oregano

Homemade chicken noodle soup
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Easy Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

This easy recipe for homemade chicken noodle soup can easily be prepared almost as quickly as the packaged stuff, and is actually made with real chicken.

Homemade chicken noodle soup

Ingredients for an Easy Chicken Noodle Soup

You will need:

  • Chicken broth (homemade or from a can)
  • Chicken breasts
  • Butter
  • Onion
  • Celery
  • Egg noodles
  • Sliced carrots
  • Basil, oregano, salt and pepper

How to Make Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

Before you do anything, you need to fry up roughly half a pound of chicken breast. Your chicken should be thoroughly cooked before using it for this soup recipe.

Chop up your celery and onion. You will need about a half cup of each. Add more or use less depending on your opinion of sort-of-crunchy things.

Bring a large pot to medium heat and add a tablespoon or two of butter. Cook your celery and onion in the butter for between 5 and 10 minutes, or until they begin to soften.

Once the celery and onion begin to soften you can pour in your chicken broth. You should add about six to eight cups of broth. More broth would just give you more soup but unless you balance out the broth with more soup-stuff then it probably isn’t worth it.

Now you can add your (already cooked and cut) chicken, about a cup and a half of egg noodles, some chopped carrots, and your spices. You should use a teaspoon or less of both oregano and basil, and as with anything else, you can add salt and pepper to taste.

Once you have everything combined in the pot, bring the soup to a boil. Once it reaches a boil, reduce the heat and let your chicken noodle soup simmer for about twenty minutes.

Tips for Making Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

  • Basil, oregano, salt and pepper are just recommendations. This is an area where you can easily experiment or just use something you like better.
  • Homemade chicken broth is an obviously better choice than the canned stuff but for the purposes of this simple recipe, the canned stuff is probably more reasonable.
  • As with most soups and stews, letting this chicken noodle soup simmer longer will result in an overall better soup. Beyond twenty minutes you will see diminishing returns, though.
Pasta with garlic butter sauce, served with shrimp and asparagus
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Butter Garlic Sauce for Pasta

Butter garlic sauce is a very simple pasta sauce. It is a great alternative for when you’re sick of your tomato sauces and when alfredo sauce is going to be too rich.

This recipe is actually very similar to the one for garlic butter (no surprise, right?) but the preparation is slightly modified.

Pasta with garlic butter sauce, served with shrimp and asparagus

Butter Garlic Sauce Ingredients

You will need:

  • Butter
  • Garlic
  • Basil
  • Oregano

Once again, feel free to use additional spices or even throw in some lemon juice. Or not. Sometimes simple is better.

How to Make Butter Garlic Sauce

Bring a small saucepan to medium heat, and begin melting a third of a cup of butter.

Chop or crush two or three garlic cloves while you’re waiting for the butter to melt. Once the butter melts, add your garlic and saute for three to five minutes.

Optional: Add a teaspoon of basil and two teaspoons of oregano.  Fresh or dried both work fine.

Pour over pasta. You’re done.

Tips for Using Garlic Butter Sauce

  • Never pre-cook this sauce. It’s mostly butter. Once it dries it’s pretty much just weird and terrible.
  • Be careful not to burn the butter. You’d be surprised how bad garlic and butter can taste when you burn them.
  • Serve over fresh homemade pasta and top with garlic shrimp or lemon garlic broccoli. Because those are all delicious things.
  • Or you can just serve it with asparagus. That’s good too.
Habanero and Jalapeno Peppers
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Homemade Habanero Hot Sauce Recipe

Habanero and Jalapeno Peppers

Somehow, a recipe created over a hundred years ago by the “Frank Tea and Spice Company” is dominating the entire hot sauce market and has been for a surprisingly long time. This thin, vinegary hot sauce has become the standard to beat. Frank’s Red Hot Sauce.

But if you use a lot of hot sauce, you should make something better. Not only is it easy to make a thicker more delicious hot sauce, but you will actually have control over how hot you choose to make it.

Hot Sauce Ingredients

For the base of the recipe you will need:

  • orange habanero peppers
  • jalapeno peppers
  • an onion
  • some regular white vinegar

For flavor you will want:

  • garlic
  • oregano
  • cumin
  • mustard powder
  • a bit of salt and pepper

How to Make Habanero Hot Sauce

This recipe starts out with an easy part. All you need to do is put everything in a blender or a food processor. Drop in a small onion, 5-6 habenero peppers and 5-6 jalapeno peppers.

Pour in two cups of vinegar.

Now, you can flavor this stuff almost any way you want, but an easy guideline is:

  • 1-2 Garlic Cloves
  • Quarter teaspoon of oregano
  • Quarter teaspoon of cumin
  • Half teaspoon of mustard powder

Now blend it all up until its all creamy and smooth.

Add the blended mixture to a heated saucepan, bring to a boil and reduce the heat. Simmer the whole thing for about fifteen to twenty minutes and sprinkle in some salt and pepper to taste. This process ensures the flavors will be nicely mixed and you end up with a consistent sauce.

The best part is, because it’s made with vinegar, this stuff will last quite a while. So you can make it and use it like you would any other hot sauce.

Tips for Cooking Habanero Hot Sauce

  • Substitute a portion of the vinegar with fresh lime juice for a citrus variation.
  • Adjust the heat by substituting out some of the jalapeno and habanero peppers with regular green or red peppers.
  • Adding a teaspoon of sugar can help make the hot flavor linger longer.
Easy Homemade Chili, covered in cheese
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Easy Ground Beef Chili Recipe

This is a very easy chili recipe that you can cook on the stovetop with any decent sized pan. Preparation is quick and painless, but if you want this chili to turn out great, you should give yourself time to cook it for a while.

Easy Homemade Chili, covered in cheese

More cheese than chili

Ingredients for Easy Ground Beef Chili

  • One pound of (preferably lean) ground beef
  • Three to four large tomatoes
  • A large onion
  • Celery stalks
  • Anywhere from one to three cups of kidney beans
  • Chili powder
  • Oregano
  • Thyme
  • Cayenne pepper
  • Two to four fresh jalapeno peppers
  • Two or three garlic cloves
  • One can of beef soup stock

How to Prepare an Easy Ground Beef Chili

In your frying pan, heat a tablespoon of oil on medium to high heat.  Once your pan and oil preheat, add your ground beef.

While you’re waiting for the oil to heat and the beef to brown, start chopping up all your vegetables and your garlic.

Once the beef has browned, throw in your chopped celery, a fairly finely chopped onion, and two or three crushed garlic cloves.  Cook until the onion begins to soften.

Now add everything else.  For your spices, a good guideline is one tablespoon of chili powder, oregano, thyme, and cayenne pepper.  But like I said, there really isn’t a “wrong way” to flavor a chili.

Cover and cook for a minimum of one hour over low heat. There is pretty much no way to cook a chili for too long, as long as you’re simmering at a nice low temperature.

When it comes down to it though, you should just buy a slow cooker and cook a larger quantity for much longer.  Most of the time a recipe of this size is meant to be for between four and six people.  I’d recommend keeping it to yourself, or maybe sharing with one person maximum.

Tips for Making Chili

  • If you don’t like kidney beans you can substitute them out for more ground beef.
  • Seriously, cook this thing at low heat for a really long time. It’ll just turn out better if you’re patient.
  • If you premake a batch of chili powder it can simplify the chili-making process as well as be used in other recipes.
  • Every time you make a bowl of chili, cover the whole thing with cheese. As pictured above.
They probably won't look too much like this
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How to Cook Garlic Chicken

This simple delicious recipe for pan-fried garlic chicken can be prepared in under twenty minutes.

Ingredients for Garlic Chicken

  • Four chicken breasts, halved.
  • Five tablespoons butter
  • One tablespoon fresh oregano
  • A quarter to half a teaspoon of dried hot pepper flakes
  • Olive oil
  • A garlic clove
  • Salt and pepper

You can use chicken with skin and bones to keep the cost down, but it is usually best to go nuts and get boneless, skinless chicken breast for this sort of thing. Because of deliciousness.

Preparation for Garlic Chicken

Chop the garlic as finely as you possibly can.  Stir the butter until it is soft and add the red pepper flakes, oregano, and chopped garlic. Continue mixing until the whole thing is a delicious smelling goo.

pan fried chicken breast

Cut into the middle of your chicken.  A nice horizontal slice into the middle will do fine.  Fill that slice with the goo mixture.  Add some salt and pepper.

Heat your oil in a frying pan over a medium to high heat.  (Stick closer to medium, burnt oil will ruin your food.)

Cook the chicken, completely uncovered, until it starts to brown in the oil.  This should take between seven and ten minutes.  Lower the heat and flip the chicken.  Continue cooking for ten to twelve minutes or until the chicken is cooked through to the middle.

If there’s any of your garlic butter paste left feel free to slather it on.

Tips on How to Cook Garlic Chicken

  • If you’re in a rush you can cover the pan to prepare the chicken a bit faster. Covering your frying pan with a lid has a two-sided effect: it will help you cook through the chicken a bit quicker (which is helpful when you are in a rush) but it tends to result in dryer chicken. Which is sort of okay if you’re into that.
  • Try not to move the chicken around too much.  If you move chicken around in the pan too often you will overcook the outer layer and make the whole thing take longer.  Be patient and let it cook through a bit. It’s worth it.
  • If you have any leftovers you can use it for a homemade chicken noodle soup. The additional flavor only adds to the end product.