Seeking Mom's best recipes

[meaniecooks]

I'm looking for Mom's best recipes. No, not my Mom's--YOUR Mom's (or Dad's or grandparent's). Any meal, any type of dish. I just wonder what you consider the "best" recipe to be, and what it is. Consider this a Mom's best recipe swap. :) I'll submit mine, too, in the comments.

Comments

[ex-prunesnp.livejournal.com]

My mom cooks like crap, unfortunately. are you sure you don't want something actually GOOD?

[kaasirpent]

This weekend for my birfday din-din, I had my mother make Chicken 'n' Dumplin's, and MAN were they good. I gave you this recipe last week, but I'm gonna repeat it here for posterity. And with the exact amount of chicken we used this weekend. :)

6 chicken thighs, bone in, skin on
enough water to cover and cook same
3 cups self-rising flour
2 Tbsp mayonnaise
1 1/2 cups milk
1 stick butter
salt, pepper to taste
other seasonings to taste

Put the thighs in the water and basically boil them until done. Allow to cool; pull meat off bone. Discard bones, keep meat separate, crank broth up to boiling.

Cut the butter into the flour using a fork until it looks like corn meal, then cut the mayo in the same way. Add the milk and combine into a sticky, biscuit-like dough.

Into the boiling chicken broth, drop bite-sized dumplings pulled from the dough. Allow them to float back to the top before adding the next one.

Keep doing this until there is no more dough. Duh.

After you've put all the dumplin's in, cook it for 20 minutes at a simmer, then add the chicken meat back and cook it for 30 more minutes. Serve.

As the dumplin's cook, some of them will sort of disintegrate. This will thicken the broth and turn the whole thing into a smooth, silky, creamy, delicious mass of chickeny-dumpliny goodness.

Believe it or not, we did not season this beyond salt and pepper. Sometimes the simple solutions are the best.

Comfort food extraordinaire.

[kaasirpent]

Our version of Macaroni and Cheese (a la my grandmother). It's stovetop, not casserole.

elbow macaroni
water
Velveeta
milk
butter
chives
garlic
salt
pepper

Cook the macaroni according to package instructions, turn heat to low. Drain off most but not all of the water. Add a healthy pat of butter, allow to melt. Add some milk and allow that to heat up. Chunk Velveeta into the hot milk & macaroni and dissolve.

The amounts entirely depend on how much macaroni you want, how "soupy" you want the final product, and how "cheesy" you like your mac & cheese.

Add seasonings as needed.

Personally, I like mine medium-soupy and VERY cheesy, so I end up with an artery-clogging mass of yellow goo that would make Martha Stewart die on the spot.