#chipotles

Mashed Potato Appreciation – click images to embiggen

Spicy Squash Soup

I love just about any combination of chili peppers and squash.  This is butternut squash with half a dried chipotle pepper, made into soup, basically.

1.  Making the Squash

Poke a bunch of holes in a butternut squash.  Stick it in a 400-degree-F preheated oven on a baking pan.  Leave it in there somewhere around an hour or an hour and a half.  It’s ready when poking the squash it’s always soft no matter where you poke.  Cut it in half, remove the innards (the stringy stuff with the seeds in it on the large end of the squash), and take the peel off.

2.  Making it Soup

Cut the squash to pieces.  Put it in a high-powered blender (like a Blendtec or Vitamix).  Put in water that covers the squash, or nearly does.

Add some kind of chili pepper, whatever you’re comfortable with, to whatever degree you like your spiciness.  You can add a pepper directly or use ground-up peppers or use a chili-pepper-based hot sauce, or any combination.  This  is entirely about your preferences and spice tolerance, and what you have on hand.

I used half of a dried chipotle, without removing the seeds, and it was plenty for the way I feel today.  If you are using a hot pepper and are concerned it’s too spicy, removing the seeds can tone it down a notch.  When in doubt, figure it out before you throw the peppers/hot sauce into the blender.

Other times I have used a combination of Sriracha and ghost pepper sauce without adding any actual peppers directly, so you can get the peppers in in whatever form fits your convenience and preference.  I tend to use whatever I have around the house at the time, which varies a lot.

Add a small amount of olive oil, butter, or similar thing.  This goes really well with the butternut squash but you don’t want to overdo it.

Then blend it on high for as long as you can get away with without hurting the blender.  If it’s too thick, add more water.  If there’s too much, do it in two batches.  Don’t kill your blender.

Getting Rid of Lumps

I’m making soup partially for use in a narrow J-tube (a type of feeding tube), and since anything I actually swallow for taste purposes ends up needing to be drained out of a MIC-KEY button G-tube (a different feeding tube I use for draining my stomach, with a valve that can serve as a choke point if large particles of food are in there).  This means it very much matters if the soup is too thick or contains particles of food that are too large.  If a large enough food particle gets in the wrong tube, the results can range from annoying to life-threatening depending on your overall situation.  So it’s important to make sure those particles aren’t there.

For that, I use a chinois.  It’s like the world’s most hard-core strainer.  It’s got small enough holes that many times, you have to use a wooden pestle to shove the liquid through.  Any solid particles of any size at all will stay inside the chinois and not make it into your final soup.  Chinois are often used by restaurants to ensure that sauces and other liquids have a smooth, silky consistency without big lumps.  I always run my soups through a chinois due to my feeding tube situation.  It’s hands-down the best way to guarantee I won’t clog anything.  This is also why I insist on using a high-powered blender -- anything less would not be able to create liquid out of pretty much anything I stick into it (with enough water of course).

Anyway, I use the chinois over a large mixing bowl, adding water if absolutely necessary, and then keep the soup in the mixing bowl, using a ladle to put soup into coffee mugs for drinking orally, or a 60-mL feeding syringe to put soup into my feeding tube.  If the soup is very thick I might water it down by just adding water and stirring it vigorously until the consistency changes.  

Taste and A Note About Mindset

I am not the only person who likes my soups -- pretty much everyone who tries them says they’re great.  Often to their surprise.  People don’t expect blenderized meals to taste good, which is a sad commentary on how most people approach blenderized food.  Even most people who have to live on it.

First off, most people associate blenderized food with “baby food” or tasteless mush of various sorts.  Simply beginning to view your food as soup rather than baby food will change both how you make blenderized food and how you feel when you eat it.  Seeing it as soup makes all the difference -- and it is soup.

Second off, it’s very important to approach blenderized food as a meal.  The way I started making my soups, is I would make (or have someone else make if it was beyond my meager cooking abilities) an actual meal as if I was going to eat it as solid food.  Complete with seasonings and everything.  Then, I just throw it in a blender, add water if necessary, and the resulting soup tastes like a meal.  If you just throw things together without bothering to think how they taste, you’ll be lucky if the results are appetizing at all.  Once you get used to making things, you can throw ingredients into the blender without making the whole meal first.  But only do that once you have an idea what tastes good with what else.

I have rarely gone too far wrong if guided by those two basic ideas -- both my blenderized vegetable food is soup and my soups are meals.  And the result is food that even nondisabled people will have trouble eating just a spoonful.  

Just because you need your food through a tube, or need food you don’t have to chew, doesn’t mean your food has to be gross.  I mean, Osmolite is pretty gross, but I’m referring specifically to blenderized meals that either replace or supplement tube-feed formulas like Osmolite.   In my case, my main nutrition is from Osmolite, but I use blenderized vegetable meals to add variety to my diet, both in taste (for what I drink orally but drain out before I can absorb many nutrients) and nutrition (for what I put down my J-tube with a feeding syringe).

Another thing you may notice, even if you do this entirely through a tube and never taste your meals:  You may feel a satisfied feeling if you’re consuming nutrients you need, even if you’re bypassing both mouth and stomach and sticking them straight into your intestines, like me.

I first encountered this with water.  I’ve sometimes needed IV fluids when unable to get enough water by drinking, for whatever reason.  When you’re thirsty enough, being given a bolus of fluids in your IV feels exactly like that satisfied feeling you get from drinking a huge glass of cold water on a hot day after working up a sweat.  I found the same to be through with water delivered through my feeding tube:  It doesn’t matter where the water comes from, just that it gets there in the end.

Food is somewhat different.  But.  When I stick blenderized vegetables into my J-tube, then once I begin to digest them, I get the same satisfied feeling I used to get after eating a lot of vegetables the usual way.  I don’t know if everyone feels that way after eating vegetables to begin with.  But if you do, chances are you will be able to recreate at least some of that feeling with vegetables in your tube.  And it feels great when that happens.

Slow-Cooker Barbacoa Beef

Servings: enough meat to stuff 30 tacos

STUFF 4 canned chipotles in adobo sauce, minced, plus all the adobo sauce it sits in 1 bunch fresh cilantro, coarsely chopped 1 medium red onion, peeled and cut into large chunks 1 head garlic, peeled and cloves smashed 1 teaspoon ground cloves 1 tablespoon kosher salt Juice of 4 limes 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar 5 to 7 pounds beef brisket 4 to 6 cups beef or chicken stock 5 bay leaves

To serve: 30 corn tortillas, warmed Diced onions Minced cilantro Salsa

STEPS Place the chipotle peppers and their sauce, cilantro, red onion, garlic, clove, salt, lime juice, and cider vinegar in a 7-quart or larger slow cooker until combined (if you have a food processor, you can also pulse till combined before adding). Place the brisket on top of this mixture. (Cut the brisket into a few pieces if necessary to better fit in the slow cooker.) Add stock to cover the meat and place the bay leaves on top. Use tongs to turn the meat a few times in the sauce.

Put the lid on the slow cooker. Cook until the meat shreds easily with 2 forks, 8 to 10 hours on low.

Transfer the meat to a rimmed baking sheet. Use 2 forks to pull the meat apart. Discard the fat, if desired (although if you plan on frying it again before use, the small fat bits are extra tasty and should be kept!). Place the shredded beef in a large bowl and ladle the cooking liquid over the top a few scoops at a time. You want the meat to hold the liquid but not swim in it; you might not need to use all of the cooking liquid. (The leftover liquid is very tasty and can be frozen in cube-sized portions for use in later dishes.)

To keep the barbacoa warm for guests, you can return the shredded beef to your slow cooker and keep it warm on the WARM setting. Serve with tortillas, onion, cilantro, and salsa.

NOTES Doubling this recipe: If your slow cooker is large enough to hold double the amount of meat, you can simply double the recipe. Otherwise, plan ahead and make two batches back to back. Once the meat is shredded, it should be reduced enough in volume to be warmed in a single slow cooker.

Using other cuts of meat: Other than brisket, any tough "roast" cut will work — shoulder or rump roast, top or bottom round. Similar cuts of pork, lamb, or goat also make fine substitutes.