There's a reason why some recipes are called tried and true.

They're the ones that always turn out the same, are always delicious, and always please your guests.

They usually not complicated.

They use simple ingredients and simple cooking techniques.

So here are two recipes that are bound to become family favorites in your household.

The first is from our friend Kim Love.

It involves pork chops and ketchup.

So what could be bad?

So this is pork chops and ketchup.

There is nothing complicated here.

There are no layers of flavor to talk about.

We need to heat a skillet.

Okay, I'll get this.

Here.

And so I can put the heat on the skillet.

There we go.

I guess that's, It's not.

Oh, there you go.

Now you're cooking.

Now.

All right.

These are lovely pork chops, by the way.

Those are huge.

They are huge.

But I guess too many of these.

We're going to slow cook it.

I guess it it's it looks nice.

Yeah.

They're a little thicker.

They do cook a little better.

The other thing is, most of us either work or have children or have busy lives.

And this is something you can make in a big batch, and you've got days worth of dinner.

So if you don't mind leftovers.

This is the thing.

This is the ticket.

Yeah.

So you get some.

We're going to salt and pepper these guys alright.

Very simply, this is, this is the only flavor you put in this dish.

So there's nothing tough here.

And we'll do the other side once we have them in the skillet.

So you don't need a degree from cordon blue for this one.

You don't need a practiced palate.

You don't need anything for these.

You just simply need to brown them and cook them in the ketchup.

But, you know, something strange happens to this ketchup once this pork cooks in it.

And I think part of the secret I like to use, boneless spareribs because they're just very easy and they're, you know much easier to take out of here.

But I think you need the bon in chops to get a little flavor.

And I think that's what does it to this cooking in the ketchup all day long.

So you mix some boneless, spare ribs with some bone in.

I mix whatever's on sale.

Okay.

The chops that are on sale, whatever's on sale.

A lot of times you can bu a whole pork loin that's cut up.

You can buy the mix chops that has some steaks.

The only thing I think that's important is to get some bone in some bone.

Okay.

Got to get that.

Alright.

So we're going to throw these in.

Now once you get i in and sooner or later that pan.

Oh it starts sizzling.

Sizzling now these are actually the little bone in or the boneless spare ribs, but they kind of a pork loins that are just sort of.

Yeah.

They're just opened up.

Yeah.

I don't know exactly what kind of meat these come from, but they're so meaty.

They're absolutely beautiful.

I've got to tell you.

Oh, we got a little.

It's all right.

There we go.

So that guy's done.

You want to go ahead and season the other side?

The other side?

Yep.

Minette, you haven't done much cooking at here.

No, but I'm going to mound this rice very artfully on this one.

You're the rice mounder.

Rice mounder and food pointer.

Now, while these guys are browning, what we can do is go ahead and get this ketchup and water in the crock pot.

These designer ingredients, just really depends on the size of your crock pot and, sort of, how much pork you're putting in.

It really is about as forgiving a recipe as you can get.

So we're going to put about two cups or so of this big old thick plain and put it on hamburgers, ketchup.

And we're going to sit down with just a little bit of water.

Okay.

I had to cook this dish and measure everything to send it to you, because I had never measured anything I did.

And it's just.

Yeah, just whatever was lef in the ketchup bottle was, well, don't laugh the way that I normally do.

It is, just pour some ketchup out, put some water in the ketchup bottle and shake it around.

Okay.

That's right.

It helps you get out.

Right?

Exactly.

Now your husband is Minettes brother.

And I know, I know Mike, but you sort of makes this, like, the multimedia family because, Mike is a writer.

He does work for magazines, but he's done some radio work.

He's done radio work, he's done television work.

He's doing some producing on a TV channel now.

So these two are just sort of a Minette on TV.

I've never seen you on a bicycle, but, no, that's not multimedia.

That's, But but you've been here, producing and doing.

I've seen you actually write for Pittsburgh Magazine.

Yeah, and lots of other places, too.

And it's it's kind of strange to remember m and Michael when we were little.

And now that we're like media hogs, it's come through.

Someone's embarrassed, but it's not us.

Yeah.

You really can't look on, on TV or in a newspaper in this city.

Not see a seat somewhere.

Yeah.

We're going to let these browns just a little bit more.

Keep in mind, with with there being so little in this recipe as far as ingredients, it's kind of important to get a good brown on these guys because you want to get that flavor.

Flavor of the other thing is we're going to pour this oil off and we'll have a little bit of, of, goodies left in the bottom of that pan.

And we're going to be glazed with a little more ketchup.

And water and put a little bit more flavor in.

Okay.

Yeah.

That's good.

I love this part.

I love to be in a kitchen with something sizzling, you know.

Sound great.

Yeah.

It sounds good.

And the narrative seeing through the studio.

Oh my gosh, it's painful to walk around here today.

We've been guessing what we've been smelling and how well we've done.

Yeah.

You know in the old Warner Brothers cartoons where the smell would come down and grab Bugs Bunny by the nostrils.

That's what it's like being i here on a Saturday.

It's insane.

Well, my husband insisted on coming, not because he had any interest in, you know, being on camera or doing any of that.

But he heard you tell that there would be food in the green room.

Yes.

He was just so delighted at being able to because the most we watched the cooking shows on Saturday morning on PBS every week.

But he can only stand so many before we have to go eat something.

So it usually means a trip to the strip or to do something to get breakfast, because he can only watch so long and then he's got to try something.

It reminds me of the Rick Sebak.

Rick Sebak is one of our producers here.

But, when when he does a show up on ice cream or hot dogs?

Sure.

I got to have ice cream.

I got to have hot dogs.

He's a true inspiration.

There we go.

That's pretty.

That's nice.

That's a little pretty brown.

Now, that's a pork chop I'd like to see on a restaurant plate.

Yeah.

So we've got a couple of chops over there.

If you want to give me those, I'll go ahead and put those in here.

Those have been browned already.

Right.

These you already got.

In case These people holding cameras think they're not going to eat.

We're feeding everybody.

There is, you know, when you cook in a slow cooker, there really isn't any need to have everything completely covered because the the steam in this thing, you know, the stuff gets it's cooking and everything gets.

Actually get all that juice.

You better believe it.

And that's the flavor.

Did you have any formal training in cooking or you never, you know.

No, no, not at all.

I in fact, have really strange family training.

My, my grandmother loves to cook and was a very good cook, but didn't like anyone in the kitchen.

Oh, I mean, She didnt want to train you.

She really like giving us cookies and sending us out of the kitchen at any of.

You know what, kids underfoot.

We're not her favorite thing.

But we learned a little by osmosis.

And my mom was a very good cook, although she swear she isn't.

And, taught me more by going to work full time.

You know, I came home to notes that said, put this in this pan and do this right.

And that's how I learned to cook.

So we really didn't cook that much together either.

She cooked and I cleaned up or I cooked and she cleaned up, which I liked a lot better.

Yeah, I like doing the cooking, not the clean up.

But yeah, I mean, I only learned from her and, we it's funny because now my mother is a much more healthful cook.

She does a great deal of chicken and fish and cook for health.

But but we were really raised on the typical sort of roast beef mashed potatoes and gravy kind of meals, you know.

But I think you and I talked about this.

I was, you know, raised in the 60s and 70s where convenience to foods were really coming into their own.

And it was we kids.

That's all we wanted was a TV dinner, give me a pot pie or, you know, pre-made pot pie.

Drive my mother crazy, yo know my mother would work in her tails off trying to cook the food that you know, they wanted to eat.

And we kids, all we wanted was, you know, Zippy Pop popcorn or something like that.

Oh, just give me something instant that has an animal attached to it or a toy and that's advertised on TV.

Yeah, absolutely.

That was the beginning of the end for poor parents.

The trifecta was a pot pie.

The metal TV tray and the television.

A lot of like, that was the best you could possibly get when you a little kid?

Yep.

And it's funny because now we're back to where we really appreciate things that we make from scratch, all of that.

But I think what's happened is that now we have a choice.

I don't think anybody's going to be embarrassed by picking up some convenience foods.

All right.

We're going to make believe these are all brown because they got them on to the next stage.

Let's take these guys out.

We're going to just pour that little bit of fat out of the pan.

I'll take that.

And I'll pour the fat into this one of these dishes.

We've got a little bowl there for you.

You want rice okay.

And all we're going to do is put a little bit of water.

You can leave that on for a few minutes and a little bit of what you asked.

Ketchup.

And deglaze the pan with ketchup and you can turn that off.

That's just all ready to go.

All we want to is get all of those little bits off of there.

Because really, like I said, this is not a complex dish Any amount of flavo you can get, you want to get it.

And we're going to pour this right in there.

Right.

Nice to have those silicone spatulas.

They don't melt when you put them in a hot pan.

Yeah I have to tell you.

You speak of learning to cook.

I learned what not to do a lot for my grandmother.

My grandmother was famous for catching pajamas on fire.

She habitually cooked in those very swanky sort of nylon pajamas that had the little men's wear looking tops and bottoms, and she caught them on fire more often than not.

So if you want to learn food safety, I learned it that way.

I'm just going to mix these up a little bit and this is all there.

So you stir that down, put the top on it, and then you can, you know, depending on your schedule, you can cook it on high for a couple of hours.

It takes about 3 or 4 hours.

You can cook it on low all day long.

Okay.

What you're looking for is just for the meat to fall off the bones.

Yeah.

That's all need.

Let's put the lid on that one.

I'll be back in three hours to eat that.

Do you want to taste one thats already done?

I'd love to taste one right now.

Well, we have that, so let's see what we can do for you.

Wait a minute.

The mounding of the rice.

The mounding.

Pardon me.

Yes, this is Minettes job.

Would you mound some rice, please?

Minette?

I'd love to.

Drumroll, please.

Oh.

Beautifully done.

Oh, they pay good money for this down there.

It's come to this.

We have our executive producers, mounding rice here.

Im gonna hand you that because I think you might want that.

Yes, I do, and I'm got the tools of the trade.

Oh, kids.

Wow.

Oh look at that.

Yeah.

It really it doesn't stink.

I'm going to put a couple in here and then I'm going to let you have at it.

And these ar definitely falling off the bone.

That's the way I love it.

Let's see.

That spoon will put a little bit of sauce on there for you.

Won't you.

Let's see.

Yeah.

Put some sauce on there.

Coming to just put some on your plate and then I'm just going to break off a piece of this.

There you go.

Yum.

I don't know what that pork does to this ketchup, but it is unrecognizable.

That's what I want to taste right now.

Kim.

Watch that steam, I see it.

wow Oh, yeah.

Isn't that strange?

Bring me to dinner.

Bring me to dinner.

This is delicious Kim.

Minette, the rice was mounded perfectly.

And these pork chops are a memory, aren't they something?

Just as simple as it is.

That's how delicious it is.

Looks like cooking up a little bit of my childhood.

Yes.

I have a feeling Li'l Abner might enjoy those chops.

Does anybody remember who Li'l Abner is?

Oh, well, the next one is a classic coffee cake that I made from a recipe submitted to the firehouse cooking show.

It bakes up in just a few minutes, and it will be cooling off as you put the coffee on.

I've talked throughout today about having gone to, number four, which is in the uptown section.

It's on Forbes Avenue right next to the Palumbo Center.

Not that you have to go down there, but, I was down there, to do some material for the, the magazine article and the.

And the fellows there was so great, to help us out.

Arts Sallustio made a delicious smoked turkey dinner for me, and, and I went back and cook for them.

So I've had a chance to spend some time with them.

And one of the fellows who sent in a recipe, I wanted to have him on the show, John Marthins, because he was there helping us, prepare the meal one day.

And I said, Gino, John, you really know what you're doing here in the kitchen?

He said, well, you know, I'm in this.

I was in the service and I did some cooking and so on.

I said, well, what do you like to cook for the guys?

It's well, you know, with art here, I don't get to do a lot of the main dish cooking.

But he sent me two recipes.

One was for a beef barley soup and the other one was for this quick coffee cake.

And he said, what he does is that when they're on night tour and if he's the the one who is on duty and has to stay up, the other fellows may be, taking a rest, in the sort of the bunks that they have upstairs.

And, what he'll do is just before the end of their tour, he will make one of these coffee cakes.

And he said the smell of that coffee cake sort of makes its way up, to where the guys are sleeping.

And when they get up before they end their tour, they can have a cup of coffee and a piece of, John's coffee cake.

And I just thought, you know, I if John can't be here and he can't be here because he was called up, he was in the, the reserves, and he got called up, to do service.

So he couldn't be here.

I couldn't even ask him to be on the show, but I thought, I don't want to miss having you have a chance to, see this recipe.

So I'm going to make it very quickly for you.

It's a it's a fairly simple, as he calls it, a quick coffee cake.

First, I'm going to put together the liquid ingredients, which is a half of a cup of vegetable oil.

You can use canola oil, as we're doing here, or corn oil or, you know, whatever vegetable oil you have, we want two eggs, that we're going to beat into that.

Theres one.

Two.

I'm just gonna Not enough if there's anything to the chemistry of this, but whenever I have eggs and oil in a recipe, I always beat them together before I add anything else.

And it seems to me that.

When you do that, the egg in the oil form an emulsion that holds it all together, and I get a better rise out of cakes, and I get you know, a better integration of the of the different flavors in a recipe.

If I mix the oil and the egg first, beat it a little bit and you can see that it it does sort of come together.

It doesn't separate out.

And you don't have the oil rising later on.

You also want to put in one cup of milk.

Plus eight ounces of milk.

And now what I'm going to put in are the dry ingredients.

These are three cups of just general purpose all purpose flour a cup and a half of granulated sugar, regular sugar, four teaspoons.

And that's sort of, more than you might normally have, but four teaspoons of baking powder.

Baking powder.

Make sure that the you know the difference.

And just a teaspoon of salt.

And I'm going to mix this together until I have a nice batter.

I guess you could use an electric mixer.

You could do something so that it doesn't spill all over the table.

But this forms a nice, fairly thick batter.

Sort of like what you would expect from, muffins.

Almost.

I'm not going to overwork that, because, as with a lot of things, I want it to be smooth, but I don't want it to, Sort of get overworked.

It toughens up a cake when you do that, I think.

All right, I'm going to put that.

I want to put this out of the way.

And now I'm going to put this.

I got a butter my, this is, you could use a 9 by 13.

This is just an oval shaped, baking dish.

And I'm just going to butter it a little bit.

If you wanted to avoid the extra calories, I guess you could Pam it.

But I like the flavor of butter as it cooks in there.

It's just to keep this from sticking.

Okay.

Just wipe the hands off on this.

And now I'm going to put this the cake batter.

Into the pan.

And that wasn't so hard.

Not a lot of ingredients.

And it does fit in there.

Fits in pretty well.

Okay.

Now what I'm going to make is a streusel topping for that.

And the streusel topping is really nothing more than some brown sugar.

This is a half of a cup of packed brown sugar.

And I'm going to put in one tablespoon of ground cinnamon.

And I'm going to mix that with two tablespoons of melted butter or softened butter.

At least I'm going to put that in there.

And I'm gonna mix this together with a fork to get that all mixed together.

First.

And you'll see that, that mixes fairly well.

Butter gets in there.

You don't have to have it completely melted butter because as long as it's soft room temperature, instead of cutting it in the way you cut shortening into flour when you make a pie crust.

But I do want to get the cinnamon completely mixed with the brown sugar.

You got to put traces in this.

You can't see, brown sugar in the cinnamon.

Okay.

Now, once I have that.

Mixed like that.

Now I'm just going to sprinkle in between a quarter of a cup and a third of a cup of flour.

And just mix that to dry it up a little bit.

And this is what constitutes the streusel topping just a little bit more, you can get a feel for it when you see how.

There we go.

And folks that's really it.

Just having done that.

Now what I'm going to do is to sprinkle this is, you know, evenly as possible over the top of the batter.

And ye it looks like a lot of streusel.

That's fine.

I love the streusel apart.

So does Frank.

Frank is, one of our floor managers today, and he approves of the amount of streusel going into this.

Yeah.

I used to I used to love those Drake's cakes.

Coffee cakes.

And they had a little streusel topping on them.

This is a little bit more sophisticated here.

That's it.

Now, you have to put this into a 375 degree oven for 30 minutes.

Or, as John says, until the cake springs back when you touch it.

I'm going to put it into an oven.

And I have one that's pretty much yes.

I could take this one out.

There we go.

Let me clear the decks a little bit here.

Now, I know one thing and that is that the next time we have a cooking show and John is not on duty, we're going to have to have him come back here.

I want to cut a little piece of this and put it on a plate.

And do my favorite.

This makes of this batter.

I mean, this is done in a 9 by 13 pan.

It makes a lot of cake.

Even for firefighters, this would be a pretty good sized cake.

And I'm not going to be stingy.

I'm going to give myself a nice.

Because after all, it is just coffee cake.

Now, is it going to stick to the bottom?

No, it's not.

Oh, and it's just warm too just nice and warm.

It's not hot.

I'm going to taste it.

Let you know what I think.

John, I know you can't watch this right now.

I want you to see the incredible texture of this.

This is a delicious coffee cake.

Very simple.

The flavor is as a delicious cake flavor, but with the cinnamon in it.

And the streusel is just fabulous.

Oh, boy.

Where's my coffee?

I got to have a cup of coffee with this.

Thank you, John, for sending in your recipe.

So there are two recipes which make the best case for keeping it simple.

People are always telling me that they enjoy our shows because it looks like these are recipes that they can make at home.

Well, that's the point.

These recipes come from people just like you, so there's no reason why you can't enjoy them in your home.

Thanks for being with us.

And as we always say, we do it for you, but we can't do it without you.

Keep watching.

Here's a quick tip from the QED Cook's kitchen that can save you money.

That's right.

When you're looking to get some chicken cutlets, you go to the store and there they are.

They're $4 a pound, but they've got the chicken breast on the bone, and that's $1.79 a pound.

Well, here's what you do.

You turn these chicken breasts into boneless chicken breasts.

All you need is a nice sharp knife.

And here's what you do.

You turn the breast over, you cut along the bone.

Cut under that bone.

And you don't have to worry about it too much, because we're going to use a cut under this little wishbone.

Just keep cutting back.

I actually then remove the skin.

Here's the little chicken tenders.

There's a nice, beautiful boneless chicken breast.

I'm going to do the other one here.

So you see how that works.

Come underneath that wishbone.

You get that.

Just keep cutting down.

Remove the.

Skin.

Chicken tender chicken breast.

Now, with this left over the bones and this part, you can make a delicious chicken stock that you can use for chicken soup.

Or you can use it as the chicken stock in some other recipe.

And you don't waste any of the chicken that you bought, and you get the premium cut of the chicken without the premium price.

And that's a quick tip from the QED Cooks.