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.

Here’s a regional ingredient to get the foodies foaming. It’s made by/at Washington State University and it comes in a can (they are the Cougars so that’s what the name is about). A 30 oz. can. That almost two pounds to you. It’s a lot of cheese to me. My sister Kim gave it to me for Christmas (and a can to brother Larry).

Yes, you read that right. It comes in a can. Tin can. 30oz. The can is inside a Rubbermaid Reseal-able container (better that your normal Rubbermaid quality too!). Larry knew all about it and passed on sailing wisdom - “keeps for ever, everydody with a boat talks about it”.

Actually, kept in a can, it will keep forever. The little pamphlet explains that. And it says it ages in the can, so depending on how old your can is it could be smooth or crumbly. On the tin, mine says “Made by Sammy June 3, 2005″.

Sammy has a bright future as a cheese maker. I’d like to buy him a drink. This is some seriously good stuff. The closest cheese might be White Cheddar. My can was a bit crumbly to cut, and had some seriously good bite back, almost like a chunk of parmesan. I didn’t throw away a single crumbly bit. Not one. I put them all in my mouth. I’d have licked the cutting board if needed. I’d be happy to use it the same way as parmesan, subject to it not being as hard as parmesan.

Now I have to figure out what to do with it before it goes bad. All cheese is good, but some are better than others of course. I’ve had some “good” ones, some I liked and some not so much. I never research before writing up my opinions but now that I have my opinion written: “Get Some”, I can look at the their website. “World Class” in the 2006 World Cheese Awards in London. That seems big to me but maybe the French have other opinions. That would be too much research for me.

The Coug’s need the cash (BSU is gunning for them in athletics) and it’s seriously good cheese. Hell the price is even reasonable once you can find it on the website. $18 for 30oz plus $5 for standard shipping. Call it $12/lb to your doorstep. I don’t want to think about the cost of two pounds of parm. Yes, they’re different. Unless you age that tin a few years more, perhaps?. Too late for me know, I opened mine. I surrender.

– Sunday
As usual, I made a lot of food. If you’re going to fire up the smoker, it’s what you do. I will have enough left overs and freezer-fixens for a long time. This meal would feed 6, easily. I made a batch of potato salad, tried some homemade mac and cheese from a mash up of recipes so that makes it mine. And somewhere in there I’ve mixed a batch of sourdough bread resting for baking tomorrow. One rack of smoked spare ribs and one “fatty”.

A “fatty” is a roll of pork breakfast sausage that gets smoked alongside the main protein for 3 or 4 hours (at low and slow temps). I’d never done that. I can say now, “that’s some good eats.”. Any brand will do, I’m told and I believe it. I can hardly wait for breakfast or a late night snack. Putting it into the fridge for another day was the biggest challenge I’ve faced in quite a while.

The smoker was the least of the adventures. It got into the 250F area fairly quickly and stayed there practically forever with little need to play with vents. The ribs were done a little early so I wrapped them in foil and left them on the counter for 45 minutes. They had just the right finger licking temperature after that nap.Very tasty. Firm bark, fall apart in your mouth tender. Nothing wrong with the ribs, nor the rub (I have a fair amount of rub left over to use for “BAM”’s.)

The potato salad was wonderful. Just kind of a pain to cut all that up in the middle of the day. Which is why I don’t make it very often. But, I can control the mayo content and I prefer it light., well in the background.

The mac and cheese I’m not sure about. Oh, I had two servings so I’ll with hold final judgement until I eat some more. I used 1/2 buttermilk and 1/2 whole milk for the sauce. That may be the source of just slight “different” flavor - not bad, just different. It might have been the roux getting a bit scorched or too must mustard powder but actually I suspect It was the cheese or the buttermilk. Ill write about the cheese next (above post).

[Update 4/30/07]
I used the the left over ribs as a source of pulled pork, some KC Masterpiece and some homemade bread - a very fine sandwich. The mac and cheese, still just slightly off.

[Update 5/1/07]
Smoked a turkey breast. See up top. The Mac and Cheese really shined. Tonight it was excellent and thats after have reheating and fridge-ing twice. So the off flavor was more the mouthful of rub and pork reacting with the white sauce or the cheese or the butter milk. That’s a fine lesson to learn. It seemed like an odd pairing or ribs/pulled pork to me, now I know why.

– Saturday
I picked up some spareribs and a turkey breast, the later frozen). Both are “enhanced”, no doubt. i thought about doing the Turkey tomorrow so I put in a the big sink with cold water to defrost. Then, a few hours later I changed my mind. I’d rather do the ribs tomorrow and the turkey on Monday or Tuesday.

I prepped the ribs: I removed the membrane, sort of. I didn’t bother with doing the St. Louis or Kansas City thing butchery and trimming. Presentation isn’t that big a deal with me and it wasn’t that big a chine bone (just 6 lbs of of spares). I mixed up way too much rub for the this rack of spares so I adjusted it to be usable on the turkey in a day or two. I hope.

1/4 C Kosher salt (Mortons)
1/8 C Paprika (the base recipe says 1/4 C but mines a bit strong)
3 Tbl chili powder
2 Tbl Black pepper, supermarket brand
1 Tbl ground cumin (that’s a fair amount)
1 Tbl garlic powder
1 Tbl onion powder
1 Tsp cayenne (might be a bit hot)

Thats more rub than one rack of untrimmed spares can take on. Enough to do the Turkey breast too and maybe more. If it’s going on poultry I need to tone down the paprika and chile powder. I added
2 Tbl of Turbinado Sugar - Yeah it’s lot. Use 1 Tbl of brown sugar instead.. That’s a fair amuunt. Just enough to take the bite off all those others. Well, that’s my plan and the die is cast.

I’m a skeptic, so when foodies go blog wild, I’m just skeptical. Read the post and the comments and click though to the various links they provide. Web surfing the old way! I’m not a foodie to the degree they are. They may be correct about this or that or not and I might care or not. I buy from the cheapest mega mart and I’m fine with my dispassionate status. I’m not saying organic or free range is better or worse. Price per pound, I have my opinion of better and you can have yours.

I know you won’t click all those links. I didn’t click them all either. When the conspiracy mindset becomes dominant, the topic is off limits for rational discussion. Here’s my summary. The USDA wants to track all meat from the supermarket back to the source - to the farms and what they were fed and the veterinary practices and so on. The have a new scheme I gather called NAIS which as described would be difficult for small producers to comply with. The degree of difficulty depends on the details and emotion is running too high to dig into those pesky details.

I used to work for the agra-biz, and they implemented a computer system 15 years ago to track their feed lot cattle. Whether those systems work, I can’t say, but it was big deal for them and those who did the worl. A small division of the company but boy did they care about tracking. That’s well before NAFTA and the supremacy of Trial Lawyers as deities in our food chain. Their tracking system had to serve many goals. The big ones:

1. They wanted to know what practices and feed would be best (for them of course - but profit is multi-dimensional)
2. They wanted to be able to recall before something got out of hand. (and fix the problem - there’s no profit in recalling all product. Ask the pet food companies. Actually, you should think about how well that recall worked.

Big business was way ahead of the USDA on this. That should surprise no one. Now we get to the conspiracy, like profit or happiness, conspiracy is multi-dimensional and some folks live in dimensions others don’t. Under attack the emotional catch phrases erupt “destroying the family farm”. Just as the big military-industruial complex was directed by the Illuminati back in 1966 or 1666 or 1466 or way back to 666 A.D.

From what I’ve read, NAIS is a bad bit of rule writing, IF EVER IMPLEMENTED. It could be worse, the DIA could have written it for Cheney’s amusement. That would be worse. If you need a vast conspiracy of evil doers to get your heart thumping and emotions racing, the “death of the family farm” is one bugle call. Just ask first if small scale farming was ever monetarily profitable in the last few hundred years. Ever. And if so, how? If so, how? If the answer is all about foodie virtues of quality at any price (take a hint, raise prices) or old Americana nostalgia, or vast conspiracies to do something vastly evil, you might want to find a successful farmer for some perspective. Just flag down his banker in the next Toyota you see and ask.

Did that old romantic world ever exist? If so, how? Why? Should it exist forever? Before you flame, remember that the Taliban want that old world back too. Those good old days are really good. Bring them back.

I’ve moved the Cooking Cheap site to this new host. Please up date your bookmarks or RSS subscriptions. It should be a better experience for us all. The new address is http://cooking.mvmanila.com/ If you’re reading this, you’re there.

For the terminally curious, it’s a real domain name and web hosting account and no longer at the end of a slow cable modem. I set up the MvManila.com domain to support a little business venture and I can (and should host my blogs there, to prove I can to do that business)

Oddly enough, I haven’t posted my recipe for meat balls or the base for a meat loaf. The secret is the bread and milk, the pork or sausage, and a wet mix. I also believe that beating the egg helps a lot. DO NOT USE store bought dried bread crumbs or dried herbs or garlic powder. It’s not really my recipe, it’s the way it was done before Betty Crocker said to use bread crumbs. I was taught to make a lot bad meatballs using bread crumbs.

For meat loaf you’d add some other veggies and maybe another egg, some catsup perhaps, maybe another glove of garlic.

Meatballs & Meatloaf Base

1 pound ground beef
1/2 pound ground pork or breakfast sausage
1 egg, beaten.
2 slices of bread soaked in milk, stale is preferred.
1 small onion, finely chopped, minced is better.
1 glove garlic, minced.
1 Tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
Salt and pepper
Milk if needed.
Other herbs as you see fit - finely chopped parsely for example.

In a large bowl, beat the egg. Add everything else and mix VERY thoroughly, add milk if needed to maintain a very tacky mixture. Roll the mixture into balls. It sticks to your hands. I usually get 20 to 24 of them. Brown the meatballs in batches but don’t try to cook them all the way through. They’ll finish cooking in the sauce.

At this point, I put half the meat balls in the freezer or fridge for another use.

Mushroom Soup Gravy:

Using the skillet you browned the meat balls in, if you have any fresh mushrooms you need to use up, sliced them and brown them in the fat for a few minutes.

Pour off any fat you don’t want but leave a tablespoon. Set the skillet on medium low. Add 1 can of cream of mushroom soup and break it up, it’ll sizzle and change color. Add a can’s worth of whole milk, mix it well and return 10 to 12 meat balls to the skillet. Reduce heat to a very low simmer, DO NOT let it boil over! Add any seasonings you like - black pepper for certain, any remaining chopped parsley is good. Simmer for 30 minutes or for as many hours as you like, adding milk as needed.

Yes, it is high in butter fat; that’s why it tastes good. 2% milk doesn’t work nearly as well, water adds nothing. Any left over half and half or whipping cream that will expire soon is good too. One could also use a slow cooker or crock pot if you wanted serve the whole pound and half of meatballs (Double up on the soup and milk of course) and of course if you have the patience for real small meatballs, you have a party appetizer in the crock pot.

For the other half of the meatballs, I simmer them (partially defrosted) in one can of Hunt’s Four Cheese Marinara ($1 a can is the right price). Yeah you could pay more, but try the Hunt’s first before gilding the lily. Campbell’s Cream Of Mushroom soup is better than the store brands, but I can’t tell the difference when it’s been cooked for an hour or two in a lot of whole milk.

I’m going to try and make another sourdough starter, just to see what happens and if can get a different culture going - faster acting or more sour or even different from what I grew a while back (That one is called “Number Three” and I’m happy with it).

Number 4, (assuming it lives) neads to be different. Instead of starting with Rye flour (everyone does that and so did #3), I’m using wheat berries. I bought a 1/2 cup or so from the Fred Meyer’s (a mega mart) bulk bin. Hard red winter wheat. My cost $0.19. I ground them down in the mini food processor to a course flour because nothing goes in my coffee grinder but coffee. I should have enough “flour” for three or four feedings. The big thing now days is pineapple juice for the the first few feedings. I’m not buying pineapple juice just for this. I have some apple cider in the fridge. It’ll have to do.

There is an explanation for the juice which which makes sense. The juice creates an acidic environment which favors the growth of the bacteria over the yeast in the early stages and then in later feedings stages, the juice is replaced with water and the yeast in the flour can develop better and eventually they all live together happily ever after. It could be true. I know rye and water work so this is different. A dud is always possible.

Day 1 - 1/13/07 8:00PM.
1 Tablespoon of each. It’s more a slurry than a batter or paste because I didn’t grind the berries all that well. Shouldn’t matter all that much. Left to stand, covered on the counter which is roughly 72F or a bit lower.

Day 2 - 1/14/07 9:00PM
Added 1 Tablespoon each of the germ (flour) and apple cider

Day 3 - 1/15/07 9:00PM
Added 1 Tablespoon each of the germ (flour) and apple cider. In theory, I’m supposed to remove half the goo first. Smells like there might something good in there but that could be wishful thinking.

Day 4 - 1/16/07 P:30PM
Most definitely there is life in the little jar. It’s doubled in size since the last feeding. Nowhere near the growth you would expect from a mature starter but that’s to be expected because there’s a large amount of wheat berry nuggets and not so much “flour”. I removed half the goo and added 1 Tbl of the berry flour and 1 Tbl of the apple cider. It smells “brighter” than what rye does after three days. I’ll continue feeding it the rest of the germ flour and cider before I switch over to unbleached bread flour and water.

Way too soon to say if this will be any different than my first starter. I have no expectations. It’s only an experiment and I’m in no hurry.

Day 5 - 1/17/07
I changed my mind. Someyhing is living in the jar but I’t not breaking down the wheat berry bit. On second look, it’s eating a lot. I switched to flour and water after throwing away half if the wheat berry goo.

Day 6 - 1/18/07

Early AM. What ever is in there is having a feast on the flour and water. Doubled in size in a few hours.