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