Budget cooking: another day, another chitlin dish

Alright, so the wontons/dumplings/whatever-the-fucks turned out really well, so what's next on the chitlin journey? You guessed it: it's pasta time, bitches!

After inspecting the rest of the chitlins I boiled before making the wontons (I've got most of them frozen and am thawing/boiling them in batches), I dredged them in flour seasoned with salt and black pepper. I'm doing the extra inspection because it's my first time doing all of this process, and I'm finding little bits of membrane that I didn't get off pre-boil; they're a lot faster to pull off once it's all boiled.

Luckily, I had plenty of my wonton filling left over, so I didn't have to do any veggie prep. Just dredge the chitlins, boil the pasta, and prep is done.

I fried the chitlins in butter and olive oil, probably about a tablespoon and a half to two tablespoons of each. Remember, the meat's already cooked, so this was more just to give a nice crispy texture to the meat. Once they were browned on one side, I flipped them.

Shortly after flipping them, I went ahead and added in my veggie mix, mainly just to heat them up and melt the butter that had congealed throughout it. I also added a little white wine to scrape up what little shit there was on the bottom of the pan. Not literal shit, flavor shit. I need to be careful talking about shit when I'm cooking colon...

Anyway, after the wine simmered down a bit, I poured in my cream, grated some asiago into the pan, and cracked a bit of black pepper in for good measure.. Got that all mixed up and things were looking, smelling, and tasting good, but not quite right. I had to use my cheat code: capers. I dumped in a handful of capers (and also added a little bit of the brine from the jar), and that took this sauce from a 6 to an 8.5 in a hurry.

After the sauce was finished with a little more butter, I added my noodles in, gave it a mix, and scooped some out for dinner. I added a little slice of asiago on top because I fucking love cheese. The texture of the chitlins was a perfect little crunch, and the flavor was remarkably balanced by the capers, which helped it to blend with everything else. All in all, another chitlin win.

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