Tag Archives: chicken

Trader Joe’s Jerky

August 26, 2015 Johnny Prime 2 Comments

I recently went on a jerky spree at our local Trader Joe’s market. After sampling some various jerky brands here on the site, I jumped at the opportunity to get these flavors from Trader Joe’s.

Why? Because they were both unique and VERY cheap – at least $1 or $2 cheaper than the “brand name” shit. So I grabbed every single flavor I could find that day in the store. Here’ we go:

Wild King Salmon

Probably my favorite of the lot, which I was really shocked about. Fish jerky, which I never even thought about before, just didn’t strike me as something even remotely appetizing. I thought I’d hate it, but I loved it. It was a bit too salty, but the texture is the consistency of dry, thick cut bacon and it even tasted similar. Awesome. I’ll be getting this again, and possibly eating it with a bagel and cream cheese or something to cut the saltiness a little.

Sweet Sri Racha Uncured Bacon

This reminded me of pre-cooked bacon but better quality and with a sweet and spicy flavor to it. I guess it’s somewhat similar to the Spicy Bacon Candy that my wife makes on occasion. The sweet comes from something in the maple flavor family, if I had to guess, and the heat is obviously from chili paste.

Teriyaki Turkey

This was pretty standard in terms of flavor – nothing new or unique – but it was executed nicely. It was juicy, yet not wet. It had nice flavor, and was thick but not too chewy.

Sweet & Spicy Buffalo

This was lean and tasty. It wasn’t too tough and it didn’t require heavy chewing, and that goes for all the flavors, really. The spice comes in at the end on this, which is really enjoyable.

Teriyaki Beef

This, like the turkey, is standard issue, but again very good quality. If you like a traditional, meaty beef jerky with a common flavor kick, then this is for you.

American, Midtown West, Restaurant Reviews

Poulette

July 20, 2015 Johnny Prime Leave a comment

My wife and I ordered some stuff here for delivery. I was excited at the prospect of eating roasted chicken from a place that specifically deals in such an item and nearly nothing else. I was expecting one of the best roasted chickens in my life. If that’s all you really do, as a restaurant, you need to excel at it. Unfortunately Poulette failed to deliver good roasted chicken. We ordered a half chicken. It was pretty dry and the flavoring on the skin had a bitter component that I wasn’t too fond of.

The brussels side was cooked with a vinegar and mustard base that really ruined the flavor of the sprouts. All you really need to do is roast them with some seasoning and chicken drippings from the roasting process for a really successful item. What a failure.

On the bright side, the french fries were good, as were the salt and pepper chicken wings. Both remained very crispy despite closed-container transport. The wings were expertly seasoned and cooked to a beautiful golden brown. They consisted of drumettes and wings with the little wing bone still attached, for extra nibbling. Sadly, the sesame glazed wings were a let-down. They were overly sauced to the point of undesirable sogginess. Good flavor in the sauce, but executed poorly. Perhaps that sauce needs to be in a container on the side rather than drenched all over the wings.

Apologies for the lack of photos. I was too hungry to whip out the cell phone this time. Take my advice though: if you come here, stick to the salt and pepper wings and the french fries. If roasted chicken is what you are craving, I say go to Inti.

POULETTE
790 9th Ave.
New York, NY 10019

Recipes

Chicken Legs and Broccolini

June 30, 2015 Johnny Prime Leave a comment

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.

Recipes

Satan’s Fried Chicken Sandwich

June 16, 2015 Johnny Prime 2 Comments

Satan’s Fried Chicken Sandwich is a recipe I concocted for usage of Saint Lucifer Spice during my review of their product. If you can’t get your hands on their delicious shit, then substitute for some other pepper like cayenne powder. But I highly recommend their habanero garlic blend. It just works better.

What do you need, and how do you do it?

1) Grab a pack of thinly sliced chicken breast from the grocery store.

2) Crack a few eggs into a bowl and mix/scramble.

3) Create a breading mixture using a combination of Italian breadcrumbs, panko and a teaspoon of Saint Lucifer Spice.

4) Drag your chicken filets through the egg dredge and batter them with the spicy breadcrumbs.

5) Fry your chicken to golden brown in hot oil.

6) Hit your still-hot chicken with some more Saint Lucifer spice to lock in the seasoning after they come out of the fryer/hot oil.

7) As the chicken cools, quickly prep some lettuce, tomato, onion and sliced apple. Maybe some cooling cucumber as well, if you feel like it. As an alternative, you can do this step before you start cooking, but then the apples may bruise up and oxidize – unless you know to hit them with some lime juice to prevent that brown bullshit from happening.

Note: This step is for adding additional crunch and a little sweet juiciness to cut the spice. If you happen to have coleslaw laying around, you could simply use that. And if buying an apple is too much work for your lazy fucking ass, you can also use the pickles that have been sitting in your fridge, floating around in murky water like a shit that never got flushed.

8) Mix a few shakes of Saint Lucifer spice into some mayonnaise.

9) Apply some of that spiced mayonnaise onto each half of a potato bun. A soft, sweet bun is key, like Martin’s or King’s Hawaiian.

10) Assemble sandwich and eat.

If you’re ambitions, you can make some “conundrum fries” to go with this sandwich on the side: sweet potato french fries spiced with a few shakes of Saint Lucifer, once they come out of the oil. Do it, and then eat them with the remainder of your spicy mayo mixture from above. Why? Because fuck ketchup, that’s why.

African/Middle Eastern, East Village, Restaurant Reviews

Halal Guys

March 26, 2015 Johnny Prime Leave a comment

This review is for take-out from The Halal Guys’ new brick and mortar location, down near 14th Street and 2nd Avenue.

I ordered the chicken and rice on the advice of my expert friend. He was going to tell me to get the mixed (lamb and chicken), but told me to keep it real on this first visit. His suggestion was great. The smell was amazing in the cab ride home, and with a midnight buzz going, I was salivating and eager to dive into this bitch.

The chicken was flavorful and spicy, the lettuce was cool and crisp, and the rice was supple and textured. The sauces were both great, though I wasn’t a fan of the hot sauce as much as the white sauce. Perfect late night grub. I’ll definitely brave the lines in midtown during work, now that I know this place serves up some legit food.

HALAL GUYS
307 E. 14th St.
Manhattan, NY 10019

Recipes

Flight of the Noble Turducken

December 9, 2014 Johnny Prime Leave a comment

My industrious, ambitious and extremely brave friend and co-creator of Hungry Dads endeavored to prepare a Turducken for his Thanksgiving feast this year. Lots of people these days, who are interested in indulging in such a menage-a-fowl, are buying them pre-prepared because it is an arduous task to do it oneself. When my buddy told me he made a Turducken on his own, I was extremely impressed. Below is a write-up that he provided for me to share with you, as well as a time-lapse video of his work. Well played!

Flight of the Noble Turducken

Hugh Gallon

www.HungryDads.com

When it comes to cooking, I’ve embraced the words of my high school Driver’s Ed teacher, Mr. Woods, who preached that people who claim they can’t cook are likely lazy and/or stupid. Any idiot can follow directions. Recipes are just directions. Taking Mr. Woods’ philosophy into adulthood, I’ve boldly undertaken many culinary ventures with unwarranted confidence – yielding more than a few disasters. And when I naively committed to preparing a Turducken for Thanksgiving, I didn’t expect it to be the greatest undertaking of my adult life.

For the uninitiated, a Turducken is a turkey, stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a chicken. Arrogant and uninformed, I assumed I would just need to shove a small bird into the cavity of a larger bird, repeat, cook, and eat. It turns out the Turducken is a true Frankenstein’s monster of poultry. After 3-5 hours of web research, I began to regret my fowl hubris, but ultimately ended up with a solid strategy by combining a few different recipes. Unexpected challenges included:

De-boning all three birds. I guess I could have gotten my birds from a butcher already de-boned, but I am not lazy or stupid, Mr. Woods. The internet provided some good instructions with photos, which I promptly ignored and instead just hacked away at the poor things like I was Dexter blindfolded.

Flavor vs. poison. When you have this much raw meat, and it comes from three separate animals, there is a lot of opportunity for nasty little bacterial microbes to fester. You gotta cook those buggers out, but not at the expense of your juicy meat. If you layer up that much raw meat and put it in the oven, the exterior turkey will dry out before the inner “ducken” is cooked. The website Serious Eats (The Food Lab) had a great solution: poach the chicken and duck portions before putting it together.

They also recommended browning the duck skin over the stove to add some nice fried fatty flavor.

Structural integrity of stuffing. Bread stuffing is controversial in a normal turkey scenario (under-cooking risks and such) – but in a Turducken, stuffing is important to fill in the gaps like spackle. But web research revealed that traditional stuffing might buckle under the weight of so much bird flesh, resulting in a lop-sided or bulged Turducken. One of the goals of the Turducken is to make it look like a regular turkey on the outside, but with pure un-boned meatiness on the inside. Once again it was the Serious Eats Food Lab with a solution: stuff with sausage instead of bread stuffing. More meat = better anyway.

Duck is mushier than snot. Trying to layer and form everything was a real pain. It was the only point in the process I considered bailing out. But by then I was up to my elbows in soft, fleshy bird tissue – so I crammed raw meat to and fro until everything fit and the outside looked like any other unassuming turkey.

The process is better shown than described, hence my two minute Turducken documentary:

The verdict? Well, I am confident that I created a successful Turducken. It probably wasn’t perfect, but it looked like a real turkey on the outside. Cutting into it revealed a lovely mosaic swirl of dark/light meat on the inside. And wasn’t dry. So I’m calling it a success.

That said, in a final anti-climactic taste review, I must say that the flavor was just so-so. I didn’t think the three birds’ flavors melded particularly well. The chicken and duck skin on the inside didn’t stay very crispy and was a little rubbery. I’d have to say each bird would have probably tasted better on its own.

Nonetheless, a Turducken is about the journey more than the destination. I took pleasure in telling friends and family about the project and enjoyed merely having the opportunity to say “Turducken” on a regular basis. Regardless of flavor, the legend and legacy of my noble Turducken will soar like an eagle for many family Thanksgivings to come.

Korean, Midtown West, Restaurant Reviews

Angry Chicken

December 6, 2014 Johnny Prime Leave a comment

Tucked away on the third floor of a K-town food court, Angry Chicken roasts up some deliciously sweet and savory whole chickens. They were giving out some free samples when I was up there for dessert at a nearby food vendor. Check these gorgeous things out. Why so angry? Perhaps because they tasted heavily of apple? So what. Throw some spicy sauce on there and this is heaven.

ANGRY CHICKEN IS CLOSED

Bronx, Latin/Mexican & Caribbean, Restaurant Reviews

188 Cuchifritos

October 19, 2014 Johnny Prime Leave a comment

Cuchifritos Frituras, aka 188 Bakery Cuchifritos, was recently featured on Anthony Bourdain’s newest CNN food show, and then written up on Grub Street as a result.

Yanked directly from Wiki with no shame whatsoever:

“In New York City, vendors advertising cuchifritos are particularly notable because they tend to make use of colorful external lighting and big, flashy signs that quickly catch the eyes of passersby. These establishments have dotted Puerto Rican and Dominican areas of New York City for the past 50 years, particularly Hamilton Heights, Washington Heights, South Bronx, Brooklyn, and other primarily Puerto Rican and Dominican neighborhoods.”

After seeing that it was pretty much meat heaven, I decided that I needed to go and try this shit out ASAP. Check out the wall o’ Dominican cuisine:

something tells me they didn't brother to secure the license to use Porky Pig in their signage... unless he's public domain now — something tells me they didn’t brother to secure the license to use Porky Pig in their signage… unless he’s public domain now

Not knowing what any of it meant, we pretty much just followed the Grub Street outline but made sure to get some of the nasty bits as well. My wife and I were pretty much shot from walking around all day, two stops away up in the Bronx, at a Japanese exhibit at the New York Botanical Gardens. I was also wiped out because the day before I had run a half marathon and then proceeded to walk around for about 20 miles to and from Gotham West Market and for several hours at the NYC Wine & Food Festival.

Needless to say, we stopped in after the park and picked up a sack of food to go – we were anxious to get home, and it was hot, stuffy and crowded in that bustling little pig joint.

But holy shit, were we happy when we got home…

I’m getting right at the titties here – the chicharrones. We ordered both pork and chicken. There’s LOTS of meat on these babies, and the skin is perfectly fried to crisp deliciousness. The portions are rather big too for $6.

We also grabbed some alcapurrias – sweet, tangy pouch stuffed with meat and spices. These were incredibly tasty. I almost forgot to take a pic of the inside before destroying it.

Last, the cuchifritos nasty bits. Blood sausage, pig ears, tail, tongue, skin… you name it… plus plantains. My wife likes this kind of offal shit more than I do usually, but I DO get down on it sometimes, especially if it’s done right. Here, they offer a gravy to go with it, but we opted for no gravy – as if we are watching our diet when eating this stuff! Haha!

When you eat in the restaurant, which I did on a second trip, you can utilize their awesome hot sauce and spicy pickled veggies.

The acids definitely help cut the fats down. Excellent food.

188 BAKERY CUCHIFRITOS (CUCHIFRITOS FRITURAS)
158 E. 188th St. #1
Bronx, NY 10468

Flash Deals, Harlem, Ramen, Upper East Side

Yasha Ramen

September 28, 2014 Johnny Prime 2 Comments

My wife and I grabbed a sweet group on deal for this place: $15 gets you $25 worth of food.

Since it was up on 106th/107th, a good hike for us, we made a little trip out of it. There were a few spots around that corner of Central Park that I always wanted to see, as well as the home of Harry Houdini.

Anyway – back to the point… we were able to try three different bowls of ramen. I had the tonkotsu, pork broth with half a seasoned egg and some cha-shu pork. Very tasty:

My wife had the signature ramen, but the spicy version. This is a chicken broth. I liked the kick of the spice, but the chicken based broth over at Totto edges this out a little.

Last was the curry ramen. This bowl came with wavy noodles (the other two were al dente straight noodles, likely alkaline as opposed to egg noodles), as well as a stew-like broth that even had potato and carrot mixed in. Very flavorful and different.

The establishment was spacious, which I liked. Lots of times at these ramen shops I feel like I am bumping elbows with nearby diners. Annoying. And it also gets way too hot in those cramped little shit boxes. This place had high ceilings, a nice big clean bathroom, and enough eating space to feel comfortable, even when fully packed out for lunch crowds, which it was…

Here’s a look at the dude slinging the goods:

YASHA
940 Amsterdam Ave
New York, NY 10025

Flash Deals, Latin/Mexican & Caribbean, Midtown West, Restaurant Reviews

Inti

September 8, 2014 Johnny Prime Leave a comment

My bargain hunter wife found a sweet deal for 50% off (up to $20 off total) of a local Peruvian food joint called Inti. I had never had Peruvian food before, but always heard good things about their rotisserie chicken and their Chinese fusion dishes. So here’s what we had:

I guess I should first mention the puffed corn kernels and green sauce that are on the table. The kernels are nice and crispy, not too salty. The sauce is amazing. A mix of jalapeño, celery, cilantro, and other goodies. We were shoveling this shit into our mouths, that’s how good it was.

We ordered a couple of potato-based apps. The first one was essentially mashed potatoes with meat and veggies in the middle, then deep fried to a light crispy outside shell. My wife described it as being like Shepherd’s Pie. This was incredible. A definite re-order on the next trip.

The other potato app was a cold dish, with crabmeat and avocado stuffed inside a yellow potato mash. This was also very tasty and refreshing, but I think the other potato app just nudged this out by a bit.

Then the rotisserie chicken came out. This shit was excellent. Our table fell silent as we dug into the juicy, tender and flavorful meat. The skin was coated with such a great, earthy spice mix. Throw a little green sauce on the chicken breast meat to spice it up too. This is a real winner, especially at only $14.

Next was the Peruvian/Chinese fusion beef fried rice. They certainly don’t short you on fillings here: the rice was packed with beef, egg and scallion, and it too had a nice earthy and soy flavor. Guess what? The green sauce went really well on this too.

We also had a nice array of beverages too. Although I didn’t get a pic, my wife had this really great purple corn drink that was sweet like a soda but without any bubbles or fake flavoring. She also had a can of carbonated beverage that was like a strange mix of mountain dew plus bubble gum.