July 29, 2026

Marinara Sauce

Tomatoes are coming into peak season around here, so I went out and bought 20 fresh romas to try out some Tomato Sauce from scratch.

I started by splitting and seeding them all, then putting them in some glass baking pans. After that I drizzled them all with some olive oil (I didn’t bother measuring), then added the chopped garlic and then the onion, salt, and pepper. I was using dried herbs so I decided to save them for later – the thought being that dried herbs would just burn with 2.5hr in the oven.

Before I did this recipe I read through the comments on the Food Network site. This one is odd: there are plenty of 5 star ratings and plenty of one star ratings. The one star ratings almost all say that everything came out of the oven burned to a crisp. So, following some of the five star comments I cooked them at 300 degrees for the first hour, 325 for the next half hour, and then I did the last half hour at 400 like the recipe says.

I think I got it just right – cooked perfectly with just the right amount of caramelization. Though, the bottom of the pans was caked, which took a lot of elbow grease to clean. One commenter said he used parchment paper on the bottoms of the pans, so were I to do this again I’d try that. After the tomatoes were done it was time for the food mill.

This was the first time I used a food mill, so it was a bit of a learning experience. I think I did it right, and after 10 minutes or so of cranking I had a mill full of skins and about a cup and a quarter worth of sauce.

Lots of the comments pointed this out – for all the tomatoes and all the work put into the recipe, you really don’t end up with a lot of sauce. I just don’t know how in the world the recipe gets to the 4 cups as listed on the site.

Regardless, I put that resulting sauce in a pan and added some wine. The recipe says to add a full cup of wine, but I figured since I only got a little more than a cup that I’d only add a quarter cup of wine. Also, I added the herbs at this point, too. I let the sauce come to a boil and then simmered it for a while before I tasted it. On the first taste, it was really bitter. I had read in the comments that this could happen and the solution was to add sugar. I added a little bit at a time, and after about a teaspoon worth, it started tasting pretty good. I heated up some left over pasta and topped it with the sauce.

The sauce definitely has the consistency of a marinara – the kind of sauce you’d get with some mozzarella sticks from the local pizza house. I am not sure I’d really do this one again based on the amount of work you need to put in for the result, but my family really liked it, so it was all worth it.

Tomato Sauce

• Crowd: 4/5
• Ease: 2/5
• Cooked for 1.5hr at 300, then 30m at 325, then 30m at 400
• Only made about a cup and a quarter of sauce
• Added the herbs while cooking with the wine
• Added only 1/4 cup of wine
• Added a teaspoon of sugar to combat bitterness

July 25, 2026

Funnel Cake

We had a free Saturday night, so what better way to celebrate than with some Funnel Cake!

Now, I’ve made gluten free pate a choux already, and that worked out OK with some modifications. This time around I decided I wanted to see what people do specifically for GF funnel cake, pate a choux or no. I eventually landed on this recipe from the Gluten Free Austrian which doesn’t make a pate a choux first. So, my rating and experience here will not be specifically with the Good Eats recipe, but we’re going to sometimes have to do that in order to be gluten free – that’s the tradeoff we’re making from here on. Often, the recipe modifications aren’t too drastic, but this time around they are. But, “making gluten free funnel cake” is higher up my list than “making the Good Eats funnel cake”, otherwise I wouldn’t be cooking for my family.

So with that said, on to the frying!

I started out by making the batter as the site suggested.

You can see from the photo that I have a piping bag in a pitcher. That makes it incredibly easy to fill the bag without much fuss.

Once the batter was made and in the bag, I got the fry oil ready. I used about 3/4 of a gallon of canola oil and heated it up to 350 degrees. Starting in the middle and going around in ever larger circles I fried up cakes one by one.

After I made a few of them – they got progressively better as I dialed in my technique – we dusted them with powdered sugar. We also heated up some chocolate sauce and drizzled that on top, too.

The cakes were delicious. Light, fluffy, and crispy with a hint of sweetness. They reminded us of being at a carnival. And making them was extremely fun, too! I’ll definitely be pulling out this recipe as a treat every so often.

Funnel Cake [GF]

• Crowd: 4/5
• Ease: 2/5
• Used a gluten free recipe from here

July 13, 2026

TBL Salad

Tomatoes continue to be in season so I thought that TBL Panzanella would be a good side dish for some burgers.

Since doing stuff gluten free makes everything harder, I started the day before by baking a fresh gluten free sandwich loaf.

I then cut it up and left it overnight to dry out, which if you’re familiar with gluten free bread, is not a difficult ask.

The next day I cooked up some bacon, made the dressing, and sauteed up a pint of grape tomatoes.

After everything was prepped, I tossed the bread with the bacon grease, washed the lettuce, crushed up the bacon, and cut up some basil.

The recipe calls for basil and mint, but we love basil around here so I skipped the mint and just doubled up on basil.

Once everything was ready, I tossed it all together and plated the salads. I really love the bacon+tomato flavor of a BLT and this delivered. I also really liked how the bread soaked up the bacon grease and the dressing, making for a soft and flavorful crouton. The rest of the family did not like this as much, though. They’d have given this a 2 versus my 4, so I settled on a three. Probably won’t be making this again, though.

TBL Panzanella

• Crowd: 3/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Used a homemade gluten free sandwich loaf for the bread
• Left out the mint, used double the basil

July 06, 2026

Stuffed Tomatoes

Over the weekend, we picked up some really nice beefsteak tomatoes from a local farm stand, so I thought I’d use them to make some Stuffed Tomatoes.

I had already acquired a mix of dried mushrooms from Amazon that has: porcini, shiitake, oyster, portobello, and wood ear mushrooms. I started by combining them with some water and white wine (sauvignon blanc) that I heated for 2 minutes in the microwave.

I left them there, with a bowl on top to push them down, for about an hour so I could be really sure that they were cas rehydrated as they’d ever get. I then chopped them up and prepared the stuffing while the hollowed-out tomatoes were draining. After stuffing them, I popped them under the broiler for 3 minutes, then topped them with some fresh mozzarella and put them back for another 3 minutes.

I used mozzarella here instead of goat cheese because I wanted my family to actually eat them. The stuffed tomatoes were delicious, even though I think the texture of rehydrated mushrooms is a little strange. Were I to do this again, I’d probably use fresh mushrooms and maybe add a little crumbled sausage to the stuffing. I might even put a little olive oil in the tomatoes and broil them unstuffed for a few minutes, first, which would create some great flavor. All in all a great way to use some large tomatoes.

Stuffed Tomatoes

• Crowd: 3/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Soaked the mushrooms for about an hour
• Used fresh mozzarella rather than goat cheese

July 03, 2026

Beets, Part 2

Season 6 has four beet-based recipes, the first two I did in March, and the second two I did over the last week.

I first set out to get some Pickled Beets going in the fridge. Like many recipes, I decided I’d halve this one. I began by getting 3 medium beets prepared for roasting.

I had forgotten to grab fresh rosemary, so I used dried. I don’t think that made much difference in the end. While the beets were roasting, I cut up some red onion.

Then prepared the picking liquid.

When the beets were finished roasting, I peeled and sliced them, then stacked them with the onions in a quart mason jar.

I used almost all of the beets, but there was maybe a half beet left over. Also, half of the total pickling liquid didn’t quite cover it all, so I boiled another half cup (quarter cup of vinegar plus quarter cup of water) – no extra sugar – and that got me to the top. I then put the jar into the fridge for the next 7 days.

Meanwhile, since I’d went and bought so many beets, I used the rest of them to prepare some Beet Slaw. Again, I halved this recipe too, because it seemed like it made a lot of slaw.

The recipe says to boil the beets, but that seemed weird to me and Allison steamed them instead, so that’s what I did.

It took about 35 minutes to steam the beets to where they seemed cooked through. Once they were done, peeled, and cooled I put them through the little spiralizer that I’d bought. We’ve had the big contraption ones in the past, but we rarely used it and it took up so much space that it wasn’t worth keeping when we moved. But this little one takes up very little space and is worth to keep around.

I put the beet spirals in a colander (they didn’t really drain all that much) while I sliced the remaining ingredients with a mandolin and put them right on top.

Then I mixed up the dressing.

And finally, put it all together with some goat cheese mixed in.

I made this on Sunday, and let it sit overnight in the fridge. On Monday, we gave it a try. It was definitely beet-y, but we really didn’t enjoy it all that much. I think the word that went around was: pointless. It’s a fine example of a slaw as per the episode but we were not sure what going through all the trouble bought us here. Some spiralized beets with a little vinaigrette would go just as far if not further. The flavor wasn’t bad, it’s just not really something we’d ever want, or would make again.

Come Friday, the pickled beets were ready to try. I popped them open, put some in a bowl and then cut the slices up. We really did want to like these. However, after the initial tang of the pickling, it was a little too strong and just kind of strange tasting. I don’t think I’d make these again.

Unfortunately, both of these beet recipes left us wanting. On a side note, I wish plain old roasted beets were included as a recipe in this season – when I roasted the beets for the slaw, we voraciously ate the leftovers and would have given them a 4 or so. But the two applications of beets this time around just weren’t worth the trouble.

Pickled Beets

• Crowd: 2/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Halved the recipe. Used three medium beets. Almost but not quite was able to get all the beets into the jar.
• Half of the liquid wasn’t enough, needed to boil another half cup of water + vinegar to top off the jar.

Beet Slaw

• Crowd: 2/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Halved the recipe – the full recipe makes a lot of slaw!
• Half recipe used ~2.5 medium sized beets to make 2 cups of spirals

June 13, 2026

Guacamole

I’ve made this Guacamole a number of times over the years – it’s been my go-to recipe since the first time I made it. For a recent gathering we were doing tacos so I thought it’d be the perfect addition. I started by gathering up the ingredients.

A couple things to note here. First, since this was going to be for a crowd, I left out the jalapeño and the cayenne. I wanted a mild guacamole that everyone could enjoy. Second, I only used a single Roma tomato, because I like to let the avocado speak for itself.

Another thing I learned over the years – don’t add all the salt and lime juice at once. Add maybe a half to 3/4 of it, and then let it sit for a while in the fridge, with plastic wrap directly over the guacamole (touching it directly) to avoid discoloration. Give this a few hours, or overnight.

Once out of the fridge, give it a taste for salt & lime, and add as necessary. I’ve made the mistake in the past of making it too salty or too limey, and this method makes sure you get a perfect balance each time.

The guac went over quite well – every last bit of it was eaten by our guests, so I’d say that’s a successful recipe.

Guacamole

• Crowd: 4/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Left out the jalapeño and cayenne to make a more crowd-friendly “mild” version
• Only used one Roma tomato

June 08, 2026

Coleslaw

Was planning to grill some chicken and corn for dinner tonight, so I thought I’d also make some Coleslaw to go with it.

I started by taking two heads of cabbage, one red and one green, both about 2.5lbs and slicing half each into thin slices. I put all the slices in a colander and put what I thought were some heavy pinches of salt on them, then mixed it up and repeated with the salt. I did this two or three times, then put the colander in the fridge for two hours. The recipe says to do it for 3 hours, but I didn’t have that much time.

After two hours, the cabbage was shiny from the released moisture, but there wasn’t any water pooled in the bowl under the colander. Kind of like the marinated slaw that I made a while back.

Next I made up the dressing using the remaining ingredients, and was ready to mix. First though, I soaked the cabbage for a bit and then spun it in my salad spinner. The cabbage was crunchy but not “raw” which I think is the whole point of the salting.

After mixing I put the slaw in the fridge while I prepared the rest of dinner. About 30m later I took it out of the fridge and served.

The slaw went really well with the grilled jerk chicken thighs and corn. We usually don’t eat or enjoy coleslaw but this was good! It’s definitely a “mild” coleslaw – missing that “tang” you get from traditional additions of vinegar and sugar. However, the mildness works for its purpose. I think next time I’d try adding some celery salt or celery seeds, like someone in the recipe comments mentioned.

Coleslaw

• Crowd: 4/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Used half of a ~2.5lb red and green cabbage (weighed before cutting off stem and core)
• Used two medium carrots shredded on the box grater

May 26, 2026

Froyo

Continuing on with season six, I set out to make the Lemon-Ginger Frozen Yogurt this weekend. It started with making some Yogurt Cheese to use as the base of the froyo. To begin, I poured two containers of store-bought low fat (1.5% yogurt) in a colander over two bowls.

I got it into the fridge around 8pm, and it immediately started draining. I checked it around midnight and there was already a cup or so of liquid. The next day around 1pm I removed it from the fridge and there was another ~2 cups of liquid in the bowl. That means 3/8 of the total original yogurt was liquid.

It tasted fine. I mean, it was plain yogurt, so it wasn’t fantastic. But it was definitely a creamy consistency much like Greek yogurt. I then broke out all of the frozen yogurt ingredients and got everything mixed together in a bowl.

Note that I grated the ginger with the microplane (just like I did with the lemon zest) rather than mincing it with a knife like the recipe suggests. Once everything was mixed, into the icecream maker it went.

I gave it about 25 minutes to churn, then transferred it to a plastic quart container and put it into the freezer overnight. Oh yeah, I did not add the crystallized ginger to the churned froyo because it’s kind of spicy and I wanted this to have wider appeal.

The next evening after dinner we tried it. I put a sprinkle of the crystallized ginger on top of mine because I enjoy the spice.

The frozen yogurt was delightful. It’s tart, tangy, sour, and sweet all at once. The comments on the Food Network recipe say it’s “summer in a bowl” and I can totally see eating this on a hot day. Gemma gave it a 5 and I gave it a 4, so I’ll take the 5 when we get them. We also really liked the crystallized ginger. Next time, I would definitely mix it into the froyo, as well as try using monk fruit or Swerve to reduce the sugar content.

Yogurt Cheese

• Crowd: 3/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Used two containers of store bought 1.5% low fat plain yogurt
• A little more than 3 cups of liquid drained out

Lemon-Ginger Frozen Yogurt

• Crowd: 5/5
• Ease: 2/5
• Grated the ginger (rather than minced which is what the recipe says)
• Did not mix the crystallized ginger into the yogurt, instead used it as a topping. But next time I would add it in, because it adds a great little kick which is tempered by the coolness of the yogurt.
• Used three light quarter cups of sugar, next time would use the full measure, or would try substituting monk fruit sweetener or Swerve to try and cut down on sugar content.

May 22, 2026

Homebrew!

In the past I’ve done a lot of home brewing, so I’ve been looking forward to brewing Season Six’s Good Brew.

In the show Alton understandably takes a bare-bones, limited equipment approach to brewing, which is certainly the best way to make it approachable to someone who’s never brewed before. I have a lot more equipment and experience, so rather than trying to replicate his exact process I set out to brew his recipe using my own brewing approach that I have honed over a few dozen batches.

Recipe

So, here’s what I used to recreate Alton’s Good Brew recipe:

• 1/2 pound 60L crystal malt
• 5.75 pounds Light DME
• Wyeast 1098 (British Ale Yeast)
• 1.75oz East Kent Goldings hops
• 1oz Cascade hops

Note that I used dry malt extract instead of the liquid extract that he used in the show. This is just a preference – one I’ve developed over time. To go from a LME to a DME measurement, you can use any number of converters online.

Now let’s get into the brew!

Yeast Starter

Prep started about 24 hours before brew day. I began by creating a yeast starter with the yeast pack.

He didn’t do this in the show, but again I have the equipment and I’ve found that starting the yeast before the pitch makes for more vigorous fermentation (less “lag” period) which helps protect against things like infection.

Brew Day

The following afternoon was brew day. I cut out of work a little early and started brewing at about 3:30pm. First I pulled out all my equipment and inspected, cleaned, and sanitized it.

In the show, AB steeps his specialty grains in the brew kettle itself. I’ve found that doing this in a smaller pot with a grain bag helps with temperature control and reduces mess.

After the grains steeped for 30m at 150 degrees (I needed to kick on the heat two or three times to keep the water temp up), I sparged the grains in a colander over the brew kettle, using 1/2 gallon of 150 degree water.

I then topped off the kettle to 3 gallons and kicked on the heat. While the kettle was heating, I added all of the remaining dry malt extract (DME). It was a touch more than the 5.75lb, but I had that little extra so I figured I’d use it. It took about 35m, but then I had a nice rolling boil.

At the boil, I added 1oz of cascade hops, and 0.75oz of the UK Kent Goldings. Here’s another departure from the show – Alton only boils for 10 or 15 minutes, which is sort of out of the ordinary. Common wisdom is that a longer boil results in better hop utilization. So, I did the “normal” thing here, and boiled for 45m.

Meanwhile, I mixed up some sanitizer (rather than water plus bleach like they do in the show) and got to work sanitizing everything: the fermenter, its lid, the airlock, thermowell, strainer – everything that could come into contact with the wort after it comes off the stove.

After 45 minutes, I added some whirlfloc. In the show, he uses Irish Moss, which is similar. I let the boil go for another 15m, then added the remaining 1oz of Kent Goldings and killed the heat. (Side note: in the show he calls this dry hopping, which isn’t correct – this is just flameout hopping.) I then let the hops steep for 10m (called a “hop stand”) before getting started with the cooling process.

In the show, Alton dumps the wort into the ice-filled fermenter at this point. In my case, I wanted to use my wort chiller and pump setup. So I brought the kettle over to my sink, dumped a cold gallon of water into it, and started the pump.

It took about 30m and two 7 pound bags of ice in addition to all the ice in my freezer (I should have gotten a third bag of ice) but I got the wort down to about 70 degrees. Once it was cool I could then strain it into the sanitized fermenter.

From there, I tossed in my sanitized Tilt hydrometer. This is another departure from the show, where he didn’t bother to do a gravity reading (or tell you the final ABV %). But I have the device, and at the very least it’s helpful for knowing exactly when fermentation is complete. It also monitors temperature, which is huge – good homebrew is all about temperature control. My original gravity (OG) was 1.044.

Fermentation

After straining, tossing in the hydrometer, and pitching the yeast, I was ready to close it up and put it into my fermentation chamber. The chamber is just a chest freezer with the addition of a temperature controller.

The temperature controller is hooked to the freezer on the cold side, and a little space heater on the hot side. I put the probe into the thermowell and set the target temperature to 66 degrees – the controller will then keep the wort between 64 and 68, which is a great range for this yeast strain. I then sat back and waited for fermentation to begin. The next morning I saw some great activity on the airlock:

Fermentation was in full force. Over the next couple days I monitored the temperature and the specific gravity using the Tilt. By Monday morning, approximately 65 hours after pitching the yeast, the airlock activity was very slight (maybe one bubble every 45-60s) and the gravity reading from the Tilt had been constant for 12 hours or so. The next move was to kick the beer temperature up to 71 degrees for a diacetyl rest to help clean up any off flavors.

I set the new temp on Monday afternoon, and let it go for a few days at 71 degrees. By Friday afternoon, the diacetyl rest was done, so I moved it back to about 68 degrees. There the beer sat for another seven days to condition. My planned bottling date was Monday April 27th, so on Saturday April 25th, I started to bring the beer’s temperature down to 40 degrees for a cold crash. By Sunday morning it was at 40 so I didn’t touch the temperature again.

Bottling

Monday was bottling day (well, bottling night). Before work I set about making sure all of my bottles were clean. I first went to the garage and grabbed my tub of bottles.

In previous brews, I would meticulously rinse out every bottle after pouring it, so I wasn’t too worried about caked-on crud. I grabbed 16 22oz bottles, and 24 12oz bottles, mixed up some PBW, and then sent each through the bottle rinser just to make extra sure there’s no gunk in them. After that, I loaded all the bottles up into the dishwasher and sent them through the “sanitize” cycle. This does a few things: rinses out any leftover detergent, gets the bottles hot enough to kill off any lingering nasties, and (since they sit upside down all day) dries them out inside.

In the evening, it was time to bottle. The first thing I did was take the bottles out of the dish washer, where they’d been sitting all day to dry/cool, and run them through the rinser one more time, this time with Star San, and put them on the bottle tree. I then used a priming sugar calculator to figure out that I wanted to boil 4.5oz of dextrose (corn sugar) in 2 cups of water in order to prime the beer for carbonation.

Once the sugar was boiled and the bottling bucket was sanitized, I dumped the primer into the bottling bucket, and then transferred the beer from the fermenter into it.

It was then time to bottle! One great thing about bottling day is that you get to taste your “finished” beer for the first time. Before I started in on filling bottles, I grabbed a sample and tried it – it was delicious. Crisp, dry, clear, nicely malty without being too hoppy, just like an English Pub Ale should be. It’s going to get even better in the next couple weeks while it bottle conditions and carbonates, too.

The other thing you do on bottling day is take your final gravity (FG) reading, which you can use to compare with the original gravity (OG) reading in order to find your total alcohol by volume (ABV) using an online calculator. My FG was 1.006, and plugging that in gives me a final ABV of 4.99%, a nice target for this style of beer.

Bottling was then just a matter of using my filling wand over the open dishwasher, filling the bottles, and capping them. This didn’t take too long, and soon I had 34 bottles full. Between the fermenter and the bottling bucket, there was about a 6-pack left behind, but getting at it would have required tipping the buckets, which would have pulled sediment along with the beer, so I didn’t mind leaving it behind.

Conditioning

After filling the bottles, I put them all into a tub in a closet that stays about 68-72 degrees to bottle condition for the next two weeks. Two Mondays later, on the 11th of May, I put one of the 12oz bottles in the fridge and tried it in the evening.

The flavor of the beer was great, but the carbonation wasn’t enough. It was bubbly but it flattened out really fast, with little to no head. This is OK though, sometimes bottle conditioning takes more than two weeks, especially after cold crashing and taking a bunch of yeast out of suspension. So, I went bottle by bottle and carefully tipped each one over and then back to get any settled yeast back into suspension and wake them up. This is called “rousing” the yeast.

Final Tasting

I gave it about another two weeks and then on the morning of May 22nd, I put another couple of bottles into the fridge. In the evening, I popped one open and saw/heard what I wanted – that tiny pop of the bottle opening, and the little vapor cloud you see due to the drop in pressure that comes with opening the bottle. Both of those signs told me that these were carbonated and ready to drink. So I poured a glass.

The beer is, in a word, delicious. It’s crisp and light, with a mouth feel on the thin side. There is a pop of bitterness at the beginning and it goes down smooth on the finish. The hops are present but not overwhelming. And at just under 5% ABV it’s completely crushable. In my opinion it’s a mighty fine example of an English bitter, or a pub ale as some may call it, kind of on the same page as a Fuller’s.

Home brewing is really fun, and I’d encourage anyone to give it a try. There are plenty of rabbit holes one can go down in this hobby, which keeps it always interesting. I hadn’t brewed for a really long time before this, and I was reminded how fun I find it. Hopefully this will motivate me to get a couple more brews done this year.

Cheers!

Good Brew

• Crowd: 5/5
• Ease: 1/5
• This makes a wonderful English style bitter (pub ale)
• Used Alton’s recipe, but also used my homebrew equipment and techniques

May 18, 2026

Tarragon Sauce

Was planning on pan roasting some salmon tonight for dinner so I thought they would go well with some Tarragon Yogurt Sauce. I started by getting my onions and garlic sweating in some olive oil. The online recipe says to then add 2Tb of stock + 2Tb of cornstarch, but in the episode he mixes the cornstarch in a jar with the full cup of stock, so that is what I did. Another difference from the online recipe is that in the show he adds the tarragon at this point, too, which is also what I did. After adding the slurry, I let it cook until it was thickened.

Then, another difference between the two – in the show he makes a big deal about tempering the yogurt while the online recipe says to just add it. I did the show version and slowly tempered the yogurt in a separate bowl before adding it all back to the pan with some salt and pepper.

After turning the heat back on (low) and stirring the sauce for a bit, I plated the salmon and spooned on the sauce.

Of course, we added a bit of sauce on the side, too. It was delicious – creamy, herby, and a little bit cool. Would definitely make this sauce again, especially if I am trying to impress some dinner guests.

Tarragon Yogurt Sauce

• Crowd: 4/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Used Fage 2% plain greek yogurt, but I think any yogurt would work here