Slow Cooker BBQ Chicken with Cheesy Grits

     Cheesy grits seem to be all the rage lately. You can't open a cooking magazine and not find something served over grits. For me, grits were always something you'd order at Huddle House- a bowl of mush swimming in melted butter. This time, it's swimming in cheese. Cheese makes everything better. At the very least, cheese makes The Wife happy, which makes my life very easy. Though the recipe isn't made entirely in the slow-cooker, it is about the lamest, laziest recipe I've ever devised, which is hilarious because it's really damned good. Give it a try and tell me I'm wrong. You'd be lying, because I'm not wrong. It's really damned good. As always, notes are in blue.

Slow-cooker BBQ Chicken
and Cheesy Grits

Ingredients
BBQ Chicken

• 1 pound chicken, skin removed (we used drumsticks. There's nothing stopping you from using boneless, skinless chicken. In the long run, that would probably save you a little time and work)
• 1 bottle of BBQ sauce of your choice. 

Cheesy Grits

• 1 cup grits
• 3 cups water
• 1 teaspoon adobo seasoning
• 1 cup shredded cheese of your choice (we used a bagged mix of cheddar, American and Swiss)

Directions

Chicken

1. Pour BBQ sauce into a slow cooker. 
2. Fill BBQ sauce bottle half-way and shake. Pour into slow-cooker.
3. Add chicken and cook on LOW 6-7 hours or until chicken is done.
4. Remove the meat from the bone and discard the bones. Return the meat to the sauce. If using boneless, shred the meat and return to the sauce.

Cheesy Grits (Done on the stove)

1. In a saucepan, bring 3 cups of water to a rolling boil. Add the adobo seasoning.
2. Stir in grits and cheese. Lower heat to medium-low. Cover and cook for 5 minutes. About halfway through the cooking, stir to make sure nothing is sticking to the bottom of the pan (you may find this step is easier if you remove the lid first. Put the lid back on when you're done stirring)
3. After 5 minutes, take off lid and remove from heat. Grits should be creamy.

Assembly

1. Take a big scoop of grits and put them on a plate.
2. Take a big scoop of chicken and sauce and place it on the grits.
3. Unceremoniously shovel the concoction in your face and enjoy. Maybe have a beer or two with this. I'd recommend a nice wheat beer. Or Guinness. You can never go wrong with Guinness. 
4. Damn it, now I want a Guinness and I don't have any in the house.
5. I'll be damned if I'm making a special trip to the store to buy Guinness.
6. It's better on draft anyway.
7. Ah screw it, I'll just have a bourbon and cola.

Good times!

Spiked Apples

     We rustic types love to preserve our own food. Fortunately for us, our in-laws both have access to apple trees. Each year, they bring us somewhere around eighty pounds of apples over the course of the season. One of our favorite ways to process them is to can them in syrup and booze. The original formula came out of the Better Homes and Gardens Home Canning Cookbook. We found it was great fun to use bourbon or other liquor in place of some of the liquid in these recipes. If you don't want to use booze, just swap water back in. Depending on the booze, the flavor will change dramatically. With regular bourbon, the apples are sweet and mellow. When I use an herbal liquor like Elisir M.P. Roux, the herbals really come through in the apples. No matter how you make them, they're great. We use them in cakes, on pancakes, over vanilla ice cream or just straight out of the jar! Since this recipe does involve boiling water canning, as always, please refer to the National Center for Home Food Preservation for tips on how to prevent giving everyone the green apple splatters. As always, any notes or changes are in blue.

Spiked Apples

Ingredients

• 3 pounds of apples for each quart you intend to make
• 3 cups sugar
• 3 cups water
• 1 cup booze (pick your favorite. I use Jim Beam for my bourbon apples and Elisir M.P. Roux for my herbal elixir apples. I imagine cinnamon or honey whiskey would be outstanding, too).
• 6-8 whole cloves per quart

Directions

1. Prepare a boiling water canner. Load your empty jars in while the water is boiling so they will be hot and clean when you go to use them.
2. Wash, peel and core the apples. (Cut the apples however you want. I use small apples which I cut into wedges) Load them in a bowl with some color keeper so they don't brown.
3. In a large pot, add liquid and sugar. Stir over medium heat until sugar dissolves. Bring syrup to boil.
4. Add apples to syrup and boil for 5 minutes.
5. Lower heat on the apples to a simmer and load the hot apples into the jars (yes, take the jars out of the canner and empty the water first, you goof. If I find out anybody was trying to fill the jars while they were still in the canner, I'm going to be very upset). Add the cloves to the jar. Cover with hot syrup, leaving about 1/2 inch of headspace. Secure with a clean lid and ring. Load into the canner. 
6. Process for 20 minutes (20 minutes is fine for either pints or quarts). 
7. Remove jars to a wire rack with about 1" between them. Wait a while until you hear the satisfying thunk of the jar sealing. If you don't hear it after a few hours, you can either run it through another water bath and try again or just put them in the fridge for immediate devouring.

Good times!

Bourbon Fruit Cake

     Can any holiday dessert be more recognizable than the ubiquitous fruitcake? No, of course not. That was a rhetorical question. Ubiquitous means you'll find it everywhere. That was a quiz. Did you pass? I hope so, because this is going to be on the final exam. This particular recipe was adapted from a recipe for Kentucky Bourbon Cake I found on About.com's Southern Food section around five years ago. In all fairness, this is not a true fruitcake as we know it. It is not the consistency of blacktop. It is not cloyingly sweet with terrifying unidentifiable bits of detritus suspended within. The original recipe did call for candied cherries and nuts, but I quickly put an end to that nonsense. I want cake. I don't want to be losing fillings and digging things out of my molars all night. This recipe does have a lot going for it. This cake is actually fluffy. It cooks well in any number of different shapes. It's good with icing. It will, however, make your Kitchenaid howl like a damned soul while mixing it. This recipe will fill a 5 quart mixing bowl frighteningly close to the top. It's worth it. When I tell somebody I'm serving fruitcake, they flinch. Then they eat it. Complaints cease. As always, any notes and changes are in blue.

Bourbon Fruit Cake
via About.com 

Ingredients

• 8 ounces red candied cherries, halved (I omitted all the candied cherries and used a jar of drained maraschino cherries)
• 8 ounces green candied cherries, halved (omitted)
• 8 ounces seedless raisins or chopped dates (I'm married so I shouldn't have dates. I used golden raisins)
• 2 cups bourbon (I went with Jim Beam)
• 1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter, room temperature
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
• 6 large eggs, separated
• 5 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups chopped pecans (omitted)
• 2 teaspoons ground nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon baking powder

Directions

1. In a medium bowl, combine the cherries, raisins, and bourbon; cover and let soak overnight. 
2. Preheat the oven to 275°F.
3. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugars with an electric mixer until light and fluffy; add the egg yolks and beat well. Stir in the soaked fruit with bourbon. In a small bowl, combine 1/2 cup of the flour with the pecans; set aside. Add the remaining flour, nutmeg, and baking powder to the creamed mixture and blend well. In a bowl, beat the egg whites with an electric mixer until stiff peaks form; gently fold into the cake batter. Sprinkle the floured pecans over batter and fold in gently.
4. Grease and flour a 10-inch tube pan and line the bottom with greased waxed paper. (I have made this recipe several times and have never used a tube pan or waxed paper. I've used loaf pans, cake pans, bundt pans). Pour the batter into the pan; bake at 275° for 3 to 3 1/2 hours, or until a wooden pick or cake tester inserted in center comes out clean (this does, in fact, take every bit of 3-1/2 hours if you're using a large pan). 
5. Cool the cake. Turn cake out of the pan, peel off waxed paper (which I did not use), and store in a tightly covered container for several days (this recipe makes me think that you're not supposed to eat the cake. Just store it for several days and then shitcan it. Look, if this lasts more than seven days in your house, you must have cooked it wrong. It's awesome).

Good times!

Bourbon Pear Cake

     The bundt cake strikes me as a quintessential middle-class food. I have lost count of the times I've seen bundt cakes at gatherings. My family was notorious for using the bundt cake pan for all sorts of terrifying Jell-O molds involving layers and suspended fruits.  It was almost unavoidable that I would eventually buy and use a bundt cake pan.  One of the first things I made was a Bourbon Pear Cake. I think I got the recipe from Relish.com, but can't find it there anymore. If anybody locates the original source, please let me know so I can give proper credit. I liked this recipe because it incorporated booze. However, I can't get myself to cook with high-end liquor, that stuff is for drinking! Unfortunately, I didn't have any bottom-shelf booze on hand so I had to use the workhorse in my bar, Jim Beam. This is just a good looking cake and is moist and flavorful. I always feel like such a pompous ass when I say stuff like that. Hmm.. CAKE SQUISHY AND TASTE GOOD. There. Much better. As always, any notes or changes are in blue.

Bourbon Pear Cake

Ingredients

• 3 eggs 
• 2 cups sugar 
• 1 1/2 cups vegetable oil 
• 3 cups all-purpose flour 
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon 
• 2 tablespoons bourbon (I'm pretty sure some form of honey bourbon would be really good here)
• 1 teaspoon salt 
• 1 teaspoon baking soda 
• 1 1/2 cups pears - peeled, cored and chopped (there's nothing stopping you from using apples instead)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 
• 1 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar 
• 2 tablespoons milk 

Directions

1. In a mixing bowl, beat eggs on medium speed. Gradually add sugar and oil; beat thoroughly. 
2. Combine flour, cinnamon, salt and baking soda; add to egg mixture and mix well. 
3. Stir in pears, bourbon and vanilla. (The batter will be stiff. Notice how I took the moral high ground and didn't make a joke here.) 
4. Spoon into a greased and floured 9-in. Bundt-cake pan. 
5. Bake at 350F for 60-65 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean (obviously, you'll want to stick the toothpick into the actual cake and not the hole in the center). Let cool in pan 10 minutes before inverting onto a serving plate. 
6. In a small bowl, combine the confectioners' sugar and milk; beat until smooth. Drizzle over warm cake. Cool completely.

"Miss Moneypenny, fetch me another slice of that fantastic cake. I'm too shitfaced to get it myself."
Good times! 

Too Damned Easy Bourbon Apple Butter

     My in-laws both have access to a fairly large collection of apple trees. This means that each fall we find ourselves in the possession of 40-60 pounds of apples. One of our go-to methods of working those apples is to render them into apple butter. Years ago I found a recipe online for how to do it and have tweaked it out for my own use. For the life of me I can't recall where I got this. If anybody knows, let me know and I'll give credit for the inspiration where credit is due. This variation uses brown sugar and bourbon and gives a sweet and mellow taste. About 35 medium apples will yield a little over 4 pints of apple butter. These can be processed in a boiling water bath for long term storage. If you are doing pint jars, give them 15 minutes in the bath. (Once again, please defer to the National Center for Home Food Preservation for clear instructions) As always, any notes are in blue.

Too Damned Easy
Bourbon Apple Butter

 Ingredients
per 10 apples

• 10 medium apples peeled, cored and thickly sliced*
• 5 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup water 
• 1/4 cup bourbon 

Directions

1. Load the apples in a large pot over medium heat. Add cinnamon, water, bourbon, and sugar. Cook until the apples get soft.
2. Use an immersion blender to blitz the apples until they are the desired consistency (if you don't have a hand blender, you're going to have to mash the apples up by hand. Good luck)
3. Load the sauce into a large slow-cooker (if you're like me and used 30+ apples, you're going to need at least a 5 quart slow-cooker). Prop the lid slightly off the cooker to allow steam to escape.  Cook on low overnight. 

   

   In the morning, you'll wake up to something like this.
   The same thing applies if you ate Taco Bell.

*NOTE: If you have a food mill, you can do this a lot quicker. When I used a mill I simply quartered the apples and boiled them for about 10 minutes. I then loaded them in the mill and basically made applesauce. If you do it this way the directions will change. Just load the milled apples into the slow cooker and mix in the remaining ingredients. You will need to cut the amount of water you use by half if you do it this way. Don't cut the bourbon. NEVER CUT THE BOURBON.

If there is an easier way to do something, I will certainly use that method.
Good times!

Too Damned Easy Stuffing Balls

     Sometimes you come across a recipe of such deceptive simplicity it boggles the mind. Years ago, while visiting friends in Kentucky, we went to a little restaurant called Cloud's Country Cooking in Salvisa. I was intrigued by their special of the day: Dressing Balls with Corn Pudding. I ordered it and was not disappointed. However, every time I came back there, it wasn't on the menu. I was left with no choice but to make them myself. Same for the corn pudding. It turns out the Dressing Balls were easier to replicate than I expected! I used chicken (they used turkey) and I changed up the name to "Stuffing Balls" since stuffing/dressing is a regional distinction. These are a whole lot of fun to serve. There's a lot you could do with these. If you were truly daring, you could even take my Chicken Cordon Bleu Stuffing Casserole and make them into stuffing balls! As always, any notes are in blue.

Too Damned Easy
Stuffing Balls

Ingredients

• 2 boxes pre-packaged stuffing (we generally choose some form of herb mix stuffing)
• 1-1/2 pounds pre-cooked chicken, chopped
• Gravy of your choice (I found a decent gravy recipe on Allrecipes to use)

Directions

1. Prepare stuffing according to directions (we make ours in the microwave as this tends to leave the stuffing damp and mushy, which is what were looking for in this recipe)
2. Throw the chopped chicken into the stuffing. Grab a handful of the chicken and stuffing mix (I hope you waited for the stuffing to cool. This step is hard to do with first and second degree burns on your hands) and form the mixture into a ball roughly the size of a tennis ball. (If you want to be truly fancy, make a pocket in a wad of stuffing and put some chicken in there. Then form a ball around the chicken center. Now you have a sort of Reverse Stuffed Cornish Hen thing going on)
3. Put onto a lightly greased baking sheet and cook at 350F for about 20 minutes. You are looking to create a nice, crunchy outside.

   

   Ready for the oven! Notice the consistent sizing of the stuffing balls.
   That's what happens when you cook after three Jim Beam and Ginger Ales.

4. Move stuffing balls to a plate and top with gravy.

Stuffing Balls with a heaping side of Jalapeno Corn Pudding!
Good Times!

Middle Class Bartending: The Cowboy Cocktail

     Cocktails are an integral part of the dining experience. Aperitif, digestif, middle-of-the-meal-if, whatever. The bottom line is that my MCK incorporates a fairly well-stocked liquor cabinet. As I enjoy entertaining, I like to make sure there's a little something for everyone.

Even this guy.

     One of my favorite cocktails is the Cowboy Cocktail. There are several cocktails that bear this moniker, but I'm going to share my favorite iteration. Ready? It's simple as can be.

The MCK Cowboy Cocktail

• 1 part bourbon
• 1/2 part cream
• Pour over ice in rocks glass
• Stir to mix

     That's it. Want a bigger drink? Multiply the recipe and switch to a highball glass. Which bourbon? Doesn't matter. Light or heavy cream? Don't care. I've put flavored coffee creamer in before, which is actually quite good. The last one I made was Jim Beam and French Vanilla creamer. Mix and match. Have fun. As much as it seems like it would be a totally vile drink, it's quite tasty and makes an excellent after dinner drink. It pairs well with cigars, too. Give it a try this weekend and let me know what you think.

Good times!