Dateline: June 13, 2020. BURGER AWESOMENESS REVISITED AND TWEAKED

Hey Tammy and Cody, this one is for you to try on your pellet grill!

I made the burgers again, and found out some things that are important.  In the original post, I stated, that the Jamison recipe called for the cheapest grade of ground beef....

No, no, no, and another no.  The first time I made them, I had 80% ground angus beef, non-vacuum packed.  The burgers were truly spectacular.  The second time I made them, I used 80% ground beef, but vacuum packed.  The packaging is what made the big difference.  The vacuum pack of the second meat made the burgers more compact and less tender and juicy.  So yesterday, I went with the non-vacuum packed ground angus and my faith in the recipe is restored.

The tweak I made was that I did not have any canned green chilis, but I did have some chipotle adobo sauce left as I used the last pepper the night before.  Perfecto, I will use the sauce in the burgers.  I used about 3 T worth and kept the minced onion the same as the recipe.  I made more One-derful rub and coated the burgers as before.  I set the smoker up the same, and after an hour they came off the grill at the perfect temp for medium rare.  I had the second grill going for the corn, so I seared off the burgers for a bit of crust, toasted the buns, and was in heaven again.

Awesome burgers here is the link to the original posting.  That rub is good on anything, too!

Dateline: June 9, 2020 Holy Mole!

I had some turkey tenderloins in the freezer and decided to try to do something with them that was 

1) different than usual

2) tasty

3) quick and easy

I began my search with NYTCooking app and found inspiration with a turkey mole recipe. 

Ingredients

5 dried guajillo peppers

5 dried pasilla peppers

1 dried ancho pepper

1 large onion, quartered, but not peeled

4 cloves of garlic, not peeled

water

1.5 lbs turkey tenderloin, boneless breast, boneless thigh, whatever you have, cut up into chunks

salt and pepper

1 t ground coriander seed

1 t ground cumin seed

1/2 t Mexican oregano

1 c chicken stock

1 T unsweetened cocoa powder

2 t turbinado sugar

Method

1.  Stem and seed all the dried peppers.  Wear gloves if your hands are raw from sanitizer!

2.  In a cast iron skillet, toast the peppers on both sides over medium heat, but do not burn!

3.  Place in a bowl and cover with water and allow to soak until pliable

4.  In same cast iron skillet, put in onion quarters cut side down, and garlic cloves.  Toast until slightly blackened on all sides.

5.  Remove to a blender and pull the peppers from the water and add them to the blender.  Add about 1/2 cup soaking liquid to help get the blender going.  Reserve the remainder of the soaking liquid in case the dish needs thinning later on.  Blend until very smooth.

6.  Strain the contents of the blender through a fine sieve into the bowl where you soaked the peppers.  Make sure to scrape down the outside of the sieve and to try to extract as much pulp from what is inside the sieve.  Hold aside until step 8.

7.  Salt and pepper all sides of the turkey chunks.  Heat the same cast iron skill over medium heat, add neutral oil, and gently sear the turkey chunks until a light golden brown.  They will not be cooked all the way through.  Remove them to a clean plate.

8.  In the cast iron skillet cook the strained sauce.  As it bubbles up, add the chicken stock, coriander, cumin, oregano, cocoa and sugar.  Stir to combine all ingredients well.  Taste, adjust salt and pepper or sugar, etc.  Reduce slightly and add in the turkey chunks and any accumulated juices from the plate.  Rotate and spoon sauce all over the pieces.  Cover pan with foil or lid and reduce heat to a simmer.

9.  Check on the skillet every once in a while to be sure that nothing is sticking to the bottom.

10.  Serve with rice, quinoa, or other side dish of your choice and a salad.

From the tasting that I have been doing of the sauce, it has a bit of a bitter edge, (dried peppers) and the cocoa and sugar really balance that out.  Additional salt and pepper was needed as there was zero in the sauce until then.  I am looking forward to this, sorry I don't have tortillas as a go with.

This was outstanding.  The mole was wonderful, so wonderful, I may make a huge batch to give away and freeze!

Dateline: June 8, 2020 Chops and Greens

I defrosted 2 veal chops for our dinner tonight.  (Don't be a hater).  

I fired up the grill to about 500° F in order to get lovely crosshatch sear marks on the chops.  I seasoned them with salt and pepper.  Asparagus went onto the grill after the chops got turned over.

Naked and afraid

I took the temp of the chops several times, and pulled when they reached 145°F and hoped that I hadn't exceeded medium by too much.  The chops were perfect, as were the asparagus.  I have a copper grill mat that I use for veggies and smaller items that may fall thru the grates.  I had the chops positioned at the rear of the grate, and after I turned them over, I put the grill mat down at the front part of the grate and let it hang over the edge of the grill.  They were dressed with only cooking spray and salt and pepper.  They came off the grill when I picked them up with the tongs and they were very floppy!

Off the grill

Plate now fully dressed

bones got saved for stock

The chop was heavenly

It tasted as good as it looks!  This was a definite keeper!  Now, veal chops need to go on sale again!  When they are on sale, they are cheaper than rib eye and more delicious.

Dateline: June 4, 2020 Smoked Lamb

 

I have heard a lot about Owensboro, Kentucky and the signature dish, smoked mutton.  I have a little 2 lb lamb chuck roast that I smothered in a mixture of garlic paste, harissa, olive oil, tamarind, salt and pepper.

It went into the smoker at 3:30 pm, hopefully, dinner will be ready by 7.  I also threw in some corn on the cob.  I can quickly put together a salad, and we are done for tonight.  Which is a good thing, because we have another zoom call at 7.

I am looking forward to the smoky, crispy, exterior and the gamy interior of this cook.

Now it's just a waiting game.  Probes have been set, corn strategically placed and the rally for George Floyd's funeral is proceeding peacefully across the street.

Well, this was a noble experiment.  I took the roast to 147° F, but should have let it go much longer.  Way too rare for me.  There was nothing interesting about this.  I had such high hopes, and may try again and take the temp up to my usual 190 - 200 for succulent well done lamb.  I much prefer lamb braised until it is falling off the bone.  To add insult to ego injury, the corn was pretty dismal too!  All in all, not a great result tonight!  Sigh.

just off the grill waiting for slicing

If you like it rare, then you would be happy

Another issue was that there was a HUGE vein of fat running through the middle of the chuck roll, which, I had no idea was there.  Perhaps next time I should roll my own, hell maybe even slaughter the beast myself.  Just kidding, the neighbors already think we are heretics!  

Dateline: June 3, 2020 It Is Raining, so Plan B -- Spicy Pork, Gangnam Style

Marinaded pork hunks

In browsing recipes today for the pork shoulder that I had, I came across this one from Melissa Clark,

Instant Pot Spicy Pork.  I had an 8 lb piece of pork that I cut into a 3 lb and a 5 lb hunk.  Froze the 3 lb one and cut the 5 lb one up into 4 or 5 chunks as recommended in the recipe.

The pork (below) browned up quite nicely because of the sugar.  

Thickened spicy pork sauce, yum!

The sauce has a lovely zip to it owing to the gochujang. The recipe did not specified what kind of soy sauce, and I thought that regular Kikkoman would make it too salty, so I opted for Chinese dark soy, same 1/4 c measure. I also used agave syrup instead of honey and turbinado sugar for the brown sugar. Those were the only swaps I made. Oops, not true, I added some Shao Xing rice wine to deglaze the pot as well as water and 2 glugs of an open bottle of red wine.

The sauce (right) is very dark because of the dark soy sauce.  I used it for 2 reasons, 1)  it is not as salty as light or regular soy sauce, and 2) it also adds a bit of sweetness.  There is a saying in Chinese cooking, dark soy for color, light soy for flavor.

The meat is in the pressure cooker for 90 minutes.  Should be wonderfully soft and unctuous.

Then the decision to broil or not needs to be made.  There is something to be said for crispy edges but do I want to go thru heating up the oven?  Dunno yet.

I opted for broiling.  This was a keeper!  Husband unit gave it 2 opposable thumbs up!  And a snorted, "keep it in the rotation, honey"!

I had pulled out 2 individual bowls of sauce before broiling so that we could add, or not, more sauce.  It's the sauce!

Cucumber salad was also quite tasty.  It had the cooling effect that it was designed to have by Ms. Clark.  In the future, I'd eliminate the sugar, and amp up the vinegar.  I know that the sugar is to dampen the heat, but it also removes the tanginess that you'd want in a salad after a spicy meal.

cuke salad

This bottle of Cab Franc is amazing...just perfect with something a bit spicy!

Dateline: June 1, 2020 It's Brisket, Baby!

I had a big hunk of brisket, packer's cut, in the freezer.  Took it out and put it into the fridge a couple of days ago to thaw.  In reviewing my options of cooking it, today seemed like the best choice.

Went at it with a sharp knife to trim it up; removing excess fat, and any weird bits that were hanging on.  I follow Franklin Barbecue and season only with salt and pepper, in a 50-50 mixture.

After I seasoned it on the bottom side, I managed to knock the rest of the salt and pepper mixture into the sink, and needed to make more!  D'Oh!

There was a lot of fat between the flat and the deckle.  In the photo at left, the deckle is the higher part at the top right of the picture.  It is also sometimes known as the "point" cut.  In the lower left, is the flat.  

I removed quite a bit of fat and decided to freeze it for when I make sausages, or need more fat in a ground beef concoction that I am making.  

The meat is well marbled, flexible, and looked to be of a high quality.  Why is flexible a good quality?  It is an unscientific theory that a tender raw brisket will be a tender smoked brisket.  I am not sure if this is prime or choice as I ordered it from Baldor and they said there were out, but the brisket arrived in the order anyway!  The markings on the package did not indicate one way or the other.

You can see the rise to the deckle in this photo better.  There is a large vein of fat that separates the deckle from the flat.  Care is necessary in digging it out for 2 reasons.  1)  That type of fat is not the kind that will melt away during the low and slow cooking.  2)  You do not want to accidentally slice off the deckle.

I started going at the meat around 7:30 this morning, hoping that if I could get it into the smoker around 8, it would be finished by dinner time!  Into smoker around 8:20 at 200°- 220° F.

I have 3 thermometers checking temps.  1) the build in one that came with the smoker,  2) in the far mid right you can see a short probe sticking out, that is for grill level temp, and 3) one in the meat which will go in around 10 am.  

I am so stoked for this.  I am using white oak pellets that came from bourbon barrels.  I am hoping that there will be some residual flavor left on the meat.

The meat was ready earlier than I thought it would.  I had a back up plan, but luckily I did not need it!

I wrapped the brisket at about 180° F.  I then replaced the brisket in the smoker and raised the temperature to 250° F until the meat was 190°, about another hour.  All told, the brisket was on the smoker for about 11 hours.  Pretty quick for a 13 pounder!

In the kitchen, the unwrapping

The house smelled great while the meat rested and as I got the salad and stuff ready.  We ate the meat on Martin's potato buns.  I put mustard (dijon) on mine, and was in absolute heaven.  The sharpness of the mustard cut through the fattiness of the meat wonderfully.  The salad was watermelon, onion, feta, cucumber and tomato salad, dressed with sherry vinegar and olive oil

Ready to slice

Servet's only request for a cocktail was my margarita.  I had an epic fail in trying to make a molecular cocktail.  The reverse spherification didn't work well.  The freezing wasn't complete so the little blobs did not form properly, it just ended up looking like snot.  Not appetizing!

MARGARITA RECIPE

1 oz lime juice

1 oz lemon juice

2 oz triple sec

4 oz blanco tequila

6 drops Fee Brothers Foaming Liquid

1/2 oz mezcal

Put first 5 ingredients in a cocktail shaker, add ice.  Put the top on the shaker and shake until the container feels "full".

Pour into a glass with or without ice and float the mezcal on top.

I took the meat off at 190° F so that I could slice it easily.  If I let it run up to 200-205° F, it would have shredded rather than cut and would have been drier.  Upside would have been a more pronounced bark.  I can live with what I got!

The three of us were in meat comas in no time flat.  I sliced the meat before the second margarita, because I knew that sharp knives and drunken hands are not a good mix.

I pronounce the meal a great eating success!

Dinner is ready

Dateline: May 29, 2020 It's Friday, It's Fish Day

I know, that statement makes me seem to be a devote Catholic, but Friday is Fish Day because that's when my weekly delivery from FreshDirect arrives and I want to eat the fish that I ordered on the day that it is delivered!

I have 2 lovely center cut salmon fillets that I am going to grill.  I also thawed some Italian hot sausages that need to be cooked as well.  And to top that all off are the lovely asparagus.

Easy quick meal.  Fire up the grill, let it get hot, add a grill mat, salt and pepper fish and asparagus, add food, watch for a bit, kick the asparagus around the mat, flip sausages, but don't flip fish.  A pleasant surprise was that the fat from the sausages allowed the skin of the salmon to crisp up beautifully and release from the mat easily.

Just put on the grill

Off the grill, on the table

Note the salmon skin "crackers"  Bill was in heaven!

As per usual, I was panicking that there would not be enough "greenery" with the meal.  So I opted to core a head of cabbage and slice into quarters.  Oiled, salted, and peppered the quarters and put it on the grill after the fish, asparagus and sausages were done. 

After charring the cabbage, I shredded it and added some sweet onion along with sherry vinegar and olive oil to produce the salad below.

Dateline: May 28, 2020. Lamb Ragu in the Instant Pot

I had one pound of ground lamb that I needed to cook.  I could have made lamb burgers, or some other ground meat ball or patty, but that just did not do it for me today.  I wanted pasta.

So my trusty lamb ragu recipe came out.   This actually came out to be vegetable and lamb ragu.  Usually I will use 2 lbs of ground lamb.  

Lamb Ragu

1 lb ground lamb

olive oil

1/2 t baking soda

3 stalks celery, cut into bite sized chunks

2 carrots, cut into bite sized chunks

2 leeks, cut into bite sized chunks

1 onion, cut into bite sized chunks

4 cloves of garlic, peeled

handful of parsley

1 sprig of fresh rosemary

salt and pepper

2 28 oz cans of crushed or ground tomatoes

2 C chicken stock

2 bay leaves

pinch of red pepper flakes

red wine

Method

1.  Put the celery, carrots, leeks, onion, garlic, and parsley into a food processor or ninja.  Do not use a blender as you will get a puree, which is what you do not want.  You want the veggies broken down, but not liquified.  Stop and scrape down as needed.  This is your sofrito.

evaporating off the water from the meat

2.  Into the Instant Pot put the olive and set to saute.  When hot, add lamb, broken into about 5 chunks.  Sprinkle the lamb with 2 pinches of salt and pepper and 1/2 t of baking soda.  (The soda helps the meat retain water by changing it's pH).  Brown the meat thoroughly.  The meat should be well browned and scrap up the brown bits that form on the bottom of the pan periodically as there is your flavor.  You will be able to hear by ear when the water has evaporated and when the lamb is cooking in the olive oil and its own fat.  It's a very distinct sound.  At this point, pull the leaves off of the rosemary sprig and add them to the pot.  It should take about 20 minutes for the browning to happen fully.

meat cooking in the released fat

3.  Add in the sofrito after it is ground up.  You may be tempted to add more fat to the pan.  Resist at this point.    Keep stirring the sofrito around until it is well browned as well.  Add another 2 pinches of salt and a little more pepper.

This is about half way to browned

The sofrito will also take about 20 minutes to brown up fully.  Do not cheat on this, this is where the magic happens and your flavors at build up.

4.  At the bottom of the pot a brown layer will form, this is your fond.  This is culinary gold.  Push the stuff to the side of the pot and ddd 1-2 T of red wine at a time.  Adding a little bit at a time will not overwhelm the evaporation process the ragu is undergoing.  To much wine, and you have now set yourself back at a minimum 10 minutes of cooking time.

Scrape up the brown bits as you go along the bottom of the pan.  You may need to add 1 - 2 T of wine at various point along the bottom.  The wine will evaporate, and the loosened fond will come up easily after a while.  Do not give up!

5.  Add chicken stock, tomatoes, bay leaves, and red pepper flakes.  Taste, does it need salt, pepper, water, stock?  Adjust and then select pressure cook, low temp, 1.5 hours, stir well and close lid.  If you have the luck that I did, you will keep getting the burn message.  After twice getting that, I changed it to slow cook for 4 hours.  Seems to be doing alright at this moment.  Some pressure has built and I am sure it will be tasty.

We enjoyed with with romano or parmesan cheese.  The watermelon summer salad was a lovely counterpoint to the heaviness of the pasta and sauce.

Dateline: May 27, 2020. Cooking with Lucas Sin

My friend, Servet, sent me a link to a YouTube video live cooking demo presented by the Asian Society featuring Lucas Sin and Matt Gross.  I have watched this video at least 3 times and enjoyed it each time.

According to Chef Sin, you can MaPo anything, so I made MaPo Dried Tofu Skin, as I had no soft tofu in the house.

The recipe is at the end of the video and it is a very interesting change up from my normal MaPo 

recipe and had tried another MaPo recipe about 2-3 weeks ago. 

I will say, that Chef Sin's is a really delicious version.

My suggestion when using tofu skin is a) break up the dried sticks in at least 1/2 size, b) soak in cold water for at least 1 hour, c) boil in salted water a la the soft tofu, d) cut into bite sized pieces before adding to the pan.

Before the peas

The pork was cooked separately.  He strongly suggested that unless you have the jet engine providing the heat to your wok, cook in a regular saute pan on the stove top.  

Once the pork or beef is crisped and thoroughly browned up, remove from the pan and hold to the side.  In this same pan the aromatics (chopped garlic, chopped ginger, sliced scallions, soaked and chopped fermented black beans), were then cooked in the rendered pork fat and when softened, add in doubanjiang, chicken stock, shaoxing, mirin, and dark soy.  Taste, if too salty, add a bit of sugar, mine tasted just right, salty, spicy, and full of umami. Next add in the boiled tofu skins cut into bite sized pieces and let them simmer in the sauce for a bit.  Add the fried ground pork and mix carefully.

I followed his direction to apply the cornstarch slurry in 3 additions.  As the sauce slowly tightened up, I then added some chopped chives and raw English peas, and stirred around some more.  I served over rice and got ready to really enjoy dinner.

Final dish

This was an extremely satisfying MaPo Tofu Skins.  I was completely sorry that I only used 1/2 lb ground pork.  I wish that I had doubled the recipe and used the entire pound.  Next time I will know that this is delicious and needs to be doubled up.  Damn, it was really good.  So sorry I had just made enough for 2 people.  Coupled with the margarita, it was a delightful dinner over Zoom with Servet.

It was spicy, but not blow your head off spicy.  It was salty, as most Chinese food is, but it was  balanced in a good way.  I would love to try this with soft tofu.  This version was excellent and will remain the rotation.  A big shout out to Chef Lucas Sin for sharing his recipe.

Dateline: May 25, 2020. An Experiment that follows smoking burgers

After yesterday's epic success with the smoked burgers, I decided to try to see if the same success could be had with smoking steak.  I had 4 thin sirloin steaks from FreshDirect.  Why not experiment on these?  Grilling them would be a crap shoot and I can't remember why I ordered them in the first place!

I used the website Hey Grill, Hey as my jumping off point.  I prefer my steaks medium rare, so cooking to 140° F or more was not in the cards.  I felt that I could get the temp right with a couple of probes attached to my Smoke Temperature Control Center.  I had one probe at grill level and one in the smallest steak. 

When I had thin, what I really meant was also tiny.  These steaks were .3 and .4 of a pound, about 5 and 7 ounces.  Maybe 1/2 inch thick, maybe if they were wearing an overcoat. 

torched steak

watermelon salad

In contemplating what to do with the steak, I thought immediately of the burger rub from yesterday, but decided that I wanted to taste the steak, not the rub tonight.  So I went with salt, pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder on an oiled steak.  Season both sides, please.

Based on the timings from Hey Grill, Hey, I figured about 30 minutes at 220° F.  It actually took about 40 minutes.  Ok, the steaks came off the grill at 130° F and I brought them inside and used my propane torch on them to brown and crisp them up.  The photo appears incinerated, but they were nicely brown.  They then went into a 120° oven to hold until dinner was served.

To accompany the steaks, I prepped earlier in the afternoon a salad of watermelon cubes, thinly sliced sweet onions, thinly sliced cucumbers, thinly sliced celery and halved cherry tomatoes on the vine.

Just before sitting down to eat, I dressed it with sherry vinegar and a good olive oil and crumbled about 3 oz. of feta cheese into the salad before tossing.

My thoughts:  the steak was very beefy, relatively tender, cooked perfectly, but left me kind of cold on the idea going forward.  I think that the biggest issue was the thinness of the steaks and the lack of intramuscular fat.  Next time I will try either a rib eye or a strip steak. 

perfect medium rare

The flavor was good, the tenderness was ok, not buttery like tenderloin, but pleasantly firm to the bite.  What came through was the beef flavor and the smoke.  I tried cutting my piece like a London Broil, (diagonal slices, against the grain) but it did not make it any tenderer.  Bill cut his up into small squares and happily ate them.  I do concur on the tiny square system of portioning the meat.

The salad was a perfect go with, juicy and satisfying, along with a bit of dessert as well.

Will I try this experiment again?  Yes, as mentioned earlier, with a fattier steak.  Conceptually, this should have been like the burgers, but because the steaks were only in the smoker for 40 minutes, there was not enough smokey flavor development.