Categories
Appetizer Snack

Get cheesy with your snacking this week

Smoked Cheez-Its can be customized with any of your favorite seasonings and give a little extra oomph to an already delicious snack. These can also be made in the oven if a smoker isn’t an option.

When we went on family vacations during childhood, we always packed plenty of snacks and a cooler with pop for the journey.

I didn’t know until I was nearly an adult that people could actually buy the snacks and drinks at roadside convenience stores. What a world.

One of our stand-by car trip snacks was a box of Cheez-Its. As I’m sure they are for many of you, too, Cheez-Its are one of my weaknesses. I have to be really careful that I don’t polish off half a box—or, let’s face it, a whole one—in one sitting.

One of my favorite things to find in a box is an extra-toasty cracker. You know, the ones that have just a tiny bit of brown around the edges? When Cheez-Its starting selling extra toasted boxes, I was a big fan.

So it was no wonder that seeing a recipe online recently that featured roasting Cheez-Its on a smoker was extremely interesting to me. I absolutely had to give it a try. If you don’t have a smoker or a grill that you can keep at a steady temperature, you can do these in the oven, too. They just won’t have that extra smoke flavor.

I found this recipe on the blog “Crave the Good.” You can find the original at https://www.cravethegood.com/smoked-cheez-it-crackers/. I changed the cooking time a bit for my version, but with only three ingredients, there wasn’t much else to play with.

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Smoked Cheez-its

Smoked Cheez-Its can be customized with any of your favorite seasonings and give a little extra oomph to an already delicious snack. These can also be made in the oven if a smoker isn’t an option.
Course Appetizer, Snack
Keyword barbecue seasoning, Big Green Egg, Cheez-It, easy snack, Kamado Joe, pellet smoker, smoked snack

Ingredients

  • 1 box Cheez-it crackers
  • 3 to 4 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 to 2 tablespoons of your favorite barbecue seasoning

Instructions

  • Preheat smoker or oven to 275 degrees.
  • Toss the crackers in olive oil until they’re evenly coated. Start with three tablespoons. If it isn’t going to coat them all, throw in one more.
  • Add your seasoning and toss again to evenly distribute it on all the crackers.
  • Spread the crackers onto a sheet pan or into a roasting pan that will fit on your smoker.
  • Smoke/bake for about 30 minutes, and then stir them. If they aren’t as toasty as you like, let them go a bit longer until they reach your desired toastiness.
  • Let them cool a bit before enjoying. Store leftovers in an airtight container.

These were tasty, and honestly, I think I might like warm crackers now. I loved how easy these were to customize, and if you’re more of a Cheese Nips or Goldfish person, I think this would work great for those, too.

I was glad I showed restraint and made a slightly smaller batch for Joey and I to share alongside some amazing chicken thighs he made on his smoker along with my crackers, because we would have polished off as many as I made, regardless of the amount.

And hanging out with Joey and chatting while eating some Cheez-its brought me back to all those times my sister and I shared a box in the backseat in between driving each other crazy. Thank goodness for frugal road-trip snacks.

This piece first appeared in print on Oct. 5, 2023.

Spice Up Your Life is a weekly newspaper column written by Lindsey Young in south central Kansas. If you are interested in sponsoring this column, please contact us through the “Contact Lindsey” link at the top of the page.

Categories
Appetizer Main Dish Side Dish Snack

Kick football season off with a bang by making shotgun shells

These smoked shotgun shells are made with seasoned sausage stuffed into manicotti shells and wrapped in bacon. They are a fantastic dish for a football snack table.

As soon as the weekly forecast came out, telling us that the opening weekend of football would be perfect for spending some time outside, Joey announced we were going to invite some folks to watch the games and throw some food on the smoker.

Of course, I had to stick my nose in and announce to him that I already found the perfect recipe to try, and being completely used to me regularly doing this to him, he immediately agreed—even though the name caught him off guard for a second.

I wanted to make shotgun shells.

The recipe is actually aptly named, considering it consists of stuffed manicotti shells. I suppose it sounds a little more macho than calling them stuffed tubes.

Also, I know I have given you a couple smoker recipes of late, but these can also easily be made in your oven or on a normal grill (as long as you watch your temperature).

This comes from the website “Or Whatever You Do” by Nicole Johnson. You can find the original post at https://www.orwhateveryoudo.com/2022/05/traeger-smoked-shotgun-shells.html. I added garlic and extra spices to my version and used sausage instead of ground beef.

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Smoked Shotgun Shells

These smoked shotgun shells are made with seasoned sausage stuffed into manicotti shells and wrapped in bacon. They are a fantastic dish for a football snack table.
Course Appetizer, Main Course, Side Dish
Keyword bacon, barbecue rub, barbecue sauce, barrel smoker, Big Green Egg, football snack, garlic, ground sausage, Kamado Joe, manicotti, shredded cheese, smoker, Traeger

Ingredients

  • 1 pound sausage
  • 1 cup shredded cheese I used Mexican blend
  • 2-3 tablespoons barbecue seasoning
  • 4 to 6 cloves garlic minced
  • 12 manicotti shells uncooked
  • 12 slices bacon not thick sliced
  • about 1/4 cup barbecue sauce

Instructions

  • At least six hours before you want to start cooking, prepare your shotgun shells.
  • In a large bowl, mix the sausage with the cheese, seasoning and garlic. Once it is well combined, stuff each manicotti shell with the sausage and wrap each one with a strip of bacon.
  • Place the assembled shells in an airtight container or on a plate wrapped in plastic wrap and refrigerate for six hours or overnight.
  • To cook them, preheat your smoker or oven to 250 degrees. Place the shells about an inch apart on the grill and let them cook with the lid closed for at least one hour before opening to check the temperature (you’re looking for 160 degrees for done sausage) and turning them on the grill to make sure they cook evenly.
  • Just before the shells are finished cooking (ours took about one and one-half hours), baste them with barbecue sauce on all sides.
  • Once the sausage in the center of the shells is cooked through and the bacon is crispy, remove them from the grill and serve.

These were absolutely fabulous. We didn’t have a single shotgun shell left by the time Sunday Night Football came on TV—and I made a double batch. It was absolutely perfect, both for lunch and for snacking during the later afternoon games.

And in case you’re wondering, yes, the manicotti cooked all the way through on the smoker. Joey and I were both really skeptical and almost par-boiled the shells just in case, but I decided to trust the process, and they were perfectly al dente by the time the sausage and bacon was done. It was a strange sort of magic that I don’t understand but definitely appreciate.

Hopefully we’ll have a few more weekends of dragging our TV outdoors for football and enjoying good food with good people in our backyard. But even if winter comes quickly and drives us indoors, I think shotgun shells will remain a regular on the menu.

This piece first appeared in print on Sept. 15, 2022.

Spice Up Your Life is a weekly newspaper column written by Lindsey Young in south central Kansas. If you are interested in sponsoring this column, please contact us through the “Contact Lindsey” link at the top of the page.

Categories
Appetizer Breakfast Main Dish

You have ‘Scotch’ to try these tasty smoked eggs

This twist on Scotch eggs is made on a smoker, using barbecue seasonings and sauce and wrapped in bacon. They can also be baked in an oven.

Just as French fries are from Belgium and Hawaiian pizza was invented in Canada, Scotch eggs are actually a British creation.

Traditionally, a Scotch egg is “a shelled hard-boiled egg that is wrapped in sausage, covered in breadcrumbs, and then deep-fried or baked until crispy,” according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

They’re often served cold in pubs, but in the U.S., people most often serve them hot instead.

Joey has been hinting—strongly—for a few weeks that he would really like to try making Scotch eggs on his smoker, so on a recent day when the heat lifted for a bit, we finally decided to give them a try.

I will tell you that these are not traditional—they lack the breadcrumbs, have barbecue flavors, and we added bacon to ours, too. But they were very, very good.

This comes from Susie Bulloch at the blog “Hey Grill Hey.” You can find the original post at https://heygrillhey.com/smoked-scotch-eggs/. I added bacon to my version.

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Smoked Scotch Eggs

This twist on Scotch eggs is made on a smoker, using barbecue seasonings and sauce and wrapped in bacon.They can also be baked in an oven.
Course Main Course
Cuisine British
Keyword bacon, barbecue rub, barbecue sauce, barrel smoker, Big Green Egg, breakfast sausage, ceramic grill, hard-boiled egg, Kamado Joe, Scotch egg, smoker

Ingredients

  • 6 eggs
  • 1 pound ground breakfast sausage
  • 1-2 tablespoons sweet barbecue rub
  • 12 slices bacon
  • 1/4 to 1/2 cup barbecue sauce

Instructions

  • Preheat your smoker or oven to 225 degrees. (Use a lighter flavored wood; we used pecan in ours.)
  • Place the eggs in a saucepan large enough for them all to fit in a single layer and fill with cold water until they are all just covered.
  • Place the saucepan on the stove over high heat. Once the water boils, turn off the heat (leave the pan on the burner), cover with a lid, and let the eggs sit for five minutes. Meanwhile, prepare a large bowl by filling it with ice and cold water. Carefully remove the eggs from the pan with a slotted spoon and submerge them in the cold water for another five minutes before peeling them. Set them aside.
  • Divide the pound of sausage into six even balls.
  • To assemble, flatten one of the balls of sausage into a disc in your palm. Carefully place the egg in the center and then wrap the sausage evenly around the egg, making sure it is completely covered. Sprinkle a healthy amount of barbecue rub onto the sausage-wrapped egg, and then finish off by wrapping two slices of bacon around it. Set the finished Scotch egg aside and repeat to complete all six eggs.
  • Place the eggs in the refrigerator until the smoker/oven is ready. When ready, place the eggs onto the grates of your smoker or on a aluminum-foil-lined baking sheet in your oven. Let the eggs cook for about one hour, turning them at least once during the cook time to let them evenly crisp. (They’re done when the sausage reaches 160 degrees.)
  • During the last 10 minutes, glaze the eggs with the barbecue sauce.
  • Serve with additional barbecue sauce or along with breakfast fixin’s.

These turned out great. They’re extremely filling, because they’re packed with a ton of protein between the eggs, sausage and bacon. We did try them both with and without the barbecue sauce, and I recommend using it. The glaze was really nice and added a great flavor to the eggs.

Also, these did reheat OK from the fridge later in the week, but they were much better fresh off the smoker. You could also accomplish these in your oven, although you’ll really be missing out if they don’t have that smoked flavor.

I’m not sure the Brits would approve of this Americanized version of Scotch eggs, but I’m not going to lose sleep over it. I figure we stopped paying attention to British judgement a long time ago.

This piece first appeared in print on Sept. 1, 2022.

Spice Up Your Life is a weekly newspaper column written by Lindsey Young in south central Kansas. If you are interested in sponsoring this column, please contact us through the “Contact Lindsey” link at the top of the page.

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