How to Cook A London Broil
A London broil is a great way to cook steak. Note that I said a “way to cook.” In other words, it’s a method, not a specific cut of meat. This distinction has confused many a novice cook.
Adding to the confusion, some butchers will call a cut of meat “London broil.” Usually, though, the cut of beef used for a London broil is flank steak, although other cuts, notably top round steak, may be substituted.
Flank steak is naturally tough, so you need to tenderize it (by pounding with a mallet) or marinate it, or both, before cooking with it. To turn it into a proper London broil, you … broil it. Makes sense, right? But not so fast … you can also grill it and still call it a London broil.
Here are two recipes, one for broiled London broil, and the other for grilled London broil.
London Broil (Broiled)
Ingredients
<>1 beef flank steak (1 to 2 pounds)
<>1/3 cup Italian salad dressing
<>2 tablespoons red wine or red wine vinegar
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tablespoons cooking oil
Directions
1. Combine salad dressing, wine or wine vinegar, garlic and cooking oil in a bowl to make a marinade.
2. Make several shallow cuts on both sides of the steak. Place the meat in a baking dish.
3. Brush the steak with the marinade; be sure to coat both sides. Cover pan with plastic wrap. Place in refrigerator and let marinate for 1 hour.
4. Remove from refrigerator. Pour off excess marinade.
5. Preheat oven broiler. Place pan with steak approximately 3 inches from top heat. Cook 5 to 8 minutes per side (to medium doneness).
6. Cut steak into slices and serve.
London Broil (Grilled)
Ingredients
3/4 cup cooking oil
3 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons red wine or red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons soy or Worcestershire sauce
1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon coarsely ground black pepper
1 tablespoon parsley flakes
1 flank steak (1 to 2 pounds)
Directions
1. Combine all ingredients except the meat in a bowl to make your marinade.
2. Make several shallow cuts on both sides of the steak and place in a baking dish. Try for a cross-hatching effect with several overlapping, diagonal cuts.
3. Brush steak with marinade, making sure to coat both sides. Cover pan with plastic wrap, place in refrigerator and let marinate for at least 1 hour.
4. Grill steak over hot charcoal or other high heat for 5 to 8 minutes per side, depending on the degree of doneness desired. Baste with leftover marinade if you wish.
5. Remove steak from grill, slice into thin strips, and serve.
Sarah Sandori is the food and entertaining columnist for the Solid Gold Info Writers Consortium. Have you ever wanted to be able to exactly duplicate a favorite dish from a favorite restaurant? Check out Sarah’s article where she reveals her source for the most mouth-watering secret restaurant recipes in America: http://www.solid-gold.info/most-wanted-recipes.html
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Trim Your Budget With Frugal Meals
In our family December means it’s the month where we spent too much on Christmas presents and try to make up for it from now until spring by saving money elsewhere. One place that you can quickly and easily save some cash is food. But how? frugal recipe to the rescue. Once you’ve mastered the art of frugal cooking, you can easily slim down your grocery budget whenever you need to. Let’s start with some frugal staples like:
- black beans
- bread
- lentils
- pinto beans
- crackers
- flour
Keep as many of these items as possible in your pantry and use them as fillers for meals or as quick and easy snacks. Cook up a few potatoes or a few cups of rice to stretch your main course. If you have just a small amount of meat leftover from a different meal, turn it into a casserole by adding some rice and beans and top it with some crumbled crackers. Instead of buying “cream of”… type soups to make your casserole, make your own out of butter, flour, water and some seasonings. A little dash of chicken bullion turns this simple white sauce into cream of chicken soup.
You don’t need to cook meat each night. Experiment with some beans or lentils instead. They are inexpensive, healthy and a great source of protein. You can also combine small amounts of meat and then get the bulk of your protein from beans. Good examples of this are chili and pork and beans. I use less than a half a pound of ground beef or ham each time I make these two dishes and then use plenty of beans to turn them into delicious and hardy meals.
Soups are another great way to cook frugally. Almost any leftovers can be turned into some sort of soup. I usually start with a chopped onion and any other raw vegetables I have, then I add various leftovers including meats, vegetables, rice, noodles etc. If it still doesn’t look like a filling enough meal, you can either add a can or two of vegetables or beans, or just add a homemade bread, some muffins or a dessert to complete dinner.
Don’t forget to visit my blog for more frugal tips. On Mondays’ you’ll find my frugal challenges there. They are fun ideas to help you spend less and make more with what you’ve got. Just get started and before you know it, you’ll be cooking on the cheap all the time.
Campfire Cooking and Recipes
Naturally I embraced my new passion with enthusiasm and have been collecting a number of 
camping recipes and tips. Since this is time of year when families are making vacation plans and some of our subscribers will be going camping, I wanted to share some of my newly gleaned information with you.
Note: For those of you who are not camping this year but are still driving to their destinations, please read my ezine article entitled, “Road Trip Tips for Kids.”
Pita Bread Pizza
1 package (6) Pita rounds
1 14 oz. jar prepared pizza sauce
1 8 oz. package shredded mozzarella cheese
Any other toppings you like
Place pita bread on hot grill and toast to desired doneness. Turn over, add pizza sauce, cheese and any other toppings you desire. Grill till cheese melts.
Source: Camping Recipes.com
Campfire Stew
1 pound hamburger
1 medium onion [optional]
2 cans mixed vegetables [don't drain]
1 bottle ketchup
In Dutch oven, brown hamburger with onions and then drain the fat. Return to fire/burner and add the remaining ingredients. Also, rinse your ketchup bottle with about 1/2 cup water and add. Let simmer for at least 30 minutes; but it is best to simmer for about an hour. If stew starts to become dry, just add a little water or more ketchup diluted with a little water for you ketchup lovers! Serve hot with warm bread or crackers. For added flavor, pour into your serving a little ketchup, steak sauce, Worcestershire, etc.
Source: Camping.About.Com
Cast Iron German Potato Salad
4 slices bacon
1 medium red onion, diced
1 pound red potatoes, precooked and cut in half
3 tbsp. white vinegar
Salt and pepper, to taste
Fry the slices of bacon in a cast iron skillet. When done, remove bacon with a slotted spoon and add onion to bacon drippings, cooking and stirring until onion is clear. Add potatoes and sear for 1 minute, cut side down, until brown and crisp. Remove from heat and pour the contents into a large mixing bowl, setting the skillet aside. Crumble the bacon and add to potatoes, along with the vinegar, salt and pepper, mixing thoroughly. Chill and serve.
For more cast iron skillet recipes, please see my ezine article “How to Care for Your Cast Iron Skillet (plus recipes).”
Foil Pocket Dinner
A friend of mine told me about this type of campfire/grill foil cooking which I thought was really cool. In addition the following simple recipe, I found hundreds more at ChuckwagonDiner.com:
Hamburger or Chicken
Potatoes, sliced
Carrots, sliced
Worcestershire Sauce
Foil Bag
Hamburger shaped into a patty or piece of chicken, sliced potatoes, and carrots. Place in a foil bag and add Worcestershire sauce. Cook on coals or grill until tender. Serve with green salad and/or fresh fruit.
Ziplock Omelets
One serving:
2 eggs
1 ziploc bag
Extra ingredients: cheese, mushrooms, ham, onion, green peppers, tomatoes, etc.
First have each individual write their name on a quart-size ziploc freezer bag. Crack 2 eggs into the bag (not more than 2) and shake to combine them. Add whatever extra ingredients that person wants in their omelet and mix contents together well. Be sure to squeeze extra air out of the Ziploc bag. Place the bags into rolling, boiling water for exactly 13 minutes. You can
cook 6-8 omelets in a large pot. Open the bags and the omelet will roll out easily. Be prepared for everyone to be amazed! Also makes a great conversation piece 
____________________________
Charlene Davis is an experienced and published writer specializing in business, retail, e-commerce, weddings, parenting, spirituality, and food. For more recipes and cooking articles, visit her Busy Moms Recipes blog at http://busymomsrecipes.blogspot.com or sign up for her free newsletter at http://www.busymomsrecipes.com
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How To Cook Lobster Tail
Learn How To Cook Lobster Tails
So you want to learn 
how to cook lobster tail? Excellent! When cooked the right way, lobster tail is one of the most succulent foods on the face of the earth….
Many beginner cooks are intimidated when it comes to cooking lobster tails and rightly so. They aren’t cheap! So you want to make certain you are cooking them correctly to avoid waste.
Lobsters, once considered to be a poor mans food, are now more of a delicacy that people only occasionally enjoy. There are a variety of ways to prepare lobster tails and I hope this post will help you on your quest to cooking the perfect lobster tail.
Preparing and Broiling a Lobster Tail Step By Step
Step 1 - Preparing the Lobster Tail:
Step 2 - Cooking the Lobster Tail:
Step 3 - Finishing the Cooking Process:
Grilled Lobster Tails
In the following video, chef Jason Hill shares his method for grilling lobster tails.
Here are the ingredients Chef Hill provides to make this fantastic Lobster Tails:
2 (8 oz.) lobster tails
2 tablespoons chive oil or extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon garlic-shallot puree (or 2 crushed garlic cloves)
2 tablespoons fresh chopped parsley
2 cups water (use as needed)
Salt and pepper (as desired)
Make Biscotti In Your Own Kitchen - Save A Fortune And Impress Your Family As Well!
My family has always had a tradition of making wonderful seasonal biscotti for Christmas holidays - we eat them by themselves and as a truly delicious snack with late afternoon coffee.
We had an good family recipe, which we used for ages, but last year we resolved to bring a bit of variety and tested a different recipe that I discovered.
I acquired it from an internet recipe collection, and it turned out genuinely yummy.
So here it is for you to make for yourself:
Recipe for Christmas Biscotti
You will need :
Half a cup of butter or margarine
One cup of sugar
Two and a half cups of baking powder
One teaspoon of crushed aniseed
Two whole eggs
One egg yolk
One egg white
Three cups of flour
Half a cup of chopped candied red cherries
Half a cup of mixed candied fruit
One tablespoon of finely shredded orange peel
One egg white
One tablespoon of sugar
Directions :
Use an electric food mixer on medium/high speed to beat the butter or margarine in a large bowl for 30 seconds.
Now add the cup of sugar, the baking powder, and the aniseed and beat until it is well mixed. Now beat in the whole eggs and the egg yolk.
Now add the flour, beating in as much as possible using the food mixer, and then stirring the rest in by hand. Add the candied fruit and orange peel and stir them in by hand.
Split the dough into two equal halves and shape each half into loaf shape of approximately 11″ x 2″ X 1″. Lightly grease a cookie sheet, and place both of these ‘loaves’ on the sheet.
Put the egg white and one teaspoon of water into a cup and stir well together, then brush the mix over the two dough loaves.
Now sprinkle the tablespoon of sugar over them.
Preheat an oven to 375 degrees F, and bake in the oven for 20 to 25 minutes until they are light brown. Remove and place on a cookie sheet to cool for 60 minutes or so. When cool, cut each, diagonally, into slices of about half an inch wide.
Put these slices ‘cut side up’ onto an un-greased cookie sheet, and bake in a preheated oven at 325 degrees F for 10 minutes.
Flip the slices over and bake for another 10 to 13 minutes until they are crispy.
Remove and allow to cool on a wire rack.
This recipe should make around 35 biscotti.
When they have cooled down enough, you can store them in a normal biscuit tin, or anything else that will keep them dry. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
If, like us, you fancy a change from your regular festive cooking, try looking through some of the online compendiums of holiday recipes recipes, you might enjoy what you will find. Next year, I plan on discovering some nice new dessert recipes for the festivities - anything will be better than christmas pudding.
How to Smoke a Salmon
For the purposes of this article, I am going to assume you have your own smoker. But don’t worry if you don’t because I am going to show you how to guild your own in later articles.
I like to start with a good quality Wild Alaskan Salmon. Farmed salmon is almost like eating poison and I highly suggest you stay away from it at all costs. Spend a little extra and I promise you your taste buds will thank you. That being said, I like to use Chum Salmon. It is lesser known than all the other species of salmon, but it is a little less expensive and has a very high oil content. This is a good thing. The more oil a fish has the better it is for this process of smoking, and it will not dry out as quickly
First things first. You need to prepare the salmon 12 hours ahead of time with a process called brining. This brine I will show you is quite simple but adds really nice flavor to the fish.In a large container pour in 4 cups of warm water, 1 cup Kosher salt, 1 cup sugar, and 1 cup brown sugar. Stir vigorously until well combined. At this point your salmon should be cut up into chunks of equal size. Place them in the brine mix, skin side up please. Put the lid on your container and put it back into the fridge for 12 hours.
After 12 hours take each piece of salmon out of the brine, rinse lightly under water, and place on the counter to dry. After about an hour of drying, a pellicle will form over the top of the Salmon. This just looks like a shiny skin and that is what we want. Now we put the rub on that is going to flavor our smoked salmon delicacy. For this application I am going to give you my recipe for what I like to call “Indian Candy”. This recipe was shown to me by the Indians of the Pacific Northwest. Rub each piece of fish with butter until lightly coated. Then rub each piece heavily with brown sugar. Let sit while you prepare your smoker.
You want to get your smoker between 150 and 180 degrees rolling with Alder smoke. I highly suggest Alder as it gives the salmon a very unique flavor. You will enjoy it, I guarantee you. Put your salmon in and close the door. Do not even peek for two hours. Just let the smoke do its work. After two hours begin to look every once in a while for the Salmon to start flaking. Once it begins to flake it is done.
Now here is a secret that no one will tell you. The flavor of the salmon is better the next day. What I like to do at this point is vacuum seal each piece while it is still warm. This ensures that maximum flavor stays with each piece. Put into the fridge until the next day, open and enjoy.
I hope you have enjoyed this lesson on how to smoke a salmon. As you can see it is not that hard, just a little time consuming, but trust me on this one, it is well worth the wait.
Chris is a chef and an award winng BBQer. Check out more of his recipes at http://www.squidoo.com/alaskanseafood
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Need a Quick, Tasty Meal? Open a Can of Tomatoes
Canned tomato products are rich in vitamins A and C. One half cup of canned tomatoes equals a serving from the vegetable group on the U.S. Government Food Pyramid. The USDA has posted recommendations for storing and using canned tomatoes on its Website. Canned tomatoes should be stored in a cool, dry place, the FDA says, on a shelf and not on the floor.
You should avoid freezing canned tomato products or exposing them to sunlight, the FDA adds, because temperature changes shortens their shelf life and speeds deterioration. Leftover tomatoes should be refrigerated in non-metallic containers that have tight lids. Use these leftovers in 2-4 days.
Never buy products in dented or bulging cans. Tomatoes are acidic and, to prevent a reaction between the acid and the metal, the inside of the cans has been sprayed with a protective lining. Dents may damage this lining and the product may be spoiled.
Tomatoes are a fruit and an adaptable fruit at that. There’s nothing like a bowl of Tomato-Basil Soup with Caesar Croutons on a rainy day. If you like fish you’ll like Sole Poached in Tomatoes and White Wine. As for Cheddar Scalloped Potatoes and Tomatoes with Bacon, they go with just about everything, including scrambled eggs. Got a can opener?
TOMATO-BASIL SOUP WITH CAESAR CROUTONS
INGREDIENTS: 1 large can of tomato puree (28 ounces); 42 ounces prepared chicken stock (the kind in the cardboard carton); 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar, garlic powder to taste (about 1 teaspoon); 1 tablespoon snipped fresh basil; Caesar salad croutons; grated Parmesan cheese
Pour tomato puree into soup kettle. Using the empty can as a mesuring cup, add 1 1/2 cans of chicken stock to the puree. Pour in a little more stock if the soup seems thick. Add remaining ingredients except croutons. Cover soup and heat until it starts to simmer. Garnish with Caesar salad croutons and grated Parmesan cheese. Makes 6-8 servings.
SOLE POACHED IN TOMATOES AND WHITE WINE
INGREDIENTS: 1 1/2 pounds sole fillets (or talapia); 3/4 cup diced canned tomatoes, drained; 1 medium onion, chopped; 2 tablespoons chopped Italian parsley; 1/8 teaspoon freshly ground pepper; 1 clove of garlic, minced; 1/2 cup dry white wine; 1/4 cup half and half; 1 tablespoon soft butter; 1 tablespoon Wondra flour
Place fish in a non-stick skillet. In a bowl combine tomatoes, onions, parsley, seasonings, and white wine. Pour over fish. Put lid on skillet, leaving a crack for steam to escape. Poach fish for 5-10 minutes or until it flakes with a fork.
Take lid off skillet. Drizzle half and half around fish. Work the flour into the soft butter and add this roux to the fish sauce. Move the skillet in a circular motion over medium heat until sauce thickens. Serve with rice and butter lettuce salad. Makes 4 servings.
CHEDDAR SCALLOPED POTATOES AND TOMATOES WITH BACON
INGREDIENTS: 3 medium potatoes, washed but not peeled; 14 1/2- ounce can of diced tomatoes with juice; 3/4 cup frozen chopped onions; 1 1/2 tablespoons Wondra flour; 2 cups mild cheddar cheese, grated (may use Velveeta); 2.8-ounce package of real bacon pieces (the precooked recipe kind)
Coat a shallow baking dish with cooking spray. Cut potatoes into thin slices. Combine tomatoes, onions, and flour. Spoon a little of this sauce on the bottom of the baking pan. Layer potatoes, tomato mixture, bacon, and cheese in dish, ending with cheese. You should have enough for two layers.
Bake, uncovered, at 425 degrees for 30 minutes or until the potatoes are tender. Tent the dish with non-stick aluminum foil if the cheese browns too quickly. Cool for five minutes before serving. Makes 6-8 servings.
Copyright 2005 by Harriet Hodgson
Harriet Hodgson has been a nonfiction writer for 27 years and is a member of the Association of Health Care Journalists. Before she became a health writer she was a food writer for the former “Rochester Magazine” in her hometown of Rochester, MN. Her 24th book, “Smiling Through Your Tears: Anticipating Grief,” written with Lois Krahn, MD, is avalable from http://www.amazon.com. A five-star review of the book is also posted on Amazon.
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