Monday, December 24, 2007

Bacon and Bacon and Steak and HOT!!!

Hi ho! It's Christmas Eve and I am enjoying my steak. First off, the steak recipe:

Steak: As Required.
Bacon: Two pieces of plain bacon per steak. The kind you get from a butcher at a supermarket. Nice and fatty. Mmm... Oh, sorry.
Montreal Steak Seasoning
Garlic Powder
Black Pepper
Lemon Juice
Meat Tenderizer
Sweet Baby Ray's Honey BBQ Sauce
One Can Chipotle Peppers in Adobo Sauce - A spicy pepper in a sweet sauce. More on that later.
Toothpicks

Open the can of Peppers - Take a deep noseful. Note that unlike most spicy foods, this won't burn your nose at all, but smell really sweet. This is a major part of why this dish works.
Pour the contents of this can into a bowl. Cut the stems off of a one pepper per steak, and squeeze the seeds out, then cut into thirds and set aside.
Add a bit of each seasoning to the bowl with the peppers and adobo sauce, depending on your taste. I prefer black pepper and sweet baby rays, with a good dash of Montreal. Place bacon in bowl.
Rub Steak seasoning and meat tenderizer into steak. Take the peppers that you have cut up and slit the skin so that you can wrap the inside of the skin onto the steak OR cut into the steak and insert skin into cut. Wrap the bacon around the steak as you please and secure with toothpicks.
Grill with 1/2 cup damp woodchips wrapped in aluminum foil with a few holes for smoke, or use Liquid Smoke.
It's up to you how you cook it, but grilling for 5-10 min with the steaks individually wrapped in foil will help keep the bacon from becoming charcoal.


Next, sweet bacon.

Take same plain bacon from supermarket butcher: No flavors, just lots of thick, juicy bacon.
This one is easy. All you need is Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ Sauce, or any honey or maple based BBQ sauce, or maybe even brown sugar (never tried it, but hey, gopher it!) A quick drop of lime juice, Liquid Smoke and Black Pepper.

Before you start frying the bacon, rub a few drops of liquid smoke onto each piece of bacon. Then, as it starts to fry and grease builds up in the pan, shake black pepper on exposed side. As you flip it, put about 1/8 tsp BBQ Sauce on now cooked side and add pepper if you want.
Don't overdo the BBQ sauce, because it will make the bacon too sweet.

Goes well on baked or mashed potatoes, which go well with bacon-wrapped chipotle steaks.

Friday, November 30, 2007

Working

Here I am, sitting at work, at 9:30 on a Friday night, waiting for a big lummox to finish the work he won't do during the day.
Anyways, my best friend from High School Graduated from Army Basic Training today. Congrats to him, except on choice of services.
Silly Hoo-ah's.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

Meatloaf

Not too long ago, I made meatloaf for the first time, and according to the wife, it was a hit.
I looked up the recipe on about.com
This is what I found:

INGREDIENTS:

  • 1 pound lean ground beef
  • 2/3 cup milk
  • 1/2 cup cracker crumbs
  • 1/4 cup ketchup
  • 1/2 cup finely chopped onion
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/8 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1 egg, beaten

PREPARATION:

Mix all ingredients together gently. Form into a loaf and place in baking dish or loaf pan. Top with more ketchup if desired. Bake at 350° for about 1 hour.
Serves 4.
It's a good base, but I prefer more flavor. I add minced or crushed garlic (to your taste) and a bit of chili powder or perhaps some hot sauce of your choice.
Also, mix about 1/3 cup ketchup with whatever spice you flavored the meat with and 1/4 tbsp of brown sugar to use as the top coat.

My suggested side dishes:
Potatoes, mashed or baked
Rice
A large rock.

I'm back


I wanted to start this while in Iraq.
Then I wanted to start it when I got back.
Then I wanted to start it the other day, but all of the crap that is currently stinking up the world doesn't seem important enough to talk about all of the time.

So Hi.
My name is Chris. I am a Marine, and I'm really awesome, and I;m the tall guy on the left.