Japanese Curry Chicken and Settling for "Good Enough"

Over there to the right is a picture of the box this curry sauce came out of. It doesn’t have any particularly nasty chemicals in it; some people have problems with MSG, but it is naturally occurring. That doesn’t mean it’s good for you, but personally I would be less concerned about what is basically a kind of salt and much more

concerned about, for example, the effect of seaweed-extract polysaccharides like carrageenan which are added to foods as a cheap way to bulk and thicken them. (You can make a gelatin-like food from the same seaweed that contains carrageenan, but that’s different from hiding it in your ice cream to save on dairy cost. People who screw over dairy farmers and mess up ice cream just to make a few more cents a carton deserve their own circle of Hell.) Still, the point is not what is in the box, nor is this a recommendation of the S&B Golden Curry product. (Though it was fine.)

The point is that this curry chicken meal took an hour to make and contained:

A Free Range Red Ranger Chicken, chopped in 1-to-2 inch pieces with a cleaver

A large home-grown onion chopped in chunks

4 extra large CSA carrots chopped in 1-to-2 inch pieces

5 CSA potatoes chopped in 1-to-2 inch pieces

The above box of curry sauce mix, a couple tablespoons of homemade cooking lard, and water.

Follow the directions on the box and serve over rice.

Would it be better, and healthier, to make a Japanese curry sauce from scratch? I think so. (Japanese curry is kind of a mix of a curry and a browned roux). That would also have taken several hours to make, possibly after a special trip to the store to get ingredients we don’t typically have on hand. With two young children and a farm to run, we don’t often have that kind of time.

That’s the curry on the right. It was good.

If your options are (1) cheap and unhealthy takeout food, (2) not eating the food you enjoy, or (3) cooking what you like by using as many good quality local ingredients as you can and settling for a sauce or other components from package, then cook the food you want with the off-the-shelf time-saver. It’s good enough.

Americans spend far less on home-cooked meals than we did 75 years ago, and we are also generally much less healthy. Part of the problem is that, coincidental to the popularization of radio and television, prior generations failed in their duty to pass on basic life skills to their progeny. However, it’s also true that most families today have dual income earners by necessity, which means we have less time to cook, and at the same time unhealthy processed food is widely available and artificially inexpensive because the workers who make it are egregiously underpaid. We need to recognize that a home-cooked meal is always going to be better than this garbage, even if that home-cooked meal isn’t “from scratch”. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Cooking a meal with some pre-packaged ingredients is just fine. In fact, even if everything in your home-cooked meal comes from a can or a box, at least you know what you put in it.

How to eat well on a budget (updated)

A lot of people express an interest in eating great-tasting, healthy, real food but don’t think they can afford to do so while paying bills, paying off debt, and maybe trying to save to buy a home or start a family. Or living on a fixed pension or even just social security. Here are some recommendations for how to eat well on a budget.

Cook your own food

The first thing to do is cook your own food. Home-cooked food is healthier, cheaper, and unless you have the money to go to fancy restaurants all the time, tastes better. Anyone can cook: get a slow cooker / crock pot. Either it heats up or it doesn’t; you don’t need to spend a lot of money. Put everything in the pot the night before, stick it in the fridge, and remind yourself to take it out and plug it in before you go to work. Come home to a hot, home-cooked meal. When in doubt, add liquid: you really can’t overcook stew. With all the money you save not getting fast food and take-out, treat yourself to a nice local restaurant every once in a while.

If possible, buy a chest freezer

A chest freezer is cheaper than an upright for the size. You can buy something used that has dings and dents in it for much less than the retail price. Tell the seller you want them to plug in the freezer before you come over. If you get there and it’s cold, it works. You’ll need a spot to plug it in and to be sure you don’t overload the circuit, but even in a 1BR apartment there may be a spot you can put a small chest freezer. Keep in mind that if you use the chest freezer for long-term storage you only need to get into it every week or so. The rest of the time, put a nice cloth over it and it’s a side table.

Spend your money on good meat (no really, we mean it)

Your best “bang for your buck” (though that would be another way to get good, healthy meat*) is to spend money on good, healthy meat. There are three major reasons why this is the case.

1. Raising meat animals “naturally” is different from gardening. There are no days off. Forgetting to water your carrots is quite different from forgetting to give a pig water. For most people, paying a farmer to do the work for you is the best choice.

2. Any harmful chemicals in plants are going to get concentrated in the meat of animals that eat those plants. It’s relatively common for CAFO animals to have damaged livers, which means their livers aren’t able to filter out all the toxins they ingest. So if you want to avoid toxins in your food, the most concentrated source of toxins is likely the meat you eat. Spending your money on decent meat is the best way to avoid ingesting those poisons. Buying expensive organic produce but eating cheap, “factory-farmed” meat is more than a little foolish.

3. Plant-based diets are trash food. Vegan diets are far worse for the environment and for your health. (A possible exception would be something like rastafarian “ital” cooking, which is very different from eating mass produced veggie “burgers”. If you are an actual rastafarian reading this, please comment.)

Buy in bulk

Half hog, quarter beef, whole lamb, bulk chicken. You’ll save a lot with a bulk discount when you buy direct from a local farmer.

This is what the chest freezer is for. If you absolutely do not have room for a chest freezer, start your own buying club. Get a group together, pool your funds, and buy in bulk together. Then split the meat among yourselves. When in doubt, ground beef and bulk sausage in one pound packages are easy to split among any number of households.

Another way you save money when buying meat in bulk is by making use of the whole animal. Save the bones and make your own bone broth: all this takes is heat, water, bones, and time. Use the extra bits and pieces to flavor or bulk up soups or vegetable dishes. A handful of chopped ham ends adds a lot of flavor to a pot of beans. Organ meats can be especially healthy, cheap, and versatile. Add some beef heart to your meatballs or meatloaf.

What about fruits and vegetables?

DO NOT BUY “ORGANIC”. Not from a supermarket, anyways. Trust your farmer, not a label.

“Organic” fruits and vegetables are not typically field tested, which means it is extremely easy to cheat the system. There are plenty of news story examples of major fraud in big ag “organic” food. Furthermore, organic farming at scale is normally highly intensive row cropping with multiple tillage passes per year, which is just strip-mining top soil resulting in very low nutrient density produce. You probably don’t even know what the “organic” label actually means. Does anyone, other than the industry lobbyists who write the regulations? You know what billions of advertising dollars are spent to make you think “organic” means. Why pay extra for a marketing scam? If you must buy at a grocery store, just get what looks good for the best price. But the better option is to buy from a local farmer you know, who is farming in a way that adds nutrients to the soil and thus to the produce you buy. (And if they say they are organic farmers, that’s a bit different from something with an “organic” label at a big chain grocery store.)

Shop local — and at the farm.

Farmers markets are fun and that is mostly what they are for. If you want to eat well on a budget, don’t buy a bag full of produce at the market. Instead, ask the farmer what their price is if you bring a vehicle out to the farm and fill up the trunk with food. Tell them you want to freeze or can a year’s supply of whatever is in season.

Buy in season, and ask for "seconds”. Farms have produce that they don’t bother to bring to market simply because it looks a little strange. It’s going to be just as tasty and nutritious as anything else, but most shoppers want to buy produce that looks like it’s “supposed” to, and there’s only so much room in the farm truck. Chances are you can find a local farmer who will gladly sell you their seconds at a nice discount. You could even ask if you can harvest from beds they’re going to turn under at the end of the season.

Once you have your gigantic box full of gnarly-looking-but-tasty apples or whatever, preserve them! Try out water-bath canning (don’t get botulism, use an approved recipe.) Or just cut them up, blanch them, and freeze them in your chest freezer.

Grow your own

Even if you live in a tiny 1BR apartment, you can grow pretty much all the salad mix you could ever want. Get two of those large plastic storage containers — the kind for storing clothes or tools. Put a few rocks inside one. Poke or drill holes in the bottom of the other. Stack. Fill the top container (the one with holes) with potting soil. Put it next to a window. (If you don’t have a convenient window, use grow lights.) Plant seeds, fertilize, and water appropriately. You can grow a lot of lettuce mix this way. If you cut the greens a couple inches off the soil, so the stems and parts of the leaves remain, they will grow back and you can keep coming back and harvesting over and over.

You can do a lot with container gardening like this. Salad mix of course. Radishes. Tomatoes, cucumbers, herbs of all kinds. Lemon trees. Plant things that benefit greatly from freshness (like salad mix) or that you like but are expensive to buy (like heirloom tomatoes). Don’t worry about experimenting. A single packet of seeds is cheap, and you can re-use the dirt and container if those seeds don’t grow. Try out companion planting to get more use out of your containers. And don’t stretch your pennies to buy the most expensive “organic” fertilizer when you’re just starting out. Sure, good organic compost is better than the NPK chemical junk on sale at your local garden center. But you’re already so far ahead of store-bought stuff by growing your own fresh, home-grown food, that buying cheap chemical fertilizer isn’t going to ruin it. Try out composting and making your own organic fertilizer — later on, once you’ve had some gardening success.

Save money on staples and don’t feel guilty

Basic, conventional rice. Dry beans. Oats. Staples that you can use to round out any meal. You may want to buy organic wheat flour (yes, this is an exception) because conventional wheat (along with other storage crops) is often sprayed with dessicant herbicides to facilitate an easy and uniform harvest. Your “organic” wheat may or may not be all that “organic”, but at least you won’t be eating something that was sprayed with an herbicide right before harvest time. (Could this widespread use of herbicides be contributing to the historically unprecedented explosion in “gluten” allergies? Not according to the corporate foundations that fund medical science!)

True…if you care about resource depletion and poisons going into the environment you probably don’t really want to think too much about how this stuff is grown and made. You know what? When you’ve saved up some money and you’re not living paycheck-to-paycheck, it would be awesome if you would help do something about that. Until then, we need you healthy and not broke. So buy the absurdly cheap corporate mass-produced flour and don’t feel guilty about it. Heck, buy the absurdly cheap sack of conventional oranges from a thousand miles away. You’re already getting great nutrition from a lot of local, naturally-farmed meat and vegetables and fruits. You’re not a bad person for buying a banana. (Bananas used to fund a lot of drugs and human trafficking, but that’s largely ended. Just don’t buy avocados unless they’re grown in the USA.)

* It’s a venison joke.

Beans and Rice with Smoked Ham Hock

Dry beans*

Smoked ham hock

Salt

Onion

Celery

Tomato paste

Paprika, Garlic powder, cumin, oregano, sage (or whatever you like)

Lard

A big heavy pot for beans

Rice

A rice-cooking vessel

Soak the dry beans in lots of (optionally, salted) water overnight. *I’m not a big fan of kidney beans, undercooked beans are pretty bad for you and kidney beans seem to take forever to cook. We tend to use small red beans or adzuki beans, which are a different genus but who cares, they look like beans and they taste like beans and they’re called beans, so they’re beans. You could use black beans or pinto beans or any kind of beans, even kidney beans if that’s your thing. Lighter-colored beans cooked with smoked ham hock are going to end up looking kind of dirty, which you may prefer to avoid or maybe you like the grunge look, I’m not judging you for that. Much.

Amounts depend on how much you want. A pound of beans will make a filling family dinner plus leftovers which you can freeze for later. For that amount of beans, probably around 1 large onion and half a bunch of celery would be good, but you could certainly add more onion and celery if you like.

Strain the beans and discard the soaking water.

Dice the onion and celery and sautee them in some homemade cooking lard. A lot of recipes call for bell pepper. Bell pepper is a height-of-summer vegetable. Beans and rice is a cold weather dish for us. We usually have some onions around and we usually have some celery in the garden. Perhaps in the Deep South bell peppers grow in winter, but I don’t think you can grow bell pepper in a Willamette Valley winter, so it doesn’t belong in the dish. Cook with what’s in season. (Canned pickled peppers are a great accompaniment to beans and rice, but unless they’ve been kept crisp which is hard to do, they’re probably best added at the table.)

Add some tomato paste for color and flavor, a few tablespoons is good. If I open one of those six ounce cans of tomato paste I’ll just use the whole thing rather than have a partial can sitting around waiting to be used.

Add the beans and water to cover them by at least an inch, then stir everything well to incorporate the tomato paste without burning it. Add in your smoked ham hocks. One hock is fine for flavor, but there is actually some meat on most smoked ham hocks, so you may want to use more than one and pull off that smoky ham hock meat at the end to mix into the final dish.

Stir in the spices. Paprika is a good idea, at least you can get some kind of red bell pepper flavor compounds this way. Garlic powder would also be good (when is garlic ever bad in a savory dish?) Other spices it depends what you like. We have several sage plants in the garden that seem to always have some leaves, and I’m testing a theory that if you want your kids to eat something, use pizza herbs (oregano).

Bring everything to a boil, then turn the heat down and simmer until the beans are soft and the ham hock is falling apart. If the water is evaporating too quickly, cover the pot, and you may have to top it up with some boiling water. The goal at the end is to not have bean soup but to have a creamy dish in which the bean starches have cooked out into the liquid. When it’s finished, remove the ham hocks and pull off any bits of meat left on them to add to the pot.

If the beans are getting soft and the mixture is too liquid, leave the lid off and turn up the heat a bit, then stir with a wooden spoon making sure to scrape the bottom and try to mash some of the beans against the side of the pot. As you stir and break up the beans their starch will thicken it.

The problem with making these in a slow cooker is that you can’t boil off extra liquid to thicken it, and slow cookers even on high heat probably aren’t quite hot enough to cook the beans thoroughly without taking a really, really long time. Making it in a heavy pot on the stove is probably best.

The beans probably won’t need extra salt after being cooked with smoky, salted ham hocks. Stir in a little ketchup or molasses or brown sugar and a splash of apple cider vinegar.

It’s probably a crime somewhere not to serve these with some kind of rice, cooked however you cook rice. Quinoa would be a lower-glycemic option, though I don’t know if eating lots of quinoa is better than eating just a little rice.

I think beans and rice needs to be eaten with lots of accompaniments so everyone can personalize their dish. Hot sauce, pickled peppers, fresh parsley or cilantro, celery leaves, fresh green onion, grated cheese, diced raw onion, sour cream, diced raw celery, crunchy bean sprouts…or whatever else you like to mix in.

"Brandenburg" Lamb with Green Beans

This is simple and very tasty. This amount will make enough for several family dinners.

Materials

A large, heavy pot would be best, with a lid

4 tablespoons of salted butter (plus see method)

2 yellow onions, medium-to-large

2 pounds of lamb (tougher cuts like a blade steak work well)

salt and pepper (to taste)

summer savory, fresh or dried, or a mix of thyme and sage (to taste)

2 cups homemade beef stock (or lamb stock if you have it)

2 pounds of fresh green beans

About 20 small potatoes less than 2 inches diameter (or larger potatoes cut in halves or quarters)

Method

Dice the lamb into approximately 1-inch square pieces. Clean and cut the green beans into approximately 2-inch long pieces. Peel the potatoes if you like, and cut into 2-inch pieces or smaller. Peel and cut the onions in half and slice them into medium-thin slices.

Heat the butter in the pot on medium-high heat. Either use clarified butter, or mix in a fat with a higher smoke point to prevent the butter from burning. Beef tallow works well. Brown the lamb in the butter on medium-high heat. Stir frequently to make sure all sides of the lamb pieces get browned. You don’t need a dark brown sear like on steak, just get the Maillard reaction started to add that extra flavor.

Keep the lamb on high heat and add the sliced onions and the red wine. Stir in some salt and pepper and some of your herbs. (You can add more seasoning later if necessary.) If you don’t have summer savory, use a mix of thyme and sage to approximate the flavor. Cook for another minute or two to let the alcohol in the wine cook off.

Add the stock just until the liquid barely covers the lamb and onions. 2 cups will likely be more than enough, so only use the amount of stock needed and reserve the rest for some other dish. Cover the dish with the lid and turn the heat down to low.

Braise for one to two hours until the lamb is completely tender. Taste the braising liquid and add extra seasoning if necessary, this may depend on whether or not your stock was seasoned. Add in the green beans and potatoes, mix well, and put the lid back on. Cook another 20 minutes or until the potatoes are done.

This dish is excellent regardless, but I think it is best when the beans are not overcooked and provide a green “pop” of color and fresh flavor. The problem with using (defrosted) frozen beans is that they would cook too quickly. If using frozen beans, a better choice might be to cook the beans separately and then mix in at the end. They won’t benefit from cooking in the braising liquid but at least won’t become overcooked.

For a low carb version of this dish you could leave out the potatoes, though without the potato starch mixed into the braising liquid the end result will be a bit watery and won’t taste quite as good.

Homemade Stock

You need bones, a large pot with a lid, water, a strainer, and (optionally) vinegar.

Do not use raw bones for stock. Roast, grill, or pan-fry the bones until they brown and begin to have black spots on them. If you use bones left over from a roast, these are already roasted and are fine to use.

Put the bones in a large pot. Cover with water and bring to a boil. Drain. Rinse the gunk off the bones and out of the pot.

Put the bones back in the pot. Cover with water. Optionally, add a splash of vinegar. Acidity technically helps to release minerals from the bones. If you use enough to be really measurable your stock will taste sour, but a splash (half a cup or less) isn’t going to hurt and might help.

Unless you are making stock for a specific purpose, there is no point in seasoning it at all. Keep it plain and then you can season it however you like, when you use it.

Cover the pot and simmer on extremely low how heat for as long as you can stand it. At least 24 hours. 72 hours would not be too long. Strain the stock into containers for storage.

We’ve found that freezing stock in glass containers, even with a lot of extra space for expansion, doesn’t work well and the glass frequently cracks. You could of course try pressure-canning in canning jars. We normally let the stock cool to room temperature and store it in freezer-safe bags. If you use this method, make sure you put the bag in a bowl or pot when defrosting. Freezer safe bags that are leak-proof when they go into the freezer have a habit of leaking when you take them out and defrost them.

Simple Pork Cuts Checklist/Walkthrough

This is a bare-bones (or boneless - hah!) guide for placing a custom butcher order for half a pig. We have some more in-depth plans elsewhere and there are probably hundreds of cuts you can get from half a pig, so if you have the time and desire to be adventurous then by all means, just start looking at “cuts of pork” and you’ll find a lot. However, if you are ordering a half hog from us or another local farmer so that you can put good food on the table for your family and you don’t have time to do hours of research, here you go.

The primal cuts of pork are the Shoulder, Loin, Belly, and Ham.

1. Shoulder: If you are going to get any roasts at all, get a Boston Butt roast or two. A smaller 3-pound roast makes leftovers for us (2 adults, 2 small children). The Picnic shoulder also makes good roasts for pulled pork. If you want fewer roasts and smaller cuts, the shoulder can also be cut into steaks. Shoulder bacon is good, and the picnic shoulder is also good ground for extra sausage or cut into stew meat.

2. Loin: We prefer double-thickness pork loin chops; you could also keep the loin as one big roast or a few smaller roasts. Two double-thick pork chops are a good meal for our family. Bone in means you don’t get baby back ribs, but you do get bones in your chops. The tenderloin cooks differently from other loin meat, so it may be best to have it separate. Grind the sirloin or cut it up for stew meat, it’s not a good cut for chops (unless you really like it.)

3. Belly: Take the spare ribs in half racks or a whole, and make standard bacon from the belly meat or have it cut as uncured belly roasts.

4. Ham: A whole cured ham is very large. You can also get it cut into smaller hams. For easy-cooking smaller meals, have the center of the cured ham sliced into steaks and keep the ends as smaller hams. We think thicker ham steaks up to an inch thick are more versatile, but for faster cooking you could go as thin as 1/4 inch. This is not sliced deli ham, you do need to cook it. If you don’t want cured ham you can also make roasts or steaks from a fresh, uncured ham, or you can grind it to get extra sausage. Uncured ham roasts are good but not quite as good as shoulder roasts.

5. Ground/sausage: You will get a few pounds of ground pork or sausage regardless, from the trimmings. If you want more than a few pounds you’ll need to pick something to add (such as the sirloin, picnic shoulder, or the uncured ham.)

6. Fat: A couple pounds of fat renders to a couple pints of cooking lard. Leaf lard fat has a more neutral flavor and you can use it in pastries. If you want more lard than that take some back fat, which makes lard that is great for frying and pan-frying. Homemade lard is an excellent cooking fat, but plan to store it in the refrigerator or freezer unless you’re using it up pretty quickly.

7. Other stuff: Get the hocks cured and smoked to add umami flavor to soups and stews. Extra bones and the pig feet are good for making stock. If you are new to organ meat, the heart is relatively easy to cook and mild in flavor. Pork liver has a stronger flavor than chicken liver; kidneys have quite a strong flavor. Pork jowl is quite fatty and can be braised or cured into a very fatty bacon. The whole head and the tail are probably not worth keeping unless you have specific plans.

Once you know what you want, custom ordering from the butcher is super simple. Here’s the literal text of an email we sent one of our custom butchers recently for a half hog for our family:

Hi [butcher’s name]

It’s [our name] [our phone number]

For our half hog:

Shoulder: make as many 3 pound-ish bone in roasts as possible. Smaller is fine, we want them to fit into a 6-quart slow cooker.

Loin: pull off tenderloin, baby back ribs (full rack), double-thick chops (2 per package), stew meat the sirloin (1 pound pkg).

Ham: grind for sausage

Belly: spare ribs (full rack), regular bacon 1 pound packages.

Sausage: 1/4 breakfast sausage (loose), and split the other 3/4 between brats and ground pork. 1 pound packages
Organ meats none this time, I'll take any trotters and extra bones.

Thanks!

(NB: We eat organ meats but our personal freezer was getting full at the time, and we already had plenty of lard and smoked ham hocks on hand.)

Simple traditional Christmas pudding (with leaf lard)

This is adapted from a video by Townsends, who are historical reenactors focused on the early American place and time and have a lot of great traditional recipes. As mentioned on our Cooking/recipes page, since “pasture-raised meat” used to be what everyone ate and knew how to cook, we think our meats often give their best flavor when cooked with old recipes and cooking methods. Of course, we’re not reenactors so we do use modern conveniences whenever we can get away with it!

You will need:

A very large pot with at least one handle

An additional means of boiling water

A clean, cloth kitchen towel without any holes in it

String

A large cooking bowl, a whisk, and a spoon

6 ounces pork leaf lard, frozen

3 eggs

3/4 cup milk

6 ounces AP flour plus plenty of extra

6 ounces dried pitted dates

6 ounces raisins

(optional, but recommended) a handful or two of candied or other dried fruits, such as candied cherries, candied orange peel, candied citron, or whatever you like

a couple pinches of powdered ginger and a couple pinches of nutmeg or about 1/4 nut grated

a few tablespoons brandy (you’re lighting this on fire, not drinking it. Must be 40 proof or higher.)

To make the pudding:

Fill the pot almost to the top with water and start it on high heat to get it boiling.

Dice the leaf lard into pieces ideally less than a quarter inch square, definitely less than a half inch. Make sure it is frozen first, the lard is far easier to work with when frozen. If the kitchen is warm, put the diced lard back in the freezer until you need it.

In the cooking bowl, crack the eggs and whisk them. Add about half the milk and continue whisking. Add the flour a little at a time and continue whisking so there are no lumps. Add the rest of the milk and whisk some more. Switch from whisk to spoon and add all the fruit. Mix very well. Add the spices and stir some more.

Mix in the diced leaf lard. The lard is a key ingredient. As the pudding boils, the lard slowly melts through the flour mixture, leaving small holes to aerate it and greatly improving the texture. You’ll end up with cloudy cooking water that probably has a lot of lard in it, but that’s okay. Whatever fat the pudding needs soak into the flour, and the rest that melts out helps the pudding have a smooth consistency and not turn into a boiled lump of gunk. Use raw, unrendered leaf lard (or suet from beef), not normal back fat or cooking lard. The leaf lard is a neutral flavor and won’t make your pudding taste like pork (though if you wanted to, you could probably include some candied bacon along with the dried fruits.)

Now add a tablespoon or two of flour at a time and stir it in very well. Keep adding flour and stirring it in completely until the mixture is very, very difficult to stir and all the flour is incorporated with no lumps.

Wet the cloth kitchen towel and lay out on a flat surface. Traditional recipes call for boiling the cloth, but wetting it seems to work fine. Sprinkle a good coating of flour over a large circular area in the center of the towel. This is to keep the pudding from sticking too badly.

Spoon the pudding mix onto the flour on the wet kitchen towel. The mix should be very, very thick and difficult to get out of the bowl.

Tie up the towel into a pouch with the pudding mix inside. Make sure (i) there are no gaps, (ii) the string is strong (use two just to be safe) and very tight, (iii) there is an inch or so of extra space inside the pouch for the pudding to expand. Leave a long tail on the string you use to tie up the pudding pouch.

When the water is at a rolling boil, put the pudding pouch in the water, hanging onto the tail of string. Tie the string to a handle on the side of the pot. Ensure that the pudding pouch floats freely in the water and that the string keeps the bottom of the pudding from sinking. You do not want the pudding pouch to rest on the bottom of the pot, as that could cause it to burn.

Partially cover the pot. Begin boiling some more water. Any time a significant amount of steam has escaped from your cooking pot, you need to top it up with boiling water. If you do not, the water level will go down and part of your pudding, held up by the string, will no longer be in the water and will not cook properly. How often you need to add boiling water depends on your pot. Do not add cold water, it must be already boiling so that the pudding continues to cook.

Boil the pudding for at least 2 1/2 and more like 3 hours. Realistically you aren’t going to overcook it, so going longer is fine. You can keep the pudding warm by keeping it in the hot water for a while after you turn off the heat.

To serve, remove the pudding pouch from the water. Untie or cut off the string(s) holding it closed and dump it out onto a platter. Yes, the kitchen towel that just came out of boiling water is hot. To check doneness, stick a long skewer through the pudding; it should come out clean.

Let the pudding rest for a few minutes to let some of the excess water steam off. When ready to serve, take it to the table and pour a few tablespoons of brandy over the top of the pudding.

Turn down the lights. Have a wet towel and a glass of water handy just in case. And a fire extinguisher, but you can’t eat the pudding if you use a fire extinguisher on it.

Light the brandy on fire. Yes, fire. Sing a Christmas song and admire the blue flames.

Most of the brandy will just fall down to the platter. Carefully pour it off, then light the pudding on fire again to burn off the alcohol. Slice the pudding like bread and serve.

(Optional) The pudding is good as is, but you can also make a pudding sauce. A simple recipe is a half cup butter and a cup sugar, combine in a pot and cook on low heat until the butter is melted, then whisk until the sugar is dissolved. Add about a quarter cup of heavy cream and whisk the sauce some more. Pour the sauce over the slices of pudding.

(Optional) It’s traditional to add brandy to the pudding, and you could certainly do that. The thing is, the pudding tastes really, really good on its own. Perhaps a better option would be to add brandy to the pudding sauce as you’re cooking it. That way you can control how much of the alcohol flavor you want by choosing how much pudding sauce you use, and the pudding itself can still be enjoyed by those who don’t want or can’t have the alcohol.