Name: Quick and Easy Pizza Skillet
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 12 min
Yield: 2-4 servings
Ingredients: 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil; 12-16 ounces fresh pizza dough (make it yourself or buy a ball at the grocery store or your favorite pizza shop); 1/4 cup tomato sauce; 1/2 teaspoon fresh oregano; 4 ounces fresh mozzarella, thinly sliced; desired toppings (don't overdo it or the pizza will get soggy)

Quick and Easy Pizza Skillet + Video

May 10, 2018

This quick and easy pizza skillet is like an amazing pan pizza baked and served in your favorite cast iron skillet, and it’s completely customizable! Scroll down for video!

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Summer Break is in Sight!

We’re down to the last couple of weeks of the school year, and I have to admit that it seems like it’s been crazier this year than in any of the previous 16 school years that I have completed (sixteen!!! That’s just crazy.). I’m sure I probably say that every year, though. It just seems like this year I thought that things were going to slow down here at the end and they didn’t. Not at all. If anything, they picked up. That’s the nature of this job, though. You can’t predict anything. There are no patterns. And that’s okay…but I’m tired.

Summer Blogging Bliss

I’ve worked the last couple of summers, and this summer I don’t have to. That means two months of blogging bliss, so I’m excited to see what I can get done this summer. If I can only make it to summer break, anyway. I’ve been working on getting organized, determined to treat blogging like a full-time job this summer, just to see where it gets me. I’ve got a free event on the books with All-South Appliance, and I have some other stuff in the works too. Super-excited.

Instant Pot Obsession

Right now, it’s all I can do to get dinner on the table at night. Since I ended my restaurant fast, all I want to do is go out to eat…you know, because I can. But I’m not gonna. I’m kind of obsessed with my Instant Pot (<–affiliate link), but I guess you guys probably don’t want Instant Pot recipes every day. I’ve occupied myself with finding meals that are equally easy and delicious.

Quick and Easy Pizza Skillet

When Philip and I first got married, every Friday night was pizza night. We bought a Mama Mary’s crust from the grocery store and topped it with store-bought “pizza sauce” (that’s what the label said!), grated pizza cheese (again, on the label), and pepperoni. It’s been a long time since I’ve bought a store-bought pizza crust, jarred pizza sauce, or grated cheese, but honestly, the homemade pizza that I make not is barely more difficult and it’s 1000% more delicious.

Click here to save this recipe to your dinner, easy, or pizza boards now!

Every time I make pizza I remember how simple it is, and how happy it makes me to turn out something that tasty, that simply. I recently decided to make it a thick crust “pan” pizza by oiling up my cast iron skillet (preheated in the oven) and tossing the pizza crust in there, then topping and baking. I was not disappointed. My pizza skillet turned out perfectly…better than any thinner crust pizza I’ve ever made. I think that this pizza skillet might be my new “go-to” way to make pizza!

For an easy homemade take on thick crust pan pizza, try my pizza skillet!

This post contains affiliate links. This means that if you click through a link and make a purchase, I will receive a small commission. This does not affect the cost to you. For more information, please see my disclosures. Thank you for supporting my blog!

Shared on The Weekend Potluck on The Country Cook!

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Mary

Yield: 2-4 servings

Quick and Easy Pizza Skillet

10 minPrep Time:

12 minCook Time:

22 minTotal Time:

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Ingredients

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
12-16 ounces fresh pizza dough (make it yourself or buy a ball at the grocery store or your favorite pizza shop)
1/4 cup tomato sauce
1/2 teaspoon fresh oregano
4 ounces fresh mozzarella, thinly sliced
desired toppings (don't overdo it or the pizza will get soggy)

Instructions

Place an oven rack in the highest position. Place a 10-inch cast iron skillet in the oven and preheat to 450 degrees. On a lightly-floured surface, roll the pizza dough out into a 10-inch circle.
When the oven has preheated, remove the skillet and pour in two tablespoons of the oil, then swirl around to coat the bottom of the pan. Carefully transfer the circle of pizza dough to the pan. You'll have to do some arranging to fill up the whole pan; be careful not to burn yourself.
Brush the top of the pizza dough with the remaining tablespoon of oil. Spread the tomato sauce on the dough, leaving about 1/2-inch of the dough at the edges. Sprinkle the oregano over the sauce. Top with the cheese and desired toppings.
Bake the pizza for 10-12 minutes or until the cheese is lightly browned. If desired, broil lightly for a couple of minutes to brown the cheese. Use a large spatula to remove the pizza from the pan and slice. Serve immediately.

Notes

Prep time does not include time to make your own pizza dough.

https://chattavore.com/pizza-skillet/

Instant Pot Water Test

January 17, 2018

The Instant Pot water test is a quick and easy way to make sure your new Instant Pot works without having to chance ruining food! Instant Pot water test video included.

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How are you guys liking my new Instant Pot posts and videos? I’ll have an Instant Pot recipe for you next week, and I promise I will get organized enough to get you all some more (non-Instant Pot) recipes soon.

New Instant Pot?

Anyway, if you got a new Instant Pot for Christmas but haven’t quite had the courage to start using it yet, you’re going to want to do the Instant Pot water test. I bought a new Instant Pot – the Instant Pot Ultra 60 – last week so I can try some fun experiments with an Instant Pot that’s a little fancier than the Duo 60 I’ve been using (and loving) for the last 2+ years. The first thing that I needed to do before cooking in it was a water test.

Why Water Test Your Instant Pot?

The purpose of the Instant Pot water test is to make sure that your Instant Pot seals, comes to pressure, counts down, and depressurizes like it’s supposed to without the threat of wasting some perfectly good food. The User’s Manual says that it’s optional, but why wouldn’t you do it?
It takes less than half an hour then you’re ready to cook!

For more videos, be sure to follow my YouTube channel!

Water Testing is Easy!

All you need to do is:
1) Make sure that your inner pot and sealing ring are in place (do people actually try to cook without the inner pot? I’m sure it has happened.).
2) Pour in 3 cups of water (if you use water that is already hot, it will slightly decrease the amount of time it will take your Instant Pot to come to pressure).
3) Place the lid on your Instant Pot and lock it into place.
4) Make sure that the steam release valve on your Instant Pot is set to “sealing” (how to do this will vary based on what model you have).
5) Select the “steam” function by pressing the “steam” button or using the central control button to select “steam”.
6) Set the time for two minutes and press the “start” button. The Instant Pot will display “on” until it comes to full pressure. At this point the float valve will be in the up position and the timer will begin counting down.
7) When the time is up, your Instant Pot will beep. Press the “cancel” or “keep warm/cancel” button to turn the Instant Pot off.
8) Stand back and quick release the steam.

Your Instant Pot is water-tested and ready to cook now!

Be sure to leave me a comment to let me know what you want me to make in the Instant Pot and what questions you have!

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One-Pot Chicken Milano + Video

October 6, 2017

One-pot chicken Milano is a restaurant copycat with chicken, pasta, mushrooms, and sun-dried tomatoes in a creamy herb sauce. Minimal dishwashing required! Scroll down for video.

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Chain Restaurants

People are always shocked when they find out that I do occasionally eat at chain restaurants. With all the great locally-owned restaurants around here, I try not to make it a super-regular event, but I definitely don’t turn my nose up at chain restaurants. Philip and I used to love Romano’s Macaroni Grill, which no longer has a location here in Chattanooga (but actually, we only ate at that one once – we used to go to the one at Opry Mills every time we went there).

Chicken Milano

When we went there I would always order chicken Milano – chicken, bowtie pasta, sun-dried tomatoes, and mushrooms in a creamy herb sauce. I used to make it at home using a recipe that I had found that incorporated a packaged herb blend. I haven’t made that in years, and chicken Milano is no longer on Macaroni Grill’s menu. I thought about it recently, though, and decided that I had to have it.

One Pot Meal

It seemed like a perfect dish to turn into a one-pot recipe. I mean, why on earth would you need to use more than one pot to sauté chicken and mushrooms and cook some pasta? To me, one-pot dishes means that, even if you do a little cooking in stages, everything cooks together in the same pot at some point so that all the flavors meld perfectly. There’s no need to take the chicken and mushrooms out of the pot to boil the pasta in water then fool with draining it. When you use just a little bit of liquid, the pasta soaks all of the liquid up and achieves a perfect al denté consistency, while releasing some of its starch to thicken up the liquid that remains.

This tastes just like the chicken Milano that I remember, or maybe even better. We ate leftovers for dinner a couple of nights later and it made a perfect Thermos meal for my lunch later in the week.

Shared on Meal Plan Monday on Southern Plate!

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Mary

Yield: 4-6 servings

One-Pot Chicken Milano

10 minPrep Time:

25 minCook Time:

35 minTotal Time:

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Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 pound boneless, skinless chicken thighs, trimmed and cut into bite-sized pieces
8 ounces mushrooms (button or cremini), cleaned and sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons Italian seasoning
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups low-sodium chicken stock (I use Kitchen Basics brand)
1 1/2 cups half and half or milk
8 ounces (2 1/2 cups) farfalle (bow tie) pasta
1 cup oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, thinly sliced (you can use regular, i.e. not oil-packed, but if you do, add the sun-dried tomatoes when you add the pasta)
salt and pepper to taste
Grated Parmesan cheese for topping
chopped fresh Italian parsley for topping (optional)

Instructions

Set a 6- or 8-quart Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the butter and one tablespoon of the olive oil. Allow the butter to melt. Season the chicken with salt and pepper and add to the pan. Cook, stirring constantly, until no pink remains on the outside of the chicken. Use a slotted spoon to remove the chicken from the pan.
Add the other tablespoon of olive oil. Add the mushrooms to the pan and cook until softened, then add the garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds.
Add the liquid and the pasta, then add the Italian seasoning and stir to combine. Add the chicken back to the pan and stir again.
Bring the liquid to a boil then reduce the heat to medium. Cook, stirring frequently to keep the pasta from sticking to the bottom of the pot, until the pasta is al denté and the liquid is thickened, about 15 minutes. The chicken should be cooked through. Stir in the sun-dried tomatoes and salt and pepper to taste.
Serve immediately with Parmesan cheese and chopped Italian parsley for topping.

https://chattavore.com/one-pot-chicken-milano/

This post contains affiliate links. This means that if you click a link and make a purchase, I will receive a small commission. This does not affect the cost to you. For more information, please see my disclosures. Thank you for supporting my blog!

Recommended for this recipe:

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Creamy Avocado Lime Pasta

White Skillet Chicken Lasagna

One-Pot Spaghetti with Meat Sauce

Broccoli and Mushroom Pasta Skillet

BBQ Bacon Smashed Burgers

September 29, 2017

In my opinion, these smashed burgers are the PERFECT burgers! BBQ sauce, bacon, and caramelized onions make them even better!

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Homemade Burgers: Better or Worse?

There was a time in my life where I was convinced that I would never be able to make a burger that was as good as the burgers that I ate in restaurants. There was also a time in my life – a LONG time – where I was deceived into thinking that the quickest way to ruin a burger was to (gasp) smash it.

Turns out that neither of these things are true. While I still love a great restaurant burger, there is no home cooked dinner that excites me more to come home and cook than one of these burgers. That’s for two reasons: 1) they might be even better than a great restaurant burger; and (2) this dinner takes 15 minutes from start to finish, assuming that I made the caramelized onions ahead of time.

Smashed Burger Perfection!

Upscale fast food chains like Shake Shack, Smash Burger, and the grande dame, In-N-Out, have, pardon the pun, smashed the notion that you shouldn’t smash your burgers. All you need for a perfect smashed burger are: some good 80/20 ground beef, salt and pepper, a hot skillet (preferably cast iron), and a whole lotta pressure. Bonus points for a squishy potato roll (Martin’s is my preferred brand) and a fantastic burger sauce. Other toppings are optional, and I always err on the side of simplicity with my toppings.

This BBQ bacon smashed burger is quick, simple, and delicious, and you will need two napkins to eat it. That, my friends, is the sign of a great burger.

Shared on Meal Plan Monday on Southern Plate!

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Mary

Yield: 4 burgers

BBQ Bacon Smashed Burgers

5 minPrep Time:

5 minTotal Time:

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Ingredients

1 pound 80/20 ground beef, divided into 8 portions (I use a kitchen scale to weigh out 2 ounce portions)
salt and pepper
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
4 potato rolls (I get the smaller ones, not the big Mamma Jammas with sesame seeds on top)
1/2 cup BBQ sauce (store-bought or use my recipe below)
4 slices American cheese (I like the kind that isn't wrapped in plastic, like Land O'Lakes)
4 slices bacon
caramelized onions

For the BBQ sauce

1/2 cup ketchup
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon liquid smoke
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)
salt and pepper, to taste

Instructions

If you are making your own BBQ sauce, whisk the ingredients together in a small bowl. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.
Roll the ground beef into balls and salt and pepper both sides of each ball.
Place a 10-12 inch cast iron skillet over medium heat and melt one tablespoon of butter. Brown the cut sides of two of the potato rolls. Remove to a place and repeat with the remaining butter and potato rolls.
Place each potato roll on a plate and spread both cut sides with BBQ sauce.
Increase the heat on the skillet to medium-high. Place 4 of the balls of ground beef in the hot skillet and smash with a flat spatula or even a clean trowel, using another spatula to increase the pressure, until the patties are as thin as you can get them. Cook for 1-2 minutes, until browned and slightly crispy. Flip the burgers and cook for another minute or two.
Top two of the burger patties with cheese and place the other patties on top. Allow the cheese to melt and remove to two of the prepped buns. Repeat the cooking process with the remaining ground beef.
Top the burgers with bacon and caramelized onions and serve immediately.

Notes

Prepping the buns before you begin cooking the burgers allows you to get the burgers from the pan to the table as quickly as possible!

https://chattavore.com/bbq-bacon-smashed-burgers/

Perfect Caramelized Onions + Video

September 25, 2017

If you’ve ever felt like “perfect caramelized onions” was an oxymoron or just more or less impossible, you need to check out my five tips below! Scroll down for video.

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Perfect Caramelized Onions?

For years I felt like perfect caramelized onions were going to elude me forever. I always seemed to end up with what looked like blackened worms in a pan…and that was even after I was an established food blogger. I got sick of it and started studying the methods of my favorites: America’s Test Kitchen, Alton Brown, and J. Kenji Lopez-Alt. I’ve combined what I’ve learned from those places with quite a bit of practice to bring you these tips for perfect caramelized onions.

1. Turn up the heat
For years I believed that you had to caramelize onions over ultra-low heat and that it took at least an hour to get them to that perfect syrupy consistency. Following the tips below, though, I have learned that I can keep my heat on medium to get my onions caramelized in 30 minutes or less.

2. Crowd the pan
This goes against everything we’ve been taught about caramelizing food, right? When we’re cooking meat and many vegetables (mushrooms come to mind here), we want to keep plenty of space in the pan so that the moisture doesn’t ruin our caramelization. With onions, though, we want the moisture. I use the smallest pan that I can fit all of my onions in and once they shrink up I keep them all pushed together. I spent too much time burning my onions in a dry pan to let it happen again!

3. Sweeten the pot
All caramelization is is a reaction that draws out the natural sugars in a food. It makes sense, then, that adding a little sugar to the pan will just speed up that process. I don’t add a lot…about a tablespoon of sugar for every cup or so of onions. You don’t want to add so much that it will make the onions overwhelmingly sweet, just enough to amp up the caramelization process.

4. Don’t be afraid to season
A little salt will draw out some of the moisture in your onions, so I always add a generous sprinkle when I first put the onions in the pan. Later, I add a little more to taste. Black pepper is also good at the end, of course, and you can also add some fresh herbs (thyme is especially apropos).

5. Liquid is your friend
Going back to number 3…I ruined a lot of onions back before I knew better by cooking them in too large of a pan without any liquid. Now, the second that I see that the natural moisture from my onions has evaporated, I throw in some liquid. I always always start with a little alcohol – whiskey or sherry – and then finish with plain old water. If you’d rather not, though, you can just use water, or even some chicken stock. I just add a little bit at a time, and as the liquid evaporates, I add a little more, until the onions have reached the consistency and color that I am looking for.

Shared on The Weekend Potluck on The Country Cook!

Click here to save this recipe on your easy cooking or side dishes boards on Pinterest!

Mary

Yield: 1 1/2 - 2 cups caramelized onions

Perfect Caramelized Onions

5 minPrep Time:

20 minCook Time:

25 minTotal Time:

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Ingredients

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 large onions, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup whiskey
1/2 cup water

Instructions

Set a medium pan over medium heat. Add the butter to the pan and allow it to melt.
Add the onions to the pan and stir to coat with the butter. Add the salt and the sugar and stir again.
Turn the heat up to medium-high and cook, stirring constantly, until the onions start to brown and browned bits cling to the pan. Add the whiskey and stir, scraping the pan, to deglaze.
Continue cooking, stirring constantly. As the liquid dries up, add water two tablespoons at a time. Repeat until all of the water is gone and the onions are golden and syrupy. Remove from the heat and add more salt if desired. Serve as desired.

Notes

This recipe can easily be scaled up or down. I frequently cook about half this amount, just using a smaller pan.

https://chattavore.com/perfect-caramelized-onions/