KC 327 - Seattle Not-Jos
Why hello there! And welcome WAY WAY back to Kitchen Catastrophes, where one man’s mistakes are that same man’s meals, because we generally don’t have the budget to learn. I’m your feasting failure, Jon O’Guin, and today’s recipe is a really simple mess I have thrown together in celebration. You can jump to the recipe with THIS link assuming I still know how to do that, and the rest of us can ford the river of bullshit for why, how, and where the hell I’ve been.
It’s Been Awhile Since I Could Hold My Head Up High
Title Jon! Welcome back. Don’t quote Staind, the lead singer ended up a dirtbag.
To be fair, compared to some of his compatriots, he turned out an upstanding gentleman.
On the other hand, there is something funny about going from a depressed nu-metal band to right-wing grievance music. Dude is still just mad.
Anywho, yes. I recognize that it has been, some would say, “over two years” since I last updated. Which is wrong. It’s been over 2 years since I cooked the last thing on the site, but it then took me 2 months to put that on here, so it’s only been 1 year and 11ish months. Ha-HA! Look, things have been rough. As an unwise man once said, I don’t want to blame it all on 9/11, but it certainly didn’t help. I don’t have a real good reason for why, other than, you know (gestures to the world around us all), and MAYBE that the anti-anxiety pills I went on in 2024 have made me not want to eat/have strangled some of my passion for cooking?
Like, this is an imperfect measure, but I DO, every now and again, take pictures when I’m cooking in the hope that I will soon have the energy to sit down and put together a post, and there is a STEEP drop-off in pictures of food I cooked once I go on my meds. Like, I think I have about 1 picture a month in 2023 of something I cooked at home, and then in 2024, after I start my meds, it’s all frozen/pre-made stuff until October. In 2025? I take some pics of the Coke Ham for Easter, a Korean Beef-Rice bowl in May, and then some Migas tacos in September.
I hate when I order migas and get Migos. The restaurant never Offsets the cost, because he’s already there.
So whether that’s fatigue, an emotional thing, or what, I don’t know. I’m still intellectually invested in food! I still watch youtube cooking channels, I’ve been watching a series that is literally just a Korean man filling his tray at his work’s lunch buffet for like, a year. I still asked for cookbooks for Christmas, all of it. I just… don’t cook as much, and feel less proud when I do.
But you know what? Doing the best job in the world isn’t what matters. What matters is being there when it counts. And if you think I was going to miss the first time in over a fucking decade that the Seahawks are in the Super… Sport Weekend (you’re still not getting my ass, you lawyer fucks), then THINK AGAIN, ASSHOLE. JON GIVES EXACTLY 3 SHITS ABOUT SPORTS, AND THEY ARE “WHEN THE SEATTLE TEAMS (Not you, Sounders) ARE IN CONTENTION FOR THE TOP CUP.”
Funnily, the Sounders are the only Seattle team I have watched in person as an adult.
Not that this is them, this is a women’s soccer match in their stadium.
So, what are we cooking today? Well, if you’re smart, lazy, or trying to throw this together at the last minute because I only uploaded this a day ahead of time, the answer is “basically nothing.” And if you’re doing it the hard way, the answer is “like, 3-4 things.” And to explain why, first, we’ve got some FUCKING HISTORY, BABY.
Knowing is Half the Battle, so We Are Going to Lose
No one knows much about the mysterious dish known as “jo-jos”. Also known as “jo-jo potatoes”, and “don’t you mean, like, potato wedges”, jo-jos are… Look, they’re not NOT potato wedges.
Most things aren’t potato wedges, so it’s really hard to argue when they basically are.
What they are is actually super-easy to explain: a mark-up. See, we’re not 100% sure where Jo jos come from, but the basic story is pretty well agreed. An executive at a food expo was showing off pressure fryers, also known as “broasters”. They’re like a pressure cooker mixed with a deep fryer, and, funnily, less dangerous than that sounds. Increasing pressure lowers boiling points, so the oil in a broaster is going to be less hot than a normal deep fryer, and also covered. The primary use case for such a dish is fried chicken or fish, since you can get a good outside fry without overcooking the meat. Supposedly, between batches of meat, some sliced potatoes got tossed in the fryer to ‘clean the oil’, and it turns out people are 100% happy to eat fried potato wedges covered in chicken batter.
The general consensus, in as much as such a thing exists, is that the Jo-Jo showed up in the 60’s, following pressure-fryers as they spread across the country, probably on the back of that first executive. Different places will have different mixes and methods, but the basics are the same: Cut up potatoes, dredge them in seasoned flour, fry them, and serve.
So let’s see how I do, huh?
Fry me to the Moon
Oh yeah, we’re making Jo-Jos in this recipe. You came for something else, but this is the road we have to walk. (To explain: “Not-Jos” is my incredibly clever wordplay on jo jos and Nachos. So we’re going to make jo jos* and then top and serve them.)
Now, as noted, the origin story of jo jos is that they come with pressure fryers. I don’t have one of those, so I decided to deep fry mine instead. Now, some recipes say you can just do that: slice the wedges, season them, and fry. But I doubted that, since my math suggested that jo jos are too thick to cook the way I want them to in just 5 minutes in the fryer. So I cut up some raw potatoes and boiled them.
Normally that last sentence ends in “roast them”, so I get to make some potato based insults here, but alas, no such linguistic ambiguity to hide behind here.
10 minutes in the boil until they can be pierced with a knife, though I would wait on that: I tried stabbing 2 of my potatoes at 7 minutes and they straight-up just snapped in half.
While that’s going, you make the seasoning, which, as noted, is a riff on chicken batter. The simplest recipe I saw was 1 cup flour, 1 tbsp onion powder, 1 tbsp garlic powder, and 2 teaspoons smoked paprika. The PROBLEM with my recipe, which we will explore, is that I didn’t read that quite right until AFTER cooking.
I also went on a BIG riff for this: See, at least one source I saw mentioned that their bar/local place SPECIFICALLY used Lawry’s Seasoning Salt, a seasoned salt that my family likes, so I definitely wanted that in. And then I couldn’t find my paprika, so I used a little berbere spice… then I FOUND the paprika, so I tossed some in, but I made a critical mistake. See if you can spot it.
Nodding sagely “ah, yes. The grain on the left.”
That is not colorful enough, because I didn’t account for a crucial distinction in the recipe I was using: I was using a recipe that bound the flour mix to the potatoes with egg, which would make crunchier jo jos, and trap the flavor to the breading, but the recipe I was COOKING off of didn’t use egg. Thus, less of the spice was going to stick to the potato, which I should have compensated for: the recipe with the egg used about 2 teaspoons of seasoning for ½ cup of flour. The recipe without used, as noted, 2 TABLESPOONS of seasoning for 1 cup of flour mixed with cornstarch. So I could have easily DOUBLED my seasonings and probably have been fine.
I also, in classic Jon fashion, learned at this point that I didn’t know where my oil thermometer was, despite (as I later remembered) literally storing it above where I was cooking. So I didn’t know if the oil was hot enough, or too hot, and decided I just had to play it by ear. So in went my potatoes, and after a couple minutes, out they came. It was nerve-wracking for me, as ever, because I still hate deep-frying. I also assume something is going to pop and spatter me with searing oil. And I certainly had some light searing spritzes, but no showers. The results were kind of hideous.
As with a great many bad late-night ideas, the lighting is doing a LOT to cover up my failures here.
But, on the plus side, I will say that while these are not the right color, and don’t taste quite right, they do NAIL the texture. The outside is a nice crunch from the fried flour, and the inside is baked–potato soft. So I am actually pretty excited to try this another time at some point with the seasoning on point. So now we have Jo Jos, what are we going to do with them?
Well, for that, I turn to the WHEEL OF PAIN.
Roll On, Columbia
The Wheel of Pain is the name for the mill that a young Cimmerian named Conan is chained to early in his days as a slave, where he spends years performing so much physical labor that he develops an accent unlike anyone around him, and eventually he’s taken off the wheel and nothing bad happens.
This is the average miller’s body-type, apparently.
It is also the experience of being a Seattle sports fan, and a sexist. Sorry, a “Sexist Seattle sports fan”, since none of our teams do well except the WNBA (do not quote me on this, as noted earlier, I do not know ball.) The point is that for a while we hope, our hopes are crushed like wheat, and one day we will hear the lamentations of their women(‘s sports teams.)
But that doesn’t mean we don’t get out there and try, and when we do, we eat the Seattle Dog. Sometimes. Look, the people of Seattle are spiritually cats: we don’t like new people, we don’t like moving in unified groups, we DO like fish, and our most famous music genre is “Pained screaming you would hear in a dark alley.”
Screeeeeeeeeeeeeaming, then Italkrealfast and now I’m yowling in heat, uhyeah
The important thing is that the Seattle Dog is like, the one sports food we have: a hot dog with cream cheese, grilled or caramelized onions, and often some other flourish like celery salt, Jalapeño, or bacon. So when I knew I was making Jo Jos, I said “well, obviously, I’m making them Seattle Dog style.” So I went to the store and bought some caramelized onions, because fuck if I’m making ANOTHER component of this finished product. And then the store was out of Jalapeño cream cheese, which really bummed me out, but I grabbed some chive and decided I’d dash on some green jalapeño Tabasco. And then I said “i know I SHOULD put hot dogs on this, but if you’re not going to sell me less than 12 polish dogs at a time, I’m not going to capitulate to your terrorism. They get bacon.” At which point, seeing that I had bacon and chive cream cheese, I said “fuck it”, and grabbed some cheddar, to technically make these Seattle Dog/Potato Skin Not-Jos, but that was too long for the title.
The cheddar also helped to serve as a binding agent for the flakes of bacon and strands of caramelized onion. I built a plate, slid it into the microwave because while I COULD broil it for extra fanciness, it was already past midnight, and I didn’t want to dirty an extra dish, so CHEF MIKE, ORDER UP.
I will be the first to admit that whipped cream cheese looks weird in dollop form. Your brain REALLY wants it to be smooth like sour cream.
The result is perfectly edible. Like, if I paid… $6-7 for this portion size at a bar, I would recommend other people get it. $10 is pushing it. But yeah, turns out all these flavors work together, so the final dish works together too. Who could have thunk?
Also, just in case you want to minimize effort, the next day, I totally just went out and bought Jo jos to throw the toppings on.
RED, The skin of angry Spuds!
Green, the sauce of peppers hot!
Spoiler: they also work perfectly well. So if you’re hungry for a perfectly acceptable and weird enough to seem creative snack for your game day, Go buy 5 things from the grocery store, and microwave 4 of them. Tell them Jon told you how. (Do not tell them that; Jon is a very common name, and it will just be confusing.)
Now, before I ride off into the 2 AM dark, I can feel that you’re looking at me expectantly. “Where will you go, Jon?” You eyes ask me, because you installed a weird cyber-eye that shows text. I shudder lightly, and pat you on the shoulder. “I’m still right here, kid.” I then squint and look at you, trying to decide if your amorphous and undefined form as an audience surrogate means it’s inappropriate to call you “kid”. Anywho, the important thing is I have no idea when I do the next one of these. Hopefully soon; as stated, I have a backlog of things I’ve cooked, and restaurants I’ve eaten at that I could tell you about, and all I would need is one or two free nights a month to get back into it. I can only tell you I’ll try. Until then, may our Bowl be full and past all expectations, may you and your loved ones be safe, and Stephen Miller should be staked in the heart to end his spree of evil. Go Birds.
I'm being told that is for a differ-
RECIPE
Seattle Not Jos
Serves 1 Jon as a light meal, probably 4 as a snack.
Ingredients
1 pound Jo Jo potatoes (recipe follows)
1/4th cup cheddar cheese, shredded
2 tbsp caramelized onions
2 tbsp cooked bacon (chopped)
2 tbsp whipped chive cream cheese
Jalapeño hot sauce (to taste)
Preparation
Arrange Jo Jos on plate.
Top with onions, then cheddar, then bacon.
Microwave for 90-120 seconds, until cheese has melted.
Dab 1 tsp of cream cheese in 6 places on the plate, and shake over hot sauce.
Serve hot.
Home Made Jo Jos
Ingredients
4 russet potatoes, cut into 1/6th or 1/8th wedges, depending on size.
½ cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp Seasoned Salt
2 tsp Old Bay, Paprika, or other violently red spice
Canola Oil, for frying
Preparation
Boil Potato wedges for 10 minutes. Drain and let cool for 5-10 minutes.
Mix Flour, salt, and spice in a ziploc bag.
Add potatoes and toss to coat.
Fry in 375 degree oil for 3-5 minutes.
