Traeger Kitchen Live #27- Game Day Dips with Amanda Haas

audio is on Hi everyone, I'm Amanda Haas, welcome back to my backyard if you've been watching these Trager Lives. I'm so excited to be back with you today. We are doing one of my favorite topics and everything will be covered. on

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day, but if you don't know me, I'm a cookbook author and recipe developer and of course a member of the Trager Pro team and that came about because I was culinary director at William Sonoma for about seven years and they introduced me to my first broughter grill when I was there and I asked to try it and see what I thought of it and I automatically fell in love with it and the rest is history so you know a lot of us are known for great barbecue or cooking wild

game

on our triggers and a I just like to tell people that I cook everything, so I tend to cook healthier and a lot of my cookbooks tend to be about healthier foods that make you feel great, but today we're leaning towards game in an important way. and we are going to have a great time, so today I am going to prepare three recipes for us, but we are going to beat them.

I'm making a taco sauce in a skillet that's basically like tacos that you can turn into nachos and scoop out. With stuff perfect for game day, I'm also making my version of French onion dip and once you try it, I promise you'll never go back to the packaged stuff. Roasting your onions in your tumbager makes all the difference in the world and it's so easy and lastly we're going to make a spinach artichoke dip that's just a super classic, cheesy, gooey treat. The best part is that all three can be prepared ahead of time, so when you're ready to start the game, you can throw them in the Trager, throw them in the trigger to warm them up, or wait and train them all day, so I'm really excited to start with you, but before I do I mentioned game day and that we're doing a ton of fun things with Traeger over the next few weeks around game day, so if you haven't seen it all on Instagram and Facebook, check it out in the feed Traeger, but I'm so excited to be doing a giveaway with all of you today and it's to support one of my favorite organizations since it's Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

We're teaming up with our friends at b4bc, which is an amazing organization that supports women going through different phases of breast cancer and I was lucky enough to work with last year and we're going to be cooking for this group of amazing women, so, What are we going to give away? We're giving away 10 lucky winners with those awesome Trager flags you've seen and then there's a special t-shirt that's been developed for this month. in partnership with b4bc made by the amazing artist hannah eddy and we're giving away 10 of them too and you all know that every time we release something like a small amount, in no time they become hot cakes as we say, so, um, I you will be Good luck and you'll get a version of that shirt which is cool so to try to win you have to listen very carefully to what I'm doing today because I have a trivia question at the end and it's not easy so we'll see how it goes well so who pays attention while I cook as always, if you have questions on the go, you can ask them, write them on Facebook and our social media team will tell me and I will be trying to answer as many as I can while I cook.

If I can't reach you during the Facebook Live, I can certainly try to answer some at the end and we always try to get back to you with important questions afterwards. You are also welcome. Welcome to text me at Amanda Haas Cooks on Instagram if she has any cooking questions. I really try to answer everyone, so let's start with this taco skillet and skillet sauce, we call it. I wanted to call it skillet sauce for tacos and nachos. a bite, but I started already taking the first steps on the grill so we could move forward, so let me show you what it looks like, so I started by browning some red onion and some ground beef from snake ripper farms, which I do not do.

I don't know if you know this too, I think we have a discount if you want to buy meat from Snake River Farms right now. I think they have a 15 percent discount on anything over 99, which is amazing, such high quality meat that they're producing and us. We're big fans of their products, so thank you Snake River for this, but all I did was sauté some red onion and then added two pounds of ground beef. I like to do this in a big way because I usually feed a crowd and on game day there are a lot of teenagers living in my house and it has been one of the only joys we have left and a fun way to get my kids excited about doing something, since that there is very little we can do in the world right now.

They both play fantasy football like crazy and have their group of friends allowed to watch and that's why I do this a lot. This is my only way to entertain them and what I love about all of these

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is that they are much easier to make than when you. I'm trying to do something on the spot. I made wings the other day and I made 150 wings and yes I have a lot of triggers but they were gone in five minutes it was so funny so with these funds I hope they at least last. a little longer and serves a bigger crowd, so one of the best things about this recipe is that you do this step and then add everything else at once and let it cook, so I have fire roasted tomatoes , which I think really enhances. the flavor of everything we're doing here and first of all, it's like cooking them in aTrager to get a little bit more of a smoky flavor, which I really like and like I said, I'm making this recipe for a There's a big crowd. , so I'm making two 215-ounce cans of fire-roasted tomatoes and then laughing because there's a bee here.

I've already been bitten once this week. Let's not just say. That's right, let's call it good luck if I get itchy again, but I'm just saying it's not going to happen, so now I have some of those green chiles hatched, just very mild chiles that I'm adding if you want. that you can add them, it's not necessary, but I really enjoy them and we're going to mix them and then we have black beans, now you can use any type of beans that you like, these are canned and it may have a little bit of salt, not a lot, and I like to take them out of the can, rinse them and drain them to remove all the extra starch and get back to the beans, you know, so that's two 15 ounce ones. cans of black beans too, so already cooked, rinsed and drained, we're just going to pour them in nice and easy and remember if you have questions for me, you can ask them and I'll try to get back to all of you, okay?

So here's the interesting ingredient that we don't use much in the tumbar and that's why I wanted to show you: We're going to cook rice here and the beauty of this recipe is that not only is it like a dip, but it's a one-pot dinner when you make it. you want and just wait until you see what I'm going to serve with it to take it out, so I'm just going to sprinkle the rice on and we're going to need some. a little more liquid and now there are two bees, they are really playing with fire, isn't that a pun?

So I'm going to take them out and add a cup of water. I'm going to load this pan, but the best thing is that once it's cooked well, it reaches the top and we're going to add the cheese at the end. It's going to be incredible. Do you think I can keep a straight face if I get stung by a bee and not curse like I did the other day. I was alone on a nature trail and I screamed at the top of my lungs and started laughing really hard because if anyone had heard me, I would have died.

Okay, I'm just going to Get some aluminum foil to cover this and another thing I want to do is we already put taco seasoning on it with the ground beef and onion and I just buy taco seasoning. This one is just organic, I buy it in the southwest. taco seasoning mix I really like it's pretty mild so it has a really nice chili flavor but it's not spicy but you can use whatever you want and I just use a packet of this so you know it's available anywhere market, whatever it may be. what you like is great, but I'm just giving it an extra touch of seasoning before I put the foil on it because of course the thing with rice is you need to have a tight lid or foil to make sure it It is steamed and cooked well. well, and you don't want it to get buried in the other ingredients, okay, let me understand, I'm trying to hide all my good food from the bees, but they don't care, so I have two sheets of aluminum foil, obviously you want .

You have to be careful because the pan is hot but you have to wrap it very well so that the steam does not escape and then we are going to cook it for about 25 to 30 minutes like this and the beauty of this recipe is that if I wanted to cook it completely like this and remove it , you can let it sit all day half a day and then put cheese on at the end and you have a great recipe for everyone to enjoy during the games, so while I put this in, I'm going to remove another ingredient from the next recipe, we'll do it, okay, it looks like We have a question and I will answer it as soon as I leave it and share it with you.

They are caramelized onions for the French onion sauce. I was talking about what our first question is. Have you ever used fresh tomatoes in this recipe? Oh, do I ever use fresh tomatoes in that recipe? You absolutely could and if you grow them amazingly if you wanted to roast them. or even put a little smoke on them, right? You could do that first. I would probably remove the skin, though only because you don't want them all like you don't want the skin to break off on the other bites or Don't just make what you like, but fresh tomatoes.

Incredible, there is nothing better than a good fresh tomato, so you can try it. Any other questions right now. What type of rice are you using? Did I use basmati? basmati rice and you can use it, I just make any grain rice that cooks in about 15 to 20 minutes, you know, some of them take longer. Brown rice tends to take a little longer, so I'm going to speed this up in this case. we can all enjoy it quickly and like I said it transfers into a great weeknight meal so when I'm in a hurry and don't have much time to cook it's perfect for that I want to show you these onions because they are so beautiful and caramelized they were three pounds of onions, which is about 10 cups when I cut them up and actually made them in a food processor.

You can do it by hand, it's hard work, but I like to thin them a lot because they cook faster and then they melt, melt, melt, melt into the sauce, so I don't want to use them right away, they need to cool a little , so let me put them in a bowl to cool and then move on to the spinach and artichoke dip, look how complicated we are, we're doing it all at once, it's all a matter of time, oh my goodness, but they smell amazing , it's so annoying with kovid that I can't share this food with people who aren't.

It's not in my small circle, but those who are in it are very lucky. This is like I could eat it all by myself. Alright, so let's put this out of the way and I think we just need a few ingredients here I'll be right back because I'm going to come out right now let's move them around and show you a couple more tricks we have another question sure absolutely oh which one It's the temperature of my Trager and, by the way, I'm cooking on an 885 iron wood griddle that I've been using our entire life and, frankly, I use it probably 90 percent of the time and I'm cooking at 350, but I I'm so glad you said that because I'm going to turn it up to 400 and I tested these recipes between 350 and 400 and I found that most of them did very well at 400 degrees and I know that sounds great if you're used to cooking at medium heat. , medium high, but when you have to open the lid of the Trager and things fall out, I think things work very well at a higher temperature, so all of these sauces can be made at 400 degrees, okay, let's keep it simple and even It's really good, okay, let me get my other ingredients.

Any other questions while I get this out, what's your favorite sauce to bring to a party? oh, what's my favorite sauce to bring to a party? That's a great question because I love bringing sauces to parties because then you don't have to do any work while you're there, right? and you can just enjoy it with your friends so I love it I love this French onion one because people can't believe how simple it is when I show you what's in it you'll say that's all it takes but I also love it , I made a riff on this spinach artichoke dip and it has goat cheddar cheese in it, which may sound a little strange, it's so delicious and it's a healthier version of what I'm making today, but people are always impressed by the flavor.

It has a lot of spinach, it has goat cheddar cheese and less of the fatty ingredients that we are going to use today, so I like it because people are always pleasantly surprised by how delicious it is, okay, let's get our ingredients out. for the artichoke dip, okay, honestly, this is the other thing I love about the three recipes I'm making is that they're so simple.and cooking doesn't have to be difficult or have a ton of ingredients to taste good, so it's really important to me that people learn that it doesn't have to take a lot of time, it doesn't have to cost a lot of money and it's not necessary be like a crazy, expert cook who uses a million ingredients to make wonderful food, okay, so I've got this, I've got that, let me get all the cheeses we need, this is so good, you'll just have our spinach and artichokes, garlic , and I think that's it, we have another bowl for the cheese that we are We'll just mix it into this, no, here we go, let's go, let's go, okay, so what do we have here?

The recipe calls for room temperature cream cheese and a little bit of mayonnaise, I think half a cup of mayonnaise and a stick of cream cheese. What I'm not saying is that this cream cheese needs to be very smooth, otherwise if you try to mix it by hand, it's very hard to do, it doesn't come together and it's lumpy, so yesterday I realized that if you have a stand mixer or a Use it with a food processor, just combine those first two ingredients and blend them really quickly and then you can store it in the refrigerator like that, but if you have the patience to make sure you soften it first, it's great because then the cream cheese and the Mayo. they can come together at room temperature very easily for you, okay, so it's just those two things combined and this is where it's going to get really delicious.

I have four types of cheeses, I have fontina provolone asiago and parmesan and I'm going to make about half of them. a cup of each, I'm just going to put them all in a big bowl, but after we mix them together we're going to reserve a little bit for the top to cover this, which I basically tried to sneak into my Last night I had my refrigerator and I ate the first batch of this that I did. I literally had to slap my hand and walk away. It's the problem with loving your job. It never feels like work so I mentioned that we do a lot of game days and it was really fun because when we talked about doing this thing with Trager, I made a bunch of these things for my kids and their friends to try and the sauce for skillet tacos was a big hit, couldn't try this one, I think I'm going to have to make another batch to share with people because it's so delicious.

I'm going to buy some asiago. We have another question. Oh, I'm so glad what flavor balls I'm using. I'm using the signature blend which I actually ended up using the entire walnut, maple and cherry blend. You know, I tend to use a lot of fruit woods. I will use cherry alone. I use apple all the time, but I love this blend, so it's kind of become my go-to for most recipes, unless I'm making something where I want a ton of smoke and I want to have your wood where You are really going to taste the flavors of those characteristic pellets and, of course, they are all for sale. on theTraeger website and you can also get them at local stores, many stores near you sell them like Ace Hardware, many of our local hardware stores sell them at Home Depot, so you can get them online or in stores along with the grills . and the other tools that I'm using today I'll mainly use the spatula and I love them, I love them, I'm missing one cheese, it's parmesan, so I just bought grated parmesan at the store, it's not necessary. be a big fancy piece of parmigiano-reggiano, if you like it you can certainly use it, but this recipe is very forgiving and it's great to have firm, tangy cheeses mixed with the gooey, melty cheeses, it's kind of the perfect combination, it's okay so let's get those cheeses out of the way and I'm just going to use my hands for this like I said I'm not sharing them so I'm not worried about germs today and I'm going to put what looks like about three quarters of them in this bowl and put it away the rest for the topping mmm and then let's grab a spatula yeah we have another question oh my gosh can you soften the cream cheese on the trigger?

Sure you can, but the thing is you wouldn't want it to go smoky, well actually you could put it at 225 250 for a couple of minutes and see what happens. Test it. In fact, I'm going to try it today for the first time I've ever smoked. water to make smoked ice cubes because I thought it was the best thing I've ever heard so when I do the after hours with chad ward on the Tragerer Instagram after this I'm going to try one of my smoked ice cubes for the first time . but yeah try softening the cream cheese there I think that's a fabulous idea look how this although it comes together really easily because I mixed them together and then left it at room temperature for probably an hour before this so that's the mixture delicious base. on its own and you can add whatever you want to it.

Obviously this is a super classic combination, but one thing I wanted to point out with the recipe is that it only calls for one can of artichokes, it doesn't say if they should be seasoned or plain. I only buy the artichokes cut into quarters without any seasoning because sometimes you can get the marinated ones and they are just loaded with other flavors. They are not for me in this recipe. I want to add my own flavor profile to it. and they can tend to be very salty so when you take them and add them to the salt in the cheese it can be a little overpowering so I like the plain ones and I just bought the 15 ounce can that's a theme nowadays , it all comes with a 15 ounce can and you drain them first and then I'm going to roughly chop them before putting them in, so if you chipped it out you could take a bite out of the artichoke and it wouldn't break. your chip, these are important things, you know, let's just run my knife through it and if you don't like artichokes, you could certainly use something else.

My friend used palm hearts, which was so good that many people like to add a crunchy touch to this sauce. As if water chestnuts would be delicious, you can make spinach with virtually any vegetable you like, that is cooked and easy enough to eat. You could make a roasted bell pepper which would be delicious and add great color. I would love to even buy the Shoot Roasted Red Peppers in a jar that you can drain and just chop them up like I'm doing with the artichoke and throw them in there. It would be great, it's a Christmas sauce.

No, I could make spinach on that holiday or you can. Do it with the colors of your favorite team. We are supporting so many teams right now. I can't keep everything straight between NBA, MLB and NFL, so I think maybe I can, but okay, so let's put those in and then. I'm going to add the spinach. What I wanted you to see about the spinach is that I had a 10 ounce container of baby spinach leaves, so they're washed three times for you. They are ready to use. You dont have anyone. of the dirt in them, but about 10 cups of spinach, when you cook it, becomes one cup, so don't panic because I sautéed it in two batches in my skillet and because it seems like a lot and you're just being nice . or twist it with tongs until it softens nicely for a minute or two and then you get this small amount.

One thing you have to be very careful about with spinach is if you buy this kind frozen you also know that you thaw it and then there's all that water in it, the same thing happens when you cook it on the stove, in fact it just gives off a ton of water so what I like to do is take a paper towel like three layers of paper towel and when I take it off Stove, I landed on the paper towel and you see all the water starts to absorb and when it cools a little bit , I bend it and rattle it and all this water comes out, you might have to do that. more than once to get all the water, but then make sure you don't have a water bath that he's just swimming in.

We don't want that, so I'm going to give it a rough cut also to the point of sauces like this also is that, like I said, depending on what you serve it on, whether you serve it with small crackers or a larger crostini, it's fine if you have bigger chunks, but with something really small when people try to dip their food in it, you want to make sure that they can get all of these great flavors in one bite, so it's a little less rustic than what you would normally do. Also, a lot of people have asked me what I do with sauces when I have people over now because of Kovid and I'm trying to be more conscious with social distancing and this is the best part: you can still make it on a big plate and then you can serve it to people on individual plates so no one has to worry about touching it. or double dipping, not that anyone in my house would do it, but you don't have to worry about any of that, it's really nice to be able to prepare them in one thing or if you're really good, you can do them individually.

I could make something like this size of individual sauces and bake them and serve them to people that way, but that's too many dishes for me, so let's add the spinach too and then the secret ingredient, which isn't really a secret, but I also have one in the grill. I worked with a chef chef the other day. I call him a chef chef because he's a restaurant chef and even though I went to culinary school, I call myself a home cook because all the recipes I write and everything. The books I write are really for people like me, people who love to cook, don't want to spend a lot of time in the

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and I joke, I'd get fired in a restaurant in five minutes, I'd be killed for making a mess and everything else, but what I did notice is that it cleaned as it went, it was so spotless the entire time I was so impressed that I'm trying to improve it, okay, the secret ingredient, the not so secret ingredient, I think is the first one.

The ingredient listed in the recipe is garlic, garlic cloves, remember when everyone roasted garlic like that and then you rubbed it on crostini and ate it with delicious things? Well guess what is still delicious and it's back. I think we have a question, oh. What is the drink of the night? I'm glad you asked. I'm making a very light version of something our friends at Whistle Pig sent over. If you like whiskey, it's amazing, but I also love them because they make the best maple syrup I've ever tried. the planet that is put into barrels and you can tell the flavor is exceptional, so all I did was take some whiskey, I simply squeezed fresh lemon juice and started with a splash of maple syrup.

You can make it with ice in a shaker and strain it, it's actually really good that way or you can just put it over some ice, I just want to try it later. People who are real whiskey lovers love the idea of ​​the smoked ice cube with it, so I'm doing it more like a science experiment, really just to let everyone see how it's okay to go back to garlic, this is what I did most recipes. Some recipes call for separating all the cloves, removing the skin, and then roasting them individually in a bunch of oil, I say, forget it, look, what's just as easy?

I cut the top off of this and I'll show you how I did it and I wrapped it all in aluminum foil and all I did was put a ton of o

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oil on it. It's not a ton of tablespoon and a pinch of salt and I wrapped it in aluminum foil so it doesn't leak and you put it in the Trager for about 40 minutes at 400 and this is what you get, you get this caramelized stuff that the wasps and the bees love it but look how easy it is to take out the garlic when you're going to finish you just press it with your fingers first you have to let it cool a little and then all the cloves come out it's like the most satisfying thing so instead of having than to peel each clove, yes your fingers will smell like garlic, but they would do it anyway and you get really good performance with this, so I'm just going to squeeze like this, you can see the smallest one. the ones on the sides, you can squeeze it a little bit if you have some paper in there, don't worry and then I'm going to go where can I put this, let's see here, we'll put it in my messy bowl, I also have water down here for my hands, but anyway I was trying to show you one that I was also grilling and it needed a little more time but the way you know it's done yeah it's still pretty hot is if you were to stick a regular knife in it like If it were a dinner knife, it really shouldn't have pressure when you can do it like this and this one does have that, but I would like it to be darker a little so that those sugars caramelize more. because the more they caramelize, the sweeter the garlic becomes and it's spectacular, so let's hide it.

In fact, I'm going to put it back on the grill. You'll notice how quickly I open and close the grill because I want to maintain the temperature and it's one of the reasons I love ironwood so much. You know, he's had this technology for the last two years, year and a half, and the time it takes to recover and recover is just extraordinary because it's at 387 right now and I have it set at 400, so even if it drops from 50 to 100 degrees, you will never have that delay that we are so used to with most girls, where it takes a long time to reach it.

You know, okay, here we are, what else do I need for this? I need some o

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oil and I need a spoon because all I'm going to do is crush this olive oil and I need some salt to act as an abrasive which will make it easier to engage a fork would be the best tool , but it's inside, so forget it, it'sokay, we're just going to use the back of a spoon and you can use as much or as little as you want if you want. We're making it for a party, you'll all go together, right, you'll all smell like garlic, it's worth it, it's so delicious and so good for so many of us, so I'm just going to mash it up.

We're going to mix it with these other amazing ingredients. Okay, let's add. You can also do this now that I'm thinking about it. You can roast the garlic and puree it with everything else, with the cream cheese and mayonnaise. leave it there for a day and it would be amazing, but putting it in at the last minute is fine too, so let's move on oh my gosh, I love that this dip is going to have so much. more color and depth and like I said, I'm not trying to pretend this is healthy food by any means, but man, there's a lot of spinach in here, so if you're trying to get some greens on a game day, do it right, yeah, I probably would have added the garlic earlier because then it's easier to spread it into the base of the sauce, so I'm not going to kill anyone with this one, I'm just going to put a little bit in and then we'll move it around.

Yes, we have a question. Whatever, it's really funny because I rarely smoke much, so I like mesquite. Know? I do things like that when I work with really big cuts of meat and what I love, whether I get my meat at Snake River or somewhere else like Bill Campo, is that there are beautiful cuts of meat and I don't need much, so If I'm going to put wood on them like that, I do the simplest seasonings on my meat because I want to taste the flavor of the wood and the meat that I'm eating, so yeah, mesquite, okay? how delicious this looks omg I really like my red pepper idea I think I'll try it next ok now let's load it onto a plate that's safe to take to the broughter.

I like to remind people if you put your cookware in an oven, you can put it on the trigger. Obviously if you're used to cooking with things with plastic handles you're not going to want to do that, but this is oven safe up to probably 500 600 degrees so it's great for my trigger oh wait you know what I wanted to add was just a little lemon juice to this. I'll also show you my lemon trick in the next recipe, but I think hot sauce would be delicious in this one. I need something to cut the richness and citrus does that, so any vinegar would do, but I think lemon juice with this tastes delicious.

Well, I wonder if you know what my trivia question is going to be if you've all been paying attention, who knows if I've mentioned it. yet or not, oh my goodness, so make this on a smaller plate if you want and leave it higher. I like to spread it like this because when I put the other cheese on it it will get crunchy, gooey, delicious and it has like a ton of surface area for that, okay, my goodness, aren't we lucky? It's amazing, okay, get that out of the way and then let's top it with that extra cheese and then it'll be so perfect because when I'm done making the other sauce, it'll probably be time to get the taco sauce out of the way, wow, the fontina and the provolone just They give a great flavor.

You can also purchase a four cheese blend that is already ready for you and use. that instead of buying all the cheeses separately, okay so that's it, I don't even have the top rack on my iron stick most days because I like to have room to get in and out, but I can cook so much food in it it's really the perfect size for me, I think I mentioned this is the 885. So I love this grill and I only bring out my tr pro and Timberlines when I'm cooking for very large crowds. I love them both, but this is my workhorse.

See you wasp, see you good, now for the last dip, the French onion, wouldn't that be amazing? If on television, if I left my stuff down there, there was someone on the other side who magically cleaned it up, that's the question, this time. at home it's definitely put us all in the mode of washing our own dishes well, so I already have one made that we'll save for later and then I'll let myself take the bowl to serve and this yes, we have another question, okay? The same question was which pellets I prefer for a more intense smoke flavor.

I would say mesquite and I mentioned that I don't use a lot of heavier woods because I don't smoke much, but I do like things that I like. They are large cuts of meat and I think they do very well with a stronger flavored wood, so try mesquite and see what you think. I also mentioned that I don't usually put a lot of seasoning on the meat if I use a heavier one. wood because I want to taste the meat and I want to taste the smoky flavor of the wood, so a lot of times I use one of our simpler Trager seasonings or salt and pepper, a little olive oil and that's it, let's go.

This is like I'm trapped, everyone can hear me talking to myself, I just talk to myself all day when I cook, okay, here we go, so oh, I need my onions, okay, so here's my three pounds of onions I cook. how caramelized they are and how beautiful and they will just melt in your mouth, it's like a french onion soup, you add that broth and then it's just delicious, tons of deep flavor here, so just cooking them in the tumbar you will be blown away. Far from how much better the flavor of your sauce is. Well, now you want to see how simple it is.

All I did was take sour cream, a little bit of mayonnaise and I'm going to use a little bit of lemon juice and then the onions and the thyme. leaves and boom, that's it, I mean this is the simplest thing again, you can do all of this ahead of time, you can let even if you add the onions to it, you can let it sit in the refrigerator for at least a couple of days before serve it. Make sure the onions have cooled before mixing them into this mixture. We don't want to cook the sour cream part of mayonnaise.

Oh my gosh, I promise if you try this, your friends will be like this, how do you do this? Don't tell them it's that easy if you don't want to tell them that you did this all day, that you had to camp out on your grill to make sure it was perfect, but in reality you set it and forget it. What I will say is that I cooked these onions here in myTrager and when you're working with a very dense amount of food like these onions in a pan, when you close the lid it's like an oven and there's nowhere for the steam to get in. really escape so if you were doing this on a stovetop and caramelizing the onions they'll sweat and then the moisture will burn off like that, it's not exactly the same here on a tumbager so think about using it like a bigger pan, I just spread them out on a cookie sheet, so they weren't as sitting in their own liquid and it worked very, very well, so we're making sure that they're all mixed together very well so that no one gets a 20 pound scoop of the onions and then We add some thyme leaves.

I'm going to add a few more to this because I don't see many there. I think it requires a teaspoon. You might change your mind and put in a tablespoon of fresh thyme. leaves and a splash of lemon juice and then like always I always talk about tasting as you go and checking the seasoning so I'll do that too yeah another question okay so I used the food processor for the onions. for the onion dip I mean the artichoke and spinach where I took the cream cheese and oh you know I used it to shred all my onions sorry so you know I cut onions by hand all the time or I have a small one mandolin which is a really safe mandolin that oxo makes, it has this little guard and it only comes with four blades and you just shave them, but they were really big onions so I used the chopping blade in my food processor.

You were right. That's what I used it for, so I'm a big proponent of just using what you have. I always say that a good cutting board and a good knife is all you need, but when I find tools I love, I love to count them out. people talk about them because they are a game changer and I believe in buying things once so like my food processor I just redid my website and if you go to

amanda

hostcooks.com I have a shopping page where it's almost everything I love in one door. on that page and I think the food processor is there because it's like the cutting blade itself, it can be adjusted and from thin to thicker paper and then when you put it away it lays completely flat so you don't.

You have to worry about cutting yourself, it's so shiny, so that's what I used it for. Thanks for asking anything else. Could you smoke the lemons? Absolutely, could you? I love smoking lemons. I love smoking any citrus here, especially if I'm making a vinaigrette or something. so with them it's delicious, so please, I mean it would add so much depth of flavor that it would be delicious? Any other questions, how long are you cooking the tacos? Taco sauce. I'm checking my watch. There are between 25 and 30 minutes left. I cooked the rice but the grill wasn't that hot yet so I'm going to let it sit a little longer and in case we have more in and my special assistant can bring it and the artichoke dip because the artichoke dip requires an hour um, I think, and depending on how hot your grill is and how many other things you've been doing, it could be anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, obviously you just want to look at it as a bubbly with cheese on top and make sure it's not cold in the medium, okay, so there's this delicious sauce and we're going to put it right into this bowl.

You know it would make a great party dip because you can put it on your plate to serve right away and refrigerate it with saran wrap the top and then all you have to do is take it out when you're ready to enjoy it. Blend number one. Let's make room for that. Go ahead and put it there. Thanks buddy, be careful for your own good. so let's get rid of the lemons and then we can finish the other one. Any other questions about onion sauce. I'll put a little time sheet on top just to make it look fancy.

I'm a big fan of making things look pretty. very little effort you know but I am also a fan of garnishing with whatever is in the recipe as if it drives me crazy if you go to a restaurant and order something and they bring you a recipe with an herb on top that has nothing to do with the recipe and then You bite into it and you think I haven't done it right, so I like to give people a little visual clue of what they're going to taste inside, which is why I garnish it with thyme if I'm using time within the recipe just like you would. with any of the other herbs we usually use, I forgot to try it though wait, thank you so much omg they look so good, everyone is fine, thank you magic wizard.

I have a friend that many of you may know because she has been helping me with all of this, my friend son, and she we are a family during this whole quarantine and she lives down the street so she has been kindly helping me with this even though he has another real job. Work, this is delicious, so I'm going to put it aside while we finish the last one, so she came and brought me my other recipes. Okay, let's take a look at the others and put it all together. I want to see how the cue gets wet. it's moving forward, so let's do it, of course, when you're working with very heavy pans or any pots and pans in this, you have to be very careful with the heat, if you ever have a wet cloth or a wet towel, it can really transfer heat. fast and burn you, so we don't want that, so I'm going to be, actually, let's be super smart.

I'm going to get some towels out so we can place them safely on top of things and get rid of that okay let's take a look yeah another question yeah just so you know I'm really glad someone asked if there is any substitute for mayonnaise in this sauce. You could definitely use yogurt. I love Greek yogurt as a substitute. I love the taste of it if you don't. Dairy is a little trickier, but I think there are other alternatives to yogurt and dairy that would work great. I'm personally starting to play with them so PM me and I'll give you a few more things to try too, but If you're looking to cut calories and fat, I love substituting yogurt and like I said, the recipe I have in my book , the anti-inflammatory cookbook, the one with goat cheese, goat cheddar, and spinach, is just a much lighter version. about this sauce, another question, looks like it's going to be fun, oh I'm so glad someone asked you because I usually show this while I'm pouring my taco sauce, let me let it sit for a second and I'll do it.

I show you someone said I made it look so easy that I was taking the time to remove the leaves from the stems, so here's a trick: There are only a few herbs with very woody stems where they are firm like this thyme and rosemary, do you? TRUE? Rosemary is really strong, so all you do is take a stem and pull the leaves in the opposite direction, so let me take a little bit off here and show you, okay, this is really fun, these are things that I can have fun when I'm alone at home, okay.

So can you see? I don't know in the camera how the leaves go up, so you just pull in the opposite direction and see that you have nice little leaves of thyme and if there is a little bit of broth left from the stem, it's probably the soft part, so you don't have to worry too much, but if,try it with rosemary too, it's much easier to learn with rosemary, just the leaves go this way and you strip them in the opposite direction and then a lot of people use um. the stems as skewers for things and you get that delicious rosemary smell when you grill things, it's actually a really fun trick, well let's get to the moment of truth with the taco sauce because let's see if it's ready, I'm not sure if the temperature was high enough.

If not, we have a replacement fresh from my other broughter. I think it's going to need a little more time, but I want to show you what it looks like so you know that temperature is very important in this one and I think you heard me. Let's say I raised it from 350 to 400. I should have had it at 400 the entire time because all this liquid should disappear properly so that when the rice is cooked well it doesn't bite and all that liquid is absorbed. So now I'm going to show you what the finished product should look like.

It will probably take another 10 minutes again. If you had started at the correct temperature, you can definitely count on it taking longer than 30 to 40 minutes total. It's still with the artichoke sauce, so I'm going to come up with another substitute for that. We're just going to do some TV magic. Do some Facebook magic here I'm really curious what everyone likes to make for game days like I said I made wings we've made ribs a million times but I'm all for these sauces okay , I'll bring them here, let me bring them, oh. OMG this is crazy check it out I mean come on this happened when I had some friends over to try it the guys literally ate it in 10 minutes this whole thing was gone but how fun is that so there that one and then you. you know what I didn't take out, I didn't take out sour cream or cream, but you can certainly put a little bit on top, it's almost like a seven layer sauce and let people take out a little bit of that too and then, um, I'm just going to put a little green onion and then I'll bring it closer so we can leave room for everything, then we have this delicious French onion dip, mmm, and last but not least, I can show you what the artichoke dip looks like on the grill.

Now it'll probably be another 15 or 20 minutes and you'll see that it still doesn't have enough color, but I'll show you what it looks like when there's enough color, so just a second, oh my gosh, can you believe that? Like my kids aren't even in my house right now look at all this food, this is crazy, who's playing tonight, there has to be an NFL game or something where I can share this food with people, but now I'm going to bring out all the things that we love to serve with it, so let's take a look, we need a drum roll, okay, all our favorite things here with this sauce and yes, I cook very healthy food, but guess what? what, nothing tastes better with this. dip that I like fried balls or some thick corn chip that allows you to grab it.

I think rice is stuck in my throat right now, so the best thing about this is that you can use any vegetables you want, any chips you like, it totally depends. for you and with the artichokes and spinach it would be great with crostinis if you wanted to grill some French bread like that or just heat up a loaf of French bread and let people tear it off and enjoy it with the sauce and with the French onion. I would do any of these things, in fact I would make the fries with this. We cut the carrots on a little bias like this because you know, when you have big carrot sticks like this and you're going to dip, you don't get much. of the sauce and obviously we're not doing a double dip so I love the idea of ​​cutting the carrots in a different shape to get a ton of sauce on the carrot, but we have kettle chips, we have the sweet potato. fries and we have the old school fry spoons here.

I made some different colored carrots, celery and bell peppers so we all have some color to choose from and that's our amazing dipping sauce, easy even if you wanted to make just one of them. It's a really fun thing to make, like I said, you can make it the day before or you can make it in the morning or let them sit in the refrigerator until you're ready to put them in theTrager and that's it. First I have to test things right and then we will do our trivia question, we will find out who will win these Trager flags and the beautiful hannah eddy t-shirts designed for breast cancer awareness month and our friends. on b4bc so let's try it and then I'll ask the question.

No, I should ask the question right now while I'm testing because you guys have to respond as quickly as you can on Facebook. Well, my question is difficult. What are the four cheeses? I used to make the spinach artichoke dip. What are the four cheeses I used to make the spinach artichoke dip? Can you name them? Just name the four and the first 10 people to get it right will be our winners and we'll text you. I think I could announce it too when I go to the Traeger Grills app or the Instagram feed with Chad Ward and I'll name the winners if we have 10 winners when we do that, which will start like 15 minutes after the hour, okay?

I'll also be doing a giveaway on my own feed tonight. I haven't announced it yet, but you can stop by Amanda House Cooks to see what it's all about because I'm going to include someone else who is a big Trager user like Well, okay, now while everyone's typing, I'm going to start eating, let's see here, I'm just going to try a couple different combinations. I love this sauce. Look at the onion for dipping. I like the creamy proportion. All onions love it. It's almost a health food, we have another question, yes, for someone who is allergic to garlic, is there something better to use as a substitute for garlic?

If I could eat onions or shallots. If someone is allergic to garlic, could you absolutely substitute something, you could use shallots, that would be really good. great or you can focus on other flavors that maybe wouldn't normally come out, like you could make a hot sauce or something to give it a little bit of flavor. You can also, if you wanted to give this a twist, use a little chipotle. It looks amazing with chipotle and adobo too. If you mix a little of the pasta it's delicious, okay, I'm just moving mm-hmm ask with my mouth full I'm going to look for a spoon what is your favorite dish to cook? the trigger oh I love this question because it changes what my favorite dish is to cook on the sunny broughter do you have a favorite dish that I make on the trigger my ribs but it's not that funny I mean we are I mean we We have the best teachers in the world work at Trager and my family wants my ribs.

They clearly haven't eaten anyone's other than apple pie. For my son Connor on his birthday I make him whatever he wants and it's usually apple pie ribs and homemade macaroni and cheese. grilled I like my skirt steak with chimichurri sauce Oops, I love my oh what am I saying? I am known for this. It's crazy. My curried roasted cauliflower because I served it at this broughter party with all of us in one place in Salt Lake. and we had eaten so much meat that was so good and everyone said, "Oh my gosh, this cauliflower is delicious, so look, it's on the app and I'll show you how to make it curried roasted cauliflower, it's delicious and if your friends and family and the kids don't eat cauliflower they'll change their mind I promise you it's fine for game day who's my team let's talk basketball first I live in the east bay of San Francisco I'm a Warriors fan true and true right now though us with the lakers and the heat on them i think it's super fun that the miami heat has gone all the way so my heart isn't really in it just next year the warriors, Be careful with the NFL, let's say 49ers, okay?

I don't watch much football on the local team because I'm always cooking while my kids like it and they like fantasy football so much that I wonder how your players did, so I'll go to any professional game that someone invites me to or any college game I love going to sporting events let's say 49ers um baseball I can go to giants and and that's not because I live in the East Bay, I also lived in the city and I love supporting our local teams, so those are my teams. I'm going to take one last bite and then we can ask Austin if he has enough winners.

I guess I won't even give the answer. Maybe we'll post it on Traeger later once we have it. Our winners, who knows this one, sat a little to make the cheese a little less sticky. This wasp is fighting me about it, but I'm still going to get to taste all this deliciousness, son. This is your dream come true. They are basically like nachos. very good, very easy, another question, yes ok, what is my favorite tumbager grill? I love you all for so many reasons, but I think someone is preparing me for this question because I didn't mention it once.

Here this is my favorite grill. I use my iron and wood the most, but I have this grill literally just to hang out with me in the backyard while I cook with all the other triggers. Her name is Poppy. An old friend of mine named her. We had a naming contest and she's adorable and a conversation starter, you know? So I have to say that Poppy the pink pig grill is my favorite grill, yes it works, yes you can order them, it's hilarious and amazing, and I'll make you Create a story with it so you can see all its features and benefits later, but Poppy the pig is my favorite.

Without a doubt, because of its functionality. Ironwood. I love it. She has all the things I need, just like you. The app works. does with most of them now i have the pellet sensor to tell me when my pellets are low i love how the thermometer attaches the instant read thermometer has enough room for me it's heavy enough it's a workhorse and that's why i love it I really like Poppy, we'll never know if she's a workhorse because I can't stand her getting pork chops, that's just rude, we have enough winners so I can tell what the answers are, let's see.

If I remember what four cheeses I put in it, we're ready, parmesan, asiago, provolone fontina, those were the four cheeses I used, they sound good, it's been super fun. Thank you very much for joining me today. I hope you head over to the Trager Grill Instagram. Feed where you can find out about all the other game day activities we have going on and contests like who has the best splash. You can participate, I think, until Tuesday and talk to Chad and I at 15 o'clock, we'll recap this. have a little drink in the evening and spend more time with you and answer more questions, so thank you for having me as always and bye from the bay area, see you soon.