Tag Archives: garlic powder

Condiments

Burger or Everything Sauce

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I’m writing this down, finally, because I’m tired of digging out the scrap of paper I figured it out on every two weeks. It started out as a burger sauce, but has since been used on fried fish or chicken, pulled pork, corned beef, pastrami, kebabs, and even a few french fries. The sauce has turned up here in a few posts, but with few details:

on smashed burgers
on kebabs
on fried chicken

Burger Sauce

  • Servings: about 1 1/2 cups
  • Difficulty: easy
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Whisk together the following ingredients:

  • 1 cup Hellmann’s® Mayonnaise
  • 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon cumin
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 3 tablespoons maple syrup
  • 1 tablespoon Sriracha
  • 1 tablespoon lime juice

Pour into a squeeze bottle and refrigerate.

Chicken / Poultry, Meat, Recipe Testing, Review

Recipe Review: Crispy Fried Chicken

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I’ve tried many methods for fried chicken. The ones that use only flour, or the three stage flour–egg–breadcrumb process, or the buttermilk marinade followed by breading, but it seems like the crispness doesn’t hold up for more than a minute or two past frying. They all taste good, but I really expect a crisp coating if I’m going to go to the trouble of frying. This recipe—Crispy Fried Chicken from Taste of Home—delivers. The name says it all.

What they do differently than most recipes is add flour to the egg wash, so that you are really dipping it in a batter before adding a final coating of seasoned flour. The final coating makes a shaggy layer that crisps up all over the chicken. Sometimes you get that shaggy look when you start with a buttermilk soak, but I find this egg–water–flour batter works even better than buttermilk.

I usually use an electric deep fryer, but I only made four pieces today, so I used a high-sided stock pot with a couple inches of oil. Unlike the original recipe, I did not use bone-in chicken; I used boneless thighs, which cook more quickly, about a total of five minutes in 375° oil for each piece.

Egg batter
Seasoned flour
Battered and breaded chicken
on fried chicken

Crispy Fried Chicken

  • Servings: will coat about 4 lbs
  • Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients
  • 2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 tablespoons garlic salt or garlic powder plus 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 tablespoon paprika
  • 2 teaspoons  white or black pepper
  • 2 1/2 teaspoons poultry seasoning—I used a combination of sage and celery seed
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 1/2 cups water
  • 1 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • up to 4 lbs chicken pieces, with or without skin. I used boneless thighs.
  • cooking oil for frying
Preparation
  1. Combine the first five ingredients in a large bowl for the final coating and set aside. The original recipe suggests a plastic bag, but I find patting on the flour works better, creating a shaggier coating that has lots of crispy edges.
  2. In another large bowl, whisk together the eggs and water, then whisk in the second amount of flour and salt, until the batter is smooth.
  3. Coat chicken pieces in batter then dredge in seasoned flour, patting the flour on until all the batter is covered and the coating is dry enough to handle and set aside.
  4. Heat cooking oil to 375° not allowing it to fall below 350° between batches. Fry chicken in small batches, depending on the size of your fryer, so that you keep the oil temperature high throughout. My boneless thighs cooked in 5 minutes, one piece at a time. The original recipe suggests that bone-in pieces would take about 5-6 minutes per side. My oil was deep enough that I didn’t need to turn my pieces over.

★★★★★ = Five Stars

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Beef, Condiments, Meat, Sauce, Slow cooker

Hot Dog Sauce Redux

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Two years ago, I posted a recipe probably given to me by my sister-in-law for hot dog sauce, supposedly similar to that at a Greenville, PA bar and grill. We’ve had the original many times, including recently, and thought this recipe was pretty close, at least in basic ingredients. But if you look at the post comments, you’ll see two recent comments from former Greenville residents that suggest one significant problem with my sauce, a problem I agree with—too much cloves. One generous informant, Mr. McDonald, even provided a recipe from one of his former Greenville neighbors “of the original Majestic restaurant.” Here’s the recipe I have been using, followed by the better one:

My recipe front
My recipe back

I decided to make the better recipe in a slow cooker, instead of hovering around a pot on the stove, and that turned out to be a good choice, although the beef didn’t break down like I thought it might, even after 8 hours, so I pulsed it in a blender for a few seconds for a much better texture. Both cooking methods are below.

Gathered ingredients
The spices
After 8 hours
Pulsed in blender
Ta Da!

Greenville Hot Dog Sauce

  • Servings: makes about 8-10 cups
  • Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients
  • 3 lbs ground beef
  • 2 “handfuls chopped onion” (I used 2 cups)
  • 3 tablespoons chili powder
  • 1 teaspoon ground cloves
  • 1 tablespoon black pepper
  • 1 tablespoon nutmeg (Mr. McDonald used 2 teaspoons; I used the tablespoon)
  • 3 tablespoons paprika (I only had smoked paprika)
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 14 oz bottle ketchup
  • 6 cups water
  • 2 teaspoons salt (I added 2 more at the end)
  • 1 cup flour (Mr. McDonald says “3/4 c. seems enough”; I used the full cup in the slow cooker)
Preparation

On stove:

  1. Brown beef, drain, and set aside, reserving about 3 tablespoons fat in pot.
  2. Sweat onions in the reserved fat until translucent.
  3. Return beef to pot with spices and ketchup.
  4. Beat together water, salt, and flour until all the flour is combined. Add to sauce mixture. “Simmer 2 hours. The sauce will thicken and the beef will break down. The beef is supposed to be in small particles, like Cincinnati chili. If you simmer the sauce uncovered then the water evaporates down,” if needed.

In slow cooker:

  1. Brown beef in large skillet, drain, and place in slow cooker. Reserve about 3 tablespoons fat in skillet.
  2. Sweat onions in the reserved fat until translucent, then transfer to slow cooker.
  3. Add spices and ketchup to slow cooker.
  4. Beat together water, salt, and flour until all the flour is combined. Add to slow cooker, stirring until all is combined.
  5. Cook at HIGH for 4 hours. Stir, then set at LOW for another 3-4 hours. You shouldn’t have any sticking, unless you have an older cooker with the heating element on the bottom, in which case you might want to use an all-day LOW setting.
  6. If the texture of the ground beef is still chunky at the end of the cooking (like mine was) you can use an immersion blender or a regular blender or food processor to make it more finely textured, which is best for a hot dog sauce. Just don’t turn it into a paste!

*About the amount of flour in the sauce. One cup of flour has 16 tablespoons, enough to thicken 8 cups of liquid to a medium sauce, like white sauce or cheese sauce. Combined here with 6 cups of water, you can see why the first cooking method on the stovetop suggests using less. In the slow cooker, however, there is little to no evaporation and the sauce is not too thick. That said, you have to decide how thick you want the final sauce. We like a kind of loose sauce with fine textured meat, and thought this one was just right

Grilling, Meat, Seafood

Walleye for You, Steelhead Trout for Me

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Ted brought back a steelhead trout the last time he was out fishing for walleye on Lake Erie, even though he wants no part of eating salmon or their cousins—he says they’re fishy, but I think he probably just had a bad experience. So, I’m having the steelhead and taking out a small walleye for him—mine on the grill; his baked in the oven.

He skinned the steelhead, so I can’t rely on skin acting as a barrier to sticking on the grill. I’ll have to be careful, making sure the grill is hot and well-oiled, and then watch for that perfect moment to flip. I’m going to use a marinade with soy and brown sugar, so that may add a little layer of protection or it may act like glue—who knows?

But let’s start with the walleye. I’m using a mayonnaise base in which to briefly marinate the fish; then it gets coated with panko bread crumbs. It creates a light crispy coating with a delicate, moist fish inside. The easiest part is that you just bake it, so there’s no messy, splattering oils to clean up afterward.

Here are the two fish after marinating for an hour in the fridge and the walleye with the panko crumbs waiting to go into the oven. You can see how neat the walleye look with the panko pressed in all around; there’s no mayo leaking out:

 

The walleye only need to bake for about 10-15 minutes in a hot oven or until they start to brown. The steelhead fillets, which are much thinner than a salmon steak, grill up in about 5 minutes and didn’t stick at all today—just don’t try to flip them more than once.

 

Yes, he likes to eat off those cheap Corelle® plates and I prefer the heavier Fiesta® ones, but I have my eye on new dinnerware that we could both like.

Baked Walleye with Panko

  • Servings: as many as you catch
  • Difficulty: easy
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Mayonnaise Marinade

For two fillets:

  • 1 cup mayonnaise
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon coarse ground pepper
  • 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1-2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley

*I don’t like to over season the fish, but you can certainly add your favorite seasonings to the mayo mixture.

  1. In a glass dish that will hold your fillets without overlapping, spread the mayo mixture over each fillet. Turn and cover the other side.
  2. Cover the dish with plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour.
Panko Crust and Baking
  1. Preheat oven to 425°; line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
  2. Place about 2 cups unseasoned panko crumbs on a paper towel or in a shallow dish. You could use seasoned crumbs or add seasoning, but I find it unnecessary.
  3. Carefully place fillets in crumbs, pressing crumbs into the mayo all around. You can’t avoid breading your fingers, but it all works out.
  4. Place each fillet on parchment-lined baking sheet.
  5. Bake at 425° for about 10-15 minutes or until crumbs are browning.

Grilled Steelhead with Honey-Soy Marinade

  • Servings: 1 steelhead of about 12-16 oz
  • Difficulty: easy
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In the summer, I usually throw together marinades on the run with what’s available, often with orange juice and ginger and soy, but today I borrowed a good recipe from Betty Crocker that is usually made with salmon: “Grilled Salmon with Honey-Soy Marinade.” I changed the preparation a little.

Marinade
  • 1 tablespoon packed brown sugar
  • 1 tablespoon butter
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon honey
  • 1 tablespoon soy sauce
  • 1 clove garlic, minced or garlic paste
  1. Mix all ingredients in a small bowl.
  2. Place in microwave to melt butter—my microwave button for that runs for 25 seconds.
  3. Whisk the warmed ingredients to dissolve the brown sugar, then set aside to cool. Do not put a warm marinade on the fish.*
  4. Pour the room temperature marinade over the fish in a shallow glass dish. Turn to coat.
  5. Cover dish with plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour.
  6. Bring to room temperature before grilling.
Grilling
  1. Set up grill for medium-high heat, about 400°; clean grill grate when hot.
  2. Mop grate generously with olive or vegetable oil just before grilling the fish.
  3. Place the fillets on the grill; turn after 2-3 minutes with a large, fine-edged turner. Grill for another 2 minutes.

*Leave a small amount of marinade in a separate bowl for basting, if you like.