It's basically a muffin mix with creamed corn added

The recipe really couldn’t be much simpler. Some milk, eggs, flour, sugar, baking powder & soda and some creamed corn. Mix it all up, pour it into a cast iron pan and bake for 20 minutes. I’m still not entirely 100% sure what the difference between cornbread and a corn muffin is supposed to be, and making this recipe, it felt like the only real difference between the recipes was the added creamed corn into the batter.

Cooked Until golden and springy

The first time I made this, I cut up a couple pieces and served one to Emily. She commented that it looked and smelled great, but after taking a single bite declared, “I don’t like it”. She had two gripes: the first was the texture – it was gritty. The second was that it wasn’t nearly sweet enough. I read up and learned that old baking powder and soda can sometimes affect the texture of baked goods. I hoped that replacing them with new ones might help enough.

I also decided to up the sugar amount from one tablespoon to three. I have since read that one of the few differences between corn bread and corn muffins is that muffins tend to be a little bit sweeter.

It looks and smells great

Unfortunately, Emily didn’t really like the second cornbread too much either. The sugar helped the sweetness and the texture was a little lighter and fluffier, but there was still a hint of grittiness to it. The recipe called for stone ground cornmeal, but I only had “plain” cornmeal. I’m thinking that a finer cornmeal might help with the gritty texture, but I’m not really crazy about trying the recipe a third time just yet.

Creamed Corn Cornbread Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Cornbread must be served with butter

The next recipe I was supposed to make was the corn bread which uses either leftover creamed corn from the last recipe, or canned corn. Emily had been eating the leftover corn as small snacks and I didn’t realize she had eaten the last of it. I mentioned that the recipe mentioned that you could use canned corn instead of the homemade stuff, but she wasn’t having that. So, on her next trip to the grocery, she grabbed some more corn. They didn’t have any fresh un-husked stuff though – just the pre-husked, wrapped stuff. We were unsure what sort of difference it would make, but we were hopeful.

Since I was going to be re-making this, I decided I could try experimenting with it a bit more. I noticed that in a lot of reviews on the website, people mentioned using frozen corn – or just canned corn. This got me to thinking that they would be getting more moisture from their corn than I was getting.

I don’t know what I’m doing wrong – but I’m just barely getting any liquid or pulp from my fresh corn. I cut the kernels off, and then use the back of the knife to squeeze out whatever else is left on the cob. So, this time I decided to give it some extra liquid in the form of water. I didn’t measure it, but for 8 ears of corn, I used roughly 2/3 of a cup.

I have to tell you – the difference was amazing. The corn was much softer – and much tastier. I still don’t think it’s as soft as a creamed corn from a can – but it tastes a whole lot better. Adding more liquid or cream may give it that extra softness/creaminess, but I didn’t want to overdo it this time around.

So, that’s the secret – if you’re using fresh corn and your corn isn’t releasing much in the way of liquid, just add in 1/2 – 2/3 cup of water to fix it up. Next up, some corn bread!

Creamed Corn – Updated Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Oh, corn – how I love you. By far, it’s one of the best side items ever. It goes well with so many dishes. In our house, we usually do grilled corn on the cob. I’d be hard pressed to remember the last time we had creamed corn – but I’ve always loved it. Alton calls his “Better than Grannie’s” -but my grandmother never served me corn that I can remember. In fact, any creamed corn I can ever remember eating came from a can.

Of course, this isn’t from a can. It starts with fresh ears of corn. The recipe itself is pretty simple. Cut the corn from the ears, cook for a short while, add the seasonings, cook for a short while, add the cream, finish cooking and adjust seasoning. Simple, right?

Behold, Corn Mountain

I don’t know what I did wrong. Maybe the corn wasn’t super fresh? It seemed it. The silk was soft. Whatever the cause, the corn just refused to soften to a proper “creamed corn” consistency. Since then, I’ve read that overcooking the corn can make the corn tougher – but I checked it frequently – and it tasted softer each time I checked. The amount of cream wasn’t enough either – I had to pretty much double it.

As such, I’m not really sure how to rate this. On one hand, it was pretty good. Emily said it tasted just like Kenny Roger’s – just a little harder. On the other hand, it didn’t really live up to the whole concept of “creamed corn”. I may try it again using lower heat so it doesn’t cook as much – and just heat up the corn instead.

Alton Brown Creamed Corn Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Supposedly, it tastes just like Kenny Roger's - just harder

Any good ribs start with a good rub

These ribs start out with a pretty simple rub. The recipe calls for using a “jalapeno shake” or “jalapeno seasoning”. The book goes on to explain that it seems to mostly be a regional item, and to omit it or replace with different spices. Our grocery had diced dried jalapenos, so I used those. I don’t know if they’re quite what he had in mind, but it was worth a shot. Rub the ribs, wrap in foil and sit in the fridge overnight.

Next up is the cooking. A lot of recipes I’ve used in the past have used apple juice as a braising liquid. This one uses white wine, vinegar, honey, worcester sauce and garlic. Wrap the ribs into foil pouches and pour the liquid in. One note here – make sure your garlic is chopped/crushed really fine or divide the liquid into two equal amounts before pouring. When you pour the liquid into the pouches, if you’re trying to be careful not to pour too much, the chunks of garlic end up getting stuck in the pouring vessel. If you know how much you have to pour before doing so, you won’t get more garlic in one than the other.

After about two and a half hours in the oven, I was satisfied that the ribs were done based on Alton’s test – grip and twist the bone to see if it rotates fairly easily. Next, we drain the liquid into a pan and set the ribs aside.

After braising, the juices and liquid are used for the sauce

The liquid is to simmer and reduce down – and this is meant to be your barbecue sauce. Baste it onto the ribs and stick them under the broiler to caramelize and brown.

After braising for almost 3 hours

There is a lot of debate over what constitutes “great” or even “good” barbecue. For my money, I tend to prefer Kansas City style. I like them all if they’re made well – but I prefer a nice thick, sweet and tangy sauce. This sauce is none of those. Alton finishes the recipe with the joke that you should eat these outside with a hose and a bucket. I don’t know why. They’re not at all juicy or messy.

The ribs themselves have a good flavor, but they’re just a bit on the dry side for me.

Alton Brown Who Loves Ya Baby-Back RibsRating: 3 out of 5 stars

They've got a good flavor - they're just too dry

I cheated and used some fresh herbs

The recipe, which is identical on the website and in the book, calls for some pretty standard items. The only fresh ingredients are the onion, celery and carrot. We always have carrot chunks on hand for Ivy, so I just used those. We actually usually don’t stock canned tomatoes – we tend to buy fresh – but I bought some canned ones for this. Where I did cheat was the herbs. The recipe calls for dried oregano and basil. We actually didn’t have dried basil, so I decided to just pull leaves from our Aerogarden. We have dried oregano, but I decided to go ahead and use fresh leaves of those as well. Lastly, we don’t have sherry vinegar. We’ve got cooking sherry, but it’s not quite the same. Based on a couple discussions across the net, I used half cooking sherry and half rice wine vinegar. Ideally, I should have used white wine vinegar, but we didn’t have that either.

Boil the herbs, sugar and tomato liquids down

The carrots and celery don't really come through

The first portion of the recipe is really simple. Combine the liquid of the tomatoes with the herbs and most of the flavorful ingredients. The recipe isn’t very clear on this, but based on cooking times, one should prep things ahead so that the liquids can start cooking at around the same time that the mirepoix goes into the oven. Mirepoix is, of course, just the traditional combination of celery, onions and carrots – the fresh ingredients.

The tomatoes take a long time to brown around the edges

Once the onions have softened under the broiler, the whole peeled tomatoes are added to the mirepoix to sit under the broiler. The recipe estimates that they take about 15-20 minutes under the broiler before the tomatoes are browned around the edges. Under ours, it took about 25 minutes. Meanwhile, the liquids on the stove had reduced by half like the recipe explained – but I don’t know that I would call it “syrup-like”. To me, that means that it should stick to a spoon a bit. It didn’t, but I had already boiled out all the water by this point.

Time for tomato smashing

Combining the broiled vegetables and the liquids, it was time to mash. I could have used an immersion blender if we had one, but we don’t – so it was time for the potato masher. That worked out well though – I like some chunks. An immersion blender would have chewed those up a lot more.

Verdict
Over the past year or so, I’ve added crushed red pepper flakes to just about every tomato sauce I’ve bought. This tomato sauce has plenty. Between the red pepper flakes and the garlic cloves (make sure to smash them thoroughly, i had a few chunks that were still too large), this has a good spicy flavor. I really didn’t taste much of the mirepoix, but the flavor acts as a solid base. If I had a single complaint, it’s that the tomatoes released a lot of liquid when I mashed them – even after being drained and broiled. As a result, the sauce was not as thick as I would have liked. I could have boiled it down further, but I was making this as the recipe instructs to. That aside, I was blown away at how good this sauce was. Ideally, I really would have liked a recipe that used fresh tomatoes instead – as canned tomatoes tend to have preservatives in them that I’d like to cut out as much as possible. For about the price of a jar of tomato sauce, I made enough for three jars (two jars worth in separate containers in the freezer) and one serving.

I may try to work in fresh tomatoes instead, and boil down the final product a bit more, but this is a great recipe.

All Pantry Tomato Sauce Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

It's a little watery, but good

Like most guys, I love deep fried foods. I don’t do a whole lot of deep frying though – just because it’s kind of a pain in the ass. I used to have a small electric fryer, but it mysteriously disappeared when the ex moved out. Since then, I’ve always just filled a pot with oil and used that. It’s not optimal, but it works.

The key component to this fish, of course, is the batter. This is a beer based batter. Digging around in the fridge, I found a bottle of dark & tan Yuengling that someone left here at one of our parties. I’m not going to drink it, and Emily definitely isn’t going to drink it – so in it went.

BEER GOOD!

The grocery store didn’t have any light fish last time I made fried fish and I had to use halibut. This time, they had no halibut, and I had to use a lighter fish. The book specifically advises not to use tilapia unless you hate fish, but the website lists it as one of the main options. I ended up using catfish.

While the batter set up, I started prepping the potatoes for their first fry. I wish I had started the oil heating up when I started this, but I had to leave the oven off for bird safety as it was almost Ivy’s dinner time. Using the mandoline, I carefully cut up the two potatoes. The website says to use four potatoes – but the same amount of fish. The two potatoes made more than enough chips/fries – four would have been way too much.

Soaking the fries.. er chips

As the oil came up to temperature, I took the chips out of the water soak. We don’t have a salad spinner, so I just let them rest on a cooling rack and then dried them out with a paper towel as best as I could. It’s not as good as the spinner, but it worked OK. With the oil up to 320, it was time for the first fry.

It's no dutch oven, but it works

The instructions say to let them fry until they’re pale and limp. Well, they were already pretty pale – so I had to just go on the whole “limp” thing. It said it should take about 2-3 minutes. I nudged the chips around while they fried – trying to test their “limpness” – but they never really seemed limp. At about 3 minutes, I called it, and just pulled them out. Once they were on the cooling rack, I poked at a few – they were pretty limp. Thus, we happen upon one of the most important rules when frying things: food never looks done when it’s actually done.

Pale & limp chips

After doing the rest of the chips, it was time to batter and fry the fish. I jacked up the heat on the stove to get the temperature up to the required 350 and put in the first few pieces of fish. This is when I wished I had used the noted amount of oil. The book doesn’t explain this, but Alton talks about it in the episodes: having a lot of oil helps the temperature from losing too much heat when you add foods into it. Because I used too little oil (about a quart and a half), and used an aluminum/steel pot instead of a cast iron dutch oven. Add in the fact that I’m using an electric stove that is really fidgety when it comes to heat control – and you end up with a real pain in the ass when it comes to keeping a steady temperature when frying. With a lot of minute adjustments, I managed to keep it near enough to the target temperature as best I could – and fried the fish for the roughly 2 minutes that the website instructed.

The book said to fry until “golden brown and delicious”, but if frying has a second rule, it’s that “golden brown and delicious does not mean cooked all the way through”. Sure enough, they were not. At roughly 2 minutes, the fish was technically cooked – but only barely. I love sushi – but fish either needs to be completely uncooked or completely cooked – there’s no middle ground here.

Finishing the rest of the fish, it was time to re-fry the chips. Crank the heat again – getting the oil up to 375. Fry the chips again – again, frying until “GBD’. This one was a little easier to check. In theory, the chips were already cooked from the first frying. This was more about coloring. Once they had a good coloring, they came out to drain and rest.

Verdict
First up was the fish. The recipe’s cooking time was off. This seems to be a recurring motif with Alton’s recipes. Granted, this may have been because I was having trouble keeping the temperature exactly right – but make sure you test the fish and make sure it’s cooked all the way through.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m not usually a big fan of fish & chips – and I’m still not. The malt vinegar that I used (it was seriously the only one that our grocery carried) helped make it tastier than any other fish & chips I’ve had before – but that’s not saying a lot. The batter itself is less flavorful than a corndog batter – and that’s saying a lot, I think. If I had had some tartar sauce, I may have liked this more, but oh well.

The chips.. or as we call them here – the fries – were a lot better – but seriously lacked seasoning. The only seasoning that these fries had was some finely ground kosher salt (run through the food processor). They weren’t bad, by any means – but they were very plain and uninteresting. Add in some garlic and paprika to give them a little oomph.

Really though – adding garlic or red pepper flakes seems to be my answer to everything. I may have a problem.

In the end, though, I really wouldn’t make the fish again. It’s just too bland and boring. I might make the chips.. or fries.. again – but probably only if we were entertaining. It’s really too much work just for one or two people.

Fish Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
Chips Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Just like merry old England

This dinner took a long time to make – a good hour and a forty minutes – but Emily and I were both in the kitchen cooking separate dishes for the first 30 or so minutes. Some of the steps could be replaced with store bought ingredients, but where’s the fun in that?

Not looking particularly appetizing there.

In Alton’s terms, we first assemble the dry team: homemade croutons (just toasted bread) and some dried herbs. Pulse it all in a food processor until it’s a fine powder.

The flavor portion of the meatloaf - herbed bread crumbs

Next up is the wet team: onions, red bell pepper and fresh garlic. Again, put through the food processor – but only until it’s chopped up fine – not pureed. This is where I misread and accidentally pureed my wet ingredients. Thankfully, I had more garlic and bell pepper – but no more onion. I re-did the chopped vegetables using onion powder instead of fresh ones. The texture may be off, but the flavor would be similar.

Pro Tip: read the instructions carefully.

The healthy part of the meatloaf

Finally, combine the wet and dry ingredients with some freshly ground (in the food processor, of course) sirloin and chuck meats – with an egg as a binder. Here is where the book deviates from the website. The book says to shape the meat mixture into a loaf on a pan. The website says to use a loaf pan. I just shaped my meat since I’m following the book.

Meatloaf, Smeatloaf, Double-Beefloaf

While the meatloaf begins to cook, you assemble the glaze/sauce. It’s basically a barbecue sauce. I like the idea of making your own sauce, but it just uses a 1/2 cup of ketchup along with some other ingredients. The biggest benefit of making your own sauce is that you know exactly what is in your sauce – you lose that when you just using store bought ketchup as your base.

The instructions say to cook the meatloaf for 10 minutes, brush on the glaze and then cook until the internal temperature reaches 155 – which should take roughly another 25 minutes. This sounded really off to me. When I’ve cooked meatloaf in the past, I’ve always cooked at 375 for about 45 minutes. The website does not give an estimated time. Still, I started out using Alton’s instructions. I started the oven at 325. At 10 minutes, I covered the meatloaf with the glaze. I noticed that the food was supposedly roughly 1/3 the way through the cooking time, but had only increased temperature by about 4 degrees. I decided to jack up the heat up to 375. In the end, it took just a little longer than my meatloaf normally takes to cook (explained by the fact that the first 10 minutes were at a lower temperature)

Lookit all that fat pooled around it... yum.

Verdict
This is a decent meatloaf, but it didn’t blow me away.

When I first pulled it out of the oven, I immediately noticed all the grease sitting around the loaf. When I use the loaf pan, I normally have to take it out every 15 or so minutes and drain the grease off the top. I think that if I did it loaf-pan-less again, I might put it on a rack so it’s not sitting in its own juices while it cooks.

Eating it, I bit into some large chunks of garlic. This is because the fresh garlic is “chopped fine” with the wet ingredients. I love garlic. I mean, I love garlic – but I don’t want to bite into big chunks of it. I’d probably toss those in with the dry ingredients to get a finer texture, or mince the garlic first so it’s smaller than the rest of the veggie chunks.

This is one of those recipes that really needs a bit of tweaking, but it’s a decent base recipe. I’d also probably add some red pepper flakes to kick up the heat on this a bit – but I’ve been on a really big red pepper flakes kick lately.

Meatloaf Again Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

It didn't really hold up well to slicing.

As I have been lately, I skipped watching the video – but I checked the recipe on the website. The only real difference between the two was one that I find most helpful. The book provides measurements in ounces. That’s all well and good if it’s meant to be by weight, but I’m pretty sure it’s not. The website provides measurements in cups and tablespoons – much easier to follow.

Are we sure this isn't a Paula Deen Recipe?

Making the pie is basically a three phase process: the dough, the filling and the baking.

The dough proved to be the biggest difficulty – for multiple reasons. First was the issue that our food processor is a little small. In order to make the dough, you mix 2 1/2 cups of flour, 1/2 cup of corn meal some sugar and two sticks of butter. At best, I could fit about half of that in our food processor – so that’s exactly what I did. I did two half batches of dough mix and then combined them in a large mixing bowl for the apple juice spray and dough mixing.

Here is where the real issues popped up. According to the book, you just spritz enough apple juice and fold the dough until you can squeeze the dough and it retains its shape. Simple, right? Once you have that consistency, wrap up the dough and stash it in the refrigerator for 20 minutes or so, so that the dough can properly absorb the moisture. Great.

This is how the dough looked the first time it was supposedly ready.

When I pulled out the dough and tried to work with it, it just kept cracking apart. Yes, it held its shape, but when rolled out, it just broke apart. I had to give it some more apple juice spray to get it to be pliable enough to work with as a pie dough.

While that set up, I made the filling. This was a simple affair with no complications – and it smelled great as it all came together.

Pear Pie is filled with pears and blueberries

Once the dough was ready for working, I got it rolled out and started dumping the filling on top. As I mentioned, this is more of a tart than a pie. You fold the edges up, but you don’t cover the whole top with dough/crust. As I folded the edges up, the dough snapped off at the creases. Not a huge deal – I just squeezed the seams shut again – but I was a little nervous that the dough may still not be quite right.

It's like a volcano of fruit

Into the oven for 30-ish minutes and allow the smells to waft through the house.

Taking it out of the oven, I was re-assured by how great the final product looked. Setting it aside, we let it cool before trying to figure out how to cut it. I was worried that cutting this, everything would just spill out everywhere. Finally, I loaded up the episode on Youtube and saw that when Alton cut it, everything stayed in place. If I had done everything correctly, mine should as well.

Hopefully it doesn't all fall apart as soon as I cut into it

Thankfully, it sliced fine and everything kept its form perfectly.

Verdict
I kind of have trouble calling this a “pear pie”. When you eat it, you get a much stronger taste of blueberries and butter. Granted – this could be due to the fact that my pears were a little overripe, but I don’t think so. The cause of the taste of butter is obvious: there are roughly 2 1/2 sticks of butter in this thing. Seriously, I’m not convinced that this is not really a Paula Deen recipe.

That said, this pie/tart is awesome. It’s a great flavor, and aside from the difficulties with the dough, is fairly easy to make. I don’t know if this will replace our apple pie for holiday get-togethers, but we’ll definitely be making this again.

Alton Brown No Pan Pear Pie Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Sliced, it retains its shape, form and buttery flavor

Of course, when I play with my friends, I like to be able to chat with them – but I don’t want to hear xXiPwNeDyOuXx screaming at his mother that he wants his juice.

Until now, the only solution I could find was to manually go and mute everyone manually – but that’s a stop-gap solution. As soon as you change matches or a new jackass gets on, you have to go and re-mute everyone all over again. Unfortunately, there is no way to “mute all” on the fly, but here is the next best solution.

Settings -> Profile -> Edit Profile -> Privacy Settings -> Voice & Text

Here, you have three options:

Everyone

Let anyone on Xbox LIVE communicate with you using voice and chat.

Friends Only

Let only your friends communicate with you

Blocked

Prevent all communication. You’ll still receive system messages and friend requests.

Chances are that you’re like me – and you have Everyone selected. Go ahead and change this to Friends Only or Blocked based on your preference. If you have a problem with screaming children on XBL and you already had Friends Only or Blocked selected, then you need to cull your friends list or tell the voices in your head to pipe down.

The annoying part about this method is that you have to sign out to edit your profile, so you can’t really do this in the middle of a match. Still, that’s a small price to pay to have a nice and quiet game. I’ve now got mine set to Friends Only so that I can chat with and hear my friends, but all non-friends are completely muted automatically.

Does anyone have a better way to do this?

Open up the Edit Profile menu

Navigate to the Privacy Settings for your profile

Choose your preferred setting in the Voice & Text Settings

I’ve tried lots of methods and recipes of cooking burgers over the years – and I’ve made a lot of pretty decent ones – but never one that I’ve really felt a need to make another one exactly like it again. I’ve had burgers like that – but always from a restaurant. Will Alton Brown’s be any different?

Burger of the Gods is people!

From the get-go, I was pretty skeptical about this one – but if there’s one thing that I’ve learned about cooking beef over the past few years, it’s that good beef doesn’t need to be masked by extra stuff. This recipe definitely has a lack of “extra stuff”. All you need is:

• 10oz chuck – chopped into 1/2″ pieces
• 10oz sirloin – chopped into 1/2″ pieces
• 1/2tsp kosher salt

That’s it. No worcestershire sauce, no onions, no garlic – nothing but some kosher salt and two types of beef.

You don't need a meat grinder to grind your own meat. Who knew?

Using a food processor, grind up the meat. Knead it by hand and mix in the salt. Form it up into patties and throw it onto a hot cast iron skillet for a few minutes to cook it. Of course, I couldn’t resist – and I threw on some swiss cheese. Burgers aren’t complete without some sort of cheese.

They're a little small. You may need to eat more than one.

Verdict
Yeah, this is a short one. But there’s really not much to talk about except for the quality. The key here are the two types of meat: sirloin and chuck. By “grinding” your own meat, you know exactly what’s going in there – and just how good the meat is. The chuck gives it the burger flavor you’re expecting – a bit of fat, but not too much. The sirloin, however, gives it that hint of steaky flavor. It’s prominent without being overbearing. The simple salt seasoning works perfectly with the combination of meats.

Where this recipe falls down is in its instructions. Alton instructs you to form the patties into 4″ diameters with 3/4″ thicknesses. That’s fine – slightly small – but OK. The cooking times are where it all goes to hell. 4 minutes on each side for a “medium-rare” burger. To give him it a fair shot, I cooked my first burger exactly like he instructed – and got a well-done burger. The second time, I cooked it for 3 minutes on one side and about 2 on the other. I got something on the well done side of medium-rare. For a medium-rare burger, I’m thinking I’m going to have to go to something more like 4 minutes total.

Burger of the Gods? Maybe one of the lesser ones. This could easily work as my standard go-to burger if I can work out the cooking times.

Burger of the Gods Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I foolishly forgot to get tomatoes for proper toppings.