Carey Family

Recipes

Becky Anderson’s Caramels

by Leave a Comment

I love caramels and a good friend gave us her recipe.  We made them last year to give with our neighborhood gifts.  Here is the recipe:

  • 2 pts. corn syrup – Bring to boil
  • Add 4 cups sugar – Keep boiling
  • Add 1 lb butter – Keep boiling
  • Slowly add 1 pt. heavy cream
  • Carmelize 3 Tbsp sugar in another pan
  • Slowly add 1 can evaporated milk
  • Slowly add carmelized sugar

Cook to soft ball stage (240-245 degrees). Add 1 tsp vanilla.

Pour into buttered pyrex dish or other cookie sheet to cool.

Cool 6 hours and then cut into pieces.

A couple of important tips:

  1. Make sure that the pan you have is big enough.  As the caramel cooks, it will eventually expand to about twice the original size of the ingredients.  You DON’T want it to boil over.  Take it from personal experience!  It will cause massive amounts of smoke in your house and stink up the place, causing you to open the windows in the dead of winter, freezing you out, and giving your wife an asthma attack.   It can also catch on fire as you try and scrape up the burnt remains on your stove, particulary if you left the burner on.  Just start with a bigger pan than you think you need.  The advantage of having it spill over, is that you get a real check to see if your smoke alarms are working.  We found out that ours work just fine.  All of them.
  2. Make sure that you check the accuracy of your candy thermometer before you start.  If it isn’t registering high enough, you’ll end up with delicious candy that is a bit harder than you might expect for caramel.  I don’t know about you, but I like my caramel soft.  You can check your thermometer by boiling some water, inserting the thermometer and make sure it registers 212 degrees.  If it doesn’t, you need to account for the difference when you are cooking the candy.  The caramel should be just barely to soft ball stage, so when it is getting close, drizzle some into a cup of cold water, take it out and see if you can mold it into a soft ball.  If you can, it’s done.  It doesn’t matter what your thermometer says!  Don’t cook it anymore!

Easy Dutch Oven Baked Beans

by Leave a Comment

These are some of my favorite baked beans.  They are easy to make, delicious in a Dutch oven over a fire or on a campstove.  You can also do them at home on your stove.

1 lb. Bacon
4 cans of pork and beans
1 Tbs. mustard
1/4 c. catsup
1 onion, chopped
1/2 c. brown sugar
3 Tbs. Worcestershire Sauce

Cut bacon into 2 inch pieces.  Cook in Dutch oven, drain oil.  Add all remaining ingredients and cook in coals until heated through, approximately 30 minutes.

Brining a Turkey

by

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

A couple of years ago, someone told me about brining the turkey before you cook it.  We tried it and the results were great!  Everyone likes the moist tender meat it makes.  Here is the recipe and method we used:

Honey Turkey Brine

  • 2 1/2 gallons water
  • 3 cups kosher salt
  • 6 Tbsp Morton Tender Quick
  • 3 cups honey
  • 10 bay leaves
  • 1 tsp ground cloves
  • 1 1/2 tsp pickling spices

Combine all the ingredients in a large pot and heat to 160 degrees.  Don't go over that because higher temperatures will harm the honey flavor.  Remove from heat and cool to room temperature.

This is enough to do a 11-12 lb turkey.  You may need more brine depending on the size of your turkey and what you soak it in.

We use a cooler to brine the turkey.  It just needs to be large enough to hold the turkey and enough brine to cover (you may have to increase or be able to reduce the amout of brine depending on the size of your turkey and cooler.  The turkey needs to soak in the brine at least overnight, so it is important to put ice in the water to while it brines to keep the turkey from spoiling.

I suggest making the brine Tuesday evening or very first thing Wednesday morning, giving it plenty of time to cool to room temperature.  Put the turkey into your cooler Wednesday afternoon or evening.  Be sure to put ice in the cooler as well (that's the reason it's 2 1/2 gallons of water in the recipe, allows for about 2 quarts of ice which melts and adds to the water).  Be sure to check the turkey to make sure all the ice hasn't melted.  If it has, add more ice in zip-lock bags, so that the melted ice doesn't add additional water to the brine.  I find it helpful to freeze large containers of water to make large ice blocks–they tend to last longer.

Cook the turkey normally and see if it isn't one of the best cooked turkeys you have ever had!