Posted on

Buffalo Wing Cheese Burger Quiche

Buffalo Wing Cheese Burger Quiche
Buffalo Wing Cheese Burger Quiche

At the beginning of Carl’s Jr. attempt to spice up their menu they came out with a buffalo wing inspired featured burger that they called the Buffalo Blue Cheese Burger.  It was pretty good, but didn’t quite have the right mix of flavors, in my opinion.  But it got us working on making a quiche inspired by it and some other ideas.  This Buffalo Wing Cheese Burger Quiche took a few tries to get right.

Serves: 16 – 22

Ingredients

  • 1.5 – 2 lb. 80/20 Hamburger
  • 2 tspn salt
  • 4 tspn black pepper
  • 1 extra egg
  • 1/2 cup of Panko or bread crumbs
  • 1/2 cup – of your favorite buffalo wing sauce (we found Frank’s RedHot Wing Sauce works best)
  • 1 cup – chopped tomato
  • 1 cup – chopped lettuce
  • 1 cup – chopped red onion
  • 1 cup – chopped white onion
  • 1 cup – shredded Swiss cheese
  • 1 cup – crumbled Blue cheese
  • 2 pie crusts

Preparation

Prepare all of the items that need to be chopped by cutting into 1/4 – 1/2 inch sized chunks.  Fine chop the white onions.  You can put the tomato, lettuce and red onion into the same container and return to the refrigerator until final assembly.

In a large mixing bowl, mix together the hamburger, salt, pepper, chopped white onions, extra egg and panko.  Make sure this is fully mixed together.  Add in half of the wing sauce and thoroughly mix.  Save the rest of the wing sauce until final preparation.  Form the meat into 3 – 5 hamburger patties.  On a medium high heat either in a skillet or preferably on a grill, and cook the patties until they are starting to get a little char on the outside, medium well.  Remove from grill and allow to rest until cool enough to chop into 1/2 sized chunks.  Put the chopped burgers in a container and refrigerate until final assembly.

For the crust, you can use a basic crust or if you want to take it up a notch make a bacon crust.

Final Assembly and Cooking

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  In a large mixing bowl combine the tomato, lettuce, red onion and burger together and mix.  Then half and put each half into each pie crust.  Prepare the basic quiche mix and mix into it the 1/4 cup of wing sauce that you didn’t use in preparing the hamburger.  Pour this over the chopped ingredients in the pie crusts.  Mix together the cheeses and spread evenly on top of the pies.  Sprinkle a little salt and pepper if you want for a little extra seasoning.  Into the oven the pies go for 30 – 40 minutes or until the cheese starts to brown.  Remove and it’s ready to go.

Posted on

Updated Potato Crust

Member Content
Since the Real Men DO Eat Quiche cookbook was completed, I’ve come up with a new way to make this crust which tastes just as good, maybe a little better, and most important it holds up better when cutting.  Most of the credit for this goes to Rachel Ray.  I don’t know her or anything like that, but she did a quiche once that had a potato crust that used corn starch to help bond the potatoes together.  That got me to experimenting with different amounts of corn starch in my usual Simply Potatoes, Southwestern Hash Browns base.  Turns out that you don’t need much corn starch to make this work well.  And you can even substitute coconut oil or olive oil for butter to try and keep this kind of healthy.  The bigger bonus, it doesn’t take as much time to cook as the original recipe.

Ingredients

  • 2 nine inch pie pans
  • 2 tablespoons of either butter, olive oil or coconut oil
  • 1 package Simply Potatoes Southwestern Hash Browns (or 4 cups of shredded potatoes with your favorite seasonings)
  • 2 tablespoons corn starch

Preparation

In a large mixing bowl, mix the potatoes and corn starch thoroughly.  In each of the pie pan apply a coating of either the butter, olive oil or coconut oil.  Take half of the potato mixture from the bowl and place it in the bottom of the first pan.  Spread out the mixture from the center to the edges so that there is an even coating of the potato mixture that is about 1/4 inch thick.  Try to go all the way up on the top lip of the pan if possible.  Repeat this for the other pan.  Put both of them in the refrigerator and turn on your oven to preheat at 400 degrees.  When the preheat is done (about 10 minutes) remove the pans from the refrigerator and put them in the oven for about 10 – 15 minutes or until the potatoes start to brown.  Remove and allow to cool before putting a quiche mixture in them.

Posted on

Grilled Artichoke, Bacon, Olive and Mushroom Quiche

Member Content
On a food hunting visit to Denver, my wife ordered a really good pizza. It was an Artichoke, Olive, Mushroom and Garlic pizza from Fat Sully’s, home of the biggest pizza I’ve ever seen. A 26 inch round thin crust pizza and its awesome.

This pizza prompted this recipe. I just added bacon because everything is better with bacon. You can either use the recipe provided for the grilled artichokes or you can just buy some already prepared and skip 90 percent of the preparation. You’ll just need to add the rosemary and thyme into the egg mixture instead of cooking the artichokes with it. This is really good with the pizza crust from Real Men DO Eat Quiche, but you can just use a prepared pie crust if you like.

Serves 16 -22

Ingredients

  • 2 grilled artichokes (or 2 – 8 oz. jars of prepared artichokes)
  • 1/2 lemon, cut into wedges (1 tablespoon of lemon juice if using prepared artichokes)
  • 3 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1/2 tablespoon of fresh chopped rosemary
  • 1/2 tablespoon of fresh chopped thyme
  • 1/2 tablespoon sea salt
  • 1/2 cup garlic, grilled
  • 1/2 cup black olives, chopped
  • 1 cup mushroom, chopped
  • 8-10 slices bacon chopped
  • 2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
  • 2 pie crusts of your choosing
  • Optional – 1/2 cup tomato sauce (a fire roasted pizza sauce makes for the best flavor)

Preparation

First you must prepare to grill the artichokes and garlic.  Take the chopped rosemary and thyme and place it in a small microwave safe bowl.  Pour in the olive oil and then microwave it for about 30 seconds (or you can do this on a stove top on medium high heat for about 4-5 minutes).  The set this aside and let everything mingle while you prepare the artichokes.

Get a large pot with about an inch of water in the bottom and a steamer rack ready.  To prepare the artichokes you’ll need to have some scissors and the lemon wedges ready.  Trim all the points off with the scissors and rub with the lemon wedges.  This keeps the artichoke from turning brown and loosing some flavor.  You’ll also want to cut off about 1/2 inch of the pointy top of the artichoke with a knife and rub it with the lemon as well.  Use a vegetable peeler to remove the thick outer layer on the stems and then trim the stem to 2 inches from the base of the artichoke and rub all these surfaces with the lemon wedge.  Then cut the artichokes in half.  Then use a strong metal spoon to the fuzzy chokes and small inner leaves.  Again rub everything you just cut with the lemon juices.
Immediately turn on high heat for the pot and bring the water to a boil.  As soon as it boils, reduce the heat to medium high and place the artichokes, cut side down on the steamer rack.  Cover and steam for about 20 minutes.   To be sure you should be able to easily pull off an outer leaf and easily poke through the artichoke with a knife.

Remove when done and start your grill for high heat.  While the grill is heating, break apart a garlic clove and coat with a light coating of the seasoned oil you prepared first.  Make a little tray out of foil to hold the garlic clove on the grill and place the coated garlic in the tray.  Then rub the oil all over the artichoke with a pastry brush and sprinkle a little sea salt all over them.  Place all this on the grill, artichokes cut side down on the grill.  Cover and grill for about 5 to 10 minutes.  Remove from the grill and allow both the garlic and the artichokes to cool.  Break up the artichokes by pulling each leaf from the stem.  The using the edge of a knife, scrape the tender meat from the inside of each leaf.  Also the stem and some of the heart will have some soft meat, chop that into small pieces too.  Also fine chop the garlic.  Store until ready to assemble the quiche.

Or you can just get these already prepared and skip the above labor intensive steps.  I’ve only done this once.  From now on, I’ll buy them prepared!

Chop up 1/2 cup of black pitted olives into small chunks.  Chop 1 cups of mushrooms into small 1/2 inch sized bits and put both of these away till assembly.  If you’ve still got the grill going, grill the bacon strips on the grill, so you don’t have to disposing of the grease.  Just keep and eye on them as they cook really quick and the potential for a grease fire that will burn them is very high.  Should only take about 2-4 minutes per side.  Allow to cool and chop into small 1/2 inch chunks and store till assembly.

Assembly

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.  If you do use the pizza crust make sure to coat the crust with some clarified butter before you put all the ingredients in.  It will help keep the crust a little crispy while cooking.  Prepare your usual egg mixture and mix in 1 cup of the mozzarella into the mixture.  Also if you choose to add the tomato sauce, it goes into the egg mixture too to make it taste a little pizza like.  Gather all the other ingredients together and thoroughly mix together.  Place the mixture into the pie pans and pour the egg mixture over them.  Mix this gently to make sure everyone is thoroughly mixed.  Top with the remaining cheese and place in the oven for 40 minutes.

Remove and serve or pack it for the rink.

Posted on

Cauliflower Steak Quiche

This one is almost straight from a recent Men’s Journal article describing Cauliflower Steaks.  This takes the premise of their recipe and adds quiche to the mix.  The only difference is that after you cook these up, chop them into smaller chunks and use them in the quiche for the filling.

Serves 16 – 22

Ingredients

  • 1 head of Cauliflower
  • 2 Garlic Cloves or about 4 tspn. Garlic Paste
  • 1/2 cup Pitted Kalamata Olives
  • 1/2 cup chopped Cilantro
  • 1/4 cup Olive Oil
  • 2 tspn Red Chile Flakes
  • 4 tspn fresh squeezed Orange Juice.

Preparation

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Slice the cauliflower from top to base into 3/4-inch slabs.  Crush and rub both sides of each slab with garlic.  Sauté over medium-high heat in a skillet with 1 tbsp olive oil until golden brown, about 2-4 minutes per side. Repeat this for all of your slices.

Lay all the cauliflower steaks on a baking sheet that has been lined with either parchment or foil.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and roast for 20 minutes.  When done, remove and allow to cool until you can easily chop them in to large chunks.  Place in a container till final assembly.

In a food processor or blender, puree the olives, cilantro, olive oil, chili flakes, and orange juice.  When complete place in a container until your ready for final assembly and cooking.

Final Assembly and Cooking

I used 2 store bought gluten free pie crusts for the one that I made.  I also substituted almond milk for the half and half in the base quiche mix.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  Place the cauliflower steak chunks into the pie crusts.  In a large bowl mix up the base quiche mix as suggested above and also add in the olive citrus puree.  Thoroughly mix these ingredients together.  If you want to make it taste a little richer, add 2 teaspoons of a good quality truffle oil.  Pour the quiche mix over the cauliflower steak chucks.  The two quiches then go into the oven for 35 – 40 minutes.  Then they are ready to serve.

Posted on

Rye Pizza Style Crust

Member Content
Cooking up a quiche with corned beef, pastrami or a lot of sharp cheese?  This Rye Pizza Style Crust is a good foundation for it.

Makes 2 pie crusts

Ingredients

  • 2 – 9 in deep dish pie pans
  • 1 pkg. active dry yeast
  • 1 tsp. honey
  • 3/4 cup warm water
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 1/3 cup med. rye flour
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 2 tbsp. dark molasses
  • 2 tbsp. vegetable or olive oil

Preparation

Dissolve yeast and honey in 1/4 cup warm water and set aside until yeast foams.

Place both flours in a large bowl. Add yeast mixture, salt, molasses, oil and 1/2 cup water and stir to combine. Turn dough out into a floured board and knead until dough is smooth, about 5 minutes.

Place dough in an oiled bowl, turning so that top of dough is lightly covered with oil. Cover with towel and let rise in warm place until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour.

Cooking

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Remove dough from bowl and half.  Each half should be a in between baseball and softball in size.  Roll that out with a rolling pin on a floured surface until it’s about 1/4″ thick, round and a little bigger than the pie pans.  Coat the pie pans with a little brush of the oil and drop in the rolled dough.  Make ridges around the edge of the pan and remove any excess.  Using a fork poke some holes through the dough in the bottom of the pans to allow for any trapped air to escape during cooking.

Place in the oven and bake for about 20 minutes or until  the dough starts to turn a light brown.  Remove and allow to cool before putting your quiche filling into the pan.