Week 24 - Inspired by a Restaurant

We love trying restaurant food, so this was a really difficult challenge week! I started out by perusing a bunch of different restaurant cookbooks, but there were so many things that sounded amazing but were also possibly too difficult to prepare, and I was also just getting so overwhelmed by choice. I don't know how I ended up there, probably browsing internet round-ups of copycat recipes, but eventually I ended up deciding on Outback Steakhouse.

I'm not really a regular at Outback (only been a handful of times), but I do love their bloomin' onion, so that was an obvious selection (to be made in the air fryer, following a recipe from Blue Jean Chef). To pair with it, I decided on Alice Springs chicken that I found a copycat recipe for on Culinary Hill. I don't think I've ever had Alice Springs chicken at Outback, but checking my photo archive, I do see an appetizer of Alice Springs chicken quesadillas, all the same elements but in quesadilla form. The recipe sounded so good though, that even if I hadn't had it before, I couldn't resist trying it.

Doesn't look nearly as good as an actual Outback plate, and kind of looks like an unrecognizable mess, but tasty!

First up, the bloomin' onion. The hardest part here was making the cuts correctly, because it was super important not to cut through the root. Unfortunately the onion I got didn't have a very big root at all, so pieces were falling off everywhere despite my best efforts, and since the root wasn't that big, I didn't have a great handle on it for dredging and it was a little clumpy. Ultimately, I just air fried the "bloomed" part that I had along with all the extra onion pieces (which I also dredged a bit). It did taste pretty good, and since the dredging on the separate onion pieces was a little more uniform, those actually were even better. I think I would try this experiment again, but only if I could find the right onion.

Sorry for the out of order photos, but can't figure out how to edit that through Google Photos on the computer...

While the bloomin' onion didn't turn out quite as well as I was hoping, the Alice Springs chicken - chicken marinated in mustard, honey, mayo, and lemon juice, and topped with mushrooms, bacon, and cheese - was delicious. I followed the recipe fairly closely (other than using vegan mayo and not having parsley), and we were pretty happy with how this turned out. Not as pretty on the plate as the real thing, but I probably added more toppings than the restaurant does, since it was all for us. It tasted so good that I think I now know what I'm getting if I ever go back to Outback (no idea what their allergy handling is like).

Even if this meal didn't look the greatest on the plate, it was really tasty. I'm glad that this challenge week ended up going in this unexpected direction, and I would consider another Outback kitchen adventure sometime!