This is a simple twist on an Old Fashioned that I decided to make with the tail end of a bottle of whiskey and some hibiscus tea that my wife brewed and left in the fridge. Other ingredients include agave syrup, sugar in the raw, lemon juice, lime juice and candied ginger.
I put some ice, whiskey, sugar, lime juice, lemon juice and agave in a shaker and shook the living fucklights out of it. Then I poured it over an ice sphere (because cubes are for pussies) and garnished with a couple of pieces of candied ginger that I had sitting in the cabinet.
The result was a great, sour-yet-sweet, tangy take on the classic Old Fashioned cocktail.
Okay so I am playing fast and loose here with the term “salad,” I realize that. If you’ve been keeping up with my posts, you know I have some very serious opinions about what constitutes a salad.
According to my definition, this is not a salad. This is some other kind of appetizer. But if you’re like me, you have an aversion to reheating leftover steak from the steakhouse. Other than tossing the leftovers into a pot to make a stock or a broth what can do with the meat, especially if you ate like a pussy and there’s a lot of nice slices left?
Once in a while my wife and I will cut it up small and toss it in with some fried rice or something, but this steak “salad” is a really fun and quick way to make a pre-dinner, cold food item.
This recipe is a little something I picked up from my dad, who used to make this with leftover steaks as well. We called it “meat salad” around the house.
The first thing you do is cut up the steak remnants into small, thin pieces. Try to cut against the bias so that you simultaneously tenderize the meat. While cutting, you can remove some of the excess fat or gristle. Keep that in the freezer for the next time you make beef stock or broth.
You’re almost done already. Place the meat into a bowl and drizzle on some olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette. Then toss with some salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion flakes and crushed red pepper. If you have any cheeses in the fridge, this dish goes really nice with some shaved pecorino or parmesan, or crumbled blue cheese, on top.
That does it. Really simple item to make with leftover steak.
Nothing too crazy about this “recipe.” It’s just a great, simple way to take your couch potato movie nights and Netflix binge weekends to the next level.
The most basic form of this would be to just add some sesame oil and soy sauce to your melted butter, and then sprinkle generously on your popcorn with a little bit of Chinese five spice, garlic powder, salt and toasted sesame seeds (regular seeds are fine too). Add or remove ingredients as you see fit, but this general set of shit will give your snack a distinct Asian flavor profile, chock full of earthy goodness. I love it, and it beats the movie theater version by miles.
I usually make popcorn with a hot air popper and then add my seasonings, but you can simmer your kernels in the sesame oil if that’s your thing. The addition of pots and pans into my popcorn snacking is just too much clean up for my blood! Worst case, just add the additional seasonings to a bag of microwave popcorn.
If you like spicy heat, then add some chili flakes or cayenne pepper as well. Feel free to get creative with this. For example, I’m generally not a huge fan of nori, but I would imagine that those who do like it might want to crunch up some dried seaweed paper into flakes and shake that up with the mixture as well. Shit, I may try some fish sauce and cilantro on my next batch for a Vietnamese/Thai kick.
My wife and I dreamed up this incredible concoction about a week ago. Last night we finally gave it a shot. It’s a pretty straight forward recipe, so no real instructional videos or any other complicated bullshit to show you.
What The Fuck Do You Need?
Pre-cooked bacon (it’s just easier)
Eggs
Ham steak
Frozen breakfast sausage
Frozen spinach
Jalapeño pepper
Chives
Onion
Garlic
Shredded cheese
Potato
Crispy fried shallots
Leftover rice from the fridge
Butter
Olive oil
How The Fuck Do You Make It?
The first thing you’ll want to do is some basic prep. Dice up your ham steak, potato, onion and jalapeño. Mince your garlic, and slice your chives, bacon and sausage. These will be more like “toppings” for your rice, so as not to moisten the rice while cooking together.
Fry some shit off in olive oil and butter. I did the potato, pepper, onion and garlic together to form a hash, and then I put it aside in a bowl lined with paper towels to get rid of some of the grease and excess moisture.
Since we used frozen spinach (you can use fresh), we threw that in a pan by itself to dry it out and remove all the excess water.
We gave a little fry to the bacon and sausage too. Here are some of the components before adding to the rice:
Grab your rice and throw it into a hot buttery wok or pan.
Once its all hot, you can mix in your scrambled egg, which you should first cook in a separate pan:
Once you get some snap, crackle and pop going, and some crispy browned rice forming at the bottom of the pan/wok, you can lower the heat and fry off the other egg separately for the top of the rice:
Fill a bowl with rice and start to assemble your dish by adding the toppings. Don’t forget the cheese!
Here’s a jerkworthy shot of the finished product:
Dive in and eat. I like to mix it all around, break the yolk, fold the spinach in, etc. Then I get a little bit of everything in each bite.
I whipped this shit up on a whim with some bullshit items I had laying around, some of which required more effort than others.
Example: the veggie stock I used as the base was made two days earlier by roasting a bunch of veggies I had in the fridge before they went bad. Onion, garlic, shallot, carrots, celery, etc. After roasting with some olive oil and spices, I boiled the fuck out of it all and reduced it to a stock of sorts. You can just cheat and use a stock of your choice.
Then I added some extra water, a packet of Tonkotsu pork ramen seasoning, black garlic oil, sesame oil, sesame seeds (toasted and regular), dried garlic chips and a huge heap of spicy, mouth-numbing Szechuan peppercorns. This was to be my hot pot broth/ramen base hybrid. See it bubbling up below:
I boiled up some tofu skin knots as well. These things are awesome in a soup.
And some dried instant ramen noodles, of course, from the packet.
The end result was a pretty tasty and spicy soup. Not so bad for a home episode of Chopped. Just strain off the junk that is floating around in the broth first, that way you have a nice clean soup as an end-product.
I should say up front that I initially intended this recipe to involve lamb rather than beef, so feel free to swap out the protein. Shit, you can even go with ground turkey if you want. What the fuck do I care?
Anyway, the grocery store that’s on my way home from work didn’t have ground lamb, and I wasn’t about to break out the Kitchenaid stand mixer and grind up the lamb chops that they DID have for some $20+. Also, I didn’t feel like going to Whole Foods and waiting on a line filled with granola-eating vegans to procure said ground lamb (Whole Foods has everything – it really is awesome… just always crowded with food Nazis). All that said, I went with ground beef. About half a pound of ground chuck, to be exact. Under $3.
My idea for this came to me when I was trying to decide what I wanted for dinner. I was thinking or ordering a burger from a local steakhouse, but I was also craving falafel. So I decided to combine the two desires into one. Behold, the beefalafel burger:
It’s a really simple recipe, with an incredibly delicious end-result.
What The Fuck Do You Need?
lemon juice
plain greek yogurt
a few cloves of garlic
olive oil (for sauce)
vegetable oil (for frying)
falafel mix
half pound of ground beef
potato buns
tomato
red onion
arugula
feta cheese
various normal, everyday household cabinet spices
*Note* as I mentioned above, feel free to swap the ground beef out for something else. Also, you can play with the ratios. If you add more meat, you will have a beefier final result that leans more toward the burger side than the falafel side. This recipe ratio – with a half pound of beef to one packet of falafel – yields four burger patties that are somewhat more falafel-ish than burger-ish. However, they are WAY more juicy than your typical no-beef falafel.
How The Fuck Do You Make It?
First, I’m going to pop my time-lapse cooking demo into the post here, that way you can see for yourself how the steps unfold. It’s really fucking easy.
So now that you’ve seen it made, here’s the step-by-step:
STEP 1: Make The Sauce
Cut up a few cloves of garlic. Sautee the garlic in a pan with olive oil and lemon juice until they get softened and the mixture starts to get slightly brown. Allow this to cool. Place a few tablespoons of plain Greek yogurt into a small dipping bowl and add some spices to your taste. I like cracked black pepper, oregano and crushed red pepper. Once cooled, add your garlic, olive oil and lemon juice combo into the yogurt from your pan. Mix thoroughly and set aside for later.
STEP 2: Make The Falafel
Prepare your falafel according to the instructions on the packet. If you’re industrious, feel free to make your own falafel from scratch. I go with the packets because they are easy as fuck, and they taste perfectly delicious to me. Besides, all that’s really involved here is adding a cup of water to the falafel powder and then mixing the shit into a fucking paste.
STEP 3: Add The Ground Beef
Mix your half pound of ground beef into the falafel paste and get the meat particles evenly distributed throughout the falafel.
STEP 4: Make The Burger Patties
Form four equi-sized burger patties on some wax paper. Step four is fucking one line of text. Don’t fuck it up.
STEP 5: Fry The Burgers In Vegetable Oil
Add your vegetable oil (1 & 3/4 cups, thereabout) into a frying pan and crank the heat. Once it’s hot enough for frying, place your burgers into the pan. When the patties turn to a dark brown color on the bottom, it’s time to flip (maybe 5 minutes). When both sides are done, take them out of the oil and place them on a drying rack or a bed of paper towels.
STEP 6: Assemble The Burgers
While you’re waiting for the oil to get hot, you can slice your tomato, red onion, and feta cheese, and rinse your arugula. When you’re ready to go, smear some of your yogurt sauce onto each half of the bun. Be generous, too. This shit is actually pretty healthy. Add your burger, onions, cheese crumbles, tomato and arugula. Close that bitch up and eat! I like to slice mine in half for easy mouth-shoving.
As you can see, this leans a bit more on the falafel side than the burger side. Add more meat and you’ll see some pink in there for a nice medium.
Parting Thoughts
This is a great way to stretch your supply if you’ve only got a small amount of ground beef left from an earlier meal. It’s also a smart way to cut down on the fat and red meat if you’re dieting, without sacrificing flavor. Lastly, it is really budget-friendly. For about $15 you can feed four people. Not bad! And you can make a salad with the rest of your arugula, tomato, feta and onion, if the burger itself doesn’t fill you up. Just make some extra yogurt sauce to use as a salad dressing.
This is really a riff on my Smoky Mountain Beehive cocktail recipe, but with a pop of elderflower sweetness instead of honey.
2 parts Laphroaig scotch
1 part St. Germain
1/2 part orange juice
1/2 part seltzer
Pour it all over ice and shake it the fuck up. Drink this shit on the rocks, and maybe add a leaf of basil or mint to top it off. Another name for this concoction is the Boutineer. St. German can be substituted with aloe drink, and scotch can be substituted with rye.
This recipe is pretty easy to execute, and every time I make it, it delivers with amazing flavor and texture. Crispy skin lemon and herb chicken legs with sautéed chorizo broccolini.
What The Fuck Do You Need?
Two chicken legs (thigh and drum X 2)
One bundle of broccolini (aka baby broccoli)
Lemon juice
Oregano
Salt
Cracked black pepper
Onion powder
Garlic powder
Crushed red pepper
Vegetable oil
Butter
Dry, cured sausage (the hard kind, like a pepperoni or chorizo)
How The Fuck Do You Make It?
STEP 1
The first thing you need to do is make the lemon-herb paste. This is basically made “to taste,” so you can vary the proportions and amounts to your liking. Just keep the consistency to a paste and not too liquidy. Combine your salt, cracked black pepper, crushed red pepper, oregano, onion powder and garlic powder into a small dish or bowl and add lemon juice. Stir until mixed into a paste.
That shit is going to smell amazing: very Greek/Italian. Try not to shove it down your throat just yet, because you need it for the later steps.
STEP 2
pre-heat your oven to 350, rinse and prep your broccolini, and chop up your sausage as such:
STEP 3
Next, you’re going to shove some butter and your lemon-herb paste underneath the chicken skin, without completely removing the skin from the meat, of course. Spread it around evenly so you don’t get any blank spaces of flavor. Don’t worry either – you’d be surprised how much the butter helps to slosh the spices around once it gets cooking. Get down into those drumsticks too!
STEP 4
Get your vegetable oil in a pan and heat it up. You shouldn’t need more than two cups of oil. Just enough to get the majority of the chicken skin into the hot oil should do the trick. Then drop your chicken legs in, top-side down.
You’re going to flip these bitches once they get golden and crispy. Try to keep the skin covering the meat too on the bottom side when you flip it (that part of the skin doesn’t quite connect to the meat as well as it does in other areas).
STEP 5
Remove the chicken from the frying pan once the other side gets nice and crispy brown, and place the legs onto a baking sheet. Pop that shit into the oven for another 20-30 minutes, top-side up.
STEP 6
Clean your pan (or use a second one), and then begin to sautee your sausage/chorizo. When they start to release some grease, you can add your broccolini in there as well.
STEP 7
When the pan is nice and hot, and your broccolini is really cooking, I want you to hit the pan with a few ounces of water to deglaze the pan. Doing this releases all that nice brown sausagey goodness from the pan and puts that flavor directly into the broccolini.
Once the water is all evaporated from the pan again, your broccolini should be fully cooked and your chorizo should be slightly crisped and browned. Plate that shit.
STEP 8
Remove your chicken from the oven and plate that shit alongside your broccolini.
That’s it. Super simple, and this will feed two people, unless you’re a fat fuck like me and can eat it all by yourself.
I also like to add sliced onion and fresh garlic into the broccolini sautee as well sometimes. When I did this recipe, I didn’t have that stuff handy, but here’s a shot of the finished plate from a previous night when I made the dish with onions and fresh garlic. As you can see, the skin actually came out a little nicer that time, due to better butter coverage and frying technique.
I put the word “homemade” in quotes because, well, nothing about this recipe is really homemade. It’s just a really incredible combination of store-purchased ingredients that comes together as one of the best pizzas you will ever eat in your fucking life.
I will 100% guarantee that this fucking pizza is better than where you get your delivery, and I don’t give a fuck if you regularly order from fucking Di Fara!
What Do You Need?
Small can of sauce (8oz)
Small package of mozzarella cheese (8oz block/ball is preferred)
Parmesan cheese (to taste)
Pre-made pizza dough (the fresh kind)
Olive oil (just a few ounces)
Bread crumbs or cornmeal (2 teaspoons)
Various spices (to taste)
Perforated metal pizza pan
Directions:
Pretty simple. Watch the time lapse video below, and if you can’t fucking figure it out from that, you can read on below…
Pre-heat your oven to 375 degrees. While waiting, coat your pizza pan with some olive oil. Shake a few teaspoons of bread crumbs or cornmeal across the pan. Stretch your pizza dough across the pan to get full coverage. Pour sauce evenly over the dough and add a few drizzles of olive oil. Add parmesan cheese and spices to taste. Cut up the block of mozzarella cheese and arrange slices evenly across the pizza dough. Bake 20-25mins or until cheese begins to bubble and turn brown. Remove from oven and allow pizza to cool down a bit before slicing.
This shit also comes out really nice with fresh ingredients. I did the same type of thing with sliced tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, herbs and some sliced onion. Check it out:
Before the oven:
After the oven:
The tomatoes actually make each vote really juicy, so this was a much better pie than the ones I make with canned sauce.
