Hold the Mustard - 7 - Misadventures in Cooking

Kendall discusses some recent attempts at cooking.

Copycat Outback Steakhouse Recipe:

Ingredients:

• 5 tsp kosher salt
• 4 tsp paprika
• 2 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper
• ½ tsp ground coriander
• ½ tsp turmeric

Transcript: 

Hello everyone and welcome to another Hold the Mustard, a podcast about food.

It's been a minute since I posted an episode, partially because I've had several ideas for episodes that didn't really pan out. For example, I was going to do an episode about fish called “Hold the tartar sauce,” but the guest I wanted fell through and I only got around to trying two or three different fast food fish sandwiches during Lent. Long story short there, Wendy's fish hasn't been the same since they changed to Alaskan Polloc instead of North Pacific Cod, McDonald's Fillet o Fish is the same as always, and White Castle did a surprisingly excellent Fish slider.

Anyway, over this time I've had a handful of misadventures in cooking that I'm going to discuss here.

First, we have Hormel's Cinnamon Toast Crunch Black Label Bacon. Depending who you ask, this is either something that is the most insane example of man's hubris ever seen in the breakfast meat section of the grocery or a perfectly normal thing. I've tried various candied bacons at Bob Evans and the like and they were never particularly great, but I do enjoy things with Cinnamon and my curiosity got the best of me. Also, my wife and I usually get our bacon in bulk from Costco, but we ran out and I didn't want to drive all the way out there.

Surprisingly, the cinnamon and sugar flavor on the bacon was pretty good. It was more cinnamon than sugar, and brought out a savory umami element. The only issue is that Hormel black label bacon isn't as good as the stuff we normally get from Costco. So after we worked our way through that pack of bacon, I decided to try and recreate it with the Costco bacon we normally get. I used a cinnamon sugar Mckormic mix that I use for cinnamon toast and flavoring my coffee. My first attempt was okay, but a little understated. Next I piled on the mixture to both sides of the bacon and ended up with a very sweet and a little bit cinnamon flavor that I liked, but I knew would be too sweet for Molly. Finally, I added some extra cinnamon to the mixture and hit the nail almost on the head. Molly liked it.

Staying in the world of breakfast, I recently saw the film night bitch, a film in which Amy Adams deals with the struggles of being a stay at home mom by transforming into a dog at night. Much of the film is tense and leans into sort of gross elements of raising a young child, but every morning, Amy Adams's character cooks frozen preformed hash browns on a cast iron pan in butter and makes them look amazing. So I decided to give it a try. I don't have cast iron, but I did try cooking frozen hash browns in a skillet in butter, crisco, and even bacon grease. I had some decent results, but honestly the best results came from following the instructions on the package and cooking them in the air fryer.

I love a good steak, whether it's cooked on a flat top grill at waffle house, a back yard grill at home, or whatever dark magic they use at an overpriced steak house. However, my favorite place to eat a steak, up until recently, was the Outback Steakhouse five minutes down the road from my house. It felt fancy, the service was great, pricing was reasonable, and I just loved the seasoning they used. Unfortunately, they closed permanently at the beginning of June.

Sure, I could drive an extra 15 minutes to get to the next closest Outback, but who knows if it would be the same. So of course, I googled “copycat Outback Steakhouse Seasoning.” The first recipe, which I will include in the show notes included:

kosher salt, paprika, black pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, cayenne pepper, ground coriander, turmeric. I only had about half of those in my spice cabinet, so one $20 amazon order later I was ready.

I've been honing my steak skills for many years. I'm still not an expert, but I do okay. First, I use a good cut of meat. Costco often has deals on sirloins or ribeyes in big packs. I get the giant pack, wrap each steak individually in plastic wrap, throw them in a zip lock bag, and freeze them. I heard somewhere that plastic wrap and zip lock bags each have different ways that air escapes, so using both prevents freezer burn. It seems to work okay, because sometimes steaks will live there for months before I'm ready to thaw them.

Once my steak was thawed in the fridge for about 24 hours, I added the seasoning. It had a strong scent that smelled almost entirely unlike Outback Steakhouse, but I went for it anyway, generously applying it to the steak as well as a random chicken breast I had leftover from a soup I'd made earlier in the week. Finally, I threw it on the grill and hoped it would be good.

Once the steak was solidly Medium to Medium Well, I pulled it off and the smell was exactly like Outback Steakhouse. The only difference was that I was using a better cut of beef, so it was extra tender. Now I just need to figure out how to make a Bloomin' Onion at home.

Finally, what you've all been waiting for, a segment on Hot Dogs. There was recently a viral video going around full of some wild hot dog hacks. A few of them fascinated me and I tried them out to varying amounts of success.

First, I tried an elevated version of Pigs in a Blanket. Essentially, you impale the hot dog long ways on a skewer and cut it in a spiral. This allows you to stretch it out to about double its normal length. I used bun length Hebrew Nationals, but would probably just normal length dogs in the future to make them easier to stab. I also did two with full hot dogs and two with the dogs cut in half. I'll probably sitck to the half dogs in the future for the same reason. Once I had the dogs on the sticks, I grilled them up nice and brown. Finally, once they cooled a bit, I took a can of biscuit dough, rolled it into a little snake, and filled in the gaps on the spiral dog. After about 8 minutes in the oven, they came out as a really neat savory snack.

Next, something a little more basic. My version of New York dirty water hot dogs. I took a foil insert pan and added onion, mushroom, jalapeno pepper, a little butter, chicken broth, and sauerkraut. Then I threw some natural casing hot dogs on the grill along with the pan. Once the dogs were nice and brown, I finished them off in the pan. Next time I'll probably use more sauerkraut and skip the broth and peppers, but in general they turned out pretty good.

And finally, the guy in the video made the most on brand concoction for a guy like me. He made a hot dog chili chili dog. In other words, he made chili with chopped up hot dogs instead of ground beef. According to his description, the smokey flavor in the hot dog puree made for an interesting chili flavor.

So I chopped up my leftover hot dogs from the previous two adventures and browned them before adding liquid, tomatoes, a jalapeno, and Kinder's Chili seasoning. Here's where I made my big mistake. I thought the full packet might over season the meat, since I wasn't using beans, so I tasted it after using a little more than half. It tasted a little bland, so I figured I would be good adding the rest. Nope. It didn't occur to me that as the chili cooked there would be less liquid to dilute the seasoning. It also didn't occur to me that the hot dog chunks wouldn't absorb the seasoning as well as ground beef. This made the chili itself pretty much completely inedible.

At least on the chili dog, the flavor was cut a bit by that of the hot dog and the massive amounts of cheese on top, but even then it was not as good as if I'd just made it with ground beef. To the extent that the hot dog meat added a smokey flavor, it tasted more like fake smoke and was really a net negative to the experience.

The thing about hot dogs is that a lot of people overthink them. They put a hundred different condiments or try to hack them and elevate them to be something they're not. Really, hot dogs are perfect just the way they are. If you like them with ketchup or relish or sauerkraut, that's great. If you prefer a simple chili either sweet like they have in Cincinatti or savory like they have in Detroit, that's great too. Even if you prefer a blackened sausage cooked over a campfire, it's perfect because that's the way you've always liked it since you were a kid. Just remember to hold the mustard. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.