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{Simply Potatoes} Loaded Potato Salad + {GIVEAWAY}

July 24, 2012 by 15 Comments

It’s summer time and I don’t know about you, but I love to make different salads and cold dishes to beat the heat. We don’t have a grill (which I’m still sad about) and when you turn the oven on in the apartment it is like a million degrees. Pair that with an air conditioner that isn’t that efficient and you’re in for a warm night (and a high electric bill!) One of our favorites is the Chop(ped) Salad that I’ve shared with you before. You’ll notice it involves bacon, which we love. We’re also a huge fan of Macaroni Salad – my Mom has a killer recipe that is so simple & basic, yet yields so much flavor. I really enjoy The Best Basic Potato Salad recipe that I’ve made in the past, but I wanted something that packed a little punch. So when I was contacted by Simply Potatoes to share a summer side dish using their potatoes, I knew bacon had to be involved in some way, shape or form.

Simply Potatoes is a product I love, and I use it all of the time. I use their Shredded Hashbrowns for the Hashbrown Crusted Breakfast Casserole that I make. I’ve tried shredding my own potatoes for hashbrowns and can I tell you what a disaster that was? It’s so much easier (and cheaper!) to just buy them already shredded. They’ve got so many other wonderful products that truly make your life so much easier. They even have recipes on their web site for you to try out.

And can I tell you how easy it was to just throw a bag in the microwave and press start? I didn’t have to wash potatoes, peel potatoes, or even cut potatoes. It was already done for me. They were already seasoned with zesty garlic so I didn’t have to mess with a garlic press and tons of other seasoning.

This would be a wonderful side dish to take on your picnic if you’re attending Dîner en Blanc in Philadelphia! This is sure to be a dish that is gone before you know it! Throw it in your cooler and enjoy!

INGREDIENTS

  • One 16 oz. package Simply Potatoes Zesty Garlic Diced Russets
  • 3 tablespoons mayonnaise
  • 3 tablespoons sour cream
  • 8 strips of bacon, cooked and crumbled
  • 1 tablespoon of fresh chives (green onions work as well)
  • ¼ cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
  • Salt & freshly cracked pepper, to taste

 INSTRUCTIONS

Steam the potatoes in the microwave as directed on the package. Let them sit in the microwave for a few minutes. Remove them from the microwave and put them in a bowl. Let them cool.

While the potatoes are cooling, fry your bacon. Drain on a paper towel and crumble. Set aside. And try not to eat it all.

At this point your potatoes should be about room temperature. Add in your mayonnaise and your sour cream and stir. Add in your bacon, chives and cheddar cheese. Stir carefully. Add salt & pepper to taste.

Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve. I like to let it sit in the refrigerator overnight to get nice & cold.

IT’S GIVEAWAY TIME!


***THIS GIVEAWAY IS CLOSED***

I’m giving away a coupon for one free product to one lucky winner! You can choose any Simply Potatoes product to try!

RULES:

1. Eligibility:

Giveaway is open to readers with U.S. shipping addresses only.

Here are the sweepstakes rules.

2. How to Enter:

Please leave a blog comment on this post telling me what your favorite potato dish is!

For BONUS ENTRIES, please leave a SEPARATE comment for each additional entry letting me know you’ve done any of these:

1)      Follow me on Twitter;

2)      Follow Simply Potatoes on Twitter;

3)       Tweet about the giveaway “I entered @one_curly_fry’s giveaway to win @simplypotatoes! #simplyfied http://wp.me/p1oF1b-1f5″

4)      Subscribe to email updates at the top of the left sidebar;

5)      Blog about this giveaway on your blog.

6)      “Like” one curly fry’s Facebook Page.

7)      “Like” Simply Potatoes Facebook Page.

This contest will run until Tuesday July 31st, 2012 at 1:00pm  (Eastern) and a winner will be chosen by random.org. The winner will be announced by 5:00 pm (Eastern) on July 31, 2012.

 {Simply Potatoes provided me with the Potatoes for this dish and the Giveaway coupon, but as always my opinions are 100% my own}

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5 Ingredient Friday: Parmesan Orzo

June 24, 2011 by 4 Comments

*sauce is not included in recipe

This week’s 5 Ingredient Friday is something that I love to make: Orzo. It goes with so many different dishes and you can change up ingredients to fit your meal. If you need something to go with a Greek dish, add in some kalamata olives, lemon juice & zest, etc. If you need something to go with a steak, add in green scallions, dried cherries, and pecans. This specific dish is just something that I came up with when I wanted a pasta-like side dish to go with Chicken Parmesan, but didn’t want anything too heavy. Orzo is a type of pasta that is made in the shape of a grain of rice. I love how it’s so light and fluffy. There’s so much you can do with Orzo. Here’s my favorite recipe…

Ingredients

  • Orzo (as much as you want to make)
  • 1 Tablespoon of Olive Oil
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 5 cloves of garlic, grated
  • 1/4 cup of Parmesan Cheese, freshly grated
  • salt & pepper, to taste

Preparation

Bring a large pot of lightly-salted water to a boil and stir in the orzo; return to a boil. Cook uncovered, stirring occasionally, until the pasta has cooked through, but is still firm to the bite, about 9-11 minutes; drain.

Heat the olive oil in a saucepan (or skillet) over medium heat. Cook the onion for a few minutes until it’s translucent. Stir in the garlic and let it cook for about a minute or so.

Stir in your cooked Orzo and mix until everything is incorporated. Add in your grated Parmesan Cheese; stirring until it melts. Taste it for flavor, and add in salt & pepper as you see fit.

*The sauce in the picture above was not included in the recipe. I was trying to use up the extra sauce so that’s why it’s on there :)

So as you see this is a very easy recipe that can be changed up at any time. I love to do Orzo with sweet onions, garlic, lemon juice & zest, and fresh parsley when serving white fish such as Flounder or Tilapia. The possibilities are endless!

Share your favorite Orzo recipes!

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The Best Basic Potato Salad

June 21, 2011 by 4 Comments

Today marks the first day of Summer! Tis the season for all of the outside BBQs and pool parties. So I figured we’d welcome in the new season with a potato salad!  I was looking for a great side dish to go along with a steak, and I thought that a Potato Salad sounded good. Potato Salad is something that I do like to eat, but I never make it myself. I’m not sure why. So I figured that I would make some and see what I can come up with. I was looking around online for different recipes, and noticed that they all had weird ingredients that didn’t sound good to me.  But then I saw a recipe on Whole Food’s web site for “The Best Basic Potato Salad.”  This sounded like it was right up my ally!

Ingredients

  • 3 pounds russet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks (I didn’t peel and I quartered them)
  • Salt and ground black pepper to taste
  • 1/3 cup light or regular sour cream
  • 1/3 cup gluten-free mayonnaise (I just used light mayonnaise)
  • 1/4 cup mixed chopped herbs such as parsley, basil and thyme (I used some dried parsley)
  • 2 tablespoons lemon juice (I didn’t use this)
  • 2 ribs celery, chopped
  • 1/2 small onion, chopped (I used red scallions from my CSA box)

Instructions

Put potatoes into a pot, cover with salted water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 8 to 10 minutes. Be careful not to overcook. Test for doneness by inserting a fork into a potato chunk. It should slide in easily without breaking apart the potato. Immediately drain well and let cool 10 minutes.

Gently toss potatoes with sour cream, mayonnaise, herbs, lemon juice, celery, onion, salt and pepper. Cover and chill before serving.

Potatoes – Cooked & Quartered

Dressing

All mixed together

Now…as usual, there’s something that I either omit, substitute, or add into a recipe!  I didn’t use 3 lbs of potatoes – it’s just two of us, so I used small baby potatoes that came in a 1.5 lb bag. I followed the measurements for the dressing though, except I added in 2 additional tablespoons of mayonnaise since I didn’t think Mr. Curly Fry would like the sour creamy taste of the dressing.  I added in dressing until it looked like there was enough – I didn’t want to overdue it. I kept the extra in a custard cup just in case I needed it later, and it turns out that I did. I mixed it into the potato salad right before serving. That worked out so well!  I didn’t have any fresh herbs on hand, otherwise I would’ve used them. Some fresh parsley and fresh chives would have been lovely in this.

I chilled it in the fridge for about 7 hours because I wanted to make sure it was nice and cold. There’s nothing worse than warm potato salad (that isn’t supposed to be warm!).  I thought this turned out great. I didn’t want pickles or hard boiled eggs in my potato salad – I wanted something very basic. This fit the bill, and it wasn’t a heart attack on a plate.  This is a great basic recipe that you can change up and make your own.

What ingredients would you add to make the perfect Potato Salad?

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5 Ingredient Friday: The 3 B’s Beans (Bacon, Brown Sugar and Bourbon)

May 13, 2011 by Leave a Comment

This week’s 5 Ingredient Friday recipe is something totally new for me. It’s my first time ever attempting to make beans that weren’t in a can! I came across Claire Robinson’s recipe for The 3 B’s – Beans (Bacon, Brown Sugar and Bourbon). I love baked beans and honestly all I’ve ever had were Campbell’s Beans. I usually open the can, doctor them up, heat and serve! But I wanted to try something new and I saw this recipe so I figured it would be perfect to try.

Ingredients

  • 1 pound dried navy beans, soaked overnight in a large bowl of water
  • 1 cup packed dark brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup stone-ground or spicy Dijon mustard
  • 1 1/4 cups water
  • 2/3 cup bourbon
  • 4 ounces slab bacon, rind removed and diced
  • Kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper

Put dry beans in a bowl


Soak the beans overnight

Cook bacon in dutch oven; drain and set aside

Drain beans and add to the Dutch Oven


Whisk together brown sugar, mustard, water and bourbon

Add the liquid mixture to the beans

Directions

Drain the beans and set aside. In a bowl, whisk together the brown sugar, mustard, water, and bourbon until the sugar is dissolved. Set aside.

Cook the bacon until crisp in a large Dutch oven over medium heat. Remove the bacon and all but a couple of tablespoons of the bacon grease. Add the drained beans to the pot and stir in the bourbon sauce mixture. Bring the beans to a boil, then reduce the heat to low to maintain a gentle simmer. Cover and cook the beans, stirring every 20 minutes, until the beans are soft and the sauce is very thick, about 4 hours. Once the beans are cooked, season them with salt and pepper, to taste. Stir in the cooked bacon and cook, covered, an additional 15 to 20 minutes. Transfer the beans to a serving bowl and serve warm.


Notes

If the beans get too dry, add water, 1/4 cup at a time. If the beans are too wet and runny, remove the lid and cook, stirring often, until desired consistency is reached.

My thoughts…

Eh. I was kind of disappointed with how these turned out. Not that I was expecting that much. They weren’t horrible, but they weren’t great. I was hoping these would be out of this world so that I had something new and exciting to take to picnics this summer…but this will not be that recipe.

As others said in the review, the beans were not done in the 4 – 4 1/2 hours that the recipe says. They weren’t even close to being done. I soaked those bad boys for 24 hours as well. After 4 hours, I knew that we were going to be going somewhere, so I transferred everything to a small crockpot and let them continue to cook in there for another 3 hours.  I tasted them and they just kind of bland. I added a little bit of ketchup and a little more brown sugar hoping to help them out a bit.  I added in the bacon and stirred and let those flavors mingle for a bit. I think the recipe was a bit heavy on the mustard. If I were to make this again, I’d knock that down a bit and add in some ketchup. I know, it won’t be 5 ingredients anymore, but I think it would definitely help the dish.

Recipe courtesy Claire Robinson, 2010
Show: 5 Ingredient Fix
Episode: Big State BBQ

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Sweet Onion Casserole

May 2, 2011 by 2 Comments

I was paging through the latest issue of Cooking Light magazine (May 2011) and came across a recipe for Sweet Onion Casserole.  I’m always interested in trying out some new side dishes since I can easily get tired of the same ones over and over. I figured that I’d check out the reviews online to see what people had to say about it. I like to do that to see if the recipes needs to be worked with a bit or if they are perfect the way that they are. There weren’t many reviews at all for the recipe, but out of the few that commented, they said it has some potential. So I wanted to try to enhance the flavors.

The recipe calls to only saute the onions for 5 minutes or so. That doesn’t seem like enough time in my opinion. I decided to caramelize the onions before adding them in. I love the flavor of caramelized onions so I was so excited to see how it turned out. I also added in a bit of garlic that I used to make some garlic olive oil. There are many recipes I like to use garlic olive oil in and I think homemade tastes so much better than the store bought stuff. I also used the garlic olive oil in place of the canola oil in this recipe.

4 cups of onions

Onions before caramelizing

Caramelized Onions

Ready for the oven

Fresh out of the oven

Ingredients

  • 1 tablespoon canola oil (I used 1 tablespoon of homemade garlic olive oil + 1 tablespoon of butter)
  • 4 cups chopped sweet onion (about 1 3/4 pounds) (I caramelized the onions a bit first)
  • 1/2 cup uncooked long-grain rice (I used medium-grain rice and it worked fine)
  • 2/3 cup 2% reduced-fat milk
  • 1/2 cup (2 ounces) shredded Gruyère cheese
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
  • 1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
  • Cooking spray
  • 1/3 cup (1 1/3 ounces) grated Parmesan cheese
  • 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley (optional)

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 325°.

2. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add oil; swirl to coat. Add onion; sauté 5 minutes or until tender. Place onion in a large bowl.

3. Cook rice in a large pot of boiling water 5 minutes. Drain.

4. Stir rice and next 5 ingredients (through allspice) into onions. Spoon onion mixture into an 8-inch square glass or ceramic baking dish coated with cooking spray. Sprinkle evenly with Parmesan cheese. Cover and bake at 325° for 40 minutes. Uncover and bake an additional 5 minutes. Top with parsley, if desired.

My thoughts…

This was good – but it was still missing something. It definitely needed more salt. When I added a little bit more salt to my serving and mixed it together, it was better. So I would bump up the salt amount if you make it. I was hesitant to put too much in there because there is salt in the cheese, etc. This still needs something else to make it really stand out. I’m thinking that some Panko bread crumbs mixed with a little butter and fresh thyme would provide a nice crunch and add a little bit more pizazz to the dish. Maybe a little bacon would help? Doesn’t bacon make everything better?

Another note…when I took the foil off after it baked for 40 minutes covered, I kept it in there for another 10 minutes at 325 degrees and then I put my broiler on low and broiled it for 3 minutes or so to get some more color.

So all in all this does have potential. I would make it again in hopes of figuring out what the missing ingredient is.

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