Chicken Chorizo Patty Melts

Damn, you's a sexy dish... a sexy dish...
Click here for the recipe

I love that David Guetta song, it really tells a story.  Girl walks in, whole room is in awe, and he's over here in the corner working his hardest to come up with a pickup line that, in his own words, won't be "disrespectful."  Ultimately, he lands on "Damn you is a sexy bitch."  I think we can all agree he nailed it.  

Anyway, there are a lot of nasty rumors floating around that I’ve gone full Guetta and have enslaved my girlfriend, taken her shoes, and locked her in the kitchen (she likes it there, I swear!).  So it only seems fair that every once in a while I step up, cook one for the team, and allow myself to be critiqued.  I decided I’d get my turn in the rotation out of the way early and posted up in the kitchen with a bottle of wine, some raw meat, and cooking gear that was not up to the task. 

Hidden behind this bottle is
my roommate's neti pot that's
been in the kitchen for six
months.  Disgusting is in the
eye of the beholder, I guess.

On the surface, a chicken-chorizo patty melt sounds like the perfect American dish to celebrate Cinco de Mayo.  I’m pretty sure Mexico has chickens… and chorizo, duh.  But in reading and reviewing the recipe I knew I was in for a nightmarish time due to, well, my general culinary retardation.  I mean, I didn’t make it this far in life without knowing how to pour milk on cereal, follow basic recipes, or at least knowing where the closest taco bell is (literally 2 minutes from my apartment and a perfect backup plan in case this all goes horribly sideways); but there are some things that I just lack the experience and bravery to cope with.  A small example:  I made brownies a couple months ago and didn’t pre-treat the dish I baked them in.  As a result, they stuck to the pan with such ferocity that only half of the brownies were actually consumed.  If not for the girlfriend, who has a weird disease that makes her LOVE to clean, I probably would have just thrown the dish in the trash with the brownies.  It was that bad. 

So when I looked at this recipe and saw “gently and thoroughly combine ingredients by hand” I couldn’t even get my brain around to the myriad of sex jokes that should be involved, because all I could really see was RAW MEAT.  Surprising considering I just butchered two turkeys three weeks ago, but I hate touching raw meat.  I don’t know if it’s because of all the salmonella horror stories I heard growing up, or because I worked at a grocery store and every time chicken went on sale the entire register would become coated in a half frozen slime that consisted of blood and juice, but either way I’m just not a fan.  So, the wine was definitely a necessity. 

Sure, I butchered this with a hatchet
and a hunting knife, but it was still gross.

Anyway, I get to the part where I’m supposed to mince the garlic and curse at myself.  Two

weeks ago, I very clearly stated that you should buy your minceables preminced; now I’m staring down the microplaner having ‘Nam-like flashbacks to the horrific sounds the girlfriend was making week 1.  MOTHER FUCKER.  Well, no worries.  It turns out I lack the finger dexterity to actually mince garlic, as whole chunks of it keep slipping out of my hands.  At this point I feel like I’m in one of those shitty infomercials where a person can’t eat potato chips without dousing themselves with gasoline and spontaneously combusting.  “There has to be a better way!”

There is!  The girlfriend did it for me.  I highly recommend forming some sort of partnership with someone who likes to mince for you.  So convenient! 

Sadly, this ineptitude combined with the wine is how we ended up with a zero in chef’s execution.  As I dumped the perfect pound of ground chicken into the mixing bowl, I eye-balled the chorizo grumpily.  I needed 6 ounces to every pound of chicken.  What I had was 1.26 pounds of chorizo.  I’m fairly certain (I never did check) that a pound is 16 ounces, and so 1.26 pounds is like, 20 ounces.  So I needed about 1/3 of the chorizo I had.  But then I thought, “It certainly can’t hurt to have more chorizo than called for, right?”  So my ratio actually ended up being about 1 pound to 10 ounces of chorizo.  I slammed my wine and poured another glass.  Then added the rest of the ingredients to the meat bowl.  Ugg, here we go.

In much the same way that I forgot to pre-treat the brownie pan with some sort of lubricant, I

Oh look, our first zero!

also failed to pretreat my own hands.  I hate raw meat, and now raw meat was sticking to me like crazy.  I could barely form it into patties and get it onto the plate.  Part time Chief Kitchen Safety Officer and Fulltime Girlfriend came into the kitchen laughing and sprayed my hands with some non-stick spray which left a disgusting, buttery coat on the outside of my patties.  It probably didn’t actually hurt anything, the patties tasted fine.  By the way, we’re done with half a bottle of wine in the first ten minutes of me being in the kitchen.  This is not going to end well.  Or begin well, for that matter.  I forgot to add the salt to the meat mix.  I think to myself, “that’s no big deal,” and press on.

Patties in the fridge, we get to the onions.  I hate onions.  I won’t tell you why here, just know it’s personal and maybe a little gross.  But I know my judge loves them, and sautéed onions are typically ok.  I get to work on chopping and cooking, and things are going pretty well to start.  Once I have everything chopped and sizzling, I pull the meat back out of the fridge and consider my next cooking question:

What the fuck really IS a griddle, and how is it tactically superior to a sauce pan when it comes to making patty melts?  In addition, why is a griddle so damn needy?  The instructions constantly call for wiping it down and brushing in oils.  I fail to see why this clingy, dramatic cooking utensil would add any value to my life whatsoever.  I mean, is this exclusively a southern thing? “Sun coming up, I got cakes on the griddle… Thank God I’m a country boy.”  Cause, I just use a sauce pan for my pancakes and that turned out just fine that one time I made pancakes Easter morning like 5 years ago. 

Chicken ain't nothing but a funny, funny riddle
who's answer is 160 degrees internal temp.

I guess my point is, I don’t own a griddle, and will be cooking my meat in a sauce pan.  Which should be fine.  Searing and cooking the patties actually goes quite well, but then we run into some legit issues.  I chose pita bread over the naan because the naan were so tiny I was afraid they wouldn’t work.  Turns out, the pita was just way too huge for the endeavor.  The patty took up about half of the actual space inside the pita, but this was our only option at this point, so we press on.  The onions are looking and smelling pretty solid at this point, as well, and everything is coming together just in time for the construction of sandwich number one.  I put it together and throw it on the stove to sear the bread and melt the cheese, and realize I probably have the heat too low on the sandwich, and need to turn the heat off on the onions before they burn. 

I turn back to the second patty and load it on the pita with the cheese and look back at the stove.  Between sips of my third glass of wine I wonder “Why the hell is the cheese not melting on the sandwich on the stove?  And wow, those onions must have been super hot, they’re still sizzling.”  The Chief Kitchen Safety Officer pokes in the kitchen to check on the tater tots and points out my culinary retardation.  I turned the onions up all the way, and turned the burner below the sandwich completely off.  It’s too late.  The sautéed onions are now burnt black and inedible.  I have brought shame to my family.  I discreetly attempt to jump off the balcony.  The Chief Kitchen Safety Officer saves me.  She’s always paying attention.  Jerk.

At least the sandwich that’s being judged got onions, and the rest of the cooking was fairly  straightforward after that… because I was out of things to screw up.

This is helpful for spicy food
and shitty club music...

Plating turned out nicely on this one, splitting the sandwich in half around some tater tot nachos, and posts a strong 4 out of 5.  I’m actually going to rate this one pretty decent in terms of prep difficulty, the fact that it came out edible despite my idiocy and drinking is pretty amazing and speaks volumes to the actual simplicity of the dish.  Definitely look for a bread product that is the size of normal sandwich bread, and don’t burn your onions and you’ll be fine.  Hell, no one would have even known I forgot the salt if I hadn’t admitted to it.  The girlfriend actually scored the dish a solid 3.5 out of 5 (which is better than anything she’s cooked, BOOM!).  She felt the recipe could have used an even larger ratio of chorizo to chicken, even though I overshot the recipe by a solid 66%.  The recipe recommends dipping your sandwich in ketchup, which is dumb, so we used a spicy ranch sauce instead and it was pretty wonderful. 

I will give you this warning, however.  Red wine and chorizo might be delicious in the mouth hole, but it’s a bad, bad combination on the stomach.  I had the worst acid reflux I’ve had in a long, long time; and that was after I took Zantac.  If your gut doesn’t do spicy or just isn’t into the super acidic, you might go easy on the chorizo for this one.  But if you’re trying to find a way to spice up a patty melt or a burger, mix in some chorizo for sure.

Anyway, despite the trauma of the experience, I was happy to feed my girlfriend for once, instead of the other way around.  It’s not like I haven’t cooked for her before, but I’ve never grabbed a recipe I’ve never tried and just went for it.  And while going for it left me drunk, frustrated, and up for a good chunk of the night with heartburn; I’m pretty excited for my next turn in the kitchen… sometime in 2019.