Korean Chicken Burgers, Jam Glazed Ribs, Teriyaki Tofu, Roasted Veggies, Apple Roselle Crisp, Apple Cake & More!

This week, there’s quick and easy chicken burgers with a big flavor punch, jam-glazed spare ribs, a fun spin on teriyaki tofu with roasted veggies, plus simple broiled fish for salads, cashew almond ranch dressing and two apple desserts!

Korean BBQ Chicken Burgers with Mushrooms, Gochujang Pickles, Okra & Squash

There is just something about a chicken burger. I had never eaten ground chicken before Greener Pastures Farm started making it years ago. Years later, ground chicken still has me in a chokehold. It just takes on bold flavors so well!

These burgers followed my basic recipe with a pound of ground chicken, an egg, about a half cup of breadcrumbs, sea salt, garlic powder, minced dried onions and then in this case I added gochujang and Korean barbecue sauce right into the meat mixture.

I also had some gochujang marinated and then dehydrated oyster mushrooms in the freezer, so I reconstituted those in some warm water and sautéed those to add on top of the burgers, along with gochujang lacto-fermented Armenian cucumber pickles!

We ate them on Bellegarde brioche buns, with some roasted okra and zephyr squash that I tossed with fish sauce and chili crisp halfway through cooking. It was all so delicious together, plus fairly quick and easy. Win win!

Jam-Glazed Spare Ribs with Roasted Squash, Quick Mac & Cheese & Salad

With all the spare ribs in stock, I had to make a batch for us. And our farm staffer Cade had his last day last week, so ribs seemed properly festive to cap off his year with us. He bought property in Mount Hermon to start his own farm!

I used this Bon Appetit recipe for Spare Ribs with Jammy Barbecue Sauce as a guide, but I clicked on it so many times that by the time I was making it, I couldn’t actually see the directions, only the ingredients without a paywall!

What I deduced/remembered before I lost access worked out well! It’s pretty simple and short process for weeknight ribs!

You salt the ribs, then mix a dry rub of brown sugar and spices (smoked paprika, curry powder and garlic and onion powders) and coil the racks on the trivet of the Instant Pot and cook on high pressure for 12 minutes, then wait to release the steam for 15 minutes after that.

Meanwhile, you make a barbecue sauce with tomato paste, hot sauce, Worcestershire sauce, yellow mustard, apple cider vinegar and jam. It calls for strawberry jam and I used the end of jars of strawberry jam, strawberry cayenne jam and blackberry jam, plus some of the liquid from pressure cooking the ribs.

Once the ribs come out of the pressure cooker, you can brush them with sauce and broil in the oven to crisp up.

We had them with roasted squash (a trio of Seminole pumpkin, delicata and koginut), plus fusilli pasta tossed in leftover béchamel sauce and a good salad. Dreamy combo.

Teriyaki Tofu Rice Bowls with Crispy Roasted Greens, Mushroom & Squash

This was a fun new take on tofu for me by one of my favorite recipe creators, Pinch of Yum.

You grate the tofu on a box grate and sauté until crispy. I used a cast iron pan that I preheated for awhile before adding oil, but the recipe suggests a non stick pan.

After getting crispy, then you add grated garlic and Japanese barbecue sauce.

While the tofu was sautéing, I sliced some zephyr squash, shimofuri mushrooms and mixed kale bunches, tossed with oil and sea salt and roasted in the oven.

I had made some spicy mayo earlier in the week to go with leftover chopped up chicken burgers and rice, so I used that for the sauce, the leftover Jasmine rice and some tempura nori crisps crumbled over the top.

Broiled Trout over Salad with Cashew Almond Ranch

We still have a solid supply of speckled trout filets in the freezer from our friend and they’re such a quick and easy protein to season and pop in the oven for a few minutes.

I also made a ranch version of my cashew almond dip. The base recipe is here from the Faux Martha, but I typically use 1/3 cup almond and 1/3 cup almonds and increase the oil and water a tiny bit to account for the extra nuts. Cashews make the dip/sauce/dressing even creamier and more luscious than almonds alone.

For this version I used Credo Farm’s kelp seasoning, extra garlic powder and dried dill.

We ate the fish over salads with the cashew almond ranch, a drizzle of buffalo sauce, fermented radishes, crunchy chickpeas and sunflower seeds.

Roselle Apple Crisp with Walnuts

In the last blog, I did an apple crisp very similar to this at my parents house with their homegrown frozen blackberries, but this time I used my homegrown roselle hibiscus for a sour and colorful punch to balance the apples.

Roselle goes so well with cinnamon, cloves, ginger and nutmeg and the color permeates through all of the apples, so you have this deep cranberry colored fruit layer.

The topping was pastry flour and whole wheat flour and oats, plus pecan meal, a little sugar, butter and walnuts.

Apple Cake with Cinnamon Sugar Topping

I brought the leftover apple crisp to the shop, so by the night I made the ribs for Cade’s last day, we needed another dessert!

This apple cake, also from Pinch of Yum, was perfect, especially since it got chilly that day!

I used Bellegarde’s Stardust hard white wheat flour, along with Barton Springs’ Ryman Rye and the flavor combination of those two, combined with the dark brown sugar, was incredible. It’s really a simple recipe, as there’s not even spices (other than vanilla extract) in the cake batter, just cinnamon in the topping. When you use good flour, this recipe really allows it to shine.

I will say I may have needed to increase buttermilk and oil a little bit next time using stone-milled and whole wheat flour versus all purpose. It was a little drier on the edges than I remember in the past and more liquid with the whole wheat flours may have helped.

But I also brought these leftovers to the shop and it was gone in a day, nonetheless!