My favorite recipes

Kelli and Daniel Broeckel with Rowdie Jo and Beauhannon.

Meet Kelli Broeckel, Rosalia

Kelli is a Rosalia girl with Pullman roots. Her family, hardworking German and Swiss ancestors, homesteaded the Koppel farm near Pullman in the 1880s. The farm was a dairy and also produced wheat. Kelli loved being at the farm with her grandparents and younger brother. Her mother, Diane Koppel, is a dental assistant and coached volleyball at Rosalia High School, so the family needed easy dinners.

After graduating from Rosalia High School, Kelli went to Blue Mountain Community College in Walla Walla on a volleyball scholarship. She spent two years there playing volleyball and the third year coaching.

She and Daniel had a Palouse Empire Fair romance, meeting when she was a sophomore at Rosalia and Daniel was a junior at LaCrosse High School. They began dating 15 years ago. Not sure what to do after graduating from community college, she began working with Daniel’s mother, Julie Roberts, and her mother, Darlene Cates, the last five or six months that they ran the Dusty Café.

After the café closed, they moved to the Koppel Farm house near Pullman for three years. She worked for two years and returned to school to study cosmetology at Mr. Leon’s in Moscow. She graduated when she was seven months pregnant with their daughter.

The Broeckels have two children, Rowdie Jo, age six, a first grader in Garfield and an animal lover, and Beauhannon, three, is all boy and learning to deal with animals.

Daniel works at the Garfield Meat Shop as a meat cutter. He graduated from Walla Walla Community College with an associate’s degree in animal nutrition. Daniel and Kelli enjoy being involved in the ranching community, which ranges long distances because there are so few cattle producers anymore.

Daniel won first place for German sausage at the Northwest Meat Processors Association Convention in the sausage making contest this year and won a prize for jerky again. They “eat local” when it comes to meats, raising their own beef, buying from their parents, and buying pigs at the fair or from local farmers. In college, Kelli found herself looking at packages of bacon while grocery shopping and she realized that she had never bought bacon at a supermarket.

They live between Tekoa and Garfield, with a Farmington address, and she found space for a salon in the second floor of the building where her daughter takes dance lessons. The Twisted Mane opened four years ago on the weekend of the stock show. She keeps busy while scheduling appointments Tuesdays through Fridays. The space is decorated with corrugated metal, white, and bright turquoise, accented with horse pictures and an updated country look.

“It’s a work in progress,” she says.

They feel fortunate to have so much family time. Rowdie just started junior rodeo. That and being in the mountains claims most of their recreation time. They hunt, ride four-wheelers, fish and cut wood in the mountains.

Kelli learned to cook with her mother and grandmothers. They did lots of cooking in large batches, from scratch and with fresh ingredients.

“I learned to cook from good cooks!”

Daniel is the barbecue cook, and does not care for roasts. He is opinionated about what he eats, Kelli said, because he grew up in a café. Since he is the cook when they go camping, it is handy that he does well with Dutch oven cooking.

Kelli does most of her cooking in cast iron and only owns a couple of other saucepans, so she cooks mostly low and slow.

Recipes:

Butcher’s Wife Bourbon Glazed Country Style Pork Ribs

2 pounds country style pork ribs

favorite seasoning blend (garlic powder, onion, salt and pepper)

1 jar home canned peach jalapeno preserves

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 smashed clove of garlic

1/2 cup chopped onion

1 cup good bourbon (I like KNOBB Creek; Jack Daniels will do.)

Season ribs with salt, pepper, and garlic powder; brown ribs in a Dutch oven on medium high heat. Remove from the pan when browned and plump.

Deglaze the Dutch oven with the bourbon and let it bubble to remove the pork bits on the pan. Then whisk in the rest of the sauce ingredients - peach jalapeño preserves, brown sugar, garlic, and chopped onion.

Toss the ribs back into the Dutch oven. If more liquid is needed, add a splash of apple juice or water, bring to a simmer, put the lid on, and bake in oven at 250 degrees F for about 3 hours or until tender. The sauce should have carmelized into a glaze on the pork, and the meat falls apart when done.

Quick and Easy Salisbury Steak

1 or 2 pounds ground beef

1-2 eggs

1/3 cup Italian bread crumbs

1/2 cup chopped onion, divided

1/4 cup half and half

dash Worcestershire sauce

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper

1/2 cup sliced mushrooms

1 can cream of mushroom soup

Mix ground beef, eggs, salt and pepper, bread crumbs, and 1/4 cup chopped onions until a mixture is a meatloaf consistency. Form into mini-loaves and brown in a skillet on each side. In a separate skillet, sauté onion and mushrooms in butter. Place in a cast iron skillet with mini-loaves. Pour soup and Worcestershire sauce over loaves. Cover and simmer until done.

Serve with Mashed Baby Reds.

Mashed Baby Reds

3 pounds baby red potatoes

1/2 cup sour cream

1/2 stick butter

1/4 cup cream cheese

salt and pepper to taste

garlic powder to taste

Boil baby red potatoes. Remove from heat when tender and drain.

Smash with a potato masher. Add the sour cream, butter, cream cheese; add salt, pepper, and garlic powder to taste.