homemade

There’s something about summer and hot dogs. ☀️ Summer officially starts a week from today but the sun’s shining so it’s hot dog time in my house. You haven’t lived until you have a hot dog in a fresh, homemade bun. You’ll spoil yourself forever and never have to suffer through those homemade ones where the ingredient list is longer that your quarantined bangs.

I make these soft buns using my white bread recipe, the one with the egg – it’s an easy one-rise recipe that you can make in an hour. The sheen comes from brushing the buns with a beaten egg wash just before baking. Freshness makes all the difference so if you don’t eat these yummy buns right away, I suggest slicing and freezing them for the next time. They freeze really well.

We don’t eat hot dogs very often but when we do, they are always on a homemade bun. My husband likes to add only spicy brown mustard but I like yellow mustard, sweet pickle relish, and sauteed onions. 🌭 What ever way you like your hot dog, it will be so much better on a homemade bun. Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones

These are just some of the recipes that I have either improved or simplified since they were originally posted. I’m always learning and improving my skills so if anyone is using a recipe that was posted a while ago or if you printed it some time ago, please check the “Recipe Changes/Fixes” category in my blog.

So far I have made changes to about 100 recipes but many of the changes are minor, like increasing salt or reducing sugar but others, like my 15-Minute Veggie Pasta, now use an easier, faster, all-in-one-pan method. I’m always looking for ways to make something healthier or faster or to simplify the process so every time I cook, if I try a better way and it works, I adjust the recipe and share the exact changes I made in the blog.

I encourage all of my regular cooks to occasionally check the “Recipe Changes” category here in my blog to make sure you are using the newest and best version of each recipe. As I evolve as a better (& simpler) cook, I will continue to occasionally update my recipes. To see if any changes were made to your favorite recipes, click here.

It doesn’t take much skill to make delicious homemade chicken soup… just a little patience. The best chicken soup starts with the best homemade stock so I am sharing my recipe for easy chicken soup and stock, which is all the same to me.  And wait ’til you see how easy it is. There’s really not much to do.

You just put everything into the biggest soup pot you have and cook it. The best flavor comes from chicken parts with a lot of bones, which is why I use backs & necks and wings. Ideally, I get a package of each since there is more meat on the wings. So forget making soup with chicken breasts – you won’t be happy.

Aromatic vegetables are a must and those include onions, carrots, celery, and I like to add a parsnip too. You can put them in whole or chop them up. The main thing is time. I cook mine for three hours and it never fails. After three hours of cooking, there’s not much left of the vegetables so I always discard them. And I pick the meat off the bones and store that separately.

So this recipe is technically a chicken stock and I always make it the night before because once it’s refrigerated, 100% of the fat will rise and solidify on the top for easy removal. It’s saturated fat and we don’t need that. In fact your soup will keep even longer in the fridge if you keep the fat layer on the top, kind of like an airtight lid.

The next day, my stock is ready to use in all of my cooking and just perfect as a soup.  Once the fat layer is discarded if I want chicken noodle soup, I chop some fresh carrots and cook them with the noodles in the stock. I also use the stock to make other soups like vegetable soup, bean soup, chili, and I also drink it as a healing broth. Chicken soup does have healing compounds if you have a cold or flu so this is the perfect time to try my healthy homemade chicken soup recipe.

Sure it’s three hours, but so were the Golden Globes last night — you could have watched it AND made soup. That’s how to multi-task! Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones

 It only takes three ingredients to make soft and tender potato gnocchi. My Polish dad was the cook in our family and he used to make them and called them kluski which I later learned are the same as Italian gnocchi. In Poland they are called kopytka and the Polish way to serve them is with fried bacon and onions but nobody needs to do that any more! I prefer gnocchi Italian style as a side dish with red sauce or as a main dish topped with my homemade bolognese sauce. Anything you can do with pasta, you can do with gnocchi and it’s a pretty simple recipe. Plus they freeze beautifully. Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones