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.

Intro: Hey everybody. Welcome in. My name is Susie Weinrich and I am the voice behind the podcast, let’s Make Dinner. I am also the recipe developer, photographer, and writer behind this website, Mom’s Dinner. 

Susie Weinrich: We’re going to  do things a little bit different today on this episode of Let’s Make. I wanted to go over some tips and tricks on how to best use the mom’s dinner website and make sure that you’re taking advantage of all of the features within the website, as well as within the recipe cards when you are cooking and making and saving the recipes from momsdinner.net.

Navigation Tips : So I want to start by going over some navigation tips. When you are on the homepage of momsdinner.net, you’re going to  see a navigation bar right at the top of the page. Anytime you’re navigating the website, you can always click on that little icon on the top that says Moms Dinner, and it will take you right back to the homepage.

The next tip is using all of these navigations right there at the top. If you hit all recipes, that will take you to a very large category page and you can search by category. So breakfast, dinner, side dishes, drinks, desserts. You can even search by ingredients. So beef, chicken, and seafood. Then we get into some more specific categories like holidays and then grilling, casserole, soup, one pan. It gets even as specific as enchiladas, lasagnas, meatballs, chilis, things like that. So you can use this page really well to navigate to a category of something that you want very specifically. Right at the top of the all recipes page, there’s also an option to click here, and that will take you to all of the recipes in chronological order, so you can see what’s been posted when. 

Now, let’s say you found the recipe that you want to make, and in this case, I’m going to go to my lasagna recipe. So in this lasagna recipe, there are a few different ways to use, not only the page in general, but the recipe card. If you’ve made this and you want to come and comment and rate the recipe, right at the very top, it will say five comments or however many comments there are, or it will say, leave a comment. You can click that and it will jump you right down to the comment section. 

There’s another button that you should definitely take advantage of, and it’s called Jump to Recipe. Of course, I want you to read the full post because I put a lot of really good tips and tricks and time into writing really robust posts so that you are successful in the kitchen. But if you’re like me, I am already a seasoned cook, okay? Then you can just hit that jump to recipe button and it will jump you right down to the actual recipe card where it gives you all of the information you need. Cook time, prep time, ingredients, instructions, everything that you need. 

I want to give you a few tips on using the recipe card. So let’s say we’re looking at this homemade lasagna recipe and it serves 10 people. Let’s say you need to double that and you have 20 people coming. What you can do is hover over that serving section right there at the top, and then a little slider will appear. That slider can be moved up or down so that you can make this for 20 people or you can make it for five people. When you do that, what will happen is all of the ingredients down in the recipe card will also change to suit the number of people you’re trying to serve. 

Another tip that I love about this recipe card is that there is something called cook mode, right in between the ingredients and the instructions. This should be available on desktop as well as your phone. Now, I know there are some iPhones that don’t allow this cook mode button, but if you have it, you definitely want to use it. So you know when you’re cooking and you’re going back and forth to your phone and reading the ingredients and instructions and your phone goes dark. Your hands are dirty. Now you’ve got to get your phone back on. If you click this cook mode button on, it will prevent your screen from going dark while you’re cooking, and that is the best thing ever. 

Another great feature that I have just started implementing, and I do have to go in and do it manually, so it’s not available on all recipes, but you know when you’re making a recipe and you’re in the instructions and then it says add the oregano, and you’re like, oh my God, how much oregano? Scroll back up. How much oregano? Okay, scroll back down. Where do I add it? 

So with my recipe card, a lot of recipes will have the actual ingredients right under the instruction step that it’s associated with. So, like I said, I do have to add those manually so it’s not available in every single recipe yet, but we’re working on that. 

Two last things I want to tell you about with the Moms Dinner website. Saving and pinning and printing your recipes is something you’ll want to do. So there are three different places where you can pin the recipe. Right at the top, there’s a little pin icon, and then as you’re scrolling down the page on the left hand side, there will be another little pin icon. Then as well as in the recipe card, there’s a little pin icon. If you click it, the pin that I created for the recipe should actually populate into Pinterest, and you can just pin it to whatever board you want.

Another way to, I guess, to save the recipes is you can always print the recipe. There’s a print button right in the recipe card, and if you click that, it will take you right to a little print screen. If you can choose at the top what you want to print. So do you want to print the recipe image? Do you want to print the notes? Do you want the nutrition label and how many people are you serving for? So you can make all of those changes right there in the print screen. Then go ahead and print it and put it in your recipe box. The other nice thing when you print the recipe, it actually puts my website right down at the bottom. So if you print it and then you’re like, wait a minute, where did I get this recipe? It will tell you right at the bottom of the page where you printed it from. 

The very last thing that I want to tell you about this website is that we love to get your feedback on our recipes. Rating and reviewing the recipe is the very best way to give us your feedback and to connect with us. There’s a few different options, like I said in the beginning here. At the top of the recipe, you can hit how many comments there are and it will jump you right down to the comment section. Or if there are no comments, It will say, leave a comment and you can click that and it’ll take you right down there.

Another option is right at the top of the recipe card, there’s a little rate button and you can click that and it will jump you right down to the comment section where you can give it hopefully five stars, and leave a comment for me. Then the last is right down at the bottom of the recipe card. There’s a jump to comments button, and that will again just jump you right down to the comments so that you can leave a rating and a review of the recipe you made. 

So those are all of my tips and tricks for using the mom’s dinner recipe website. I hope that these help you navigate the entire website as a whole, as well as the recipe card.

If you have any suggestions for things that would make the mom’s dinner site a little more user friendly, please reach out. You can always email me susie@momsdinner.net. Or like I said, you can leave a comment on a recipe. I check those every single morning, or you can connect with me on Instagram, Pinterest or Facebook.

Outro: All right, that’s all I have for today. Until next time, I hope these tips help you in the kitchen. See ya.

Intro: Happy holidays everyone, and 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: So today I’m just popping in real quick. We’re not making a dinner recipe. This is a little bonus episode. I am going through the full recipe to make a holiday punch. 

Tips and Tricks:It has flavors of pomegranate and orange and cranberry that pair perfectly either with a party or any type of holiday celebration. One of the bonuses of this recipe is that you can have it without alcohol or you can add alcohol. Now, if you have a group that’s mixed kids and adults, what I recommend doing is just putting the alcohol on the side and adults can pour in as much or as little as they want. Then the kids can drink straight from the punch bowl or the pitcher and be totally safe. 

Now, if you have a complete adult party and you know everybody is going to want to have cocktails, then I recommend pouring in one cup of either a white rum, silver tequila, a vodka, prosecco, mixing it in the punch, giving it a taste, and then adding more as you like. 

Holiday Punch Recipe: To make this punch recipe, you only need four ingredients, plus maybe a couple garnishes if you want to keep it really festive. All you need is four cups of cranberry juice and what I recommend here is buying, this is going to get confusing 100% juice, Cranberry juice. I’m emphasizing the word juice. The one that you don’t want to buy is a hundred percent pure cranberry juice. The 100% juice Cranberry juice is sweetened. It’s delicious. It’s not a cranberry juice cocktail. It’s exactly what you want. The hundred percent pure cranberry juice is that really tart, like burn your tongue cranberry juice. That’s not what you want. Okay, so make sure you get the right cranberry juice. You’re going to need four cups. 

Then you need three cups of OJ. I personally love a heavy pulp orange juice, but when you’re making it for a crowd, I recommend doing pulp free. Then you need two cups of pomegranate. and three cups of ginger ale. You can also sub like a Sprite or a seven up, any kind of lemon lime soda for the ginger ale. So all you do is pour all of that into a pitcher, give it a stir, and it’s ready to serve. 

If you want to make your punch before a party or before a dinner, you can mix the cranberry juice, the orange juice, and the pomegranate juice together, pop it in the fridge for a few hours, and then right before it’s time to serve, then pour in the bubbly, the ginger ale or the lemon lime soda. 

Some fun garnishes that you can think about for this punch are orange slices, pomegranate seeds, and fresh cranberries. You can even do slices of lime, so you have the red and the green for Christmas would all be beautiful. 

If you’ve got a lot of kids at your party, I also recommend maybe putting out a little bowl of maraschino cherries for the kids to put in their drinks and actually the adults are probably going to like that too, cause they’re delicious. If you have a really large crowd that you’re trying to serve this punch to, you can actually double or triple the recipe no problem at all. It will absolutely work. However, you will want to have an actual punch bowl that you’re going to serve it in. Let me tell you this little tip. You’re not opposed to going to thrift stores or going to estate sales, punch bowls and glasses are plenty at those locations, so there’s no reason to go out and buy something new and expensive to serve your punch in.

Another tip though, I will tell you this. So if you have a trifle bowl, that can absolutely work as a punch bowl. I actually have a cake stand from Pottery Barn that doubles as a punch bowl. It’s crazy. So the base gets turned upside down and the lid gets turned upside down and fits into the base. So see if you have one that will work like that too. 

All right, so that’s the full recipe for this holiday punch. I hope that you have a wonderful holiday season. As always, I will link all of the recipes that I talked about right in the show notes so you can make it, save it, find it when you’re ready to have this punch recipe.

Outro : Until next time, I hope this recipe 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 always get on the table. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich.

Hi everyone. Thank you so much for joining me today. So I am sharing a fancier recipe today. We are going to make a braised tri-tip. This is kind of like a roast, so you might think of it like a pot roast, a chuck roast, roast beef. It’s a recipe that’s going to take a little bit more time. So this maybe isn’t something for a Wednesday night, but it’s great for a Saturday night entertaining dinner, maybe a holiday dinner or a Sunday family dinner, a special occasion. It is delicious. So you’re going to roast the whole entire tri-tip, and actually you’re not roasting it, you’re braising it. Those are two different things. So you’re going to braise the whole tri-tip in a red wine sauce and then it slices into these beautiful tender slices. Then you’re going to reduce down that braising liquid and make the most delicious red wine glaze that gets served over top.

So you can see it’s a little bit fancier than we normally do here, but definitely simple and definitely delicious. 

Tips and Tricks: You may be asking yourself, what in the world is a tri-tip? It is a cut of beef that is very specifically in the shape of a triangle, which is how we get the tri-tip. It has three tips that make it in the shape of a triangle. `It is cut from the bottom sirloin, so it’s a leaner cut of beef. But it has a wonderful beef flavor. So think of it like a chuck roast, or maybe even like a brisket, but it’s going to be cheaper than a brisket. So this is also maybe a little bit of a more economical cut. When you’re looking for a tri-tip in the grocery store, you  make sure that number one, it has a decent fat cap on one side. What that is, a fat cap is just basically a layer of white fat.

Then when you’re looking at the actual meat side, you want to see that it’s pretty well marbled. Because it is a leaner cut, to have a little bit more marbling of fat throughout the tri-tip is going to be a little bit tastier. 

Another little fun thing I  talk about with this recipe is we are actually braising, and you may think, okay, braising versus roasting. What’s the difference there? So with this recipe, we’re actually braising the meat. We’re going to brown it at a really high temperature, and then we’re going to cook it in the oven, low and slow with some form of liquid. So with this recipe, we’re using red wine. If you’re roasting, that usually means that you’re just using hot air like in an oven to cook a piece of meat with very little or no liquid. So with this recipe, we’re going to  braise it low and slow with that red wine, and it’s going to  be super delicious. 

As always, when you’re cooking with red wine, I like to use something that I’m also going to drink. This recipe calls for one cup of red wine, so you’re going to have about three quarters of the bottle left that you can drink. So of course I recommend choosing a red wine that I also will drink for dinner. You’re going to use a Malbec, a Cabernet, Shiraz, Zinfandel, Merlot. Something that is pretty hearty, that has a lot of flavor that’s going to  stand up to the beef. In my experience, you can get like an eight to $12 bottle and have it just be absolutely fantastic and you’ll enjoy drinking it. It will taste great with your beef. Recently, I think it was Cook’s Country or America’s Test Kitchen. They did a test actually with a cheaper red wine. Then a more expensive red wine and the taste testers couldn’t tell the difference. So you can absolutely use a cheaper wine. 

All right. I don’t know that I have a lot of other tips. I think the only other tip that I’m going to  talk about and I’ll talk about at the end is how you cut a tri-tip. Because of where it’s cut from, it actually has two different grains. If you’re familiar with cutting beef, you always want to cut against the grain. So when you’re cutting the tri-tip, you actually have to cut in two different directions. So we’ll talk about that at the end. 

Braised Tri-Tip Recipe: But for now, let’s get on to actually making the full braised tri-tip recipe. This is going to serve about five people, and you’re going to use a three pound fresh tri-tip that has good marbling and a full fat cap. Some other equipment that you’re definitely going to need is either a roasting pan or a six quart dutch oven, and then some parchment paper.

You’ll start by preheating your oven to 325 degrees. Now, like we talked about before, you’ll  look at that fat cap and make sure that there’s no silver skin and that you have a half an inch or a quarter inch of fat cap. If you are finding that your fat cap is larger than that, you may  trim off some of that so your dish doesn’t get too greasy.

Then you’re going to  take a fork and prick the fat cap down to the meat. Or you can use a sausage pricker if you have that. This will just help the fat render down a little bit more and get a nice crust. Then you  generously salt and pepper the tri-tip on both sides. With the salt, I always recommend using a kosher salt, not iodized table salt. You’ll lightly rub that into the meat. Then you’re going to place your dutch oven or roasting pan over medium high heat on the stove and add two tablespoons of oil. So you can use canola oil or you can use olive oil here. Let that oil get nice and hot. Then you’ll place the tri-tip in the pot fat side up in that hot oil and brown the first side. You’re going to  want to be patient with this. It’s going to  take at least five minutes to brown that first side. Then you’re going to flip it over and brown the other side, which is that fat cap. You want that fat to get nice and rendered down and get a nice little crisp crust on it. So again, five minutes.

You’ll  remove that tri-tip now to a separate plate, and we’re going to  take that empty pan and we’re going to  add a base layer of flavor and braising liquid. So you’ll need one yellow onion that is sliced. Two carrots that are just rough cut into like one inch pieces. Two celery stocks that are also just rough cut into one inch pieces. Three garlic cloves that are either chopped or you can just crush them with the blunt side of a knife, half a teaspoon of kosher salt and a quarter teaspoon of black pepper. None of this needs to be beautiful because you’re not actually serving any of that. This is just to flavor that braising liquid and to flavor the roast while it cooks.

So you’re going to soften that and lightly brown it for about 10 minutes. Now you can add in one tablespoon of tomato paste and just stir that around the pan. Then finally, you’re going to stir in one cup of beef broth and one cup of that red wine that we talked about. This is going to further deglaze the pan, so make sure you take a wooden spoon or a spatula or something and start scraping up any brown bits that are on the bottom of the pan.

Then you’re going to lay in two bay leaves and two to three sprigs each of thyme and rosemary. Now you have your braising liquid all delicious and ready for the tri-tip. So you’re going to  take that tri-tip and you’re going to  nestle it in fat side up into that braising liquid. 

Now what you do, I said that you’re going to need parchment paper. You’re going to take a piece of that parchment paper and just put it directly over the roast. What that’s going to do is help the braising liquid work its magic on the tri-tip. So as that liquid starts to steam up, that parchment paper is going to make that braising liquid come back into the pot and into that tri-tip and just flavor it so beautifully.

So then you’ll cover the pot with your lid. If you’re using a roasting pan and you don’t have a lid, you’ll just  cover it tightly with foil. You’ll place it in the oven to braise for two and a half hours. That’s what I talked about at the beginning. This is not like a quick Wednesday dinner. This is a long, low, and slow cook.

So then at the end of that two and a half hours, you’re going to remove the tri-tip from the pot to a separate plate or a wooden cutting board or something. Cover it with foil and just let it rest for about 15 minutes. While that’s resting, you’re going to make that red wine glaze that we talked about at the beginning.

So after you remove that tri-tip from the pot, what you’ll have left is a lot of liquid, the onions, the herbs, all of that. What you're going to do is place a fine mesh strainer over just a bowl or a large liquid measuring cup, something that will catch the liquid. You’re going to strain those solids from the braising liquid. Keep the braising liquid, and discard the solids. Now you’ll  take that sauce pan and put it back over just medium high heat on the stove top. Pour that liquid back and then you’re going to add just a touch, one teaspoon of apple cider vinegar. So that braising liquid has all of the savory and salty and warm flavors. It’s so beautiful and delicious, but usually when you have something that is that deep and savory, you need a high note, and that’s where this apple cider vinegar comes in. So don’t skip that step. Put one teaspoon of apple cider vinegar in there and then let it simmer for about five minutes. When you are simmering it, if any brownish, tannish bubbles, it’s also called scum, which is a terrible word, but if it rises to the top, you can skim that off and discard it. 

Okay, so after it simmers for about five minutes, you’re going to make something called a beurre manié. What that means, it basically means needed butter in French, and it’s a liquid thickener. So you’re going to  take two tablespoons of softened butter and two tablespoons of all-purpose flour, put them in a little bowl and take a fork and just mash them together until they completely come together. That’s called a beurre manié. What you’re going to do is put that into the braising liquid and whisk it in so that it is completely dissolved into the sauce, and then it thickens. You’re going to  absolutely love it. This is a great way to thicken any sauce without using cornstarch and after the sauce is already put together. So once it’s nice and thick, you’ll pull it from the heat. Taste it for seasoning, always. So if you need a little more salt, if you want a little more vinegar, if you want some more herbs, go ahead and add that. At this point, your tri-tip should be nice and cooled and all of the juices have redistributed and it’s perfect and ready to cut.

Like we said before, you have two different directions that your tri-tip fibers are running, so you always  cut against the grain. So start at the really skinny tip of the tri-tip, and you’ll just cut perpendicular with that tip. Then as it starts to widen, you’re going to  be about three quarters of the way up. You’re going to turn your knife about 45 degrees and then cut across from there. So if this sounds super confusing to you, there is a link to a video of somebody cutting a tri-tip that shows it perfectly. If I can, I will actually link that right in the show notes for you. If not, you can click through to the entire post and you’ll find that link in the post for the recipe. 

So once you have it all cut into nice half inch thick to one inch thick slices, then you can pour some of that red wine glaze over top. Then when you serve it at the table, put a little bit extra red wine glaze on the table just like you would a gravy, and people can add a little bit more to their plates.

As far as serving side dishes go with this, I absolutely recommend just classic mash potatoes, they would be perfect. The recipe that I have on my site for Instant Pot Mashed Potatoes or Yukon gold Mashed Potatoes would be wonderful with this. Then you can add a roasted veggie. So roasted asparagus or roasted carrots would be great.

As always, I will link all of these recipes and hopefully that video for you to check out right in the show notes and you can save it, pin it, have it whenever you’re ready to make this for dinner.

I would love to have you all subscribe and follow this show in your preferred podcast player. It’ll just make it easier for you to find all of our future episodes and future delicious recipes right in your podcast feed.

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