Pork Rinds - Page 254

I was absolutely convinced I was going to f**k these up.  I've played around with the skin of a pig before and it has never turned out well.  Looking at the recipe, I knew it wasn't going to be easy.  There was a lot of pressure to get all the fat off.  Then you have to scrape the skin until it's translucent.  Then you have to cook it in 83 Degree Celsius water for 24 hours.  Now I don't have a sous vide machine, nor do I have an immersion circulator.  What I do have is a pot, ziploc bags, a fry thermometer and a probe thermometer with an alarm.

So here's what I did (after working on the skin with a knife and a bench scraper for an hour): I put the skin in a ziploc freezer bag and immersed it in water to force every bit of air out.  I put it in a pot of water with both thermometers.  I set the probe thermometer for 85 Celsius using the alarm.  I adjusted the stove element, the lid and the pot position to get the temperature stable (I had to move it from big to small burner to keep the temperature low enough.)  Once stable, I checked on it every couple hours for just under 12 hours, then called it good.

24 hours in the dehydrator and they looked sad.  Very sad.  I did not have high hopes.  I waited a couple days because Ox was going to be frying turkey leftover egg rolls, so I figured we could fry them then.  While rolling egg rolls the oil hit 350F and we dropped the dehydrated skins in.  MAGIC!  They puffed up beautifully and tasted awesome!  I could not believe how well they came out.

Sean Brock is a miracle worker!

Advice: Get an immersion circulator.  My method was just stupid, and I wouldn't have done it if we hadn't promised to do every recipe in the book.  Ox says he has no problem with me investing in one for us - fat chance.

Tomato Jam - Page 229

We used the same tomatoes that we used for the Tomato Conserve, but these were another day riper.  This meant I couldn't procrastinate even though I didn't feel like cooking.  Good thing too, cause this stuff was good.

The peeling of the tomatoes went a lot better today.  I gave them 30 seconds in the boiling water and then just a minute in the ice bath.  I also think there's a skill to this that I acquired some of yesterday.

It seemed like it took forever to boil the tomatoes down to "dark brown" and "very thick".  I was boiling for about 32 minutes, but I took a hint from it being similar to making tomato paste, so I didn't give up until it was good and dark, and good and thick.

This stuff tastes awesome.  I'm already thinking about getting some more tomatoes and making more, because I have a LOT of ideas to use this stuff on.

Advice: If you're having trouble peeling tomatoes, give them an extra 10 seconds in the boiling water next time.  Also make sure the water is REALLY boiling.

Heirloom Tomato Conserve - Page 223

I have a confession - I don't know what the hell Tomato Conserve should look like.  Luckily, I have the internet....

The internet doesn't know what it looks like.  There are images for everything from paste to soup like consistency.  I have an idea what it should look like, since the Great and Powerful Brock tells me in his book to cut the tomatoes to a quarter inch dice, and then carefully fold them in.  So obviously it should be a bit chunky, and definitely not paste.

All that said, mine came out a little runny, but delicious, so I'm calling it good.  I'll let you know what we try it on and how it works.  Gonna try it over Pecorino Cheese soon.

The hardest part is peeling the tomatoes, but the beautiful ones I got at the Summerville Farmer's Market (from one of the smaller vendors) were a lot easier to peel than traditional tomatoes.  I still did a pretty bad job of peeling, seeding and dicing, but the end result wasn't too ugly.

Advice: Get good tomatoes.  Make sure to use a wine that you like.  Chef's sometimes argue about why it is ESSENTIAL to never put wine that you wouldn't drink in food that you are cooking, but to me, the answer is obvious - I plan on drinking what doesn't end up in the food!

Bread and Butter Pickles - Page 228

I have to say I had a lot of fun with this one.  Cucumbers are MADE for slicing with a mandolin, and there's something very zen about doing them this way.  This recipe is kind of a hybrid between a preserved pickle, and a refrigerated pickle.  You do a lot of the same sterilizing steps, but then keep them refrigerated.  They're nice because you don't need the final bath for canning (though you can do it if you want them to last a long time.)

As usual we did some smaller jars for sharing, and so we don't have to use a quart of pickles in 3 weeks.  We also oven sterilized the jars.  A full set of canning supplies and equipment would have made these easier, but they were at Ox's house, and I'm working on independent ops.  Don't tell him I'm cooking from THE BOOK without him.

I'm looking forward to using these pickles on the Husk Cheeseburger!

Advice: Use your canning equipment to make things easier.  Use a mandolin to slice the cucumbers.  Don't sterilize the jars until the day AFTER you refrigerate the cucumbers if you use the optional "crispier" method.

UPDATE: Tasted the pickles after a week and they might be the best bread and butter pickles ever.

Preserved Lemons - Page 313

Now this is as simple as it gets!  Mix some salt and sugar, slice some lemons, pack it all in, throw in a bag, and freeze for a month.  Now as long as I sliced the lemons right...

Cut an "X" 3/4 of the way through.  So this is what I did.

We'll let you know in a month if they're awesome.

How to Build a Pit and Cook a Whole Pig Like a Champion Pitmaster - Page 140

Well this was it!  We built the pit during the Lowcountry Boil we had a week ago.  Ox had his crew bring cinder blocks and we paid them for their labor with the seafood and other goodies from the boil.  For the whole hog barbecue, Ox and I started the pig at 2 am, and finished the day with a plethora of goodies from the Heritage book, and a bunch of homebrewed beers.


The week before that, I found out that House of Brews was doing a charity whole hog barbecue in the same setup, so I got there before opening and watched Dave (owner of Coast Brewing) and Robert cook the pig, helping where I could, and taking lots of notes.  One of the ideas I got was to make a plywood cover, with sheet metal on the pit side for protection and heat sealing.  Their pig was amazing, so I hoped what I learned would help.

Here's how it went down:

As I said earlier, the pit was mostly built the week before, and finished off the Thursday before the pig roast.  That day we put in the rebar and expanded metal, and put my custom made, aluminum clad covers on.  We then ran a bag of lump charcoal through the pit to make sure there were no combustibles that would add an off flavor to the pig.

Friday I picked up the 105 pound (dressed weight) pig from Winningham Meats.  It didn't have head or feet, which was good for our first time, but we will probably get those next time.  My neighbor, Adam, provided the wood, mostly oak and hickory, and I delivered the wood to Ox's house that day, and kept the pig in my garage.

Saturday at 2 am I was at Ox's house with the pig.  We got two chimneys of natural lump charcoal going, and also started our open fire coal maker (basically a cinderblock firepit with rebar to allow the coals to drop to the bottom).  We used the two chimneys of charcoal to get a head start on heating up the pit while waiting on the coals from our fire.  We were using two Polder probe thermometers, one at ham level and one at shoulder level in the pit to monitor temperature.  It was cold and rainy, so the chimneys only got us to 205F, when we wanted 250F.  We added a third chimney, and about that time we hit 250F, and our fire was producing coals.

So now it's about 3:15, and we break open the pig (it was bagged) and start to rub it.  Now Ox and I are serious backyard barbecue "experts" so we have our own rubs and sauces.  We decided to do half the pig with the rub and sauce from the book, and the other half with Ox's rub and my sauce.  At service we had three sauces: The paprika based Husk BBQ sauce, my mustard based sauce, and a hot vinegar sauce that I made by basically adding everything in my kitchen that was hot to vinegar and then balancing out the flavor with honey, tomato paste, herbs and spices.  Once the pig was rubbed - onto the pit, skin side up.  Right about 3:30 am.

We had lost a lot of heat, and our coals were coming in a bit slow, so we stoked it back up to 250F, and decided to give it an extra hour before flipping since it wasn't at temperature for a lot of the first hour.  The flip after an hour from Heritage conflicted with a lot of advice and internet information, as well as the way Dave and Robert did it at House of Brews, but after doing it myself I like Sean Brock's system.  One of the reasons is that if you go most of the way on the belly, like Dave and Robert, the pig is very difficult to flip without ripping.  Dave and Robert had an ingenious system for doing this, we did not.  So at 5:30 we flipped, and then dropped the temp to 225F.

By now we were having no difficulty maintaining temperature.  Our fire was producing tons of coals, and the pit was well warmed and held temperature well.  It took no time to get up to 225F even after the flip.

Around noon, the pig was pretty much done (temperature checks with an instant read thermometer in hams and shoulders).  This worried us since we weren't planning on serving until 4 pm (when the guests were told to be there.)  We dropped the pit temp to about 175F and prayed.

At 1 pm we put the hash on (we got a gallon from Winningham's), as well as the baked beans.  We used canned beans, flavored up with pork belly we had in the pit with the pig, and some smoked pork we had done earlier.  We just dumped it together in aluminum pans and put it in the pit with the pig.  Someone was supposed to bring rice, which they did.

After that, people had started arriving so we set out the Pickled Peaches, Pickled Mushrooms and Pickled Okra.  We also had a pitcher of Southern Screwdrivers, home brewed Wit beer in bottles, and a keg of home brewed Curmudgeon Clone that was nothing like Curmudgeon, but was excellent.  There were also a lot of potluck items brought by the guests.

3 pm we went back and started breaking down the pig.  This was when we knew we had done good.  There was a lot of snacking.  We pulled all the meat out into aluminum trays and then flavored it  with a little sauce and a bit more rub.  We didn't overdo the sauce since people had the three sauce choices available for their own tastes.  We covered the pans with foil and waited for the rest of the guests to arrive.  It only took about 20 minutes to break down, though we could have pulled the pieces smaller.

At 4 pm, we dumped the trays back into the pig skin, carefully keeping the two halves separated so people could try both kinds.  In our opinion, both sides tasted great without sauce, and it was a matter of taste which one you though was best.  Nobody would turn down either kind, that's for sure.  We served all the hot stuff right out of the pit, and the cold stuff in the driveway from tables.

The pig was an absolute hit.  People were very enthusiastic with their praises.  I have to say that the mustard sauce was the preferred sauce, but not by much.  Matter of taste, of course.  We ended up with about fifty people, and only half the pig was eaten.  That equates to our estimated 1 pound of dressed weight per person, so use that in your calculations.  The leftovers have been awesome the last couple days (the pig and the Curmudgeon).


Advice:
1.  Rebar can be gotten from Lowes in 10 foot lengths.  It cuts relatively easily with a hacksaw, but cutting it in half turned out to be a little too long.  Measure your distance so you can do fewer cuts.
2.  We cut notches in the cinder blocks so the rebar would fit in and the blocks would be flush.  A masonry blade on a circular saw made short work of this task.
3.  I splurged for a 2 by 4 foot, and a 4 by 4 foot, 1/2 " precut plywood sheets for the cover.  I could have gotten a full sheet and cut it down, but I was tired of cutting things at this point.  Make sure not to get pressure treated.  I used rolls of roofing aluminum to make a metal layer, and held it down with 1 by 3's and 1 by 2's  I used the 1 by 3's to make the covers a little wider so it would be easier to fit on the pit opening.  These made things really easy, and held the heat in nicely.  Learned this one from Dave and Robert.
4.  Start your pit on lump charcoal while waiting for your coal fire to start producing.  This cuts an hour or two off the total time.  Thanks Dave and Robert for that advice!
5.  105 pounds was a good two person pig size without a magic contraption for flipping.  I wouldn't go much above 110 unless I had wire trays I could tie around the pig to hold it in place.  1 pound dressed weight per person is good for the guests if you have sides.  I would get more than that for the leftovers!
6.  There's going to be a period between picking up the pig and cooking it.  If it's more than 2 or three hours, you are going to need a plan to keep the pig cool.  You'd need a pretty big cooler to make it work, or, as I did, pile ice bags around it.  Winningham said if I had given them an estimate of the time from pickup to cooking, they could have adjusted how cold they gave it to me to buy more or less time.
7.  To expand on the timing in the book, our 105 pound pig took 8 and a half hours once it was on the fire.  Total time from starting the process until broken down and ready to eat would have been ten hours.  The pig kept just fine for 3 hours after done, so give your self some wiggle room at the end.  The only downside to this is getting up earlier to start.  We could have waited until 5 am to start!
8.  You'll want gloves for breaking down the pig that are rubber, and thermally insulated (that f**ker's hot!)
9.  We thought breaking down of the pig would take an hour, so we started early.  Took less than 30 minutes (for 105 pound pig).  A lot of people said they wanted to watch, but we messed that up.  Time things so people can be there, and admire your whole cooked pig.

This is where we got the various materials and supplies.  They all have hyperlinks, which is a good way of knowing they did good.  I won't provide a link if I wouldn't recommend them.

Building Materials: Lowes
Expanded Metal: Colonial Kitchen Fabrication and Sheet Metal
Pig and Hash: Winningham Meats
Cooking Supplies: Berlins
Beer Stuff: Beer Engineering Supply
Other: Keegan-Fillion Farm, Harris Teeter, Summerville Farmer's Market

Southern Screwdriver - Page 264

Kari has loved these since the first time we went to Husk Bar.  They have been off the menu for a while and she continues to pine for them.  This Saturday we are doing the whole hog barbecue from the book, and the Southern Screwdriver is one of the drinks we will be serving (along with two home brew beers).  This is a remarkably easy drink to make.  The Basil simple syrup comes together in a snap.  We did 60 hours for the jalapeno vodka and it has just a bit of heat.  You might consider going longer if you like spicy things.

The presentation in the picture is just slapped together, for the purpose of taste testing.  The barbecue presentation will be interesting, since it will wither be red solo cups, or lab-ware glasses, since me and Ox are both lab geeks, and many of the guests are too.

Advice: Follow the recipe.  This ones perfect as written.  I used a bullet instead of a full sized blender, and 3 minutes was plenty for the basil syrup.

Here are standardized measurements in ounces for the recipe which is helpful if you're making a big batch at one time:

2 ounces jalapeno vodka
1 ounce vodka
1 ounce basil simple syrup
4 ounces fresh OJ

How to Throw a Lowcountry Seafood Boil - Page 178

Now this was ambitious!  We invited Ox's entire Navy crew and all his neighbors to his house for a seafood boil/pig roaster build.  Everyone brought either ingredients for the boil, or cinder blocks for the roaster.  It was nerve wracking waiting to see if we would get all the ingredients, but his crew came through.  We had over 75 people, and enough ingredients for FOUR 8 gallon boils.  Everyone had a great time, and we got the pig roaster 80% done (this was our goal).

The last person to show up arrived just as we dumped the first load of food.  Good thing he did, since he was the ONLY guy bringing cocktail sauce.  We had two turkey fryers, and started them 15 minutes apart, so we were dumping food on the table every 15 minutes.  One of our fryers didn't have a basket, but we had a spider strainer and it worked out just fine.

Now Sean Brock says this is a hands only meal, but we had a tough time convincing everyone.  People came around though, and had a great time.  The first two batches went in 10 minutes or less, with the sausage going first.  The shrimp was a close second, probably because most of it was hand caught by a couple of the sailors on Ox's crew.

We used Charleston Spice Company seafood boil spice mix, and this had great flavor.  You can find them at the Summerville Farmers Market on Saturdays all year except the winter.

We missed one item on the equipment list...the trash can.  We had quite a mess to clean up, and very few places to put it.

I would HIGHLY recommend doing this for a party.  People will have a blast!

Advice: Have a lot of sausage - it seems to be the most popular part.  Don't forget the trash can.  Make sure at least two people are assigned to bring each item, so you don't risk a single point failure messing things up.

 

Spicy Pepper Jelly - Page 214

I'm excited about this recipe, because my sister makes some awesome pepper jelly, and I want my own.  I again texted her for advice, and she gave me some tips which I will detail later.

You need a juicer for this, and when we juiced 2 pounds of red peppers per the recipe, we had almost four cups of juice (vice the 1 and a half the recipe said we needed).  This might be due to the AWESOME juicer I have, which I recommended in an earlier post.  You also need a candy thermometer.  I will link to the ones I use at the end of the post.  For full disclosure, we get a small cut if you buy through the link, which we use to defray ingredient costs.

As usual, we used the excess juice to make some bitchin' bloody marys, similar to what we did with the excess clear tomato juice from THIS recipe.

The recipe called for heating the full mixture to 145F (between soft and firm ball for you candy makers) and said it would take about 10 minutes.  This became another "In Brock we Trust" moment, since it took 45 minutes, and the jelly started looking really caramelized.  In the end, it tasted delicious, and seems to be cooling to jelly consistency.  UPDATE: Came out too thick.  More like caramel than jelly.  Still awesome taste.  We will check our thermometer calibration.  We tried the serve over cream cheese with Wheat Thins at our Lowcountry Seafood Boil and it was great!

Again, don't take a big whiff of the boiling liquid!
This one has vinegar AND peppers.
Yes, I smelled it again.  Sniff gently.

We oven sterilized the jars for this recipe as well.  The other change we made, as recommended by the sister, was to immediately flip the jars upside down for ten minutes right after lidding.  We left them there for ten minutes, then righted them.  We are not touching them again for 24 hours.  We also jarred them in smaller jars.  The 4 oz jars are perfect for emptying over a chunk of cream cheese, and serving with wheat thins.

Advice: Get juicer and thermometer linked below.  Make bloody marys with excess pepper juice (or make ice cubes with it - for bloody marys).  You don't need to boil the full jars for this one.  We had the pot boiling away before we realized this.  Trust in the Brock.

Pickled Okra - Page 234

The great pickling adventure continues!

This time, we aren't making refrigerator pickles.  We're canning!  Canning with all the attendant worries about cleanliness, sanitation, etc.  One thing we don't worry about is water taking too long to boil and thus overcooking what we're trying to pickle.  If you think a turkey fryer is just for frying turkey - you're wrong!  It's for making stock, making beer, making wings, low-country boils and...canning.  A turkey fryer gets 7 gallons of water boiling in minutes!  It's all about the BTU'S!  Imagine me making a grunting noise like that guy from Home Improvement.  Seriously though, I think turkey fryers are one of the most under-appreciated kitchen appliance out there.  Right after wort chillers.

One thing we did different from the recipe was oven sterilize the jars vice boiling them.  My sister's been doing it this way for years, so I just felt more comfortable doing it this way, at least once she finally responded to my text asking questions.

I have to say these are the prettiest of the three pickles we've done so far.  We haven't tasted any yet, so hopefully they'll be good.  Pickled Peaches and Pickled Mushrooms will be ready tomorrow.

We had some leftover okra and a jar's worth of liquid, so we started grabbing vegetables from the fridge and stuffing them in the jar.  We'll see if anything works (we didn't seal this jar and just put it in the refrigerator for immediate (after a week) consumption.

Advice: Get a turkey fryer.  Have extra vegetables on hand in case there's some liquid left.  Use plastic gloves when cutting jalapenos and DON'T TOUCH YOUR EYE!  Also, don't take a big whiff of the boiling pickling liquid.  (I know, I've said this before, but if I don't learn the lesson, you might not either.)

Pickled Mushrooms - Page 214

So we had three choices of mushrooms from the recipe - Button, Cremini or Brown Beech.  Harris Teeter had Cremini and Button.  I decided to go with Cremini, since they had both baskets of loose and pre-packaged ones.  I wanted to pick the best so I dug into the basket and then reached for what I thought was the box of bulk mushrooms waiting to restock the basket.  It wasn't a box of mushrooms.  It was a spacer to keep the basket pushed to the front.  Behind it was something I never want to see again - not going to even describe it.  Now don't get me wrong.  I'm not trying to bash Harris Teeter.  I expect most stores would have the same issue.  It's just a place you never look.  Harris Teeter had nearly all the ingredients I wanted, with great quality.  The mushrooms were beautiful.  Point is, don't go digging in the backs of coolers.

So we got into the recipe, got our jars stuffed and were heating the brine when we noticed that this recipe probably was going to have proportion problems.  There just wasn't a lot of brine and there were a LOT of jars of mushrooms.  So we doubled the brine batch.  When we poured the brine over the mushrooms, we felt vindicated as the brine amount was perfect for the jars.  But then the mushrooms started sucking in the brine and shrinking up.  We figure we could have carefully alternated mushrooms and brine in the jars and had a perfect batch with only one batch of brine.  Now we have jars that are half mushrooms and full of brine.  Sigh.

It was interesting doing this batch of "pickles" right after the pickled peaches.  While both will be pickles, the flavorings couldn't be more different.  Peaches, lemongrass, allspice, cinnamon, mace, ginger, cloves and peppercorns vs, mushrooms, mustard, bay leaf, thyme and salt.

We did add a fresh sprig of thyme to each jar for pretty.

Tasting at 1 week: Love the flavor and texture.  Tastes like it needs more time to soak in.

Advice: Fill your jars half with mushrooms and then pour brine to cover.  As they cool and the mushrooms shrink, add more mushrooms and brine until the jar is full of mushrooms and brine.  Also, don't explore hidden crevices in grocery stores!  Let them sit a little longer than a week.

Ox and Brock are losing their S**t!

Ox and Brock are going to build the pig roaster from the Heritage cookbook on October 30th, while doing the lowcountry boil from the book. Then, on November 7th they are going to roast a whole f**kin' pig! Neither of us has EVER done this. It's going to be exciting, fun, and possibly disastrous. If you know the Ox and Brock crew, now is the time to start sucking up and trying for an invite. If you happen to be Sean Brock, don't take the "stalker" label too seriously, and see if you can come check it out.

Pickled Peaches - Page 213

This recipe had ginger, lemongrass, allspice, cinnamon and mace for what looks like a lot of sweet and pie like flavors to offset the acid of the vinegar.  Ox also pointed out that, other than peppers, that's a lot of jerk chicken ingredients.  It was a big contrast to the mushrooms we are pickling soon.  We'll see what it turns out like.

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time (all ten of you) you know that the proportions from the book don't always translate to the home kitchen.  In this case, they were perfect.  We wanted several different sized containers for sharing, and we ended up with 5 containers of various sizes.  We did one with whole peaches, like the recipe said, but couldn't fit whole peaches through the necks of some bottles, so we used halves and quarters.  We'll let you know which ones were best.

We boiled and chilled the peaches per the recipe, and they still didn't peal for s**t.  But this wasn't as big of a deal as it was for the pickled eggs.  We might try some experiments to see what we did wrong.

The main piece of advice for this (and all pickle) recipes: don't take a big whiff of the boiling pickling liquid - you'll regret it.  Smell gently.

This recipe was fun and easy - right in our wheelhouse.

Tasting after 1 week: Love the texture and flavor (especially texture.  Feel like they will only improve with time.

Why the Gap in Posts?

Kari and I spent 30 days in Alaska, that's why...