Milk-Can Supper

I heard about Milk Can Supper on the America’s Test Kitchen Radio podcast in June 2014. It is a one pot meal, which I dig for efficiency sake, and it sounded intriguing. Basically you layer red potatoes, cabbage, corn on the cob, carrots, onion and bratwurst in a large pot and use a pale colored beer as the steaming liquid. I gave it a go and the results were delicious. I’ve made it, or parts of it, several times since with a couple of variations.

I use our 20-quart stock pot when I make this for a crowd. If I’ve halving it then I leave out the cabbage and cook it in the dutch oven we use for stews and tomato sauce.

Give this a try sometime. You won’t be sorry.

Milk-Can Supper
Servings: 10-12
Prep time: 15 minutes
Total time: 1 hour

Ingredients:

• 1 Tbsp. vegetable oil
• 3 lbs. fresh bratwurst (15 sausages)
• 3 lbs. small red potatoes, unpeeled, rinsed
• 1 head Napa cabbage, cut into quarters
• 6 ears corn, cleaned and cut in half
• 6 carrots, peeled and cut into ~2″ pieces
• 2 onions, peeled and cut into 8 wedges
• 10 sprigs fresh thyme
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 tsp. kosher salt
• 1 tsp. ground black pepper
• 1 12 oz. bottle light ale
• 2 green bell peppers, stemmed, seeded, and cut into 1″ squares

Directions:

1. Cut brats in half. Heat the oil in the stock pot over medium heat. Working in batches, brown brats, about 2 minutes on each side. Set browned brats aside. Drain the oil from the pot.
2. Dump the potatoes into the pot. Cover these with the quartered cabbage followed by the corn, carrots and onions. Sprinkle with the salt and pepper. Tuck the bay leaves and thyme springs in among the vegetables.
3. Arrange the brats on top of the vegetables. Pour the beer over everything, pop on the cover and bring to a boil.
4. Reduce heat to maintain a simmer; you want to see a bit of steam come out when you take off the lid. Cook for 15 minutes. Add the bell peppers and cook for an additional 10-15 minutes. You can temp the sausages if you are worries they aren’t cooked through (160°F being the magic number). I try to stab a potato and a carrot to make sure they aren’t still hard.
5. If you have a big enough bowl or platter you can carefully dump everything into it. For a large group I prefer to separate out the sausages, corn and cabbages (which I cut into smaller pieces after cooking) into separate bowls. The potatoes, carrots, onions and peppers end up together in another bowl. This allows the food to be passed around the table more quickly. I try to put at least some of the cooking liquid into a measuring cup to pass as well.

Notes:
The original recipe calls for a “light-bodied American lager, such as Budweiser”. I’m a bit of a beer snob and don’t have Bud in the house nor will I buy it just for the recipe. I’ve used Smuttynose Shoals Pale Ale in the past and most recently I used Sam Adams Porch Rocker. Both worked well. Use what you enjoy.

As I suggested in the intro, this recipe can pretty easily be halved if you aren’t serving a mob. I leave out the cabbage, reduce the rest of the ingredients by half except the amount of beer. How many sausages you cook is really up to you. I’d go for at least 10 (that’s 2 packs were I shop). I honestly should just increase the number of sausages to 20 for the full recipe; they are the best part.

Cumin Ground Lamb with Braised Napa Cabbage

When faced with a cabbage my first instinct is to braise it. When faced with a 15″ long and 8″ diameter Napa cabbage my impulse was to braise it for Saturday night dinner. My partner in cookery suggested some lamb to go with it and his Interweb search turned up a candidate recipe. A bit of tweaking to fit other items that were part of the meal and this was the result.

Cumin Ground Lamb and Braised Napa Cabbage

The idea for this recipe came from this recipe at the Hot, Spicy and Skinny blog. I’ve rewritten it to include the ingredients I used and reworked the instructions. Enjoy.

Braised Cabbage

I discovered this braised cabbage recipe in a magazine at the eye doctor’s office.  We happened to have a head of cabbage at the time so it seemed worth a try.  It worked out rather nicely.

Braised Cabbage
Servings: 8-10
Prep time: 10 minutes
Total time: 25 hours

Ingredients:

• 1 head of red/purple cabbage
• 1 Tbsp. olive oil
• 2 shallots, minced
• 2 Tbsp. whole grain mustard
• 8 Tbsp. cider vinegar
• salt and black pepper

Directions:

1. Prep the cabbage. Halve the cabbage, from root to crown. Cut out the root by making a “v” shaped cut along either side. Cut the halves into 1/2″ ribbons. Set aside
2. Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a pot large enough to hold all the cabbage. Add the shallot and stir to coat. Cook for 1-2 minutes, until the shallot begins to soften.
3. Add the mustard and vinegar to the pot. Stir to incorporate the mustard, vinegar and shallot.
4. Add the cabbage to the pot. Toss the cabbage with the mustard, vinegard and shallot.
5. Cover the pot and cook for 10-15 minutes, tossing the cabbage every few minutes.

Saturday night – 10/01/11

The weather went from warm and muggy to cool and muggy so the menu shifted to something a bit heartier. Other than wanting/needing to use a cabbage from last weeks CSA box I didn’t have much of a plan. A chance encounter with a likely preparation for the cabbage Friday afternoon pretty well set the rest into motion.

Menu
Baked chicken with bacon
Israeli Couscous with butternut squash, leeks, golden raisins and pine nuts
Braised cabbage (recipe in notes)
Salad greens with radishes & roasted beets

Ted’s homemade bread
Apple Crisp