[What Are You Cooking Sous Vide Today? (Part 3)]

The turkey fest is coming to an end.  I'd like to thank the two 12-pounders from Publix ($0.49/#) and the 15-pound Butterball from BJ's ($0.99/#) for making it possible.  The Butterball is featured today.

 

Leg quarters cooked for 20 hours @ 150 and breast cooked for 4 hours @138.  The breast halves were seasoned with five spice, pork fat, satsuma slices  and lemon slices.  The leg quarters were seasoned with Tony Chacere's More Spice blend.  The meats were vacuum bagged and allowed to marinate for 24 hours prior to cooking.   The dark meat was finished on the smoker for about two hours.  The breast and drumette were flash fried for color.   The breast with five spice is really tasty and the texture is better than the generic Publix birds.

 

 

[Dinner 2022]

12 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

 

Interesting texture on your bread.  Is it your own?

 

Yes - The loaf is Ken Forkish  overnight white.   I must have been a little slack in the folding stage😏

[Dinner 2022]

It was a somewhat busy day so the lunch menu morphed to dinner.  Tonight's sandwich was homemade longaniza sausage with gruyere and lunch was SV turkey breast with cheddar. 

 

 

 

[What Are You Cooking Sous Vide Today? (Part 3)]

I started a couple of turkey leg quarters and wing flats with tips at noon.  This will be the first time I have used my Anova for an extended period using an ice chest.   I made a bridge for the Anova out of a 1-inch scrap of PT SYP.  I also used a small piece of shoe mould to clip the bag ends too.  The way the interior of the ice chest is moulded allows the top of bridge to sit flush allowing a nice seal with foil backed insulation lid.   I'll cook for 20 hours then reduce the heat to 140 and cook the breast.

 

 

 

[Lunch 2022]

The last of the turkey and andouille gumbo.  Served with a sous vided & smoked turkey wing.  Next time I'll separate the drumette and cook it with the breast meat.  The flat was cooked perfectly.   

 

 

Yesterday's lunch was chicken boudin and made a very nice light lunch.   I have a "next time" for this lunch also.  I'll make shorter links and not pack the casing as tight.

 

 

 

[Sous vide Picanha pastrami]

From an Android phone tap on the menu icon top right then tap on browse. The cure calculator should be in the drop down menu. 

 

[Sous vide Picanha pastrami]

@&roid the universal cure calculator that DiggingDogFarm created is an excellent tool to determine the quantity of curing salt.  It is located in the tool bar(?) above.  I believe for wet equilibrium brining you input the  weight of the meat plus the weight of the water required to cover the meat.  Unlike most web based calculators it allows you to specify the % nitrite of the curing salt that you are using, the target salt % ( also sugar %) and also can calculate based on desired ppm.   

[Dinner 2022]

I'll call this one Gilded Lily Gumbo.  The turkey and sausage gumbo was made with homemade andouille sausage and SV/smoked turkey leg quarters in a rich chicken stock.  The gumbo was finished with lump crab and shrimp sautéed in butter and turkey meat from the wing. 

 

 

   

[Lunch 2022]

SV'd turkey breast and bacon wrapped tenderloin sandwich.  Served with turkey gravy and gingered cranberry sauce on Hawaiian rolls.  Yum Yum!

 

The sandwich

 

The turkey

 

 

[What Are You Cooking Sous Vide Today? (Part 3)]

@kayb I've successfully smoked meat after SV.  I use a Smokai smoke generator attached to my gas grill.  I use the left burner on low and place the items to smoke to the right. I think  @Duvel SV'd some goose quarters which he finished in the oven.  I decided to SV turkey leg quarters and wings for ~18 hrs @ 150 then finished on the grill for about two hours. 

 

 

Here's the collection of turkey cuts from two birds prepped for the circulator.  Two breast halves were seasoned and bagged, two breast halves where stuffed with garlic sausage, wrapped in bacon and formed into a roulade,  the tenderloins from each bird where bacon wrapped and formed into roulades and the quarters and wings described above.  I decreased the temp of the bath to 140 for the last three hours when I added the white meat. Two leg quarters and carcasses were used for stock.

 

 

 

I use my homemade circulator in a 48 gt. ice chest.  I think I made this around 2012.  I have an Anova for small batch cooking.

 

 

The tenderloin and breast halves after a quick hot oil bath for color.

 

 

 

Bagged up and ready for the freezer.  One tenderloin and the stuffed breast were cooked then iced.  I re-thermalized and brown at some future time. The JVR Vac100 has been a work horse over the past year.

 

 

 

 

 

[Dinner 2022]

A light meal tonight-boiled shrimp and avocado salad.

 

The main course last night of a not so light dinner.  The main was a sautéed seafood platter with meuniere sauce from Chef Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen Cookbook.  I was going to serve stuffed flounder but the flounder looked a little tired so I bought three puppy drum and filleted at home.  The frames were used for stock.  I was a little sloppy on the last platting due to too much hovering from my help🙄 and I was two oysters short.

 

 

 

[Dinner 2022]

Thanksgiving dinner may be  a little anti-climatic after tonight's feast.  I went to our local co-op yesterday to buy celeriac root  and a few other ingredients which they were all out of.  They did have a nice package of Meyer Duroc porterhouse chops at 25%  off that I jumped on.  The chops were about 12 oz. each and I cooked then sous vided tonight for 1.5 hours @ 150 then seared and served with potato's and spinach.  I hope the SV turkey turns out half as well!

 

 

 

 

[Dinner 2022]

@Tropicalsenior, @Shelby, thanks for the boudin love!  I worked out of Cameron LA for many years and ate a lot of boudin on my commute from Mobile AL.  Boudin is pretty ubiquitous at gas stations/convenience stores south of I-10 in LA and is usually served from a crock pot with a steamed casing.  Grilling really transforms the links to entrée status.  

 

Tonight's dinner was shrimp and sausage grits.  The sausage is homemade using A.C. Leggs #10 seasoning blend with the addition of garlic and pink salt.  I smoked it using my Weber gas grill and Smokai smoke generator with a blend of apple and hickory pellets. 

 

 

[Dinner 2022]

About nine PM last night I was wondering what possessed me to make such a large batch of chicken boudin.  My fifteen pound sausage stuffer was filled to the rim and I still had six pounds of pork sausage to stuff.    I hung in there and cranked away and a little past ten the job was done.  A shout out to Sweetwater 420 for the assistance! 

 

The boudin was a improvised mixture of roasted chicken thighs (seasoned with fresh rosemary and garlic)  combined with onion, celery, parsley and medium grain rice.  The rice was from Crowley LA and really tasty after being cooked in the roasted chicken pan juices.  Dinner tonight was grilled boudin with a garlic forward vinaigrette.

 

  

 

Boudin pre-link

 

Pork sausage post smoke.  I'll provide details in another post.

[Lunch 2022]

A few lunches from the past week or two.  Today was a cheese omelet on toast with tomato gravy and crumbled bacon.  The pan drippin's were the base for the gravy and the bread is overnight white.

 

Grilled cheeseburger and house longaniza sausage.

 

 

Store bought smoked jalapeno sausage with Zapp's potato chips

 

[What Tea Are You Drinking Today? (Part 3)]

58 minutes ago, heidih said:

Nice looking cuppa - but was TEA involved  

Whoops! I'd better get my iced tea ready.  Lipton's finest with the second meyer lemon off the tree this season.

[What Tea Are You Drinking Today? (Part 3)]

I'll give this thread a bump.  I usually roast my own coffee but I decided to try a local roaster's espresso blend while I'm waiting for my order from Sweet Maria.   I pulled a flat white this morning and the coffee was quite delicious.  A little pricey at $16 for 12 oz but the quality of the coffee is very good and not over-roasted.

[Dinner 2022]

I had a small piece of grilled salmon left over from earlier in the week so I prepared it in the style of Maryland crabcakes.  I used a recipe from Craig  Claiborne's Favorites from the NYT, Series I.  Lot's of great recipes in those two series of recipes and recollections.  The salmon cake was served over Potatoes Anna with remoulade sauce.  The salad was watermelon radish and mixed greens in a light vinaigrette. 

 

 

 

White chocolate amaretto cheesecake in the process of being inhaled!

[Dinner 2022]

Oysters today.  Check out the size variation.  They were pretty good but far from prime.  We refer to the big oysters as tongues and they are great fried.  

 

 

VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED AS THE FOLLOWING PHOTO COULD CAUSE "DEEPLY UNPLEASNT"  FEELINGS.

 

Last night we had oysters from the same box prepped a few different way's.  Cheese was a common denominator in several preparations😮.  This batch was grilled with hatch green chilies, green onion, bacon crumbles and Monterey jack cheese.

 

 

 

Pavlova for dessert. 

 

 

 

Eggplant Parmesan a few nights ago.

 

[Dinner 2022]

My sister and BIL have been in town this week so I cooked a few favorites the past couple of nights.  I bought 25# of oysters which yielded about 6 dozen.  The count is inexact as the ones I consumed during shucking aren't included in the total😛   The first night we had them raw, grilled and fried as a topping on the main course.  The second night we had the remaining oysters grilled.  The grilled toppings were butter, garlic and pecorino romano cheese or minced Conecuh sausage and pepperjack cheese.

 

Salmon Rockefeller-Gruyere cheese grits, wilted spinach, grilled salmon, fried oysters and hollandaise

 

 

Creme Brulee both nights.  

 

 

Last night's braised beef shanks

 

 

 

[What Are You Preserving, and How Are You Doing It? (2016–)]

First greens of the season from Stewart Farms in Bay Minette AL.   Salad turnips & tops, rutabaga greens & tender root, and watermelon radish with the tops cooking down with the rutabaga greens.  

 

[Dinner 2022]

I've been knocking it out of the ballpark with the lettuce-tomato heart healthy type stuff and tonight's dinner was more of the same. Panzanella'ish salad with fried shrimp and a tarragon forward remoulade sauce.   The shrimp seasoning was a Louisiana Brand shrimp blend.  The bread was  Forkish overnight white that was toasted then rubbed with garlic and Finlandia butter.  

 

[Lunch 2022]

New Orleans style roast beef faux-boy's.  I had some delicious leftover roast beef and gravy but no Leidenheimer bread so hot dogs buns were pressed into service.    Dressed with lettuce, tomatoes, onion and a swipe of mayo with horseradish.  Nice  and sloppy just like in the Big Easy.  And since your stomach doesn't know it's full till you have dessert I had a little bread pudding to finish.  The pudding was made with TJ's Pumpkin Brioche.

 

 

[Lunch 2022]

Lamb ragu with cavatelli.  The sauce includes preserved lemon, oil cured olives and capers.  The salad was dressed with a garlicky olive oil and sherry vinaigrette.

 

 

Here's a photo of Willow doing a little QA\QC on the lettuce.  First cat we've had that has a thing for lettuce.

 

[Dinner 2022]

A relatively quick and simple dinner that "punches above it's weight".  The protein is a rather motley assortment of chicken thighs from BJ's that I deboned, or not, since they ran on the small side.  I marinated them in Cavender's seasoned salt, lemon juice, garlic and fresh thyme.  Browned in the skillet then into the oven with mushrooms.   While the chicken was cooking I made three small skillets of potatoes.  Served with salad greens dressed with vinaigrette.