German Oven Pancake Recipe: Breakfast Culinary Perfection

This morning I made German Oven Pancakes for our Saturday morning family breakfast. This is one of my all-time favorite recipes, which I have in the cookbook my mom gave me after college when I started living and cooking on my own. (We didn’t have to cook our own food at the Air Force Academy as cadets!) This is the finished oven pancake, before cutting it in half and serving it with sausage patties and bacon. We have two of these oval glass pie plate dishes so I was able to cook two at once in the oven.

Here is the recipe. The only modification I made was also adding a dash of cinnamon in the blender in addition to the nutmeg. Yum!

My mom is an amazing cook and now shares a lot of the recipes she finds and uses on Yummly. Sharing this on our family learning blog makes me think I need to start on a cookbook to give Alex and our other kids once they’re cooking on their own, either in college or afterward. For now, the meal plan as a freshman at Colorado School Mines is pretty amazing, so I don’t think Alex is in need of any recipes from me. I’m betting in a few years he will be, however!

I like using the Paprika Recipe Manager currently, which my mom told me about a few years ago. It lets me copy the link to an online recipe and readily enter it into its database. It also syncs if you want to use it on a laptop or a mobile device. Paprika lets you easily double a recipe too, and you can create a shopping list. My favorite shopping app on my iPhone now is “Clear – Tasks, Reminders & To-Do Lists.” I don’t use it for work or other to-do lists, just for shopping.

If you use this blog post to make Sharol Metzler’s oven pancake recipe, please let me know by leaving a comment or reaching out on Twitter!

Addition: My friend Jason in Montana read this post this morning, thanks to Twitter, and gave the recipe a try successfully! Social media is amazing.

Homemade Jalapeño Roasted Poppers (recipe)

Tonight I made a tray of homemade jalapeño roasted poppers, and they were yummy! I made my first batch over the Christmas holidays, and I modified the recipe a bit further and liked it even better. It was also popular with the rest of my family. Here’s what I did. I’m sharing this for my own future reference, as well as to possibly inspire you to try these. If you use this, please let me know by sharing a comment on this post or a tweet to @wfryer. I waited about a week after purchasing the jalapeños this time, and that made them ripen and taste a bit spicier. They were still pretty tame though, since I removed all the seeds. I used the “regular” jalapeños from our WalMart Neighborhood Market.

Ingredients:

  1. Two bars of cream cheese
  2. Four pieces of bacon
  3. 15 medium sized jalapeños
  4. 1 tablespoon minced onion flakes
  5. Half tablespoon dried cilantro
  6. One cup Mexican style shredded Kraft “Four Cheese”
  7. 2 tablespoons minced garlic (from a jar)

Directions:

  1. Fry bacon, set aside
  2. Mix all ingredients in a large mixing bowl, if necessary microwave at 50% power one minute to soften cheese. (I did this twice, stirring in between)
  3. Cut up bacon and add to the mix
  4. Halve and seed jalapeños
  5. Use a knife to put the mix in the jalapeños
  6. Bake 15 minutes at 350°

Modified from this Rachel Ray recipe!

Perfect Holiday Prime Rib 4.0

This is the fourth time I’ve cooked prime rib for our family for Christmas dinner. My wife thinks tonight was the best meal we’ve ever had at home in almost 20 years of marriage, so whatever we did this time I want to remember and be able to repeat again! In this post I’ll recap what we did, the changes I made from previous times I’ve cooked prime rib, and what I want to do again if and when we have an opportunity to prepare another amazing meal like tonight.

I wrote two previous family learning blog posts about cooking prime rib, back in 2013 and in 2011. Like I did in 2013, I used this recipe from Prime Steak Houses as my primary guide. Here are the three things I did differently this year which helped make this a remarkable prime rib dinner.

1 – Digital Probe Thermometer

One of the Christmas gifts this year I am most excited about is a probe thermometer that shows the temperature inside meat when it is cooking in the oven. My wife and son bought me a Oneida Digital Probe Thermometer with Timer. Bed, Bath and Beyond sells it for $20. The oven thermometer I used previously had a minimum temperature of 140 degrees, but that’s a problem since the Prime Steak House recipe recommends removing the prime rib from your oven when the interior temperature reaches 120 degrees. So in past years, when I removed our prime rib from our oven, I was just guessing that the meat was ready based on recommended cooking times. Unfortunately, ovens can vary considerably in the cooking time they require, and the result in the past has been prime ribs which weren’t cooked long enough. This afternoon after putting a rub on the meat, I put the thermometer probe into the center of the prime rib. Instead of 120 degrees, which is the low end of rare meat, I set the target temperature for 130 degrees. Our prime rib tonight was 6 pounds, so I initially set the timer for an hour and a half of cooking time to follow the initial 15 minutes of cooking at 450 degrees.

This is the cooking procedure and times I ended up using tonight for our 6 pound prime rib:

  1. 15 minutes at 450 degrees (uncovered)
  2. 1 hour, 55 minutes at 325 degrees (uncovered, with no basting, till the internal temperature reached 130 degrees)
  3. Removed from the oven, about 15 minutes covered with foil, until the interior temperature reached 140 degrees. The top temperature it reached after removing the foil covering was 143 degrees, before we served dinner.

2 – Meat at Room temperature

The second thing I did differently this year when cooking prime rib was to get the meat out of our refrigerator about three hours before I started to cook it. This allowed the meat to warm up, closer to room temperature. This is something included in the Prime Steak House recipe, but a step I hadn’t taken the time or care to follow in the past. According to my thermometer, our prime rib started cooking this year at a temperature of 50 degrees.

This is the clear instruction given by the Prime Steak House chefs:

It is crucial that you allow the roast to come to room temperature to ensure even-cooking. This means leaving it out for up to two full hours right before roasting.

3 – Herbes de Provence Seasoning Salt

The third main thing I did differently this year was use a new seasoning for the rub. We have a fantastic store in Oklahoma City called “Savory Spice.” One of the employees there recommended “Herbes de Provence Seasoning Salt” to use as a rub with prime rib. This turned out to be a FANTASTIC idea.

Following the Prime Steak House recipe, I made a series of half-inch cuts in the meat, and rubbed the seasoning salt all over it. before putting it in the oven.

This resulted in some absolutely AMAZING prime rib!

 

That’s it! Those were the three critical things I did tonight which helped me our prime rib dinner a smashing success. If these tips prove useful to you, please leave a comment or contact me via Twitter @wfryer.

Holiday Prime Rib

This Christmas we ate prime rib for dinner rather than our more traditional turkey or ham main course, and it was delicious. For my own documentation for future years, and in case this is of interest to others who may find their way to this post, here are some details about what I did, my lessons learned, and what I’ll do differently next time.

Christmas Prime Rib

This recipe from Prime Steak Houses was my main guide. It’s been around 5 years since I’ve cooked  a prime rib, and I couldn’t find the friend’s recipe this time that I’d used previously. I did remember it involved initially cooking the prime rib at a high temperature in the oven for a short time, and then lowering the temp for a longer time… and that is what this recipe also directs. We bought and cooked a five pound prime rib, planning for about 3/4 of a pound per person. That worked out great portion-wise. The main change I’d make is to cook it about 15 minutes longer than I did. My meat thermometer starts at 140 degrees, but according to the recipe you need to remove the roast when the interior temp reaches 120. Since my meat thermometer didn’t show the exact temperature that low, I had to guestimate and I guestimated a bit low. After the initial 15 minutes cooking at 450 degrees F, I cooked our prime rib an hour at 325. Next time I’ll use a meat thermometer that shows increments at least down to 120 degrees (hopefully lower) and cook just a bit longer, probably an hour and a half for the same quantity. Rather than remove the prime rib at 120 degrees (as I tried to do this year, and the recipe directed) I’ll remove it at 130 degrees. For the eaters in our family, medium to medium-well prime rib is best.

I will say the aroma of the cooking prime rib in the house was absolutely fantastic. The anticipation of eating excellent meat like this can be almost as good as the actual eating itself.

We have a relatively new spice shop in Oklahoma City on Western, right by the Will Rogers Theater, called the Savory Spice Shop. It’s a chain based in Colorado, and they have some amazing seasonings. I used their “Mount Evans Butcher’s Rub” as my spice rub on our prime rib and it turned out delicious. I highly recommend it, and look forward to also using it on pot roasts in coming months. Per the above recipe link, I rubbed the ends with soft butter and made small, 1/2 inch cuts around the roast before rubbing in the spices.

We love creamy horseradish sauce with prime rib, and I used this recipe to make mine although I used raw horseradish from a bottle rather than fresh. It turned out runnier than I would have liked, probably because of the amount of lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce. Next time I think I’ll just make my own to taste with sour cream and raw horseradish. It was good, but next time I’d like it to be less runny.

To accompany the meat I cooked our family’s traditional mixed vege casserole, cranberry sauce (basic and plain from scratch, the best kind) and mashed potatoes roughly following following this recipe. It was a great meal on an already wonderful and blessed Christmas day with family.

I hope you had a great Christmas are are continuing to enjoy a restful holiday time with family and friends!

Table set for Christmas dinner

Christmas dinner 2013

 

Delicious Prime Rib

Tonight for Christmas dinner we cooked prime rib. It turned out delicious! I probably should have left it in the oven about 10 more minutes. Here is some documentation of how I cooked it in case you’re interested, and for my own later reference.

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This was the recipe I used and modified slightly. We bought 4 pounds of prime rib at Whole Foods, which was 2 bone-in ribs/steaks. We were feeding 7 people. This worked out fine, but I would like to have an extra rib next time for the same number of people.

For the seasoning rub (which turned out amazing) I added some Montreal steak seasoning to the four ingredients included in the recipe: coarse sea salt, onion powder, garlic powder, and pepper. I didn’t baste the sides during cooking. For our 4 pound roast, I cooked it 15 min at 425 degrees and then 1 hour, 15 minutes at 325. The meat thermometer read 130 at the end of the cooking time. I covered it with foil and let it rest for 20 minutes after that. As I said it turned out amazing, but since we had several people who like more well done meat it would have been good to leave it in the oven just a touch longer.

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I cut it with our electric knife which worked great. To keep the meat hotter before serving, however, next time I’ll try to have all other items ready for our plates before cutting the prime rib.

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Peppermint Fudge Brownies

This evening Sarah recorded a new episode for “The International Cooking Show,” demonstrating how to cook Peppermint Fudge Brownies for a holiday potluck. The video is 7 minutes, 49 seconds long.

This episode is significant for several reasons. First of all, it’s the first episode we’ve uploaded to a unique YouTube Channel for The International Cooking Show: www.youtube.com/intcooking. Sarah is applying for a public magnet school next year in Oklahoma City, and we realized all her cooking videos have not (previously) been aggregated on a single website. She wants to list her cooking show on her application resume, so this is needed! We’ll be uploading past episodes to this channel soon, along with new shows.

This episode is also significant because it’s the first one we’ve not only entirely shot on an iPhone4, but also edited and published with an iPhone4 using the $4 app ReelDirector. ReelDirector is compatible with other iOS devices in addition to the iPhone4 and the 4th generation iPod Touch. iMovie for iOS costs $5 but will NOT work on older devices. Since both iMovie and ReelDirector provide movie editing and publishing features, I figured our money would be better spent on an app which will run on our older iOS devices as well as the newest.

Learn more about “The International Cooking Show,” which was designed to be a collaborative project but still needs other project collaborators, on internationalcooking.pbworks.com. In 2011 we’re going to list the project on some collaborative project websites to solicit more participation!

Way to go Sarah!

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The Best Pork I’ve Ever Tasted

This video is an interview with Dr Brent Benkelman, as he supervised the final preparations of the 120th pig he’s cooked in his life. Brent co-hosts an annual pig roast potluck for friends in Manhattan, Kansas.

See more photos from my Flickr set of this weekend’s festivities, which included the disappointing loss of KSU to Nebraska. It was a great time of family fun, despite the football loss!

Wesley, Sarah and Tom Fryer

Our family at the tailgate

Tom, Sarah and Wesley Fryer

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Dad’s first episode for The International Cooking Show: Fondue!

This evening my kids helped me create my first contribution to “The International Cooking Show,” sharing our favorite family recipe for fondue.

We recorded this in one take on my iPhone, and I edited it in iMovie ’09. I used the iMovie settings shown in Steven Sande’s post, “How to make iPhone videos sparkle with iMovie.”

The unedited version of the movie was almost 14 minutes long, with the stirring portions sped up the final video is 8 minutes and 14 seconds long. The free “royalty free music” I chose for this video was “Shiny Tech” from Incompetech.com. I noticed that in the video titles I actually misspelled the name of the recipe, it should be “Yodler’s Fondue” rather than “Yodeler’s Fondue.” I’m not going to go back and make those changes, however, since it would require recompressing and uploading the video again to YouTube!

Sarah recorded the entire video except the last two minutes, which were filmed by Alexander. She still needs to work on keeping the camera still and stable, but this is an improvement over some of her past recording efforts. We’re all continuing to learn together! It’s so fun to be able to put together a quick video like this on the fly, add a few edits, and then publish it online.

Apple technology makes multimedia authoring so easy!

If you have any gourmet chefs or aspiring chefs (we have the latter) in your house, please join The International Cooking Show wiki and add your own contribution!

Cross-posted to “Moving at the Speed of Creativity.”

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Great food and Loopt

We have had some GREAT food so far in Hawaii. On our way to the north shore on Friday, we ate at The Dixie Grill. I ate there twice in Dec ’07 when I was here for the USS Oklahoma memorial dedication, and they did not disappoint. The fried green tomatoes along with peel and eat shrimp were great! Yesterday morning the iPhone program Loopt came in handy to help my brother-in-law redezvous with us in a nearby town for breakfast!

The best fried pies in Oklahoma

Whenever our family drives from Oklahoma City to Dallas on interstate 35, we love to stop at Davis, Oklahoma, and enjoy some fried pies. I recorded a short video podcast from Davis interviewing Nancy, who inherited the recipe for her fried pies from her mother and grandmother. Nancy’s fried pies are located off exit 51 on I-35 between Dallas and Oklahoma City, just east of the highway.

I found this post from June 2006 by Jon Berry that includes some photos of the fried pies and where they make them. Yum!