Red Meat - - Page 13

by Emily

Macaroni and Cheese Hot Dogs. Seriously.

Here’s a shocker for everyone: I’m here to report yet more breaking hot dog news! Two of my favorite trashy bar foods, mac & cheese and hot dogs, have found each other at last. Then they found my mouth.

We’ve covered the existence of macaroni & cheese hot dogs before on ES, but I’d never seen them in the wild… until now. During one of my many bar-hopping benders last week, I cruised into Po Dogs in Seattle for a late-night meat fix, and discovered the accurately named Mac ‘n’ Cheese Dog: Homemade macaroni and cheese topped with Tillamook cheddar cheese. As a professional food writer, I advise you to order barbecue sauce on this as well.

For those of you who demand yet more cheese-drenched meat options, feel free to order the Dub-T Dog: creamy cheese sauce, crushed potato chips, topped with mustard and ketchup.

I mean, why not? Frankly (no pun intended!), I would like to cover most of my meals in melted cheese. This is a step in the right direction.

Previously: Peanut Butter Bacon Hot Dogs. Seriously.
Octopus Hot Dogs. Seriously.

by BS

Another Win for America

Evanston, Illinois fast food restaurant Wiener and Still Champion (awesome name!) is already locally famous for their hunky cheeseburgers, fresh-cut french fries, and bacon-wrapped hot dogs. But now they’ve added a new menu item that deserves national attention.

For an extra charge of just $1.50, any burger on Wiener’s menu now comes with a thick patty of deep-fried gravy. The golden-brown crust of the patty adds a big crunch to the burger, and then on first bite, the hot gravy comes oozing out all over everything, ensuring each bite remains juicy and gravy-licious.

Bravo, Wiener. Bravo.

in Featured / Red Meat / Restaurants / Trends 3 comments

by Emily

Top 10 Break-Up Foods

For some, Valentine’s Day is a time of magic and romance. For the rest of us, it’s a pain in the ass. I’m not a big proponent of feeling pressured if you’re dating someone, or sorry for yourself if you’re not. Come on, we’re all gonna get laid sooner or later, who cares if it’s on V-Day, right? And most romances end in heartache, so let’s just indulge ourselves and talk about something more realistic than the perfect confections to buy your sweetheart.

Maybe you’re feeling bitter because you got dumped right before Valentine’s Day, maybe you found out through Facebook that your high school lover is engaged, maybe you just realized that every dude on this season of Mtv’s Real World/Road Rules: The Challenge somehow resembles one of your ex-boyfriends. (I mean…hypothetically, of course.) At least there is always food and sweet, sweet alcohol.

Just in time for everyone who is feeling bitter over this “holiday,” we present Endless Simmer’s Top 10 Break-Up Foods.

10. Bananas

I know, we’re starting off with a weird one, but bear with me. For a lot of us, when we’re upset or depressed or convinced we will die alone, sometimes it’s hard to see the point of eating. (If you are in this heartbroken place, don’t worry; in my experience, this unwillingness to stuff your face will pass soon enough.) While you might feel dramatic and slightly excited by the possibility of effortless weight loss, you need something to provide you with energy, or at least keep you from fainting at your desk. I read somewhere that the human body could technically live off bananas. I don’t know if this is actually true, but this “fact” stuck with me, and now whenever I’m depressed and have to force myself to eat, I choke down a banana.

9. Coffee

You might be waking up alone, but at least you have a daybreak companion to look forward to: coffee. If you’re been up until 4am crying, or maybe writing angry emails, or pathetic “I am so lonely without you” texts, it’s gonna be a rough morning. You need to force yourself to get out of bed and face the day somehow. What is the answer? Caffeine, of course. There is something about a sober, steaming mug of black coffee that is bleakly comforting.

8. Pizza

You’re in no mood to cook. Everything is too much effort. Nothing says “I’m lonely and lazy” like some cheap pizza. Plus it’s oily enough to soak up a boozy hangover if you’re been drinking away your sorrows. Whether it’s local delivery, late-night drunken desperation, or a cold slice out of a greasy box you find in the back of the fridge, pizza is a tried-and-true break-up binge classic.

in Cheese / Desserts / Drinks / Featured / Holiday / Lists / Personal / Photos / Red Meat / Top 10 Lists 11 comments

by Russell Warnick

Welsh Rarebit Lamb Nachos

Recently, I was invited to participate in a recipe competition hosted by the American Lamb Board. I think in all the years in writing for ES I’ve only ever cooked up one lamb dish. In a moment of weakness I agreed to participate. The premise of the contest is to create an original dish (do they even exist these days?) using a cut of meat provided to us by the good folk at Border Spring Farms in Virginia — in this case a dry aged boneless leg of lamb.

The more I thought about creating a dish with a slab of meat I’m not incredibly comfortable with, the more I became intimidated. I’m in this contest with a flock (ha! I apologize) of other DC-area food bloggers and these guys are pretty awesome. In the spirit of all things Endless Simmer I decided to do what I do best — nachos. We’re big fans of nachos, actually pretty wild about them here, so it seemed fitting I’d go this route. I just hope I didn’t disrespect the meat.

But I still brought a little class. Growing up in England, I always associated lamb with Wales. I would holiday there a lot as a kid and it wasn’t uncommon to see sheep and lambs in the rolling fields of the countryside as I was camped out in a tent in an adjacent field — welcome to my childhood. In that vein I thought I would bring a little of Great Britain to these nachos and instead of using plain old cheese, I’d go with Welsh Rarebit, in the hopes of allowing the flavors of the lamb to shine through.

Slow Roasted Lamb Nachos with Welsh Rarebit and Scallions

in Cheese / Featured / Personal / Recipe / Red Meat 7 comments

by BS

America’s Best New Sandwiches — 2012

You want sandwiches? We got sandwiches. Last year, Endless Simmer’s post on America’s Top 10 New Sandwiches was our most-read story of 2011, and even helped turn The New Luther into a bit of a sell-out phenomenon. But America’s sandwich artisans haven’t stopped innovating, and we haven’t stopped salivating. So here we go, for your drooling-at-work pleasure, this year’s list of America’s top 10 craziest, loveliest, cheesiest, most creative new sandwiches.

10. The Noble Pig — Noble Pig Sandwiches, Austin

Texas may be best known for its beef, but perhaps not for long, if chefs John Bates and Brandon Martinez have anything to say about it. Their year-and-a-half-old Noble Pig serves up a namesake sandwich that somehow combines everything that is beautiful about pork products on one truly outstanding sandwich. Tender pulled pork, spicy slivers of ham, and crispy bits of bacon are all mixed together, topped with provolone cheese, and served on toasted, house-baked bread, for a porky trifecta that hits all of the spots. (Photo: Marshall Wright)

9. Pane et Panelle — Bar Stuzzichini, New York

Chickpeas may get typecast as functioning only in falafel form, but it turns out balls aren’t all they can do. Panelle is actually an old Sicilian street food snack—chickpeas and flour formed into light, airy strips and fried in olive oil. Stuzzichini‘s sandwich revives that classic and perfects it, layering crispy strips of panelle on a sesame-studded bun, in between levels of soft ricotta and caciocavallo cheeses. The result is a light-but-addictive sandwich that will make you curse every overly dense falafel wrap that has crossed your lips.

8. Chicharrones Banh Mi — Ink Sack, Los Angeles

There are a million banh mis in American nowadays, but we were most swept away by this version from Top Chef champ Michael Voltaggio. At his new Ink Sack sandwich shop, tender slices of pork belly and pork butt are topped with pickled vegetables, plus the kicker — crispy chicharróne fried pork rinds, creating one incredible multi-culti pork bomb.

in Bacon / Cheese / Eggs / Featured / Lists / Pig / Red Meat / Restaurants / Sandwich / Top 10 Lists / Trends / Veggie 8 comments

by forkitude

If You Can Get Joy Out of This, Life Isn’t So Bad

Each time I visit one of the five Shake Shack locations in New York City, I get an anxious feeling. It is a much different feeling than when I go to Chipotle or, dare I say it, McDonald’s (not that I have set foot in one in years). Why? It’s just a hamburger. It’s just a hot dog. Big deal, right? Why does this particular fast food restaurant attract mobs of people like some sort of tourist attraction?

McDonald’s has saturated planet Earth with mediocre food and substances that could be categorized as something other than whole food. It takes a special talent to open a fast food joint that attracts tourists.

So what exactly makes Shake Shake a fast food joint that has brought so many seasoned food writers to their knees?

in Red Meat / Restaurants / Sandwich / Trends 1 comments

by BS

Top 10 New Foods of 2011

Another year gone by, another chance to look back fondly at the thousands of things we stuffed our faces with in 2011. After much internal debate, we’ve narrowed it down to just 10 — the very best new things we shoved in our mouths in 2011.

10. Tater Tot Poutine

Montreal’s greasiest, gravy-iest contribution to the food world, poutine officially became a trend back in 2010. It got even more amazing this year when chef Kyle Bailey of D.C.’s ChurchKey had the ingenious idea to replace the french fries with tater tots.

9. Kouign Amann

We first discovered this over-the-top traditional pastry, which is something like a croissant with twice as much butter and sugar, on a trip to Brittany, France this summer. Returning home, we were pleased to find it blowing up in the states. The best version we’ve tasted to far is the one above, from Starter Bakery in Oakland. It has also popped up at Dominique Ansel in New York and Bouchon Bakery in L.A.

8. Nouveau Filipino

Filipino food is among the most far-out in the world, so it was only a matter of time before it got a hipster update. From Adobo Hobo’s Filipino tacos in San Francisco to Maharlika’s spicy arroz caldo in New York (above), we’ll take all the creative Filipino cuisine we can get.

in Bacon / Desserts / Eggs / Featured / Food Travel / Fowl / Lists / Pig / Rants & Raves / Red Meat / Restaurants / Top 10 Lists / Trends 1 comments