Welcome to kidscookdinner.com.   Today, after school finished (early since it’s remote), I decided to make French Bread.  We aren’t shopping much thanks to COVID and we often run short of bread.  Since we were planning on having fondue for dinner, it was essential we have bread.  (Max couldn’t help because he is studying for four AP tests). Ingredients for French Bread are pretty simple: flour, water, yeast, a little salt, and egg white (for an egg wash):

First step is to mix the yeast, water, salt and flour using an electric mixer.  Then you slowly add the flour (you start with 2 cups and try to work in almost 6 cups).  You have to use a spoon and your hands as the dough gets stiffer.

Then you knead it until it’s a smooth ball (6 -8 minutes

You place the ball of dough in a greased bowl, turn once, and let rise for an hour.

After you punch down the dough (the most fun part of making bread), then you shape it into two long loaves by rolling out the dough in a rectangle and then rolling each up.  You let the loaves rise for 45 minutes; and then brush with egg wash (water + egg white).

Then you make 3 diagonal slices in each loaf, about 1/4 inch deep, and bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes, you remove from the oven and brush them one more time with egg wash so they get really crusty and brown.  They need about 15-20 minutes more of cooking time.

Best way to eat them? With fondue, of course!

Welcome to kidscookdinner.com.  To learn more about our website, and we why started doing it five years ago, scroll down a couple of posts. To read what we cooked today: read on right here!

Even though it was May, we decided we really needed some traditional comfort food so we decided to make Thanksgiving Dinner: turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. The only thing missing was the pumpkin pie.

First step was to make sure there was nothing inside the turkey (mom said sometimes the neck or liver is inside…unfortunately she was right).  Good thing we had extra gloves.

Next step was to tuck the wings into the skin and then rub the bird with butter and salt and pepper.

Then into the oven at 325 degrees for 3 and 1/2 hours.  (Time to cook depends on the size of turkey: this was one 13 pounds).  We covered it with a tent of foil for the first two hours of cook time so it wouldn’t get too brown. We checked it every hour. The second photo is about halfway through the cooking.

About an hour before the turkey was supposed to be done, we started peeling potatoes.  Then we chopped them into quarters and put them in water to boil.

Max was in charge of mashing once the potatoes were fork tender

For the stuffing, we chopped an onion, sauteed it and added chicken broth.  Once that was combined, we added the stuffing mix.  Right before serving we toasted it in the oven.

Cranberry sauce was easy: from a can (that’s our favorite; homemade has too many whole berries!) We pulled out the turkey and let it sit for 20 minutes while we finished up the stuffing, added butter to the potatoes and set the table.  Mom sauteed kale since we “forgot” to include a green vegetable.

Then it was time to plate and eat. Each individual part of the dinner was pretty easy. Hardest thing was making sure each part was done at the same time). Happy Thanksgiving in May!

Hi, welcome to kidscookdinner.com.  To learn more about this blog, scroll down a few posts.  To find out what I cooked for COVID comfort food this week, keep reading here.  This week’s comfort food was barbecued brisket, made in a slow cooker.  I started it on Saturday morning, let it cook all day, refrigerated overnight and then reheated it for Sunday dinner.  Ingredients are simple: spices for a dry rub, beef brisket and barbecue sauce.

The first step is to remove some of the extra fat on the brisket.

Next, put together the dry rub for the brisket and rub it in.  The dry rub has onion powder, garlic powder, paprika and salt and pepper. It needs to rubbed into the meat.

Then into the slow cooker with barbecue sauce and let it cook.

Here’s what it looks like after eight hours in the slow cooker. Yummy!

After it cooked for 8 hours, I let it cool down and put it in the refrigerator overnight.  This makes it super easy to remove excess fat because it solidifies.  (Orange stuff around the edges is solid fat).

The bowl has all the fat we removed!!

Then I reheated it.

I like to break up the brisket with a fork so the sauce penetrates deeper into the meat.

Then it was time to eat.  I served the brisket with a hamburger bun and arugula salad.