Superbowl Appetizers

Adapted from The Pioneer Woman Cooks

Note: these are decidedly NOT healthy!

I made two appetizers for the Superbowl this weekend- both were big hits, both were very easy, neither were healthy (and, most importantly, neither looked like cat puke).

Buffalo Wings

Ingredients:
2-3 lbs chicken drumettes
1 12 oz bottle Frank's Hot Sauce
2 sticks butter
Canola Oil (err on the side of A LOT, i.e. a 48 oz bottle or so)
Tabasco Sauce

1. Pour the canola oil into a thick skillet or a dutch oven- the depth should be about 1.5-2 inches of oil (hence, erring on the side of a lot of oil). Heat the oil on medium to medium-high heat; keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't overheat, but you need to let it get pretty hot.

2. While the oil is heating, put the drummettes in a colander and rinse with cold water. I've read that this helps them fry... who knows if its true, but its fun!

3. Once oil is hot (it took about 10-15 minutes for mine to get hot), dump in your chicken drummettes, and immediately scrape the bottom with METAL tongs so as to make sure they don't stick to the bottom of the pot. Be careful (its not fun to have hot oil splashed on you). Cover with a splatter guard if you have one. Keep an eye on your chicken- it should take about 25 minutes for them to fry. You want them to be crispy and golden brown on the outside- if they aren't browned, keep them in a while longer. Just watch them to make sure they don't burn.


4. While your chicken is frying, make the buffalo sauce. Melt two sticks of butter in a medium saucepan, then stir in the entire bottle of Frank's. Remove from heat and stir it together with a fork, making sure it is well blended. Add in tabasco sauce to taste.

5. Once the drumettes are done frying, remove them (again, with METAL tongs. As much fun as it is to melt plastic stuff, I don't think that'd be an improvement on this recipe) to a paper towel lined dish. In batches, add the drummettes into your sauce, cover them entirely, then set them on your serving dish.

6. Serve with blue cheese (YOU'RE blue cheese!) or ranch sauce. The go-to celery sticks are a good side, but if you are trying to adhere to the whole not-healthy thing, I feel like that'd be going against that goal.



Jalapeno Treats

Adapted from The Pioneer Woman Cooks

Ingredients:
About 20 jalapenos (try to find the smaller ones, about 1-2 inches long)
Two packages of cream cheese, softened to room temp
1 package of bacon
Toothpicks!

Note: NEVER, under any circumstances, bring your hands close to your eyes while working with jalapenos. In the interest of helping you out, I am imparting this hard learned wisdom. If you need to, scrub your hands like you are prepping for surgery, cause let me tell you- jalapenos in the eye is NOT a pleasant experience.

1. Slice the jalapenos in half, length-wise. Use a spoon to clean out the seeds and membrane (those are what makes the peppers spicy. If you want to retain some mouth-searing spice, leave a few seeds or some of the membrane in. This may or may not make you wish you were dead, but hey, its a personal choice).

2. Once the peppers are cleaned out, rinse them off to get rid of the extra seeds. Fill the peppers with the softened cream cheese, as full as you'd like. Something I noticed is that if you end up with larger peppers (which I did), if you fill the peppers up, that is a LOT of cream cheese. Again, personal choice.


3. Take the bacon out, and cut it in thirds to wrap around the peppers. If you have large peppers, you might not want to cut it into thirds (it may be too short to get all the way around the peppers). However, if you don't cut it into thirds, you may run into supply problems... it's a dilemma I solved by cutting into thirds, and occasionally doubling the bacon up on the large peppers


4. Heat your oven to 375. A trick for cooking these things- line a cookie tray with foil, and then place a metal cooling rack on top of the tray. Place the peppers on the cooling rack (you may need to cook them in 2 batches), so the bacon grease can drip to the tray below.


5. Cook for 20-25 minutes, and then serve! They go well with the buffalo wings because you can dip them in the blue cheese as well. Nummy.