Cheeseburger Sushi

Jalapeno Poppers

I have had many a deep-fry party in my day, and for some reason they always seem to turn out the same. Deep-fry parties are like pancakes - the greatest thing ever at first, but by the end you're sick of them and vow to never have one ever again. And also, you can smother everything with butter and syrup. But just like pancakes, the DFP always manages to find a way to creep back into your life to pull your life expectancy down just a touch. And that's why I love them so darn much.

This is a deep fried classic and we didn't do much to mess with it except wrap it with bacon. You will need jalapeno peppers, cream cheese, gouda, bacon, flour and breadcrumbs.



1. Cut the tops off the peppers and scoop out the seeds. Use a piping bag to fill them with cream cheese or any filling of choice. We used a smoked salmon flavored cream cheese mixed with shredded gouda.




2. Wrap the peppers with bacon. Cut each slice in half, drape one half over the open end of the pepper, and wrap the other half around.





3. Dip the bacon-wrapped peppers in a batter made of flour, water and salt. Cover with breadcrumbs and deep fry at 375F until bacon is cooked through.



The poppers were pretty effing delicious, but very spicy. If you don't like spicy food, you're just gonna have to man up.

Poppers with loaded potatoes

Bacon-Wrapped Pineapple Kebabs

It's been quite some time since our last post, but its only because the team was on a short break while we all moved back home for a few weeks. I know, it sounds like a lame excuse for not putting up recipes, but imagine trying to explain to your parents why the fridge is stocked with 12 packs of bacon and 20 sticks of butter. My mom would beat me with a sock full of tofu burgers and flax seed. Just kidding! It would probably be with her hands. Well, we're back on our own and ready to share some more bacreations with the world. This and the next couple of posts were made back at the old place (yeah, that kind of voids my previous excuse) and then new, post-summer foods will start going up.

This is really the ultimate food-on-a-stick. We made kebabs with bacon-wrapped pineapple, marinated chicken breast and red bell peppers. You don't have to eat the peppers, they're really just there for color. Or you can wrap them in bacon too.



1. Cut chicken breast into kebab-sized pieces, and marinade in olive oil, salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, rosemary, lemon juice and any other herbs/spices you want.






2. Cut up pineapple into small chunks and wrap with bacon.







3. Alternate pineapple, sliced red bell peppers and chicken on a soaked skewer (so it doesn't burn). Sprinkle kebabs with some ground cinnamon.




4. Place in 400F oven for about 15 minutes.





That's it. Just a quick tip: when wrapping the pineapple chunks with bacon, half slices should do the trick. If you're a poon.


- I honestly forget who was there

Deep Fried Macaroni and Cheese

How do you make an already awesome dish like macaroni and cheese even better? A generation ago the answer would have been simple: add bacon. This approach is very basic but has been the most reliable food-enhancer for years. I believe the culinary world has evolved in flavors and complexity since the days of our parents and grandparents, and today the answer has become much more complicated: add bacon and deep fry it. This formula works so well it almost seems like cheating. Using the bacon/deep-fry combo is like playing basketball against your kid sister/a midget - a little too easy and doesn't require a great deal of effort or skill, but ultimately still satisfying. So here are instructions on how to make deep fried mac and cheese:





1. Make macaroni and cheese. We used elbow macaroni and mixed it with cheddar, ricotta, sausage and bacon.






2. Wrap in a tortilla and hold in place with skewers.






3. Deep fry. As I have mentioned in previous posts, we don't own a lot of equipment. If you don't have a thermometer, don't leave the stove heat on too high like we did. We learned a valuable lesson in the smoke point of vegetable oil.





4. Eat.





Although we initially decided to just make deep fried macaroni and cheese, this session turned into sort of an experimental night. Since I don't want to make a post for each item, here's some of the stuff we made.

Another one, deep fried for less time with a thin coating of batter

Potato chips and sweet potato fries

Shrimp (the darker ones are coated with breadcrumbs)

Viva Puffs (marshmallow and cookie in chocolate shell)

- Angie, Carol, Charles, Daniel, Howie, Laura and Marcus

LNC Double Down

If you follow the Late Night Chefs, you may have noticed that chicken hasn't been used in any of our previous recipes. Since this project is a take on a KFC menu item, it makes sense that we would be popping our chicken cherry, right? Sorry, not this time. The KFC Double Down is a fantastic example of what makes good food, and I applaud their effort at sending out a big "F you" to so-called 'health experts' and 'nutritionists'. But we will not be outdone.

The LNC Double Down is not made with lean chicken breast meat. We used two 20 ounce round steaks, 6 strips of bacon, two layers of monterey jack, and smothered it with our homemade Mac Sauce (see previous entry). The final product weighed in at almost 3 pounds. If you want to make your own, here's how:



1. Set up 3 stations: plain flour, eggs and seasoned flour. We seasoned our flour with a variety of spices, including salt, pepper, garlic powder, chili powder, cayenne, etc.







2. Dredge each steak in the first flour station, soak in egg, and then move into seasoned flour. Let the steak rest for about 10-15 min.








3. Heat up a pan with enough oil to cover the entire bottom. Fry steak on each side for about 5 minutes for crispy coating and medium rare doneness.





4. Lay slices of monterey jack cheese to cover the bottom steak. Now is the time to fill with as much bacon as you want.





5. Add another layer of cheese and top with Mac Sauce. Put the second steak on top and place in oven to melt cheese and cook meat to desired doneness.




Sorry chicken, you're going to have to wait for another post until we purchase your raw body parts, cook them into some kind of gut-busting piece of awesome and devour you. And when we do, you can bet we're going to put KFC to shame again.



I need some sort of sign off. Marcus OUT? Nah. Lame.

- Angie, Laura & Marcus

Meat Roll-Up

If you haven't been living in a hole for the past decade, you must have noticed the recent trend of restaurants and fast food places with "healthier choice" menus. It seems like everyone's offering salads, whole grains and smaller portions nowadays. It's disgusting. But worry not - these menus are the boy bands of the food world, and like any other trend they will soon become sparse. And old. And fat. And will try to make a failed comeback years later after reinventing themselves when we barely remember what they were. Then we can go back to eating better tasting foods with tons of calories and fat. Just to make sure we're ahead of the curve, we created something that could probably kill a child or a small adult if ingested without caution.

In true Late Night Chef fashion, we started making this thing around 2am. There was debate over what to call it, with names like "Meat Torpedo" and "Meat Slug" being thrown around. Since I forget what we actually decided on, here's how we made the Meat Roll-Up:



1. Ingredients: Sausages, cheese, ham, ground beef, bacon, beer and flour. Plus any seasonings, and skewers to hold the bacon in place. (Pictured right: our grocery list.)






2. Cook the sausages fully using any method, and wrap with a layer of cheese and ham.






3. Create a mat of ground beef, and wrap the ham/cheese/sausage. Make sure any holes are sealed up. We also added another layer of cheese here.





4. Wrap beef/ham/cheese/sausage with bacon, and use skewers to hold in place.





5. Place in 400F oven until ground beef is cooked through.







6. Meanwhile, mix up some beer batter. We used a simple mix of flour, salt, Stiegl beer and some cayenne.






7. Fill a pan with enough oil to cover at least half of the meat roll. Set heat on medium-high (or about 375F) and deep fry to your hearts content.




We made 8 of these things. Each one was about 8 inches in length and weighed well over a pound. Afterwards we put on bathing suits and slip-slided around our grease covered kitchen.


- Angie, Charles, Howie, Marcus & Michelle

Poutine Pie

It's been more than a week since our last update, which means it is time again to combine two things we love individually and see what would come out if they had sex. The first half, poutine (poo-TEEN), is universally adored for its caloric density and artery-clogging properties. A basic poutine is made by topping fries with cheese curds and hot gravy, making it vegetarian (aka healthy?). The second half is pie. Enough said.

Note: Our integrity did come into question when we decided to take several shortcuts in this recipe. We use pre-cut fries, pre-made pie shells and regular cheese instead of cheese curds. Feel free to make everything from scratch, but for us it just means a longer wait until the final product. This is how we made the poutine pie:




1. Gather up the necessary ingredients: fries, cheese, gravy and pie shells. We decided to add some ground beef and mushrooms to ours, as well as our recipe standard - bacon.




2. Bake/fry the fries, cut cheese into small cubes (if not using curds), cook mushrooms and beef, heat gravy and bake pie shells according to instructions.





3. Add a layer of fries to the bottom of the pie shell. Top with cheese, a sprinkle of beef and gravy. Repeat for a second layer, packing down the fries so there aren't too many gaps.







4. Top with bacon weave. Not only will the bacon taste good on its own, but the bacon juices will seep into the pie like a magical nectar and enhance the flavor of everything it touches.







5. Return to oven at a high temperature to cook the bacon (we used the broil setting).






This was possibly the most delicious and fattiest thing we have made so far, despite not tasting much like actual poutine. I guarantee you will see more creations deriving from both poutine and pie in the future, as they have both taken their places under bacon in the "I don't care how long I live" food category. Enjoy the pictures.





- Angie, Carol, Charles, Daniel, Laura, Marcus & Michelle