Cooking Cheap

Oh My, this is seriously tasty. I put the defrosted point chunk back on the smoker for 4 hours at the last smoke and then back into the fridge for a few days. I made a BBQ sauce of my choice I diced the meat and put it in in a saute pan over medium to render a bit more fat,.got bored with that., lowered the heat and added a bunch of the sauce and simmered the mess down to gravy like thickness. Spread it on two slices of bread, open face sandwich style. Oh my god! To date, I’ve never done better. It’s that good. Maybe it was worth a 16 hour smoke. The brisket had the Java-Chile rub and the sauce was “Memphis Magic”. I think those are both in the archives somewhere.

I’m going to fire up the smoker Wednesday and I want to maximize the effort with lots of stuff to smoke. So, another attempt at Pepperoni and something called “Herb Sausage”. These recipes are from Morton Salt but just in case, I’ll write them down here. The only change is I’m using the smoker instead of liquid smoke and an oven. I know from last year that the pepperoni tastes fine and it won’t stay in the freezer for very long. The second recipe doesn’t call for smoke, I’ll have to think about that but I’ll probably smoke it. They are very different recipes when you start crushing the spices and mixing them up.

Pepperoni

• 1 lb hamburger
• 1 1/2 level tsp of Morton Tender Quick
• [1 tsp liquid smoke if using an oven]
• 3/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 tsp Mustand seeds
• 1/2 tsp Fennel seeds, slightly crushed
• 1/4 tsp crushed red pepper
• 1/4 tsp Anise see
• 1/4 tsp Garlic powder

Combine all ingredients, mixing until thoroughly blended. Divide mixture in half. Shape each half into slender roll about 1-1/2 inches in diameter. Wrap in plastic or foil. Refrigerate overnight.

Unwrap rolls and place on broiler pan. Bake at 325°F until a meat thermometer inserted in the center of a roll reads 160°F, 50 to 60 minutes. Store wrapped in refrigerator. Use within 3 to 5 days or freeze for later use.

[My way]
Omit the liquid smoke and place in smoker until 160F. Might take a few hours at BBQ temps.

Herbed Sausage

• 1 pound lean ground beef
• 1-1/2 level teaspoons Morton® Tender Quick® mix or Morton® Sugar Cure® (plain) mix
• 3 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
• 2 tablespoons dry red wine
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon dry basil, crushed
• 1 teaspoon dry oregano, crushed
• 1/2 teaspoon mustard seed
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/8 teaspoon onion powder

Combine all ingredients, mixing until thoroughly blended. Divide mixture in half. Shape each half into slender roll about 1-1/2 inches in diameter. Wrap in plastic or foil. Refrigerate overnight.

Unwrap rolls and place on broiler pan. Bake at 325°F until a meat thermometer inserted in the center of a roll reads 160°F, 50 to 60 minutes. Store wrapped in refrigerator. Use within 3 to 5 days or freeze for later use

[tips]
Don’t use a ricer to twice grind the hamburger. It annoys the meat, may not work and you have to clean it.

[Smoking log]
20:00 6/22/05

It took a long time to get the smoker up to temperature, an hour and half from lighting the chimney. I need to remember this. Sausage was on at 19:45, the remains of the point cut is on and soon the pork chop cause I’m getting hungry. It’s running 240 at the lid, and the probe in the sausage says 107 it’s been it their for 15 minutes of so. Roughly 5 pounds of food to smoke.

20:20 6/22/05
Sausage probe reads 145. They are not not going to take much longer at this rate. I closed the bottom vents, lid temp is 235 of so. I added the pork chop a few minutes earlier and I put one of the Herbed sausages in the oven (and one is in the smoker with the pepperonis, as a control for confinement loaf).

20:32 6/22/05
Lid 200F, probe: 154 F, turned the chop over. The sausage doen’t look near done to me. When the 160F alarm sounds I’ll switch the probe to the pork chop. The sausage recipes do have wide variations in their oven temps but always 50 to 60 minutes for a 160F internal. That’s not clicking in my logic.

Opened the vents a tiny bit.

20:45 6/22/05
225F at the top. 152 on the probe. Finally the WSM is settling into for a smoke. Hard to say what the chunk of brisket point is doing. It was black and smoked going in. For sure, It’s more black and more smoked now.

21:00 6/22/05

225F at the top, 154 on the sausage probe. The oven timer went off at 50 min @ 350F. Internal temp of that bit, 140F. 10 minutes more for the oven sausage. The “herb sausage” from the oven does smell good.

21:15 6/22/05
Oven sausage reads 160F after 60 minutes at 350 (and it was just a half pound). Flipped the pork chop over. Lid temp is 225. sausage probe is 156 if I remember correctly. Finally, the temps are doing what I would expect. Like the experiment on how low a Weber grill can go and, I’m learning . I’m getting hungry too.

21:35.
Sausage probe sounds the alarm. They look right to me, I removed them. I instered the probe into the pork chop and it reads done. the brisket will cook until the charcoal runs out in a hour or two.

22:35.
Double Opps! The pork chop was supposed to go to 160F, not 145F. My bad. It’s back on the smoker. It was very tender and tasty at 145 though. Just wasn’t cooked and it’s no where near the “Smoke And Spice” claim of 60 minutes at pit temps. I didn’t think that was right. Now I have proof that I do know my way around the pit, Was is a typo in the book, an editing error? The answer no longer matters. I’m done with following recipes. I figured out the torilla thing and the bread thing and now I know I’m flying free on the BBQ thing. I’m flying on my own in the dark of night. Literally. It’s 1100PM and I want a pork chop!

I was in the mood for a pork chop and a longer effort than grilling it or frying it. As I often do, I cruise the internet looking for recipes that flip my switch for the night. That switch was labeled “goulash”, but I didn’t have the ingredients the recipe called for. But I do have the makings for my old worn Betty Crocker version of goulash. It turned out well enough to write it down.

[serves 1 to 2 people]

• 1 thick bone in pork chop. 3/4lb
• Flour for dusting
• Salt and pepper
• Small glove of garlic, minced
• Half a medium onion, sliced.
• 2 Tbl catsup
• 1 Tbl Worcestershire sauce
• 1/2 Tbl brown sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1/4 tsp dry mustard
• pinch of cayenne pepper
• 3/4 C water or broth or wine ….
• [Optional] slurry of water and flour or cornstarch

Heat skillet to medium, add enough oil to coat bottom. Salt and pepper the pork chop and dust in flour. Shake off excess and brown the chop in the skillet for a few minutes per side. This is a good time to slice the onion and chop up the garlic and find the other stuff in the pantry and fridge.

Remove chop and put on a plate. Reduce heat to medium low. If needed, remove or add some oil, depending on your skillet, the amount of flour on the chop and the amount of oil you started with. Again, you just need a light coating. Add the onions and saute for a couple of minutes, Add the garlic and just look all chef like stirring the stuff for another minute. Add every thing else except the slurry. Mix. Add the pork chop to the sauce, cover the skillet and reduce heat to the lowest simmer you can get.

Barely simmer for 45 minutes to an hour adding liquid as needed for your sauce consistency. In fact, I only added half the water at the start and then replenished it a table spoon or two at a time. If you end up with soup at the end then, you have to thicken it with a slurry or remove the lid and up the heat a notch and reduce it (which will probably dry out the chop]

You now have time to prepare your starch to meat their gravy. Mashed potatoes, rice, noodles or what I did is make a half recipe of Spaetzle. The little dumplings match well with the spicy gravy.

Cooks notes
[[6/18/05]
Knowing how long to braise the pork chop before it gets way too dry and keeping the liquid level at the amount of gravy you want is the only trick to this dish. Even if the chop is a little dry it still tastes very good so don’t worry too much about that. I could even argue the texture and feel is better if you go for the longer time. Just keep the lid on and the liquid level correct. Yes, you have to lift the lid to check or add. It’s cooking.

I used water but I’m sure a chcken broth or beef broth would be fine but you should eliminated the salt in the recipe if your broth is canned or a bullion. . A full bodied (aka dark or malty) beer might be even better. If I had some red wine in the fridge, I’d have used it for half the liguid. Those substitutions have not been tested by me.

If water is your liquid, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to add bunch of it and then thicken it later. There’s still the same amount of flavor particles no matter how much water and slurry you add. I prefer to use less at the beginning and add it over time. For completeness, a slurry to thicken is 1/8 cup water and 1Tbl flour mixed together. You probably don’t have a 1/8 C measure. I don’t. Two or three Tbl of water ought to do it. It’s not that important a measurement. Truth be told, I didn’t measure any of the ingredients, I just gave it my best guess. It’s a pork chop, its paprika and onion gravy. There’s no way it will be bad.

If you use boneless chops, or thin chops you can probably cut the time in half but that’s just a guess on my part. I wanted to fuss over something for an hour (but no more than that). It’s a pork chop in a paprika and onion gravy. Just don’t burn anything and I’ll be fine.

Cookin’ Cheap was a TV show out of Roanoke Virginia PBS back in the late 70’s, as memory serves. Larry Bly and Labin Johnson. Your PBS station might have carried it. It was not a winner for syndication. Labin of them has passed into the great canned soup kitchen of the beyond. One’s still around. They showed me that cooking can be fun and cheap. There are archives of their recipes.

Think of tasty, quick and affordable as the legs of a three legged stool. Remove one and the stool is unstable. The bubblly Racheal Ray goes for quick — “Veal cutets only take a few minutes and the cheese comes pre-grated from the the mega mart, How cool is that!”. We’re giving up the cheap leg, and possibly the tasty leg. Emirl has a full staff of cooks behing the curtain. It’s not cheap or fast except in TV time.

It’s time for someone step forward and write about the cheap. I’ll not worry about quick if I can get tasty and affordable. Cooking Cheap. I’ll miss the mark in both directions. Sometimes you can get all three and sometimes my stool breaks on the taste leg. Open a can of mega mart chili for backup, a beer and see what happens.

I do have specialized equipment for smoking meat and it wasn’t cheap. It’s not out of the ball park expensive either, Cheaper than a month of health insureance but you’ll need that too. Lastly, I cook meals for a single person. Sometimes the recipes are for two or more if the leftovers are good enough. If your cooking for 4 or 6, you could probably double them or triple them but I haven’t tested that and I’m not likely to.

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