DudeFoods.com Food Blog and Reviews

The Poor Man’s Eggs Benedict

Written on April 2, 2012 by Nick in Food I Made

Last weekend I wanted to make myself Eggs Benedict, but after checking my kitchen I realized that I was short two key ingredients — English muffins and Canadian bacon. Since I didn’t feel like going to the grocery store though I did the next best thing — I improvised!

What I did have you see, was a loaf of plain white bread and an 88 cent package of cheap bologna that I bought a week prior. Granted, these two things weren’t exactly a perfect substitute for what I was missing, but honestly, I’m not a huge fan of Canadian bacon anyway — sometimes it’s great, but sometimes it’s just WAY too chewy.

For the Hollandaise sauce I used… Hollandaise sauce because seriously, what are you going to substitute for this amazing mixture of butter and egg? It’s already pretty much the best sauce in the entire world. In my opinion we really need to start topping more foods with Hollandaise sauce. I mean, what do we really have now aside from Eggs Benedict and Chicken Oscar? Plus, I absolutely hate asparagus so I never eat Chicken Oscar anyway.

Remember how popular deep fried butter was at state fairs across the country all last summer? I think I need to try deep frying some Hollandaise sauce instead, or maybe even include some diced Canadian bacon and egg as well and just make some sort of deep fried Eggs Benedict.

Oh yeah, and I know you’re probably wondering what that orange stuff near the edges of the plate is right? I had a can of that spray on cheese in my cabinet so I decided to fancy up, and I mean this in the loosest sense of the word, my food a little bit. After all, it’s all about the presentation right?

So how did my Poor Man’s Eggs Benedict taste? Not too bad actually. How well you can poach an egg and how good your Hollandaise sauce tastes is what really makes or breaks Eggs Benedict for me. I’m pretty sure that you can drizzle Hollandaise sauce over almost anything and make it taste good. Except for asparagus of course. Asparagus is and will always be terrible.

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The French Toast Burger

Written on March 29, 2012 by Nick in Food I Paid For

Breakfast is by far my favorite meal of the day. There isn’t much I enjoy more than heading out to eat with friends and grabbing a few drinks and some good food, so when there’s a new restaurant in town offering brunch I’m always eager to check it out.

Although Hamburger Mary’s has been around since 1972 with eleven locations across the country they just recently set up shop in my hometown of Milwaukee. A couple weeks ago I finally made the trek in with my wife and our friend Curt to give them a try.

We started off with the Loaded Ta-Ta’s, which are tater tots covered with cheese, sour cream, tomato and scallions. We all agreed that although they were good they sort of just tasted like something we could have easily made ourselves by tossing some cheese on a pile of tater tots, microwaving them, and then topping them with a spoonful of sour cream and some diced tomatoes.

When it came time to order our meals I decided to try the French Toast Burger, which the menu describes as a half-pound Angus burger topped with bacon, peanut butter and homemade strawberry jam served between two slices of French toast. The burger tasted great, the bacon was cooked to perfection and the peanut butter and jelly mixed amazingly well with the greasy hamburger patty, but I did have one problem with it — the “French toast” wasn’t very French toast like at all.

The term “French toast” implies that the pieces of bread are dipped in egg before frying. Although the sides of my bread looked like they were battered, the top and bottom halves of the bread that faced outward from my burger clearly weren’t and were simply grilled instead. Maybe they only battered one side of each piece of bread and those two sides just happened to be facing inward, but I definitely wouldn’t call what I got “French toast.” Again, the burger itself was good, but if I had simply ordered the French toast as my meal I would have been extremely disappointed with it.

The one other good thing I’ll say about the French Toast Burger from Hamburger Mary’s is that it wasn’t anywhere near as disappointing as the egg sandwich that Curt ordered or the egg, spinach and feta cheese scrambler that my wife chose. The scrambler was completely tasteless and the amount of feta mixed in with the eggs was sparse at best. Then again, their menu did only describe the amount of feta in the scrambler as “a bit,” so maybe the fact that there was barely any of it at all is the norm.

Curt’s egg sandwich suffered from a similar lack of taste. It was also supposed to be served on a brioche bun according to the menu, but instead came served between two slices of white bread. I’m sure that must people wouldn’t even care if their egg sandwich was served on a fancy French roll, but if a menu describes a sandwich as being served on a brioche bun and then the waitress drops it off and all you see is two boring pieces of plain white bread instead it’s just sort of a letdown.

The best way to sum up Hamburger Mary’s is that they have a really creative and unique menu where everything SOUNDS delicious, but they just don’t execute it very well. I don’t know if it’s just the cooks at their Milwaukee location or the recipes themselves, but if they could just add a little flavor to their dishes (or at least use the correct types of bread) their food would be WAY better. One of the main reasons I like to go out to eat is to enjoy food that tastes better than what I can make for myself at home. I’m not a good cook by any means, but when I taste three different dishes at a restaurant and don’t prefer any of them to something I could just whip up myself that isn’t a very good sign.

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The California Burrito

Written on March 26, 2012 by Nick in Food I Paid For

A couple months ago a new Mexican restaurant opened right near where I work. I was alerted to its presence by a handmade neon poster board sign as I drove by one day on my lunch break. Check out the picture of the sign below. Clearly when you see a sign that awesome the first thing you want to do is stop in and give that restaurant a try right? And stop in is just what I did!

The name of the restaurant is simply “Mexican Restaurant.” I’m not sure if the owners just haven’t thought of a proper name yet or if they just got some sort of awesome deal on the green and white “Mexican Restaurant” sign that’s attached to the building, but at least there’s no confusing what type of food they serve! Imagine if all restaurant names were this simple. An Italian restaurant simply named “Pizza and Pasta,” or an American place called “Burgers and Fries” perhaps…

In addition to not having a name for their restaurant they don’t have any menus either. Their “menu” consists of a wall with the items and descriptions written on pieces of colored construction paper as well as a large selection of stock photos of Mexican dishes. It’s only after you stare at the wall until you decide what you want to order that you’re seated at one of their eleven tables.

Originally I was planning to try their chicken enchiladas, but that was until the California Burrito caught my eye. They described it as steak, cheese, sour cream, guacamole and fries all stuffed inside a flour tortilla. How could I pass that up? The waitress asked me if I understood that the fries were actually INSIDE the burrito, which I thought was kind of funny, but she went on to explain that the description had been confusing a lot of people and that most of them expected the fries to be served on the side. I told her that the fact that it was stuffed with fries in addition to everything else was one of the main reasons I ordered it. If only she could see what I usually eat on a daily basis…

I’ll have to admit that I didn’t have very high hopes for this place at all, but they surpassed all my expectations. My burrito was absolutely packed with steak and just the right amount of everything else. The worst part about some burritos is taking a bite and getting a mouthful of tortilla because your burrito is barely filled with anything at all or tasting only sour cream because they just globbed it all into one area instead of spreading it out. My California Burrito on the other hand was assembled perfectly and each bite contained the perfect mix of all five ingredients. Stuffing fries inside a burrito seemed a little weird to me at first as well, but when you think about it it’s basically just the same as adding potatoes.

I guess the moral of this blog post is that just because a restaurant doesn’t have a name, a fancy sign or any menus doesn’t mean that they don’t have some pretty awesome food. Oh yeah, and if you’re looking to try out Mexican Restaurant for yourself you can find them in the strip mall on 88th and Brown Deer Road in Milwaukee right next to the store that sells wigs.

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Win a $50 American Express Gift Card from Pringles!

Written on March 22, 2012 by Nick in Everything Else

Earlier this week Pringles launched their Tournament of Flavors, which is a bracket-style contest consisting of fan-submitted, Pringles-themed videos. What’s even better is that to help kick things off they’re giving one lucky DudeFoods reader a $50 American Express gift card!

They gave me a $50 gift card as well, but I can assure you that being paid off had no impact on me whatsoever when I decided to write this blog post. Alright, it might have had a small impact… I mean, who in their right mind would turn down a $50 gift card for about 15 minutes of work? Little do they know though that all they really had to do to get me to mention them was to send me a few free cans of Pringles!

So how can you win the $50 AmEx gift card? Just head on over to https://www.facebook.com/Pringles, vote for your favorite video and then leave a comment on this blog post letting me know which video you voted for. There are actually some really creative entries, my favorite of which is embedded below.

Pringles is also giving away 2,800 free packages of Pringles and 28 $500 gift cards over the course of the promotion to people who vote via their Facebook page, so even if you don’t win the $50 gift card from me you at least have another chance of winning something.

I’ll pick a random winner two weeks from today, but in the meantime get to voting! Oh yeah, and be sure to use the #TournamnetofFlavors hashtag if you tweet about the tournament. Good luck!

Update: 4/5/2012 — Congratulations to Tommy who won the $50 gift card! It’s on its way!

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Peanut Butter Bacon Bars

Written on March 19, 2012 by Nick in Food I Made

Back in November I got a box of nuts in the mail from Planters which I then used to make some pretty delicious bacon & almond pumpkin spice pancakes. Last week I received another package from them containing peanuts, pistachios, almonds and a few jars of Planters peanut butter.

Up until I opened that box I actually had no idea that Planters even produced a peanut butter, and as it turns out they apparently didn’t until last summer. Since all this peanut butter would take me forever to eat if all I used it for was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I decided that this was the perfect opportunity for me to try and come up with a recipe where I could use a decent amount of it.

After brainstorming for a few minutes I remembered that as a kid I used to love peanut butter bars. In addition to that, they’re ridiculously easy to make. I did decide to make one small addition however and add some bacon to the recipe. Wanna make your own? Here’s how:

Ingredients:
3/4 cup butter
1 1/2 cups creamy peanut butter
2 cups crushed graham crackers
2 cups sugar
2 cups chocolate chips
1/4 pound bacon

Start off by combining the butter, peanut butter, graham crackers and sugar in a bowl. After everything is mixed up nice and well spread the mixture evenly into a pan. I used a 9″ x 9″ pan for mine and it was the perfect size. At this point you’ll wanna let the pan chill in your refrigerator for around 30 minutes before adding the layer of chocolate.

While the bottom layer is in the fridge you can start frying your bacon. The amount you use is totally up to you. I absolutely love bacon so I used a quarter pound of it, but I can totally see how that might be too much for some people. When your bacon is ready use a paper towel to blot off as much grease as you can and then chop it up into small pieces.

At this point a half hour should have passed and you can start melting the chocolate chips. I also added five tablespoons of peanut butter to my melted chocolate and then mixed 3/4 of my diced bacon in with it as well.

All that’s left to do after that is to spread the melted chocolate over the bottom layer and then sprinkle the rest of your bacon on top of it. Another hour of cooling time in the refrigerator after that and your peanut butter bacon bars will be ready to eat!

The peanut butter bars turned out just as great as I remembered them and the addition of bacon made them even better! If I made them again I’d probably try adding a couple mashed up bananas as well to turn them into a desert version of the classic Elvis sandwich. Seriously, think how awesome those would taste!

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