You all know I love to cook and here is a special post about the different types of salt you can cook with! I am embarrassed to say I had no idea there was so many types of salt to cook with! So now I am on a mission to try some out! And now if any recipes call for any of these salts, this is a quick reference on the kind of salt it is!

This is a post from Chad Bonin of Instawares restaurant supplies and equipment company

Smoked Salt

A rarity, this is salt that has been smoked, seasoned with liquid smoke, or mixed with smoke-flavored maltodextrin. This version of salt works best as a seasoning where you also want to add a bit of smoked seasoning to, such as avocados, salmon, or even roasted veggies.

Kosher Salt

A larger grain without iodine added, and is not actually “kosher”, but is used in the process of koshering meats, by being able to draw blood out of meat. It’s suggested not to use this type of salt when it comes to baking with small liquids, as the salt will likely remain after baking.

Pickling Salt

A very small grain salt, this can clump from moisture. Used largely in the titular pickling action, it’s actually a pretty good salt for sticking to items, due to its small size.

Kala Namak

A dark, rotten-smelling, large grain salt, this type of salt is used in many Indian dishes, but can also supply an egg flavor for vegans. It can be used as such in tofu to mimic egg salad. It can also be used as a laxative and digestive aide.

Black Lava Salt

For decorative purposes, this is sea salt that’s been blended with activated charcoal.

Sea Salt

Salt that comes from the evaporation of seawater, it can be different colors due to the minerals from the area. A larger grain, some find this variation to have a better taste.

Himalayan Sea Salt

This is just a marketing term for “halite”, better known as “rock salt”.

Halite/Rock Salt

Large chunks of salt traditionally used to reduce the melting point of ice for the purposes of clearing roads, rock salt can also be ground or powdered into table salt, or used as a curing salt.

Iodized Salt

Salt with iodine added to fight iodine deficiency, this is traditional table salt that you’ll find with just a slight nutritious element.

Tablet Salt

Table salt is the ever-present salt you’ll find in every restaurant and kitchen, although might be mixed up with iodized salt.

Glauber’s Salt

Not meant for eating, Glauber’s Salt, is used in cooling and heating elements.

Epsom Salt

Epsom Salt is a dessicant and a drying agent, used to soothe sore muscles and improve crops. For foodies, it can be used in making tofu.

Shopping online at Instawares also provides a wide selection of Dinnerware so check them out!

This is a sponsored post from instawares.

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If you are a vegetarian you probably aren’t reading this recipe but if you still are you might want to stop. Funny story alert:

So my husband is a big hunter and not only does he hunt, we eat everything he gets. We save so much money each year by eating the free meat he kills but let me preface this. I do not take part in any part of the hunting, catching and what not. I just want the meat to show up in my refrigerator all nice and packaged. My husband got a wild turkey last weekend and I was super excited since we were almost out of the elk he got last year.

When it showed up in my fridge…it still had HAIR ON IT! Hair/feathers were swimming around on top of the meat and I refused to cook it until that had been taken care of. Well a week goes by and I either let the meat go bad or take care of the de-feathering myself. I think I have been living in a colorado neighborhood to long (we lived in the country in Louisiana) because it made me want to gag!

Well since I am more worried about spending money than a feathery turkey I decided to make turkey and dumplin’s today. It ‘s literally the best recipe I’ve ever tried. You can use chicken but of course I chose the turkey. If you happen to use turkey, let it cook for at least 1-2 hours or the meat will be tough.

I adapted this recipe from The Pioneer woman and like all of her recipes, it did not disappoint! But if I EVER see another hairy meat choice I will revolt!

This is the turkey browning. I am pretty sure I could have just eaten the turkey like this!

The vegetables and bacon sautéing.

 Don’t forget to pin this recipe on Pinterest here!

I found this recipe on Pinterest the other day and HAD to try it! I never ate meatloaf as a kid but the past few years, I make it all the time! So when I saw this I had to make it.

These are actually super simple to make and I think they would be a hit at any party! Just remember, spray your muffin pan really well. I didn’t and some of the cupcakes stuck to the pan.

Meatloaf cupcakes recipe:

1-2 t butter
1 cup onions
1/2 cup diced carrots
1/2 cup diced celery
1 t dried oregano
2 cloves of garlic, mined
1 cup ketchup
1 1/2 pds beef ( I used 2 small packages)
1 cup italian bread crumbs
2 T mustard (I have always used mustard in my recipes and this is the first one i’ve found that does!)
2 T worcestershire sauce
1/4 t black pepper
2 eggs
mashed potatoes
1/2 cup or 1 cup cheese

cooked bacon and green onions for the top

Get ready, get set….cook!

Preheat the over to 350 degrees.

Saute the butter, onions, carrots, and celery for a couple of minutes until the onions are transparent.

Add in the oregano and garlic and cook another 2 minutes.

Combine sauted items in large bowl with 1/2 cup ketchup, and rest of ingredients up to the eggs. I added everything but the meat, stirred the items together, then added the meat. If you handle the meat to much, it won’t stick together as well. Spray your muffin pan, and add meatlaf mixture. Top it with a little ketchup and cook for 20-25 minutes or until 160 degrees.

While cooking make your mashed potatoes. I cooked about 5 potatoes until very soft (boiled the peeled potatoes for 20 mins). Then put in a mixer (or use a hand mixture) and beat. Add 1/2 cup -1 cup cheese. Beat until melted. Add a little milk, salt and pepper to taste. I also added a little cajun seasoning to my potatoes. Just make sure they are smooth.

Put potatoes in a ziploc bag and cut off the tip. This way you can pipe the mashed potatoes onto the top of the meatloaf cupcakes.

Let the meatloafs cool a little then take out of the muffin pan. Pipe potatoes on top and add bacon and green onions and serve!

recipe adapted from  six sisters stuff

Make sure to repin this recipe here!

Swamp Cookies:

1/2 cup butter softened
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs
1 tsp soda
1 tsp salt
2 1/4 cups flour
Mix last ingredients together then fold in chocolate chips. I like the milk chocolate and white chcocalte.
Bake at 375* for 8-10 minutes.
The key to good cookies is not to overbake them! I take them out when they are barely brown on top then let them sit on the hot pan outside of the oven for a few more minutes.

Very easy & delicious meal we eat for dinner quite often. Chop up tomatoes, zucchini, & red bell peppers.

Chop onions & saute in small amount of olive oil.  They need to be caramalized until brown. Then add veggies & saute until just barely crisp.  Add seasoning to taste (salt, pepper, Tony’s Chachere’s seasoning)

Cook healthy pasta as directed.

Place drained pasta on plate, then add vegetables & sprinkle with grated parmesan cheese. Delicious!

I was behind in bringing my butter to room temp. So turn the oven on, set the butter on top of stove and it bring its down quick!

This is an example of your dough being to sticky.

It needs to look like this, only sticking to the hook. I love my kitchen aid!

Bacon and Cheese Bread:
I am sort of a homemade bread snob as well as a knead your own bread junkie but today I didn’t have the time. I needed homemade bread in under 2 hours so I pulled out my trusty bread machine.

(this is my all time favorite kitchen tool. Anyone I bake bread, I use my dough scraper to get the dough off my table)

Homemade bread:
Add 1 1/2 hot water
1/3 cup oil
1/3 cup honey
1 teaspoon salt
4 cups flour

THEN on top add 1 tablespoon yeast. Do not let the yeast touch the water, it needs to go on top of the flour. And once the bread machine starts to knead it, the water will be the perfect temperature to bloom the yeast.

If you want to hand knead, add the ingrediants the same way, knead for 8 minutes then add to a bowl and cover with a damp towel.

2. I put my bread machine on the “dough” setting and let it rise for 1hour and 30 minutes. I took mine out right before it kneaded it to rise for the 2nd time. DO NOT let it knead it twice.

3. Half cook 5-6 pieces of bacon. You are going to cook the bacon in the bread so it does not have to be all the way cooked. Plus this lets more of the bacon drippings seep into the bread.

4. Flour your counter

5.  Roll out the dough and cut the edges. I couldn’t find my rolling pin so I had to use a cup, haha!

6. Add the bacon to the center.

7. Add some….or alot of cheese

8. Start braiding the bread from the top down to the bottom

9. Transfer over to a greased cookie sheet and bake at 375 for 20 minutes or until brown. FYI I NEVER time anything I cook. I just wait until it looks done.

9. Enjoy…it was amazing! And you can always brush a little butter over the top

I heard about the concept of freezer cooking from a few blogs and decided I would try my hand at it. I am living in a small town where the grocery deals a a little harder to find, so I decided I would try and save money with freezer cooking.

The concept is buy lots of ingredients for 1 particular meal, make a bunch of the recipe at once and freeze it in individual bags for later. Most of the blogs I read were all about the saving time aspect but I wanted to incorporate saving money as money as well.

This is one of my favorite recipes because it’s a healthy take on fried chicken and a sneak a great vegetable in it!

Cajun Chicken

Buy 3 packs of Chicken Drumsticks $3-4 a pack)

1 Bottle of Ranch Dressing (as a couponer you probably have some in your stockpile, I got tons of Ken’s Dressing for free a while back)

1 head of Cauliflower around $3

A little hot sauce and seasonings

1 bag of chips or breadcrumbs (free to $.50 a bag is what I normally pay) And remember which ever type of chip you use, your chicken will take on that take. All I had was corn chips so my chicken had a little corn taste.

Directions:

Steam the Cauliflower for about 10 minutes or until soft.

Puree the Cauliflower in a blender until smooth.

This is the pack of chicken for my family of 5.

Put all the chicken in a bag and put 1 cup of Cauliflower in top. Then put 3 T of Ranch dressing on top of that (just 3 squirts of the ranch dressing, I didn’t really measure it ). Then I put some seasoning on top of that and a little hot sauce.

These are my 3 bags that I labeled as “cajun chicken”, shook up a little, and made sure all the marinade was even. I put 2 in the freezer and 1 in the fridge because we ate one that night.

Next put your chips in a blender (if you are using bread crumbs, you will skip that step) and make really fine.

Put in one bowl to bread the chicken then put breaded chicken in dish for cooking.

Cook at 400 for about 30 minutes or until the internal temp is 160 degrees.

And now I have 2 more meals for 2 other nights that I just have to un thaw and roll in the breading mixture.

Welcome to a little cajun cooking from yours truly the Cajun Couponer!

Oatmeal Squares:

2 1/2 c. old fashioned oats
2 c. flour
1 c. sugar
1 c. brown sugar
1 c. veg. oil
2 eggs
1 tsp. soda
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. vanilla
1 t cinnamon
1-2 t milk
Optional: 1 c. chocolate chips, 1 c. butterscotch chips, 1c. nuts, and/or 1 c. raisins

Mix together and spread evenly in a greased 13×9 pan.
Bake 325* for 30 minutes.

This recipe was from Kari, a friend of mine from Louisiana but I did not use sugar in mine, I used sucanat which is a natural sugar that even diabetics can tolorate.

And I added a little melted almond bark on top.

I feel like I make homemade pizza at least once a week. It’s way cheaper and you can make it as healthy as you like! Here are some great coupons to get you started!

Go here to get a great king cake recipe!

I love to try out new places to eat and local places are top of my list.

Larkburger just moved into NorthGlenn, CO and we couldn’t wait to try it out!

We took the fam and and the kids and let me tell you, I was very impressed at the healthy options. Not only were their drinks options for the kiddos, organic milk or juice, their meal also came with an apple.

The 1 thing that threw me off for a minute was the portion size. The fries were a moderate portion and the burgers were less than humongeos which I appreciated! No one needs a supersized mcdonalds meal but I think as a country we have gotten accustomed to bigger is better but it’s not always better for our health or wasteline.

And to be honest, I was totally full and didn’t even want anything more!

They have many gluten free options, where commercial composting is available, Larkburger composts 100% of its consumer packaging, and they focus on all natural, healthy ingrediants.

Oh and the parmasen truffle fries….best fries ever!

Go here to see if there is a location near you but they only have locations in Colorado!

And yes that is the hand of my youngest son who couldn’t wait to dive in!

If you know me at all, you know I am VERY forgetful! My sister was blessed with the organized personality and I am more of a free spirit…which means I have a thousand thoughts going on which makes it easy to forget some things.

Here is the Gumbo recipe I use and have been promising for quite some time.

This is from one of the best cooks I have ever met, Kay Robertson of A&E’s new series Duck Dynasty, and Duck Commander.

The Duck Commander crew is from my hometown of West Monroe, LA and I actually appeared in Duckmen 5, haha! They are a family who has made a very successful business out of building homemade duck calls, and it still cracks me up when I can walk into Bass Pro and see there products! Here is Mrs. Kay’s recipe for Duck Gumbo.

Here is a video on what the Duck Commander crew like to eat! I sure miss Louisiana.

Ingredients

• 8 ducks
• salt
• pepper
• bay leaf
• flour
• garlic
• peanut oil
• 3 white onions
• 3 green onions
• parsley
• Cayenne pepper
• Sausage
• COOK – ORIGINAL SEASONING

Instructions

1. Place 8 fully cleaned ducks into a large pot filled with water.
2. Add Salt and Black Pepper to taste, and one bay leaf to pot.
3. Boil ducks for 2-1/2 hours.
4. While your ducks are boiling you can prepare your roux in another large pot.
5. For 8 ducks, mix 3 cups of flour and 3 cups of peanut oil.
6. After stirring your flour and oil to a consistent paste, heat it on a medium-low temperature.
7. Stir thoroughly until color is a dark chocolate brown. (Should take 35-40 minutes).
8. Dice up 3 white onions, 3 green onions, and a handful of parsley.
9. Once your roux is dark brown, mix in your onions and parsley. (watch out for the steam)
10. Add a dab of garlic
11. After your ducks have boiled for 2-1/2 hours. Take them out of the pot (saving your broth) and separate the meat from bone.
12. Take your broth and fill your roux pot just over half full.
13. Turn your heat up to boiling again.
14. When the peanut oil rises to the top of your pot remove it with a spoon.
15. Sprinkle a small amount Cayenne Pepper and Duck Commander seasoning into the pot.
16. Dice up some sausage into nickel size pieces.
17. Then dump all your duck meat and sausage into your gumbo.
18. Let it simmer for at least 3-4 hours.
19. Serve gumbo over rice and Enjoy!

Here is the White Chocolate Creme Brulee I was raving about on facebook. This is my dad’s recipe, and well let’s just say I have eaten 4 of them in the past 2 days But they sure were good!

1 quart heavy whipping cream

8 ounces white chococalte (I used the healthy white chocolate chunks from Whole Foods)

1 cup egg yolks or 1 dozen eggs

2/3 cup sugar

2T vanilla

sugar for topping(we used sucanat, a healthy form of sugar)

Preheat over to 225. Bring the cream to a simmer in a heat saucepan. Remove from the heat and add chocolate.

Let stand for 3-5 minutes and wisk until smooth.

Wisk the egg yolks, 2/3 cup sugar and vanilla in a mixing bowl. Add the white chocolate mixture, scraping from the sauce pot with a rubber spatula.

Fill your ramekins full (we used 1 cup per ramekin)

Bake for 1 hour. Take out and make sure the center is a little jiggly. Cool to room temp and put in fridge for about 1 hour. 

Now comes the fun part…

You will need a torch for this .

We bought a Creme Brulee torch at Williams Sonoma. The flame on that bad boy was no joke.

Sprinkle the top with sugar then torch until brown. Let cool then enjoy. Heaven in a ramekin. And by the way, I got the eggs for free from Safeway(free coupon in the mail) and the blue and red ramekins were free from Walgreens (used some register rewards).

2 new Libby coupons just popped up…get them while you can because these never last all day! Look under zip 77477 if you can find them! These are the coupons I always print to get super cheap canned goods.

$1/2 Libby’s fruit (not tropical) coupon
$1/4 Libby’s canned vegetables coupon

Check out this green bean recipe. This is always my go to side dish!

I can green beans

1 T butter or more if your feel crazy!

1 t cajun seasoning

1t greek seasoning

Put all ingrediants and sauce pan and stir. Let simmer around 20-30 minutes or just until your done cooking supper. And remember eyeball your seasonings. I NEVER measure mine, I just pour in enough until it looks right.

Cooking has always been my first passion. Even when I was terrible, I still loved to cook. My grandfather was a cook in the army and he taught my dad how to cook who taught me how to cook.

Everything in the south revolves around food. If someone asks you over to their house your first response is always “What should I bring” and if they say “nothing” you bring something anyway!

Here is a little baking tip for homemade buttermilk.

Buttermilk is exspensive but I have a shortcut.

We always have a gallon of milk in the fridge.

Go to walmart and they have huge bottles of lemon juice on sale for around $1.

When a recipe calls for buttermilk use this instead.

1 cup buttermilk

1 Tablespoon Lemon juice.

Let sit for 5-10 minutes and you have buttermilk. We just had these buttermilk biscuits for lunch…and yes they were good!