French Dip with Toasted buns

So I've seen the tutorial for the crockpot French Dip in quite a few places.  It's super simple and quite delicious.

Crockpot French Dip Ingredients:

2-3 lbs Chuck Roast (trim any big pieces of fat)

2 cans of Beef Consomme Soup

1 Packet of Good Seasons Italian Dressing Mix.  Do not use Kraft, it's meant to be thick and creamy and will turn it into superglue.

Put the beef in the crockpot, sprinkle the Italian on top and dump both cans of soup on that.  Let it go on low for 8-10 hours.  Take out the meat, shred it up and put it on bread.  Use the juices left over for dunking.

Anyone who knows me has probably observed that when I go to a restaurant for the first time, I order a French Dip.  If they can pull that off, they are worthy of my business.  There are usually three factors to a good French Dip.  1) The meat shouldn't be tough or dry.  Ever.  There's no excuse. 2) The au jus shouldn't be bland.  3) The bread has to be toasted just right.  If it's not, the juicy beef will get the bread gummy before you get a chance to dunk it in the au jus and the subsequent dunk will basically liquify the bread.  A good buttery toasting forms a protective barrier so it's still crispy when you dunk.  Trust me, I've eaten hundreds.  Since the crockpot French Dip recipe shows you how to do 1 & 2, here's the best way to nail #3.

Start with good buns from the bakery.  Not the bulk made perfect circle hamburger buns that are banned in my house, but something like these beauties.  Or a good hoagie bun would be great too.  Slice them in half.

Take a chunk of butter and put it in your skillet.  I could do two whole buns at a time and ended up using 1.33 tbsp of butter per load.

Melt it over medium and get it so that it's nice and bubbly.

Drop your buns on the butter, you can move them around to soak up all of the butter surrounding them.  It takes a couple of minutes to get a good toast, I pick will usually just peek under there periodically to see how they're coming.  When you finish one batch, wipe out the pan with a few paper towels while not burning your fingers.  Let the pan cool down with no heat for a minute.  You want your buns brown, not your butter. Throw another chunk of butter in and go med-low until the butter is hot and turn back up to medium once your buns are added.

Put your shredded meat on your toasty buns and dunk in the juice left in your crockpot.  These buns are also great with burgers.  Also, sometimes I heat up a pile of thinly sliced deli ham and cheese and heat it in the microwave and then slide it on the toasted bun for a grade A hot ham & cheese.  Holy crap, I'm hungry now.

Buffalo Chicken Monkey Bread

This would make an awesome appetizer, but I just made it for lunch because in this house appetizers are meals.  It's a great way to use the extra dough if you made the caramel monkey bread from the previous post, and also any leftover shredded chicken you have in the fridge.

Ingredients:

2 - 1 lb loaves frozen bread dough, thawed

About a cup of shredded chicken, I prefer breast meat

1 cup shredded Monterrey Jack cheese

1 cup Frank's Red Hot, plus 1/4 cup for the pan and top

1 stick butter

1 tbsp Hidden Valley Ranch dressing mix

Stir together chicken and cheese, add in Frank's until it's all coated thusly.

Melt the butter and mix in the ranch seasoning in a bowl

Cut your dough into pieces and flatten out with your palm to about 2 or 2.5 inch circles.

Put some of the meat in the middle

Roll into a ball repeat until you run out of dough.

Grease an angel food or bundt cake pan, pour some Franks in the bottom.

Dunk the balls in the butter and stack in the pan like bricks.

I put a little of the extra meat on top as well as some more Frank's.

Let rise for 30 minutes.  Preheat the oven to 350, bake for 20 minutes.  Let stand for 20.

Pull apart and enjoy!

Monkey Bread

This was on of my favorite treats as a kid and now it's something my kids love.  This is way easier to make than caramel rolls from scratch but has the same tastes and textures.

Ingredients:

2 -1 lb loaves of frozen bread dough, thawed

1 tbsp cinnamon

1/4 C. White sugar (not pictured)

1 C. Vanilla ice cream

1 C. Brown sugar

1 stick butter (1/2 cup)

Thaw your bread dough per the instructions.  I always use Fetting's from Finley, ND, but I suppose that's a regional thing.  Spray a 9 x 13 inch cake pan with cooking spray.

Combine cinnamon and white sugar in a bowl.

Cut your dough into bite sized pieces.  Roll them in the cinnamon mixture and put them in the pan.

Repeat until done.  You might want to squeeze them together a little.

In a sauce pan, melt the butter and ice cream with the brown sugar over low.  When it's starting to combine, turn it up to medium heat.  Keep stirring while bringing to a boil.

Dump the boiling sauce over the dough.  You're going to let it sit for a while so the bread will rise and the sauce will sink below the dough at this time.

After 15-20 minutes, preheat your oven to 350 and in about 10 minutes your bread should look like this:

Notice how it doubled?

Put the cake pan on a foil lined cookie sheet and bake for 20 minutes.  The caramel may boil over and the cookie sheet will save you some scrubbing.

Remove from the oven and let sit for 20 minutes before you start picking at it.  I waited ten before digging into that corner.  My tongue is a tiny bit burned.  The caramel at the bottom is the best part, sop it up with your pieces, don't waste it!

Enjoy!

Bev's Chicken

Bev is my awesome great aunt and this is her recipe and a major family favorite. Very simple and delicious!  The crispy skin is the best part IMO.

Ingredients:
1 whole chicken cut up, or 3-4 lbs of various bone-in skin-on pieces of your choice
1 stick of butter, melted
1/2 cup of soy sauce
About a cup of flour

Preheat oven to 350

Rinse the chicken in water and shake excess off before lightly dredging in flour.  Arrange all pieces of chicken in a single layer on a GLASS (Pyrex) baking dish.  Metal just doesn't work right.

Mix the melted butter and the soy sauce and pour all over the chicken.  Cover with foil and bake for one hour.  Remove the foil and bake for another hour.

Just that simple!!

Oven Roasted Ranch Potatoes

This is a simple recipe that goes over well with my kids and husband.  It goes great with "Bev's Chicken," which will be discussed in my next post.

Ingredients:

6-8 small russet potatoes

1 stick (1/2 cup) butter

1 packet Hidden Valley Ranch mix

Preheat your oven to 400.  Wash and cube 6-8 small russet potatoes.  Put them in a bowl. Melt your butter and pour over the potatoes, toss to coat. Dump in the packet of ranch.  I really feel like Hidden Valley is important. We get ours in the huge container at Sam's and even though 3 tbsp makes a packet, I use closer to 4.  Probably not necessary but that's how I roll. Stir until it's all evenly coated.  Put on a baking sheet covered in parchment paper.  Bake for 35-45 minutes depending on how big you cut your potatoes.  You do want them brown without burning.  The brown tastes better.  

If I make them with the chicken, which bakes at 350, I bake them at that temp for the last 40 minutes and when the chicken is out of the oven, I use my broiler for just a tiny bit to finish the job.