Guilty as Sin

Tastes like delicious. 

Have you read the "Serious Eats" website?  If so, you may be familiar with a fellow food nerd---although one whose skill, mainly, but also nerdiness far, far, FAR exceed my own--Kenji Lopez-Alt.  This epic King of Food Nerdiness has this scientific cooking series where he examines, tests, and refines the "best" way to make certain things.  Like how to shape a hamburger, when to season it, how the best __ to make.  That sort of thing.  It's entertaining for his clever, referential writing alone.  But, damn, the boy is good, and his meticulous methods are truly astounding, interesting, and make me glad he's there doing the testing so that I don't have to.

So when I saw these two recent entries, you know what had to be done:

Nacho Cheese Sauce
Ultimate Sliders

Oh, lord.  How many can I eat? Answer: at least three, and that's only by using restraint. 

Yes, because, Internet, you cannot just see a recipe for nacho cheese sauce and ultimate sliders and NOT make it, can you?  Because, if you can, well, you and your willpower can just take the high road, cause I can't pass it up.

One more time, for effect. 

Deconstructing the recipes is a little tricky.  The cheese sauce was awesome...but it most definitely was not the same thing you get at the baseball games and movie theaters along with your tortilla chip nachos.  It's distinctly cheesier--cheddary, tangy, and creamy.  It reminds me more of the Merkt's Cheddar cheese--a sharper, less creamy, but cheesier sauce--that you find in hot dog stands around Chicago for cheese fries instead of the aforementioned nacho product.  It's different, and each are special in their own way, but for now I'm sticking to this homemade version as the best of two worlds.  I probably sped up the melting step of mine a little to much, resulting in a bit of graininess in the finished product.  Overall, though, a quick and easy way to indulge a cheese fry craving at home.  Because I really needed to know how to do that.

The sliders I'm in a bit of the same boat.  Definitely not White Castle replicas, these are beefy and steamy and onion-tastic (my fingers smelled like a White Castle for at least 24 hours, despite repeated washings).  If you're craving WC, these probably will not hit your spot.  But if you're craving an awesome slider (see also Serious Eats for lengthy, arcane discussions about what is and is not a true slider) this will knock WC out of the ballpark.  For reals.