Burger Mac & Cheese Soup

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While tooling around online, I came across this Big Mac & Cheese Soup idea that was perfect for using up some stuff I have kicking around in my fridge. Namely two leftover burger patties, and half a jar of spicy cheese sauce (soo good).

You know I love to play around with recipies to make it my own if I can, but more importantly, I need to make it simple enough to be both fast & dirty, and tasty as hell. I think I nailed this one. Check out what I came up with:

I started by cooking the pasta in water with a beef cube together from the jump. As this pot boiled, I heated up water and chicken stock powder in a small sauce pot off to the side.

When the pasta was done, I reserved about 1/4 cup of the flavoured starch water and drained the rest. While the cheese sauce and ground up burger meat heated through mixed into the pasta, I diced up a dill pickle to stir in as well to keep the Big Mac burger theme going.

I gave it all a good stir together and spooned heaping amounts of the mac & cheese into bowls, and then ladled the chicken stock over top to turn it into a soup. This dish stands on its own without the chicken stock if you’re not into soup. My husband loved this dish as a straight pasta + meal meal.

The original recipe above called for milk in the sauce mixture, but I wasn’t into that idea today, so this is all I used to make this meal:

Burger Mac & Cheese Soup:
2 C Macaroni Pasta
I Beef Bouillion Cube

2 C Chicken Stock

2 leftover Burgers (with an dry onion soup powder in the mixture)
1/2 C Salsa con Queso (found at Walmart)
1/4 C Dill Pickle, small dice

I hope you love making this one. It’s a hearty, tasty meal. It’s also fast and dirty, and tasty enough to satisfy. I really like that the spicy cheese and the onion soup mix did most of the heavy lifting. This is a no-sweat meal to make on the fly when you want to clean our your fridge more than you want to be all gourmet and fancy.

Air Fryer Burgers

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I’ve really gotten into making my own burger patties to cook in the air fryer in this past week. I stumbled on the idea of using a certain one ingredient online two months ago, and I have been very happy with my homemade burgers ever since.

Butter Burgers:
450 g Ground Meat (any)
2 Tbsp Butter, grated
2+ Tea Spice Blend (of choice that works with choice of meat)
1/2 C Breadcrumbs (optional if mix is too moist)

Mix everything up by hand just to combine. Don’t over work the meat. Divide the mix into four equal patty portions. Roll each one into a ball and then flatten them out across closed fingers to about 4-5″ wide. Place each patty in the air fryer basket lined with parchment or tin foil.

Cook at 320* for 6 mins per side, and at 400* for 3 mins per side to brown each side more. Let the patties rest in the basket to reabsorb the butter juices. Flip the burgers over a few times before moving to buns.

 

Summer Salads – Potato

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This is my riff on Simply LaKita’s Southern Potato Salad. Her recipe is as delicious as it is straightforward. You will have your potato salad made in no time at all. I use the same base materials and steps, but I add two other ingredients. If my additions scare you, trust me when I say LaKita knows what she’s doing, so you can check out her original recipe instead. šŸ™‚

Taco Potato Salad:
5 Russet Potatoes, peeled, diced
Half a medium sized mixing bowl of cold water + 1/2 tea salt

Prep and rest your potatoes in the mixing bowl as you peel and dice them up. Rinse the diced potatoes twice with cold water. Dump into a pot with water to boil. When the water hits its boiling point, add 1-2 teaspoons of salt. Always salt your starches!

Rinse out the mixing bowl using cold water. Add some ice and add some cold water. Drain the pot water after the potatoes hit fork tender stage. Drop the potatoes immediately into the mixing bowl to come stop the cooking and chill the potatoes.

3 Eggs, room temperature
1 tea White Vinegar
Half a small sized mixing bowl of cold water + ice

Bring eggs up to boil in water + vinegar, and then drop to a simmer. Cover and let them cook for 11 mins. Remove the eggs immediately and drop into the iced water bath to rest 10 mins before peeling. Smash both ends on all of the eggs before carefully getting fingernails under the membrane to smoothly remove the shell fragments. Wipe the eggs off on a paper towel before chopping up.

Dump the potatoes and egg chops into the rinsed out mixing blow and add the dressing:

1/2 C Mayo
2 Tbsp Relish
1 Tbsp Yellow Mustard
1+ Tea Taco Seasoning Blend
1/2 Tea Pickle Brine
S&P

Mix this all together, cover, and chill to marry everything together for roughly 4 hours.

Mocktails

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Millionaire Sour:
2 oz (60 mL) each: Lemon Simple Syrup / Ginger Ale
1/4 C Crushed Ice
1/4 oz (7 mL) Grenadine Syrup
Lemon Slice

Yield: 1

Arnold Palmer:
1 C Brewed Black Tea
3/4 C Lemonade
Ice
1 Shot Lemon Simple Syrup
1 Lemon Slice (or thin slice of Jalapeno cut lengthwise)

Yield: 1

Ginger Beer Mule:
1 C Ginger Beer
3 Tbsp Lime Juice
3/4 C 7-Up or Sprite
1/4 C Simple Syrup
Ice
Mint & Lime Wedges

Yield: 2

Jalapeno Mockarita:
1 C Ice
1/2 C OJ
1/4 C Fresh Lime Juice
1 Jalapeno, cut into rings
Salt for rim

Yield: 1

Philly Steak Sandwich Inspo

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I can’t find the video I watched a week ago that gave me this idea. In the video, they used chopped up steak, but I had leftover smoked ribs and chicken, so I chopped up both into a mix and used that instead.

I started by frying some chopped onions, and then I added the meat to heat all the way through. Near the end of that, I added some marble cheese shred, gave it a toss and then scooped it into naan bread I steamed to make them pliable.

I added some Poke sauce to the naan and took a bite. I was so good. It will be better when I make this again when I add some veg (I didn’t have any left at this point in the week), and following the traditional Philly Steak, I will add fried green peppers, some lettuce and tomato slices, and then top it all with melted Provolone (or Swiss) cheese and hit with some Kewpie mayo. I can’t wait.

A Very Berry Summer

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I bought a container of price reduced strawberries when we were grocery shopping for bbq food. I gave them an eight min bath in 1/4 C white vinegar and enough water to just top the berries. After draining, I placed them on a clean tea towel to dry.

The former customer of ours that gave us blackberries from his backyard as I was making dinner to let me know he pick another huge yield that day. I dispatched the husband to grab another pint from the nice customer. When he got back, i set up the same vinegar and water bath for the blackberries. I rested them eight mins, drained them, and laid them out to air dry.

From there, I lined each plastic container with a bit of paper towel, and placed the berries back inside them before I found some room in the fridge to eat them this week.

Straight from the Smoker

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It was a beautiful clear day yesterday, so I decided I needed to BBQ some food for the week. I thawed some back ribs I had in the freezer when I woke up, and while that was doing its thing, we headed out to buy some groceries for other items I was planning to smoke.

When we got back, the husband took off on the motorcycle (a rare luxury for him these days), while I fired up the charcoal. I prepped all the food as the fire heated up the coals. I slapped down some pepper cuts, potatoes, chicken breasts, and the ribs to get some colour on the top side before I rolled it over and shoved it over to the indirect side to slow smoke.

While this was happening, I got to enjoy a few hours out on the patio playing on the computer and drinking cold coffee. Ahhh… I was a happy camper. After the food was finished cooking, I brought it all in and get the table ready as the husband was walking in the door. The corn also got smoked but it was the last night I smoked a few mins on each side after microwaving them in their husks for 6 mins to speed everything up.

When the chicken was cool enough to handle, I cut all five breasts differently to target meals for the week. I sliced one and a half breasts into thin slices for the express of making my favourite sanny ever, the Chicken Club. šŸ™‚

The rest of the chicken got cut up into thicker chunks for a Caesar salad for one, and cubes to drop into a pot of hot Butter Chicken sauce tomorrow night for dinner. Yes!

After dinner, I got making up a few meal kits for our lunches the next day. When the corn was fully cold, I dropped a bit of salt over them as well as a small butter pat, so after the corn is heated with the meat, we could roll our corn sections in the salt + butter inside the dish. Worked like a charm.

And the potato in my kit got pierced in a lengthwise line as was as a cross line. I didn’t think it was enough, so I stabbed the rest of the potato top and then used the fork to push it all down to a smushed mash before topping it with some cucumber salad dressing and green onion chops like I did the night before (see above dinner plate).

All in all, I’m liking this bbq weekend stuff. I just wish the weather was more consistently night as opposed to one bbq day every three fricking weeks. Ugh,

Gluten-Free Chocolate Chips (Quarter Batch)

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I’m at that age where eating a cookie (or three) over the course of a day is really not working for me. But, I still want a cookie every so often, so I dipped a toe into the dark side by picking up a bag of gluten-free flour.

I know, I know!

I also bought a small bag of gluten-free cookies at work the other day, and son-of-a… Yeah, I felt fine, and I didn’t look stuffed like a pig the next morning. So I guess we all know where this is heading. Ugh.

Ok, fine! I will start to shift over. I’m starting with this recipe I found on the back some other g/f cookie mix bag that was far too expensive for me to buy. I just couldn’t. I hope just buying the flour will get me where I need to go.

(fingers crossed) Here is my first kick at that can.

Auntie Stacey’s Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies:
Dry:
Flour = 75g
Baking Soda = 1/4 tea
Salt = 1/4 tea
White Sugar = 150g
Brown Sugar = 156g
Chocolate Chips = 30-40g
Chopped Nuts = 30-40gĀ  (opt)

Wet:
Vanilla = 1/4 tea
Butter, soft = 40g
1 med Egg

Yield: 12 mini cookies
Bake at 375*F, 11 mins, on parchment

Update: The butter spread out too much, so I dropped the butter and upped the flour increments so I can refer to this online recipe when I make them again next week. But, as for the rest of the cookies, I can tell you they are soft in the middle while retaining a crunch due to the brown sugar. It’s a lovely chewy experience. And the sugar blend is dead on. The cookies aren’t not too sugary, and nor are they underwhelmingly sweet.