Norm Matthews

An acquaintance gave me a list of wood properties. This is what I have about alder and oak. I assume you'd get similar results with wood chips or pellets. ALDER - Very delicate with a hint of sweetness. Good with fish, pork, poultry, and light-meat game birds. OAK - Heavy smoke flavor--the Queen of smoking wood. RED OAK is good on ribs, WHITE OAK makes the best coals for longer burning. All oak varieties reported as suitable for smoking. Good with red meat, pork, fish and heavy game.

I made sukiyaki. I made it on the stovetop, not at the table top like some versions.

I've read that restaurants banning ketchup goes back to depression days when people would steal bottles of ketchup to make tomato soup. One day quite a few years ago, before I knew catsup on hot dogs was controversial, I put some on a hot dog just like I always did and thought: Yuk! how did I ever like that combination? BTW does anyone still spell it catsup? I think Brooks spelled it with a C. when they made it.

My son was raised, during the day time, by his Korean relatives at our restaurant, and had access to any Korean food he wanted. When they all moved to California, it was just the two of us and he ate my cooking without problems. I never made him eat anything he didn't like if he at least tasted it and I never made him 'clean' his plate. He could stop eating as soon as he decided he was finished. But then he started going to public school and I told him he had to get used to eating 'regular' American food like everyone else in his class. He complained but I insisted he eat the food at the school cafeteria. I feel kind of bad about that now. I later learned he threw up after lunch nearly every day. One summer when I was finishing my masters degree, he was about eight and spent the summer in Los Angeles with his grandparents and they fed him McDonalds everyday for two months. He got chubby and stayed that way for a long time. I don't think he is a picky eater and I hope he is well adjusted now after all that.

Is that anything like turkey in the straw?

I think sometimes people don't like certain foods because whoever cooked for them didn't prepare it well. I am thinking of someone i know who hated asparagus until she had some fresh from the garden and not from a can.

My niece is married to such a person. I understand he has a long list of food he won't touch, including anything white... and he works at a grocery store chain. My son's wife had a list of thinks she didn't like, but started eating them when I included them in things I cook. Some things she still doesn't eat are puzzling. She hates the taste of breakfast sausage and says she does not like pork but will eat -and apparently likes brautwurst when I mix it into meatloaf or other things I used to use regular sausage in. She likes carnitas which is pork shoulder. She won't eat anything with a bone in it, at least she doesn't want to but does sometimes. One constant that she never likes is celery. I substitute baby bok choy, romaine stalks or even bean sprouts for celery now. Her brother is really a cautious eater. He has limited experience with different kinds of food. He will taste anything but won't eat a lot of things he decides he doesn't like. Her sister used to be like that but seems to eat everything now.

Have fun with your Yoder. I need to deal with some rust on the bottom of my smoker firebox. I had a cover for the Char Broil one and the wind tore it to pieces in a month. The initial tear let water in and held it next to the smoker longer. They have covers for the Horizon but haven't checked them out. The rust on mine is from heat use, not weather.

cyalexa, hope you get a chance to check it out. Penzey's is in front of the farmers market on Santa Fe and a couple doors down is a bakery specializing in pies and next to that is a place that sells olive oils and vinegars.. I went to a party at my nephew's on Sat. and took some bacon rolls I had smoked and some of the brisket from Wed. I was sitting next to a couple who were eating some of my bacon rolls and they asked questions about it that only experienced smokers would know to ask. After a while, she mentioned that they were both BBQ judges so I asked their opinion on the brisket. He held up a slice and pulled on it the same way Franklin did in a video to test for doneness. He said it was perfectly cooked and both of them were kind enough to say it tasted very good. He said he was surprised that I got those results with only 8 hours in the smoker.

DIL is at work tonight so son made dinner for the two of us. It was hamburgers but different and very good. He added stuff to the ground beef that I thought would make it taste 'teriyaki-y' but it didn't. It just brought out the flavor of the beef, then he dressed it with bahn mi type vegetables. Here is how he described it. He parboiled the bean sprouts, BTW. Korean inspired burger (freestyled): 80/20 ground beef with Korean red pepper paste, sesame oil, pepper, salt, garlic. Carrots and radishes pickled in rice vinegar, sugar, and water (also used it for dipping sauce), green onions, bean sprouts, and mayo mixed with a drop of soy sauce.. We had root beer floats for dessert.

My nephew had a bacon and bourbon themed party so I took some bacon and bourbon themed food plus another 'B'.. Barbeque. I made smoked bacon rolls, took some of the brisket I smoked on Wednesday and also made some bacon-bourbon BBQ sauce.

But BBQ consumers do drink beer. It's a style of food created for the masses and used cuts of meat thistorically available to the the poorer segments of the country. It isn't the kind of food to serve with crystal, fine silver and china and a bottle of vintage Cabernet Sauvignon.

Cat Poet, it's the same here. The stereotype of BBQers is that they are beer guzzling, obese, bike riding gangsters. There may be some competition BBQers and backyard hobbyists like that but there are also lots who aren't. People who own restaurants and the people who work in them are just like any other professional food service place. Like bakers, they even keep similar hours since it takes all night, every day to cook BBQ for the public.

How is sipping on a beer while watching a log burn in a 'fireplace' gonna kill anyone?

I faced a challenge that I had avoided for a long time: do a brisket in the smoker. It turned out pretty OK.

It's not as daunting a task as I feared but I'll be doing bacon sushi or fatties on Fri. or Sat. for a party I'm going to.

Yeah now. That isn't what they were saying yesterday. Brisket turned out really well, better than any I've had at restaurants around here. More details at the link at the bottom.

My nephew is having a bacon and bourbon party on Sat. I plan to make some bacon sushi, bacon and bourbon BBQ sauce and take some brisket too. I have pickles, slaw, potato salad and will start on the beans shortly. I have some pickled onion too now I think on it.

Choice grade. I am kind of glad it shrunk. I was wondering how we'd ever eat all that meat.

I have no qualms about using the crutch. Crutch is just a word and I don't have butcher paper. I call foil a finishing tool instead of a crutch. Click on the link at the bottom of my post for a blow-by-blow of the progress of the brisket up to a few minutes ago.

I only wrapped it in foil after it got plenty of smoke and was almost black on the outside. i have been up since 4:30 this morning with the brisket, battling heavy rain at times and almost losing. I think things are going well now, and I'm keeping a log of everything I do.

Rotuts: A friend or mine, a retired Italian plumber in New Jersey gave me these guidelines for what he does with store bought corned beef at St. Pat's Day dinner. "rub the corned beef with fresh garlic, lots of coarse ground peppercorns, a little fresh ground coriander, double wrap it in foil, place in a covered roasting pan and slow roast in a 250°F oven for 5 to 6 hours depending on size. The flavour is closer to pastrami when roasted this way." I had made corned beef from scratch for Irish day but bought a couple of corned beef packs when they were on sale afterward. I made one as he described it and it was good. I did the other one later in the smoker instead of wrapped and in the oven. As for the discussion about Franklin Brisket, I felt I could use some more information about just briskets. It is an area I would like to have more confidence in before i attempt another one. I thought I'd get the book and maybe get some insight on doing briskets since I haven't really tried to do a whole one after the first one I did a couple decades ago. I thought the book would be a little dialog and a lot of recipes but instead it was all dialog and a couple recipes at the end. I think i realized from reading this book that my offset smoker is not too small to be a wood burner. Another veteran smoker told me it was but I think I can manage a good smoke with smaller logs and a smaller fire. After reading the book and watching some of the videos, i have some extra insight in the way I can get more out of my smoke. It didn't hurt to find out that he just won this years James Beard Best Chef award. So tomorrow I am going to try to do a whole brisket once again and spend the time to do it right this time. If it turns out well, I will be glad that I succeeded. It's like one of the things to check off my bucket list. I don't think I will do another one soon if this one turns out well. Quote from chileheadmike: Check out Bichelmeyer's. The last time I tried to get a whole brisket from Hen House the butcher looked down his nose at me and said they don't really deal with THOSE kinds of cuts. " I got a similar remark from one of the meat cutters last year when I was looking for nice big ham hocks. I found McGonigle's Meat Market here in Kansas City and they the kind of brisket I was looking for.

I found a meat market that sells whole, untrimmed briskets. It is in Missouri and not far from Penzey's The brisket was about half what I expected to pay for it. It is 11 lbs USDA Choice. I plan to smoke it on Wed. Look at the size of their smoker. This is standing outside next to Penzey's. On Saturdays and Wednesdays, it is not a parking lot but filled with farm trucks selling all kinds of goodies. I like this time of year in Kansas City.

That's what I told myself when I got the Classic smoker. And it's true, I'll probably never really need more capacity, but every once in a while I catch myself kind of wishing I'd got the bigger one. ps my son and I got to looking around and found there are several meat markets in the area. I plan to check one out tomorrow. It's over on the Missouri side via Penzey's and an antique store.

As I recall it is a nice mild mustard sauce.