Kitchen-Aid Mixers - The Potluck Chef's Best Friend

The Mighty Kitchen-Aid Mixer!

If you do potluck cooking, you are frequently called upon to prepare food in mass quantities. You can do this, of course, with quite ordinary kitchen have a lot of time on Friday's to get something ready for the church potluck next day, then I'm here to tell you....

Industrial strength kitchen tools are essential!

The one I'm going to talk about today is the inimitable Kitchen-Aid mixer. Let me warn you they are NOT cheap. We inherited ours from a friend when she passed away or I would never have known the joys of having the mighty Kitchen-Aid in our stable of kitchen tools.

This powerful and versatile stand mixer allows you to prepare stuff in a hurry or to multi-task, something we all have had to do when getting ready to feed hungry visiting academy choir. Here are some things specific to potluck preparation the size and power of the Kitchen-Aid allows you to do.

1. Bread-making - You can go off and leave the dough hook kneading your while you peel potatoes and prepare the baking pan for your rolls or bread loaves.
2. Potatoes - Great for whipping up enormous batches of mashed potatoes or potato salad.
3. Cakes -  Homemade cakes and cobblers are easy to whip up with a stand mixer. Just toss all the ingredients into the mixing bowl and run with the batter attachment. You can do other stuff while the ingredients are mixed up.
4. Vege-Meat/Food Grinder - The Kitchen Aid has a power hub and a bunch of attachments including a meat grinder. If you've  made up some gluten "wheat meat" or just want to make burgers out of something else like choplets or vegetable steaks. Just run it through and you've got burger.
5. Cookies and biscuits - For heavier mixtures like cookie or biscuit dough, the batter attachment is a whole bunch easier for blending in shortening with flour and eggs and stuff of different consistencies. Makes a big bunch of biscuits or five or six dozen cookies.
6. Whipped cream and meringue - For stuff that needs to be whipped up or beaten for a lengthy period like pudding, a mixer like this is great. With the whipping attachment, you can go off and leave it whipping while you work on something else. Works great.
7. Pasta - There's a pasta-making attachment that lets you make all sorts of homemade pasta like
   
   spaghetti, egg noodles and lasagna noodles
8. Ice Cream Maker - You can even make homemade ice cream with the ice cream attachment. Saves all that hand cranking or using the more awkward electric version of the hand-cranker. Great for small group parties or you can make it up and freeze enough for a potluck.
9. Grain Mill - The grain mill attachment allows you to make flour from a variety of whole grains - oats, rice, soy, flax, almond, corn, and even dried coconut. Multi-grain bread is a lot of fun to experiment with and you can get all sorts of grains and nuts in the bulk foods section of many grocery stores.
10. Food Processor - There is even a food processor attachment for chopping up vegetables and stuff.  Saves you some room on your counter and the attachment hardware is one tough magilla, unlike so many stand-along food processors.  

 

If you've got work to do, this invaluable tool helps you cook faster and better. The Kitchen-Aid is the Kirby Vacuum Cleaner of kitchen tools. Man, you gotta get yourself one of these!

© 2017 by Tom King

Stuffed Peppers

Roasted a couple of ears of corn along with the peppers.

I was planning on doing something else this week, but on Friday I happened upon someone with a crate of very nice green Bell peppers they were giving away, so I accepted ten of them with a vague notion of chopping and freezing them or, perhaps, stuffing them. I found a plethora of recipes online, so I cobbled together my own vegetarian version and it came out rather well. It was a bit tomato-ish for Sheila, but her digestive system is a wreck, so pay no attention to her negativity.

The recipe requires the following:

Ingredients:  (Multiply as needed)

• Four (or multiples thereof) Bell Peppers (any color is okay)
• Salt (to taste - I just went with the salt I used to cook the rice)
• 5 Tbsp olive oil (it's virginity level is up to you)
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1 medium yellow onion, peeled and chopped
• 1/2 bag Morningstar Farms Recipe Crumbles or a can of vegeburger (LL, Worthington, etc.) 
• 1 1/2 cup of cooked rice (I made half brown/half white rice)
• 1 can chopped tomatoes, (drain liquid from the can)
• 1 tbsp oregano (chopped, powdered or dried - go lighter on the powdered)
• 1/2 cup Mozarella Cheese (optional)
• 1/2 cup ketchup
• 1/2 tsp of Worcestershire Sauce
• Dash of Tabasco sauce (super optional)

Directions:

1. Cook the rice according to directions. Adding a dash of olive oil and red wine vinegar keeps it from being sticky. Preheat the oven to 350º.
2. Remove the tops and cut out the seedy bits of the Bell peppers. Steam them till they soften. You can put them in a steamer for 8-10 minutes or do as I did and bake them for 10 - 17 minutes to soften them.
3. Saute' the onions in a large skillet or electric skillet. Once they start to soften, add the Recipe Crumbles or vegeburger and brown lightly. 
4. Add the rice and chopped tomatoes to the mixture and stir in. Add the mozarella and let it melt into the rice/vegeburger mixture.
5. There are two ways to do the ketchup and Worcestershire Sauce. One is to mix it up in a bowl with a little bit of water (less than a quarter cup) and mix about half into the stuffing. The other is to wait and ladle it over the peppers after they are stuffed. I put half into the stuffing and saved the rest to put on top of the stuffed peppers.
6. Stuff the peppers with the vegeburger/rice mixture. Put a spoonful of the ketchup/Worcester/optional Tabasco mixture on top of the peppers. 
7. Place in casserole dish and bake 40-50 minutes till they look like the picture above.
   Serving Suggestions:
   
   Serve with another vegetable or salad and maybe some rolls. The peppers look a little wrinkly, but they taste good. You can play with the spices a little bit. Me, I'd have added a little Tabasco, but then I like the pepper flavor and a little heat with some dishes.
   
   If you have a late summer harvest of green peppers, you can make up multiple batches of the stuffing mix, core the peppers and make as many as you'd like to. It's kind of ambitious, but it's a nice single dish for a potluck. 
   
   
   © 2017 by Tom King