Sriracha Tater Tot Bombs

For the past few months I've been seeing Tater Tot Bombs popping up all over the internet.  Everybody that writes about them tells how their family raves about them.  Every single recipe I've seen has been the same.  Each one is tater tots, bacon, cheddar cheese, and brown sugar.  OK, given both my career and hobby I've been involved in the culinary world for 26 years I understand the whole sweet and savory combination.  However, I don't believe you need to make that combination with everything that comes along.

Everything in place ready to roll

I'll admit that the most likely reason I don't completely buy off on the sweet and savory thing is that we don't eat many sweet things.  Then again, I tend to do things my way in the kitchen and sometimes disregard the accepted culinary dogma.  Besides, as I've said before, a recipe is a suggestion or just a shopping list.

Rolled up and ready to cook/smoke

Most days around 1700, the good wife and I will get something cold to drink and sit on the patio and talk or just watch the dogs do what they do.  This is usually the time I'll finalize plans for supper as far as sides go.  Since the good wife was on the phone with her sister and we were going to have leftover pizza for supper, I decided to do a small batch as hors d'oeuvres.  It was to be a time for experimentation.

Sriracha Tater Tot Bombs hot from the oven

I had some Smithfield Hometown Original bacon on hand that I decided to use.  I also had a small piece of Colby Jack cheese that needed to be used up so I used that instead of opening the cheddar.  Naturally the Sriracha sauce was in the cabinet so it had to be used.  The result was spicy bacony potato goodness.


Sriracha Tater Tot Bombs


tater tots, room temperature
bacon
cheddar or Colby Jack cheese
Sriracha sauce


Cut the cheese in 1/4 inch thick slices the length and width of the tater tots.  Cut bacon slices in half or thirds.  Run a line of Sriracha sauce down the center of each piece of bacon leaving a half inch bare at each end.  Place a piece of cheese and a tater tot in the center of the bacon slice.  Fold one end over the cheese and tot then roll to the end.  Place on a baking sheet seam side down.  Repeat until you have made all you want.  Bake in a 400F oven for 15 minutes.  Turn the tots over and return to the oven for another 10 minutes.  Serve hot.


I started with cutting the bacon slice in thirds but I had to stretch it too much to get any overlap.  A half slice works much better.  Since Colby Jack is a softer cheese than cheddar a bit more oozed out during the cooking than I thought would.  There was still plenty that cooked into the crevasses of the tater tots.  I only made 8 of these for each of us.  If you are going to be making a large batch for several people you should enlist help and make it group effort.
In between the time I started writing this and now, I made these again but with a twist.  The twist is that I smoked them instead of baking them in the oven.  I also used cheddar cheese on these.  I just used a couple of chunks of smoking wood that were laying around.  I'm not certain what they were but I believe they were cherry wood.  Use the smoking wood you prefer.  These weren't as crispy as the oven baked ones but if we hadn't been quite so hungry I'd have moved them to direct heat and crisped them up a bit.  If you're a fan of smoked foods then this is the way to go.  It only took 30 - 45 minutes  to get these smoked.

Smoked Sriracha Tater Tot Bombs ready to eat

If you want something a bit different with a kick then these are just the ticket.  If you want, try the Sriracha sauce with the version where they are rolled in brown sugar.  Heck, even I may give that a try someday.


Give these a try and let me know what you think.


Uncle T

Kimchi Pizza

Yes, you read that right, kimchi pizza.  A couple of years ago, someone told me about seeing a kimchi pizza on an episode of Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives.  Thankfully, Food Network puts those shows online so I was able to find it.  Here is the video if you want to watch it, Pizzeria Lola.  The place it comes from is up in Minneapolis which is a bit too far away.  So, if I wanted to have kimchi pizza I'd have to make it myself.


One of the problems that came up was the use of Korean sausage.  I spent a year in Korea courtesy of the US Army and never saw any sausage.  Searching online didn't offer any help other than finding a  recipe for a Korean blood sausage.  I may have to try it because it is very different from European style blood sausage that I usually make.  I decided it was Korean sausage simply because a Korean made it.  So, I watched a couple of times and wrote down the ingredients and started experimenting.  In the end, I came up with what I call Korean sausage that works for the kimchi pizza or as a patty to make a kimchi burger.


Korean Sausage

3 lb ground pork

4 – 5 Tbs Korean hot pepper flakes

3 Tbs(rounded) ground fresh ginger

2 – 3 Tbs ground fresh garlic, minced

2 Tbs kosher salt

1 Tbs black pepper

1 Tbs sugar

Mix well and allow to sit for at least an hour to let the flavors fully meld.

Kimchi Pizza


Pizza dough
8 oz Korean sausage
8 oz diced tomatoes
kimchi, drained and chopped
2 - 3 green onions, cut lengthways
1 - 2 Serrano peppers
sesame oil
toasted sesame seeds
Sriracha sauce


Prepare dough according to your recipe.  Put the diced tomatoes on the pizza.  Pinch off small pieces of the sausage and scatter over the pizza.

Put on a layer of kimchi.

Put on the Serrano pepper and onions.  Drizzle with sesame oil.  It's a little hard to spot the peppers because I rehydrated some of my dried Serrano peppers and the ones I used were red.  The heat still comes through.

Bake according to pizza dough instructions.  Sprinkle with sesame seeds and drizzle with Sriracha sauce.

For a regular crust pizza I use this recipe, 10 minute pizza dough.  I have a baking stone in the oven that heats up  as the oven heats up.  As you can see in the pictures, I use parchment paper on my pizza peel to help the pizza slide off neatly.  I've used flour and cornmeal but they tend to leave a mess in the oven and if you go a little overboard with toppings the pizza can still stick to the peel.  Parchment paper alleviates the problems of a mess to clean up and a sticking pizza.


Naturally, I use kimchi I make.  If you want to make your own the instructions can be found here, Kimchi.  If you don't want to make your own then use any good kimchi.


This is a wonderfully tasty and hot pizza.  If you are a fan of heat then you'll like this pizza.  If you make it let me know what you think.


Uncle T

Shoulder Bacon

I've had people ask me personally and I've seen the question asked online; why make your own bacon?  That is usually followed by the comment that it is available in seemingly infinite varieties at the grocery store.  It comes down to two reasons, I like making my own stuff and taste.


I started learning how to process an animal some time after I killed my first deer.  I took it to a local meat processor and paid to have it done.  The cost back then was far less than it is now even taking inflation into account.  However, I wasn't pleased with the packaging, how it was cut, and overall workmanship.  The workmanship part was the fact that they hadn't scraped the bone dust off the various cuts.


Fast forward a few  years and I'm an Army Food Inspector trained in conducting red meat inspections to ensure contractual compliance with USDA guidelines.  Part of that training was attending a red meats course that was conducted at the Veterinary Services schoolhouse at Fort Sam Houston.  The main instructor for that class was the head of the Standardization Branch of the USDA.  The course taught us the proper names of the important muscles, the landmarks for dividing the carcass, and how to go from a hanging carcass to retail cuts of meat.


A natural outgrowth was making sausage out of what I killed.  After all, I do use as much as possible of each animal.  Mostly I made bulk sausage for breakfast.  Making other types will be the subject of a separate post.

Shoulder bacon fresh from the smoker

After I retired from the Army and had settled down I got interested in charcuterie.  One of the best references I have found for that is Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn.  It has clear explanations of the techniques and reasons behind each type of charcuterie and excellent recipes of many types.  I use the basic bacon cure as found in their book.

I found out a few weeks back that my source for pork bellies was no longer carrying individual bellies and I don't have room for a case of bellies.  Since I was about out of bacon I had to resort to what I had done in the past, use pork shoulder butts.  I bought boneless butts since they were on sale and cheaper than the bone-in butts.  The downside was the plant workers are a little less careful than I'd be removing the blade bone.  I was only able to get one good slab from each butt though I was left with 17 lbs of pork to use to make sausage.

Shoulder with cure and Sriracha sauce applied, ready for the refrigerator

Shoulder with cure applied, ready for the refrigerator

Now comes an experimental part of this production.  After I'd weighed out the cure and rubbed into the smallest slab and had it in the vacuum bag ready to seal I had an idea.  I put about a 1/2 cup of sriracha sauce on each side to help flavor the meat while it cured.  I let it cure for a week and it was ready to smoke.  The bacon was rinsed after pulling out of the cure as usual and dried.  I even rinsed the sriracha bacon because I didn't want the surface to be too salty or the sauce to burn while smoking.  The bacon was smoked using cherry wood to an internal temperature of 150F.  After I brought it in, I rubbed a thin coat of sriracha sauce on each side.  Once that dried I rubbed on a second coat.  Once the second coat dried it was wrapped and put in the refrigerator to chill for a few days.

Sriracha bacon on the slicer

A couple of mangled slices were fried up after all the bacon was sliced.  I will say the sriracha bacon is a keeper.  You don't get much heat but the sriracha flavor comes through with just a hint of heat that builds as you eat more.  After eating her sample, the good wife wanted to know why I hadn't done this before.

Sliced shoulder bacon

As a disclaimer, I'll add that adding sriracha to bacon is not original with me.  I first saw it in commercial bacon when we were visiting our son when he lived in Kansas City.  That bacon looked like they'd just squirted some sriracha sauce on top of the sliced bacon before they sealed the package.

I vacuum seal my bacon to hold the cure close to the meat.  This is not necessary to make bacon at home.  All you need is a Ziploc bag and a pan to put it in.  The difference is that with the Ziploc bag you'll need to flip the bacon daily to ensure good contact with the cure and resulting brine.  If you don't have a smoker you can either add a bit of liquid smoke to it as it cures or forego the smoke and just cook it low and slow in the oven until it reaches 150F.  If you have a grill, you can set it up for indirect cooking and use it as a smoker.  I've done that many times.  There are some good videos on Youtube showing you how to make your grill a smoker.

Give making your own bacon a try.  You'll be amazed at the difference in flavor.  Plus, you can experiment with different flavor combinations to suit your tastes.  If you make it, let me know how it came out.

Uncle T