What's cooking? part 4

Yeah, I'm going to try to stay mindful of the learning curve and not try to run before I walk. I almost got a Weber Smokey Mountain (charcoal) instead of the MES electric, but the temp-control learning curve looked a little steeper. There are a lot of people on The Smoke Ring and other forums who said they have both and that both heat sources have their uses. Apparently there are some quick and easy hacks that make cold smoking possible with the MES if I want to do smoked fish or cheese, or make my own bacon. One intriguing idea I saw was buying storebought corned beef briskets and making my own pastrami.

omg Jaq...you were right about that slow-cooker chicken. Delicious!!

Though I forgot that my slow-cooker runs kinda hot so the chicken was pretty much done after 4 hours. Early dinner (!). The gravy was eeeeexxxcellent. Think I will ease back a little on the tomato paste, but otherwise holy shitballs.

Mr Veg is already planning the meals for the rest of the week so that we can incorporate leftover gravy into all of them, lol

Yay! I'm glad you guys liked it as much as I did - the first day I took leftovers in for my lunch, I made off with a considerable amount of gravy and ate it like soup.

lol wow, good call :D

VegGrrl and Quincie, any expertise you can send my way is welcome! For a pork shoulder: fat side up or down? Do you mop or spray, or just stick with the dry rub? Do you wrap it in foil at any point? How often do you add chips? Sauce or no sauce? Memphis or Carolina? etc etc etc

mr veg sprays - we used to mop but ugh the mops get so gross. no foil til it comes off to rest.
carolina sauce once it's pulled.
ooh - buy yourself a pair of bear claws on amazon. soooo much better than trying to pull with forks.

i asked mr veg re fat side: he said he does it fatside up bcz the kamado is p airtight so temp is the same all the way around the meat. but diehards say fatside down to protect the meat from the heat source. which is prob not helpful, much like most bbq advice haha :)

We have done both dry and semi-dry rubs--the semi-dry is when my husband decided to add mustard to the dry rub to make a paste, then plastered it on.

We add chunks (not chips) of the flavor wood (hickory, mesquite, applewood, cherry wood, pecan wood, alderwood are all things we've tried--I'd go with applewood for pork, but Stevester would say mesquite). They maybe get soaked in H20, or maybe not, depending on whether we thought to do it or not.

Chunks go on when the meat goes on. Also included in the smoker is a drip pan filled with water--you want a humid environment in there, which is one reason to mop and/or spray. The BGE/kamodo keeps in a lot of moisture, so I don't do either of those--it is humid enough in there and every time you open up, you mess with the temp.

I have done both fat up and fat down; honestly I couldn't say I have a strong preference. To be safe I'd do fat side down as insulation on the side of the meat facing the heat. Bone-in definitely makes a difference--doing cheap Costco boneless butts was fine, but bone-in with a thick fat cap is definitely preferable.

I insist on an Eastern North Carolina sauce of cider vinegar, cayenne, minimal sugar, salt and pepper. My parents think it ruins the meat and prefers a Memphis sauce. No harm in dividing the meat and doing some of each!

I wrap in a double layer of foil only when I pull it from the smoker, and let it rest that way for about 20 minutes before I open it up to pull it with two forks.

Oh and for pork we run the smoker around 325 F until a leave-in thermometer reads ~200.

For brisket, we have learned the hard way to keep the smoker no higher than 250 F until the meat hits ~190. This takes a long, long, long time, much longer than the pork shoulder as done above.

Cool, thanks both of yez! Smoker preheating now for Cook #1 (I feel a little like Walter White), shoulder rubbed down last night with J3ff's Naked Rib Rub, a rub apparently so awesome that J3ff sells the recipe and gets people to agree not to publish it on the internet. Sorry Jeff, somebody must have had their fingers crossed when they agreed to that.

Squash / apple soup recipe is here:

http://scrapbook.channel4.com/bookmarkBar/50aa4737e4b09b08528a708a

i do not like cooking all that much. in fact, somehow i've never ever clicked on this thread. but i've decided to attempt to raise my cooking competence level from Terrible to Merely Serviceable. so once a week i'm going to try to create a (relatively) special meal for me and my gf, and probably fall on my face a lot, but learn a lot about cooking along the way. hope it's ok if i document my faceplants here. if it's too annoying, i can make a new thread. or actually, i'll probably do what i always do and quit after 3 weeks anyway. only this time i have the gf happiness thing as a motivator so hopefully my interest will be maintained for longer.

do it here!

what do you have in mind for your first meal

i haven't gotten that far yet! (lol pathetic me). i was planning on settling on recipes tomorrow night, and then hopefully making the meal wednesday or thursday. i don't eat most meat, so that's one minor constraint, but i do eat fish.

i realize there's probably been a thousand references to good places to look up recipes in this thread (and its earlier iterations), but if anyone wants to lay a recommendation down i would happily check it out!

http://www.veganconnection.com/recipes/african_stew.htm

I made a variation of this last night and it was pretty amazing.

Hot pine...apple...? I'm not sure...does that seem right?

First stop insulting yourself. Then think about what you want to eat. Then figure out what you need to buy and to do to in order to make it. Then try to make it!

That was xp, sorry!

xxp It may not seem right, but it was great. Pineapple + peanut butter + hot sauce = magic happened.

One of the first things I learned how to cook (like 10 years ago?) was this horrible sounding thing with black beans, raisins, an entire jar of salsa, cumin, cinnamon, almonds, and rice. It tasted good, though, and gave me confidence to do weird things.

Also one of the first things I ever cooked was an attempt to recreate the Vietnamese noodle salad I had at a restaurant.

Just saying that each came from the idea that I wanted to eat good food and save money -- being hung up on skill is a waste of time.

At least I think so.

i'm really intrigued by that stew but am thinking my gf would not go for it

I gained confidence from finding recipe books that used flavorful ingredients. The first Jamie Oliver cookbook was a big revelation to me, in that a lot of his recipes are put together in the same kind of way you do when you're looking in the cupboard figuring out what to cook. And he's got a very relaxed approach which isn't as intimidating.
I know he gets a lot of crap but I found him v good at boosting my confidence when I was living on my own & trying to cook 'grownup food'

being hung up on skill is a waste of time.

― this customer is a jerk (La Lechera), Monday, January 14, 2013 4:52 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

agree w/the caveat that for someone who hasn't cooked much prep times can get pretty crazy for some dishes. just something to take into account for a weeknight meal.

Z S, you can find lots of great stuff at All Recipes; their rating system is extremely helpful.

Z S - This was one of the first Jamie Oliver I ever made from his tv show - spaghetti thing with fresh tomatoes and fresh olives --- it's so ridiculously simple, you don't really have to cook much at all, and you feel like a genius lol. Mr Veg still asks me to make it from time to time

http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pasta-recipes/simple-summer-spaghetti

150 g black olives, stoned

looooool this is gonna be a journey

Hot pine...apple...? I'm not sure...does that seem right?

― grossly incorrect register (in orbit), Monday, January 14, 2013 4:48 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

pineapple rules in savoury dishes

420 aside, that looks good V! but it does raise another potential constraint - my lack of a good local grocery store. nearest thing is harris teeter, which sometimes has decent stuff but often disappoints with the selection.

I like pineapple on pizza actually but when it has appeared in, for instance, curries I randomly ordered, I've found it gross.

http://i.imgur.com/X89kB.jpg

it's okay you're from the midwest ; )

Z S my recommendation would be to purchase 'how to cook everything' by mark bittman on iphone or iPad, it's got some really good kitchen basic stuff too (w/ great pencil illustrations)

yeah on the front page of the app is a button that says 'kitchen basics'

xxpost Z S - nah I understand that. It mightn't be the best for that situ,. However - it's pretty adaptable to the ingredients you can get. I have made it with canned tomatoes (try for italian plum tomatoes which will give you a little bit extra flavor, or at the very least whole canned tomatoes), just don't use the horrible canned olives. Make sure you get kalamatas.

Sometimes the thing to do is go to the store first and buy some things that look good/interesting that you think you will like, then get them home and search for recipes that use those ingredients. If you get hung up on needing a specific cut of meat or type of pasta or squash or whatever, it can feel like a huge may-as-well-order-a-pizza hurdle.

agree with all y'all -- bittman is annoying as a person but he gives good beginner's advice imo

i think starting with things that are more assembly-focused rather than COOKING -- tacos, for instance
that's all shopping and chopping with the exception of whatever meat you choose to make, and the payoff is greater than the effort it takes to assemble a taco or three.

yeah good call on tacos

z s - try "the simplest and best shrimp dish" from the mark bittmann app (which i also recommend.)

triple-sign tacos, get you into the chopping/prep work groove but only one v. simple thing to actually cook.

Pineapple w/red peppers is pretty much the best flavor combo

ZS when I moved out I "cooked" stir frys only until my grandma gave me a recipe of hers that I liked for tuna, Parmesan & rice. Sounds so terrible but tastes great. It was the first recipe I followed and I used to make it twice a week (nutrition, yeah!) and be melodramatically meticulous about the directions but now I wing it. It's so hilarious to me, looking bad, what chaos I could wreak on a kitchen then. Bonus, this is cheap, too, saffron aside. This is roughly the same: http://southernfood.about.com/od/tunarecipes/r/bl30104m.htm

I love cooking now. But it's mostly based around meat, so I haven't many ideas to share. Tonight I made a bomb broccoli slaw with slow-cooked ribs & Yorkshire pudding. Living large after a good rib sale & a Christmas crockpot.

I was always into watching cooking shows as a kid and messed around making omelets with tons of horrible junk in them or whatever but I really got seriously interested in cooking when I was really stoned at my boss's apartment in Detroit in 1997 before going to a Kraftwerk show and started reading his copy of the Joy of Cooking that was on the coffee table and everything in it sounded delicious and I bought a copy soon after that.

I moved to Arizona soon after that and found The Border Cookbook and started to try to make things that I liked from Mexican place, which gave me a reference point. I made a shitload of recipes from these books and learned a ton of fundamentals.

I'm not necessarily "good" technique wise but I've done it so much and trial and errored along the way that I feel really comfortable cooking now and have memorized basics about how things work and go together that it's really pleasing to me that I can just make a whole lot of things without having to read or study or anything, just knowing from past experience.

I'd be so happy to be able to play music this way, having practiced regularly for years until it becomes second nature but I just can't and never will. Needing to eat every day really forced me to learn cooking and I never needed to play music.

Get one decent pan and a sharp knife. I couldn't work out why some easy dishes took ages to make then I used my friend's sharp knife and it was a revelation.
BBC goodfood is another good site with loads of really easy stuff. I kind of hate having heavy hardback recipe books out while i'm cooking!

Z S the other option is to do what my uncle does, which is to make a big stew of all your favorite things (i.e. like barley, rice, oreos, peanut butter, ginger snaps, cream cheese, sriracha, soy sauce, lentils, pop tarts, and coffee ice cream) and cook that on the stove for like 5 hours and then just eat from that for the rest of the week (via reheating using a microwave)

I basically do that and call it "lentils" or "black bean soup." Skip the ginger snaps tho.

yeah they get a bit soggy