Hush Puppies & Grilled Cheese

Hush Puppies as an Alternative

These are a nice change to serve with Family Chili instead of Cornbread .
After having a he-child, I found out why they are called “Hush Puppies” and it has nothing to do with canines!  LOL  I don’t know where I got the recipe so many years ago, but our family has loved it for a long time.

Hush Puppies

1 3/4 C corn meal
1/4 C flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 small sweet onion, very finely chopped
1 C buttermilk
1 fresh farm egg, beaten

Heat your deep fryer oil to 375* in Deep Fryer.

Whisk together the dry ingredients in your favorite mixing bowl.
Carefully stir  the onion in.
In a separate bowl , mix the buttermilk and egg well.  Add to the dry ingredients, and mix thoroughly.  Remember that you can’t get rid of the lumps because of the onion.

Carefully, drop batter by spoonful into the hot oil.
When it floats, carefully turn each hush puppy over to finish cooking.
Drain on paper towels, then serve hot with real butter.

*I have found that we like them better with smaller spoons, perhaps about 2T of batter to be about the size of a walnut when done.

Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

Oddly enough, I have found that there are many ways to make Grilled Cheese Sandwiches.  Some are edible, while some are delicious!  Let me share with you how I prefer to make Grilled Cheese Sandwiches to go with Homemade Chili.

Quality food begins with quality ingredients, so you want a dense bread that gets nice & crispy on a cast iron  griddle. Sometimes I like to use Sourdough Bread.

Grilled Cheese sandwich, by definition, must have a good cheese.  Stop using that fake stuff that comes individually wrapped in a cool, plastic sleeve.  Instead, you want either American Cheese or Cheddar Cheese or Provolone Cheese.  Sometimes, you will want to use more than one. Sometimes, you will want Longhorn or Colby or Monterey Jack cheeses.

Then, of course, you want real butter. Real butter, whether salted or unsalted is the only choice to make.

Step One

Turn on the fire under your cast iron griddle to heat.  A hot griddle is essential for proper browning.

Next

Get out your ingredients … bread, cheese, butter … and a table knife with serving plates.  On my work surface, I like to place a long square of waxed paper, just for ease of clean-up.  Get two slices of bread.

If the bread is dense, butter the surfaces of the bread that will touch each other.  When the griddle is hot, place the two slices of bread butter-side-down on it.  While it is on the griddle, butter the top sides.  When it is browned, nice and crispy, flip over one slice of bread.  Quickly put two layers of the desired cheese on top, cover with the other browned slice, with the browned side against the cheese.

Notice what you have … the bread has grilled sides on the inside of the sandwich, against the cheese.  The outside of the sandwich has two buttered sides.  When the first side browns, flip it over and brown the last side.  Serve it hot next to a bowl of Chili or other Soup.

Second Option

If your bread is nothing special, just regular loaf bread, that’s fine.  You still want to have a hot cast iron griddle ready.

This time, just butter the outsides of your bread.  If you are making sandwiches for a crowd, you can stack them with buttered sides together.  When it is time to cook them, you can easily separate the slices, place one piece buttered-side down, put your two slices of cheese on top, and then add the final slice of bread with buttered-side up.

Brown it as desired and flip gently to brown the second side.  Serve hot with a bowl of chili or whatever else you like with a grilled cheese sandwich!