First, the onions. I like to mix them up; using some sweet, some red and pungent, some simple brown or yellow. About three pounds total, sliced into thin slivers.

I also change up the original recipe by Val Harrison by using up to three different types of vinegar (I use a splash of apple cider or red wine vinegar in addition to the malt vinegar and balsamic). As you can imagine, three pounds of raw onion is quite a bit. In addition to taking you a good 10 minutes to peel and slice — with frequent breaks for face-washing as your eyes water profusely — you’ll have enough to fill a pretty big pot. Add a bit of olive oil to start the onions cooking, and 12-14 ounces of brown sugar, as well as garlic powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, coriander, cloves, salt and pepper (1 tsp. each), plus 3 oz or so of balsamic and malt vinegars, and a splash of red wine or apple cider vinegar. These do not have to be exact measurements and you will likely want to add more of all of these spices at the end.

Don’t worry, this will cook down to about 2/3 to a half of the total mass. Let it simmer, stirring occasionally, for about three hours or until the onions look like this:

 … then add the juice of one lemon, give it a taste and add more spices and/ or splashes of vinegar as needed, and once you’re happy with the taste, ladle it into hot, sterilized mason jars, and process in a hot water bath for 20 minutes.

Could it be even easier than bacon? Unbelieveably, yes. In fact, if you skip the corning step, you can make your own pastrami at home in a weekend and with nothing more than a fridge, a smoker and some spices.

All of this can be yours.*

You may recall that I was shocked to learn that homemade bacon was within my humble reach, when my friend showed up at my house with pork bellies, already cured for a few days (with just salt and sugar), and all we had to do was slap them onto my trusty smoker for a few hours to make them into delicious, homemade, nitrate-free bacon. It was epic.

Such was my surprise when I happened upon a pin-worthy post from Coconut and Lime, declaring that a homemads pastrami could also be mine, if all I did was coat a corned beef brisket with brown sugar, paprika, coriander and pepper, let it sit overnight, and smoke it. To be fair, I could have done this COMPLETELY from scratch if I had 5 days to brine a brisket in the corning spices and brine, but who wants to wait that long when a decent corned beef brisket is no further away than my grocer’s meat counter? Not I. Not once I discovered how easy this was.

Step one. Buy or make a corned beef brisket. I bought.

Step two: Soak it in water and rinse it well. Coat it in freshly ground coriander and black pepper, plus paprika and a small amount of sugar (no more than a tablespoon). Rub the spices in there and make sure it sticks.

Step three: smoke the brisket over mesquite wood chips (or another similarly fragrant and delicious smoke) for about 6 hours – don’t let the smoker temperature get above 250 — until the internal temperature of the meat has reached 165.

Step four: Let the meat rest for at least a couple hours, or overnight. Slice against the grain into thick, meaty slices.

For best results, *add those thick slices of pastrami to a sour rye sandwich with a generously-sliced slab of gruyere or swiss cheese. Be sure to coat the bread with a dollop of the best homemade mustard you have. The taste will be worth it.

**Note: after tasting this a few ways, I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t pastrami-y enough for me. It tastes more like a fantastically flavored smoked brisket, and the curing flavor wasn’t as apparent as I would like. I would recommend that you, and next time I make this I will, coat the meat and let it sit for a couple of days instead of just overnight.

The idea is basically to oil and season the outside of the chicken, then sit it upright, stick a beer can up its you-know-what, and sit it vertically on a smoker while the liquid inside the can keeps the meat and the inside of the bird nice and moist. It’s excellent when made with beer (although ironically, it’s better with a cheap, domestic Bud Light sort of beer than it is with a dark and strong Guinness type), and it’s delicious with a sweet fruit juice, so I decided to combine the two ideas and use a more concentrated orange juice with a cheap chardonnay.

I found that the easiest way to prepare the chicken is to sit it on top of the beer can (in this case, an empty one), then season and oil the outside of the chicken. Once the chicken has been moved to the smoker, you can add the mimosa mixture or other liquid through the top of the cavity — you’ll actually be able to look inside the top of the chicken and see the beer can inside.

I smoked it over soaked mesquite wood chips, for 3-4 hours or until the chicken has reached an internal temperature of at least 165. Once the bird is cooked, it’s best to let it rest (put it in a big pot and cover with foil) to let the juices redistribute.

The meat is EXTREMELY tender and juicy. Plus, once the chicken has been picked clean of the meat, the carcass will make a smoky and delicious stock. I just put the whole carcass in a crock pot (or in a gallon-size freezer bag to make into stock at a later time), cover it with water and a few spices, and let it simmer until all of the meat has come off of the bones. This is an excellent way to use any chicken or turkey carcass, and it’s even better when the meat has been smoked!

Much to my happy surprise, a simple google search helped me find this ridonkulously easy “No Recipe Cherry Jam” from pastry chef David Lebovitz. Fabulous!

Step One: Clean and pit all of your cherries. It doesn’t matter how many. Just go for it. (Note: this step is probably going to be more time-consuming than all of the rest of the steps. It’s certainly the messiest part.)

Step Two: Put those cherries in a pot, with the juices, too, and bring it to a boil. Then turn down the heat and let it simmer for about 10-15 minutes, or until the cherries are nice and soft.

Step Three: Measure how much cooked cherries are in the pot, and then add 3/4 of that amount of sugar. For example, if you have four cups of cooked cherry goo, then add three cups of sugar. Put the pot back on the stove and let it cook some more at a soft boil. Stir often. If you want to add extra flavorings (like a vanilla bean or some other spice), add them at this point.

Luckily for me, I had enough cooked cherry goo that I could make a batch of cherry jam and cherry vanilla jam.

Step Four: When the jam passes the frozen plate test, it’s ready for canning. Ladle the jam into hot, sterilized mason jars and process for 15 minutes in a hot water bath. Four cups of cherry goo, plus sugar, yields about four or five 8-oz jars of jam.

I embarked on this awesome adventure with my friend and fellow food blogger The Neighborhood Foodie, who for the last couple of months has been working in Amsterdam, so we haven’t gotten to nerd out on a cool project in a while. She took a stay-cation in San Diego at the beginning of January and we decided to go food-blogger crazy and make some of our own bacon.

As my house is the one with the smoker parked outside, it needed to  be a joint venture.

 About a week before we got started, she purchased a few slabs of pork belly (ask your local butcher to hook you up), and used a recipe with no nitrates or preservatives. Just salt, sugar, time, and love. Trust me: once you try this, you’ll never miss that nitrate-filled, preservative-packed bacon from the store.

It’s a two-step process: curing and smoking. Both steps are needed to turn pork belly into bacon. Both can be done at home, if you have a smoker.

* I want to interject a side note here about my M7P 7-in-1 Outdoor Cooking System. I bought this online (Overstock) for about $150 with free shipping. It cost another $40 for a used propane tank. This baby grills, smokes, boils, steams, and fries, and you can do any of those tasks with either propane or charcoal heat. It’s the best $150 I ever spent. I highly recommend this model (no, I haven’t been hired by the company or anything) or a similar multi-tasking machine. Trust me. After you do a cool project like bacon — or smoked garlic, or smoked jalapenos, livers for a sweet pate, or a nice beer-can chicken, or cedar-planked salmon and brie, or a holiday crab boil (it also comes with a steamer pot and a big stainless steel pot for boiling) or just a nice grilled piece of chicken or pork with minimal effort — you will see. This thing pays for itself.

For every 5 lbs. of pork belly, mix 4 cups of kosher salt and 2 cups of brown sugar, coat the pork as well as possible, and refrigerate it in a freezer bag or loosely wrapped in plastic (I’d recommend the bag, because it gets pretty wet in there). If you are adding other spices or flavors (we did one slab with Jamaican jerk seasoning, one with maple, and one with chili and cocoa), add it at this point. If you are coating the bacon instead of flavoring it – say, in ground peppercorns, for example – you will want to save that for after it’s cured and before you put it on the smoker.

If you have done a few searches for homemade bacon recipes before you settled on this awesome blog, you’ll probably notice that there are a lot of opinions out there about how to do this right. Some cooks swear by “pink salt” - salt and nitrates, used for preserving the color of the bacon - and insist that it is part of every bacon recipe, and some cooks insist that you don’t use any such thing. Others, like us, prefer to do it au naturale, like this Cool Material post.  It’s up to you and you have to do what makes you feel right. We opted for a more natural recipe with simple salt and sugar, and without all the preservatives. The only down side to having bacon free of nitrates and preservatives is that you have to eat it faster. Darn.

Seal the baggie with the pork and seasonings and refrigerate for at least 7 days. Every day or so, move it around and massage the meat a little to encourage distribution of spices and salt. There’s a complicated scientific explanation for what happens inside that bag, but essentially, the salt forces the moisture out of the pork belly, curing it and pushing those juices out. If it’s a lot of moisture you might want to drain it out.

After at least 5 days, uncover the meat and rinse off the majority of the salt and flavorings. Let it sit on a plate or baking sheet in your fridge, uncovered, for at least another day. Again, there’s a deep science-y explanation for that happens, but the idea is that this step will create a sort of film over the surface of the meat, which will act like a sticky, gooey magnet for the delicious smoke.

After at least 7 days of curing … make sure the meat is firm, like bacon … it’s ready for smoking. Use your best judgment when it comes to the type of wood; many people use apple wood, cherry, hickory, mesquite, even alder. If you have the time, you can also mix it up and experiment with what sort of wood best brings out the flavor of the meat.

Since I like to experiment, I tried a couple of different kinds. I prepared a smoker full of soaking applewood chips for 3 of the bacon types: the chili-cocoa, the brown sugar and the Jamaican jerk spice. Since the maple bacon wasn’t quite hard-to-the-touch and needed a few more days of curing, I decided to wait and smoke the maple bacon with the lighter, fruitier flavor of alderwood. (I thought about mesquite, but in the end decided the mesquite would totally overpower the maple flavor. I’ll save my mesquite chips for smoking a nice peppery bacon.)

After the chips have soaked in water for a couple of hours, fire up your smoker and let it get to about 140 degrees. Then give each piece of pork belly a good, thorough rinse, and drop it lovingly and gently on your smoker.

Don’t let it get hotter than 200. A slab of meat that is between 2 and 2 1/2 lbs. will take about 2-3 hours to fully cook to the desired internal temperature of 150; but temperature is more important than time, so if after 2-3 hours it hasn’t reached 150, let it continue to smoke until the meat is at 150.

Now, it’s bacon.

After the bacon is fully smoked, it will still need to be sliced and fried. Since the bacon isn’t packed full of nitrates and preservatives, it won’t look like the pink stuff you buy in the store.

I adapted Local Kitchen’s recipe for Roasted Garlic and Lemon Mustard, only I substituted garlic smoked over pecan wood chips instead of roasted garlic. Then I realized that the recipe could also be adapted to be spicier — with smoked jalapenos — and milder — with dill and extra lemon. All three versions were amazing!

Smoked Garlic and Lemon Mustard

(also see variations below for Smoked Jalapeno Mustard and Dill-Lemon Mustard)

• 4 heads of garlic
• 1 cup mustard seeds (dark or yellow, or a mix of both)
• 1 1/2-2 cups white wine
• 2 cups white vinegar
• 1/2 cup good honey
• juice from 2 lemons
• kosher salt
• olive oil, salt and pepper, for smoking the garlic
• mustard powder and/ or garlic powder

First, either the night before or a few hours before, place 1 cup of mustard seeds in a jar or glass and cover with white wine  — at least a cup. After just a couple of hours (it’s actually surprisingly fast), the mustard seeds will absorb the wine, soften, and puff up a little. The longer you let the seeds marinate, the more flavor you will infuse, but honestly a couple of hours does the trick just fine.

I set the seeds to marinate, waited about an hour, then smoked the garlic and jalapenos. I clean the garlic heads and peel off the outermost papery layer, then sprinkle salt and pepper and drizzle a little olive oil on each head. Then wrap loosely in foil (you do want the smoke to get in there) and smoke over soaked wood chips at 150-200 degrees for about 2 hours, give or take 20 minutes. I smoked my garlic heads at the same time as a boneless turkey breast, and they were ready at almost exactly the same time.

Once the garlic is cool enough to handle with your clean, bare hands, the cloves will pop out very easily and will be deliciously fragrant and a little soft and gooey.

If you think I didn’t stuff one of these into my face standing there at my kitchen counter, you are sorely mistaken.

This mustard I wanted to be fairly grainy and chunky, so instead of pureeing the marinated seeds and garlic in a food processor like the Local Kitchen guru did, I left half of the seeds whole (but softened) and the other half, I ground by hand with a mortar and pestle. 

Then all of the garlic and mustard went into a pot on the stove, where I added the lemon juice and honey, and then (SLOWLY) added vinegar and wine until it was at the desired consistency. You might not need all of the vinegar and wine specified above, so pour it slowly — remember you can always add more, but once you add it, you can’t take it away. Make it a little thinner than you want the final product to be, because it will thicken upon cooling.

At this point, you want to taste the mustard, and if necessary, add more mustard powder or more garlic powder to even out the flavors and make it how you like it. Once it’s perfect, ladle it into hot, sterilized jars and seal in a water bath for 20 minutes. The total yield was two 8-oz. jars and nine 4-oz jars. Not bad!

* Smoked Jalapeno Mustard: Substitute jalapenos for garlic — smoke them in the same fashion, and chop the finished peppers very finely. Remember the heat is in the seeds and the ribs inside of the jalapeno, so if you scrape them out, you will get the smoky and peppery flavor without the heat.

I diced three jalapenos and scraped the seeds out of two of them, so mine was perhaps a 4 on a scale of 1-10. You can keep in all of the seeds and have a nice spicy mustard. Also, for this variation, I totally pureed the jalapenos and the mustard seeds instead of hand-grinding them; and I used apple cider vinegar instead of white vinegar.

* Dill-Lemon Mustard: Add 1/2 cup of dried dill (or 1/4 cup of fresh, chopped dill) to the mustard seeds as they are soaking in wine, and add an extra cup of lemon juice to the total. It’s very mild (compared to the other two) and it tastes fresh and citrusy!

Step One: Put gummi bears in a jar. I separated them by color but obviously that’s not a requirement.

Step Two: Fill the jar with vodka.

Step Three: Wait a while … maybe a day or so … until they plump up full of liquor.

Viola! Decorate and give as a thoughtful yet drunk gift.

Mint Jelly

(This is delicious on roasted lamb and turkey, or as a topping on toast or biscuits.)

• 1-3/4 cups mint infusion (about 1-1/2 cups fresh mint leaves, boiled in 3 cups water)
• 2 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice
• 2 drops green food coloring
• 3-1/2 cups sugar
• 1/2 tsp. butter
• 1 pouch liquid pectin

(Note: this recipe is best with storebought and unflavored pectin, because homemade pectin, like from apples or lemons, add that fruit’s flavor to the jelly.) Boil the mint infusion and sugar for about 5 minutes. When the mixture is at a rolling boil (it doesn’t stop boiling when you stir it) add the food coloring, lemon juice and pectin. Keep boiling and stir constantly for one minute, and add a pat of butter to reduce the foam. Ladle into sterilized jars and boil for 10 minutes in a hot water bath.

Cranberry-Apple Relish

(Could this be any faster or easier? No. Not it could not. Enjoy giving this as holiday gifts, and try it with your Christmas turkey or roast.)

• 6 chopped apples (various types)
• 4-5 cups chopped cranberries
• 2 1/2 cups brown sugar
• 1 cup water 
• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon

Simmer the fruit and water for about 20 minutes, and add the cinnamon. Add walnuts, too, if you like, and simmer for about 5 more minutes. Ladle immediately into hot, sterilized jars and process in a hot water bath for about 10 minutes.

Bonus condiment — Hot Cranberry Salsa! Got extra cranberries? Put them in a baking pan with chunks of onion, garlic gloves, and whole jalapenos (remove the stems), and sprinkle sugar on top of everything.

Roast everything together in the oven at 400 degrees for about 30-45 minutes (until the berries and vegetables are all soft).  Transfer to a blender, add a cup of orange juice, and pulse until smooth. Add salt and pepper to taste. This can also be canned and processed in a hot water bath to seal. *Warning: it’s pretty spicy; you can scrape the seeds out of the jalapenos before roasting to cool it down a little.*

This year, with a few tiny exceptions, my holiday gifts to friends and family will be homemade, and I will be gifting many of the same dishes I plan to trade at the San Diego Food Swap this weekend.

However, I do not plan to be standing over a hot stove.

Once again, my crock pot saves the day. Check out these two easy recipes for making delicious and easily gift-able homemade goodies.

Bourbon Bacon Jam

(I adapted this recipe from Evil Shenanigans … by adding more bourbon, doubling the volume of the recipe, omitting the coffee and making it less hot. Not to be confused with this amazing, smoky and spicy Bacon Chipotle Jam.)

• 3 lbs. chopped bacon
• 2 large sweet onions, diced
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 1 head of garlic, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon allspice
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1 cup good quality bourbon
• 1/8 cup maple syrup

Render the bacon in a large stockpot and add chopped onions and garlic. Cook on medium high heat for about 10-15 minutes, until bacon is rendered and vegetables are a little tender.

Transfer everything to your crock pot (including all the bacon grease at the bottom of the pot) and add the remaining ingredients. Cook on high for about an hour, then take the lid off and let it cook on high for about another 2-3 hours, until the mixture is thick and syrupy. Taste often and add more or less spice according to your preference.

When it’s ready, transfer to a food processor or use an immersion blender in the crock pot to break the mixture down to a chunky spread. Pour into sterilized jars and keep refrigerated (this is not safe for canning).

Spiced Apple Butter

(This is a super-simple and extremely delicious recipe. You can also vary this recipe by adding pumpkin and making pumpkin-apple butter, or pears or plums.)

I like to mix up different types of apples for lots of flavor.

• about 3 lbs. apples, mixed types, chopped
• 2 cups brown sugar
• 2 tbsp. cinnamon
• 2 tbsp. ground nutmeg
• 2 tbsp. ground ginger
• 1 tbsp. allspice

Chop apples and add to your crock pot with brown sugar and spices, and place on high setting. Cook for about 2-2 1/2 hours, until the apples are tender. Mash up the apples with a potato masher or immersion blender.

This has a lovely seasonal flavor, but you can make it easily all year round. It’s delicious on toast, biscuits, pancakes and more. It’s also safe for water bath canning. Enjoy!

In my house, the delicious and juicy slivers of turkey and ham always seem to disappear first, usually into little makeshift sandwiches using leftover rolls, or tossed into post-Thanksgiving breakfasts. Plus, usually my family boils down the turkey carcass on Friday, making a nice turkey-rice or turkey-noodle soup, so maybe by Saturday and Sunday, you’re kind of turkeyed out! But the potatoes and the stuffing always seem to hang around. I found these two excellent recipes for utilizing leftover mashed sweet potatoes and leftover stuffing, and gave them my own little spin.

Sweet Potato and Carmelized Onion Shells

I adapted this recipe from this one from Taste of Home, but I used my own homemade carmelized onion chutney instead of carmelizing onions for this on the spot. I also made it just a little healthier, omitting the turkey gravy at the end (not necessary at all) and using some lovely cheese left over from my cheese plate instead of gorgonzola. I also left the shells uncooked and then baked them in chicken stock for added flavor. Obviously you should feel free to adapt this recipe both based on your tastes and what you have left in your fridge.

• 1/2 jar (about 4 ounces) carmelized onion chutney
• 2 cups mashed sweet potatoes (milk and butter were added when they were cooked for Thanksgiving)
• 1 package jumbo pasta shells (uncooked)
• 6 oz. (approx.) gorgonzola or other tangy cheese
• 2-3 oz. grated parmesan cheese
• 2 cups (approx.) chicken or turkey stock
• garlic powder, salt and pepper, poultry seasoning (about 1 tsp. each, to taste)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix the mashed potatoes, carmelized onion chutney, cheese and spices and spoon the mixture into each individual pasta shell. Place into a baking dish and pour the stock into the baking dish.

Make sure the liquid touches the shells but doesn’t cover everything. Essentially everything is cooked except the shells, so cover and bake until the shells are tender (about 25-20 minutes). The mixture will be nice and bubbly. Then top with parsley and grated cheese, and bake another 10 minutes until the cheese is nice and browned.

This is soooooo delicious. Why did I never think of this before? I want to try this again with garlicky mashed potatoes and other variations.

It’s also nice to have a good savory breakfast dish. I have to admit, this looked so good, I might have to make this all year round. Mark Bittman, master of all things simple and delicious, posted this lovely recipe for eggs baked in stuffing, and once again the universe opens up a way for me to use this awesome carmelized onion chutney again (yeessssss).

Eggs Baked in (Leftover) Stuffing

(This can be made in a casserole dish or individual ramekins.)

• 2-3 cups leftover stuffing, cooled or at room temperature
• 1 cup carmelized onion chutney
• 6 eggs
• salt and pepper to taste
• grated cheddar or pepper jack cheese (optional)

Grease your baking dish or individual ramekins, and preheat oven to 350 degrees. Alternate stuffing and chutney (I used stuffing, then a spoonful of chutney, then more stuffing on top), then crack an egg into each ramekin — or make a crater in the stuffing in your dish and crack the egg into it. Add salt and pepper to taste. Bake for about 20 minutes or until the eggs have set. If you are using ramekins, put them in a baking dish filled halfway with water.

About halfway through cooking, I added a bit of grated cheese to the top of each egg.

I am usually not coherent enough first thing in the morning to make an adequate breakfast, so these are ideal for me. They’re perfect to make the night before and wrap up for the next day’s breakfast, or to enjoy while they’re warm!