Pork Jowl Confit

I had been up in Seattle recently and returned with a Cryovac sack of 5 pork jowls. I had never prepared jowls before, so I stuck them in the freezer and started to do a little research. After a little reading, Guanciale seemed like the most popular way of jowl preparation. With it being the middle of summer  I didn't think we had place in the house cool enough to let them air cure. I'll save that adventure for the fall or winter. I did learn that jowls are similar to belly. I've been wanting to do a confit of belly, so I decided to go for it with the jowls. I had a lot of pig fat in the freezer from trimmings so the first thing that needed to be done was to render us some fat. 

The above is bowl of cut up trimmings from various bacon cooks. There's also some fat back in there as well. All in all, I had about 6 pounds of fat.

I didn't want to stink up the house, so we rendered it out on the driveway in a Lodge pot. This process may seem a bit gross,  but rendering your own fat is a time honored tradition, and the stuff you make at home is actually quite good for you and isn't hydrogenated. 

 It's lower in saturated fat than butter and high in vitamin D. It's just got a bad name over the years, but I've got a feeling it will be making  more of come back as people  continue to pay more attention to what they eat.It's a simple process, and the results are good!

After a couple of hours, the fat begins to render. Its sort of a slow operation, but goodness takes time! The finish product, when cooled, is milky white. 

With the fat rendered, it was time to turn our attention to the jowls. I decided to do three of them and save the remaining  two for the winter. We had  made a simple brine of salt and sugar, and left the jowls alone for about 8 hours.

Heck, they look harmless enough. 

The 3 of them fit nicely in the Dutch oven. We covered them with the lard and headed outside to the smoker.

We placed the Dutch oven in a 200 degree smoker and let the jowls cook for about 6 hours. Afterwards, we brought them in  and let them cool for a bit before transferring  into a dish.  We then covered them with the fat and plastic wrap. We placed a couple of rocks on top of the plastic to help flatten the jowls out and stuck them in the fridge to cool and firm them up. In hindsight, I think  maybe we should have anchored them down some how during the cooking process to try to keep them flat as they had a tendency to curl. I'm not sure if that would have helped, or maybe been a hindrance, as they were very tender when done cooking. They may have fallen apart under too much weight - I'm not sure.

The next day, we took them out of the fridge, reserved the lard and cut the jowls into squares. To prepare them, we sauteed fat side down for about 20 minutes, then baked for another 15 on the Weber gas grill. We served them with grilled scallops and some nice sides. Not bad for a first attempt!

Driveway Fried Chicken

We love fried chicken. Come to think of it, who doesn't?  Fried chicken defines summer in the USA. The only downsides being it can be a mess to make and tends to stink up the kitchen. Not a problem! We cook our chicken outside. It's more fun that way, and you never end up needing to wash the  walls or with your kitchen smelling like a Popeye's in Lake Charles, LA.

Good fried chicken starts with good chicken. We prefer smaller, free range birds in the 3.5 to 4 pound range.  Those aren't always easy to track down, but anything under 4.5 pounds will work fine. Once you have a chicken we think it's a good idea to brine it. There's no question that brining helps retain moisture; however you run the risk of winding up with too salty of a bird if not properly brined. Our experience proves that most brining recipes tend to be generic and provide inconsistent results. Because of this, we decided to take matters into our own hands and have been attempting to dial in the prefect balance of salt, sugar & lemon balanced against the weight of the bird and soaking time  forour chicken brine.

Brine is measured in degrees. To accurately measure the degree of the brine, one needs a salinometer. The corresponding charts list the amount of salt in weight required to raise the saline reading to the desired level.  Typically a chicken is brined between 17 to 22 degrees, with  the higher number indicating a saltier brine. We prefer less salty,  so we've been shooting for a brine in the 16-17 degree range. It's important to keep in mind that the charts indicate the degree when only salt is added to the water. Using other spices or sugar effects the reading. For example, when measuring the brine after only sugar has been added, the degree rises. We start with all our other spices prior to adding the salt. Then we just add salt until the salinometer reads 17.

With the brine prepared, it's a good idea to let it sit in the fridge over night prior to soaking the bird. The chicken will then brine in the fridge for 10-12 hours. Prior to frying we'll take it out of the fridge and let it warm up to just about room temperature.

Outside, we prepare the fire for frying, and set up the dipping station. We'll first dip in a mixture of flour, cayenne, garlic power & onion powder, followed by a dip into butter milk, then into a second dipping bowl of the flower and spice mix.

We were shooting for about 320 degrees. Another important element to good fried chicken is to keep the fire hot! - This is fairly easy to accomplish with the propane cooker. Those things can put off some heat, and can adjust the heat of the oil rather quickly  Just make sure you use a thermometer, and keep an eye on it.  With the cooker dialed in, just let the magic happen.

Roxy being the good dog she is, keeps a careful eye on the chicken for us as it comes out of the peanut oil.

     It came out well. Crunchy - not too salty with just enough cayenne heat!

                                                                            

plated with some summer sides -

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Peach Baby Back Ribs

We had a couple of slabs of really nice natural baby backs that have been staring me in the eye every time I've opened up the freezer over the past couple of months - It was a gorgeous weekend here in Trout Lake, so it seemed like the opportune time to prepare some ribs!

I've been working on a peach barbeque sauce, trying to perfectly balance the sauce with a rub - The idea was, to have a nice sweet layer on top of a spicy but not too spicy bark layer on the ribs. I'm getting close. For the rub I combined  & ground:

• 10 g seeded & deveined chile de arbol
• 1 tbsp black pepper
• 1/2 tsp yellow mustard seeds
• 1 tsp dehydrated onion
• 1/2 tsp whole coriander seeds

 then added:

• 1 tsp ground ancho chili
• 1 tsp ground guajillo chili
• 2 tbsp brown sugar 
• 2 tsp kosher salt

There really isn't too much to the sauce. Doris freezes peaches each year  so I just grab a bag of frozen peaches, add some agave nectar, along with some chile arbol pieces - I like to have the flecks in the sauce. Once that's mixed together, I hit it with the immersion blender then let simmer for about 1/2 an hour. I'll then thin the sauce down with apple juice.

After trimming the ribs, removing any unnecessary fat and squaring them up a bit,  we apply the rub. We like to apply one side at a time, leaving some time for the rub to sweat in before flipping them over and doing the other side.

Once the rub has been applied we let them sit for a couple of hours to soak up all the goodness. During this time we start prepping the fire and start chopping up stuff for the beans. Doris is making her barbeque buttermilk rolls, so its also time to mix the dough and let it begin to rise.

With the fire now at 250 degrees, the ribs go on at about 12:30. Today we will be smoking on a mix of apple and peach wood. We'll leave these guys alone, only  opening up every hour to flip them for the first 3 hours. Next up are the beans:

                                     

 
We start by sautéing some bacon pieces, and then add chopped garlic, onion and  jalapeno. Once those have cooked for a bit we add the beans, brown sugar, barbeque sauce  and molasses. The beans will simmer for the remainder of the afternoon.

While the ribs and beans are cooking, Doris bakes the rolls on the Weber gas grill. The gas grill works well for baking if you use indirect heat and raise the baking pan or tray off the grate. These look about done, and are ready to come off.

Here are the ribs at 3 hours. At this point we will wrap them in foil, adding a couple of tablespoons of apple juice, some agave nectar and brown sugar. They go back on for about another 1.5 hours before we unwrap them, and hit them with the peach barbeque sauce.

After hitting them with the sauce we let it set, flipping them a couple of times.

Ready to come off and serve:

Bacon for Porkfest

We had a little party at the end of June and thought it would be appropriate to serve bacon for breakfast. We started out with 3 bellies - The bellies are Carlton Farms products:

We did half the bacon sweet with maple sugar, and the other half savory with garlic, bay leaf, black pepper and juniper berries. After rubbing them down in the cure, we let them do their thing in the fridge for about 2 weeks.

We smoked them on apple wood at low temperature - somewhere around 125 -140 for about 8 hours.

After the 8 hours, we jack the temp up to around 180 degrees to bring the internal temperature to around 140 and then pulled them.

The next morning, under the careful eye of our quality control agent Roxy,  we sliced them:

Then wrapped and sealed.

Rack of Lamb

One of my favorite lamb recipes is the out of the little book that's shipped with  Weber kettles. There's also a version in the Keller Ad Hoc book which is essentially the same thing. The prep of the panko is a bit different, other than that, it's true to form. We also made a great salad which included tomatoes that were cooked for 7 hours on the WSM with very light apple wood at 200 degrees:

We had a nice rack of lamb that was locally raised. It was pretty huge for lamb. It  almost looked like a rack of baby backs -

I was watching the golf for most of the day so I was lazy, and did it on the Weber gas grill. The key is not to mess with it to much once you put it on or the panko will fall off. You want that buttery, crunchy goodness to adhere to the meat.

Doris made  Boone Tavern Rolls, and the Au Gratins from the Julia Child book. The salad was a slight variation from the Keller book, which included those tomatoes, lardens from our last bacon cook, and a yummy buttermilk blue cheese dressing made from local blue cheese and a garlic confit aioli -

Butter Burgers

We are moving the blog over to Google - It will take a bit to catch up, but I believe its a good move as the software seems to be less flaky  than at CenturyLink -

pbg

We had done an adaptation of Mavericks’ Butter Burger. Maverick is a great joint in San Francisco’s Mission district.

We started out with local natural beef chuck from Emerson Dell Farm. We cubed and seasoned, and then partial froze it prior to grinding:

Next we ground the beef with butter - Lots of butter:

We then formed patties, and sealed them with more butter in preparation for sous vide:

It was at this precise moment I realized we didn't own a sous vide tank - Doh! As we all know, outdoor cooking and BBQ is all about the ability to make adjustments. I headed out to the garage and grabbed a few things: A Smokey Joe, a number 12 Lodge and tripod might just be the the ticket!

We cooked them at 52 degrees Celsius for about 25 minutes in the Lodge, then seared them for about a minute.

We served them on homemade buns with all the fixin's with a side of slaw. We poured a 2009 Capiaux Pisoni Vineyard Pinot. They were pretty good!