What's cooking? part 4

Finally decided to try a buttnernut squash soup. Am a little wary, bcz I'm not a huge winter squash fan...but it's been years since I had one and they're SO cheap right now, I figured what the hell. Using an Emeril recipe that has italian sausage in it --- I figured that might help ease me into it. Training wheels, haha.

squash&sausage sounds potent, curious about the recipe & how it ends up.

yesterday was prawns-capers-mushrooms-olives&white wine risotto, today is meatballs.

Got a smoker yesterday -- a Masterbuilt 40" electric. It's going through its seasoning/burn-off process now, will start with pork shoulder tomorrow. Will I turn into one of those cue-heads who spends hundreds of dollars on gear to make a $20 rack of ribs? Only time will tell!

read somewhere recently how to make the perfect soft boiled eggs and it's foolproof as long as you time it right. the article claimed steaming allows the yolk and white to achieve their respective internal temperatures perfectly in 6.5 minutes no matter the size of the egg. i've done it twice this way now and concur with their findings. i didn't realize before that yolk and white coagulate at different temperatures and boiling isn't the best way to get both cooked to the perfect doneness consistently.
i LOVE soft boileds (esp. w/ a wee dab of umeboshi paste)

xxpost:
butternut soup rules. easy to make and i love that sort of delicate flavor. used to make one that had diced roasted red pepper added to the pureed soup. looked nice and tasted real yumm

I'm excited. Kitchen smells amazing right now

xxpost WmC - Mr Veg got a Brinkman from his Dad when we first bought our house, having never barbecued/smoked anything ever. Within 6 months he was obsessed, and within 2 years we had a Kamado. So, the answer is yes. But it's sooooooooooo worth it. I don't even remember that many inedible failures starting out tbh. To me even the failures were fking delicious :)

Good luck, and happy smoking!

Thanks! I think I have the hang of grilling and wanted to add smoking to the repertoire. The smoker was an Xmas gift from my main/only work client, who actually sent me cash and told me to research and get the smoker I wanted. This all grew out of a conversation we had the Friday before Labor Day -- she asked if we had big weekend plans, if I was going to barbecue. I said no, I didn't have the gear or the know-how for 'cue, but I was going to grill some hamburgers. This got into the whole thing of using the word "barbecue" when you mean "grill" and I happily ranted away on my pedantic high horse for a while, so that gave her the idea of getting me a smoker for Christmas. She and Judy plotted for a few weeks on what exactly to get, and decided to just give me $$$ and let me do the researching/buying, which is a big part of the fun anyway.

That's awesome! And v thoughtful

Squash/sausage soup was a success! You cook everything for a while, puree & then strain, so you retain the sausage flavor but not the actual meat. V interesting flavor. Still find the actual squash kinda sweet to attempt on its own but I would like to try a thai version I think

Roasted squash and apple soup with chili oil is great. Sharp apples and smoked paprika cut through the sweetness of the squash really well.

wow that sounds delish

Recipe please! I picked up a butternut squash at the FM yesterday.

WilliamC, bbq has become a serious hobby for the spouse and me after aquiring a smoker (well, a big green egg/kamodo type cooker, anyway). Pork shoulder is the perfect starter meat, very forgiving. Brisket is extremely fuckupable, but such a triumph when it comes out right. Best baba ghanoush ever when you smoke an eggplant.

Will be interested to hear about your smoking exploits! Spouse and I disagree about how much smoke flavor to shoot for (he loads up on smoke; I prefer a more subtle flavor).

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.