Easy Jalapeno Cheddar Beer Bread

Beer bread is one of the easiest breads you can possibly make. The only thing keeping you from delicious, fresh, homemade bread is a bottle of beer and a handful of ingredients that are already likely in your kitchen.

Beer bread works by utilizing the already-present yeast in the beer to aid in the bread rising. Because it's still much less yeast than a traditional, kneaded bread, the end result will be a denser loaf, with an almost biscuit-like texture. It's a perfectly hearty side for soups, stews, or to split as a snack with a good friend and a few more bottles of beer.

My good friend Becca re-introduced me to beer breads, and I haven't stopped since. I had a couple jalapeno peppers leftover in the fridge that were just begging to be used up, so I obliged and this was the result. It's spicy, smokey, and just a little bit cheesy. I really can't ask for more. Really, though, you can throw in whatever you have on hand - some Italian seasoning, caramelized onions with Swiss cheese cubes, or even leave it plain.

Easy Jalapeno Cheddar Beer Bread
Author: Amanda
Difficulty: easy
Serves: 4-6, one loaf of bread

Ingredients

• 3 cups flour, sifted
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 bottle beer (I typically use a lager or pale ale)
• 1 cup shredded old cheddar cheese
• 2 jalapeno peppers
• 1/4 cup melted butter
• vegetable oil, for broiling

Directions

Prepare jalapeno peppers by splitting lengthwise and cutting off the tops. Remove seeds if desired (more seeds = more spicy). Line a baking sheet with tin foil, shiny side up, and lay the peppers with the cut side on the foil. Brush with vegetable oil and broil on high until heavily charred, 5-10 minutes. Once cool to touch, dice peppers small. Sift dry ingredients together and stir in shredded cheddar cheese and diced peppers. Slowly pour in bottle of beer, and stir until ingredients just combined. Grease a loaf pan and pour batter into same. Pour melted butter over the loaf and bake at 375 for one hour. Allow to cool in loaf pan for 10-15 minutes before removing to slice and serve.

Step-by-Step Photos

Start off by chopping the tops off a couple of jalapeno peppers, deseeding if desired (I deseeded one of my peppers and left the seeds in the other), and cut legthwise. Place cut-side down on a baking sheet lined with foil, and brush with vegetable oil.

Broil on high until heavily charred, 5-10 minutes depending on your broiler settings.

Once the peppers are cool to touch, dice into small pieces.

While the peppers are cooling, you can sift together the dry ingredients. Sifting is pretty important here, because there is no kneading this bread and the sifting helps ensure there will be no lumps.

Stir in shredded cheese and chopped peppers.

Slowly pour in one bottle of beer.

Stir until just combined. I ended up having to add an extra couple teaspoons of water just to help bring everything together.

Pour into a greased loaf pan and pour melted butter over the top.

Bake at 375F for one hour, and allow to cool in loaf pan for 10-15 minutes.

Slice and serve! I had mine with some stir-fried cabbage and bacon pieces. It was delicious!

Cabbage Roll Lasagne

Every time I've ever tried to make cabbage rolls, they end up half fallen apart. While still delicious, I couldn't help but feel they were taunting me from the swirling depths of the tomato sauce, and that I was a culinary failure for not being able to replicate such a classic comfort food. I tried keeping the rolls together with toothpicks, or sandwiching them close together so they didn't have the space to dissolve, all to no avail. One day, while browsing Pinterest, I saw a recipe that essentially left the cabbage rolls unassembled, like a casserole. Suddenly, cabbage rolls seemed approachable again. And how can you get more comfort food than casserole?

I took this recipe and adapted it for my own purposes, which included using regular rice, adding a bell pepper since I already had one on hand I needed to use, and layering the meat with cabbage in a similar style to a lasagne. It maintains the essence of a good cabbage roll with the ease of throwing everything in a pan and into the oven. An ideal comfort food, even with a grandma's disapproval. ;)

Cabbage Roll Lasagne
Author: Amanda, adapted from The Primal Food Blog and Joy of Cooking
Difficulty: easy
Serves: 6+

Ingredients

• 1 pound lean ground beef
• 1 large yellow onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 red bell pepper, deseeded and diced small
• 1/2 cup white rice
• 1 cup beef broth
• 1 680mL can plain tomato sauce
• approximately 1/4 head green cabbage, roughly shredded
• salt and pepper, to taste

Directions
Brown ground beef in a medium sized saucepan on medium heat. Add onion, garlic, and bell pepper. Saute until onion soft and translucent, about five minutes. Add rice and beef broth, cover, and allow simmer 20-30 mins on low heat, until rice is cooked. Add tomato sauce, salt and pepper. In a lightly greased 9x13 baking dish, layer cabbage and meat sauce until dish is full. Bake at 350F for 30-45 minutes, and serve.

Step-by-Step Photos

Start off by browning a pound of ground beef in a medium sized saucepan on medium heat. Break up the ground beef into tiny pieces as it cooks.

Add the onion, garlic, and bell pepper. Saute until the onion is soft and translucent, around five minutes.

Add half a cup of rice and a cup of beef broth to the meat mixture, cover, and reduce the heat to low.

While the rice is cooking, prepare the cabbage. I ended up slicing/shredding a full half head of cabbage, and used about half of it for this particular recipe.

Lightly grease a 9x13 baking dish and layer cabbage along the bottom.

After 20-30 minutes, the rice should be fully cooked. Stir to ensure most of the excess liquid has been absorbed.

Add the canned tomato sauce, and adjust salt and pepper to taste. I added about 3/4 teaspoons salt.

Layer about half of the meat mixture on top of the cabbage.

Continue layering cabbage and meat mixture until the dish is full.

Bake uncovered at 350F for 30-45 minutes, until the tomato sauce is bubbling and the top begins to brown.

Serve! I love this with a healthy drizzle of sriracha, mmm!

Pancit

Pancit is a traditional Filipino noodle dish. As with most nationally loved dishes, there are a thousand and one different ways to make it. Growing up, my best friend's mom was Fillipina and would make pancit on special occasions. Vermicelli rice noodles, pork, cabbage, carrots, and this amazingly spiced sausage that really brought everything together. Honestly, eating pancit with their family is one of my fondest food-related memories.

So, of course, years later I tried to reverse engineer this delicious meal. I researched online and pieced together different parts of different versions of pancit, but I knew the key to success was in that mysterious sausage. One day, I stumbled on it at the Asian supermarket. I recognized it immediately, and couldn't wait to take it home to finally try my hand at pancit myself. The final result is pretty genuine, and I am so pleased to have this scrumptious, noodle-based comfort food whenever the mood arises.

Pancit
Author: Amanda, adapted from Maria
Difficulty: easy
Serves: 4-6

Ingredients

• 1 medium pork loin
• 6 lengths Chinese sausage
• 1 large yellow onion, sliced into thin half moons
• 3-4 medium carrots, cut into matchsticks
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 6 cups shredded green cabbage
• 125g dry vermicelli noodles
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 6+ tablespoons soy sauce, to taste

Directions
Bring a kettle of water to a boil, and pour over dry vermicelli into an adequately sized pot or mixing bowl. Allow to sit for several minutes, then drain and set aside. Prepare the meats by slicing the pork into half medallions and the slice the sausage lengths diagonally. In a wok or large pot, heat up the vegetable oil and add the pork half-medallions, turning occasionally to ensure even cooking. Once pork is approximately half cooked, add the sausage to the pot. Continue to saute at medium heat until pork almost cooked and sausage is softened. Add onion, garlic, carrots, and cabbage. Saute until onions translucent and cabbage is wilting. Add the drained vermicelli noodles and soy sauce to taste. Combine well and serve.

Step-by-Step Photos

For stir-fry type dishes, your best bet is to do all of your prep work before starting to actually cook anything. Get all of your meat and vegetables ready so that nothing is compromised once you start bringing it all together. Slice the onions into half moons, mince the garlic, matchstick carrots, and chop or shred approximately 6 cups of cabbage. Slice the pork width-wise along the loin, and then cut those pieces in half again so they are not discs and are more suited to the size of the other aspects of the dish.

This is the Chinese sausage, the true star of the show. I found that half a package works perfectly, which is about 6 lengths of sausage. Unfortunately, I had used half previously and simply froze the rest of the sausage until I was ready to use it, so I don't have a picture of the package to show you. I was able to find it unrefrigerated in the Asian supermarket.

You'll also need vermicelli noodles. I used half of this package.

Prepare the vermicelli by bringing a kettle of water to a boil. Pour the water over the noodles in a heat-resistant receptacle. The noodles are delicate enough that simply sitting in the hot water should cook them sufficiently.

After a few minutes, they should look pretty soft. Drain them and set them aside until you are ready to use them with the rest of the dish.

Heat up a couple tablespoons of vegetable oil in a large wok (in this case I used a Dutch oven since my wok needs replacing). Add the pork pieces and stir them around so they cook evenly on all sides.

Once the pork appears to be about half way cooked and still pink in the middle, add the sausage.

After a few minutes of sauteing, the sausage should start to soften. Add the vegetables to the wok/pot and continue to saute, stirring frequently.

Add the cabbage and stir well to combine.

I ended up putting the lid on my Dutch oven, and the steam helped wilt the cabbage a little faster, but still stir it every couple of minutes to make sure that nothing burns to the bottom.

After a couple of minutes, the cabbage should start to wilt down. I prefer mine to have a bit of crunch in it still, but if you prefer a softer cabbage, you will want to let it saute a little bit longer.

Add the vermicelli noodles and soy sauce.

Stir well to combine the noodles with the rest of the dish and to avoid "noodle clumps."

Serve with extra soy sauce to taste.