Has anyone seen or heard of this??
I just stumbled upon this online. This better not be a cruel joke… I need to know where I can find this, and I need to know now. Maybe good ol’ Amazon can help me, because THIS needs to happen:
That’s so beautiful I could cry. I want to blow that photo up, frame it, and hang it above my bed. I will get to the bottom of this and report back.
Wow, let me tell you, it took DAYS to count all the votes that came in for the meatballs vs mac n cheese recipe poll. I may need some interns to help me with the next one. I have to say though, I was a bit surprised that the meatballs won out by such a large margin.. they got twice as many votes than the mac n’ cheese! Check out the poll results and see for yourself.
OK, so lets get started. Here’s what you’ll need:
-A pound a’ meat
-A cup of blended Goldfish crumbs
-One egg
-A nice amount of parmesan cheese
-2 tablespoons of olive oil
-Marinara sauce (I went store-bought again)
-Salt and pepper
-Salt-N-Pepa playing in the background (most crucial)
Behold my 6 total inches of counter space!
First thing you’ll wanna do is preheat your oven to three-fitty. Then slather 2 tablespoons of the olive oil on a baking sheet, spread it around, and shove it in the oven (I had a picture of me doing this, but do you really need to see that?). Next, crack an egg in a big bowl and beat it up and dump in the meat (I used ground beef, but you can use turkey or pork or horse or whatever the eff you want), dump in the Goldfish crumbs, and a nice big dash of parmesan, salt, and pepper. I didn’t use anything too fancy to season this because I didn’t want the Goldfish to be overpowered. Mush it all together for a while. Here’s what that hot mess will look like as you’re mixing it:
Push it real good
Once it’s nicely mixed up, take out the heated pan and make golf ball-sized balls of the meat mush and put them on the pan, at least an inch apart. And wash your hands once in a while, will ya?
Look at those beauties
Put ’em in the oven and bake for like 13 minutes, and then take ’em out and flip ’em and put ’em back in for another 5 or so. Be sure that Salt-N-Pepa is still playing. Here’s a thrilling picture of me flipping them over:
OK it’s been a few minutes.. do they look done? Good, now take out the pan and cut one of the balls in half and make sure its cooked all the way through so you don’t kill yourself from eating frikkin’ undercooked Goldfish meatballs. That would be a sad/amazing obituary.
These look done, right?
You can see the Goldfish bits in there! Hohooo! Now I’m getting excited. Before I slathered the marinara sauce (oh yeah, you should’ve been heating your sauce, my bad) and parmesan cheese onto the meatballs, I wanted to taste one as-is to see if the Goldfish taste came through. It kiiiinda did. Maybe if you put more Goldfish crumbs in there you could taste it more, but these only had a very slight taste of it. There’s a fix though! In addition to pouring on the heated sauce and a dash of parmesan, sprinkle some of the leftover Goldfish crumbs on top. Once you do, it’s a thing of beauty:
………
Now THAT’s a Goldfishy meatball! Everything actually goes pretty well together. Maybe throw a few whole Goldfish on there for presentation too. Voila! There’s your Goldfish meatballs. Let me know what you think! Maybe make some pasta too so you’re not just eating Goldfish and beef for dinner (not that there’s anything wrong with that!).
A few months back, my girlfriend threw a party at her apartment and put together a pretty impressive snack spread. All the bases were covered – hors d’oeuvres, veggies, chips, dips, baked goods…. but there was also a somewhat inconspicuous bowl of Goldfish. I was shooting the breeze with some chums by the snack station and I noticed that despite the plethora of deliciousness available to the crowd, the Goldfish were being depleted at a swift rate. Granted, I was generously helping myself to the fish, but I wasn’t the only one. The other snacks were eaten too, but I was surprised that despite all of the competition on the table, the Goldfish were one of the most popular snacks. I also heard a party-goer say “Damn… Goldfish were awesome when I was 6 and they’re still awesome today”. Amen.
The fact that people forget how good Goldfish are is puzzling since you can buy them almost anywhere and they’ve been around forever. But why are they so underrated? Why are they the forgotten snack? Why don’t you see them at Super Bowl parties? I think a big reason for this is because Pepperidge Farm has their own aisle in the supermarkets and bodegas, and it’s usually not close to the chip section. While it’s pretty cool to have your own aisle in a store, I think it’s doing them an injustice. I get that PF sells mostly cookies and baked goods and this is why their section is closer to the cookie aisle than the chip aisle, but if the Goldfish were separated and sold in the chip aisle, I guarantee that you would see them at more parties. Especially if they changed the packaging so that it resembles a small bag of chips instead of the iconic PF bag they come in now. Messing with brand recognition is usually a risky move, but I think it could help in this case. They can still sell Goldfish in the current bags that they have now, but if they also had a potato chip-esque bag with a less kid-friendly design (putting a beard and reading glasses on Finn the fish would give him a distinguished, sophisticated look) and placed it in the chip aisle, people would be more likely to snatch ’em up.
Unfortunately, I don’t see this happening any time soon since PF has been doing what they do for like 1000 years, but I for one would like to see more Goldfish at parties and… holy crap I just thought of something… imagine you could get a giant bucket of Goldfish at a movie theater??? Sweet Christ, I would go to a movie every other day. It would probably cost like $200 though. So worth it.
…Goldfish Baby Cheddar!
It was close, but after counting the MILLIONS of votes that flooded in, Goldfish Baby Cheddar edged out Goldfish Grahams Vanilla Cupcake by a 16% margin (7 votes to 5). Now, on to the review:
First off, these guys are small. Below is a baby Goldfish next to a full-sized:
But wait! These fish aren’t smiling! I was a little disappointed by this because I like when my food is happy. After reaching for another fish though, I realized I was wrong:
So half are smiling and half are not?? What is the meaning of this??! Why did they do this I wonder… the faceless fish seem so anonymous and emotionally empty. Perhaps they taste different? Lets find out.
My first reaction after eating some were that the faceless fish were more puffy and hollow, and the smiling fish were thinner and more dense. I wouldn’t say that the smiling fish are tough or too crunchy, but eating the faceless fish feel more like you’re eating the traditional-sized Goldfish. The cheddar taste is present, and they managed to balance the saltiness and cheesiness to replicate the taste of the full-sized cheddar fish. Eating the smiling and non-smiling together also produced a beautiful medley of crunchosity. Also, since these fish are so small, you can really get a nice handful:
Theres gotta be like 20 fish in there. Oh, and don’t think this means that you’ll be able to manage your portions and eat less because they’re smaller. They are as delicious as the regular cheddar Goldfish, so any self control or willpower is out the window. You are at the mercy of these fish, and you will finish eating them when there are no more fish to eat, so prepare accordingly. However, if I had the choice between the baby cheddar and the full-sized cheddar, I would go full-sized. They basically taste the same, but if you had the choice between eating Cookie Crisp-sized chocolate chip cookies and Entenmann’s-sized cookies, you’d go Entenmann’s, right? Me too. BTW, who knew Entenmann’s was spelled like that?? I first typed it out as “Entiman’s” which doesnt look right at all, but sounds more right than Entenmann’s. Reminds me of when I was young growing up in Westchester and first realized that New Rochelle was not spelled “Nurrashell”.
Oh, and you thought the regular-sized Goldfish tend to end up on the floor and in the couch cushions? These lil buggers end up everywhere.
Your dog will thank you though.
Remember this one??
Best part is that the person who taped this was watching Ernest Goes to Camp. Jim Varney + Goldfish = epic Sunday afternoon.
We’re gonna start with the recipe that inspired me to start this blog – Goldfish-breaded mozzarella sticks. I got the idea for this recipe a few years back when I was invited to a Super Bowl party and wanted to whip up a lil’ suh’in suh’in. Just a few tidbits before we jump in:
-I am NOT a cook and can barely boil water, so these recipes will be pretty simple for everyone.
-You’re gonna reek of Goldfish when you’re done making these. You’re welcome.
-You’re gonna see some nonsensical units of measurements like “a small handful” and “a good dosing”, so feel free to convert to actual measurements if you know how to cook.
-I’ve made these several times, but I’m still perfecting the recipe, so all suggestions are welcome in the comments section.
OK first off, here’s a list of everything you’ll need.
-Goldfish- you can buy just a 6.6 oz bag, but I recommend the 30 oz carton so that you can shovel Goldfish into your mouth while you cook (kind of like what I’m doing while I’m writing this). I went with the Flavor Blasted Xtra Cheddar this time because I mean business.
-A few eggs
-A blender
-A small handful of Italian-style bread crumbs
-A few dashes of grated parmesan cheese.
-A pack of string cheese (feel free to experiment with different brands, but I usually go with Polly-O). You can also cut your own sticks out of blocks of cheese and be fancy.
-Vegetable oil
-Marinara sauce for dippin’ purposes
-A wooden stick, lead pipe, or shiv
Alrighty. So the first thing you’ll want to do it throw some Goldfish into your blender and blend until the fish are like delicious golden breadcrumbs. Leave no survivors. The amount shown in the photo below was way more than enough for the 9 sticks I was making.
Dump the fish crumbs into some tupperware that is wide enough to fit a mozz stick, and throw in a small handful of the breadcrumbs and an equal amount of the grated parmesan. I add the Italian-style breadcrumbs because they give a nice added flavor, but you can exclude them if you want. Mix that isht up and you’ll get something like this:
Okay, now set up a station where you have your breading mix, a bowl of the eggs all whisked up, the unwrapped cheese sticks, and a baking sheet with tin foil over it. Get yerself a fork and a knife too. Start out by stabbing a stick with the fork and dipping it into the eggs… make sure it’s coated nicely. Then you’re gonna dip the stick into the breading, and really bury it in there so the whole stick gets full crumb coverage. Now, I repeat this process with the same stick so that they’re double-coated. You dont have to do this, but double coating will make the sticks crunchier and Goldfishier. Once the stick is coated to your liking, take the knife and slide the stick off the fork and onto the baking sheet. The knife is key because if you use your finger, the egg and crumbs will stick to you and you’ll have a big bald spot that you have to patch back on.
Once you do this to all the sticks, put the baking sheet in the freezer, uncovered (or maybe covered, that sounds more sanitary) and freeze for at least two hours. You can freeze them overnight as well. The reason we freeze is so that the sticks don’t turn to mush when you start frying them.
(Do not judge me for only having ice cream and ice cubes in my freezer!)
OK so now your sticks are frozen. Grab yourself a relatively deep frying pan (the pan I used in the photo below is a bit too shallow, I had scalding oil splashing all over the place when I dropped them in). Pour a good dose of veggie oil into the pan.. enough so that about half the stick would be submerged when you drop it in. I don’t own a deep fryer, but if you have one, go for it because that would probably be awesome. Start heating the oil on medium heat (this is where it gets tricky.. you don’t want to burn the Goldfish exterior, but you need the cheese inside to melt, so I find that medium heat is the way to go, but feel free to experiment).
Oh, and start heating up your sauce. Fry the sticks about 20-30 seconds on each side. If the breading is burning before the cheese starts melting, lower your burner. You know how Ballpark franks “plump when you cook ’em”? Well Goldfish mozz sticks will “slightly ooze cheese when you cook ’em”. That’s when you know they’re done, when the cheese starts peeking out of the breading. Fry a few at a time, and then transfer them to a plate with paper towels on it so that it soaks up the oil. Pat them slightly with another paper towel as well. Now put your heated sauce in a little cup and transfer the sticks to a different plate and serve those mofos! (I had to “taste test” 3 of the sticks while frying them)
Now grab the wooden stick, lead pipe, or shiv that I mentioned in the ingredients list, as you’ll need it to beat off all the ravenous savages who will be lunging for these sticks. My roommate Jeremy got his hands on one though:
So there you have it! Feel free to make some suggestions or post some reviews in the comments section below. Enjoy!
The Goldfisherman 