Regina3000

Thanks, everyone! I don't want to brine a whole loin, but rather individual chops, for eventual cooking on a grill or in a skillet. I think this will be a good thing to try.

So I recently purchased two boneless pork loins, and I plan to cut them into chops and roasts and freeze them. I usually don't brine loin because I don't plan ahead enough, but since I need to cut these up and freeze them, I was wondering if it would be good to brine them before freezing? I'm thinking that if I do, all I'll have to do before cooking them is make sure they're thawed. I wouldn't use anything other than kosher salt in the brine. Are there any good reasons not to do this?

I'll throw it in whole with the stock, then. My dear partner wants nothing to do with the skin and doesn't like beans. He's opposed to the idea of stock on principle ("Why would you put the parts you can't eat in there! Don't feed me that!"), but I love beans, and will probably reserve some of the stock for that purpose.

Here's the picnic roast. What to do with the skin!?! It's beautiful, but tough. Should I put it in the stock pot along with the fat and bone? I REALLY like this one. More unctuous.

That sounds like a neat set-up!

Shredded (HOT!) and ate a bit for lunch. Still need to shred the rest. I'm going to wait until it's a bit cooler.

I pulled the boneless butt out of the oven at 190 F. Before I did, I stuck a fork in it and twisted, and it started to separate effortlessly. "Front" "Back" I covered it with foil. While composing this, the other thermometer told me the bone-in hit 180 F, so I reset it to let me know when it reaches 190. It smells sooooo gooooooood.

Thanks! I'll look at that shortly!

I had to give up and go to bed shortly after 1 a.m. The boneless was at 165 and the bone-in at 154. I turned the oven off. I got up about 6:15 and turned the oven back on. The boneless was at 118 and the bone-in at 122. As of 20 minutes to 10, they were at 174 and 160, respectively. I'll turn the oven off when the bone-in hits 190. I may pull the boneless out when it hits 190, then let it rest before pulling it apart.

And just before midnight, the boneless butt hit 160.

Ok, half an hour later, temps started to budge upwards. Now to just have patience.

I will, when it's done! It's a new-to-me Brinkmann vertical charcoal water smoker, one of the boxy kind. I've never used a charcoal smoker before, so it's been a learning experience. I've had issues keeping the temperature up to 200 F. I think that we're going to ditch the OEM charcoal pan and find or make a deep rectangular one that I can load up with charcoal and wood á la Minion, even thought it's not a WSM. I put the meat in the smoker at 5 minutes to 8 this morning, and at 5 after 10 tonight, one still hadn't gotten above 138 (bone-in) and the other not above 149 (boneless), so I pulled them out of the smoker and put them in the oven at 250 F. I put them on a rack in a half sheet pan. Strangely enough, about half an hour later, they haven't gone up in temperature at all. I'll keep an eye on them for another half an hour before I start to freak out.

Brined from about 10:00 yesterday until I put it on the smoker. No other seasoning. Hickory for the smoke.

I put an 8-lb boneless butt and an almost 10-lb picnic roast in my new-to-me charcoal smoker about 20 minutes ago. I've never used a charcoal smoker, so this will be a learning experience, but I'm looking forward to it!

No, the texture was the same throughout.

That makes sense. The rest of the cake is rather bland. I'll make sure to grind it, next time. Thanks!

No, I used coconut oil, and tasted it after I ate my piece of cake to make sure it wasn't salty. And the bottom was way saltier than salted butter would've made it, too. I'm stumped.

Tonight I made a one-bowl yellow cake (200 g sugar, 2 eggs, vanilla; creamed. Add 70 g oil, 200 g milk, 160 g flour (I used cake flour), 1 1/4 tsp baking powder, 3 g salt in this order. Bake in greased and floured 8-9" round cake pan at 350 for 60 minutes. Adapted from a recipe at Jenny Can Cook.) I've made this before, when craving cake, and while it's not the best recipe, it's decent enough and pretty fast to put together. I forgot the milk until the end, and mixed the cake using a whisk because I couldn't find my hand mixer. I used kosher salt. The recipe didn't specify. I iced it and just now had a piece because I woke up and can't get back to sleep. The bottom of the cake is salty. What could be to blame, here?

I try, but sometimes it doesn't work out that way. And really, there's maybe 1/4" to 1/2" of brothy stuff over the solid.

That will work great for some soups. I don't make soup all that often, so maybe it's just not worth worrying about.

That would be great, if there weren't leftovers. Perhaps I should just dish it out and put the rest away before calling him to eat...

Yeah, I like brothy, too, but I ALSO like to get my fair share of the solid bits. He's like this with pretty much everything. He doesn't stop to think about how what he does affects what I get to eat.

My partner likes soups I make, but unless it's a creamy soup, he gets really upset if I try to give him a fair-to-all-eaters amount of the broth of the soup, instead of loading his bowl up with the solids. Drives. Me. NUTS. He doesn't seem to get that if he gets a bowl full of solids, the rest of us (namely me) are stuck with a higher liquid-to-solid ratio than he gets away with. I don't make really liquidy soups, and I try to thicken the broth when I can, but there are times when that is not practical, like when making a chicken soup. Creamy soups don't seem to be as much of an issue. I there anyone else out there who has had the same issue who has come up with a solution? Or who maybe wants to vent along with me?

Thanks, everyone! I will move the thing to a different container, next time, and add water to the cooler full of blue ice. I didn't think about the water part, and frankly didn't want to deal with the container-changing, plus I was in a hurry to be somewhere. Next time, I'll be better prepared.

Didn't think of filling with water, and didn't have another container to put it into, at the time, but thanks for the ideas!