Stuff!

The meat purchases in my weekly grocery run are heavily dependent on what is on sale and what is on clearance. Then I try to come up with something. In an age where the internet is much more reasonable and convenient than an actual cookbook, thats where I turn for different recipes. So started my dilemma last evening after work. Pork chops. Phooey. Bing search and oo country fried pork chops. 

This is the recipe I referred to: very detailed, nice pictures, overall great recipe. However, I have learned my lesson several times over to not follow them to a T and so these days it’s literally just reference and I tweak the recipe to my liking.

So how did I tweak? 

1. We neither have nor can physically tolerate buttermilk. I’m sure it would make it taste better so instead with the egg I put a little chicken broth and mustard. 
2. No exact measuring for me. Everyone has different tastes so having cooked for a while I just winged it and hoped it was good.
3. I decided to put soy sauce on the chops themselves before battering up to give it more flavor. Worked very well.

My audience (i.e. my picky brother and my dogs) loved it. He (the human) even asked if it was store prepared batter and having learned that it was all from scratch complimented it. Whoa. Always a good sign when the brother looks for more and the dogs follow me around after a taste in hopes of more handouts.

If you like gravy it would have been indicated but I don’t care for it myself. My only regrets were not making more and that the oil either seemed to have degraded or I overloaded the pan for the final batch.

Happy cooking!

So called because they are make from Kodiak brand of pancake mix! I am addicted to the mix!!!! It’s absolutely amazing. Now let me say here, that I dislike cornbread. No amount of trying “really good” corn bread will make me like it. I don’t hate it like I hate mushrooms but I dislike it. The only thing I tolerate cornbread with are corndogs. Now take corndogs and pancake mix, change a few things up and WHAMO you have pancake battered hotdogs!!!

And that’s what I’ll be posting about here. Quite easy to make with the Kodiak pancake/waffle mix and your favorite brand of hotdogs. I happen to like the Oscar Mayer ones.

The purpose of this post is just sharing of something I made. I am in no way an expert. In fact, this is the very first time I made this!

What you need:

• Hotdogs
• Pancake mix
• Corn Meal
• Deep Fryer
• Peanut oil
• Sticks. I used coffee stirrer sticks.

Now for a series of pictures.

This is the box of the one I used. There are many different mixes to choose from under the Kodiak brand.

First off, I decided to cut the hotdogs in half, one, because the coffee stirrers were much too flimsy to hold a whole hotdog, two, the deep fryer is not nearly big enough, and three, I figure it would fry faster. The coffee stirrers were still flimsy on the half-dogs (btw these are the jumbo wieners).

Here is the setup I used outside. It just so happened that my mom wanted to use a different batter so she made her own (the smaller blue bowl on the left side). Pay that no mind. That’s a Presto multi-purpose pot. We usually fry outside to prevent smell, heat and splashing.

Pretty simple stuff. Coat the dog in mix. Notice how the consistency is thicker rather than thinner.

Now fry it. You can see now why I cut them in half. There are 4 frying there.

Looking somewhat dark, but smelling heavenly. It’s getting dark too. I had some trouble getting them not to stick to each other in the basket.

And here’s the end result. Close up so you can see the corn meal. Looking like a real corndog!

Yeahhhh, I’m a big fan of more meat, less batter. On the side, since I had more mix left, I decided to dice up some chicken breast and use the remaining bits to coat that and fry. The funny light colored bits on top are plain pancake mix with nothing in it….don’t recommend that so much. The chicken turned out really well, similar to a Chick-fil-a nugget in consistency.

In conclusion: In doing this again, while it was overall a success, I’d recommend mixing some honey or maple syrup into the pancake mix. It was a little bland since it was just pancake mix and not cornbread, but nothing a little drizzle of maple syrup on top didn’t solve! If wanting to use a full sized wiener or frank, I’d get a full sized deep fryer and popsicle sticks or takeout chopsticks. The coffee stirrers were perfect for the half-cut, though. I will definitely be trying this again in the future!