Cooking Cheap

I put the following rub on some beef rubs tonight and I’ll smoke them tomorrow afternoon along with the hil billy bacon I had a 3.5 lb chunk of ribs and the quality below is enough, but I measured with a light spoon and I didn’t measure the coffee.

2 Tbl freshly ground coffee.
1 Tbl New Mexican chili powder
1 Tbl Kosher salt
2 tsp turbinado sugar (less if packed brown sugar)
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
2 shakes each of onion powder and garlic powder.

I removed the membrane on the back side of the ribs because it doesn’t look to me any rub is going to flavor the meat through the membrane. This is just a slight variation of the Java - Chili rub I used on a brisket last year and I liked that. I don’t think I’d use it on pork, but if I did, I’d up the sugar a bit more, The recipe would makes enough for a full untrimmed rack of pork spares or my 3.5 pound of beef ribs.

[Later]
The rub was fine. In fact the rub was about the only thing to eat. The beef ribs only looked like they had some meat. I also had them in the smoker too long. Tasty dry meat when you could find it. I ate all seven bones. That’s a lot and something to say about how closely the mega mart trims the beef ribs.

Here’s the starting point, Hillbilly Bacon. This time I’ll follow the instructions more closely. The first time I added the molasses with the cure. That turned out OK, and I ate it all that year. But the molasses kind of glopped up the rub and didn’t spread evenly on the meat.

I found a 4.35lb boneless pork butt at Winco, which was cleverly and accurately labeled 1/2 Boneless Pork Butt. From a local company, Falls Brand, not that I had a choice of brands. Still, I like knowing its a local thing. After mixing the cure (1/4 C Tender Quick and 1/4 C brown sugar ) I removed the netting holding the butt together and it was dead easy to find the one place to slice it into two mostly equal chunks. Dead easy because it doesn’t matter that much. It’s going to shrink from the cure. There was not a lot of surface fat so I didn’t trim anything.

Since my butt is a half butt, I used half the recipe amounts giving me a 1/2C of cure. That’s a very generous amount of rub for the quantity of meat. I thought I had too much. I rubbed in half, turned them over and rubbed in the other half. This takes maybe 5 seconds. As rubs do, a good bit spills on the counter top. So I turned the meat over so I could distribute the counter drippings more evenly. It was gone! There was no excess rub on the first side. How odd? I turned the chunks over and the rub on that side as disappeared. I don’t know about Tender but Quick is certain. The excess rub I put on the ends. It too disappeared, inhaled into the meat, I guess. The two pieces fit neatly into a gallon freezer bag and that I put in a glass baking pan and into the fridge. For some number of days.

[Ten Days Later]
I’ve turned the bag of butt every couple of days. There is not a lot of liquid so I didn’t bother pour it out. It’ll get a wash and soak tomorrow and into the smoker. I haven’t decided on the glaze. I’m leaning to doing a black pepper rub on one piece and a glaze on the other half.

[Next day]
This time around I washed and soaked the cured pork butt (halves for 3.5 hours. I went with a light honey glaze on the pork butt. I put it into a 235F smoker and it took 90 minutes to get to 149F internal. Thats quick. My experience has been that cured meat doesn’t take long but I was expecting a little longer than that. Smelled like bacon as it cooled.

[Days Later]
It tastes like bacon too. Not nearly as much fat so it fry a little differently. I don’t taste the honey glaze but that could be me. It’s really very good. You have to be very skilled to cut it as thin as bacon. I’m not. I’m not complaining either, it’s good stuff.

I think any spice flavor has to go into the cure, not the glaze. All I have to do is eat 4 lb’s of bacon so I can try again.