Cooking Cheap

Mom’s visiting and I want to impress her with some smoked protein and do something I haven’t done with rubs and the Weber Smoky Mountain. I chose chicken and since previous rubs and pastes left me underwhelmed, I’ll try a marinade. It’s easier to make, easier to cope with and something new to me and the smoker.

Before you read my whining, know that It makes some damn fine chicken. If I wanted smoked chicken again, I’d use this marinade.

From “Smoke & Spice”, Cheryl and Bill Jamison, who acknowledge it might be James Beard’s recipe. This reads like a large amount. It was enough for a butterflied chicken and not much waste, as marinades go.

1/2 C Soy sauce
1/2 C dry Sherry
1/2 C strong brewed tea
2 Tbl honey
2 Tbl peanut oil
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tsp ground anise
1/2 tap ground cloves
1 garlic clove, minced.

Combine in a food processor.

Then there’s my way. I ddn’t have any Sherry but I have Shao Xing rice wine, an irony that defies certain belief systems. This marinade also used up my supply of light Soy sauce and peanut oil. I didn’t have ground anise but I had anise seed, I crushed the seed in my fingers or tried to to. That boring fast but it’s a nice smell. I didn’t measure any of it. It’s only BBQ!

I took a 5.25lb chicken (smallest I could find) and butterfly-ied it — remove the back bone, the breast bone, the wish bone and the small bone connected to the big bone connected to dat bone/ so that the two chicken halves are connected by a thin bit of meat and skin. It’s not as hard as it sounds and a lot less fun than I’m making it sound. If you eat meat, you might as well learn how to cut meat.

Turns out, a gallon plastic bag isn’t large enough. Two gallon bags, with half a chicken each — just right. OK, there was nothing separating the chicken halves but dreams. I poured have the marinade in each bag and put them in the fridge for almost a day. Turning them over a couple of times.

The next day, Mom and I hit Wally World. Internet rumor is they carry Royal Oak lump charcoal. Not where I live but they did a decent price on a 5lb bag of hickory chunks. I was going to buy that until I saw the line. So we went next door to Lowes. They had Royal Oak briquettes and the price was almost OK compared to Kingsford. So I bought some.

My last bag of Kingsford got a bit soaked from a leak in the water softener in the garage. It’s burns OK, but I don’t think charcoal should have a green hue when cooking for Mom. I filled the ring in the WSM half full of the Royal Oak briquettes and the left overs from the last burn. I lit a chimney with 18 RO briquettes and when white, added them to the smoker pan, assembled the bad boy and waited for it to get to 240F or 250F.

An hour later I fired up 10 more in the chimney, added that and finally the smoker got to 235F. An hour liate but Mom’s a good sport. It’s 90F outside and there’s no reason I can think of for the smoker to be running so cold but I did. I put the chicken halves on and after another hour I had to adjust the vents down to get 235F. Finally I could adjust down. It ran 235 for several more hours (total smoke around 4 hours). The chicken was pulled off to rest just as the thunderstorm hit. One and 1/2 chunks of smoke wood.

Turned out to be a doozey of a storm. The corn on the cob suffered from the storm temp drop. I need to work on the corn thing. The chicken was as good as I’ve ever done in the smoker and the marinade is way easier than putting on a rub or paste. This is a excellent recipe to build on If you think smoked chicken is what you want.

I had other reasons to smoke a chicken so that die was cast, but this one turned better than not half bad. Four out of 5 stars (for chicken).

I muse on rub effectiveness, invent a reason for the previous BBQ huh? and provide an old time recipe for some decent potatoes.

I smoked up a store bought ham Saturday. Friday I scored the surface and rubbed it with a bourbon maple paste. It came out tasting like, hold on …. store bought injected cured ham! Go Damn figure. That’s OK, Ill be happy to use it for all kinds of meals for months to come, but the extra smoke from the BBQ and the rub and the glaze (I didn’t glaze)? It didn’t change the taste of the interior of the ham in any substantial way that I can detect. Yes, the outside bits are different and taste different, the inside did not turn into “some folks think it’s better than country ham”. Those folks are full of shit. A paste and a final cook in the smoker do not change the nature of that injection thing.

Don’t get me wrong. I ate a lot of it because it was tasty, and I’ll happily use the leftovers for many months, But it’s not worth the extra cost of the charcoal and the rub/paste/marinade ingredients to smoke it (again). That said, I still think it’s worth the effort to make a faux pastrami from a corned beef. Reality and doorknobs do mix if you fix reality.

There’s nothing wrong with the maple bourbon paste, but it’s not really worth my time to write it down here. It might be really good on a pork loin, where every slice is going to get a bit of the spice, but not a store bought 6 pound ham.

The ham also fooled me. I guessed it would take 6 hours in the smoker to get to 160F. After 4 hours, it was up to 140F (the smoker was running 235F). Cured meat doesn’t take that long, right? So I got busy on the side dish which takes an hour and half of baking. I opened the vents on the smoker a bit to increase the temp. 90 minutes later, the potatoes are done and the ham is all the way up to 153F (internal). Well, that sucks. I turned off the oven and let the potatoes sit in the over (over cook some might say). 30 minutes later , The ham reads 157F and twilight is upon me. Close enough to 160F in my book.

I had no trouble at all with getting the smoker up to 225-230 and keeping it there, so I don’t know what I did wrong on the previous pork shoulder smoke. I have a theory, of course. If you can’t make up a reason, you’re not BBQ’ing! In the all night smoke session, I placed some large chunks of apple wood and covered them with more charcoal and put the lit coals on the top. I watched it for a few hours and went to bed and when fully awake some hours later, the temp was way down to 170F.

Today’s theory is that the too large apple chunks were at the the same place in burn down to them time and they don’t burn like charcoal. Supporting evidence is the the smoker was pouring smoke. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it until I change it.

Back to yesterdays Ham. Not really worth the effort or expense. What was really yummy was the potatoes au-gratin. I don’t remember making scalloped potatoes from scratch or without a crock pot (slow cooker for our international readers). I’ve always bought that box of dehydrated taters chips and cheese dust. I’ve never made scalloped potatoes.

One reason is that it take a couple of hours, but if your BBQing that’s a short time. Turns out home made is pretty easy and very tasty. The following is only my latent best guess of measurements.

Au-Gratin Potatoes - serves 2 (or 1)
1 Idaho Baker, about 2/3 lb. These are “large” here but probably “small Idaho’s” to you.

Peel the potato. Slice into rounds, maybe 1/8 inch thick, or even, gasp, 3/16th’s . Chop a third of an yellow onion (medium here, probably “small” where you live), In a skillet on med low heat, melt 1 Tablespoon of butter, more or less. When foaming but not brown, stir in 1 or 2 Tbl of flour, stir often, simmer low to a light roux. It’s white sauce! Slowly add some milk. I used maybe a 1/2 C of whole milk. Or maybe it was 3/4 C. Depends on how much flour and fat. Add some salt and pepper (not much)

I really can’t be exact. Mixing fat, flour, and some liquid is pretty much all that any cook needs to learn and it has to be learned. Make a smooth sauce. I added a shake or two of ground nutmeg (curse you Rachel Ray). I added a lot of grated sharp cheddar cheese, maybe 1/3 lb. or 1/4lb . Added some more milk since the cheese will thicken it. Now its a cheese sauce. I’ve made Mac and Cheese this way and now potatoes too.

Smart people would grease a casserole dish. That’s probably a good idea. Put half the potato slices and half the onion in the dish. Cover with half the sauce. Layer on the rest of the potatoes, minced onion and sauce. Bake covered at at 350F for 30 minutes, then bake uncovered 60 minutes. Yes, that does seem like a long time. It’s worth it.

The Smoked Ham was OK, but the potatoes were simply awesome. The fat to flour to heat to liquid ratio is pretty much every thing a young cook needs to master. It’s all gravy from there.

I’m making pulled pork for Fridays dinner. Tradition would suggest more dense, softer white bread. Hamburger buns actually. I’m going to use sourdough though because I’ll learn something. I’ll worry about hydration and weights tomorrow.

A month or so back, I saved a ‘chef’ from a batch of sourdough bread and I kneaded in as much flour as it could absorb and then wrapped in layers of plastic wrap and it’s been in the fridge for a long time. I’ll use that instead of the jar of starter. After weeks (or months?) the chef is actually pretty sticky. It did grow a bit in size in the fridge. I only needed half of it to start my normal 1 oz of flour and 1 oz of water. It’s going to take some extra time I think to get the next chef working (compared to the more liquid starter like I have in the jar. The smell is subtlety different, not better or worse, just slightly different. That may not carry over to the final loaf.

It took a long time to get the chef to consume the 1 oz of flour and 1 oz of water so I went to bed. It took some time to consume the 3 oz of flour and 3 oz of water at the next feeding. It’s taking some time for the first rise after mixing all the ingredients. I’d like to bake this off tonight even though it will be very late, but I’ll up with the BBQ smokers anyway. The recipe, I just took the one out the bread machine cookbook and adjusted it for the amount of starter, and going for 60% hydration. For that 8 oz starter of starter, that was 11 oz of bread flour, 5 oz of water and the shortening, sugar, salt, milk power for a 1.5 lb loaf. I even used the bread machine to knead it.

The bread is being extremely slow about rising. I won’t be able to bake it tonight. It’s rising but very slowly. I’ll have to retard. Something happened in the chef that I saved and strong yeast activity is not one of it’s attributes.

I divided the dough in into 6th’s. Rolled them a bit and placed them on a baking sheet. . I put that in a plastic garbage bag and the into the fridge.

It wasn’t in the plan to make pulled pork on Friday but the mega mart had pork shoulder at $0.88/lb. A Cinco De Mayo special. That’s too good to pass by. I could have frozen it for later use but I’m on for a all night smoke tomorrow night. That 8.5lb shoulder should take about 12 hours to cook, more or less.

I’m doing the Renowned Mr Brown. I’ll deviate from that recipe by design and by error. First I’m using shoulder and not butt. Butt wasn’t on sale. In fact, it’s not usually seen at my mega mart. The problems started early. I didn’t have enough dry mustard for the rub and I didn’t feel like going to the mega mart so after trimming the shoulder I lathered on some wet mustard, maybe a quarter cup, maybe less. It helps the rub stick to the meat and it’s not going to hurt the taste (I like mustard).

Trimming the skin off was easier than I expected (before rubbing). I’d guess the skin and trimmings are a pound. It’s still a huge hunk of meat for a single guy but an overnight cook is something all would be pit masters need to get right. This will be my second overnighter. I know from the first one (brisket) that once the Weber Smoky Mountain (WSM) gets settled in on a temperature, it’ll hold it while I sleep. The WSM just works and I have to learn to trust it.

The weather report for Thursday night is dry, but cool (a low of 40F is predicted),. That will be a test.to get the fire up fast enough given my last cooking session. I also need to make some bread, but that’s another post.

9:00PM Thursday , May 4, 2006

Before I started to get dark, I’ set up the chimney of charcoal, a full right of charcoal and smoke wood in the smoker. Just light the charcoal, wait a while, put the pork on, get the temp set. Meanwhile, I made the baked beans (this recipe is on this site). They’ll cook tonight and go into the fridge. I’m already to go. Snort.

I had just put the beans in the oven and came in here to write this update when I noticed it had started raining. WTF. So much for weather forecasts! One cloud in the sky and it’s sprinkling on the Rancho, and the chimney and ring of charcoal. It was just luck that I managed to get it all covered before much water fell, but it’s going to affect the charcoal and temps. I had counted out 22 briquettes for the chimney, I think I might go for 24.

I could move the smoker to a covered area. It’s a real pain in the ass to attend it there, so I didn’t.

11:15PM. I fired up the chimney and it was happy at 11:45 so I scattered the 24 burning briquettes in the grate (Minion Method), assembled the smoker and filled the water pan. 12:15AM, it’s running 220F as measured at the top. I”d like that to be higher. 12:40AM, 225F. Not that much better, but I’m getting weary. I put the meat on and added some apple wood chucks. Half hour later, it’s a smoking, at 225F (sigh), bottom vents 100% open. I’m looking for 240F or 250F so I can close the vents a bit and go to bed.

1:35AM. Up to 235F. I remove the lid and put in the probe on the thermometer to get a reading at the rack instead of at the top. You, know, just in case the top therm went bad. It read 85F. Must be operator error, it’s too dark to figure out the buttons.

1:50AM. Yes!. It’s up to 240F at the top, 203 at the grate (assuming I got it right on the probe). I closed the bottom vents to 1/3rd open and if the temp locks in around 225 (top or bottom), I can got to bed. This is the sweet spot where the WSM show’s it’s mettle, When it gets dialed in, it stays there. He says. I am ready to crash too. With the beans and the bread and the smoker and dinner, I’ve been cooking and worrying for 8 hours. Granted it isn’t hard work or easy to screw up but anal compulsives have rules that you may not know.

2:25AM Near 250 at the top. No it’s not a problem. I closed the bottom vents to 1/4 open which seems about right considering the outside temp. I won’t predict how many hours I’ll get out of the charcoal ring. It’s a cool night (some would say it’s cold at 40F).

3:10AM. 230F.

3:30 AM. 235. Turned down one vent that was a bit more open than the others. Nothing wrong with 235. I ‘m going to bed.

9:00AM. 220F, I filled up the water pan. Back to sleep.

11:00AM 170F, but still smoking. Opened the vents full and strirred the coals.

Noon: Back to 220F. I put the probe in the meat. 145F - That’s not so good.
I fired up another 20 briquettes in the chimney and added them and that much unlit.

7:00PM. This is a lot longer that a 12 hour cook I had planned on. Smoker is still running 230 or so. The meat is 183F. If it ever gets to 190,F I pull it (or I’ll run out of fuel) - which ever comes first.

I took the meat off at 8:30PM. 186F and let it cool before pulling. It’s was awesome BBQ. A little dry because I didn’t mop or turn it but very good. There a huge pile of leftovers in the fridge. I’ll deal with that tomorrow.

It’s 10:30PM and the smoker is still running at 220F. I have no idea what it’s using for fuel. It must make it out the air.