Cooking Advice

More from the mind of Dave to your plates and pots. Dave Scott from Davecancook.com is one our exclusive contributors and again hits a home run with how he, and now you, can make great Lasagna.

Dave went overtime on this recipe and it has come out as a two part’er’.

This first viedo keys on making the sauce which is “the most important part” to making your lasagna a hit.

We have fallin a bit behind and Dave never stops cooking so stay tuned as we catch up with more great ideas for men in the kitchen looking for something beyond pot pies.

When you get done learning how to whip up lasagna here see more of Dave and his creations in the kitchen at Dave’s Youtube.com page and be sure to leave a comment and tell him where you saw him, on Charlottecritic.com.

Just double click any video to pop in on his homepage.

Dave does requests so feel free to drop him a line as a Youtube comment or right here on our site and let hiom know what you want to challenge the “world’s greatest chef” to make next week in his ongoing series.

Here in the second video Dave takes the great sauce you just learned how to make and tells you where to stick it! I mean stick to the ribs of course!

Dave is recovering from the flu, and the first thing he did on his comeback tour in the kitchen is bring out the big guns with a recipe from his Grandma’s archive.

Nothing brings the strength back to a cook in the kitchen like Beef Stew Hash.

Not only has the beef stew revived our contributor Dave Scott, but this also means Dave Junior is tossed back behind the camera after bringing us Southern Style Breakfast.

Dave writes us the following insight on this kithen creation:

“Grandma’s Stew Beef Hash!! Oh man, this is good. Stew Beef, Potatoes and Onions. Grandma taguht me how to cook this and it is good. Grandma’s secret is in the onions. Two whole chopped onions stewed slow with beef and potatoes. You put the Hash on some grits and let the taste buds fly.”

This post is a contribution of cooking and great food ideas from the World’s Greatest Chef David Scott of Charleston, South Carolina. Dave shows us how to cook up dishes that men love to eat in a way that is so easy no man can mess it up. Stop back often to get the latest recipes every week.
You can view all Dave’s recipe contributions here.

Unfortunately Dave is down with the flu or perhaps Dave Jr. has him tied up in the basement so he can take over the kitchen and eat both plates of food. Dave’s son steps up to the plate and gives us what we have all been requesting which is how to cook traditional southern style breakfast.

Dave Jr. Produces 3 plates of greasy mixed and meat loaded breakfast. First he puts together a traditional grit breakfast on an omelete with sausage, bacon and plenty of grease, he matches that with a non-grit potato breakfast and lastly he shows you how to make french toast.

If you are incompetent in the kitchen and realize that nothing is as good as greasy Southern American-style breakfast, this is the lesson to show you how to make it right.

Now thats an interesting name? and since its a headline of sorts, anyone still reading at this point is apparently a victim of its hook and edge.

White trash Chowder is yet another mutant stew recipe we made while daydreaming at the supermarket. Our goal here was a “white colored” hearty stew, based on the main ingredients of “pork & beans”.

The fact is Pork and beans are both easy to work with ingredients so this name leaves us with alot of room to wiggle and get it right.
Ingredients for this great stew are

Pork Chops (4-5) trimmed into stew sized pieces
8oz white mushrooms (you pick the type)
1 can White kernal corn
1 White onion
1 can pinto beans.
1 cup white rice.
Pinch of White pepper (any pepper is fine, this is for effect)
3-4 slices of bacon cut into small pieces
Salt
Adobo
Garlic Salt
Flour or bisquick
Olive Oil

We start out by prepping it all as usual and get a few money shots with the camera for this site. Chop the pork chops into small cubes or chunks for stew, quarter the mushrooms, and chunk the onion. Chop the onion into good size chunks as well, these should be bigger than diced. The size should be to your preference.

Grab a can or bag (we used a coffee can) throw in this 1 cup of bisquick or flour, a tablespoon of salt, Adobo, Garlic Powder and a few pinches of curry powder. Also add the white pepper (or black) to your taste preference. Remember that in stew a little pepper goes a long way, so just a 4-5 shakes should do it right unless you like it spicy. If you like it spicy use red pepper here for a nice kick.

Into this can throw the 4-5 chunked pork chops.

These stew chunks end up being about to large handfuls. Add this to the can and add the entire small to medium onion cut into chunks as well. Shake the can up and coat it all. Now pour the mixture into the strainer and get all the loose powder off it. If this feels like panning for gold, keep in mind that it kinda is once your hungry.

In a skillet heat up olive oil (enough to cover the bottom of the pan). Put the small handful of fine chopped bacon into this pan and let it crackle for 3-5 minutes. Now throw in the pork and onion with the flur and spice coating. Cook this for 5-10 minutes moving it around and browing and crisping the outside of the pork. Drain off any extra oil, though there shouldnt really be much if any with the flour soaking it up.

Pour this into your stewpot, turn it up to medium. When the pan starts sizzling pour in enough water to cover the meat completely, likely 3 cups or so. At this time add any more salt or red pepper to suit your tastes and let this cook covered on med heat for 45 minutes, and let some of the water cook off.

The meat should still be under water at this point. Pour in the cup of rice and the can of white kernel corn. Let this cook for 10-15 more minutes till the rice look ready. Remember we are making soup so it shoul all be floating and underwater, add a cup or two more if needed since the rice absorbs some. You can see the image of this stage here to see the consistency we were going for.

If you want to taste the progress it should be slightly salty and you should taste the curry just a bit too, though you dont reeally taste the pepper much. Adjust it to be right.

Pour in the mushroom and the canned pinto beans. These ingredients get soft fast so we are close to done. After about 10 minutes you should be hot and thick stew as shown in the pics here. Serve it up with a shake or garlic powder and white pepper if you like flavor, though this was one of the better stews we have made.

This is a great next day stew, you will find out since this make about 4-6 big bowls.
See all the pics of this nice man meal recipe here.

This post is a contribution of cooking and great food ideas from the World’s Greatest Chef David Scott of Charleston, South Carolina. Dave shows us how to cook up dishes that men love to eat in a way that is so easy no man can mess it up. Stop back often to get the latest recipes every week.
You can view all Dave’s recipe contributions here.

I hit Dave up for a request on the coming March madness NCAA tourney. I had hopes for “finger foods with flair” unique and heavy enough to fill up a room full of semi-cultured men. Dipping is compulsive behavior around the tourney time of year and seems this year will be an epidemic.

Teriyaki hot wings are a sure fire way to impress your fanciest Duke-fan friend, while filling up the 340lb guy for UNC, see the recipe then go eat this recipe.

Good morning on this monday!

Here’s another episode of Carolina Cooking With Dave. He’s done it again with a crazy array of four flavors for spicing up our chicken. He even stirs up some dippin’ sauce tasty enough to make your mouth water and eyes tear. This takes an innocent snack and makes it decadent. A great way to kick off March Madness!!

Dave says “We aren’t dipping chips. We are dipping Meat!”

This post is a contribution of cooking and great food ideas from the “World’s Greatest Chef” David Scott of Charleston, South Carolina. Dave shows us how to cook up dishes that men love to eat in a way that is so easy no man can mess it up. Stop back often to get the latest recipes every week.
You can view all Dave’s recipe contributions here.

We are slowly catching up on the posts by Dave. We are using his archived recipes. In the future we wont be posting “by Dave” recipes daily like we are now.

Dave has promised us one per week every Monday. With this promise every Tuesday night you can have a new meal from the Southern kitchen master and our very appreciated contributor from this day forward.

Here is Dave making up Spaghetti Carbonara.

How can you possible not like eating pasta with cheese and bacon?

Just the ingredients of this dish served on side dish plates would be great, so when its cooked to perfection this is a great dish that will please.

Picture yourself stirring this cheese and bacon packed bowl of pasta before you hit it with salt and red pepper and serve it up to company, or perhaps you have visons of the great leftover this would make at midnight when you are craving a snack.

Enjoy this sweet “man favorite” dish!

So man was it hard to read through and watch the sizzling of the pork steaks, BBQ and “southern fried everything’s” that Dave was making in our last post about the Chef Dave series from South Carolina. The photos from this little (big) meal are here in the gallery as well. Next time you see a caterer cutting little radishes in to the shapes of flowers I want you to take a huge pot of this pork hash and brain him with it.

Cooking With Dave post

I have since contacted Chef Dave directly and he sounded pretty excited about showing more people what he loves to do. Dave promises us some special and new recipe videos in the coming weeks to give everyone some march madness cooking ideas.

In hopes that Dave reads this I am asking him to give me something for my grill for the upcoming NCAA tournament. I need a juicy southern style chicken or pork meal that I can grill and lather up with sauce while I watch the basketball games this march. I am sure Chef Dave will hit us with some simple to make tasty dipping meals from the south.

After watching through this video from dave where he makes Pork Butt Roast into the tastiest BBQ hash you ever seen with garlic and onions I was inspired to learn from him and contribute a bit myself.

I didnt have Boston Butt Roast to work with but I did have Butt roast that had been cut to ribs or steak size slabs and that would work just as well. I had a few more bones to contend with but they all fall right out anyhow.

I started last night by dropping my Boston Butt slices into the pot I would use the next day.

The pot had water, black pepper, salt, garlic powder and fresh onion and minced garlic in it. I also added about 1/2 a cup of this great spicy hot terriyaki sauce to the water to add a hot spicy and salty taste to the meat.

Now when the next day rolls around I will pour this water out and start with this presoaked and spiced up pork. Not much of a change from Dave yet, maybe a bit spicier for my tastes.

NEXT DAY:
Next day rolls around and I now pick up with Dave’s tutorial and filled my pan with onions, minced garlic, italian seasoning, pepper and salt. I also added to mine some of my Montreal steakseasoning which is basically a salt and cracked black pepper taste and makes the meal a bit hotter for my personal tastes.

Into this pot I seared the pork like Dave suggests and get it that grilled look all around the outside before lowering the heat for about 2 hours. I chopped and added some hickory smoked bacon (Carolina Pride!) to the pork before this 2 hour simmer stretch. This always adds such a nice hickory smell and flavor to my kitchen.

After the 2 hours, drained it all, got the nasty grease out of the meat.

At this stage where the BBQ sauce goes in I used a bottle of the best sauce I have discovered thus far in my sauce search.

This sauce is Grill mates Hickory BBQ. This is one we raved about in the ultimate sauce post.

This Hickory BBQ goes great with the bacon in the pork and is by far the best BBQ sauce I have used to date. If you go through the time of following Dave’s Lesson on pork, then do yourself a favor and use this sauce.

Dump the whole bottle into your pork as Dave shows and mix it so it breaks into hash. Cook on low to medium heat for about 30-40 minutes more and you get a nice thick BBQ hash with the tangiest swetest sauce you ever had on your plate.

This is where we gave a it a twist and I challenge my new associate Dave to try this one for himself. We dont have enough Carolina experience in my kitchen to make the lima beans and greens like Dave to go with our pork hash, so we gave it our family twist. We ate our Pork hash with Bollitos AKA Bollitos de harina (boiled flour balls).

You can see the recipe for the dominican style ones here:
* 2 cups of medium grain corn meal
* 1 teaspoon of sugar
* 2 tablespoons of butter.
* 2 tablespoons of oil
* Salt

1. Mix corn meal, 3/4 cup of boiling water, sugar, 2 teaspoons of salt and butter. Put 1 1/2 tablespoon of the mixture in the palm of your hand. Mix well with a spatula until you obtain a somewhat-sticky dough. Make into cigar-shaped rolls.
2. Boil in abundant water to which you will add the oil and 2 tablespoons of salt for approximately 35 minutes or until well cooked inside. If you are going to use them for sancocho, skip this step and just add them to boil in the preparation at the point indicated by the sancocho recipe.

You can see from the photos that we serve the Venezuelan style ones in my house which are soft and basically I call them Latino baked potatos because in the end they look and eat like one.

When slapped with butter or guacamole and some pepper these really soak up the flavor of whatever BBQ sauce and meat you mix wth them on your plate.

Thanks to Dave for his inspiration and the meal that is waiting for my downstairs as I type this.

Southern White Gravy With Dave

One of many cooking lessons on the web.

Cooking gravy with Dave brings us the trick to good southern gravy and how to make it think and white as you like it.

A nice authentic recipe and clear instructions to Southern Style Gravy.

Next up Cooking With Dave brings us Southern Fried Steaks, another 7 minute lesson to authentic Charlotte Southern style steaks.

Southern Fried Pork Steaks With Dave

And last up is the homerun from “Cooking With Dave” the world’s greatest chef (according to him). Daves thick southern style and accent caught my eye, and his ability to doo 100 things with pork makes him all about what Charlottecritic.com loves the most.

Thanks to Dave for 3 nice video lessons in the klitchen.

We have shot Dave an email and asked him to contribute more of these great southern authentic style recipes for our readers and get you men in the kitchen making some pork.

Dave is on his way to becoming a handy and smart part of the kitchen here at Charlottecritic.com.

Original recipe Yammys sauce is gonna be my pick of the year. It was basically the last one I picked to soak some Chicken breasts in and have on the grill. I was walking and daydreaming at Bloom when this label screamed hometown flavor at me. You can’t get a more local look or feel that this white on white bottle of red sauce. You can see other Yamm’y Inventions here http://www.uncleyammys.com/

Pop the top to this local bottled excellent product and you taste honey sweetness with red pepper fire underneath. They tout themselves as sweet with a little bite, but the truth is Uncle Yammy’s Original Grillin Sauce has a bit more bite then they advertise. This sauce if not cooked off on a hot grill will make a medium to spicy cut of meat best suited for men.

This is a semi hot sauce with definate stick to your finger sweet ingredients.

Made for beef pork, fish or Chicken and strong enough flavor to last past the grillin, this is my personal choice of the year. Along with the excellent Lawrys Steak and Chop these are some sauces I will stock in my fridge all grillin season.

Yu can follow along with some of the local and not-so-local flavors we have tried on our great sauce search here.

Chicken Pot Pie the way we like it.

Here is a slow learners recipe to making a huge family meal that will STICK to your insides all day!

Special Thanks to ‘Luis the cajun super chef’ for doing the prep work on this fat meal!

Got a bit bored and decided to clone together some common homemade pot pie recipes with some of the chicken stew recipes we had been tinering with and enjoying here at home.

You will need:

4 Boneless Chicken Breast
4 Carrots
4 White potatos
1 Medium Onion (your choice what kind)
8oz Sliced Baby Bella Mushrooms (or white whatever)
6-7 Slices of bacon
Handful of fresh cilantro
1 garlic clove
Box of Bisquick
about a cup of milk to make the bisquick
Curry Powder
Black Pepper
Salt
Put the four chicken breasts in a pot of boiling water, boil them for about 10 minutes till they would be about 90% coooked throughout. Remove them from the water and put about 1-2 cups of this water aside for later use, you can dump the rest.

Chop the potatos and carrots into 1 inch cubes, same size so they cook the same as they boil. Toss them all into a pot of boiling salted water.

In the skillet put the mushrooms as is, slice the onion into half rings or a good size to end up on your big spoon, chop the cilantro and toss it in the pan, cut the bacon into small 1 inch sized pieces, add a small splash of olive oil to the pan.

Sizzle this on medium heat till the bacon looks about half done and the onions are getting nicely browned.

When the pan looks nice and greasy and sizzling toss in the chicken cut into 1 inch cubes, add to this 1 can of campbells cream of chicken soup and the 2 cups of borth water from the chicken you boiled. Add 1 teaspoon of curry powder to the skillet as well. You should have a nice thick stew with a yellowish tint to it.

Let this simmer for about 10 minutes having minced the garlic (or pressed) and toss it in the sauce and stirred. Also add your salt and black pepper to your preference at this point. I also like to add a few pinches of red pepper here but that is a preference thing.

Once the potatoes and carrots are soft to poke with a fork, strain them and add them to this now LOADED skillet and stir together lightly.

In a bowl, mix about half a box of bisquick with about 1 cup of milk. Bisquick can be used at many consistencies, but you want to mix it well and shoot for a finished product product about that of Elmers glue or say…pancake batter. The biscuit batter need to be pourable, but not watery.

The stew in the skillet should be very thick and chunky with some broth but not too much. Pour the entire pan contents into a glass 9×12 pan. Press it with a spatula so its flat and level across. You want no gulley cracks or valleys in the flat pressed filler or the batter will go right in the holes. Our next step is to pour the new concrete floor.

Now pour the batter over the top of the mixture, it should spread flat and cover the entire top of the filler so you cant see anything peeking through. You should get a nice thin solid coat on the top. Use as little as you can, but enough to cover the entire top of the mixture FROM POURING IT naturally.

Bake this in your 350 f preheated oven till the top looks browned like pie crust, should take about 15-20 minutes.

Take this baby out and let it cool for about 10 minutes, then get out the spatula and serve it like Lasagna and impress your peeps.

Here is the Chicken Pot Pie Money Shot!

“Tastes like Chunky Soup in a pie crust” my couch potatos shouted.

This is a must try no brainer recipe that any home-cook wannabe can pull off.

chicken pot pie, chicken recipe, pot pie recipe, chicken ideas, chicken meals, low fat recipes, chicken recipes