kitchen tool of the week

I love the kitchen. When we were planning the building of our house, I drew exactly how I wanted the kitchen and said, "now work around that." Along with loving the kitchen I love the kitchen tools. So every once and a while I will highlight a favorite kitchen tool. Today . . . .

the meat grinder

I just got this not too long ago. Every year I can salsa with my mother-in-law and we have used the timeless and painful method of hand grinding all the peppers (which you must do if you want any real flavor or spice in your salsa because is squeezes out the juice while it grinds the peppers). So this year I got the meat grinder and I felt like a old lady entering the technology age.


Lucky for me, salsa isn't the only thing I use a meat grinder for, I actually grind meat for it. For instance, my chicken lettuce wraps.

Pre-meat grinder I would pulse raw chicken in my food processor, which works just fine. You can add just about any ingredient to these lettuce wraps and they would probably taste good, as a matter of a fact I never really do them the same twice.

Ingredients;

2-3 boneless skinless chicken breasts, ran through meat grinder or pulsed in processor

1-2 cloves garlic crushed

diced green pepper (maybe 1?)

fine diced red pepper (half of a pepper?)

fine diced carrots (8-10 baby carrots?)

fine diced mushrooms (6-7?)

1/4 c soy sauce

2 or 3 T of oyster sauce

1/4 t chili paste (optional)


Saute this all together in a hot oiled pan. Do some tasting to see if you need a little more soy sauce. You can also add other ingredients, celery, water chestnuts, tofu, green pepper . . . . .