Category Archives: Meaty Meals

Air Fryer Pork & Reduction Sauce

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I tried air frying some pork loin the other night. It came as a two pack, so I marinade both at the same time and cooked them at the same time. They were, *chef kiss*, fabulous. This is my new go-to pork marinade.

My biggest gripe about pork is that it’s bland without any a quasi brining step before cooking it. I have tried a lot of marinades for pork, but none of them were worth repeating. This one is. I’ll be using this one again and again.

Pork Loin Marinade:
1/4 C Soy Sauce
2 tbsp Ketchup
1 tbsp Fish Sauce

This was enough for both of the loins. I rested them in the fridge for 4 hours before dripping the marinade off before dropping the meat in the air fryer. While they were cooking, I poured the marinade out into a small sauce pot and heated it up and let it roll boil until it thickened up. I poured this sauce over the meat that I cut on the diagonal.

So tasty, so easy, and so cheap to pull together. I love hearty meals that aren’t a million dollars to put together. I know this marinade is simplistic and pared down, but when you hit the right ratio of a few ingredients that really gets the job done, why overdo a recipe?

The saying, ‘Less is more,’ exists for a reason. Simple is better when it comes to meat.

Garlic ‘Pasketti & Balls Bread

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My husband’s loves this spin on a childhood fave food. It consists of a hollowed out bread loaf that’s been brushed with garlic butter, topped with cheese and spaghetti & meatballs. I put more cheese on top and bake it for 10 mins at 350*F. I let it cook for 10 mins, pulled it to rest 10 mins, and then cut it into slices to serve.

Garlic ‘Pasketti & Balls Bread:
1″ Bundle of Spaghetti
Pasta Sauce, of choice
Frozen Meatballs, of choice
Half Bread Loaf, cut lengthwise and middle mostly hollowed out
Garlic Butter
1/2 C Marble Cheese, either slices or grated, or both
1/4 C Parmesan Cheese, grated

Serves two.

Hollow out the bread and brush the cavity with the garlic butter. Lay down half the marble cheese and top it with half of the parm cheese. Roll the cooked pasta in the pot with the hot sauce and balls. (I cut the meatballs in half to make eating them easier.)

Carefully lay the spaghetti & balls over the cheeses and top with more meatballs. Push it down as you add more to condense it and really get that hot sauce melting the cheese to trap the spaghetti in place. Top with the last of the cheeses, and bake on a sheet pan.

It’s a real challenge to eat this without losing any of the balls or strands of the spaghetti, but that only makes it more fun to eat on some random night when you need something fast to make and filling to consume.

Sunday Dinner – Meatloaf & Beans

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Made a late simple dinner tonight. I cooked a lovely meatloaf in the air fryer. And as that rested, I cooked some green beans with canned mushrooms, and fried onions as the side. I have made many different meatloaves over the years, but this one is up there with my favourite ground turkey meatloaf that I keep craving.

Here’s what I put in mine:

Jalapeno Meatloaf:
1+ lbs Ground Beef
1/4 sm Yellow Onion, grated finely
1/4 Bell Pepper, any on hand, fine diced
1/2 med Jalapeno, seeded and fine diced
Cracks of Pepper
Pinch of Salt
3 tbsp Everyday Seasoning Rub
1/2 C Panko
1/2 C Dry Breadcrumbs

Everyday Seasoning Rub:
1 1/2 tbsp: Garlic / Onion Powders
1 tbsp: Salt / Paprika
2 tea: Black Pepper / Mustard Powder

(Despite only needing a bit of the rub mix for the meatloaf, the above will net you enough to fill a small mason jar. You can use it with any kind of food group.)

Mix all of the meatloaf ingredients in a mixing bowl by hand. Place fistfuls of meat into a greased pan, and press the meat into the corners first. Add the rest to the middle and spread it all out evenly across the surface.

Place the pan into the air fryer (or on a sheet tray) to cook at 375*F for about 18-20 mins. Pull the loaf when it temps at 158-160* and let the residual heat finish cook the meat. Let it rest on a cutting board in the pan for about 15 mins as you work on the green beans.

Green Beans:
1 tbsp regular Olive Oil
S&P, to taste
1/2 can Mushrooms (for cooking speed), drained
1+ tbsp Dried Onions

Clean out the mixing bowl with soap, and drip dry it. Run your green beans under cool water to rinse off any dirt. Drain them and dump them in the bowl. Assemble the other ingredients over the beans. Roll everything around nicely. With tongs, move the mixture to the air fryer basket (or dump it onto a sheet tray to cook them in the oven, or in a skillet to pan fry). Cook the beans at the same temp as the meat for about 5+ mins.

They are done when you can hold one bean with the tongs and bend it over in a soft V shape. Plate it all and decide if you want any sauce to top the meat with or not. Enjoy.

Air Fryer Smash Sliders

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A few weeks back, I made some cute mini smash burgers at home that, although tasty enough, were a huge pain the butt to make on the stovetop. They had too much clean up time attached after the onions invariably burned while the thin meat patties resting over them steam cooked, and the cheese on top of them finally melted and the bun warmed up. Ugh.

I vowed never to make them that way again. They make a cute pub grub meal, but honestly, I wasn’t into making them the Alton Brown way again. What he does, he does well. But, I’m not Alton. I’m me. And me is really good at figuring out ways to streamline production and assembly methods at work, and at home. Work smarter, not harder!

So with that, I turned to my air fryer. In the back of my head, I was only going to cook down the onions in it (so they didn’t burn) while I pan fried the patties on one side before flipping them and adding the cheese on the second side as the meat finished up.

I ended up poo-pooing the idea of using the stovetop all together when I remembered how fast cooking onions in the air fryer is at 350*F for about 10-12 mins. I could just wait ten minutes and add the patties after removing the onions. From there, 4 mins on the first side, flip, add cheese and cook another 4 minutes while I prepped the buns.

I chose a small dinner roll pack because the grocery store stopped getting the slider buns I was going to buy during the pandemic. I assume the bread maker axed this from their streamlined product line for supply chain issues. Oh, well. The dinner buns were the perfect size in the end.

I laid the onions on a platter in small nests so I could drop a cheesy patty on each when they came out of the air fryer. I placed the tops on each patty so they melded together. On the bottoms, I laid down some somewhat spicy burger/dip sauce I had in the fridge.

We then scraped up each pile off the platter and laid them down onto each bottom, and viola! Done. I really like how these turned out, and how fast they came together. And it was about as much clean up as cooking bacon strips in the air fryer. And none of it irritated me like doing these smash sliders on the stovetop did.

I’m calling this one as a win! Will do smash sliders this way from now on. Recommend.

Quick Butter Chicken

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This isn’t my recipe, it’s Arron & Claire’s, and it’s a keeper. It’s quick, it’s easy, and it’s tasty. In short, this recipe gets the job done on nights where I am craving Butter Chicken and don’t have a jar sauce on hand in my pantry. Luckily, I stock all of the ingredients to make it when push comes to shove. 🙂

Quick Butter Chicken:
4 Chicken Thighs, bite size cubes
1/3 C Plain Yogurt
1 tbsp Garlic, minced (or 1/2 tea Garlic Powder)
1/2 tbsp: Garam Masala/Cumin/Ground Ginger/Chili Powder
S&P

Oil
1/2 C Yellow Onion, diced
30 g Cashews, rough chopped (opt)
3 C Passata Sauce

5 tbsp Butter
1 tbsp: Ginger, grated/Chili Powder/Cumin/Ground Coriander/Garam Masala
1/2 tea: Sugar (or a pinch of carrot, grated)/Salt

2/3 C Water
1 C Heavy Cream (18 – 35%)
5 tbsp Butter
1/4 tea Chicken Stock Powder

Mix the cut up meat in the yogurt mixture and rest it for 20 mins as you prep everything else. When ready, get your skillet heated up. After 3 mins, add some neutral oil and drop the meat in carefully in small batches. Brown the chicken to take advantage of the maillard reaction. All of that browning = flavour. (The meat will finish cooking as it rests in the hot sauce later.) Rest rest each browned batch in a bowl with paper towels set inside as you work.

In a bigger skillet, or a big pot, heat up some different oil and dump in the diced onion to soften. Add the cashews. Sautee for a minute before adding the passata sauce. Stew that together for 5 mins before adding the meat in. Stew the sauce another 5-8 mins to cook the meat through.

At the end, add the water, butter, heavy cream and chicken stock. When you’ve stirred it all together, plate some of the meat in shallow bowls off to one side, top it with a ladle of sauce, and drop the starch of choice (cooked rice, mash potatoes or naan bread chunks) over the sauce. Serve with a dollop of sour cream if desired, topped with some chopped cilantro leaves.

What I Air Fried This Week

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I made a lot of the same things I’ve already made, and I also went back to try the Chocolate Croissants again because I wanted to play with the times.

Instead of the typical 350-400* bake, I dropped it down to 300-320* for ten mins using a can of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls and a crushed up Flaky chocolate bar. Nailed it!

I also saw this video recipe for Lemon-Pepper Wings and decided I needed to try it since the flavourings were right up our alley. I mean, lemon and pepper? C’mon! So I used frozen chicken parts that I coated in seasonings and then in flour. I dropped them in the basket and flipped once half way, cooking them at 400* the whole time ( 8 mins + 8 mins).

The recipe called for rolling them around in some melted butter with the lemon-pepper blend, and they were fantastic. What I didn’t like was how the butter made the crisp texture straight from the air fryer soggy. :-\ I will definitely make these wings again but I will roll them in the lemon-pepper dry seasonings before I cook them and forgo the butter bath altogether.

And if that doesn’t work, I will dust the crispy wings in the lemon-pepper seasonings as a rub after they come out of the air fryer all hot and crispy.

Yes, I know. I need better lighting for my pictures. I agree. I have a ring light but my kitchen is still largely a mess from the unexpected repairs the husband had to do in there, and my ring light is buried in a corner right now. Oh, well.

Air Fryer Italian Meatballs

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I made 4 dozen mini meatballs the other night because I needed to use up the medium ground beef I bought two days beforehand. I had other materials I needed to use or lose them at the same time, so this what I decided to make to test out my air fryer.

PS: I paired them with this lovely red pesto sauce I bought a few months back.

Italian Meatballs:
1 kg Med Ground Beef
1/2 C Italian Seasoned Breadcrumbs (optional, for bulking out the filling only)
1/4 C Parm Cheese, grated
1 Egg
3 Shots Hot Sauce (optional)
2 Tbsp Dried Parsley
S&P

I used this meatball tool from my late MIL’s house. It scoops up the perfect mini meatball size portions.

I bought some shallow foil pans from the dollar store that fit my 10″x10″ basket perfectly, and they ended up holding 16 balls each, so that helped speed up this whole cooking process unlike cooking meatballs on the stovetop in a skillet. I am not a fan of making meatballs on the stovetop and finishing them in the oven. Too much splatter to clean up. Not with the air fryer!

I cooked each tray of balls in their first runs at 320*F for ten mins with a gentle shake of the pan (not the basket), and for their second run I blasted them at 400* for the last five mins. I temped them before blasting and again when they finish (to verify they did at some point hit 165*).

Enchilada Lasagna

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Made this delicious Enchilada Lasagna for dinner tonight. It’s all of the normal enchilada materials, only presented like a lasagna. It’s magic is in the velvety sauce. So good!

Enchilada Lasagna:
1 lbs Ground Beef
1 Tbsp Green Chilis (or cut up pickled jalapeno rings)
1/2 Tea ea: Onion Powder / Garlic Powder / Salt/ Pepper

3 Tbsp ea: Butter / Flour
1 Tbsp ea: Chili Powder / Paprika (any kind)
3 C Chicken Stock, hot
1 Tbsp Tomato Paste
1/2 Tea ea: Oregano, crushed or rubbed / Cumin / Salt / Pepper / Sugar
1 1/2 Tbsp Taco Seasoning (from a store bought packet)

1/2 Onion, diced
2-3 C Pepper Jack Cheese, grated (or Marble)
Eight 7″ Tortillas

In a hot fry pan, drop meat to brown, chopping it up as it cooks down and the fat renders out. Add the chilis and the seasonings, stirring them in completely. Spoon out the fat into a small bowl for discarding later when the meat finishes cooking. Spoon out the meat into a bigger bowl; set aside for now.

Add the butter to the fry pan to melt completely. Add the flour. Whisk both together and let is cook for a full minute as the colour of the fat deepens. To this, add half the chili powder and whisk continuously before adding the second half to whisk in. Add the paprika one half at a time and continue to whisk as the second portion also goes in, whisking so none of the mixture burns.

Add 1 cup of the broth to the pan and whisk the butter mixture into the liquid. When it’s smooth and incorporated, add the next 1 cup and mix it in. Continue with the last of the broth. At this point, add the tomato paste and really work it into the sauce to evenly distribute it.

Place one seasoning at a time into the pan and give it a good stir before adding the next so each one gets time to meld into the sauce properly. Remove the pan from the heat and start setting up the baking dish, tortillas, meat, onions and cheese for assembly.

Lay two tortillas on the bottom of the dish. Ladle a small spoonful of the enchilada sauce over them, spreading it out thinly all over the tortillas. Top this with 1/3 of the meat, followed by 1/3 of the onions and 1/4 of the cheese. Continue this layering two more times until you finish with the last 1/4 of the cheese.

Top with foil and bake it 15 minutes at 375 degrees. Rest it after that on the stovetop for another 15 mins before cutting it into 4-8 portions. Plate it with some cut up lettuce, a dollop of sour cream, and some diced tomatoes or a small spoonful of salsa.