Why hello there, and welcome back to Kitchen Catastrophes, one man’s slow ascent to “technically a competent cook”. I’m your Mountain-Climbing Cuisinart, Jon O’Guin, and today’s recipe is one I’ve wanted to do for a while, that turned out easier than expected. Which is…actually a bit of a problem, since it’s pretty simple, both in creation and etymology. Luckily, I have just the thing to make it vaguely relevant! IF you don’t care, and just want to get cracking (that’s a pun you don’t even understand yet!) then here’s the link. For everyone else, let’s talk croquettes. 

Davy, Davy Croquette, The Treat that’s great With Beer

Now, you don’t need me to tell you that times are tough, right now. You have, by the fact you are enjoying this medium right now, a semi-functioning internet connection, and semi-functioning sight. There’s a lot going on that’s frightening and upsetting. A lot of conflict coming out: I unfriended someone for the first time today. Literally, I have NEVER done that before, and I know that it’s a relatively small thing, but…I mean, in 10+ years, I have NEVER unfriended someone. I’ve unfollowed 2 or 3 people, but I am renowned for my patience and steady (ignoring the bursts of mania) temperament. (In their defenses, it’s not like we had some kind of furious conflict: It was literally just the first time someone posted one of those “If you disagree, don’t try and argue, just unfriend me”, and I legitimately disagreed with them, so I said “Yeah, okay, if that’s how you feel”.)  Though, for posterity, if you’re reading this from the future, where things are, I HOPE, better, or at least this specific case of chaos has been replaced with a different chaos, for context we are still in the middle of the COVID 19 pandemic, just over 2 months in now, I believe. And the Riots just happened. The May Riots, if that makes a difference.

Before the Volcano Wars.

And in that paradigm, It feels like the world needs something calm, comforting, and enjoyable. Which is why it would have been GREAT if Samurai Gourmet season 2 came out, but my research suggests the show has been cancelled. (Which, if true, I will promise right now: If I ever become like, legitimately wealthy, Netflix: I am wiling to spend an unreasonable amount of money to get this show going again. You need literally 10% of my net worth? I’ll fucking do it.) On the plus side, a new season of Somebody Feed Phil DID come out, but I learned that Saturday night, so it’ll take me some time to get to that. And it was actually the discovery of that new season that brought Samurai Gourmet back into my mind. So, as part of my self-care routine today (A “routine” that mostly consists of randomly giving into temptation on various impulses. I ALMOST went to bed rather than start this post as part of it.) I rewatched a bit of Samurai Gourmet. And I knew exactly which episode to watch, because it’s the REASON we made today’s recipe.

See, today’s recipe is something I wanted to make because Samurai Gourmet spawned a meme between my brother and me, and prompted me to try a new food in a time of relative pain. Because THIS is a picture of what I believe to be the first croquette I ever ate.

In retrospect, a closer pic would have been clearer, since I haven’t actually DESCRIBED a croquette yet.

And actually, now that I think about it, I think that was a bowl of Tan-Tan Pork Ramen, which means it was my first time having a variety of Dan-Dan Noodles! And maybe I’m wrong about it being the first: maybe years ago I ate some Croquettes, and just forgot because the word didn’t mean anything to me at the time, or I wasn’t paying attention, I don’t know. I, pretty obviously, can’t remember things I may have forgotten or not noticed. But I believe that to be the first. And I tried it because of Samurai Gourmet, and an interaction Nate and I loved.

In episode 9, Kasumi is out shopping to buy his wife some hair products. He swings by the butcher shop, which is selling croquettes. Croquettes, if you don’t know, are fried breaded patties of…whatever. Seriously, they can contain almost anything. “Croquette” just means “Little Crunchy” as you might have guessed from our discussions of Croque-Monsieurs. Or not. After all, the sport “croquet” has nothing to do with them. (it comes from an alternate spelling for croche or crochet, referring to a shepherd’s crook/hook) The ONLY consistent thing is that they’re breaded and fried. They can be made of meat and sauce, meat and potatoes, potatoes and cheese, cheese and meat, vegetables and literally any option I’ve listed…you can have dessert versions with fruit, etc. etc.  Anyway, Kasumi remembers that, as a child in middle school, his friends and he would sneak off on the way home/between club activities, and pick up some croquettes on the DL. Moved by the memory, he decides to get one to relive the experience as an adult. He contemplates a couple options, before deciding on one of the cheaper, plain options.  Whereupon he’s asked “how many would you like?” and, is faced with an immediate quandary: if he only orders one, he’ll look like a cheapskate! He orders two, and immediately regrets it.

Damn it, ME.

That moment resonated deeply with Nate and myself from myriad points in our lives. Literally this past Saturday, I ordered from a local Hawaiian restaurant for the first time, and, due to some minor confusion with their menu, ordered 2 servings of Mac Salad rather than try and clarify that I misspoke.(I asked “I see from the picture that there’s extra--Mac Salad is extra. Is that right?” To which they responded “Oh,  the family pack comes with mac salad, but we can give you an extra one no problem! (clearly writing it down)  2 servings mac salad.” Me:”…Sure.”) I did NOT regret that call, both because A: the mac salad was delicious, and B: we went so close to closing they actually ran out of mac salad, and had to ask us to accept a green salad instead of the second serving so they could meet their remaining order. I ended up looking benevolent instead of bumbling!

Anywho, for months Nate and I would regularly reference the moment to each other, and still do it infrequently to this day. But right after we first watched it and started doing it, we ended up in Capitol hill for my father to revisit Swedish for some cancer-related treatment, and we went to U:Don, a Japanese noodle place in the neighborhood with a kind of 1 part Subway, 1 part Cafeteria vibe: you walk down the line with a tray ordering your noodle bowl, and then get to a section where you can just grab hot or cold additions: stuff like Spam Musubi (or, in a tragic surprise one time, Salmon Musubi.) Croquettes, Gyoza, etc. So Nate and I, fresh off a meme-high, tried them. And they were fine. Not amazing, but cool.

But they’ve always been an occasional “I guess I could do croquettes some time” idea since then, until two months ago. DUN DUN DUN

A Very Boring Surprise

The April/May issue of Cook’s Country had a recipe for Chicken Croquettes. That’s it. I literally just  went “oh, cool, a fairly simple recipe I trust!” And decided to make it.

Surprise! It’s…literature.

Partly I was excited because the recipe gave me explicit permission to cheat on two of the long, frustrating parts of the process: See, for a traditional chicken croquette, you want to shred some roasted chicken, mix with pre-made mashed potatoes, mix with herbs and flavoring, form into a bunch of patties, bread and fry. This recipe just says “buy some pre-shredded rotisserie chicken, and use some instant mashed potato flakes.”

They look like old school soap flakes.

If you’ve never interacted with them before, Instant Mashed Potato flakes are…well, they’re flakes of mashed potato. Like, literally, a factory just makes huge batches of mashed potatoes, spreads them out thin, dries them, and breaks them up into little flakes. So you get the box of flakes, add them to hot water or milk, they suck up the liquid, rehydrate, and look, you have mashed potatoes in like, 10 minutes instead of 30. They keep longer than raw potatoes, they’re lighter, and most of the time they’re pretty chemical free. This is, I think, the second or third time I’ve used them in my life, so it was kind of exciting!

Which is good, because, honestly, this recipe is so straight-forward, it’s kind of boring.

Like, once you replace the effort and time of “shred a chicken yourself” and “make mashed potatoes”, the recipe is basically “Mix together some ingredients, form into balls, bread, and fry.”  It takes some TIME, because forming, breading, and frying 18 (the recipe is supposed to make 20, but I made fractionally larger croquettes, and some filling stuck to my hand and was mysteriously eaten.) balls is a time consuming process. BUT, if you’re interested, let’s get started.

Mix it Up Once in a While

The first step is making your own breadcrumbs. Why? Well, the recipe says that A: they just make the best texture, and I say “Look, you’re buying pre-shredded chicken and instant mashed potatoes. You gotta put in a LITTLE effort”. And “little” it is: You just tear up two slices of white bread, toss it in a processor with some all-purpose flour, and 30 seconds later, you have fresh breadcrumbs. More than you’ll need for the recipe, in fact!

This might be made partly wrong. I think I used too much flour, but I didn’t take a picture, so I could be wrong.

After that, you’ve only got 4 things you really need to prep: FIRST, whip up a couple of eggs for the breading process. Second, if some of your chicken is a little long, chunky, you can pull it apart a little more with your own fingers. SECOND second, you need to mince some garlic and slice some scallions.

The number of pictures I take of minced aliums is alarming. Alium-ing?

IN fact, the process is so straightforward from here on out that I actually spent a fair bit of time just…dicking around. Like, I spent 10 minutes of the cook-time cleaning the rest of my scallions (some were starting to get a little sticky on the outer layers, so I just peeled off the bad bits and rinsed them) Once you’re done distracting yourself, you want to heat up some half-and-half and butter in the microwave. You want it covered, so you don’t have half-and-half boil over and leave a large puddle on your microwave turntable. A totally hypothetical example with no basis in reality. While that heats, combine your dry ingredients: chicken, potato flake, salt, pepper, cayenne, garlic, scallions. Then, pour over your molten dairy and mix until combined.

It’s a very beige food.

I don’t have many pictures of the forming process, since, obviously, I was using both my hands, but I DID pre-empt the common issue of “Is this enough?” by measuring out my ball of prepared filling, dividing by 20, and using that to measure out each ball to the proper size. It wasn’t perfect, because I actually deliberately aimed for 18 balls instead of 20, since we have 3 people in the house, and better to have 6 per person than 6 per person and 2 extra, and very few scales have a 1/9th measure, so I kind of alternated between 1 ounce and 1 and 1/8th ounces, and did my best. It took me about 20 minutes working alone to get to where everything was ready to dip.

Organization is not my strong suit. Nor is wearing socks in the house.

Then, it was just a matter of egging, breading, and setting back on a prepared surface, which took about 10 minutes. THEN came the frying.

You’re supposed to work in 2 batches, frying for about 5 minutes per batch, 2 minutes on 1 side, 3 minutes on the other. And I want to thank this recipe for giving me the explicit instructions to “start at 350, and just make sure the oil stays between 300 and 350”, since, as I mentioned with the cauliflower post, knowing what an acceptable range in oil heat is can be tricky. Between heating the oil, cooking, moving all the pieces, and letting them cool, it was about 30 minutes before our batches were complete.

Man, the color contrast on this makes it look like I BURNT some of these. I assure you, that’s just a difference in the color tones of the kitchen light, and the evening sun through the window.

And, within a couple minutes, I cracked one open to survey my handiwork.

It looks rad.

Flavorwise, they were very interesting. They are, basically, just a batch of garlic mashed potatoes with chicken mixed in. They’re savory, warm, and pretty damn good. We didn’t make the sauce the recipe called for (a mayo-based lemon and onion sauce), since that would have required someone help me, and Nate voted that he’d prefer no sauce to having to help make one, which I think was a little bit of a misstep. I CAN tell you that barbecue sauce is not a good pairing with it. (At least, a hickory and brown sugar Kansas-Style sauce isn’t) If I had been thinking, I would have made like, Tonkatsu sauce for that Japanese pairing. But I didn’t think of it. And overall, I’d count them a success. Everyone tried them, and no one had anything bad to say. So if you’ve got some time on your hands, give them a try!  And if you’re vegetarian, you could replace the chicken with like, corn. I have no idea how to properly balance that, but I know it’s an option. Non vegetarians could swap it out for cooked bacon, or cubed ham, or whatever. It’s a pretty simple canvas with a lot of room to expand.

THURSDAY: JON FINISHES THE PAN TALK.

MONDAY: I HAVE ONE THING PREPPED, BUT LIKE, 6 THINGS IN THE WORKS. IT’LL DEPEND ON HOW THE WEEK GOES. COULD BE KOREAN, MIDDLE-EASTERN, JAPANESE, VIETNAMESE, “I BOUGHT THIS WITHOUT A PLAN” or “I BOUGHT THIS FOR THE JAPANESE THING, BUT I HAD TO BUY THIS MUCH”. ASSUMING THE PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE, A SIMPLE NOODLE DISH.

Recipe

Chicken Croquettes (Cook’s Illustrated Recipe)

Makes 18-20 croquettes, serving 4-6

Ingredients

Breading

3 slices hearty white sandwich bread, torn into 1-inch pieces

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

2 large eggs 

Filling

1 ½ cups finely shredded rotisserie chicken

1 ¼ cups plain instant mashed potato flakes

4 scallions, sliced thin

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 ¼ teaspoons table salt

1 teaspoon pepper

⅛ teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 ½ cups half-and-half

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 cups vegetable oil for frying

Preparation

1. Process bread and flour in food processor until finely ground, about 30 seconds; transfer to shallow dish. Beat eggs together in second shallow dish. Set aside bread-crumb mixture and eggs.

2. Combine chicken, potato flakes, scallions, garlic, salt, pepper, and cayenne in large bowl. Combine half-and-half and butter in 2-cup liquid measuring cup and microwave, covered, until butter is melted and mixture is hot, about 3 minutes. Add to chicken mixture and stir to combine (mixture will thicken as it sits).

3. Divide chicken mixture into 20 equal portions (about 2 tablespoons each). Using your moistened hands, shape each portion into 3-inch log with pointed ends. Working with 3 to 4 croquettes at a time, dip in eggs, turning to coat and allowing excess to drip off; then coat with bread-crumb mixture. Transfer to rimmed baking sheet. (Breaded croquettes can be covered with plastic wrap and refrigerated for up to 24 hours.)

4. Line second rimmed baking sheet with triple layer of paper towels. Heat oil in 12-inch nonstick skillet over medium heat to 350 degrees. Add 10 croquettes and cook until deep golden brown on first side, about 2 minutes. Using tongs, carefully flip croquettes and continue to cook until deep golden brown on second side, about 3 minutes longer. Adjust burner, if necessary, to maintain oil temperature between 300 and 350 degrees.

5. Transfer croquettes to paper towel–lined sheet. Return oil to 350 degrees and repeat with remaining croquettes. Serve with sauce of your choosing.