fiftydollars

I’ve had briskets take me up to 20 hours or so, but never a butt, which I’d say usually takes around 15 hours. If I’m using the weber bullet it seems that the stall comes just at exactly the same time that my charcoal starts running really low. So I have to pack in the charcoal or struggle just to keep the smoker on the low end of the desirable range. It’s times when this happens that it takes several more hours to get into the 190s and often I just give up in the 180s after, say, 18 hours or so. The butt is a lot more forgiving. If I run out of charcoal and can’t keep up the temperature with a brisket, I usually pull it out, wrap it, and finish it in the oven. Otherwise, the hour or so that losing heat at the stall adds to the cooking process will almost guarantee a dead brisket. But the butt doesn’t seem to mind a bit of abuse and that’s probably why I make them so much more often.

Word.

If you wrap it in foil you have to start it bare THEN wrap it after it’s had some time to absorb smoke. Otherwise the smoke will not penetrate the meat. After the first 2-3 hours or when the meat reaches a certain point, it will no longer absorb much smoke flavor. So you could wrap it at that time to help prevent the sugar rub from burning. However, you might want to adjust your levels of sugar and possibly try other sugars. If the reason you want to avoid burning the sugar is because you don’t like the flavor, maybe there is something about that raw sugar that you don’t like. Sugars with molasses, such as the raw sugar, will have a certain bitterness that is greatly enhanced by caramelization. Try cutting back on the fancy sugar and/or maybe use white sugar or a combination of both. I find that although smoking does slowly and deeply caramelize the butt, it really shouldn’t burn the rub. My butts look black, but on further inspection it is really a dark brown/mahogany/redish-type color and there is nothing burned(burnt?) in the rub(be it spices or sugar).

I’m really excited about tomatoes. I’ve been scoping out the scene at the Berkeley Bowl and things are starting to look up… but it’s still not quite time for BLTs. There is little I would rather do in September/October than eat fresh tomatoes. It’s what I most look forward to in the fall. Sure we have a few tomatoes in the summer, but the competition from other produce is fierce and the tomatoes really can’t fight back until September. That’s when tomatoes finally reach a point where eating anything else is futile. Once they are gone it’s a difficult time. From there it’s a long slog to Dungeness crab season, which is my favorite time of the year and a time when I regularly forget about any other food groups. In mid-November my idea of a balanced meal is making sure to drink a glass of wine with my butter, lemon, and crab (don’t forget the baguette). It's still July... DAMN IT!!

I met John Scharffenberger at a newsstand in San Francisco and he did not strike me as a stupid man. He sold the chocolate business, no doubt for a large sum of money, just like he sold his sparkling wine business and he will probably move on to some other interesting venture. Of course it won't be the same once Hershey gets a hold of it. Just like with the sparkling wine, once he's gone, all that will be left is the long German name.

There are too many varieties and, with the exception of a few, the season for each variety is too short to list. There are dozens of peach varieties with the point of ripeness being one of the most important distinguishing characteristics between them. You see, you have to spread out your season planting enough different varieties that all of your trees do not ripen at once. If you only had one variety, that’s exactly what would happen. Almost all fruit within a given variety ripens simultaneously. Sure each variety will probably be available for a few weeks, but it’s only coming off the trees during one very short window. So, as a farmer, if you want to be selling fruit in May, August, and all those weeks in between, you better have a lot of different varieties to occupy your time. And, as a consumer, if you favor only one variety, your season will only really be a few days long, so you should can them, freeze them, or have a really good memory.

Unfortunately the PLU does not give information specific enough to determine variety or if you are getting a free or cling stone. I am partial to a certain variety of nectarine (fantasia) and when I think it’s getting to be about that time I’ll ask the grocer to give me a heads up. In CA, the exact variety is printed by the packing house onto the boxes. If your store leaves the boxes out, just take a look. The variety name is usually something snappy or having to do with a lady like “Fantasia,” “Flavor Crest” or “Summer Lady.” Keep in mind that any given variety will only run for about a week or so. My favorite nectarine, the aptly named Fantasia, becomes harder and harder to find every year. I can understand why nobody will plant the thing… It is ugly and prone to all sorts of spots and mechanical damage, which puts it too far behind the ball in an industry that sells its product on the basis of only color and size. But it is the tastiest nectarine out there and I resent having to brawl with old ladies to get them.

Smoked duck breast, gruyere, and yellow heirloom tomatoes.

Yes! And recipes can be ridiculously expensive sometimes. Until my spice rack and pantry had a chance to mature, following almost any recipe meant spending a whole lot of money. It certainly contradicted the popular notion that it is cheaper to cook than to eat out. I was easily dropping $50 or more on just dinner for two. Nowadays my ripe little pantry is getting out of control. All that investment is paying off somewhat. There are a lot of things I can make without buying more than a protein and vegetable. But now I also have to start tossing out old spices and other pantry items that are passing their peak. These days I try to pay more attention to what’s in my pantry before deciding on a recipe and I’m finally seeing how this cooking thing can save you some money.

Growing up in Mexico City tacos were my religion.

I buy Pellegrino because if I'm going to pay a $1 for a bottle of water it might as well be Italian and carbonated.

I’m glad that California has enough diversity to provide many places and people to make fun of without having to cross State lines. I mean, have you BEEN to Bakersfield?

I cannot quite understand how my crockpot can magically make different foods taste a whole lot the same. But I have managed to make chicken taste like beef with ease and convenience. A while back I bought a fancy-pants slow cooker and I disastrously tried a coq au vin that tasted remarkably similar to the horrendous boeuf bourguignon that followed it. Now, let's not necessarily get into exactly why it wasn't a good idea to try either of these recipes in this device. And I agree that these dishes have enough similarity to make this a very bad example of the magical qualities I allege. But I have made both of these recipes before and they are certainly not the same. There is just something about the slow cooker that gave both dishes a unique quality that I later started detecting in almost everything that went in there. I couldn't finish either stew, but I have difficulty throwing away food, so I sealed them up and froze them for posterity. (I find it's a good way for me to express my penchant for procrastination with food and non-renewable resources... why throw away today what I can keep and throw away tomorrow? ...or next year when I finally concede that what was bland and ill-colored when it was freshly-prepared will not improve with an investment of time and electricity) Now, as far as recipes go, freezing bland, mediocre food is generally a fail-safe way of pushing it to the very limits of edibility, and this was no exception. The stews became painfully worse and I believe they have haunted my slow cooker. Somehow every thing I have cooked in them since has, at the very least, had flavors reminiscent of the red wine stews.

do you braise? tougher cuts like shoulders, ribs, breast, brisket, etc. yield substantial and satisfying meals that reheat beautifully and they are almost invariably cheap.

Article in Slate

i tend to have the same problem. wiping the blade with a bit of oil before every cut seems to help.

Since I had the terracotta left over from the time Alton Brown made a standing rib roast, I rigged up the smoker and gave it a try. It worked pretty well. I didn’t have a hot plate, but I had an old electric skillet that I had previously used when I put together Alton’s cold smoker from his smoking salmon show, and it all worked pretty well. To my surprise, the heat from the skillet was actually enough to bring the temperature in the ceramics well into cooking temperature (I am using a smaller pot than AB). I have a weber bullet, but I wanted to try dry smoking a pork shoulder because a few of the books I have read say that the water smoker is too moist to get good shoulder. Having tried back to back bullet vs. dry shoulders I would have to say I kind of agree. The dry smoking pulls a lot more fat out of the shoulder and yielded an impressive smoke ring compared to the bullet. But since my version of AB’s smoker was quite provisional, I haven’t spent much time using it and I still smoke shoulders, ribs, and whatnot in the bullet. However, I can say Brown’s ceramic smoker idea definitely works.

I really like Steingarten's method of making pie crust by hand in The Man Who Ate Everything. My second favorite method is the food processor (close second). Both methods work very well and are really, really easy, but with Steingarten's I get to look down at people as I brag about my hand-made crusts and credit their flaky buttery perfection to innate skill.

You can make butter in an ice cream machine? I am curious!

In most applications you will not notice a difference between thawed and never frozen butter, but freezing does have an effect. I find that previously frozen butter, including Plugra specifically, tends to be more crumbly. This doesn't bother me in a lot of applications, but with some pastry stuff, like croissants, it can make things a little more difficult.

Better late than never... I like Challenge butter because it is still wrapped in foil. Apparently, manufacturers of butter have been pressured by consumers to make their quarters microwaveable, which means no foil. I am glad Challenge has so far resisted this trend and I find their product is often fresher (or at least less likely to have off flavors) than other products simply because it is wrapped in foil. This is not to say Challenge is the best butter out there, but it is pretty good, widely available, and usually pretty fresh.

I don’t marinate shrimp, but I like to thaw them in salted water. I believe it speeds the thawing and somewhat brines the shrimp in the 20 or so minutes it takes.

Baby back ribs can be very forgiving and it is definitely possible to cook them on a grill, over high heat, really fast and still have them turn out ok. They are not like spare ribs, which would be pretty much inedible after the treatment you described. If your charcoal grill has a lid, it will work fine for making ribs. Just make the fire on one side of the grill and leave one side with little or no coals. I usually divide the grill up about 25%-75%(or thereabouts depending on the application), with the largest section of the grill having no coals. I don’t necessarily sear my ribs, but if you do you can sear them over the hot coals and then move them to the cooler part of the grill to finish cooking. I usually just put the ribs to smoke and when they are done, I slather them in a finishing sauce and quickly set the glaze over a fast grill. I find that if I sear first, the ribs don’t absorb as much smoke flavor as I would like (oh, yeah… you can add a bit of smoke flavor with a chunk of applewood/oak or a handful of wet chips wrapped in aluminum foil).

How well do smoked products last in the freezer? I'm thinking of throwing on a turkey breast to accompany my brisket, but I'll probably have too much meat to eat in a week between the two, and so will probably need to freeze the turkey... Ian ← Smoked meats keep quite nicely in the freezer. You shouldn’t have a problem with the turkey. Just wrap tightly in foil, plastic and whatnot…

I think you might have cooked them too hot and/or not long enough. I would try to keep the fire a little closer to 225 degrees or so. I would also try cooking them longer. Sometimes spare ribs take up to 6 or more hours. It doesn't hurt to pull on the bone or, if in doubt, to eat one.