This can  makes you think of chili, too, right?

Keystone Meats is a fourth-generation, family-owned business in Lima, Ohio that produces canned meat products and soup bases. In addition to the shredded beef, Keystone also makes ground beef, plus shredded pork, chicken, and turkey. The beef is sourced from local farms and the finished product is simply beef and some sea salt in a can. It's tender and flaky as if you had slow-cooked a chunk of beef yourself and shredded it with a fork. The first thing The Minx and I thought of when we saw the can was chili.

We've all had those day when it's cold and damp and a bowl of hot, spicy chili would really warm your soul. The trouble is, a proper chili takes hours to prepare and you've just come home from work and want the chili now! The biggest obstacle to making a good pot of chili is the time it takes to cook the meat until it's tender and shreds easily. I've often used ground meat to make a quick chili, but it's not the same. With Keystone doing the hard part for you, an emergency bowl of chili is attainable. Using basic ingredients, I was able to put together a flavorful and hearty meal in about 45 minutes.

The Minx really loved it. She was astounded that the meat came from a can. It was tender and moist, like long-cooked pot roast or even short ribs. And it certainly did not taste like it came from a can.

Emergency Chili

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion chopped
1 can (4 oz.) diced green chiles
1 can (14.5 oz.) Keystone Beef
2 cloves garlic
1 can (14.5 oz.) diced tomatoes
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon cumin
Kosher salt to taste
Chopped scallions
Cilantro
Shredded cheddar cheese
Sour cream

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet. Add onion and saute until translucent. Add diced green chiles, beef, and garlic and stir until all ingredients are integrated. Add diced tomatoes and stir. Sprinkle in seasonings and turn heat down to simmer. Allow the chili to simmer for as long as possible. Ten minutes would be good; 20 minutes would be better. Adjust seasoning to your liking.

Garnish to your liking with scallions, cilantro, cheese, and sour cream. Serve with cornbread.

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats. Amazon links earn me $! Please buy!



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My Mom always claimed not to enjoy cooking; she only did it because she had two children to feed. Dinners usually consisted of Shake-n-Bake pork chops or chicken, canned green beans or corn, and instant mashed potatoes or Minute Rice. Sometimes spaghetti with jarred sauce and meatballs (at least those were homemade). We were lucky to have an apartment in my Grandmother's house, and every few days she'd give Mom a break by cooking dinner for all of us.

Once my brother and I were adults, or at least college-age, Mom started to take a surprising interest in the kitchen. She was actually a pretty good cook when she wanted to be. With less responsibility during the day, she would pass the time watching cooking shows on PBS. During pledge drives, Mom opted to donate when the free gift was a cookbook. I still have several of the Frugal Gourmet's books in my collection. I liked watching The Frug, even if he did turn out to be a perv. Mom also liked Madeline Kamman, but I found her accent grating (sorry, French people) and was particularly annoyed by the "ehhh" sound she made after every other sentence or so. I have one of her cookbooks, too, Madeline Cooks.

Mom tried one recipe, and one recipe only from Madeline Cooks: chicken cutlets with mushrooms and bacon. It was so good, and so fast, she made it frequently. There's something almost magical about the simple combination of bacon, mushrooms, and scallions. Oh, and cream. Hell, you don't even need the chicken.

I think about this dish once in a while, when I have bacon and scallions in the house but not chicken or mushrooms, or some other incomplete combination of essential ingredients. I decided to dust off that 30-year-old cookbook and make the dish myself, but with chicken thighs, just to be different. It throws off the cooking time a bit, particularly with bone-in, skin-on thighs that need to be browned first and cooked longer, but the combination of flavors was still the same, still almost magical. And it brought back memories of my Mom in the kitchen, in those few years when she actually seemed to almost enjoy cooking.

I served the chicken with chicken flavor Healthee USA organic brown rice. Just 90 seconds in the microwave, fluff, and eat! I'm too impatient to cook brown rice properly, so it's usually chewy. Healthee's is nice and tender and I don't have to worry about making a side when I have a couple packs on hand. And green beans, cooked low and slow for a long time, the way my Grandma made them.

Chicken with Mushrooms and Bacon (adapted from Madeline Cooks)

4 large chicken thighs
Salt and pepper
8 ounces fresh mushrooms, sliced
1/2 cup chicken stock
2/3 cup light cream
3 slices bacon, crumbled
2 tablespoons chopped scallions

Season chicken with salt and pepper. Place skin-side down in a pre-heated skillet and cook over medium-high heat until skin is browned. Turn chicken and brown other side. Cover the pan and turn the heat down to medium. Cook the chicken for 10 minutes, then remove the chicken from the pan to a plate. Remove all but a tablespoon of fat from the skillet and add the mushrooms. Cook over medium high heat, stirring frequently, until they have given up their juices and have started to brown. Add the chicken back to the pan, turn down the heat, and cook an additional 10 minutes. Remove lid, turn up the heat, and add the chicken stock and cream. Bring to a simmer and cook until the sauce coats the back of a spoon.

To serve, put each piece of chicken on a plate and spoon sauce and mushrooms over. Garnish with crumbled bacon and scallions.

Serves 2-4.



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Popkoff's is a California-based company that has been making Russian-inspired pelmeni and vareniki for over 50 years. Vareniki are like pierogies that are stuffed with a variety of meats and vegetables. Pelmeni are similar, but smaller and round, reminding me a bit of tortellini. Popkoff's recently sent us a selection of their pelmeni to see what kinds of recipes we could come up with using them. I chose to start with the beef pelmeni and decided that a rich mushroom sauce would work nicely.

Popkoff's pelmeni come in freezer packs and cook up quickly. Add the contents of the packet to boiling water and they are fully cooked in about five minutes. As soon as they are rolling about on the surface of the water, they are done. The sauce recipe below is also quick and easy to put together. The most difficult part is making the roux, and that's not very hard at all.

Mushroom Sauce

1 medium onion chopped
1/2 pound mushrooms chopped
2 cloves garlic chopped
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup half-and-half
2 tbsp. flour
2 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
1/4 tsp. fresh thyme
1/4 tsp. grated nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste

Combine the flour and olive oil in a pan over high heat. Stir constantly until the mixture becomes liquid and takes on a tan hue, about 5 minutes.

Reduce heat to medium high and add onions, garlic, and mushrooms to roux. Saute until onions are translucent. Slowly add the heavy cream and half-and-half, stirring constantly until everything is incorporated. Add thyme, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats. Amazon links earn me $! Please buy!



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As is so often the case, I don't think about what to have for dinner until about an hour before dinner should be served and my tummy is already starting to grumble. I want something filling and delicious, but I'm not so keen on putting in the effort to make an elaborate meal. I was having just that experience the other day and found myself riffling through the pantry and fridge looking for some combination of ingredients that might make a tasty dish.

One of the items I stumbled across in the freezer was a bag of Kahiki Foods Sweet and Sour Chicken. Kahiki packages their breaded chicken chunks so that they don't become soggy, and their vegetables are always nicely crisp. Best of all, they package the sweet and sour sauce separately, so one has the option of using a little, a lot, or none at all. In my case, I don't have much of a sweet tooth and would prefer a more savory sauce, so I opted to leave it out and make my own.

I also discovered one cup of leftover jasmine rice in the refrigerator, so I decided to turn this meal into a fried rice dish. Although the amount of vegetables in the package was ample, I thought it would be good to build up the meal even more with some chopped onion and carrot, along with some frozen peas and corn.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I'm not a fan of green bell peppers. Red, yellow, orange - perfectly fine, but there's an unripe quality about the green ones that I don't care for. The sweet and sour chicken package has quite a few of the green chunks in there, so I picked them out. If you like green bell pepper, then by all means leave them in.

The resulting dish was flavorful and filling. The pineapple added just the right amount of sweetness and acidity to balance the savory sauce. Also, the meal was made in about the same time as ordering and waiting for Chinese take out. As a bonus, I still have the sweet and sour sauce packet in the freezer that I can experiment with for another dinner.

***Don't forget - if you want to try Kahiki Foods for yourself, leave a comment on the post linked here and you can win three vouchers worth a combined $22.***

Re-Imagined Sweet and Sour Chicken

For the sauce:
4 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons zhenjiang (black or Chinkiang) vinegar
1 tablespoon agave syrup
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon hot broad bean paste (doubanjiang)
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon cornstarch

For the stir fry:
1 carrot
1 medium onion
1 cup pre-cooked jasmine rice
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 bag Kahiki Foods sweet and sour chicken
1/4 cup frozen corn
1/4 cup frozen peas
3 spring onions chopped (for garnish)

Chop the carrot into thin strips about an inch long. Slice the onion into half rings. Heat the vegetable oil in a large pan over high heat before tossing in the carrots, onion, and rice. Mix together and let fry until the onions start to caramelize and the rice turns slightly golden, stirring occasionally.

While the carrots, onion, and rice are frying, assemble the sauce ingredients in a bowl and whisk until everything is completely incorporated. Set aside.

Once the carrots, onion, and rice have reached the proper state, add the chicken and vegetables from the Kahiki package along with the frozen corn and peas. Stir together until the frozen vegetables are warmed up. Add the sauce and fully incorporate. Cover the pan with a lid and lower the heat to medium so the chicken can heat through, about 5 minutes.

Chop the white and some of the green parts of three spring onions. When ready to serve, sprinkle the spring onions over each serving for garnish.

Serves 4.

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats.



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Mr. Minx here with another story about a quick, easy dinner concocted on the fly. Most days, I don't think about what I'm going to cook for dinner until about 30 minutes before I have to start cooking. It's not that I don't like cooking; I just don't like to think about cooking. This is especially true when I've been busy all day and there isn't anything in the fridge that immediately sings to me. This was the exact circumstances I was faced with a few days ago. What to do?

Well, I started by looking for some kind of protein. Fortunately, the Minx and I had just purchased some salmon fillets from Trader Joe's the previous week. We both like salmon, but I always seem to overcook it. There is such a fine line between underdone and dried out. Also, using frozen salmon that's been thawed tends to bring out all the nasty albumen, which is not appetizing to see or taste.

Then, for some strange reason, the words "poached salmon" popped into my head. I'd never poached salmon in my life and, if I've ever eaten it before, I couldn't remember when or where. The concept of poaching seemed to make sense though. No way I could dry out the salmon if I poached it. To figure out how to achieve this cooking feat, I reached for my go-to cooking resource, The Joy of Cooking. The book offered several recipes for poaching fish, most requiring ingredients I didn't possess or time I didn't have. Then I came across a recipe for poaching fish fillets in soy sauce. The following is my variation on that recipe:

Salmon Poached in Soy Sauce

2 scallions, chopped
1 teaspoon powdered ginger
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 tablespoon of sugar
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup mirin
1/4 cup water
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 1/2 pounds salmon fillets (2 or 3 fillets, depending on size)

Mix the ginger, garlic, sugar, soy sauce, mirin, water, and rice vinegar in a bowl. Sprinkle in most of the chopped scallions, retaining some for the garnish. Pour the mixture into a pan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Turn the heat down to low and lay in your salmon fillets. Cover the pan and allow the fillets to cook in the liquid for 5 minutes. Since the cooking time will vary depending on the thickness of the fillets, check to see if the fillets are cooked all the way through by gently slipping a knife into the center and creating a small opening. If the middle is too mushy and red for your taste, put the cover back on and allow the salmon to cook for a few more minutes.

Once the fillets are cooked, remove them to plates. Turn up the heat on the poaching liquid and allow it to reduce to a slightly thickened sauce consistency. Cover the fillets with the sauce and garnish with the remaining scallion bits.
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I served the salmon with some steamed rice and petite string beans. The whole meal went from concept to plate in about 45 minutes. That's my kind of cooking!

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