Hard Boiled Eggs in the Oven – Who Knew it Could Be This Easy!?!

Tags

Cooking, deviled eggs, Easy, egg salad, Food, hard boiled eggs, Oven Baked, recipe

  
Check this out! You can make perfect hard boiled eggs in the oven! Who knew!?! No water required! All you need is your eggs, a muffin pan and a 325 degree oven.I just saw a Food Network video on how to make these. You simply place your eggs in the muffin pan, put the pan in a 325 degree oven and bake for 30 minutes. When the cooking is done, you remove them from the oven and put your eggs in a bowl of ice water. Shocking the eggs in the ice water will cool them and make them easier to peel.

  
Now, I love my peeps at the Food Network, but I wouldn’t be a responsible, respectable food blogger if I didn’t try this myself. I HAD to know that it actually worked. Plus, I love me a good science experiment!

I didn’t have an entire dozen eggs on hand (OK, I only had 4!), so I only cooked 2. I didn’t want my daughter to be in a bad mood if she couldn’t make her fried egg sandwich on her spring break morning!

So how did it work, you ask? Perfectly! As you can see from the picture below, the egg yolk is perfectly cooked, no green ring or undercooked center! Voila! Now you have eggs for eating, egg salad, or deviled eggs. Easy peasy!!!

  

Turkey Burgers and Oven-baked Curly Fries – Getting Our Burger Fix the Healthy Way!

Tags

healthy, Oven Baked, Oven Fried, Seasoned Curly Fries, Turkey Burger

  
I love a good burger and fries, but lets face it, it is usually a fat & calorie packed meal. Last night I needed a fix, so I decided to put a healthy spin on an American classic. We had turkey burgers on whole wheat buns with lots of good toppings and oven-baked curly fries. These curly fries were well seasoned and had a nice little spice to them. It was a very satisfying, delicious meal.

For the turkey burgers, I used Jenny-O turkey patties and seasoned them with my home-made barbecue rub. I always keep some of this rub on hand for just such a night. It was rainy where we live, so instead of barbecuing our burgers I cooked them in my grill pan on the stove top. They still tasted great! For toppings we had tomato slices, onion slices, dill pickle slices, avocado slices, crispy bacon, mayo, Ketchup, mustard. Get creative and top your burger they way you please!

The seasoning for my fries was inspired by another blogger. I did add some salt though and decided to use my spiralizer and make curly fries rather than wedges, as they did.

Oven-baked Curly Fries

1 tsp paprika

1 tsp chili powder

1 tsp onion powder

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp salt

3 large russet potatoes

2 tbsp olive oil

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. In a bowl, mix together first 5 ingredients. To make curly fries, use a spiralizer to cut potatoes. Cut potato spirals into small manageable sizes as they can be rather long. I chose to leave the skin on. You can also cut your potatoes into wedges. You may need to increase cooking times for larger cuts. In a large bowl, drizzle cut potatoes with olive oil and toss to coat. Sprinkle seasoning mix over fries and toss to coat. You may not need to use all of your mix. It just depends how seasoned you like your fries.

Spread potatoes on a baking sheet sprayed with non-stick spray. Bake for 30 minutes. For crispier fries, turn oven up to 500 degrees and bake for an additional 10-15 minutes.

Tip: I cut my potatoes into a bowl containing water to prevent potatoes from turning brown.

Chicken Lettuce Wraps – A Wonderful Alternative to Tortillas

Tags

Chicken, Cooking, Food, healthy, hulli huli, lettuce wraps, low-fat, Oven Baked, recipe, sweet potato fries

  
I received the most beautiful green leaf lettuce in my latest farm shipment of organic produce. It was too perfect to tear up for a salad, so I decided to make lettuce wraps. This dinner was so delicious, healthy and surprisingly filling! I happened to have sugar snap peas and carrots on hand, so we added those to our wraps for additional flavor and texture.

I decided to go with Asian themed wraps, but you could really go in any direction. Anything you would put in a taco or burrito, you could put in a lettuce wrap.

I used chicken slow cooked in Huli Huli sauce (See my post on June 18, 20015 for details) and we added sriracha as a condiment. The rest of our ingredients were all veggies, so this was a very healthy dinner, but it packed an incredible amount of flavor! We will definitely be making these again!

A great new ingredient I discovered at the grocery store was fresh, crinkle cut sweet potato fries. These were sold in bags in our produce section. I just tossed these with a tablespoon of olive oil and seasoned with salt, pepper and cumin and baked at 475 degrees for 15 minutes. Delicious and so easy!!! I find sweet potatoes challenging to cut, so this was a good investment for a quick, yet delicious side dish.

Chicken Lettuce Wraps

1 pound chicken

1/2 bottle Huli Huli sauce

1 1/2 cups low sodium, low-fat chicken broth

2 cloves garlic, pressed or diced

Sugar Snap peas

Grated or shredded carrots

1/2 red onion, diced fresh or caramelized (see my post on 12/4/15). I used caramelized onions and they added great flavor.

1 head lettuce (You want lettuce that will hold together but is flexible. Good lettuces to use are green leaf, bib, romaine, butter or iceberg), washed, dried and cut off the core to separate leaves

Mix Huli Huli sauce, chicken broth and garlic in a pan with a lid. Place chicken in the pan, cover and simmer on medium low for 45-60 minutes or until tender. Remove chicken from pan and on a cutting board using forks, shred chicken. I used about 1 1/2 cups of the sauce the chicken cooked in to make a sauce. I made a slurry with 1 tbsp cornstarch and 1 tbsp water and added this to the 1 1/2 cups sauce in a separate sauce pan and brought to a low boil. Cook until thickened and reduce heat.

Serve shredded chicken, snap peas,carrots, onions on lettuce drizzled with sauce and if you want add sriracha or other condiments.

As I mentioned above, we had a side of oven baked sweet potato fries.

Enjoy!

Baked Beer Battered Fish Tacos – Delicious and Healthy!

Tags

Baked, Beer Batter, Beer Battered, Cooking, Fish, Fish Tacos, Food, healthy, low-fat, Oven Baked, Oven Fried

   

Our famly LOVES fish tacos!!! We try them wherever we can and we have a favorite restaurant version, but that’s another blog post.

I had some cod in the freezer, so I decided to make some oven baked fish tacos. Cod is one of my favorite fish to use when making fish tacos. When out, I also enjoy mahi mahi. I do prefer the taste of fried fish over grilled in tacos, but we all know that’s not the healthy choice. I have made oven baked fried chicken and oven baked fries, so I thought I would give oven fried fish a try. And there is no better fried fish than beer battered fried fish!

My healthier version turned out prestty darn good, so i just know all you foodies wanna know how I did it and I love to share. Here you go…

Baked Beer Battered Fish Tacos

4 – 6 cod fillets

2 cups flour

1/4 cup corn starch

2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

1 1/2 tsp paprika

1 1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/4 tsp black pepper

2 cups bread crumbs

1 cup beer

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mix flour, corn starch, salt, cayenne, paprika, garlic powder, and pepper. Remove and set aside 1 cup of the flour mixture. Stir beer into original container of flour mixture untill well blended. Pour bread crumbs in a separat bowl. Dredge cod in 1 cup of flour mixture that you set aside, then dip in beer/flour mixture, and then dredge in bread crumbs. Place fish on baking pan sprayed with cooking spray. Before baking spray the top of all fish with some more cooking spray. Bake for 15 minutes until golden brown.

Serve your fish with tortillas of your choice. I like low-fat flour tortillas, but my family likes the corn tortillas fried in vegetable oil. Top with what ever you fancy; salsa, sour cream (I use fat free), onions, peppers, diced radish, guacamole (a must!!!), cheese (again, I use fat free), and whatever else sounds tasty. 

We usually serve our tacos with some fat free refried beans and rice made with salsa.

Ole! A healthy version of fried fish tacos!!!