Earl Eats Pork Belly Tacos at Taqueria27 - A Review & Update

Very recently I had the opportunity of joining Capt. Len (of BBQ fame), at a place totally different from the food truck scene, for some Mexican fare. On my first visit here, I tried their Duck Confit Tacos. This time I was looking for something a bit different from my first review/experience at Taqueria27. They offer classic Mexican dishes along with some re-imagined street food in what they call a "casual yet upscale environment". It was exactly as advertised! Everyone on the staff was polite, engaging and SMILING...even though we were in a bit of a hurry, and we let them know it. When I got the menu, I was drawn to a taco I had never heard of, designated simply by the alphabetic abbreviation "P.B.L.T.A." This reminded me of what my wife (a.k.a. "Turkey") refer to as "BLAT", or a B.L.T. with Avocado added, so I read on. 

What their taco offered was different. Rather than bacon, it was made of PORK BELLY. For the un-initiated, pork belly is a "boneless cut of fatty meat from the belly of a pig, considered a delicacy in many parts of the world", and it is a darling of the foodies and food-TV. It comes from the uncured, un-smoked and un-sliced belly of the pig, and is a bit fattier than bacon. To this they added lettuce, tomato and one of my favorites, avocado. In essence, this was our "BLAT" substituting a tortilla for bread and the father of bacon (pork belly) for bacon.

This was my best tasting experience yet. Everything was flavorful and seasoned just right. Two tacos were served with the order, and the only thing I would change is I wanted more, even though these were stuffed full of goodness. If you live in the Salt Lake Valley, go to this place! Taqueria27 is locally owned by a husband and wife team. They now have 5 locations in the greater Salt Lake City area. I recommend you try them. There are so many good choices, both classic and more modern, and I doubt you will go away hungry OR disappointed.

By the numbers:
Service ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Food ⭐⭐⭐
Price 💲💲
As you can see, the service and food are high and the price is low. A good value! Thanks again Capt. Len!

Smoked Brisket With Chive & Bacon Mashed Potatoes

Few things say "comfort food" like Barbecue, but another thing that does is Mashed Potatoes. For dinner tonight, I thought I would combine them into one quick and easy dinner for the two of us.

I had on hand some of Capt. Len's smoked brisket, some of the best you'll find. I prepared a batch of mashed potatoes with applewood smoked bacon chunks, then added homegrown chives, from my wife's (a.k.a.: "Turkey's") garden, to the potatoes. I then added thickly sliced brisket on top and drizzled a bit of my own Au Jus over the top of everything. I grew up eating and loving Sunday dinners with roast beef cooked low and slow, and this added the smoky deliciousness I never had growing up.

If this post sounds familiar, I did something similar a few months back, and loved it then and love it now. Comfort foods like these never get old, so go buy yourself some smoked brisket and bring back memories...or make some new ones!


My Quick Au Jus Recipe
Ingredients:
2 tsp. Beef Broth base (or bouillon).
1 cup water
¼ tsp. garlic powder (granulated garlic)
¼ tsp. onion powder
1 tsp. Worcestershire Sauce (soy sauce an be substituted here)
Salt & fresh cracked pepper to taste

Steps:

• Boil water.
• Add beef base to boiling water and stir until dissolved. Reduce heat to low.
• Add remaining ingredients dissolving completely.
• If a thicker Au Jus is desired, increase heat to medium and reduce until you get what you want.

Uses: 
Drizzle over any beef. Great for French Dip sandwiches. You can make extra and freeze for later!

—This would also be great made with beef bone broth or canned beef broth, substituting the water and beef base with the broth!

Earl Eats Popeye's $5 Boneless Wing Bash - A Review

There are no Popeye's near us, so this was more of an impromptu decision while shopping in a store near this one. I will start off by saying neither my wife (a.k.a. "Turkey") nor I have liked our previous visits. Why then did I decide to eat there? Beside being hungry, I saw the word WINGS. I like wings better than any other chicken piece. Then I saw that it was a $5 BASH and I felt I needed wings...WAIT! What's that small print? BONELESS? I don't know if you know this, but WINGS HAVE BONES! PERIOD! Restaurants who try to sell you these are not delicately removing the delicious meat from the bone for your enjoyment, they are selling some other part of the chicken and renaming it. It is false adverting. If I gave you thighs and called them breasts you would SCREAM! So this is me screaming. Meanwhile, I was now HANGRY and decided to carry on.

This is what I mean. Let's analyze their ad. 

• First: It wasn't $5! Including tax, it was almost $7, and no, I didn't supersize anything.
• Second: IT WASN'T WINGS! Boneless or otherwise. It wasn't even wing-like. THESE ARE NUGGETS, pure and simple. Pictured here they look big. They aren't.
• Lastly: How can it be a BASH when it costs more and isn't what is advertised?

 My photo on the left shows exactly what my to-go looked like as I opened it in my car. I substituted mashed potatoes for fries and they were about what KFC offers these days. The biscuit was quite flat, like it hadn't risen enough. The one nice surprise was their honey mustard dipping sauce which was unlike any I had tried, but hey, this should be about the chicken, right? The chicken was okay, but no better than Wendy's or McDonald's. So this $3 or  $4 dollar meal cost me $7! If you want wings go to Wingers or Buffalo Wild Wings or your favorite wing place. If you want value, this is not the place either. I am still looking for the reasons people go here at all!

By The Numbers
Food ⭐ (nothing special and the ad misrepresented the product)
Price 💲💲💲 (not as advertised and pricey for what you get)
Service ⭐⭐ (it was drive-up...but it was lunch hour and I got my food rather quickly)
Value 👎👎

Earl Cooks Fresh Peach Cobbler

We love fresh fruit! On this day I was lucky enough to get a bunch of freestone peaches from our neighbors of almost 30 years who have just decided to move. They have generously shared their harvests of peaches and cherries with us over the years, so much so that we often have a difficult time eating everything they bring before it turns BAD. Determined to not let that happen to these lovelies, the last batch we will be getting from them, I set my mind to eat half and create something with the other. I knew I had something in the pantry to help me decide...Krusteaz Cobbler Topping Mix. I bought this box to both try and review it some time ago, but didn't have fresh fruit. Everything was coming together now, though.

I understand that some of you are saying "why use a mix, cobbler topping is not difficult," and you would be right, but remember, I am somewhat baking-impaired, and will look for help where I can. Krusteaz products are usually quite good and often quite excellent, so for those of us that need a bit of assistance when it comes to baking, this recipe/review is for you. For those who want to make their own, I will list the cobbler recipe, which is from the Krusteaz box.

Shown right are my ingredients on my trusty bamboo cutting board. I was a bit worried that I wouldn't have enough peaches left after eating our fill, but there were plenty. The ingredients are:

• Peaches (4 cups)
• Butter (6 Tbls)
• Sugar (3 Tbls)
• 1 large egg
• Cornstarch (2 tsp)

The steps are:

1. Heat oven to 350℉ and lightly grease an 8x8x2-inch baking pan.
2. Place the full pouch of cobbler topping in a medium sized bowl, add the egg and stir with fork until well combined.
3. After slicing the peaches, add sugar and cornstarch to peaches and mix gently. No need to
   
   remove the skin on these peaches because as it cooks, they become part of the dish. Add the peaches to the greased baking dish.
4. Evenly sprinkle the prepared cobbler topping (step 2). Drizzle melted butter evenly over topping.
5. Place in preheated oven for 40-45 minutes (I chose the longer time to make the topping even more crisp, but check yours after 40 miutes. Ovens vary greatly. Serve WARM topped with Ice Cream. We chose to use Red Button Creameries Harvest Peach and it was marvelous!

Result and Conclusions:
This was delicious! The topping tasted homemade, the peaches were marvelous and the ice cream...what can I say except that is tasted even better than it looks! Not only will I buy the mix again, I bought some the next trip to the grocery store!

This is the cobbler recipe from the box

This is the ice cream we used

Earl Eats McDonald's® Buttermilk Crispy Chicken Strips - A Review

For  some time now McDonald's has been touting their newest chicken addition - Buttermilk Crispy Chicken Tenders. This is not a comparative review, although I will make a few in the CONCLUSION section at the end. I normally would start off talking about the service, but this is McDonald's and they have worked hard to be the same from McDonald's to McDonald's, so nothing to report here, except to say that to my surprise, they took a long time to get my order out, which is a good thing! It meant my food was freshly cooked, which is especially important for crispy chicken.

I ordered a 4 piece to-go from inside the restaurant to watch the process a bit, and to see how really hot they would be, once delivered and taken to my car, where I ate them. I had determined ahead of time that I would not eat them with their dipping sauces, because I wanted the flavors of the chicken to stand on their own. How did they fare?
—They were VERY hot when I got them and remained so even on a rather long trek to my car.
—They were CRISPY as advertised. This is from their seasoned coating which I thought was unremarkable in flavor.
—The meat was not DRY nor was it MOIST. It was about what I have come to expect from McDonald's chicken.

RESULTS & CONCLUSIONS
This is better than their previous chicken strips! It was not the best fast food chicken strip available. For that, Chick-Fil-A is a clear winner but I don't go to burger-centric  restaurants for chicken. If you want fast food chicken, and don't have a Chick-Fil-A nearby, this will work okay, and is better than nuggets any day!

Earl Eats Duck Confit Tacos at Taqueria27 - A Review

Very recently I had the opportunity of joining Capt. Len (of BBQ fame), at a place totally different from the food truck scene for some Mexican fare. We were looking for something quiet, cool (temperature), and totally different. We found it at a place called Taqueria27. They offer classic Mexican dishes along with some re-imagined street food in what they call a "casual yet upscale environment". It was exactly as advertised! The first thing I noticed was the service...everyone was polite, engaging and SMILING...a great way to start! The interior was warm and inviting in a minimalist way and did not scream "in the style of Mexico or Latin America" as national chains often do, which was nice.

Having lived in Mexico in the mid 70s, I take a critical eye to most "Mexican Style" restaurants offerings. When I got the menu, I was pleasantly surprised! They offered some real classics as well as more modern "foodie" options! One of the darlings of the food reality shows these days is DUCK and one of the more popular duck options is "duck confit", which is basically seasoned duck meat cooked at a low temperature. I have eaten duck, though not often. Taqueria27 offers a Duck Confit Taco—succulent duck with fire roasted veggies, chipotle crema and crispy leeks! Since I had never had a DUCK taco and I love leeks, how could I go wrong!

The order included 2 tacos for just six and a half bucks ($6.50). They were bright and light and had everything advertised. The taste was very good, with one exception...the crispy leeks! They were not crispy and were tough. Because of that, they were an interference rather than an enhancement to the tacos. Once I got around the leeks, everything was good. My dining buddy, Capt. Len, had their "Brent" taco which is flame grilled chile marinated Angus beef in flour tortillas with shredded cheese & salsa crudo on the side. It was equally good and a bit more traditional. We also tried the "Tortilla Chips & Cheese" which were good and they make their own chips!

Taqueria27 is locally owned by a husband and wife team. They now have 5 locations in the greater Salt Lake City area. I recommend you try them. There are so many good choices, both classic and more modern, and I doubt you will go away hungry OR disappointed.

By the numbers:
Service ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Food ⭐⭐⭐
Price 💲💲
As you can see, the service and food are High and the price is low. A good value! Thanks Len!

Earl works with Capt. Len - My Food Truck Foray UPDATE

UPDATE!
Since my first time working with Capt. Len on his BBQ Food Truck, I have worked several more times, mostly on a Friday or Saturday night, but I have also done company parties and one gathering dedicated to Dog Owners. Working on a food truck  is much better than I anticipated, mostly because of the great customers! I had always understood that hungry people are hard to deal with, but that is not at all the case. Granted, I spend most of my time getting their food ready, but I have met older people, kids and even out of towners...WAY out of town, like Stockholm, Sweden!

The food truck community is a close knit group, not cut-throat businesses at all, really. Most Food Truckers want to try, and indeed request, food from the competition in exchange for their own. Many share space in a common prep area, and do so on an honor system of sorts. It is literally a "league of their own".  It is a business, with all of the challenges, but to me it is more like how it should be in business. Good people serving good products to happy customers!
 ⸺⸺⸺⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸺⸺⸺⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻
 (original article starts here)
Until now, I was the only member of my family that HADN'T worked in a restaurant environment.
But I ran into a longtime friend (longer than both of us care to admit), who was busy stocking his NEW food truck. He asked if I would like to help him, (I think half kidding), and I thought that it would be a great experience and said yes! His name is Capt. Len, and he abandoned his legal training to do what he loves and is very good at, winning competitions and awards. I have posted about his smoked pork and how delicious it is previously, and I even helped him sling baked beans at our class reunion last fall, but tonight I get the full experience. It is the longest day of the year and I am going to work in a small kitchen, in the hot evening. I think it will be great!

Let me be clear about 2 things. Len is the one who is really responsible for the cooking/smoking. My job was to make sure it got assembled properly and delivered to the customer as ordered. For my first time in the kitchen, they didn't really even let me handle a knife...but I did get cool blue gloves!

The second thing is this is not a food TRUCK. Rather, it is a TRAILER. And it is decked out with most everything one could want in a commercial kitchen on wheels, including a smoker! Len has developed his rubs and sauces over many years to give the best results possible, and that care and attention shows, or rather tastes. I find smoked food almost hypnotic in the way it attracts me to the source.

Ribs & Beans & Len's Sauce
Before & after I finished mine

The ribs are my personal favorite with the pulled pork a close second, but we got very good compliments on the brisket, so it really does hit the spot with everyone. I brought my wife some ribs following my little adventure and fortunately, she left me a little too!

I prefer mine with no sauce, but his sauce is a favorite and a special recipe he has developed for years.

Well, I have now worked in a professional kitchen. It was fun, funny, busy, hot and informative.  I will be doing it again soon. Thanks Len!