BBQ Experiment Results

Yesterday, I mentioned some BBQ experimenting I'd done and here are the results.  The first was chicken breasts marinated overnight in jerk marinade, which was inspired by Chris' (Nibble Me This) smoking of a jerk pork butt.  I've only had jerk meat from the grill, but thought it was good from the smoker, although I have to admit the heavy allspice flavor will need to grow on me some more.  A friend and major customer came by to pick up his order and he tried the jerk chicken - his comment was “I’m ordering it this way from now on.” Looks like I have a new menu item and fortunately Eric, son who made the marinade, gave me the recipe.

The next day, I had a couple of slices of the stuffed fatty (see yesterday's post for a picture of the whole thing) for breakfast with a slice of homemade toast and the standard cottage cheese and tomatoes – can you believe we’re still eating our garden maters? The fatty was stuffed with sauteed onion and some type of Ore Ida potatoes I'd found in the freezer, scrambled eggs, and cheddar cheese. By the way, a fatty is smoked breakfast sausage and is often flattened out and stuffed with other items, then rerolled and smoked. I just nuked the fatty to reheat and while the apple smoked, maple flavored bacon was a bad choice with the Thanksgiving brussel sprouts, it was great on the pork, as it provided just a light, maple sweetness. It still wasn’t crisp and since I only eat crisp bacon and don’t need the fat and calories, I left it on the plate.

I will go in search of a thin version of this bacon for the next time I wrap a fatty (which will be soon) and if I can’t find it, I think I’ll brush a coat of thinned maple syrup on the sausage surface prior to wrapping with regular bacon or partially cook the thick bacon prior to wrapping. I believe I have stumbled upon a definite keeper.

I'd mentioned yesterday that I marinaded a pork tenderloin overnight in Wickers Marinade and Baste and I smoked it with no further additions, even salt.  So for dinner, I reheated it at 250* in the oven, tightly wrapped in foil.  It was moist and tender and Bev thought it was good and I thought it was okay but needed something in addition to the Wickers.  Here's my plate which includes leftover broccoli casserole and baked sweet pototo from T-day.

Daughter, Wende, ended up with the Wickers marinaded chicken thigh, so I'll have to wait on a report from her.

Of the three experiments, it is two real winners and one so-so, a pretty good day of learning for me.

Have a good one and thanks for stopping by.

Larry

December BBQ Day At Almost Heaven South

After my November BBQ day, which required a whole day of prep and 24 hours of cooking on two smokers, I decided it was not fun – which is why I BBQ for others. So I sent an email to those who get BBQ from me and advised I was limiting my offerings (the more different items I cook, the more attention and effort required) and advising I would just fill up the one smoker and then close the order book. I don’t know if it was that, the holiday season, some of my big customers spending the winter in Florida, or some of all, but I had a lot less orders.

The good news is this gave me the opportunity to cook for my freezer and experiment with some things. The fare this time was two briskets, with one and a third made into burnt ends, a pork butt, 2 slabs of pork ribs, a pastrami (from a store bought corned beef) several chicken items, a chub of breakfast sausage, a stuffed fatty, and a pork tenderloin.

The experiments are as follows: chicken breasts marinated overnight in some jerk marinade that my son made for us, a chicken thigh and pork tenderloin marinated overnight in Wickers Marinade and Baste (of which I have a gallon and need to find a good use for), and a stuffed fatty, wrapped in the apple smoked maple bacon that we thought was too flavorful for the brussel sprouts at Thanksgiving.

I fired up the smoker at 6pm in 43* temperatures, which I’d traded for the rain and warmer temps of the day before. Fortunately, my Stumps Smoker is well insulated and fuel-efficient, so I put the big pieces of meat on at 8pm and headed for bed not too long thereafter.

Next morning it was a balmy 29* when I went to check things at 5:30am – I’d mis-set the clock by an hour after the recent power outage and thought I was getting up at 6:15. Anyway I had everything wrapped up by 2pm and the only shot I took at the smoker was of the fatty – everything else looked like my normal fare – you can click on BBQ under the Labels for lots of pictures. I considered making the fancy bacon weave, but it was the last thing I prepped and I was tired when I got to it. I wish the bacon had gotten crispier but not surprised it didn’t, as it was pretty thick cut.

Bev baked bread this day and made her first attempt at creating a crust similar to Italian and it turned out really well. Another time or two, and I think she’ll have both the bread texture and crust down pat. For dinner, the brisket was still pretty warm, so I sliced it thin, topped with a couple slices of pepper jack cheese and nuked for 30 seconds to melt the cheese. It was delicious.

Bev put some BBQ sauce on hers, but in BBQese - I don’t put no sauce on good brisket (but I put cheese on almost everything).

This post is getting pretty long, so tune in tomorrow for the results of the expeiments.
 
Have a good one and thanks for stopping by.
 
Larry

You Know I Had To Try It

When I said yesterdays post was the last Thanksgiving meal post, I meant last turkey post.  I ate leftover stuffing with gravy for breakfast for the first three mornings after Thanksgiving, then, I skipped a day and had it with the potato pancake meal posted on Dec 2. So I just had to try this – big surprise huh?

I was a little apprehensive due to the sweetness of the dressing, but I knew it would at least be edible. I took one bite and a big smile spread across my face, as I thought it was delicious. One of the things I always do with pancakes, which I lke but rarely eat, is top them with a fried egg, even though they have syrup on them. And this reminded me a lot of that dish.

Can you imagine that Bev ask if I wanted her to add the remainder of the left over dressing (my favorite Thanksgiving dish) to the dog food she was making (Dec 3rd post) and I actually considered it. I think there may be enough for three more meals like this and I’m sure glad I told her no.

What a great discovery and now I can hardly wait for next Thankgiving’s dressing. Wait, there is something wrong here – dressing is one of my very favorite foods and I only eat it once per year – this must be corrected.

I've often mentioned that I am an engineer by education and a friend recently sent me several "Understanding Engineers" jokes that I thought were funny enough to pass on.  Here's the first one.

Two engineering students were biking across a university campus when one said, "Where did you get such a great bike?" The second engineer replied, "Well, I was walking along yesterday, minding my own business, when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike, threw it to the ground, took off all her clothes and said, "Take what you want." The first engineer nodded approvingly and said, "Good choice: The clothes probably wouldn't have fit you anyway." 

I'm pretty sure I'm not THAT much of an engineer, but have know some.  Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry

Turkey Pot Pie From The Leftovers

Finally, the last of the thanksgiving meal posts – but my favorite, and a pretty common one across America.

For me, the one must-have meal from Thanksgiving leftovers is turkey potpie and Bev usually just wings it, but this year I used the recipe proportions provided by Dennis over at More Than A Mount Full. This way, if it turns out just right, I’ll know what I did - I made a double recipe. I kept it pretty simple by starting with the diced carrots cooking in 6 cups of the fresh poultry stock, then added the potatoes, celery, and onions. When they were all crisp tender, I thickened the liquid with a roux and added the chopped leftover turkey, gravy (it’s just thickened broth after all), and frozen peas, cooking until everything was boiling - ready to dump.

Then I adjusted the seasons and poured it into a greased casserole dish. Bev topped it with some Pioneer Baking Mix biscuits (I don’t bake – even with a mix, I will put frozen biscuits on a pan and put them in the oven though) and we baked at 450* until they were browned (my family always used drop biscuits).

One key is to have plenty of liquid for the biscuits to soak up some while cooking and to put over them when serving – more so than if topping with a pie crust. I didn’t add any additional spices except S&P – relying on the meat and gravy to provide everything else.

I normally flip the biscuits when I plate them, but Bev convinced me this would be a prettier picture - right as usual.

I had the right amount of veggies and liquid, but it needed to be just a little thicker (I should have used as much butter and flour as Dennis did in his and started with the butter and veggies), but I wasn't sure what impact the leftover gravy would have, otherwise it was outstanding - my first ever pot pie.  And while we may now have more leftovers than when we started, I'm looking forward to lunching on them the next few days.  Also, we all thought the biscuits turned out to be especially good, for a mix.

Well I don't know about you, but I'm about turkied out (except for the pot pie), so it's steak and a salad tomorrow for dinner.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry

Rich (Brown) Turkey Stock & Puppy Treats

When I have leftover poultry bones and parts, I usually just cook them in water and make broth, but sometimes I add veggies and herbs to make stock. While conversing with Chez John, over at Fat Johnny’s Front Porch about his jambalaya recipe, he mentioned he started with rich stock, which he described as being made from roasted bones – it’s also called brown stock verses white stock for un-roasted bones. So I decided to give it a try.

In the freezer, I’d been saving chicken bones left over from meals and BBQing for several months and had enough to make a batch. I would like to have also used the Thanksgiving turkey carcass, but it had too much of the sweet glaze flavor remaining. I put the raw parts in a roasting pan and cooked at 450* for about an hour. After removing from the oven, I transferred the bones to a stockpot. I’m never sure about the proportions of poultry parts to water, but after some research, I settled on the following for each four pounds of raw poultry parts (1# raw bones per quart of water).

1 gallon of water
1 medium white onion, quartered
2 medium carrots, large chop
2 celery stalks, large chop
1 large garlic clove, halved
1 bay leaf
5 peppercorns
5 sprigs each fresh parsley and thyme

Some recipes I read called for roasting the veggies and herbage with the bones, but for my first try, I decided to just roast the poultry and since I had 5# of chicken, I used 5 quarts of water and kept everything else the same.

After adding everything to the pot, I covered and cooked over my lowest heat setting overnight (about 14 hours) then strained out the solids. After cooling to room temperature, I put it in the fridge over night and next morning I skimmed the fat from the top. I put some in quart bags, but since many recipes call for smaller amounts, I froze some in 1/2 cup molds, then stored the individual cubes in a plastic bag – it was definitely a darker color.

I also had 4# of smoked bones left over from pulling chicken and I made them into broth, not stock, just to see how it would turn out. I only cooked it for about 6 hours and when I tasted it, I got the flavor of pinto bean broth to which a smoked ham hock had been added. So I’ll keep it and try some in a pot of beans and other places where smoky meat is part of the recipe or used for flavoring – perhaps gumbo and other soups. I stored it in both bags and the molds.  These are frozen and headed for plastic bags.

Lastly, since the softer bones, veggies, and meat were so well cooked, Bev tossed them into her grind-almost-anything Vita Mixer with some liquid and made a puree.  She then mixed this with other cooked ingredients ingredients (old veggies from the freezer, rice, stale bread, etc.) and made dog treats. She molds them into tennis ball sized meatballs, freezes them individually on a sheet pan and stores in re-sealable plastic bags.  Here's the pot full and after smelling and looking at it, it's almost tempting enough to try a spoon full.

We got the original meat, then the broth, then dog food, and only the big hard bones and a little fat went into the trash – I’d say we got our moneys worth from those chickens.

While I was putting up the broth, we had "Down Home With The Neely's" on TV and Bev came in the kitchen and pronounced - "while I always like you to compliment me, if you talked to me like he does to her, I soon wouldn't believe anything you said to me."  If you watch the show, you know what she means.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry

A Couple Of Thanksgiving Leftover Meals

While I enjoy the standard Thanksgiving meal menu, I prefer the turkey made into leftover dishes. Since we had a direct repeat of our T-day meal on Friday, it was now time to move on to other things – I did have dressing with gravy for breakfast on Fri, Sat, & Sun – that’s why no new breakfast posts.

In the past few weeks, Bev had mentioned a desire for both tortilla soup and some type of turkey soup and I had saved a recipe that looked like it fit the bill. It’s called Ranch Style Tortilla Soup and comes from Lea Ann over at Mangos, Chili and Z – check out her site for the recipe and pictures.

We followed the recipe with just a few minor changes – we used leftover turkey rather than chicken, added a can of drained black beans for a little contrasting color, and used a higher ratio of Rotel to tomatoes, because when I upped the recipe amounts to 1½ times, it fit the can sizes we had. We also used blue corn chips because we had a bag already opened, and it used up two avocados that were about to get too ripe. I really like it when a recipe calls for ingredients we have on hand and need to be utilized – the only thing we had to buy were the poblanos. Here it is in the pot.

And my bowl.

We had six for dinner and all but Bev’s sister (who rarely gives anything new a high grade) thought it was outstanding. The poblanos and Rotel gave it just a nice little heat in the back of my throat, which makes it good for all but those who demand zero heat. Bev likes to have tortilla soup fairly often and this will be made again. Thanks for sharing the recipe Lea Ann.

One of my favorite Thanksgiving leftover recipes is fried, potato pancakes for breakfast (of course), so this meal was built around them. I had a choice of fried eggs on top of the potatoes or scrambled eggs beside them. I went with scrambled as I hadn’t had them in a while and the fried would have hidden the potatoes.

My mom always just formed the potatoes into cakes with no additions and fried them (they came apart easily). Bev likes to add a little flour, an egg, and milk – if they’re too dry, to help hold them together – which I believe is an improvement. Sometimes diced onion, herbs, etc. goe in, but I went with the pure version today.

So for breakfast, it was potato pancakes, scrambled eggs, and a little reheated stuffing (I skipped it on Monday).  I can't seem to get into the habit of adding a little something - like chopped green onion - to make it prettier.  Since I'd been waiting three hours for our @&%# power to come back on, I was in a bit of a hurry and mildly irked.

When I watch the cooks on the cooking shows, they rarely ever put up a finished plate that they haven't sprinkled something on.

The leftover we didn’t make this year was turkey salad (we ran out of turkey) and I didn’t make stock from the turkey carcass and bones, as they had too much sweetness from the cooking glaze. I’ll just have to smoke a turkey in the near future to make into salad – I prefer the smoked version anyway and have two birds in the freezer.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry

Where The Cooking Happens At Almost Heaven South

When we built our house, we used someone else’s plan and just didn’t put enough thought into the kitchen, so a few years ago, we remodeled to make it more cooking friendly. Although we wish it were bigger, the remodeled version used the same basic space, with a little bit stolen from the dining room. Sam Hofer from My Carolina Kitchen, who was here for the blogger get together, recently suggested I post about it, and when Penny, from Lake Lure Cottage Kitchen, initiated a kitchen reveal for today, I decided to participate.

Our major consideration was to have a cooktop that would match-up with what we did and we decided on a 48” Dacor, 6 burner model that will accommodate six 12” pots. When canning, it’s not uncommon to have 5 burners in use and some with very big pots and canners on them. Since we do cook and generate lots of steam, heat and odors, we also wanted a nice hood that would vent everything to the outside.

Another big desire was to make the island a workspace rather than a visitor’s space. What we had was hardly usable as it was small, contained no storage, and often had people seated at it – in my way. We accomplished our goal by moving the visitors to a bar with the barstools in the dining room – which did make it a little crowded but still functional - and using a shallower fridge allowed for a larger island.

We utilized lots of drawers, in the lower cabinets, so it would be easier to get to things from the back, went with stainless appliance fronts, and granite counter tops, which were an absolute must for Bev. The older I get, the more I appreciate the drawers. Rather than just buy cabinets, we first decided what would go in each space then designed the cabinet that would work best. Here’s the visitors bar - the near monitor is an electronic picture frame scrolling our favorite photos and the far one is a TV - another Bev must have.

 We tried to improve functionality by dividing the kitchen in to specific areas for food prep, cooking, baking, and clean up. The prep area contains the fridge, pantry, island with cutting board, food processor, knives, mixing and measuring equipment, and utensils. We considered several refrigerators, but settled on the GE Monagram, as it had the features we liked. Bev is a big food processor user and wanted it to be handy without setting out, so it’s on a pull up shelf. Here's some shots of the general area and some details - island, fridge, pantry on right.

The cooking area is next to the prep area contains the pots and pans, utensils, oils and other liquids, the visitors bar, range hood, cooktop and ready access to the pantry. Since 4 burners will usually do, we keep the other two covered by a griddle with a cutting board on it – so it’s usually just extra countertop. As you can see, this is a place to cook and we keep the utensils handy.

 

The bake center has a lowered counter top (so my short wife can get on top of the dough she’s kneading), the 36” wide Dacor oven, G.E. Advantium microwave/oven, Dacor warming drawer, the baking dishes, dry goods in a pull out pantry (left of oven), and utensils. The door leads out into the walk-in pantry, laundry area and then the garage.

The clean up area has the sink, dishwashers, storage for dishes and utensils, trash and can recycling, and cleaning equipment. We liked the Fisher & Paykel two drawer dishwasher, as it is actually two independent units, each the same size as the bottom shelf in a normal dishwasher. We also found we needed a three section sink and preferred stainless.

Before remodeling, the kitchen had an 8' drop ceiling of plastic, like in fluorescent light fixtures, set in a wooden grid work, which difused the light from the skylight above.  Bev wanted to have it as a vaulted ceiling (as in the dinning room), with the skylight visible, and she had it faux-painted to look like an evening sky. The fan/light has an additional light that shines upward and we leave it on at night to get the sky effect.

I was sure I'd taken a shot from the dining room of the entire kitchen, but it appears to be missing, but I think you can put the pieces together - the prep and clean up areas are opposite each other as are the cooking and baking areas. 

Now I have to admit, we usually have a few additional items sitting out, but moved them for the photos, so you’d think we were really neat.

If we had it to do over, even though the GE Advantium is a combo microwave and oven and can bake a potato just like a regular oven, we’d put in a double oven as well – even though we rarely need it. Fortunately, for those times, such as Thanksgiving, I have a smoker that is basically just a big oven.

I know this was long, but hope you enjoyed the tour and thanks for stopping by.

Larry