Sunday Gravy with yeah right: Baked Snipe!

Welcome back everyone.

Happy baseball season! You got the NCAA tourney shit today too! And it’s motherfucking SPRING!

Get outside and do…something! Thaw out those winter weary bones at least.

Anybody else do the Spring cleaning thing? No shit, sometimes the winter fucks around so much that it can be months between full house cleanings.

I already did mine because we had a whole fleet of visitors over the last few weeks and we already went straight past winter and spring and just went ahead and started summer for the fuck of it.

Open up those windows! Air the place out! Breathe deep and come out of hibernation. It’s time to get back to the world!

Since it’s also warming up we are going to be moving away from the menus that cook in an oven for 3-4 hours just to keep the goddamn house warm.

While I do enjoy making complex and time consuming recipes I’ve discovered that I really like quick and easy shit too. Especially when quick and easy produces tasty results. That’s exactly the shit I’m looking for.

Occasionally I’ll hear about “viral” recipes from family, coworkers etc so research is then required. Over the course of the next few episodes we’ll focus on some of these meals and we can show off the results.

You want easy?

Then our shit today is definitely for you.

Got Chicken? Breasts or thighs, it don’t matter. Have some bacon and barbeque sauce on hand? No, really. Any kind of barbecue sauce at all.

Then you can make this because that’s all it is.

Three ingredient recipes fucking rule.

The online write-ups about this dish were fucking hilarious. “Best chicken recipe ever!” Of course it’s delicious dumb ass! Look at the ingredients. ANYONE can do this. You didn’t just invent molecular gastronomy by making this, dipshit.

You fucking wrapped boneless skinless chicken with bacon and cooked it with barbecue sauce. You ain’t getting a Michelin star for that shit, Chef Andrés. Enjoy your little moment of “what-ever-the-fuck” glory you’ve achieved.

I just like this shit cuz it’s easy.

I mentioned that I would be sharing this recipe as a Sunday Gravy feature and Brother Taj said “You should call it Baked Snipe.”

I remembered back to a childhood memory of his that made this make sense to me and asked him to elaborate a bit.

Take it away!:

“As a teenager I wanted something more than my god fearing mom was offering so I sought out the dangerous and violent. My cousins were much different than my brothers and I as they were allowed to own motorcycles and guns. My mother?

Terrified of them so there would be no bullet riddled fun for me or so she thought.

During the summer when I turned 15 I was to spend some time with said cousins far away from the ever curious eyes of mumsy dear. This was how my one and only “Snipe” hunt came to be.

We were to walk many miles up “Cougar Mountain” with tents and high powered rifles slung over shoulders in search of anything alive so we could kill it dead.

Being my first big game murdering small animal adventure I was considered a “Tenderfoot” having never been on an excursion in search of small rodents to destroy much less an actual snipe hunt. My cousin was forced to teach me the hidden details of terrorizing the small beast until fear forced them to flee shelter, giving me a chance to end their puny little lives, real painful like.

This I found out I did not like.

In order for us to have a meal that night and not starve to death, it was determined that I Tender Taj was to hunt and bag a snipe.

Seemed easy enough. I was told to walk slowly up to each bush that I encountered and kick the bottom because this was where the real fat, juicy ones hid. I did for a while.

All throughout my search for the ever elusive fowl there was a constant giggling coming from the group of warriors I traveled with. Seems something funny was afoot and the joke was clearly on me.

“They taste like chicken and bacon,” they would shout, which must have been a right knee slapper as this brought about a real gale of laughter again pointed right at me. I stopped kicking the bushes and sat down and took the good natured ribbing as well as I could.

Later someone shouted, “Hey you ever play duck the dick”?

Man I wish I would have ducked sooner for that splash of coyote blood was something I’ve never forgotten!”

Since we’re being lazy as fuck today, how about we do another random store bought product review?

We can do that!

Basic concept was to try this stuff.

As someone who will research basically anything, it won’t surprise you that yes, I researched “Best Store Bought” macaroni and cheese for today’s post. After reading multiple sites that reviewed mac and cheese from the store, this was the clear cut favorite. Also, please note the “World’s Best” disclaimer that’s right there on the box. That’s some big swinging balls you got to put that claim right in the title of your product.

Believe me! I will judge your ass for that!

All this is my lazy way of saying that mac and cheese sounded like it would pair up very well with our entree today.

I also wanted to see how it compares to the “Stuff in the Blue Box” which as most of you know cooks up something like this.

With some added pepper of course.

The second reason why I chose the Beechers stuff?

I’ve been there, man!!

Beecher’s cheese shop! Really.

It’s located in Pike’s Place Market in Seattle.

Yes. The market with the “Throwing of the fishes” thing.

Here’s the view of the cheese shop from the street side window.

If you look closely, they are cutting the cheese into rectangles. This batch of cheese is just beginning to tighten up from it’s milk stage and  is turning into a soft cheese.

We sampled some cheese curds, some aged flagship cheddar and a couple of other aged cheeses. There’s a counter at the cheese shop and they have a kitchen that makes hot food too.

We did a food tour of Pike’s Place and it was great. Extremely filling too. They stopped at at least 10 stalls. We were very well fed from the tour.

Anyway, enough of the travelogue. Let’s make us some Bacon Barbecue Chicken!

Choose your sauce.

I believe I’ve featured Sweet Baby Ray’s original sauce on Sunday Gravy in the past. It’s my go-to barbecue sauce.

This dish doesn’t give a fuck, man! You prefer a different sauce? Use that shit. Taylor this shit to your preferences.

For the chicken parts you can use chicken thighs…

Or breasts…

Or fuck it! Both.

What we’re doing with the bacon is basically giving some “juice” back to the baked chicken. I’m sure every one of you know the difficulty in keeping baked chicken juicy, well we’re going to cheat by adding bacon fat to the equation!

How can that be a bad thing?

Think you can handle the intricacy of these next instructions to come?

I don’t know, man. Pretty heady fucking stuff here.

Place the chicken in a zip top bag and add a cup or so of sauce, squish around for a bit then refrigerate overnight.

Pretty intense shit! I know!

Next day get the chicken out of the fridge about an hour before you start cooking to allow it to come up to room temperature.

Rather than just wrapping the chicken with raw uncooked bacon, we’re going to par cook the bacon for a few minutes or so to jump start it towards crispiness. The oven will finish the deal.

Just 3 minutes per side will do.

Bonus bacon grease! Enjoy!

Place the now room temperature chicken in a foil-lined baking dish and top with bacon slices.

Breasts too.

Yeah, you caught me. I didn’t have quite enough bacon slices to “wrap” the chicken, so I just tossed the shit on top.

Think I’m worried about aesthetics with this simple-ass recipe?

I could give a FUCK.

Baste with some more barbecue sauce.

Cook them shits in a pre-heated 350-375 degree oven. About 35 minutes or so.

Lovely! Use the cooking time to heat up the mac and cheese too. Adjust cooking time to fit the temperature that you’re using to cook the chicken.

Mac should be done.

Any thoughts on the use of penne pasta in the mac and cheese?

I’m OK with it but I still use small shells as my mac and cheese default. Penne just feels like too much pasta for the sauce ratio. Probably just me.

Plate up!

Let’s get a closer look at the mac and cheese.

More beige food!

I’ll tell you what. That mac and cheese is pretty goddamn tasty.

Again, look at the box.

That fucker clearly reads “Smoked” flagship cheese. There is most definitely a smoky thing going. The box says they use apple and cherry wood to smoke the cheese and you can pick up some of that. Very nice touch.

I’ve had their World’s Best non-smoked version and there is a difference. This one does carry a little bit of that “graininess” that you can sometimes find in a mac and cheese but that doesn’t bug me. To me that’s a sign that they used real cheese in the recipe.

Thumbs up on this shit! Go ahead and give it a go.

Two caveats however.

Number one? Shit’s expensive. Almost prohibitively so. Keep that in mind.

Second caveat? See that “Serves 2-4” bullshit?

WRONG!

Two people, OK but if you want to head back in for a second helping that may pose a problem unless you threaten person number two with physical violence. 

It’s your kitchen, I’ll let you sort that shit out for yourself.

Now that chicken?

That chicken is fucking good as hell. How could it not be. Crispy bacon, smoky barbecue sauce and a juicy hunk of bird. The fuck’s not to like?

AND it went very well with the mac and cheese and my boring ass choice of corn as a vegetable.

I ain’t taking too much credit for anything apart from the fact that it was prepared and cooked flawlessly. I’ll accept that glory.

Stupid easy to make, stupid delicious results! That’s exactly what we want from a very stupid recipe.

Try it!

Today’s “Fun” holidays, courtesy of A Bit of Good News: “March 29 is World Marbles Day, National Lemon Chiffon Cake Day, National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day, National Pita Day, National Smoke and Mirrors Day and Mermaid Day.”

I could definitely grill something up and wrap it in a pita. Maybe some hummus and some tzatziki? SOLD! I’ll process the lemon chiffon cake thing for a possible later date.

Have a great rest of your Sunday folks.

Thanks for stopping in.

Until next week!