Sunday Gravy with yeah right: A Midsummer Grill Fest with COOKIES!

Good Morning everybody!

NFL CAMPS ARE OPENING! In just a few days Every. Damn. Team will be in camp with veterans and everything! It’s gonna fucking happen! Holy shit, holy shit another season is knocking on the goddamn door and it’s ready to kick that fucker open!

I thought we could celebrate summer camp week by grilling the fuck up! We won’t be stopping there either, nuh-uh. I’m also going to make some goddamn white chocolate macadamia nut cookies!

How ’bout that shit!?!

It feels like a party up in here!

We’ve finally arrived at grilling season and we’re getting after that fucker.

We haven’t done a grill session post in a long time and it feels like it’s high time we remedied that.

Nothing crazy fancy today. How about some barbecue chicken and burgers? Got a slight idea for them burgers too.

Ready?

We’ll get started by making a brine for the chicken.

Remember this shit?

It’s cool when I can copy and paste from my own recipes. Here’s the info for the brine. This is from a previous grilling post.

“Bring one cup of water to a boil and dump in 3 tablespoons of kosher salt to dissolve. Add some ice cubes and cold water to cool the brine down – that would be about 2 additional cups worth of liquid. Then add a couple of bay leaves, a handful of peppercorns and some crushed garlic.”

Place the chicken and the cooled off brine into a gallon zip-top bag like so.

That chicken will brine overnight in the refrigerator. Always place the brine bag in a bowl just in case of leakage. I don’t give a fuck about the brine leaking in my fridge but I’ll be goddamned if I want chicken juice up in there.

The next day get that chicken out of the fridge, let it come up to room temperature and cook it’s ass over a charcoal fire.

These were some serious big fat breastages so they’re going to take awhile. Make sure your flame isn’t too hot and is cooking evenly. I hesitate to even give you a time because there are a shitload of variables in play including ambient weather and grill temperature. These went maybe 10-12 minutes per side.

Go ahead and sauce up the chicken.

Don’t be shy with the sauce. Slather that shit up! Your choice for barbecue sauce. I went with Sweet Baby Ray’s Original sauce.

Cook until done.

When the chicken has been cooked and is resting under foil wrap in the kitchen, we’re going to make some burgers too. It is mid summer grilling season after all.

We will start by making a panade. That would be the binding agent for the burgers. A panade is simply bits of old bread with milk added to form a paste.

There was a reason why I keep chunks of my homemade bread.

Crumble this up and add in milk, or use heavy cream like I did because it’s what I had on hand. Season the panade liberally with salt and pepper.

Let the bread soak for 10 minutes or so. Then add in the hamburger meat. Two pounds today to feed 8 folks. Standard meat to fat ration of 80-20 is very much in play here.

Form the patties and season the top of the burgers.

Yes I did indeed season the outside of the burgers with Adobo Criollo, (Thanks Don T!) it was dynamite.

When all of the chicken has cooked get the burgers on next.

Slap some cheese on those things!

Obviously use whatever cheese you prefer but we went with the standard processed American cheese food for this.

I thought maybe we could kinda, sorta duplicate the Big Kahuna Burger thing we fucked around with earlier this season. Only this time on a charcoal grill.

Check this out.

Yes. Grilled pineapple. I seriously may need to do this for every grilled burger I ever make in the future. That balance with the salty juicy burger and the sweet smoky slice of pineapple. Oh HELL yes. Add some teriyaki sauce? We’ve created a goddamn star!

Grab a plate and load yourself up!

Sure it’s store bought potato salad but it was still damn good. Delicious stuff. Perfect for a gathering of the right clan. That burger was crazy juicy and cooked perfectly. The panade really allows the meat to retain a bunch of juices. Give it a try sometime.

I did mention cookies though and teased them on the lede so cookies it shall be.

I was absolutely inspired by Game Time Decision when he graciously hosted a Sunday Gravy week off for me earlier this year, I wanted to do something slightly similar but still a bit different.

So I went with white chocolate macadamia nut cookies.

This is some really good shit.

recipe inspired by Preppykitchen.com

8 oz white chocolate

1/2 cup unsalted butter room temperature

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1 egg

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

½ tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. baking soda

1 tsp corn starch

¼ tsp. kosher salt

1 cup macadamia nuts chopped

We get started by breaking out the trusty stand mixer.

Dump that room temperature butter in the mixing bowl.

I find that real “room temperature butter” beats melted butter every time. It makes the next step a lot creamier.

Next get the sugar in there and “cream” the butter and sugar together with the paddle attachment of your mixer. Whip this for about 2 minutes.

These next two players will jump in the bowl now.

Yes we will measure out the vanilla and we will crack in the egg. We’re not complete fucking savages after all.

Time to get our dry ingredients together.

Get the dry ingredients into a bowl of their own and mix to combine. When the dry ingredients are blended we slowly start adding the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients in the mixing bowl. Just a bit at a time.

Continue to slowly add the dry ingredients until the dough starts to form together,

Let’s bring in our supporting cast. Macadamia nuts first.

OH! Dry roasted yet! Yes these are truly goddamn delicious on their own. Notice that I’ve bagged these.

That’s because they are still whole and we need them in pieces.

I bagged them and beat their ass with a rolling pin until they turned into pieces. Very cathartic by the way.

Next we add the nuts into the dough.

Now about the white chocolate.

Not sure how familiar you all are with Ghirardelli chocolate but it’s a legitimate fucking “thing” here in California. They’re based out of San Francisco and I’m pretty sure I went to their factory, hell I know I went to an adjacent gift shop because I bought some of their goods back for my daughters when they were much younger and I was returning from 3 weeks away on business.

Since I am most definitely not a huge fan of chocolate I have no idea how far ranging their brand is.

Just be aware that this is the very best I could find.

We don’t want to use the blender to add in the chips, so remove the mixer paddle attachment and add in the chips by hand. Gently.

Grab a sheet of the oh so familiar parchment paper and place it on a baking sheet.

Heat up the oven to 350 degrees.

Take about 1-2 tablespoons worth of dough and place each doughball on the pan. Leave a couple of inches between the balls.

Into the oven for about 10 minutes or until golden brown and goddamn delicious looking.

Since these are very monochromatic, I thought using the black plate for a bit of contrast would work.

Cook until all of the batches of dough have been cooked and the cookies are done.

Shit. I should have doubled the recipe.

It’s time like these that I actually regret my decision to stop drinking milk. I quit probably 5 or so years ago but godDAMN would a cold glass of milk be awesome with these.

For the record not a single cookie survived the onslaught. It was a massacre.

Well, guess that about wraps this one up. I’m sure everyone has been hearing about the heat wave shit going on but no need to worry. I live right on the coast for a reason. It’s been abso-fucking-lutely gorgeous the last few weeks.

Just in time for training camp!

Shit howdy, who’s ready for some gatdamn football?

WOO!

Enjoy your Sunday everyone and be sure to stop by next week. Got something pretty damn special lined up for you.

Until then.

PEACE!