Smoked Buffalo Chicken Wings

 

This is as simple as it gets. You just need 2 ingredients....chicken wings and Frank's Hot Sauce. And then just 2 hours of low and slow in the smoker. For smoking, I recommend either cherry or apple wood  to impart a nice sweet taste. If you don't have a smoker, no problem. Just skip the wood and cook 'em in your oven.

INGREDIENTS

2 pounds chicken wings

1-1/2 cups Frank's Original Hot Sauce

DIRECTIONS

1. Remove wings from packaging and pat dry with a paper towel.
2. Place wings in a ziplock bag and add hot sauce. Toss to mix thoroughly. Place bag in refrigerator and let wings marinate for 4 hours.
3. Preheat smoker to 225º.
4. Place wings into the smoker and cook for 2 hours, flipping the wings at the 1 hour mark.
5. After the 2 hours, remove wings and serve with either ranch or blue cheese dressing.

Pairing: An Ice Cold Pilsner

Little Bites

 

Kirkland Caesar Salad: Becky and I love our caesar salads...we usually have 2 to 3  each week. While my favorite caesar dressing is the original one: (https://terrygruggen.blogspot.com/2024/07/happy-100th-birthday-caesar-salad.html), it takes quite awhile to make that. During the week, I like my prep time to be minimized, so I often reach for a store-bought caesar dressing. Until last week, Briannas Home Style Creamy Caesar was our favorite.

Last Thursday, we bought the Kirkland Caesar Salad at Costco. For $8 and change, you get all the fixings and enough salad for 4 entree portions (or 2 nights of salads for empty nesters). We were discussing how their salad had the best dressing.....and so I decided to do a little online sleuthing. A few keystrokes later, I uncovered that Costco contracts with Ken's Salad Dressing for their dressing packets in the Kirkland Salad.

If you have enjoyed the Kirkland Caesar Salad as much as we have, the cat is now out of the bag. Costco's dressing is actually "Ken's Creamy Caesar with Roasted Garlic". Hands down, it's the best bottled dressing I have ever tasted. I checked with the 3 grocery stores I frequent, but none of them carried it. Amazon has it for about $7 a bottle. But go to Stockup Express, an online grocery wholesaler , and you can score 9 bottles for less than $18....bringing the cost per bottle down to $1.94. That's a pretty small price for the biggest tasting caesar dressing in a bottle.

Really Great Coffee on the Cheap: For years, Becky and I have been Keurig K-Cup fans. Our coffee of choice is a really hearty dark roast.... Barista Prima Italian Roast. We love that each cup is fresh, piping hot and ready in less than a minute.

While we were on vacation last February, we ordered 2 French Press coffees on our last day. Damn....those were tasty! (thanks Bigs) A French Press makes incredible tasting coffee through immersion (letting the boiling water commingle with the ground beans) and air pressure (forcing the water through the grounds and a micro-filter).

When we got back, I started researching what kind of French Presses were available for home use. One name kept jumping to the forefront....AeroPress. Unlike the competition that were married to the classic coffee pot design, AeroPress kind of resembles a big test tube. I could describe how it works, but watching it in action is much more fulfilling: https://youtu.be/3rHj76QLSe0?si=KXrTFVaszo-LEFWw

I think it makes the best cup of coffee around. And it grabs 3 of my brass rings: it's delicious; it's easy to use/clean; and it's dirt cheap. In a world of outrageously priced espresso machines, this leaves them all in the dust. I got mine at Amazon for just $34.99. We still use our K-Cups, but the AeroPress is our go-to when we want that special cup of coffee.

Pork Bulgogi with Spring Vegetables

 

Where did the Korean concept of bulgogi come from?

Imagine, if you will, ancient Korea. We're talking way, way back, before K-Pop and even before Gangnam Style. Picture a time when people weren't scrolling through TikTok, but probably, like, trying to figure out how to keep their food from running away.

We can trace its delicious lineage back to the Goguryeo Kingdom (37 BC – 668 AD). Back then, they had something called "maekjeok". And what was maekjeok, you ask? Well, it was essentially skewered meat, grilled over an open flame. Think of it as the great-great-great-grandpappy of bulgogi, a bit rough around the edges, perhaps, but with good, honest intentions. These were likely nomadic warriors, who, after a long day of, you know, being nomadic warriors, probably just wanted some sizzling meat on a stick. No fancy marinades, probably just "Meat. Fire. Eat."

Fast forward a few hundred years, and we enter the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1897). This is where things get a bit more refined, a touch more sophisticated and definitely more saucy. During this period, the dish evolved into something called "neobiani", which literally means "thinly sliced." And that's where the magic really starts to happen.

Imagine a royal chef, perhaps tired of the King complaining about chewy, tough meat, deciding to thin-slice the pork. And then, perhaps, someone accidentally (or brilliantly) dropped it into a mix of soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic, and who knows what else. "Oops! My bad! ...Wait a minute, this is actually amazing!" And thus, the tender, flavorful, marinated meat we know and love began to take shape. It was the VIP meal, the dish for royalty, so you know it had to be good. 

From these noble beginnings, bulgogi slowly but surely made its way from the royal palace to us common folk, adapting and evolving with local ingredients and preferences. It wasn't always called bulgogi, mind you. "Bulgogi" itself is a more modern term, literally meaning "fire meat" – which, let's be honest, is a pretty accurate and badass name for something so frigging delicious. 

This Melissa Clark recipe from The New York Times serves four.

INGREDIENTS




For the Marinade and Sauce

1/2 cup soy sauce

1/4 cup gochujang

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon white sesame seeds

2 tablespoons neutral oil (grapeseed, avocado or sunflower)

1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil

2 garlic cloves, minced

1, 2-inch piece of ginger, minced

2 scallions, thinly sliced







For the Pork and Vegetables

1 pound boneless pork chops, sliced thin  

1 tablespoon of neutral oil (grapeseed, avocado or sunflower)

4 ounces shiitake mushrooms, sliced

1/2 cup radishes, thinly sliced

8 ounces snow peas, stems removed and each cut in half 

6 scallions, white and green parts thinly sliced

Cooked white rice for serving







DIRECTIONS

1. Make the marinade: Add marinade ingredients to a medium bowl and whisk until combined. In a small bowl, reserve half the marinade at room temperature for serving.
2. Add pork to the marinade and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes and up to 2 hours. 
3. In a large skillet over medium-high heat, add neutral oil. Once the oil is hot, add mushrooms. Let sear, stirring once or twice, until just tender and caramelized, 4 to 7 minutes.
4. Raise heat to high. Add pork along with its marinade, radishes, snow peas and all but 2 tablespoons of the scallions (reserve for garnish) to pan. Let cook, stirring often, until the pork is just cooked through, about 3 to 5 minutes. (Take care not to overcook it; it won’t brown, and it may still look slightly pink inside).
5. Garnish with reserved scallions and sesame seeds, and serve hot over rice with reserved marinade for drizzling.

Wine pairing: Zinfandel