deep-fried butter

Here at Buffet o’ Blog, we’ve been known to experiment with various new food creations (see our Buffet o’ Bacon series), and we enjoy discussing the potential of new ideas.  Something we heard about is deep-fried butter, which debuted at the Texas State Fair this year.

The creator says it tastes like a mix between a biscuit or a croissant that is stuffed full of butter.   He also offers varieties with flavored butters: garlic, grape, or cherry.

Apparently the Texas State Fair has started a tradition of trying everything deep-fried, because this year they introduced many new deep-fried dishes: twisted yam on a stick, peaches and cream, fried pecan pie (picture that one!), pork chips, and more.  Previous years have featured deep-fried lattes, fried banana splits, and chicken-fried bacon.   (The latter is one I’d like to try, with a gravy dipping sauce.)  The creator of deep-fried bacon has also introduced deep-fried cookie dough, Coke, and peanut butter and jelly and banana sandwiches.

He also made a radical new creation called Fire and Ice.  It consisted of deep-fried pineapple chunks topped with strawberries, strawberry sauce, and banana-flavored whipped cream flash-frozen in liquid nitrogen.  So when you were eating it, smoke would come out of your nose or mouth when you exhaled.

The creator of deep-fried butter has found such success as a concessionaire that he quit his job as a computer analyst, which he had done for 14 years.  Supposedly he works for about 3 weeks a year now.  I knew concession stands at fairs were highly profitable, but had no idea you could make that kind of money.  Perhaps I need to take that up as a job on the side… I can come up with some great deep-fried goodness. 

becoming a food critic

I think one of the best jobs ever would be a food critic.  You go to restaurants, your company pays for it, and you try all kinds of interesting food, then review it.  Unfortunately, most of us will never get that job, so I’m starting a series where we get to be a virtual food critic.  I know, it’s not nearly the same, because you don’t get to eat the food.  But it can still be fun.  Plus, if we discover a new dish that sounds awesome, maybe we’ll try it at one of our next “Adventures in Eating” nights (also called “Buffet o’ Bacon”, though not necessarily limited to bacon).  And maybe we’ll invite all the regular readers here to these events (as we have been discussing).

Here’s how this new series will work: I’ll post a picture of some dish, and then we discuss it.  If that doesn’t sound interesting, give it a chance.   I’ve been involved in numerous food-related discussions with the Buffet o’ Blog staff that were a lot of fun, and we’ve come up with many good ideas.

One limitation with these pictures is that there may not be a recipe included, so sometimes we will have to guess at the actual ingredients.   But if we aren’t sure what it is, we can always make substitutions (like switching bacon for an unknown meat or replacing non-potato vegetables with cheese).

In your analysis of the featured food dish, you can rate it from 1 to 10 (or any comparable scale), you can specify which ingredients / sides should be removed as well as which ones should be added, and you can explain why a particular dish would be awesome or horrendous.  And remember this is a humor site, so don’t get burdened down in seriousness.  This is supposed to be fun.   So don’t be afraid to get extreme or go way over the top in suggested improvements.

I’ll start this new series with something we’re all familiar with — a cheeseburger.  But to me, something about this burger just isn’t quite right.  What do you think about it, and what should be changed on it?

(The future entries will all be filed under the category of “food critic“.)

Buffet o’ Bacon 3

Last night I had the Buffet o’ Blog staff over for a regular team outing (where we played video games and discussed funny stuff — how meetings should go!).  As has happened before, this meeting turned into a Buffet o’ Bacon.  It was kinda like an Iron Chef episode, where 3 contestants brought an original dish based around bacon.  (At these impromptu cooking sessions, the theme is always bacon.  Not that I’m complaining!)

First on the menu was bacon-wrapped smokies covered with barbecue sauce and grilled, and served on a stick.

That one used turkey bacon, which works better for grilling and is a lot healthier.  The taste was really good.  You just have to make sure the bacon is cooked to the point of getting slightly crispy, or it’ll be easier to notice it’s turkey bacon.

The second item we sampled was bacon-wrapped cream-cheese-filled jalapenos.   We removed the seeds so they wouldn’t be too spicy (for some).  These were also delicious, although I’d like to experiment with different types of cheese.  Cooking them on a rack is essential (as I will explain in further detail on the next item).  They were also served on a stick (well, a toothpick).

Third on our list was the most ambitious creation, and the one that slightly concerned me.  It consisted of club crackers topped with shredded cheese, then bacon-wrapped and cooked for two hours at 250 degrees.  Here’s a picture of them during preparation.

Notice there was no rack used to elevate the food above the inevitable bacon grease.  Supposedly it wasn’t necessary according to the recipe, that the crackers wouldn’t absorb all the grease.  I was concerned because we’ve been down this road before.  /* flashback */ At the initial Buffet o’ Bacon, there were some bacon-wrapped croissants, and the bread absorbed almost all the bacon grease during cooking.  The consistency of the croissants was like butter at room temperature, and it was deemed the “gut-bomb”.  (Read the second comment on our initial Buffet o’ Bacon for an explanation.)  /* end flashback */ So how did it turn out?  Let’s have a look:

What’s missing from this picture is the grease that was drained before I got in there with the camera.  Supposedly there was a pool of grease.  And if it isn’t evident in the picture, the crackers were saturated with grease, along with the cheese, and the bacon was quite greasy also.  Someone looked at the recipe to see where they went wrong, and they noticed the last line of the recipe said to cook it on a rack over a pan.  Obviously that line was never read, and the excuse was used that the picture included with the recipe didn’t have a rack in it.

We each tried a couple of them, and you could tell there was a lot of potential there, if not for the extreme load of grease.  The rest were discarded, for the sake of healthiness.   Hopefully a lesson was learned from this, because it’s really sad to throw away bacon and cheese.  (Should we have a moment of silence?)

If you want to read about our previous bacon research sessions, the link to part one is above, and here’s part two.  There are other food-related experiments and discussions — too many to list — but you can search for them if you want.

For those of you who live nearby and would like to participate in one of these in the future, there has been talk of hosting one on a Saturday afternoon and making a party out of it.  Stay tuned to this blog for further details.

crack weenies and bacon candy

Here at Buffet o’ Blog I often write about topics I find humorous, although sometimes the topic turns to food.  So when I found these videos that combine humor and food, I had to write about it.

There’s an online food show called “Worst Foods Hall of Shame”.  The basic premise is that the host tries unusual recipes that are sent in by readers.  As you might guess by the title, some of the concoctions are nasty.  But there are some that you’ve probably never heard of but will be tempted to make.  The episode linked below has one of each.

In this video the host, Shawn McKee, tries 3 reader-submitted recipes.  The first involves Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookies topped with sliced cheese.  He says they’re okay but missing something, so he improvises and adds maple syrup.  The second recipe consists of chocolate cake donuts topped with can tuna (packed in oil).  That one sounds incredibly gross.  He tries it, and says, “It’s even worse than you’d think it would be.  Oily tuna on a chocolate donut?  Amazing… amazingly bad.”  His third recipe is called “crack weenies”, which are made from smokies and bacon, and it sounds good.  (Perhaps we’ll try that last one at a future Buffet o’ Bacon event.)

In that video, he references “bacon candy”.  If you’re still reading, I figure you’re interested, like I am.  So here’s that video.  (A short synopsis is candy made from butter and sugar, a gelatinous mix made from cottage cheese, Jello, and ranch dressing, and then bacon candy.  Only one of those am I interested in trying.)

If you are interested in our bacon experiments, here’s the link to our buffet o’ bacon and part 2.

making homemade corn dogs & pepperoni nuggets

One of our astute readers sent us a link to a funny and informative video (big props to Rurouni Kenneth), and it spawned some research and experimentation by the infamous Buffet o’ Blog Research & Development (R&D) department.  But first, let’s discuss the video.  You may not be into cooking shows, but this episode of “Good Eats” is called “The Man Food Show”.  It’s not about how to make your food pretty or different ways to steam vegetables.  (There’s plenty of that on TV!)  This episode is about man food.  And it’s presented FOR men BY a man.  It’s about homemade corn dogs and mini-burgers.  Alton Brown wants to help guys develop their “man food skills”.  So check it out.

BTW, even if you don’t want to watch it all, check out the beginning, where he asks women to leave the room so he can talk to just the guys.  (Obviously, any women reading this should stop playback and/or leave the room when he says so.  If you don’t follow instructions, bad things may happen.)

In part 2 he explains the technique for keeping the grease at the right temperature, and how doing so will prevent the food from becoming greasy (and thus extra fattening) despite being deep-fried.  He even uses a football illustration to make his point.  (If only cooking involved more physical contact…)

Alton Brown, the host, claims these are the best corn dogs in the world.  That’s quite the claim, and it seems unsubstantiated without our own taste test.  So one of our researchers made the corn dog mix and brought it to our meeting last night.  In the interest of full disclosure, his mixture was lacking the jalapenos, onions, and corn, only because those things weren’t readily available.  And he used regular milk instead of buttermilk.  So our recipe was different, and some manual adjustments were necessary to obtain the proper consistency.   But regardless of all that, it turned out very good.  Was it the best ever?  Perhaps.  I would definitely eat them again, to get a larger sample set. 

Our corn dogs had a lot of flavor, and the hot dog part stayed juicy.  So it was really good.  The only drawback was that there weren’t enough of them.  In case you aren’t a statistician, you need a large sample set to reduce standard deviation and aberration within the results.   Or in plain everyday language, you need a lot of samples, which in this study is food.  So once we ran out of hot dogs, we took some turkey pepperoni from the fridge, ran it through the two-stage batter process, and tossed ‘em in the deep fryer.   This in turn created pepperoni nuggets.  I don’t know what you would expect from them, but they were quite delicious.  (Next time we’ll put two pepperoni slices per nugget, to better balance flavor.)

We’ve now had several food research sessions (see Buffet o’ Bacon 1 and 2 and chocolate-covered bacon on a stick), and they’ve all been a great time, with new discoveries.  We’ve taken food beyond its normal frontier and boundaries.  We’ve invented several new dishes, and we’ve got a lot more ideas to try in the future.  We’d like to open a restaurant, but that’s just not in the budget at this time.  Perhaps we should start charging admission to our food research expeditions.