Let's make meatbuns the Tai way~!
>Ingredients<- 1 thing of ground meat (I think it's a pound)
- 1 cup of water
- A few blocks of cheese
- Garlic powder
- Chili powder
- Salt
- Oregano
- Bacon bits
- 1 tube of Pillsbury pizza crust
>Tools and Equipment<- Meat-cooking pan with lid
- Cheese grater
- Small plate
- Spatula or large spoon
- Pyrex liquid measuring cup
- Sharp knife
- Cookie tray or baking stone
- Stove
- Oven
- Large plate
>Here we go!<0. (optional) Put on some music! Cooking is fun!
1. Let's cook the meat first! Hopefully this thing has been thawing in the fridge for, like, a day, because it takes a lot longer when frozen. I use ground turkey, because that's what Mum buys, but I guess you can buy any meat you like!
2. Turn on the stove to about medium heat, somewhere around 5 or 6 if yours is like mine. Dump the meat into the meat pan, and add a whole cup of water with your Pyrex poury measurer.
3. Break up that meat! Use your spatula or large spoon (I use a spatula, so we'll call it that from now on) to cut up the big frozen chunk into small edible bits. This can take a while if it's still frozen! If it is, put the lid on it and let it broil a while. Either way, once it's pretty much broken up and stewing around in the water, cover it up and let it simmer.
4. While we're waiting, let's prepare the cheese! Put the cheese grater on top of the small plate. Now you have a place for the cheese to rest!
5. Grate up whatever cheese you'd like to have, even if it's none! I personally like cheddar, and also mozzarella if we have any. First grate the cheddar until you use up half of however much you have. However much! Then grate the mozzarella until you get frustrated by the fact that mozzarella is so soft and hard to grate. Hopefully this is about half of that, too. If you have pre-shredded cheese, you saved yourself time, but now there's nothing to do during this step! Use half the bag anyway.
6. Check on the meat. By this point, some of it should be gray from being cooked. The other half is still pink.
7. Spice Spice Baby! Get out all those spices I mentioned. We're going to awesome that meat. Throw in a little salt, because salt is always added to things. Use a fair amount of garlic and chili powder, to give it some flavour. And use even more oregano, to make it smell good! If you have bacon bits, throw those in too! Throw in a quarter of the container! Now stir it all up. The water will absorb the spices, and as the meat boils, they'll absorb the flavours from the water. It's magic or something! It'll all turn kind of brown, and start looking like real meat. Cover it back up when done.
7. Bonus Content Here's an optional idea! If you have the leftover flavour packet from a pack of instant yakisoba you didn't add the beef teriyaki flavour to because you just wanted buttery noodles instead, dump that in with the other spices. It's a neat flavour option, and really helps make things brown.
8. While we're waiting on that, we'll get the bun part ready. Get that tube of Pillsbury pizza crust, and struggle with opening it for a couple minutes. Bang it on the counter if it gets frustrating! Once it's finally freaking open, try centering it and unrolling it on the cookie tray or baking stone. It unfolds in a big doughy square!
9. Cut the square into quadrants with your sharp knife. It needs to be sharp and not serrated, because that dough is pretty stretchy and resiliant. Now you've turned one big dough square into four little ones! Leave them where they are.
10. The meat's probably done by now. Turn off the stove, and take the meat over to the sink. Using the lid as a guard, pour out the meat water without letting any of the meat spill away. Be very careful! Get out as much water as you can, then return the meat to the still-hot burner.
11. Using your spatula, spoon the meat into the center of each of the four squares. Heap it up there! This is, like, a pound of meat, so you can put a lot in each bun. When Tai does it, this uses about 95% of the meat.
12. Now the cheese! Pile up the cheese on the meat, just as you piled the meat! About 90% of that huge amount of your cheese is going into the buns. The heat from the meat will melt the cheese a bit, so you can squeeze a little more on than you think.
13. Now you've got a little pile of foods in the middle of some dough squares. Remember how I said that dough is stretchy? It's time to use that power! Stretch the corner of each square one at a time on top of the pile. There should be enough give to get each corner on top without any difficulty or need to pinch the seams. Now the meat is completely surrounded by dough!
14. Time to cook them! Put the tray in the oven, and follow the tube's directions. If you got the same tube I have, set the oven for about 425 degrees, and then set the timer for 25 minutes.
15. That leftover little bits of meat and cheese? Why not mix them in a bowl and eat them while waiting?? Or save them for a really tiny taco? Whatever you like. I always end up with some extra, so it's really up to you what you do with it.
16. Go back upstairs and talk on the #fstdt IRC channel while waiting on the timer. Talk about how awesome your meatbuns are gonna be.
17. Are the me-e-e-eatbuns re-e-e-eady yet~?
18. Once the timer goes off, turn off the oven and take the tray out. They should be all crisp and goldeny brown now, and smell like pure heaven~ Use your spatula to get them off the tray, and put them on the large plate.
19. Eat one now, and save the others for later. These things are actually pretty filling! Also, return to the IRC to report your success.
20. Do the delicious meatbun dance. ~*w*~