Good morning all and happy Labor Day weekend!

We made it! We got through the longest off season of any major sport!

We survived and are hereby awarded with real motherfucking football next week!

As such, today will be the season finale of Sunday Gravy. For you newer readers Sunday Gravy is one of our many regular, recurring posts that run exclusively during the off season to help get us through the interminable months long slog of surviving without any professional football.

During the season you will be regaled with our own Scotchy’s world famous open threads – there may be some hobo-killin’ fan fiction too! We have Hippo Thoughts, Quotables submissions and results, Cocktail of the Week as well as our ongoing EPL, AFL, CFL and Battlebots coverage. There is also real football news content and shitloads more! Join us!

We’ll reconvene for Sunday Gravy again next February following the Superb Owl to yet again educate and hopefully entertain you with recipes from around the world to tantalize your taste buds and increase your culinary repertoire.

Sometimes I’ll even drop a random Sunday Gravy cameo during the NFL season if I cook something new or stumble across a recipe that needs to be shared with the masses.

While I do very much love doing the whole Sunday Gravy thing it is still A LOT of work. Not even talking about the physical cooking element but the planning, photography and trying to come up with something new each week is a challenge for sure.

And I’m taking a fucking break, dammit!

Before getting started with today’s menu I wanted to do a quick recap on some of my favorite recipes from this past season. A greatest hits, if you will, of my personal favorite dishes from the past several months. I’ll give you 3 highlights that I highly encourage all of you to try. They’re in no particular order of deliciousness.

Item #1

That’s from the post where I made James Beard’s Chicken and 40 cloves.

Very simple and insanely delicious. It’s in the official rotation at home now. Easily one of my favorites from this season.

Item 2:

From early in the season, this is from a very special 2-part Sunday Gravy where we focused on homemade flatbreads.

Holy shit was that fucking killer. No shit, I’ve probably made 14 flatbreads since I posted this initially. It’s a staple.

Finally, something that I will be cooking this very fucking afternoon!

Grilled chicken with Aleppo pepper.

Fuck yes!

Don’t think by any means that these are the only recipes we made that were worth cooking. Fuck no. I’ve just taken up a lot of your time talking about them. Feel free to search the entire archives. The shrimp packs we just did were awesome, so were the Greek Meatballs and lemon garlic potatoes. I raised my game to new levels with the homemade breads and pastas. They’re all there in the very first link.

Shit, we even made pickles!

Spoiler alert! We’ve got some pickled action going today too.

Enough fucking around with this reflection shit!

Let’s make some game day food!

The last couple of weeks I’ve been trying to get you in regular season mode with food items that can be made ON an NFL Sunday. Today’s menu will be EXACTLY that. Something quick, delicious and easy to make on a football Sunday.

Let’s fuck around with the two most famous of the ‘Os.

Tacos and Nachos!

And since I just have to show off one last time let’s go ahead and pickle our own jalapenos while we’re at it.

Pickled jalapenos!

recipe inspiration from allrecipes.com

6-7 fresh jalapenos

1 fresh carrot peeled.

3/4 cups of white vinegar

3/4 cup of water

2 tablespoons of white sugar – adjust according to taste

1 tablespoon of salt

1 clove of garlic peeled and smashed

1/2 teaspoon or dried oregano

Special equipment – 1 mason jar.

 

Get some fresh veggies. Guess I should tell you that these will need to pickle for a week so do these in advance.

Go ahead and peel the carrot and cut into slices. Also cut the stem off the top of the jalapenos and cut them in slices. Leave the seeds!

Get that brine going by adding the water, vinegar, salt, sugar, garlic and oregano to a pot on the stove top.

Get this shit up to a boil.

Turn off the heat and add in the carrot and jalapeno. Yes, to the hot brine.

Let cool for about 10-15 minutes.

Next, using a pair of tongs start layering the veggies into a mason jar, leave room for the brine here. Fill the jar all the way to the top then place the lid on ‘er.

Sock this bastard away in your refrigerator for at least a week prior to using. Will last up to 2 months if handled properly. What I mean by that is don’t use your goddamn fingers to remove the jalapenos slices. Use a clean fork.

It’s positively paramount to proper pickle preparation and preservation.

Y’all already know how to make nachos but I’ll show you my technique.

I layer my chips in a ceramic baking dish. Use anything that is oven safe.

Next a layer of cheese.

That’s a 4 cheese Mexican cheese blend.

Add another layer of chips and cheese.

Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for about 6 minutes THEN add on your salsa, pickled jalapenos and anything else you desire.

Extreme close up.

Those pickled jalapenos are GOOD. They have a little sweetness, a legitimate crunch that you won’t get from store bought and a serious kick in the dick with the heat. That’s a goddamn tasty batch of nachos right there.

Before we get to the entree round, it’s important to have substantial snackage on hand for an NFL game day.

Like so.

Some nuts and a serious cheese tray with aged English cheddar and habanero jack cheese. Yes, obviously I love my spicy food. Do whatever you usually do on game day for snacks.

Here’s another helpful game day item or two.

That’s my “mini” crock pot and the Instant Pot, both can be valuable assets on an NFL Sunday. The Instant Pot for making quick work on otherwise time consuming dishes such as:

Texas chili! 

Here are a few more recipes for the Instant Pot.

The mini crock pot is perfect for keeping hot foods warm. In fact the next recipe can be kept warm in the crock pot for hours allowing folks to eat at their leisure. I use it on Superb Owl Sunday to keep the Buffalo chicken dip warm during the game.

Fuck it, let’s make some tacos!

Do you use beans on your tacos?

No?

Shit man, give them a try.

We’ve done beans a dozen times so I’ll make this a speed round.

Sort and rinse your beans. Add the water, onion, garlic, salt pepper, cumin, chili powder, chile de arbol and get to simmering on low, about 2 1/2 hours covered with lid slightly ajar.

Wait, is that bacon?

Fucking A right it is!

Remember? Eat the bacon bits and add the bacon fat to the beans during the last half hour of cooking.

There you go.

Finally, right at the end mash or blend up about 1/3 to 1/2 of the cooked beans.

Feel like this may be too time consuming while you’re trying to watch football?

Make that shit the day before! They reheat perfectly! If you don’t want to add the beans directly on your taco then serve them as a side covered with cheese and salsa. I put mine right on the damn taco.

Taco meat!

A real recipe!

1 pound of ground meat – dealers choice here. More on that to follow.

1 teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon of ground black pepper

1 teaspoon of chili powder

1/2 teaspoon of cumin

1/2 teaspoon of granulated garlic

1/2 teaspoon of granulated onion

1/2 teaspoon of chili powder

1/3 cup of water

1/2 teaspoon of cornstarch – to thicken

Get out a large skillet and get it over a medium heat on the stove top then add in the meat.

Start to break up the meat into bits then add in all of the seasonings and the water.

Stir. Stir. Mix. Mix.

Reduce the heat to medium low and continue to cook for about 12 minutes or so. We want the meat to brown, tighten up and we also want to be sure the seasonings are thoroughly mixed together.

Now if you wanted to you could cook the meat – shit maybe make a double batch if you’ve got company over – and put the meat in that mini crock pot and set the heat to “low.” It can stay warm and edible for hours! Then your guests can build their tacos on their own time.

Now since it’s game day it’s OK to use a shortcut and use the store bought taco shells here.

These will heat in a 350 degree oven for about 6 minutes.

Hey! What the fuck? Didn’t our nachos also go in a 350 degree oven for 6 minutes?

You’re goddamn right!

How you build your taco is entirely up to you.

Like some fresh tomatoes on there?

You can of course do the lettuce and onion thing. Man, make this fucker how YOU like it I’m just showing you how I do my damn thing.

Now build that bastard.

I put a little layer of the beans on first, then a scoop of the meat, some of my world famous chili tepin and top it with your choice of cheese. Four cheese Mexican blend on the left and aged cheddar on the right.

Consume with many, many cold beers.

I’m sure you all know how good this shit is. It’s delicious, simple and not too expensive and can feed a good size crowd.

Tacos are the shit!

I wanted to give you the taco meat recipe just in case you are using a seasoning packet just to show you how easy it is to make.

Now.

We’ve got to talk about something.

I hope you’re ready.

When I said the choice of meat was dealers choice?

Yes I did.

Here’s an incredible article about changing our habits from ground beef to the new shit – non meat based protein or alt meat.

Here’s the money paragraph as to why:

“Part of the appeal of the new burgers is their smaller environmental footprint. Beef is the most wasteful food on the planet. Cows are not optimized to make meat; they’re optimized to be cows. It takes 36,000 calories of feed to produce 1,000 calories of beef. In the process, it uses more than 430 gallons of water and 1,500 square feet of land, and it generates nearly ten kilograms of greenhouse-gas emissions. In comparison, an Impossible Burger uses 87 percent less water, 96 percent less land, and produces 89 percent fewer greenhouse-gas emissions. Beyond Meat’s footprint is similarly svelte.”

I’m going to at least try to reduce my carbon footprint and I’m serious as fuck about that. I’m driving less, recycling more and trying to do my part. If I can replace ground beef with the new alt-meat I fucking will.

Don’t get me wrong, I still will eat the fuck out of a steak on occasion but this is at least a try dammit.

Let me tell you, that was a goddamn tasty taco too. The chew is different but really close to beef. You can detect a bit of a different taste but since this was cooked with a bunch of spices it worked great. The only odd thing was there was no smell while cooking it which was unusual.

I originally wanted to use the “Impossible” version of the meat because they do something cool as fuck.

Again from the article:

“Beyond gets its bloody color from beet juice: Impossible uses heme—the same molecule that makes our blood red—to achieve its meaty color and flavor.” 

Those fuckers actually bio-engineered SOY to make it taste like blood! That’s cool as shit!

When I finally do get my hands on the “Impossible” meat I will most definitely run it through the Sunday Gravy test kitchen. It is currently unavailable at the grocery stores.

There’s a surprise ending for you!

Hope this wasn’t too far “Left” for you all today and I generally don’t get political on here but I really did want to try this and see if it would make a tasty Sunday Gravy feature.

Complete success.

Well folks? That’s a wrap. Another season of Sunday Gravy in the books.

You good folks are the reason I do this. Your being there and following along has kept me going these past 4 seasons. I didn’t do a final count but I’m guessing we’re near about 130 menus given.

Let’s do it again next off season.

Good luck to most of your teams this season.

Most.

SKOL Vikings!

PEACE!