Baked Buffalo Wings & Crispy Baked Frites

Friday nites after working all week are usually take out nite, but tonight I decided to do some baked buffalo wings and crispy baked frites (french fries).  Very simple, fairly healthy and tasty.  Start by preheating your oven to 425.  Take 2 sheet trays and lay a sheet of parchment paper over each for easy clean up.  What you'll need to make this Friday nite feast: 10 chicken wings, rinsed and drained and trimmed up.  The wing has three sections, the tip, mid section and drummette.  Lose the tip just by using a sharp chef knife to cut it off and then discard it.  Then you'll need to cut thru the joint of the drummette and mid wing section. Season them with salt and pepper and toss them with 1 tbs of olive oil, and place them on one of the sheet trays and set aside.  For the frites, you'll need 3 medium size russet potatoes peeled, sliced into 1/4" length pieces.  Soak the potatoes in cold water for about 30 minutes and rinse them.  After rinsing them, you'll need to pat them dry with some paper towels.  These steps help to remove some of the starch, which really helps crisping the frites while they bake.  You can season them with whatever you like.  I mixed 1 tsp hot hungarian paprika, 1/2 tsp granulated garlic and 1 tsp sea salt and 1/2 tsp pepper into a bowl with 1 tbs of olive oil.  I then tossed the potatoes in the mixture.  I placed the potatoes evenly on the sheet tray not touching each other.  Place both the sheet trays (frites and wings in your preheated oven and let them bake for about about 40 minutes.  Remove the trays from the oven.  For the buffalo sauce, you can make your own, but I really like Franks Buffalo Wing Sauce.  It's really hot and as good as any sauce that I've made from scratch.  Toss the wings in the sauce and set aside a little extra for dipping.  That's it!  Fresh, tasty, healthy and simple for a Friday nite or any nite of the week.  Enjoy!!

Bacon Burgers and Fries

We do burgers fairly regularly, today inspired by Chef Symon. There are some out there that I would love to make, but my honey is a little picky, so I try not push the burger creativity over the top.  Tonight we had bacon burgers and fries.  The first thing I did when I got home was to take 2 large russet potatoes that had been scrubbed and cut them in half lengthwise and cut the halves in to 5 wedges each.  I placed them in a bowl of water and let them sit for about an hour, because I didn't want them browning on me while  me and my honey took little ride thru the country on the bike, since we haven't really been able to get it out with all of this rain, BTW which will back tomorrow evening. When I got home I preheated my Breville oven to 450, drained the water, dried the potatoes and coated them with EVOO and S&P and placed them on baking sheet and popped them into the oven for 35 minutes.  While those were baking I took 1 part 80/20 organic ground beef, 1 part organic ground pork and 1/4 part organic chorizo, mixed them all together, formed into burgers and sprinkled both sides with S&P and put aside.  I took the bacon outside to cook  on the side burner of the grill.  Don't get me wrong I love the smell of bacon, but it permeates the house, and sometimes its just a little much.  Anyway, when there was 15 minutes remaining on the tators I heated my grill- 1 side on med  and 1 side on high.  Once heated I placed the burgers on the med heat side of the grill and let them cook thru, flipping only one time.  I placed the bacon slices and slices of red onion and monterey jack cheese over top, closed the grill and let the cheese melt.  While the burgers were grilling I also took my burger buns and lightly seared them on the grill.  That was it.  No mess, little clean up, easy and yummy.  We served our burgers with a little mayo, and some pickles next to those perfect fries.  Mmm! Mmm!