Donny Enriquez | What's For Lunch
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00:00Yo Kyle, what's for lunch? Chef Donnie, I'm from Cincinnati. I love my chili. I can't
00:05wait to have your version of Skyline chili. Oh boy, that's a first. Let's get
00:09cooking. Guys, welcome back to What's for Lunch. Today we're joined by Minnesota
00:19Vikings legend Kyle Rudolph. Kyle, welcome to the kitchen. Hey, I'm happy to be here.
00:23I'm gonna be honest, I'm from Minnesota, so I was expecting maybe like juicy
00:27Lucy, maybe some chicken wild rice soup, maybe a hot dish, but your Cincinnati guy
00:32we're doing Skyline chili. I've never made it before, so yeah, this should be
00:36interesting. It should be a good one. I'm excited. You know, being a Cincinnati guy,
00:39I don't get this often. Minnesota was home for 12 years, so all those things,
00:45I've had a lot of. I'm actually headed to Minnesota tomorrow, so you got to get me
00:50my Skyline chili fix, and then I'll get all my juicy Lucy and hot dishes and all
00:55that stuff. All right, fair enough. We'll get you chopping an onion first. So I'll
00:59do the first half here, and then we'll have you do the second. While
01:03you were living in Minnesota, did you have a favorite, like a go-to restaurant
01:07downtown? Where would you like to go? Oh man, I think one thing people don't realize about
01:10Minneapolis and the Twin Cities is how good the food is. Some of our
01:15favorite chefs there, Gavin Kaysen. I worked for Gavin Kaysen. It was my first
01:19job when I was in high school, when he first opened Spoon and Stable. I was a
01:23prep cook there for a couple of months. That's a beautiful restaurant. It's one of my
01:26favorites in Minneapolis. Whenever I can go back and get a seat, it's
01:29always a treat. So with the onion, we're slicing it just until that root.
01:33Try to hold it in, then do one slice on the inside, and then you come down, and
01:36then you get like a perfect dice that way. So you can go slow and
01:41steady on this. We're not trying to set any speed records here.
01:44So I don't need my fingers anymore? Yeah, well, we'll keep them tucked. If you keep them
01:48tucked like this, like if you have the knuckle, it never goes above that. You can't cut.
01:52You can't cut it. So you said one in the middle. So first, we're gonna go, you're
01:55gonna go just straight down, up until that, so that root kind of holds it all
01:58together. So you're gonna go right before that. Just like straight, straight lines
02:01across. We'll start with that. We'll start with the ones across. Sounds good. And if you
02:04want to hold your knife, the best way to hold it, like most control, is do you
02:07have your thumb here and your forefinger, and like the handle doesn't really
02:10matter. You can kind of just grip it like that. Cool.
02:15There it is. In the middle? The middle one, we can skip. You know what, the middle
02:21one. I'll rock the middle one, because if you get caught on this show and it
02:25comes back to me, I don't want that. That'll be good. Now we're just straight down, right?
02:28Now we're just straight down. So did you grow up down, like in Cincinnati? In Cincinnati. How often would you eat
02:33scallion and chili? I mean, at least once a week. Is it once a week? Yeah. Is this
02:38something that people eat from Cincinnati, and they're like, oh, this is
02:40really good, and then anyone else tries it, and they're kind of like, what is this?
02:43Very much so. And I think, too, it's like, you know, like for instance, my wife is
02:48from Michigan, and you know, at first she was kind of like, what is this?
02:55Take that. An acquired taste. Okay. Because I think at first, and I see it here, you
03:00got the chocolate and the cinnamon. Yeah. It catches people off guard. It does.
03:05Because they're like, oh, chili. Chili's supposed to taste a certain way. The taste
03:10and like texture profile of runny chili over noodles, or runny chili on a hot dog
03:17with cheese, like the Coney's. It's just different. It's different. When you grow
03:22up there, it's a way of life. It seems closer to like a meat sauce, almost, like
03:27a ragu, than a chili, which I like. And you know what? The flavor is
03:32sweet. The cinnamon threw me off, and like the chocolate. So you do have a
03:36sweetness involved. But the one thing I'm gonna do, so the old-school recipes, old
03:39school is all, you get water, and you start, you boil water, and then you
03:43basically just put everything in a pot. And that, like, not browning the meat is
03:47like, that kills me, and not having the onions cook a little bit before the
03:50water. So we're gonna do, we're changing one thing. Instead of water, we'll use
03:53beef stock. Okay. The more flavor there, and then we're gonna just saute the
03:56onions quickly in butter before. That's it. The rest, the rest I'm keeping. If you're
04:00cooking with butter, I'm good with it. All right, good. Can't hurt, right? No, it can't hurt.
04:04You need a little butter. I mean, you're still very, very fit. It's not gonna, it's
04:07not gonna hurt. How strict was your diet when you were playing? You know, I think
04:12you just, for me, being a like high school basketball player that was skinny,
04:17you know, diet became a huge part of my regimen early on, because I had to gain
04:22weight to play tight end. Like, you can't be 220 pounds and play tight end. It won't
04:26work. Right. So, in high school, diet became a huge part, but it was like, go to
04:32Chipotle and eat two burritos. Sure. Literally consume as many calories as
04:36you possibly can. Then, as I got older, I played at about 265 in college. Then it
04:43became, okay, don't become a tackle. So, my diet changed. It became, you know, be
04:50careful. If you go eat two Chipotle burritos, you're gonna be playing right
04:53tackle instead of tight end. Right. So, it was kind of always changing, but I will
04:57say the one constant throughout high school, college, and the NFL is like diet
05:02and nutrition is always a part of what you do. And now, retired, it was kind of
05:06nice to just eat whatever and drink whatever and not have to worry about it.
05:09Right. Yeah, I bet. The Spice is, okay, I'm changing this, too. The original recipe
05:13calls for the spices to be added once, like, all the liquids are boiling. We got
05:17to toast the spices out a little bit in the onion. So, we're going with chili
05:19powder, cinnamon, allspice, a little bit of ground cloves in there, and then some
05:26chili flake and some garlic powder. And that's it. So, you, like, traditional
05:31chili would have a lot more cumin, like Chipotle, some cayenne in there. This is
05:35on the, more like a Swedish meatball almost, like, in spices. But, so we're
05:41gonna get these a quick toast in there. That's just me changing the recipe. If
05:44you have people out there that are Cincinnatians, might be losing their mind,
05:47but look, I just, I had to change just this small thing. I'm getting some of the
05:50smell already, so whatever you're doing is working. It's smelling right. Alright, we're on track. Yeah,
05:54I've never made this, so you're gonna be a good judge of a, if I'm even close. And
05:57then, a little tomato paste is gonna go in there. And, too, with tomato paste, we're
06:00gonna let that cook just a little bit. I'm gonna put some beef stock in here. So,
06:06did you play, did you ever get to play in the Metrodome? Oh, yeah. You were in the,
06:09three years in the Metrodome. That's when they change it. And then, TCF? Two years outside at TCF, and
06:15then the rest at US Bank Stadium. How sick is US Bank Stadium? It's the best. Oh my god. That is the best, I think it's the best stadium in the NFL. I agree. Yeah. Yeah, I mean,
06:23obviously, there's newer stadiums, Vegas, LA, you know, constantly building new
06:27stadiums. Sure. You know, I would put US Bank Stadium up there with the best. Let's
06:32go. It's, it's been amazing. And now that this is, the broth is boiling, we can add
06:36our beef. Again, this is something that, if I was doing this the other way, I'd
06:39usually cook the beef first, you want to brown it, get a lot of flavor on it, but
06:42this is the, it's the original recipe. So, then you just break it up with a whisk.
06:46It's not the most appealing looking thing when you, when you get started, but
06:49you know, it's, it's a, it's a Skyline chili. So, we break that up, and then
06:54basically bring us to a boil, and then let it simmer for like an hour, hour and
06:58a half. And then, let's put some dark, dark chocolate in it. There's no sweetness at
07:02all. It's 100% cacao, very bitter, but that goes in there, and that adds, actually,
07:06that's nice. A chocolate and the chili is a good depth of flavor, but that's
07:10essentially it. And here we go, the batch I made this morning. It's been going for
07:14about an hour and a half. Is that looking at least visually like what it, what it
07:17should look like? Yeah, yeah. All right, and then it's served over spaghetti noodles. Yeah.
07:21Which is kind of a, you don't expect chili to go with spaghetti. That's, that's
07:24a first. The three-way, right? That's how it is. So, whenever I'm doing, like, any
07:28kind of pasta, though, to get the most sauce on it and everything, I do a little
07:31bit in the pan, and we'll build it, and then we'll pile it on top. There's a way
07:35to eat it as well, which is wild. All right, all right. That's, we'll take the
07:39tongs here. I'm gonna get the cheese. Now, that's a, that's a plate of... That's a plate.
07:48This would be probably an XL three-way. I don't even know if that's a thing anymore, but
07:53this is massive, so. Now, you, are you piling more? Yep, absolutely. Okay, all right. So,
07:58there, there, theoretically, there's the pasta. That's the spaghetti. So, we got
08:03spaghetti. Now, we go chili. Yeah, and then cheese. So, the cheese, and here's the
08:11thing with the cheese, like, it is literally a mound of cheese. You just say,
08:16you say when. You tell me when. You know that commercial where they're, like, doing
08:20the cheese in the restaurant, and the guy gets covered in it? Yeah, yeah. It's almost
08:23that. Okay, so, a comical amount of cheese. Yes, I mean, like. All right, I'll keep going.
08:29I mean, maybe the block. We'll see. Oh, that looks good. That looks good. And it's, like, for a
08:33long time, they even had what was called a Skyway, where they would say you get
08:3650% more cheese. So, like, that, that would say that's a traditional amount. Wow. And, I
08:41mean, you're just talking about mounds of cheese. So, there we go. Yeah, no, that is a
08:44mound of, uh, that's a mound of cheese, I do say. This is it. This is all you. Every
08:49Creverly bite, guys, tastes better with Pepsi, especially the zero sugar. Mm-hmm.
08:53Skyline chili, Kyle Rudolph. Here we go. So far, man, I appreciate it. So, I said there's,
08:57there's a specific way, when you eat a three-way, and you don't even need a knife,
09:02it's just the fork, and it's, like, you cut it with your fork. Okay. So, there it is
09:10right there, and it's a scoop with the bite right there on the fork. All right.
09:14So, that is how you, you cut with the fork, and then you scoop. Look at that. It's not
09:19often I learn something from the guests on this show. Let's go. Mm-hmm. What do you
09:22think? That's good. You close? That's damn good. I have nothing to compare it to, so,
09:30I don't know. Like, if you go to Skyline and sit down in the restaurant, it'll
09:33taste different than if you bring it home from the grocery store. Even if you
09:38go through the drive-thru, like, I didn't really like going through the drive-thru
09:40at Skyline. Gotta sit down, gotta eat it. This is a hell of a replication of
09:45Skyline chili. I'll take it. Well, Kyle, thank you very much. Appreciate you being here.
09:49Skullvikes. Let's go. Guys, that's gonna do it for this episode of What's for Lunch.
09:52We'll see you next time. Peace.