If you told me that I could only pick one snack food to eat for the rest of my life, it might be chicken wings. Either that or popcorn, but probably wings. I’ve made chicken wings before on Macheesmo, three kinds in fact, but this version is something different.
I think there are three important qualities to a solid chicken wing: 1) Tender and juicy meat. I hate an overcooked wing. 2) Heat! This one is debatable but in general I think a wing needs some heat for it to be memorable. 3) Messy. I better have to lick my fingers.
These sticky wings have all three of those qualities!
Sticky, spicy, and wonderful.
I had a hard time deciding what to call these guys because I actually adapted the rub and sauce from a ribs recipe. It’s got some Asian flavors going, but also some Southwestern aspects. The wings have a dry rub on them, but then are tossed in a sauce.
A few weeks ago when I made my Porter braised brisket, I wanted a biscuit or something to go along with it and as luck would have it, I found a delicious recipe as I was browsing the latest Bon Appetit. The recipe is your standard buttermilk biscuit base, but then you fold in cheese and a lot of herbs as if you were making a laminated dough for croissants or something.
Except it’s a lot easier than croissants. The folding makes the biscuits really light and fluffy though and the cheese and herbs add a delicious punch to the dough. The biscuits were great with dinner, but were also good to just snack on.
Whoa Momma.
The other thing about this recipe that I wasn’t expecting at all was that when the biscuits were baking, my kitchen smelled exactly like Thanksgiving. All of the herbs are pretty holiday-like and it smelled exactly like I was about to put a 15 pound bird in the oven.
So if you are looking for a good biscuit recipe this Thanksgiving, bookmark this recipe people!
2) Chop up all the fresh herbs and mix them in with grated cheese. Grate frozen butter.
3) Mix dry ingredients and butter together to incorporate everything well, then add buttermilk. Using a fork, mix it all together until it forms a ball.
4) Turn out dough ball onto a floured surface and gently roll it or press it into a rough rectangle. This should be about 8 inches by 10 inches. Then cover the right 2/3 of the dough with 1/3 of the cheese mixture. Then fold over the left third of the dough to cover the cheese mixture. Finally fold over the left 2/3s of the dough to finish off the folding! So you have three layers of dough and two layers of cheese!
Do this folding process two more times. The easiest way to do it is to rotate the dough 90 degrees, roll it out again to the same sized rectangle, and repeat the whole folding process!
Note: A dough scraper helps lift the dough if it is sticking to the counter.
5) Once you’ve done this whole folding thing three times and all of the cheese mixture is deep in the dough, roll it out one more time and slice it into 2 inch by 2 inch (approximately) rectangles.
6) Transfer them to a lightly greased baking sheet and they are ready for the oven.
7) Bake for only 10 minutes at 500 degrees.
8) Let them cool for 5 minutes before biting into them. You should have enough biscuits to need two baking sheets as you should give them an inch or so in between each biscuit. Bake them one sheet at a time though to make sure they brown nicely!
Adapted from Bon Appétit Nov. 2009.
Preheat your oven to 500 degrees.
Making the Cheese Mixture
You need a lot of fresh herbs for this recipe. This recipe is packed full of herb flavor from 4 different fresh herbs. I would encourage experimentation here people. If you have some rosemary around, don’t go buy thyme, just use what you have.
This would actually be a great way to use leftover fresh spices if you have some laying around!
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme! And by rosemary, I mean basil.
Chop up all your fresh herbs and mix them in with your grated cheese!
Smells good!
Making the biscuit dough
This is a little trick I learned from Good Eats but is also written in the recipe: when making pie crust or biscuits, you want to make sure you have your butter as cold as possible. So freeze it! But once it’s frozen, it’s hard to distribute evenly in the flour.
Solution? Grate it! It looks like white cheddar, but that’s butter!
The Alton Brown Method.
Mix your dry ingredients and butter together to incorporate everything well, then add your buttermilk to the party. Using a fork, just mix it all together until it forms a ball. Whatever you do, don’t over-mix it, or start kneading it or anything crazy.
Keep it as light as possible.
Forming the biscuits
So now we need to incorporate this huge amount of cheese and herb mixture into the biscuit dough while keeping the dough light and airy. BA recommends a method that’s used to make laminated doughs and croissants and it worked like a charm! Here’s the run down:
Turn out your dough ball onto a floured surface and gently roll it or press it into a rough rectangle. Should be about 8 inches by 10 inches. Then cover the right 2/3 of the dough with 1/3 of the cheese mixture.
This is just 1/3 of the cheese mixture. Get it?
Then Fold over the left third of the dough to cover the cheese mixture.
Fold one!
Finally fold over the left 2/3s of the dough to finish off the folding! So you have three layers of dough and two layers of cheese!
Fold two!
Two more times
Notice that we only used 1/3 of our cheese mixture. That’s because we are going to do that whole folding process two more times. The easiest way to do it is to rotate your dough 90 degrees, roll it out again to the same sized rectangle, and repeat the whole folding process!
It really doesn’t take that long once you get the hang of it.
One note though: As you work, if your dough starts sticking to the counter, it would be helpful to have a dough scraper to scrape up the dough as you are folding. Then you can throw down a little more flour and keep going. If you don’t have a scraper you can use a knife, but a scraper is worth the $8 if you make even a few baked products throughout the year.
For the math inclined
By doing this fold three times, you make 27 individual layers of dough. You could do one more series of folds and go for 81 layers, but you run the risk of overworking the dough. Three is about perfect I think.
Once you’ve done this whole folding thing three times and all of your cheese mixture is deep in the dough, roll it out one more time and slice it into 2 inch by 2 inch (approximately) rectangles.
I'm a square kinda guy.
Of course you could make circle biscuits but that just seems like more work than necessary. Square biscuits are the best!
Then transfer them to a lightly greased baking sheet and they are ready for the oven.
See the layers?
Baking the biscuits
These need to bake for only 10 minutes at 500 degrees. Let them cool for 5 minutes before biting into them. You should have enough biscuits to need two baking sheets as you should give them a inch or so in between each biscuit. Bake them one sheet at a time though to make sure they brown nicely!
Try not to eat them all immediately.
These are light and fluffy but have flavor of an intense cheese straw. They were great to use to sop up all the deliciousness from the brisket I made, but Betsy had a few as a study snack also and they are great no matter what!
As with most biscuits, these deteriorate pretty quickly after day one. I would say by day three or four you’re better off using them as a paper weight than trying to eat them.
With Football season in full swing and baseball playoffs happening, I’ve found that my weekends and sometimes week nights are spent eating a lot of excellent (but not excellent for you) food and drinking copious amounts of beer.
I definitely enjoy a good plate of wings (check back on Thursday for an example) and a beer or a few, but after many days of that, my body is usually screaming for some sort of veggie besides celery dipped in blue cheese dressing.
So over the weekend I set out on a Internet hunt of sorts to find 60 dishes that might help you detox after a long weekend of excess. Why 60? Well, because it fits nicely in a 20 by 3 square of photos.
Make a few of these and your body can thank me later.
I don’t want to sound cocky or anything, but I think I’ve found the cure for the flu… including the swine variety.
Betsy was sick a few weeks ago, and maybe she didn’t have the swine flu, but she was definitely sick and I decided to make a dish that my mom used to make for me: chicken and dumplings. When I told Betsy I was going to cure all her illnesses with chicken and dumplings she replied, to my shock, “I’ve never had that.”
I was stunned by that, but it made me even happier to make it for her.
I kind of feel like I don’t need a flu shot now.
The cure.
The thing about this recipe is that there are a lot of shortcuts to take if you want, but I do recommend the full process. Sure, it takes some time, but it’s a great recipe to make on a lazy Sunday, it makes A LOT, and the quality difference is noticeable. IF you wanted to take some shortcuts though, you could use canned stock and maybe buy a roasted chicken or something for the chicken meat.
There’s nothing like a warm breakfast during the fall. Similarly, there’s nothing like a warm dessert! This baked apple dish can kind of be both. I call it a breakfast baked apple because I stuffed it with homemade granola leftover from my peanut butter granola bars!
When a baked apple is done right, it is pretty heavenly. I mean, come on:
Breakfast!
As I see it there are only two problems you can run into in the baked apple world: 1) You used the wrong kind of apple. That’s pretty easy to avoid though. Golden Delicious bake up really nicely. Or you can check out this chart for other good varieties.
I’m not a huge, huge fan of watching baseball on TV. I really like going to games and occasionally I’ll put a game on mute or something while cooking or doing something completely different.
To me though, it’s just not always exciting to watch. I think part of it is because there are so many freakin’ games in a season. I mean by the time it’s August, the players are tired, I’m tired of watching them do the same thing everyday, and I’m just ready for a change.
But playoffs, however, are pretty exciting. I think it’s like when you watch a really long movie, and even if you haven’t been paying attention for most of the movie, and in fact slept through parts, you wake up and pay attention to the ending.
My pick for last man standing based on absolutely no research is the Dodgers. Go Dodgers.
More Pumpkin Recipes -After my mild pumpkin failure yesterday I went on a hunt for good pumpkin recipes. Nicole has had some serious pumpkin successes as shown by this photo roundup. (@ Pinch My Salt)
9 Healthy Halloween Treats – I don’t usually think to go healthy during Halloween, but these ideas are all very creative and you might be able to sneak some veggies into the night without even noticing! (@ Start Cooking)
Given the season, I wasn’t too surprised to see “Something Orange” blow away all the other colors for dishes in the poll last week. I ended up making two orange dishes in an effort to get something really orange. Turns out Mother Nature is a bit of a trickster and what appears to be orange is sometimes more of a light yellow.
Case in point: Pumpkin. Pumpkin was such an obvious choice for this and I’m assuming it’s what everyone wanted me to make! I mean, come one, look how orange it is!
Orange right?
Over the long weekend I went over to a friend’s house to grill and brought along this beauty of a gourd. I had very high ambitions! I was going to slice it up, peel off that rough rind, grill it, and glaze it with a sweet-heat glaze I came up with.
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