Recipes: Inside Out Inari Fox Burgers? (Patreon)

Hey, All👋~~ How are you? Richard's working on the next episode of UJ. It's a non sponsored one, and it's funny, I kind of had so many topics I wanted to talk about it was hard to make a choice. It's should be up in fifteen minutes. Ha!

The interview for Ancient Aliens is this weekend and I'm nervous, of course, but. much better prepared than last time. Too prepared? I know they're only going to use a minute or two of what I say, but I timed my answers...and I can talk for over two hours about this stuff. Yowza. Fun though!

I've been Buddhist, yōkai, and ghost story leaning my whole life here, but I have developed a very healthy affection for Japanese myth, the goddesses, the gods. It's wild! I could see spending a lifetime sorting through the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki.

Now for the recipe!

Inside Out Inari Fox Burgers 🦊🍔 -- or something like that.

I saw something like this on social media and lost it, then played around with the idea of it, and here you go. You can totally adapt as you see fit.

Most important, can you get abura age near you? Those deep fried tofu pockets. I didn't try it with inari sushi pouches. It might work, but they are sweet, so it'll be a different flavor. I'll have to try. The regular abura age are totally unflavored and a little bigger than the inarizushi ones.

So first just get some minced meat and flavor it how you like your burgers (onions, garlic, egg, spices?) I think this would work with tofu flavored up, too, or chopped up veggies. It would be fun to experiment with.

 Below is how abura age is sold here and what the package looks like. They're non flavored fried tofu pouches and one is completely sealed. Meaning you have to cut one in half to get two pockets.

 Here's what that looks like. Then after cutting, you carefully turn inside out.

 Do that to all of them. So five will get you ten pouches.

Fill them 1/3 with the meat mixture (or whatever you like), add some cheese of your choice, a little more meat so the cheese doesn't leak out and splatter the oil.

 Then you fold the tops in to seal. Left right, then top bottom. Turn them upside down so they don't pop open. When you go to fry them, place them folded side down and they seal so nothing comes out.

They're pretty easy to shape at this point, so try to make them square or rectanglish, since you'll need to fry on all sides. Perfectly round is a fun shape, but hard to brown evenly.

Shallow fry, low to medium, turning and taking internal temperature to make sure everything's cooked all the way through. For some reason inside part of the abura age fried up nice and crispier than the outside would and with a very interesting consistency.

 Observations: I was really afraid I'd bite into one and get a mouthful of raw meat. Yuck. It worked out okay, but it was a balance between not wanting to burn them and making sure they were cooked. They did cook through! I cut one open and tested.

The next day, I cooked the meat before added it to the pouches and that worked perfectly fine, too, actually.

Tadah! It's the weirdest damned outside texture, but interesting, good!

I mention it in the podcast but I'm going to retell "Urashima Taro" for this month's Bedtime Story. That along with another chapter of The Pillow Book. It looks like things are winding down with the oracle cards (all my work is done!) and the middle grade book (just have to comment on artwork which is INCREDIBLE!, by the way), this interview out of the way and I'll have some time again ٩( 'ω' )و

Okay, everyone stay safe and well. More soon!

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