Cooking Cheap

Sometimes I just make stuff up and this is one of those times. Heres the plan. It’s not a recipe yet until I do it and report back in [brackets] and remove this disclaimer. I also need a catchy name in case it’s good. It’s original to me, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been done before. What to call it? What if it’s really good?

Serves one or two with another chicken breast, even more depending on your sauce needs but I like gravy poured over starches.

[more than enough paste/pesto for one chicken breast, might handle four]

Ingredients:

1 boneless skinless chicken breast
1 can of Cream of Mushroom or Cream of Chicken soup.
Milk.

Veggies for stuffing paste
1 glove garlic, minced
1/2 small yellow onion, sliced into half moon rings.
1/4 bell pepper, sliced in thing strips, halved across.
1/? can of black sliced olives
2 Tbl chopped fresh parsley
2 dried small Chipotle peppers

2 Tbl Bread crumbs
2 Tbl Olive Oil (if needed)
1/4C Grated cheese (parmesan or your favorite)
Salt and Pepper

Procedure

1. Reconstitute dried Chipotles, Rinse canned chipotles. Remove seeds and stem.and mince
2. Lightly saute the veggies over med-low heat in olive oil or butter until the onions and peppers soften. Let cool a bit. In a mini food processor, make a paste out of the
3. Mix with breadcrumbs, grated cheese (parmesan or Cougar Gold for me) add olive oil if needed to make a spreadable filling. Let stuffing cool a bit. .
4. Flatten chicken breast as thin as possible. [I don't do that well]
5. Spread stutffing across chicken breast, roll up and toothpick the seam. Don’t get anal about it.
6. Mix 1 can of cream of mushroom soup plus half can whole milk ( maybe more milk) in baking dish.
7. Add chicken roll to backing dish and any left over stuffing stuffing.[I had enough pesto or paste or whatever for another meal and the chicken roll is spilling stuffing out all over so I didn't do that]
8. Bake uncovered at 350F for 20 minutes. .
9. Add some frozen peas and reserved veggies, [if any] Bake for another 25 minutes or so. \

Serve with rice or mashed potatoes or pasta or over bread/toast, something that needs gravy. Home made gnocchi would be fun or my dumplings maybe.

Actually it is cheap cooking if you have the veggies in the fridge and the olives are waiting to get tossed out for age dating. Not to mention the milk that going unused and the cheese that goes green if you don’t use it soon. Sunk costs. I wouldn’t run out to buy those ingredients just to make this.

[ It sort of didn't suck. I forgot the olives in the stuffing/paste - that was wrong still, the paste was tasty and might serve as a kind of pesto or tapinade or marinade.

The meal was good enough for me to eat it all so it wasn't bad, just not what I was thinking it should be]

All the cool kids are talking about smoking brisket in 5 hours instead of the 10 to 12 hours. I’ll try one too. Here’s the plan and reality will just have to be discovered.

Night before, trim brisket a bit closer than normal, apply rub, cover and fridge overnight.

Light a full chimney (around 40+ briquettes)
Remove brisket from fridge

Fill ring with charcoal. add lit charcoal, (30 to 40 minutes from lighting charcoal
Assemble smoker – foiled but empty water pan.
Add brisket with temp probe
Add smoke wood.

Target cooker temp is 325 to 350 so all vents wide open. (can turn door upside down and prop it open a 1/4 to 1/2 inch if needed)

When briskets reads 165 to 170, wrap in foil with probe and return to smoker. Expect a 2 or 3 hours to get here from putting the meat on, longer depending on smoker temp.

When briskets gets to 190, start checking for tenderness – slight to no resistance to probe or fork. This phase may take a couple of hours.

Remove brisket from smoker. Remove probe.
Drain the liquid in the foil into large measure might be +3C in there.
Reserve the liquid.

630 PM. Separate point from flat (if you can, or care too and return the point to the smoker and cook another hour, unwrapped – i suppose, probably at a lower temp? )

Double wrap brisket in new foil and add enough reserved liquid (or add broth) to make 1 1/2 C. Wrap in towels and put in microwave or cooler for an hour or two. Unwrap 10-15 minutes before slicing.

Thats the plan. Here’s how it went.
1:30 PM Light a full chimney (around 40+ briquettes)
2:30 All lit, assembled the smoker as above. 3 good size chunks of Apple and a handful of loose little chips. Meat on

I’m a little surprised the smoker got that hot that quickly but you go with what you’ve got. It’s didn’t take that long (90 minutes) to get to 165 on the probe and it hit 190 a half hour after the foiling step. I was warned your have to pretty much ignore the probe at this point. It’s all touch now. It’s done when it’s tender. I decided to wait for another hour before testing for tender and eventually decided that it was “about” right, I guess.

Basically it’s braising in it’s own juice after it gets the smoke treatment, it’ll taste good.

I was a little worried about handling the hot foil package with all that juice (2 Cups for me) but it was no problem. I even managed to get the point off the flat with without too much error. The liquid left doesn’t have a lot of fat separating out yet. It seems a shame to toss it. – it’s got to be full of beef and rub flavors, although it might be too strong?

Here’s a picture of the brisket as I started to cut the point off before going into the cooler.

That camera batteries ran low when it came time to shoot the picture of the smoke ring in the slices and I was too hungry to refill. Not much of a smoke ring, 1/8 ” inch maybe a 1/4″. One wasn’t promised. Tender was promised and that promise was delivered too.

Perhaps as moist and tender a brisket as I’ve had. Plenty of beef flavor. So, the recipe performs as claimed. The downside is the bark and the rub just kind of vanishes in the braising liquid (and yes, the liquid is too strong).

I don’t know if I’ll do this again or not. If I do, I’ll try to keep the heat around 325F for a slightly longer cooking time and use a less complex rub. If I had that old Electric Brinkman this would the technique to use.

I tried the Weber Smokey Mountain (WSM) on another high heat smoke. I tried it last year and although it was good I had a hard time getting the heat up and running it high (320+). That time I was supplying food for party and couldn’t be so cavalier with “it’s done when it’s done” timing.

The trick is you need a lot of burning charcoal and an empty water pan. At least two full chimneys of hot charcoal. That’s a bit tricky if you only have one chimney. From lighting the first chimney to full temp it’s going to take at least an hour. I thought about doing it the Weber kettle but I’ve done that before, I want some WSM skills.

I was running 325 until the shade covered the smoker. If I have to finish in the oven, I can do that. I’m not going to be al purist about it. In fact, this was some bargain brand, enhanced bird – so I didn’t bother to brine it or even apply a rub. I’m not a fan of the skin either so I won’t worry about that either. Actually, it cooked the turkey to 165F internal in an 1.5 hours which is what I would have guessed. (I Did guess., didn’t?) I foiled it and put in n a cooler for a while. Maybe an hour. It was just right for slicing.

There wasn’t a lot of liquid in the foil. Hmm. Not much in Smoker’s drip pan either. Most of the meat was moist enough. Of course it tasted fine, all Q tastes good. Now I know, I should have brined. A light smoke flavor which is exactly what I wanted. It’s a win on technique and there’s nothing wrong with the bird. Just might have needed some extra juice. I’ve got a summer’s worth of turkey sandwiches. That’s not a bad thing.

Remember. All things BBQ here are variations from the fount of BBQ wisdom at the Virtual Webe Bullet. See the cooking topics, and then the forums. I never Q without looking to see what’s new or checking their recipes for the starting point.

A big issue for single people is what to do with all that left over meat from a BBQ. I believe that micro-waving to reheat or even for defrosting is just going to ruin your leftovers. I don’t recommend that.

Pork Ribs
Pork ribs are thought not to be so tasty when frozen and then defrosted and reheated. I happen to believe that. Wrap them in foil and put them in the fridge. Reheat in the foil in a low oven 200F or even less.

Or as I discovered recently, reheat them and shred meat and you treat them like pulled pork bark.

Pulled Pork

Finishing pulling it all into shreds, get rid of the bone, skin and other things you don’t want. Store in the fridge and/or wrap imeal or single serving sizes . I wrap them in plastic wrap, and I put those bundles in a ziploc and freeze them.

Mix with some BBQ sauce in a small sauce pan on low until warmed thru and make a sandwich. Or add to a pot of Chili or gumbo to just to flavor some beans (boiled or baked). Or fried rice or in a hash

Brisket
Slice the leftovers and package them in meal size or single size servings. (see the pulled pork ideas). Brisket hash is terrific! That’s what I with mine.

Beef Ribs
Wrap in foil, freeze and thaw at room temperature. Reheat in a low (200F) oven.

Ham
Slice into severing sizes. Bundle chunks and bits into sizes to “flavori” a pot of beans or gumbo. Defrost the bigger pieces for sandwiches , or breakfast.

Chicken/Turkey
This one is hard. It’s really easy to over smoke poultry and the next day it’s like sipping off the bottle of liquid smoke. I happen to believe dark meat is really prone to a two strong smoke taste. Still, it’s going to happen, so we need ideas for that. Gumbo or jambalaya will take anything and a good place for the dark meat.

You could make a sandwich with sliced breast (white) meat if not over-smoked. Heat it slowly if you have to, but you won’t do that more than once. Tettrazini or Ala-King or other baked pasta would work well. There’s always gumbo and chili and fried rice and omelet filling.

Summary

Learn to make gumbo and how to cook a pot of beans and a white sauce and baked pasta. Big bonus points if you make your own bread to go with or use in BBQ left overs.