Sunday Gravy with yeah right: More Game Day Recipes!

Good morning everyone.

Welcome back. We’ve got your penultimate episode of Sunday Gravy season 11 going.

How about some more quick and easy game day recipes for you? Got to get our minds into game day shape! The time for slackers is over!

I’m here to help.

Let’s say you want to do a taco Sunday type thing for football Sunday. That’s a smart call on your part. It’s quick, easy as shit to do, cheap and it feeds a crowd. Sounds like a winner!

Yeah yeah we’ve done the taco thing a time or two for you but this time though?

We’re going to make our very own taco spice mix. You can make a shitload of this and just keep it in the cupboard for whenever you want to get all southwest in the kitchen.

Homemade Taco Mix!

recipe inspired by allrecipes.com

1 tablespoon chili powder

1 ½ teaspoons ground cumin

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

½ teaspoon ground paprika – smoked Spanish paprika works best

¼ teaspoon garlic powder

¼ teaspoon onion powder

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

¼ teaspoon dried Mexican oregano

1 teaspoon of cornstarch.

This is pretty challenging shit here. You ready for this?

Gather your ingredients.

Spoon them into a container.

Shake the shit out of that container and use as needed.

Still need a walkthrough?

A’ight.

How about we start with a batch of beans. You know that one. No?

Maybe I’ll just copy it verbatim from everyone’s favorite year, 2020. Yep. Right at the start of lockdown too.

“PINTO BEANS!

Hard as fuck to find these days but let me tell you how these came about.

Back to that first weekend of the pandemic deal. Remember that weekend? How fucking fucked up everything was with the run on every goddamn thing in the store? Well, apparently sometime during that weekend, and believe me I know you will understand, I was shit hammered drunk and tried to order some pinto beans from Amazon. I have almost no recollection of doing so. Guess what showed up on my doorstep about a week ago? Over a month later? Three 1 pound bags of dried pinto beans!

Woo-hoo!

Anyway, soak the beans the day before if desired.

Add to a pot with enough water to cover by an inch or so. Chop up a medium size onion, some more garlic and add to the pot. Then some salt, pepper, cumin and chili powder and a couple of chile de arbol pods. Get her over a simmer

Cover with a lid, reduce heat to very low and cook for about 2 hours or until tender.

I’ve made beans on Sunday Gravy so many goddamn times all of you can probably make these in your damn sleep by now.

You know my trick for finishing the beans, remember?

Damn right, chop up some bacon and get in the pan and cook until the bacon is crispy.

Remove the bacon from the pan and drain on a paper towel. You then add the bacon grease right into the pot of beans and finish cooking for 10-15 minutes. Next use your immersion blender to mash/mix about half of the beans.

You can either just eat that damn bacon, or hell you could garnish the beans with it too.”

There you go. Beans.

Now for the taco meat service get some tortillas. Corn is the usual or hell, grab those pre-made taco shells I ain’t judging.

For me? I was really wanting a combo burrito today so I went flour.

Check it out! Found fresh tortillas at the store. These were damn good too.

Get a pound of ground meat of choice and brown it in a skillet.

Add 3 tablespoons of our spice blend and 1/3 to 1/2 cup of water and combine.

Cook for 5 minutes more to allow the water to absorb in the meat mixture.

Like this.

Hey! Perfect.

Warm up a tortilla and load it up with some beans, cheese, meat, salsa. Customize that motherfucker son!

You know how to roll one up don’t you?

After you’ve stuffed your face a couple of times please pay attention to the quality of the burrito you just made.

Cool.

Ready for a new one?

Queso Fundido!

A true Sunday Gravy original recipe.

Quick breakdown; queso fundido is a warm melty, appetizer dish that’s made with any number of cheeses, some chilies and onions and in today’s case can also feature chorizo.

The inspiration for this item came about because of these fuckers.

That’s a bag of hatch green chilies. Yes, they come blemishes and all. They are right at harvest season now and you can find these all over the Southwest. Since this is a first effort at this recipe I erred on the side of caution and only fire roasted 1. This dish could have used 3-4. Lesson learned.

Fire one up.

Cover with wrap, cool and peel.

Give it a good chopping.

Now, since the first word of the recipe is “queso” that will mean we need to get a couple of good melting cheeses. Let’s see what the store had available.

Beauty. That’s got everything we need. Quality melt AND a kick of habanero. Also, this is about a 6 oz wedge.

Let’s see what else we can fuck around with.

Drop that knowledge Wiki!

“Appenzeller cheese is a hard cow’s-milk washed-rind cheese produced in the Appenzellerland region of northeast Switzerland. Cheese from Appenzellerland has a documented history of at least 700 years, being first mentioned in a document from 1282. The cheese is straw-colored, with tiny holes and a golden rind. It has a strong smell and a nutty or fruity flavour, which can range from mild to tangy, depending on how long it is aged.” 

The White Label you see here is the “classic” version and has been aged 3-4 months.

Shred that shit up. This is also a top notch melting cheese for our application today.

Next, get yourself some chorizo.

This is a 9 oz chub of pork chorizo. After checking the ingredient list and only seeing “pork” listed, I purchased this one. For those unfamiliar, chorizo can contain some pretty funky pig bits in it’s ingredients. Things like salivary glands and lymph nodes. Doesn’t freak me out as much as it used to but you should be aware. Since this had strictly “pork” as the meat ingredient that means it’s mostly safe from the other piggy bits.

We’re going to cook down the chorizo for a few minutes to cook off some of the fat and to get it crispy.

Notice the intense red hue? That’s due to annatto seeds in the recipe.

Cook until the fat is rendered and the chorizo is cooked through.

You will definitely want to drain the cooked chorizo on some paper towels.

Apologies for the crime scene photo.

Don’t remove all of the chorizo fat from the skillet. Reserve about a tablespoon because we’re going to finish building the queso.

Mince up some red onion. Maybe 1/4 of an onion.

Add the onion and the diced chilies to the chorizo fat and cook for 3-5 minutes.

Add back in the chorizo and the cheeses.

As the cheese melts we will also add 1/2 cup of heavy cream. Mix thoroughly and let everything combine.

Grab some chips and test it out.

Let’s see how much cheese “pull” we got.

Nice!

One final tip? Kind of leave the pan a little cock-eyed sideways on your burner.

Just sayin’.

This weeks “FUN” holidays courtesy of A Bit Of Good News: “August 30 is International Whale Shark Day, National Beach Day, Frankenstein Day, Slinky Day and Toasted Marshmallow Day.”

The pickin’s are getting slim indeed.

Let’s get together again next week for the Season 11 finale of Sunday Gravy. One more time!

I can feel it too folks.

Until then…