap or they put them in the dishwasher, I can always taste the soap on whatever they bake on them. So if you use a reusable silpat, just think about that next time you bake with it and see if you can taste the soap on whatever you’re baking. What I prefer to use is parchment paper and you can just get it, you know, at your normal grocery store, probably in the same aisle where you’d find plastic wrap or foil.

So line your baking sheet with the parchment paper or your silpat. Then what you’re going to do is cream together two sticks of softened butter and two cups of brown sugar. This will take about two minutes. You can either use a handheld mixer or you can use a stand mixer with a paddle attachment. Then you’re going to add in two eggs. I like to just add one at a time so that it starts to mix into the batter and mix that for about another minute or two. Now you’re going to pour in half a cup of buttermilk and one teaspoon of vanilla. 

A little tip with the buttermilk. If that’s not an ingredient you have or that you want to purchase, you can actually create your own buttermilk by combining a scant half cup of milk and two teaspoons of either lemon juice or vinegar. Let it sit for about five minutes. Give it a stir, and then you can use it in the recipe. Basically you’re going to need that vinegar or that I guess it’s really an acid to activate your baking soda. So don’t skip the buttermilk. 

So go ahead and mix that together for about another minute. Now, at this point in the cookies, don’t be alarmed if your batter is looking curdled. Once you get the flour and all the dry ingredients mixed in, it will not look so scary. 

In a separate bowl, you’re going to sift together three and a half cups of all-purpose flour, one teaspoon of baking soda and one teaspoon of kosher salt, a half a teaspoon of ground cinnamon and a quarter teaspoon each of ground clove and ground nutmeg.

So sift all that together and then add that flour mixture to the cookie dough until it just comes together. Now on a cutting board, you’ll want to just roughly chop up two cups of those candied cherries, and you can get those candy cherries either in red or green, or a red and green mixture. I like the red and green mixture because I feel like it feels a little bit more festive. So give those a rough chop as well as two cups of dates and then one and a half cups of pecan. Chop all those together. 

Here is a fun cookie tip, anytime you’re making cookies, it doesn’t matter what, you know, when you go to a website, like momsdinner.net and you see a cookie and you’re like, why do my cookies not look like that? The tip that a lot of food bloggers or food stylists use is that they will save back a few of the mix-ins and after you form your cookies, they’ll actually dot the outside with those mix-ins. Like chocolate chips, nuts, in this case, the cherries, so that when they bake, those colors are really pronounced on the outside and make your cookies extra beautiful.

So stir in the candy cherries, dates and pecans into that cookie dough. Then once it’s all together, it’s time to bake. Just like the name says on Mom’s Dinner, it’s a fruitcake drop cookie, so there’s no need to roll, to cut out, to slice. This is literally a scoop and drop cookie. Each cookie will be a heaping tablespoon of dough, so just scoop it out and drop it right onto that prepared baking sheet. If you’re using the pecan half for the top of the cookie, you can lightly press one into the top of each cookie dough ball on the baking sheet. 

Then you’re going to bake them for about nine to 11 minutes. They’re going to be done when the outside edge is just starting to turn golden, but the middle is going to be extremely soft. These are meant to be really soft and tender cookies. What’s going to happen is after you bring them out of the oven, as they cool on the cookie sheet, they’re going to continue to bake a little bit and they’re going to firm up. So really don’t bake them in the oven until they’re brown all the way across. 

If you’re baking these in batches, which I’m assuming you are, that you don’t have an oven that can fit 50 cookies in it at the same time, you’ll want to place that extra batter in the fridge while your other batches bake. That’s just a good cookie tip no matter what kind of cookie you’re making. 

All right, and that is the full recipe for your holiday fruitcake drop cookies. The nice thing about these cookies is that you can actually freeze the baked cookies or you can scoop out the dough and freeze the dough and bake it later. There’s lots of options with these cookies. They’re pretty simple to make, and they are extremely festive and perfect for Christmas. 

So as always, I will link this recipe in the show notes for you so you can find it. When you’re ready to make these cookies. I will also pop a link in there for all of my Christmas cookies and treats and deliciousness.

Outro: So happy holidays, everybody. Until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner makes your holiday time a little sweeter. See ya.

Intro: Hey, hey everyone. 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: You guys, I am so excited for this recipe today. So if you’re looking at this recipe or if you’re listening to this, it’s probably wintertime or it’s getting cold, and you need some kind of cozy comfort food to eat for dinner. Today we are making a five hour dutch oven beef stew. It’s going to perfume your house like a pot of beef potpourri, and you are going to absolutely love it. \

This is okay. I hate this term. Are you ready for it? But this is what it is. It’s a dump and bake recipe. I hate that term, but that’s what it is. You are going to dump all of the ingredients right into your dutch oven, pop the lid on, put it in your oven, and forget about it for about five hours. It comes out as this luscious, delicious, rich beef stew that’s full of veggies and a tomato beef based broth that’s thick and the stew meat cooks down into these absolutely impossibly tender chunks. It is excellent served with either saltine crackers. So if you like to crumble up saltine crackers in your stew, that’s what I like to do. Or you could serve some crusty warm ciabatta bread on the side, mwuh! Delicious. 

Tips and Tricks: Okay, so a few tips with this recipe. The base liquid of the recipe is actually just tomato juice. However, if you have a V8 and you want to use that, that works too. This is a super flexible, kind of rustic recipe that is super popular in the Midwest. So you know we are flexible. The other ingredient that you will need is stew meat. Usually in the grocery store, it’s super inexpensive, super economical. You’ll find it cubed into one or two inch pieces, and it will be called either lean stew meat or just stew meat, and it usually comes in like one to one and a half pound packages.

This is not a cut of meat that you can cook quickly or grill or pan sear. This is a super tough, cheap cut of meat that needs a really long and slow cooking time. However, you can also use it in the Instant Pot in my Beef and Barley Stew, which is one of the most popular recipes on Mom’s Dinner. 

The last ingredient that I want to talk about is kind of a weird one, and you may need to have somebody help you at the grocery store to find it. They’re called tapioca pearls. You don’t want to buy tapioca pudding. They’re their own pearls, and it will say tapioca pearls on them. It will be medium tapioca pearls or large tapioca pearls. Now you don’t want to get boba size tapioca pearls, but tapioca pearls. You can usually find them in the pudding aisle or in the baking aisle, which actually usually is the same aisle. Head down that aisle. See if you can find them. If not, grab somebody at the grocery store. Tell them what you’re making and they should be able to help you find those. If you cannot find them, I’m going to link tapioca Pearls on Amazon so that you could order them if you need to.

One piece of equipment that you’re going to want to make sure you have for this recipe is probably a Dutch oven with a lid. A six quart dutch oven with a lid will be perfect here. You can obviously buy the super expensive ones like Staub or Le Creuset. But Lodge is super affordable. They literally are experts in cast iron and they make beautiful enamel dutch ovens, so you can go that route and spend a lot less money.

Dutch Oven Beef Stew Recipe: Let’s get on to making this super easy five hour Dutch Oven Beef Stew recipe. I told y’all it’s going to be super easy. This isn’t going to take very long. Are you ready? You’re going to preheat your oven to 250 degrees. Like I said, this is going to go low and slow. Then in your large Dutch oven, you’re going to add in one and a half pounds of beef stew meat, two cups of russet potatoes that are peeled and diced. One cup of celery that’s cut into about one inch pieces. One and a half cups of carrots that are peeled and cut into one to one and a half inch pieces. A large onion that’s cut into about one or two inch pieces. Then you’re going to add in three cups of tomato juice, two tablespoons each of Worcestershire sauce, sugar, and those tapioca pearls that we talked about. One teaspoon of kosher salt. Half a teaspoon of black pepper and half a teaspoon of chili powder and smoked paprika. Then you’ll pop in two bay leaves, give it a little stir, pop the lid on, and put it right in the oven. 

Now, usually when I make this, I like to stir it one or two times while it’s cooking. Just so that as that sauce thickens, you can make sure that all the veggies and the meat are staying down in that liquid. But that’s it. Once it comes out, it’s going to be smoking hot. You’ll want to let it cool for like 15 to 20 minutes before you actually serve the stew. 

Like I said at the beginning of this episode, it is excellent served with saltine crackers or warmed up ciabatta bread. If you want to add a green side salad with a vinaigrette dressing, you could do that.

So that does it for today’s episode of Let’s Make Dinner. As always, I will link all of the recipes right in the show notes for you so you can find it when you’re ready to save it, make it, pin it. Whatever you want to do, it’ll be there for you. I would also love to have all of you dinner makers out there, rate and review the Let’s Make Dinner Podcast in your preferred podcast player. That will just help us as a newer show be found by your peers, which is always good. 

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