Basic Homemade Bread

Basic Homemade Bread
(recipe credit to: Taste of Home)

Ingredients

• 1 package (1/4 ounce) active dry yeast
• 2-1/4 cups warm water (110° to 115°)
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 2 tablespoons canola oil
• 6-1/4 to 6-3/4 cups all-purpose flour

Directions

1. In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Add the sugar, salt, oil and 3 cups flour. Beat until smooth. Stir in enough remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time, to form a soft dough. 
2. Turn onto a floured surface; knead until smooth and elastic, about 8-10 minutes. Place in a greased bowl, turning once to grease the top. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1-1/2 hours.
3. Punch dough down. Turn onto a lightly floured surface; divide dough in half. Shape each into a loaf. Place in two greased 9x5-in. loaf pans. Cover and let rise until doubled, about 30-45 minutes.
4. Bake at 375° for 30-35 minutes or until golden brown and bread sounds hollow when tapped. Remove from pans to wire racks to cool. Yield: 2 loaves (16 slices each).

Cheaters Ramen

Cheaters Ramen

Close to all the flavor and so much easier!!

What you need:
Ramen
Egg
Dried Wakame Seaweed

Measure 2 cups water per ramen package into a pot.  Add 1 teaspoon dried seaweed per package of ramen.  Bring water to a boil.  Add ramen to boiling water.  Set timer for 3 minutes.  While that is cooking, break one egg per package of ramen into a cup and scramble slightly with a fork.  When the timer gets to the 1 minute mark, pour scrambled raw egg into the pot and stir gently.  Tear open and add the soup base from the ramen packages and continue to stir gently.  When timer goes off, divide into bowls and enjoy!!

Homemade Curly Noodle Soup (Ramen)

Homemade Curly Noodle Soup (Ramen)

This is a complicated process, but delicious and worth it!

What goes in the bowl:
1.  Cooked Noodles
2.  Broth with Seaweed and Bok Choy
3.  Chicken in Jeannette's Yakitori Sauce
4.  Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs (Sliced and Fanned)

The tricky part is to get all this ready to go in the bowl at the same time.  I recommend making the hard boiled eggs first, and setting aside (15-20 minutes).

Review and set out all the ingredients for "Jeannette's Yakitori Sauce for Chicken."

Additional items you need:
Somen Noodles
Dried Wakame Seaweed
Bok Choy
Chicken Bouillon

             

Set out your 3 pans:  a large pot for boiling the somen, a medium pot for making the broth, and a non-stick skillet to make the Yakitori Chicken.

Fill the somen pot with water and turn up heat to medium/high.

Plan 1-2 cups bouillon per person, and measure water into medium pot and add bouillon cubes.  Turn up broth pot to medium/high.

Begin making Yakitori Chicken (see recipe on other page).

As the broth pot begins to boil, stir the bouillon until fully dissolved.  When fully dissolved, sprinkle a small amount (about a teaspoon per 2 cups of bouillon) of dried seaweed into pot.  Chop bok choy into 1 inch strips and rinse if needed.  When broth is at a boil, throw in the bok choy and reduce heat to simmer.

Continue cooking Yakitori Chicken.  As that part of the recipe gets to the boil-down stage, begin peeling hard boiled eggs and setting aside in a bowl ready to slice and spread on soup.

By now, the somen pot should be boiling.  Take a good look at where you stand.  The somen cooks very quickly (3 minutes), so don't start them until everything else is basically done.  When the chicken is nearly done, unwrap one packet of noodles for each person and put in the boiling water.  Set a timer immediately for 3 minutes and make sure you have a strainer ready in the sink.  When your timer goes off, immediately drain noodles into strainer.  Do not rinse noodles.

Build each bowl of ramen in this order:

Add noodles to bowls (fill all the bowls and make sure they look about even)

Ladle broth over noodles, making sure to get some seaweed and some bok choy in each bowl

Slice hardboiled egg and fan out over the noodles

Add chicken

Serve and enjoy!!

Jeannette's Yakitori Sauce for Chicken

Jeannette's Yakitori Sauce

This rich sweet and salty prep for chicken breast is fantastic on salads, over rice and in homemade ramen soup (see picture at bottom).

You will need:

Chicken Breast (sliced into strips) or Chicken Tenders or Chicken for Stir Fry (1/4 pound per person)
San-J Low-Sodium Tamari Soy Sauce
Kikkoman Aji-Mirin Sweet Cooking Rice Seasoning
Ground Ginger
Any Cooking Oil

Add a small amount of oil (about a tablespoon) to a non-stick skillet, and spread around with your spatula.  Add chicken to skillet and heat to medium.  Shake ground ginger on top of chicken.  Brown on one side and then turn and brown on the other.  Shake ground ginger on opposite side of chicken.  Keep turning and browning until the chicken begins to turn opaque and lightly browned, about 2 minutes.

Shake soy sauce over chicken until the chicken is nice and brown (less than 2 tablespoons).  Pour mirin into the pan until it covers the bottom of the skillet and slightly up the sides of the chicken (less than 1/4 cup).  Keep the sauce at a simmer/slight boil.  You want the chicken to cook thoroughly, and the sauce not to cook down too quickly.  Continuing simmering chicken in the sauce and turning occasionally until the sauce cooks down to a nice dark sticky coating on the chicken.  Remove from heat as the last of the mirin boils away.  Be careful not to walk away, or the sauce will burn.

Serve hot over rice, noodles or salad, or refrigerate for later.  Keeps for a week.

Here's how chicken tenders in Jeannette's Yakitori Sauce look over homemade ramen.

Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs

How to Make Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs (Updated)

You will need:

Instant Pot

Eggs

Water

Put eggs in the bottom of the instant pot on either the metal rack included with the pot or one of the excellent silicone egg inserts.  Add 1 cup water to instant pot.  Set manual timer for 5 minutes.

After 5 minutes, use tongs to plunge eggs in cold or icy water to immediately stop the eggs from continuing to cook.  Put the hard boiled eggs in the refrigerator until ready to use.

Hard boiled eggs, unpeeled and stored in the refrigerator, are good for 1 week.  Any eggs that shatter during the cook cycle will need to be used immediately.