Main Recipe: Grilled Onion CheeseburgerOverallWhenever my wife and I were still regularly subscribing to Hello Fresh, I always loved when a burger recipe would pop up in our box. Not only are burgers something I generally enjoy quite a bit when they're made well, but they also tend to be relatively easy to make. Any burger night with Hello Fresh would take about thirty minutes from prep to plate. Unfortunately, much like with last week's risotto, this was not the case this time around. Some of this could have been anticipated, like the extra time needed to measure out ingredients for the special sauce, but other issues were just a case of unfortunate timing. Thinking we were going to eat the burgers before Monday, we left the ground beef in the fridge instead of the freezer, and in just that short window of time from getting the groceries to prepping the meal, the meat had already started to take on a brownish quality that made us both very uncomfortable. So with an added trip back to the grocery store coupled with all the extra prep time coming from measuring out ingredients, we were now looking at another hour and a half of cook time for a single hamburger. And maybe it's just me, but I don't think a hamburger should take as long to make as a risotto. But after all the meat was delivered and all the ingredients were prepped, how did everything turn out? Honestly, pretty dang good. This burger is enhanced quite a bit by the special sauce, which uses a combination of Dijon mustard, mayo, and ketchup as its base along with some garlic powder before folding in some pickled onions, which definitely added to the overall texture of the sauce. The biggest issue I had with this one (besides literally everything else I've said so far) was preparing the meat. This is seeming to become a trend with me with a lot of my meals recently. With the chicken cutlets, the issue was that we didn't cut them in half, so they retained a bit of a thickness that made it harder for flavors to penetrate. With the burgers, I think there was a similar issue with thickness. I essentially made four 8 oz. patties, and just cooking one on the stove and getting it up to temp took a good ten minutes, and even then I had to put it in the microwave to get it where it needed to be. I think I haven't quite figured out the precise alchemy for getting meat to the right temperature the first time, and if I make any more burgers during this project, I think I will go back through and watch some more videos about prepping meat to see if there's some essential piece I'm missing. RatingTASTE: 4/5 PRESENTATION: 4/5 Other MealsSo, the main goal for this week was to make two different recipes from the Hello Fresh stack, the grilled onion burger being the first of these. With the week being surprisingly busy and us heading out of town, though, it was difficult to find the motivation to try another recipe, especially considering how much more challenging it was to make the burger than anticipated. Considering that I prepped four burgers that were only going to be good for so many days and still had leftover risotto from Sunday, I figured I'd make my life a little easier and alternate between those meals for leftovers throughout the week. What I found was that the risotto got better as the week went on and the burgers were anything but the "easy" option for lunch or dinner.
Issues with getting the meat to its proper temperature persisted throughout the week. I tried a lot of different experimentation to see what would help and so far have not stumbled upon the correct formula. My second attempt at cooking the meat left me needing to microwave for another two minutes on top of the cook time. The third attempt saw me putting the meat in the oven on broil, though this time for so much time that I inadvertently melted all my cheese. For the fourth, I increased the initial temperature in the pan and did much more flipping to get a good sear and internal cook than I had earlier in the week. Of all my attempts, this was the best, but I still needed to put it in the oven on broil to get it closer to the correct temperature, which doesn't feel like it should be necessary if the burger is prepared correctly. All that to say that I lived those dang burgers this week, and my stomach definitely started to hate me for it after a while. I may make burgers again (dang it if I'm going to let them beat me), but I'm probably going to give it a few weeks before I tackle it again.
1 Comment
The Real Cooking BeginsAfter a couple of weeks of false starts and refinement, we are finally in the new cooking routine for this project. As a recap, I am choosing dishes each week based on a random drawing from my stack of Hello Fresh recipes from the past few months. While I reserve the right to deviate from this stack specifically if it makes more sense financially or logistically, the goal is to make at least two meals a week that are either unfamiliar or force me to work on a skill that I have not yet mastered in the kitchen. After eating each dish, I and anybody else who has eaten it will rank it on a scale of 1 to 5 both on its taste and its presentation. Main Dish 1: Crispy Kickin' Cayenne Chicken CutletsOverviewThis recipe turned out significantly better than expected. Everything cooked remarkably well in the oven, and the sauce on top of the chicken was phenomenal. Even when I forgot to add the sauce for the following day's leftovers, though, the panko breading mixture served up enough flavor that it didn't even matter. The biggest flaw with the dish overall was one key mistake: we didn't actually make chicken cutlets. When completing this recipe with Hello Fresh, everything came pre-portioned and pre-cut. We knew that chicken breasts would be used for the cutlets, but I thought that there would be no need to cut the chicken down further in size. Turns out, that's exactly what a chicken cutlet is: a chicken breast cut in half lengthwise. The lack of actual "cutlet" making goes a long way to explaining why the chicken still felt a bit watery at times and as if it was too thick for the flavor to fully penetrate it the way it should have. The fact that the food was still as good as it was despite all this is a testament to its overall quality for sure. I would 100% make this recipe again, and I may even do so during this project to see if I can get its ranking even higher. Final ResultTASTE: 4/5 PRESENTATION: 4/5 Main Dish 2: Zucchini & Sun-Dried Tomato RisottoOverviewNote: As a complication to my originally-noted plan, from this recipe until an indeterminate date, my wife will not be able to rate any of these dishes because she is dealing with some stomach issues. So, this dish has an interesting history. This is one of the first recipes we ever made with Hello Fresh, and it was phenomenal. Hands down one of the best things I have ever cooked in my life. I was thrilled when this was one of the two recipes chosen for this week because I had been hoping to tackle this one again. But here's the problem with expectations like those: they were nearly impossible to meet. This dish was a monster to prepare. Without the ingredients portioned out, the prep alone took a half hour. And one thing to note about risotto is that there's no way to shortcut the process. There's no inactive time. One key part of its preparation is adding eight cups of warm water to the rice mixture one half cup at a time until the mixture sets. The process continues until you've gone through all your water. With all the set-up time involved in this process, it's no wonder that I found myself frustrated by the end. But it would've been worth it if the risotto had been as good as I remembered it. It wasn't. To be fair, I do know I made a few mistakes at the end, including adding the cream sauce later in the process than I was supposed to. Had that gone in earlier and had I been a little more generous with the salt and pepper, I might have been able to save it. What came out wasn't bad by any means, and I can have leftovers for the next couple of days because I made so much, but it still left me feeling a bit underwhelmed by the end of the week. Final ResultsTASTE: 3/5 PRESENTATION: 4/5 Other Meals for the WeekBesides the main dishes I made specifically with the project in mind, I also did some experimenting this week. I had a lot of leftover buffalo chicken from making buffalo chicken sweet potatoes last weekend, so I decided to make a variety of sandwiches this past week all using the leftover chicken to see what I could come up with. From a pure flavor standpoint, the final sandwich was undeniably the best, but using shredded buffalo chicken did make portioning out the ingredients inside (particularly the cheese) a bit messier than I had wanted. Of the four, I would definitely make that one again, though I think the second egg sandwich could have been enhanced with the addition of some buffalo sauce, hot sauce, or even some cooling agent (sour cream, mayo, or ranch) to bring out more of the flavor. OverallWhile the week began with a notable high and ended on a bit of an underwhelming note, I am overall pleased with my initial progress. I made more meals this week than I ate out anywhere else, thereby saving me some money (the one night we did eat out was my parents' treat), and I got to do a decent amount of experimentation with leftovers, ensuring that my initial prep for food had a use beyond one or two meals.
Next week will see us going back to some things that should be a bit simpler: Grilled Onion Hamburgers and Santa Fe Pork Tacos. Check back in then to see how I did. This third week of Genius Hour saw me take the final steps to actually beginning the project in earnest. While I managed to map out a plan for how I would choose my various meals and recipes by the end of last week, it wasn't until the end of this past week that I actually put that plan into action. So what kept me from actually starting cooking official meals this week? Mostly time in this case. Though last week was a short one at work, it came with a number of meetings that took up most of the time I had in the afternoon. Knowing that I was going to be home late most days and with little time to devote to "real" cooking, I decided to save the purchasing of ingredients and official planning until the end of this week. Prepping for RealSaturday morning, however, saw a shift and my official move into planning out my meals. As a refresher, one thing my wife and I decided to do was to take the stack of Hello Fresh recipes we have accumulated over the past few months and shuffle them. From that stack, we chose two recipes that we have to make in the upcoming week. Next week's official selections are Crispy Kickin' Cayenne Chicken Cutlets and Chicken Risotto. Of the two, I expect the cayenne chicken to be the easier to prepare, but I will have a more specific update on that next week.
Mapping it OutThis past week of working on Genius Hour has continued the planning stage. I had hoped to do a bit more cooking specifically for this project, but with traveling to the beach and seeing both family and friends throughout the week, I actually found that I had many more instances of people cooking for me than I would have otherwise. Having little to no pressure to cook, though, did give me a good opportunity to sort through recipes and make plans, though, so I want to take a moment to outline those here. Sorting and PrepMy first task this week was to figure out how to make use of my existing stack of Hello Fresh recipes from multiple weeks of receiving these in the mail. I began by taking the recipes I had and sorting them into different stacks. The first stack was for recipes that I simply didn't enjoy and wouldn't want to make again, the second was for any duplicates from my existing group, the third was for recipes that I enjoyed but that required more specialized ingredients, and finally the fourth was for recipes I want to try again on my own. In doing this, I found that I had quite a few recipes to choose from as that final stack was by far the most well-populated. This is quite fortunate as it basically guarantees that I will have a lot of variety in my recipes when I pull from this stack. All that considered, the plan for the Hello Fresh recipes will be to pick one from this stack at random each week, and I will have to make a version of that recipe using ingredients that we add as part of our weekly grocery run. I will also have to make sure that when I make this recipe that I have enough made for leftovers for both my wife and me for at least one more day afterwards. Next StepsThis upcoming week will be the first where I start documenting meals I've cooked and will begin evaluating their quality.
Another year, another Genius Hour project. For the uninitiated, Genius Hour is a project that is hardly original, though anecdotally, it does seem as if perhaps the idea of it isn't as popular as it used to be. Regardless, a lot of my students have found benefit to completing the assignment over the years, and the same can be said for me as I have often found occasion to do the project with my students. This year is no exception to that rule, so join me (and my students) over the next twelve weeks and let's see what we produce! As For Me, It's a Cooking ProjectOver the years, I've found that projects involving cooking, athletics, and music have tended to be some of the most popular for students to choose. Some of that is because these projects seem like they'll be easier on the surface, but I maintain that this is only true if a person doesn't take the time to plan out all the details and consider things like data collection or how they will measure their growth. In this light, it feels appropriate to make sure that my project actually fulfills all that criteria if I want to have a leg to stand on. So, some background on my project. During quarantine, I spent quite a bit of time watching cooking videos on YouTube. Gordon Ramsay's video on making scrambled eggs is what really started me on my own cooking journey (well, that and recognizing that some of my favorite restaurants didn't handle the transition to a take-out-only model particularly well). Since then, I have taken on significantly more of the cooking duties at my house and have loved it. This interest in cooking led me down quite a few rabbit holes on YouTube, sending me to channels like Ethan Chlebowski, The Babish Culinary Universe, Pro Home Cooks, Sam the Cooking Guy, and You Suck at Cooking among others. I've spent quite a bit of time watching these videos, and I've also tried quite a few of their recipes or used their ideas as motivation to experiment with dishes. Yeah, But What Are You Doing This Time?In the past few months, my wife and I have followed the advice of seemingly every Youtuber with a sponsorship on their video and signed up for Hello Fresh (I don't have a promo code for you, sorry). This has been fantastic for giving us access to high quality ingredients and inventive recipes that can almost exclusively be made in 40 minutes or less. It's an awesome idea that got both of us out of our comfort zones, but nothing is free, as they say. Hello Fresh came with its own set of problems. Yes, we had fresh ingredients, but to stay within a reasonable price range, our boxes only came with enough ingredients for two servings (meaning no leftovers). Additionally, while I had initially hoped that paying for Hello Fresh boxes would cut out some costs at the grocery store, we found that any decrease to our grocery budget was minimal, and we often found ourselves at the end of the week lacking in ingredients to make other dishes. All this considered, I have a few goals I want to accomplish over these next twelve weeks, and I will do this through a few specific challenges. Goal 1: Better BudgetingSince one of the reasons we decided to cut back on Hello Fresh is because of budgetary concerns, one goal I have over the next few weeks is to minimize the amount of money spent on food in any given week while maintaining the quality of the food that we're eating (no unhealthy substitutes for the sake of saving money). To accomplish this, we have already cut out the Hello Fresh boxes. But beyond this, I also plan to begin reincorporating meal prep into my routine any given week. I experimented with this idea a bit last year as I tried to gradually build myself up to having a majority of my meals in any given week be home-cooked. The idea is that I can use some time on Saturday and Sunday of each week to prepare a few dishes or meal components in advance that can be pulled out throughout the week and easily incorporated into any given recipe. In other words, I'd like to replace what Hello Fresh was doing for me by pre-portioning out fresh ingredients by doing my own prep when I have more free time to ensure that I don't stress myself out on cooking throughout the week and keep both quality and variety in my meals each week. In doing all this, I should be able to both better budget my time and my funds. I will save money by cutting out Hello Fresh, but I will also be saving time by taking into consideration ahead of time what I want to make in a given week and preparing components in advance. Goal 2: Keeping it QualityEating Hello Fresh recipes was often a revelatory experience. I loved so many of those dishes, and many of them were some of the best things I had made in my own house. So, just because I'm not paying for the boxes doesn't mean I can't keep doing the recipes, right? That will be another part of this project. After I've gotten into a sort of routing regarding the meal prep, I will start choosing some of my favorite Hello Fresh recipes from the past few months and will try my best to recreate those using our own ingredients and keeping within our budgetary restrictions.
Each dish will be rated on a scale of 1 to 10 as we go, and by the end of the project we will hopefully have reincorporated some of the best parts of what we had from our previous Hello Fresh adventure into our new budget. I imagine that this will be quite a bit more challenging than I am fully anticipating, but I think it will be a worthwhile endeavor that will allow for some significant improvement. So, here's to some good cooking, and here's to Genius Hour! |
AuthorMr. Barker is a high school English teacher, and this website is his contribution to his classes' Genius Hour projects. ArchivesCategories |