Category: Carnal Cooking

Emergency Oatmeal

WFMH

Listening to: Death Atlas- Cattle Decapitation , or alternatively, you could listen to whatever the fuck makes you happy right now

Uncooked oats, yum yum!

‘Sup fuckers! Uncertain times call for usual coping mechanisms, which includes my grand return to my cute little blog I forget I have, with the rant at the end if you care to read it. Here’s a recipe for some oatmeal I bring to work so I have something low-cost to munch on. Fuck those disgusting little flavor packets, you can make your own with a lot less packaging and minimal effort.

Emergency Oatmeal- Yields about 3-4 servings depending on how many feelings you’re dealing with

  • 2 cups quick oats (from a 25# bag you keep for these occasions)
  • 1/4 c brown sugar
  • 1/2 t cinammon
  • 1/2 t nutmeg
  • 1/4 t cloves
  • Optional: raisins or other fruit fruit if that’s your thing

0. If you don’t have brown sugar, it’s easy to make if you happen to have molasses and white sugar: mix about a cup of white sugar with a few tablespoons of molasses until it’s the darkness you’re used to (the brown sugar, not your inner demons).
1. Mix all the ingredient together. Note that I don’t actually measure my spices, I just give a shake-shake until it looks like enough. Add more oatmeal if you manage to fuck it up.
2. Shake some of the oatmeal mix into your microwave-safe bowl and cover it with water so it’s soaked but not a huge soup, ya dig? Blast it for maybe 99 seconds, keeping an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t explode. Alternatively, you could do this on the stovetop and cook for longer, but that’s another dish and more time.

Look what a fancy container I have to keep this in at work, I am just the definition of bougie, aren’t I?

Okay, so the past few weeks have been crazy. Many of you don’t have an open workplace to bring your frugal oatmeal to anymore. Everyone is adjusting to a new normal these days and it’s hard. Cattle Decapitation really started something when they busted out their single “Bring Back The Plague”. If you sing the refrain, using your most creative interpretations of Travis’ vocals and controlling your timing, it’s almost 20 seconds long to wash your hands to.

If you can, buy some merch from your favorite bands so they can stay afloat while they’re having to postpone or cancel their tours. This is a great time to work on your battle jacket. Do your best Chopped (in Half) meal plans getting creative what you might have left in your pantry. I know you like to feel evil, but you probably have a backlog of bathbombs, special soap, or whatever you’ve been saving for “the special time”. This is the special time. Look better than you feel. Master your wingged eyes for your corpsepaint. I believe in you douchebags, okay? <3

Heavy Metal Nettle Pesto

WFMH1 Comment

Listening to: Thornsmoat by HVØSCH (the soundtrack to my untimely death)

What’s more BRVTAL than going out to the forest and picking stinging plants with your favorite bandmates? Okay, I can think of a few things, but this is pretty badass. Stinging nettles grow pretty much anywhere, I collect these from the bog 2 blocks from my house. 

Stick that green shit on everything!

Nettle Pesto- Yields 1.5 cups 

This recipe is *not* for canning, due to the dairy and oil. You could freeze it in an ice cube tray or something else to portion it nicely.

  • 1/4 lb of stinging nettles, leaves only, which for me was one small produce bagful. It might look like a lot, but it will shrink down considerably when blanched. 
  • 1/2 cup grated parmesan or grana padano 
  • 1/4 cup walnuts, or pine nuts if you’ve got the dough
  • 1 large lemon, zested and juiced
  • 3 cloves of garlic, minced
  • 1/4 cup olive oil, probably more as needed
  • 3 Tbs salt
    Special equipment: Blender or mortar and pestle or food processor

0. Collect the nettles. I recommend using gloves, maybe you’re more TRVE than I am. Pick only the new growth top 3 or 4 leaves on each plant. Rule Number One of foraging is “Don’t Be a Dick” and leave some for others, even when it’s a pest plant like nettles are. You never know who wants this garbage other than your crunchy ass. 
1. Blanch the nettles: Boil water in a large pot. Prepare an ice water bath, keep in the fridge until it’s needed. After washing the nature out of the nettles, plop them all in the boiling water, or in batches if you have a small pot. Boil the nettles for about 2 minutes and use tongs to dunk them into the ice water to stop them from cooking any longer. This deactivates the stinging part of the plant. Taste the blanched nettles, don’t be a pussy. Know your raw ingredients. Remove the nettles from the ice bath and wring out the water. All of the nettles you collected should be the size of a baseball. Roughly chop these, no need to get fancy with it.
2. Add the cheese, nuts, lemon juice and zest, salt, garlic, and about a third of the olive oil into the blender until it moves by itself and is in smaller chunks. Take a break to enjoy the devastation HVØSCH is unleashing on your earholes.
3. Add the nettles and slowly add in the rest of the oil as it’s processing until it moves by itself. If you’re doing this by hand, godspeed. It should be a little bit chunky, not a purée. Adjust lemon and salt to taste.

Look at this poseur with gloves and scissors to decapitate the local delicious pests. Probably also picked some öyster mushrooms to saute with the pesto pasta.

This goes really well with homemade pasta, or regular ass pasta too. I’ve even made pasta with a tablespoon of this pesto in the dough for flavor. You know I like to go all extra when I do stuff like this. It would be nice in a layered pasta bake, pizza base, or even just as a dip. 

Nettles are one of those strange items I never thought I’d eat, but working in the kitchens taught me otherwise. We would receive these in the summer and have an all-prep-crew picking party, where each of us would triple up on nitrile gloves and pick the leaves from the huge bundles we’d receive. Three pillow sized bags would yield about 8 qts of leaves, which would yield about 3 qts of blanched nettles for service. They were served on a pizza with a cheese base, probably with chicken and sun-dried tomatoes. I loved snacking on the blanched nettles, they taste “green” like chlorophyll and earthy on their own. 

I’ve always been extremely cautious about foraging since I’ve moved to WA. When I lived in Southern California, a barren wasteland, there wasn’t much to pick that wasn’t on private property that wasn’t citrus. Since moving to WA, I’ve found myself identifying and picking mainly fruit trees, berry bushes, and a few varieties of mushrooms. I’m still learning a lot about our environment up here and what can be used. Always ask permission on private property before picking, and follow the rules if it’s a national park. I’ve found that everyone and their mother has some kind of a fruit bearing tree in their yard, so ask your local Buy Nothing or neighborhood page. I do what I can to divert produce from rotting on the floor of someone’s yard while simultaneously saving myself a lot of money for my hobbies.

Chopping Block Chicken or Turkey Stock

WFMH

Listening to: The Bees Made Honey in The Lion’s Skull- Earth

No two batches of turkey stock will look the same.

Whole turkey or chicken make for a few great meals and then gives the gift of bones for stock. Get in the habit of saving bones from your bird meals, including rotisserie chickens, but maybe not fried. It’s okay if there’s some meat or connective parts on the bone, it makes for a more flavorful stock.  

Make a whole bunch to pressure can for shelf stable goodness or freeze if you don’t have access to a pressure canner. 

Turkey or Chicken Stock- Yields 7 qts

  • 3-5 ziplock bags of bones you’ve saved up in the freezer
  • 1-2 ziplock bags of vegetable scraps you’ve saved in the freezer (onion peels, carrot peels and butts, celery butts, non-cruciferous odds and ends). If you didn’t save scraps, use a few whole veggies like onions, carrots, and celery.
  • Aromatic herbs of your choice: a small handfull of peppercorns, bay leaves, a bouquet of thyme or sage. Whatever you have on hand will be okay.

Special Equipment: Large stock pot, pressure canner (or lots of tupperware for freezing), chinois or other kind of strainer.

0. Have the foresight to save bones from turkey or chicken. Any meat or fatty bits on there add more flavor. Like in the Vegetable Stock recipe, save some veggies too. If you don’t have freezer space to hold your would-be compost, you can scale this down significantly. 

1. Roast the bones in the oven at 400F for an hour or two. Break the smaller bones for bonus points. This is an optional step, but deepens the flavor of your stock. 

2. Place the bones and veggies in the stock pot, cover with water. Set it on medium-high or high setting to get it simmering. It shouldn’t boil, get that sucker on low and slow to keep the temp just right. Simmer that stock for at least 6 hours, some people go for as long as 48 hours. I usually find a happy medium at 12-16 hours for my stock. 

3. Strain the stock into heat-resistant containers. Discard the veggies and herbs into your compost pile, and bones in trash. Skim some of the fat off the top of the stock. Save that shit, that’s shmaltz! Use instead of butter or lard in other recipes. If you wanted to get all of it off, refrigerate the stock for a few hours or overnight. The fat comes right off. The broth should be gelatinous and wiggly when it’s chilled, that means you did it right. All of that collagen is what the hipsters pay up the ass for in their expensive little bottles of “bone broth”. 
At this stage you can freeze the broth into pint containers or in ice cube trays for a tablespoon at a time. It keeps in the fridge for about a week, any longer and it gets fizzy in my experience. Continue on if you want to learn to can your magical fluids.

4. Prepare the pressure canner according to manufacturer instructions. Bring the fat-skimmed stock to a boil. Ladle the stock into the clean jars , leaving 1 in of headspace. Give them a lil rim job with a towel and place the two piece lid. One full canner load is usually 7 quarts or 10 pints, use whichever jars will work better for your needs. Pressure can for 20 minutes for pints, or 25 minutes if using quarts. The clock starts when you hit the psi needed for your elevation, 0-1000 ft is 11 psi. Let the canner depressurize on its own and remove the jars. Listen to those beautiful lids ping, it makes your bits tingly. 

Adapted from a test and USDA approved recipe. Normally when you can vegetables, peels are removed to prevent bacteria from growing, but since these peels are strained out, they are safe to use.

Well it’s been a long goddamn time since I’ve posted anything, my b. It’s a snowy day here in WA, so enjoy and make Turkey Soup or something with this recipe.

Turkey Soup- Carcass and all!

WFMH

Listening to: Necroticism- Carcass

Turkey soup ready for the dark winter nights when you’re too lazy to make lunch or dinner.

Turkey is cheap right now, so grab a few if you can and freeze until you’re ready to can. Canning soup is easy to do if you prep your vegetables ahead of time and assembly-line your process. Pressure can for 75 min for pints, 90 min for quarts at 11psi (or higher depending on your elevation). If you don’t have a pressure canner, DO NOT try to make these shelf-stable, just freeze them instead. 

Turkey Soup- Scale up or down as needed

Veggies: celery cut 1/4″ thick, peeled carrots in thin rounds, diced onions. I think those should be a part of almost every soup. You could add just about any vegetable you want, including peeled potatoes, peeled turnips, frozen peas, corn etc. just about whatever floats your little grindcore boat.

Seasonings: 1/2 tsp to 1 tsp per jar depending on how salty your stock is. I added 1/2 t thyme and half a bay leaf in each jar. 

Meat: Meat for soup can be either raw or cooked about 2/3 of the way. It’s all going to be pressure canned for the same time anyway, so I just do it all raw and some cooked meat I have on hand. If you’re going to be freezing the soup, obviously cook it all the way through so you don’t give extra offerings to the porcelain gods. Use leftover Thanksgiving meat for this if you’d like

Broth: I used chicken broth I had canned previously. You’re going to need at least 1/2 of the volume of soup to be broth. Store bought is sacrilege, if you need to wait until the turkey broth is ready, please do so. The raw turkey will make a little bit of its own broth in here, but if you need to use store bought, go for turkey. Keep it simmering while you fill the jars so it’s ready to go. 

Special Equipment: Pressure canner. I repeat, Do Not Attempt to Can Low Acid Foods Without A PRESSURE CANNER <3 

     0a. Buy a whole turkey and get the meat off of it. You can roast it and pick the meat off or just break down the bird raw. Either way, save the bones and fat for the broth you’re definitely making with the carrot peels, onion tops, etc. you’re saving for this. 

 0b. Get the pressure canner ready per manufacturer instructions

  1. Chop up the vegetables and separate them in their own containers. It’s Pinterest AF and sucks for the amount of dishes, but I promise it helps this whole process go faster. Cube the meat into 1″ portions as best as possible. You can separate the dark and white meat if you’re picky. Save extra meat for canning on its own some other time soon.
  2.  Layer the jars: salt and seasonings first, then 1/4 full of meat, then a few tablespoons of each vegetable. Fill each jar up to 1 in from the top. 
  3. Fill each jar with hot broth, leaving 1″ of headroom. Debubble with a rubber spatula or something that won’t hurt the jars, adjust headroom if needed. Fit the two piece lid on there.
  4. Pressure can for 75 minutes for pints, 90 minutes for quarts at 11 psi. The clock starts when it comes to the indicated pressure. Turn the heat off when the timer is done, let the canner depressurize on its own. Do not try to “help it”. Keep the lid on for 10 more minutes when it’s depressurized. This helps prevent “siphoning” or when the jars spit hot broth everywhere because of a sudden temperature change.
Assembly line!

One project I’m working on as I write this is pressure canning an entire frozen turkey. The idea is to cook it just long enough so the meat is cooked, the skin won’t be crispy like oven roasted, but if it’s done right the meat should be nearly falling off the bone. I’m planning on making a bunch more soup, another batch of broth to reuse the bones, and rendering the fat for schmaltz. 

Cowboy Candy From Hell

WFMH

Listening to: Cowboys From Hell- Pantera

Cowboy candy is pickled candied jalapenos, but you could use any chilies that float your boat, like serranos, habaneros, or bird’s eye chilies. They’re a great snack and the syrup makes a great meat marinade. Any time you feel like overwhelming your sense of smell and water your eyes, give this a try.

Cowboy Candy- Yields 8 half-pint containers

  • 3 lbs firm fresh chilies
  • 2 cups apple cider vinegar (5% acidity)
  • 6 cups sugar
  • 1/2 t turmeric
  • 1/2 t celery seed
  • 1 T minced garlic
  • 1 t cayenne pepper (optional)

0. Get your water bath ready: In a large stock pot or canner, boil enough water to cover your jars by at least 1 inch.  
1. Slap on some gloves for this activity unless you’re feeling particularly brutal and don’t mind burning your bits. Remove and discard the stems from all the chilies.  Slice them into 1/8-1/4 in rounds as uniformly as possible and set them aside. Knock the seeds out if you want, but I like them. 
2. In a large pot, bring the rest of the ingredients to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes.
3. Add the peppers and simmer for 4 minutes. At this point in the album it’s probably going to be Heresy, listen to most of that track for this step, if it doesn’t make you want to jump out of a window. 
4. Use a slotted spoon to transfer them into the the clean jars, fill leaving 1/4 in headspace. 
5. Bring the syrup to a hard boil for 6 minutes. Do some air guitar while you wait and make your best Phil face. 
6. Ladle the boiling liquid into the jars. Knock air bubbles out of the chilies and adjust the headspace if needed. Give those guys a lil’ rim job and fix the two piece lids to finger tightness. Process in the rolling boiling water for 10 minutes for half-pints, or 15 minutes if you’re using pints. Lift them out of the water and listen to those sweet pings of glory. 

You can eat them right away or wait a few weeks for the flavor to settle, they become milder over time. Adapted from a mommy blog, but apparently has the best recipe out there. 

I’m on a few canning groups and forums and everyone is always posting this recipe. I was skeptical of the hype, but it’s pretty good. They’re great as snacks or as a condiment in whatever dish you feel like. 

Cowboys From Hell was my first Pantera album, if I could relive listening to that album for the first time again, I’d probably cry. It was one of the most magical moments of my adolescence. It was a time of many first listens to classic heavy metal albums and this one in particular energized me and made me want to tear through the house breaking things, which I definitely did not act on. 

I don’t support Phil Anselmo and his shitty views, I always make sure it’s a non-affiliated Youtube link when I do partake. Metal has historically had some unsavory folks make a bad name for us, but we don’t let those people take over the genre. Let’s not be dicks to each other and keep metal inclusive for everyone. That shouldn’t be a controversial stance. RIP the Abbott brothers.

Chopping Block Vegetable Stock

WFMH

Listening to: By The Light of the Northen Star- Týr

No two batches will look or taste the same. 

Vegetable stock is a staple in any pantry. This is made for pennies, unless you monetize your time like a capitalist pig. Save your vegetable scraps in ziplock bags in the freezer until you have enough to fill the stock pot, simmer, strain, can. No two batches will taste the same.

Do not water bath this recipe, non-acidic products need to be pressure canned. This holds up well in the freezer if canning is not an option for you. 

Scrap Vegetable Stock- Yields 6 qts

  • 3-5 ziplock bags of veggie scraps
  • salt to taste
    Special equipment: Large stock pot, Pressure Canner (or lots of pint containers for the freezer), sieve or strainer

0. Have the foresight to save your vegetable scraps from your regular cooking activities. Washed and not-moldy: potato peels, onion/garlic papers and butts, carrot peels and butts, celery butts, discarded bay leaves, etc.; basically anything that would normally be a candidate for the compost pile. I don’t add squishy veggies like tomatoes and try to limit the amount of cruciferous veggies that end up in the bags. Depending on what is in your scrap bags, add some bay leaves or peppercorns. 
1. Dump the ziplock bags into the large stock pot and fill with water. Bring to a boil with lid closed, as this helps it heat up faster. Bring the heat down to a simmer for 4-6 hrs. 
2. Strain the stock, using a fine-mesh sieve or strainer. Most importantly, get the big chunks out of the stock, if you want it more clear don’t push the excess liquid out of the veggies. There will be some sediment, but that shit is delicious, don’t worry about it. Discard the cadavers of the vegetables. I wash and reuse the ziplocks and store them in the freezer for future batches, I’m a bit crunchy like that.  You may reduce the stock further by simmering for another hour or so, but do not add more water to dilute it. It’s wonderful as it is and so are you <3.
3. Salt the stock. This is important, folks. The stock is *okay* on its own, but it needs a bit of salt. Start with 1/4 cup for 6 qts of stock and go from there. You don’t want to go overboard here because when you open the jar or defrost the stock for cooking with it, you want it as neutral as possible. 
4. Store the stock: 
a) Portion the stock into food-grade pint containers and let cool for a little while before putting the lids on and placing them in the freezer. Stores well for up to a year.
Pro: No canning required. Con: Plastic container, defrosting required, and takes up freezer space.
b) Prepare pressure canner per your manual, in the last 1/2 hour of cooking the stock before straining. Pour broth in sterilized jars leaving 1 in headspace. The top left jar has just a little bit too much space. Process at 11lbs psi at altitudes less than 1000′: Pints 30 min, Quarts 35 min. Let the canner de-pressurize on it’s own, do not attempt to open it or “help it” go faster. This could break the glass. Listen to the sound of your people, those lids popping is your ultimate goal. Store for up to a year, but I bet it won’t last that long. 
Pro: Shelf stable, no need for defrosting. Con: Must be kept in cool, dark place for maximum shelf life, requires pressure canning which is not feasible/accessible for everyone.

Use within a week or so of opening the container. Boil grains in it instead of water, add to one-pot dishes for flavor, make a gravy, you’ve got a brain to Google what else to do with it.

This is the well-versed cook’s secret to making any dish better. A good stock will make even the congealed brains of your enemies taste pretty good.

I started making veggie scrap stock after reading a post on Reddit. I have always made chicken stock, but I don’t go through carcasses \m/ often enough to make it frequently. I have always used fresh vegetables, which is a perfectly valid way to make flavorful stock, but I realized how much life is left in the scraps when other people mentioned this method. I cook nearly everything from scratch, so most of my household waste is compostable. Unfortunately we don’t have commercial composting services here and I live in a condo where I don’t really have space or a yard to take care of it, so I do what I can to reuse the scraps once before discarding them.

Living a lower waste lifestyle has been crucial in my personal development over the past year. Rethinking what we throw away, looking at alternatives to individually wrapped everything and packaging in general has developed my home cooking into more labor intensive, but more fulfilling food. The more you cook from scratch, more fuel for your veggie stock! Chicken stock will be a separate post because I have a different method for that. 

Finally a post without a shitload of sugar. Diabetes isn’t metal.