Hatch Chile Corn Dogs (featuring LSmoke on the Bass)

Sit back and relax, this is gonna be a long one. But first, corn dogs.

The day began with a round of golf that never happened. For that I would like to say something to Pecan Valley Golf Course in Fort Worth. No one wants your rainchecks. Just give the money back if the golfing experience is not good after one hole. Thats all I have to say on that.

When Central Market announced that they would be having another Hatch Chile competition a couple weeks ago, we began brainstorming some recipes that would both be delicious and have not done before as that is sort of our deal. We don't like making things that have been made before. Still waiting on those butterfinger brisket royalties to come in.

Smokehopper would not be in town for this delicious endeavor, so I called another culinary contributor to the site and thankfully LSmoke was available. We talked and decided that the best way to win both the competition and a delicious Saturday would be to make homemade sausage corn dogs stuffed with Hatch Chiles. We won. The delicious Saturday part, not the Central Market deal. But thats ok. We don't need justification from places that do not even carry the supplies we need. Onto that portion of this raucous tale.

Here is an interesting fact that you need to know when making sausage for the first time....you need sausage casings to make sausage. This is a list of places in Fort Worth that do not currently sell sausage casings and have no plans to:

1) The Mexican meat store on Granbury road

2) The Supermercado on Hemphill

3) Central Market

4) Alberstons

5) Kroger

6) and one other place that I can't remember

You can however find them at Academy of all places, so thanks Academy.

It should be noted that you should buy the hog sausage casings. They smell up the kitchen something fierce, but its worth it. This is what they look like in a bowl getting ready to soak for 30 minutes or so.

While they were soaking and making the kitchen smell mostly like a pigs insides, we started roasting the chiles. LSmoke has a badass KitchenAid convection broiler so this was a pretty easy process without having to fire up the grill just for some chiles.

Once the chiles were roasted and peeled, we put them in a large ziplock with a damp paper towel to help them peel. It worked. But sorry no pics. They should be blackened when you pull them out of the oven or off the grill. LSmoke has a sausage grinder and luckily has made his own sausage once before. He knows the ins and outs of his kitchen, but we still tried a couple of things. Here we go. This is all of the parts to a sausage grinder. Cleaned and oiled.

At the first Mexican meat market we were certain they had some kind of casings for the sausage in the back, but we decided to let sleeping dogs lie and picked up 3 pounds of pork meat instead.

As you can see, we have assembled the grinder and set it up. We figured out very quickly that it takes a lot of effort to grind sausage and it needs to be bolted down to something or you can add an hour or two to the process.

We got this far before we figured out a better way to use the grinder.

We changed up to a thicker cut of sausage and bolted the grinder down on the right side of a part of LSmoke's leftover fence. This way he was able to sit on the board and feed sausage into the grinder while I cranked. Worked out a lot better.

And we got roughly 2.75 pounds of ground pork parts out of it. Success.

Once this task was completed in a little more time than we had planned it was time to prep the chiles. Like I said earlier the skin pretty much peels right off. We deseeded the chiles too, for the most part. We figured that sausage sometimes has a few seeds in it, so we left a few of them in. They didn't add or detract anything away from the dogs.

We sliced them up into smallish sqaures and added them to the meat.

Sauteed up some garlic for the meat too.

And added healthy amounts of this stuff to the pork. In a bowl. Please put it in a bowl.

I mixed it up with my hands. You have seen countless number of pictures of me mixing things with my hands before, so you don't need a picture of this process. LSmoke added a piece to the grinder and we were ready to start forcing the pork into the casing.

Aaaaaand sausages. Please note the green parts inside. Those are the chiles.

We cut them and stuck skewers in one side and prepped the skillet for cooking.

While the oil was heating up we began the batter for the dogs. Used the following in unmeasured amounts until we had a consistency that would stick to the outside of the dogs without running all over the place during the transfer from batter to skillet.

Sausages in the skillet cooking in oil. We figured that they needed to be cooked rather than just fried. We were right about this as it didn't take too long to fry them up.

Once the oil was at the right temp (350 degrees) we dropped these guys in. Carefully. Hot oil burns. See you have learned a couple new things today.

And for the finished product.

All in all, these were a great success. Making corn dogs from scratch is a relatively difficult and time consuming task, but it was more than worth it on a Saturday afternoon. Add Hatch Chiles to the equation and the greatness increases exponentially. We thought at one point that it would take only a couple of hours, but when it came down to it I would say it was closer to 3 or 3.5. Regardless, more than worth the time. The sausage turned out fantastic and the batter was not too sweet but rather served as a good compliment to the salty consistency of the sausage. I regret to inform you that some old man named Jimmy Dean has stolen my idea of breakfast sausage fried in pancake batter, but that is for another day and another time.

Try this out if you like. I think you will enjoy it. LSmoke, thanks for your hospitality and effort in getting this done.

~El Smokeador~

I've Been Letting This Idea Stew For Awhile

Those bags of beans at the store have been eyeballin' me for awhile now and last week I succumbed to the pressure.  Bean pressure.  Beans are a relentless force that will not deny or avow their greatness, even facing McNulty and Bunk in room 5.  However, some beans are cocky and will tell you how great they are, some many times over, like in a stew that you can keep in the fridge for a week or so.  These were those beans.  Fortunately enough, mine didn't last a whole week.  I had visitors (that will be receiving my Atmos bill in the mail shortly) in from sunny California this past week.  After a long couple of days on the road, they needed a hearty handshake, laurel and a good meal to fight off Winter Blast 2009, the Second Coming. As a sidebar, I had the immense pleasure of seeing M. Ward at the Horchow Auditorium in the Dallas Museum of Arts on Sunday.  He played this and it was fantastic.  If you get to see Matt this week at SXSW, do it.

Beans soaking overnight (24 hours is best) - 2 quarts of water

Beans pre-rinse

You can see here that I rinsed them because this is a picture of a strainer (is that what you call it).  After rinsing, add beans back to washed out (no soap) pot with 2 new quarts of water.

Cubed up some Earl Campbell hot link (singular, not the kind you buy 6 in a packet but those will work too.  If you aren't a master stewer.)**

Add sausage to a boiling pot of beans and turn to medium until you have a good simmer goin. A good simmer is 2 or 4 columns of little bubbles coming up from the bottom.

Other stuff to add (its on the back, but I freelanced a little and threw in some piquins, jalapeno's and smoked paprika.)

After a good two hours (you can do 3 if you want) add the chopped ingredients and squeeze the lemon in. Salt and pepper accordingly.  I used and have almost used up my peppercorns and colored sea salt.  A tablespoon of each should suffice.

Add in a can of stewed tomatoes when adding the rest of the stuff too.  You can stew your own if you want, but I didn't.

Once all of the ingredients are in the pot, let them simmer for another hour.  I brought the heat up to a near boil because it was still kind of watery.  I wanted more of a stew, so it reduced down nicely.

Finished product, Dallas Cowboys glass for wine not required but suggested.

Moral of the story, took about 3.5 hours to make and was quite delicious. Made about 12 bowls of stew and cost about $10 American since water is cheap.  Since it's SXSW week, here are some bands we think you should check out:

The Heartless Bastards

Blitzen Trapper

Elbow

The Avett Brothers

and the guys that will be paying my March gas bill

Austin Hartley Leonard (Golden Opportunity is a jam)

** I am not a master stewer

~El Smokeador~

The Derbyshire Invitational

My Posse’s on Breakfast Sandwiches (yikes)

This last week I was fortunate enough to receive into my kitchen two world class chefs visiting from their retreat in Vermont. Yes, both SmokeBerg and SmokeNor came to visit and while here, they made Yankee Breakfast Sandwiches. They are Yankee because onions and jalapenos went into the cream sauce. Also the recipe came straight from Bobby Flay, who as we all know is a Yankee. I’m not too sure if the word Yankee has any more social relevance but alas, I’ve already typed it and I’m sure as hell not going to go back and delete it. This is an amateur blog. Give me a break. I’m not going to do it.

The Process:

1) Green onions were added to a whole slew of eggs along with salt and pepper. They were scrambled.

2) Jalapenos and Onions were diced and placed in a pan to sweat.

3) Patty Sausage was cooked in a roasting rack of all places. Although not shown, bacon was cooked in the oven as well.

4) Grease from the sausage and bacon was added to the onions and jalapeños along with some milk and some a.p. flour. Brought to boil and then reduced.

5) English muffins were toasted with butter under the broiler.

6) The Sandwiches were assembled.

7) Deliciousness was had.

Thanks to SmokeBerg and SmokeNor for all of the pics and good times.

According to rumors and lies, Smoked Turkey Legs will be coming soon. I’m just sayin. Until next time Smokeheads.

-SmokeHopper