Kitsch's Kitchen

2 cups Instant Rice

1 Tbsp Oyster Sauce

1 tsp Ground Ginger Powder

1 Tbsp Soy Sauce

1/4 cup Chopped onion

1/4 cup chopped bell peppers

2 Tbsp Butter

If you have leftover white rice from the day before, that works best. If you don’t have any left over, cook some 5 minute instant rice the day before and stick it in the fridge. It’s really important to start this with cold rice. Day old cold rice works best.

Turn your pan on high heat, let it get hot. I used an iron skillet because I’ve had bad experiences with woks. Add your butter and let it melt into the pan. Make sure the skillet is coated. Throw in your vegetables. I only used bell peppers and onions but you can use pretty much anything. I do NOT put egg in the fried rice that I make but if you wanted to you could; I just prefer not to. When your onion starts looking somewhat opaque, reduce your heat and add the rice. Toss the rice around in the pan, coating it with the butter and mixing it with the onion and pepper. Splash your soy sauce in and mix, then add the oyster sauce, and finally sprinkle the ginger powder over the top. Mix it all together and keep tossing until the texture is to your liking. I probably stir fried mine for about 10 minutes or so. I gradually increased my heat as it cooked. But you do not want it to get back to high. A medium high will work fine. If it starts to stick a little, just add more butter and reduce the heat a little. Butter makes everything better!

You can add more soy or oyster sauce to flavor it to your liking. I found that using just a little bit can go a long way and won’t overpower the rice. 

(Sorry for no pictures. Still trying to find my digital camera)

Today, I decided to make homemade meatballs for the very first time. I did it the hard way, which I find to be more rewarding and delicious. But if you want to skip making your Italian bread crumbs, you can find it in most grocery stores already made for you.

Italian Breadcrumbs:

4-5 pieces of thinly sliced French bread

1 Tbsp of butter

1 clove of garlic -minced

1 Tbsp of Oregano

1 Tbsp of Dried Parsley

1 Tbsp of Garlic Salt

1 Tbsp of Basil

2 Tbsp of Parmesan

Black pepper to taste

Directions:

Thinly slice your french bread. Mince a clove of garlic and microwave it for 30 seconds with your butter. Lightly coat the bread with the butter and toast it on 425 in the oven until it looks like the above picture. Then, put your bread in a food processor or in a ziploc bag and crumble it up. If you still have moist feeling chunks of bread, put it back on the pan and spread it out. Let it brown some more in the oven. Crunch it up again until you have fine bread crumbs.

Watch your breadcrumbs closely so they don’t burn. After you have your crumbs nice and crisp and you’ve crunched them up as finely as you can, add your other ingredients. Mix well. 

Do not add salt if you use garlic salt. If you prefer to use garlic powder and regular salt, that’s fine.

The Meatballs!

Ingredients

1lb Hamburger meat (Or you can do half ground turkey, half hamburger meat - Or all ground turkey. Depends on how healthy you want to be.)

1 Lg Egg

1/4 cup of Sour Cream

The breadcrumbs you just made

1/4th - 1/2 lb of sausage (I didn’t have a lot of sausage so I just threw in what was left in the freezer)

1/4th cup of minced onions

1 clove of minced garlic

1 Tbsp Onion soup mix (optional)

More of the spices used in the above picture. (Give me a break y’all. I’ve been making meatballs all day. Do I really have to retype it?)

1 tsp of Worcestershire Sauce

Crushed red pepper to taste (Optional - I had to leave this out because people in my house don’t like spicy too much. Plus, depending on how much sausage you use, you probably don’t really need any.)

Your hamburger meat and sausage need to be thawed. Mince your clove of garlic and onions and add them to the mix.  Add in the breadcrumbs and your extra spices. Don’t be stingy with the cheese! Add in the egg and sour cream (sour cream is one of my momma’s kitchen secrets; don’t tell her I put this on the internet). Mix it with your hands. Don’t be afraid to get messy, that’s why baby Jesus made soap.

Mine looks orange because of the type of sausage I used plus the bread crumbs got a little more brown than I would have wanted. Doesn’t matter, the stuff is still good. Roll it into little balls and put it on a pan. Spray the pan with cooking spray so it doesn’t stick.

Bake in the oven at 425 until they are brown. Once I knew they were fairly solid, I turned them over. Don’t be a dumbass like me and get burned though. Use tongs or something unless you were blessed with ‘asbestos hands’ like my momma. 

Now for the sauce:

1 can of spaghetti sauce

1/2 can of tomato paste

1 can diced tomatoes

1 can mushrooms (optional)

Diced onions (optional)

Diced bell peppers (optional)

Chopped basil (optional)

2 Tbsp Ketchup

1 Tbsp sugar

You finally get to be lazy. Yeah, all that stuff came from Walmart because we’re cheap. If you’re fancy, you can use the expensive stuff. But trust me, if you do what I’m about to tell you — the cheap stuff will still taste amazing. Get out a skillet, preferably an iron one. I cut up basil from my momma’s herb garden and added some oregano and black pepper. Throw in half a can of tomato paste and a can of diced tomatoes (leave the water in there because that’s going to loosen up the tomato paste and it has flavor). Then add in your can of spaghetti sauce. Now the weird part. Add ketchup and sugar. Yes, I said sugar. Y’all trust me, okay? It’s good, I promise. Cover that up and let it simmer on medium heat until it’s fully heated through and the flavors have all melded together. You can add more tomatoes, mushrooms, and onions if you like. I like bell pepper in mine but we didn’t have any.

So good! I’m not telling y’all how to make the noodles because if you don’t know how to boil water then you don’t need to be looking at this page. I also made garlic bread, but you can just cut up french bread, stick some butter and minced garlic on it and cover it with parsley/oregano and Parmesan cheese.