The Enforceable Chef

“Over The Top” chili gets its name for cooking the meat on a rack over the pan with the chili in it, so as the meat cooks, it drips juices into the chili. If you choose to cook the chili in a BBQ instead of the stove or oven, the chili picks up the smokey flavors from the charcoal adding a deeper flavor profile. For this recipe, I prefer red onions to add “punginess” and use a mix of beef and pork meat.

This recipe combines two great dishes - smash burgers and chili. Substituting typical meat choices for chili with crumbled smash burgers makes for an interesting and unique flavor since most chili meat is either browned or slow cooked. The key to success is adjusting the spice combination for the smash burgers to work with your spices for the chili recipe.

Slow cooker, crockpot recipes are solid weekend meals when you have time for a long cook. They also have the added benefit of making the house smell great while you wait for the meal to get done. This recipe features Crockpot Beef Short Rib, which is a naturally tough piece of meat. Slow cooking with broth and vegetables breaks down the muscle fibers in the rib leaving a tasty, tender dish.

Grilled street corn is a quick and easy recipe that can be added as a side dish to virtually any meat prepared on a grill. Grilling the corn adds nice additional flavor due to the char marks. The corn can be customized by adding butter plus a seasoning or just simply by itself seasoned with salt.

If there was a “pork chop championship,” this recipe would win it. Described as “the best pork chop ever” in our house, I highly recommend this recipe. Few ingredients, simple, and a relatively quick cook. This recipe relies on just a few seasonings allowing the meat and heat to do the work. Due to high cooking temperature, you will need a strong fan to keep the smoke detector from going off.

Spicy steak fries are a great addition to any red meat meal—or as a standalone appetizer. For this recipe, we use avocado oil, but butter can be substituted for a creamier taste. This recipe is a quick and easy side dish with a little extra kick. The spiciness can be easily controlled by the amount of red pepper used.

Few things say Summer like a freshly made, cold Greek salad. This is one of our favorite Greek salad recipes from the McCormick company using their spice ingredients. This salad is a nice accompaniment to pita bread, hummus, ziziki sauce, and Greek chicken.

Greek rotisserie chicken has a great combination of a lemony taste coupled with Greek spice and a fire-grilled taste. Grilling chicken with a rotisserie set up, such as the Kamado Joe JoeTisserie, is surprisingly easy and the rotisserie ends up doing the hard work. If you don’t have a rotisserie, simply grilling the chicken in a charcoal grill or baking in an oven is also good.

Smashburger. Smashburger. That seems to be the burger de jour for the last few years. Here’s our attempt to bring back the Fat Burger — juicy, thick, and tasty. Instead of a thin, double-patty stack, these burgers rely on a thick single patty, which gives you more options for combining vegetables such as onions and jalapeños into the meat. Read on to reclaim the joy of the fat burger!

A good Pico de Gallo is hard to beat and is a versatile dish as a standalone appetizer or a garnish for eggs and other dishes. We named this one “Weekend Pico de Gallo” because you can make it on a Friday afternoon and enjoy it all weekend. This base ingredient for this recipes is two roma tomatoes in the ratio below to the other ingredients.

This is what happens when lasagna levels up. Rich venison, homemade noodles, and just enough cheese to make you feel rebellious. The spirals look fancy, but it’s all surprisingly doable—and wildly delicious. Bonus: zero risk of boring dinner conversation when this hits the table.

Cheaper than takeout and just as addictive. Smoky, spicy chicken thighs meet limey cilantro rice and a crunchy bean-corn salsa that might accidentally steal the show. The air fryer does the heavy lifting, and no one will believe you didn’t DoorDash it.

These muffins are soft, sweet, and just banana-y enough to feel like breakfast instead of dessert (though no judgment either way). No fancy steps, no weird ingredients—just simple, reliable, and dangerously easy to eat three in one sitting. We skip the nutmeg, but you do you. Bonus: they reheat like a dream in six seconds flat.

This has been served at every family picnic I can remember.  The flavors are crisp and tangy, with the crunchy cabbage and sweet cranberries. It’s a great side dish for anything cooked on the grill.

I had hoped this recipe it might be an old family secret passed down from generation to generation originating in the old country. But I suppose the star ingredient of  “Cap’n Crunch” was a giveaway of its more recent origin.  While it was passed down to my wife from her mother, that is the extent of its history. It is my mother-in-law’s recreation of a Planet Hollywood appetizer.

The name for this chili comes from the fact that this recipe was my first chili dish to win a chili cookoff as “best in show.” Previous attempts successfully took home the “hot as hades” award. This is a pretty straight forward recipe that you can make in 15-20 minutes. Note that option to include kidney beans in this chili recipe. You can also easily adjust how hot it is with just a few ingredients.

Golden, crispy, and instantly recognizable — these nuggets shaped an entire generation of childhood cravings.

I love risotto and this recipe is a simple version of just what's needed to make a great risotto meal.  

Rebound bone broth soup originates with a soup I first started making when I was trying to get over a cold or allergies, hence the name “rebound bone broth soup.” Rumor has it that the soup may also be an effective hangover remedy. While just a soup, it is surprisingly hearty.

Cultus Lake Mac & Cheese traces its roots back to an annual family vacation just outside of Bend, Oregon, which become a tradition with our kids that “no parents were allowed” in favor of time with their cousin, aunt, and grand parents. While that summer vacation ended during COVID, this mac and cheese recipe lives on.

Who doesn’t like Smash Burgers. What follows is a simple and straight forward approach to making these burgers. If you like Smash Burgers, you may also be interested in our recipe for Fat Burgers.

Easy Saturday Chili is my go to chili recipe, which works for our whole family since I can level up or down the heat by modifying a few of the ingredients—jalapeños and Frank’s Red Hot Sauce. Most Texans frown on the thought of adding beans to chili. But if you promise not to tell anyone, a can or two of kidney beans won’t hurt this recipe.

If soup could brag, this one would. Creamy base, tender chicken, and enough rice to actually fill you up.

Growing up, we would have English Pancakes on the weekends.  My grandmother’s family was from England, and my mom had these as a child too.  The powdered sugar and bit of lemon juice made them seem like fancy crêpes, though the recipe is super simple and cooks up quickly.

This recipe was created after a venture to make a new, non-boring stuffing recipe without eggs - not a fan of them in stuffing.  This recipe combines a couple recipes found online with some of my favorite ingredients added. The use of croissants is key!  It is a hearty side dish that can work as a main. 

Fall pear salad is a delightful and refreshing dish to serve when the heat of summer wears off. Candied pecans and red onions create contrasting flavors that complement the pears.

Harvest pork is a nice dish to make in the fall or winter as it serves a hearty combination of meat and vegetables. The addition of rosemary creates an amazing flavor combination.

While brisket is the keystone meat in Texas BBQ, pork ribs (baby back ribs or St. Louis spare ribs) are also serious BBQ meat. I have tried several ways of cooking ribs, including the ubiquitous 3-2-1 ribs method and have landed on the 3-hour rib method by Chef Eric Gephart. As he said, “3-2-1 takes too long.”