Syzygies

Re: berkshire vs. commercial butts Well, Niman Ranch prefers hybrids to Berkshire, because they like their pigs to live outside in frightfully cold conditions, and the purebreds just can't take it. I've never understood peoples' fascination with purebred dogs either (hip displeasure, anyone?), I like mutts. Their pigs are rather fatty, this time of year.

Re: Foil pork butt? Well, let's just stipulate that restaurant pork butt is uniformly dreadful and overcooked. I've been to famous places in the south, and I'm holding my ground. One could do better starting from rope and bouillon cubes. That said, you need to discover what's done for you, without prejudice. What you've had before doesn't matter. In my opinion pork butt needs to be cooked a bit less, but doesn't need to be foiled.

Re: I was robbed again.. ;-( Dennis, I'm sorry to hear this. No one wants to get to the confrontation stage. Like any sport, every team wins some of the time. I don't like the odds here. I keep wondering if the wall lasers come variable power. I mused once about trying to electrocute the squirrels taking over my garage, and my normally pacifist brother-in-law said two words: Think 220. Given the desire for no witnesses, I wonder if the most effective deterrent would be a video feed into the cloud, if such a service is available to you. If so, I'd be tempted to post a monitor at the gate, to highlight the existence of the service. Our alarm service phones us during mishaps (sensor falls from door) but it would be more effective to have a speaker system. A broadcast into the house "we have the suspects on video; ask them to leave" might avoid further confrontation. I'd also be thinking a safe room, and a communications channel no one can tamper with, including perhaps a default response if your service can't reach you. Like computer security or backup, one needs a mix of strategies. Any one approach can be easily defeated, but one can't defeat a approach unless one knows it's there.

Re: Pizza Stone - direct or indirect? Also, plain crusts take heat better than crusts with any additives. Flour, salt, yeast, water. No oil, no milk, of course no sugar.

Deckle the Halls! Well, if one is playing with cooking the point and flat separately, there's always the option of foiling the flat for a while, but not foiling the point. Many people said this brisket was the best they'd ever had. My dear, direct German host blurted out "I'm sorry Dave, this is better than last year." His wife (who was cooking madly for her birthday, and was the one to request it) was very pleased. I loved the point; the flat was a bit lean for me, as always. Option two would be to revisit a bit of dry aging. Too much and one is serving meat pudding, but in moderation? Option three: My butcher actually has more trouble selling the points than the flats. Some people never buy whole chickens, they just buy legs. Maybe I should just buy points!

Re: High temp fast brisket

Eight hours Well, a sample after four hours (160 F) was chewy, but a sample after eight hours (175 F) was great. I wish I could serve now! I dialed back the Guru to 200 F or so to hold till the party. This, by the way, isn't what everyone means by "fast" brisket (see High temp fast brisket). We've never been happy foiling before the transportation stage; the texture becomes too much like a braised pot roast for our tastes. If I wanted to poach one side of my brisket, I'd leave the fat cap on. If I wanted to poach both sides, I'd foil. It does depend very much on the cut of meat.

The Space-Time Continuum Well, a classic barbecue technique is all wood and two fires, one to condition the wood. I love how you've adapted this to the KK, putting your two fires in sequence rather than next to each other. I'm almost entirely there on your analysis. The one part that baffles me is how to best allow for the conversion of collagen to gelatin, which takes time. This is why I've assumed that the fast brisket advocates were working with collagen-deficient cuts where time only hurts. (That, and the teasing I'd get before I learned to blur out prices on my briskets.) In any case, the foiled trip in a cooler to the party contributes in large part to a juicy presentation on arrival. We'll see.

Re: Everyday Misc Cooking Photos w/ details A 17.5 lb prime brisket from Golden Gate Meat Company. As a bonus, Boccalone ("Tasty Salted Pig Parts") is in the same building; they also do mail order. I'd been thinking the fat cap is yet one more cooking myth, like "seared meat is juicier" debunked decades ago by Harold McGee. The fat cap just gets in the way of the smoke and the rub; if I wanted one side of my brisket poached I'd cook it sous vide. And this brisket had plenty of marbling, through and through. So I'm cooking this one more like ribs. When I was done trimming the fat cap, I was down to 11 lbs, and two pieces. The point is bigger than some flats I've seen. So I'm going for a 12 hour cook, with the point on the upper deck. Four sides of rub and smoke, where I used to have only one side of rub and smoke. Dennis weighed in recently on quicker cooks; it's time to get over my prejudice that quick cooks are only for cheap meat.

Re: First cook on KK - RIBS - Need advice Well, here are my unreconstructed, subjective opinions: Foiling: We tried this both ways, a number of times, and settled on "never foil anything". The texture is better, not foiled. Ribs need six or seven hours to cook tender without foil, and to render enough fat (a function of the season, winter pigs are fatter). Sauce: I'm a "from scratch" cook in all other arenas. We grind our own flour, we skin, partly dry and freeze our tomato crop each year. When I cook Thai I have to look for a can opener for the coconut milk, wondering each time if I own one. So the idea of constructing a barbecue sauce by opening various jars has always struck me as bizarre. We like salt, pepper, and sometimes chiles as a rub, nothing more. Jam is to disguise cheap meat, but anyone who can afford a KK can afford better meat. Whenever I've tasted through these complex sauces to the meat (e.g. at a cook off) I've tasted cheap meat. Smoke: Meat absorbs smoke only up to some cutoff temperature. One can enhance smoke absorption and the telltale red smoke ring by starting with really cold meat, and a cold cooker. I always generate smoke using a smoke pot: A two quart cast iron dutch oven, with several 1/8" holes drilled into the bottom, filled with apple and/or hickory chips, with the lid sealed on with flour/water paste to prevent any possible convection through the pot. Set this pot on the charcoal, and light the fire directly under the pot using a weed burner and Mapp gas. The smoke pot limits the combustion byproducts such as creosote, which taste really nasty, allowing the use of more wood than anyone could use loose on the fire. This is a distillation process in effect, allowing you to cook with armagnac rather than moonshine. The smoke is distinct, but one more spice that harmonizes with the food rather than taking over.

Re: Heresy?

Re: KOSHER SALT VS. SEA SALT

Re: Jack Daniels Maple Syrup Brined Turkey Cook - Video For most applications I'd agree with Michael, and we generally use a plain light brine (1/2 cup sea salt, 1/4 to 1/3 cup sugar per gallon water) for part of a day before cooking. Chicken at 500 F direct (charcoal nearly spent but KK hot) is great this way. For pork loin we generally use some combination of the "Oliveto House-Cured Ham" recipes (Cooking by Hand, Paul Bertolli) where one heats a mixture to 160 F then chills before brining several days. In this case I compute a target salinity of 2.5% (a rather light ham) based on a water content of the meat itself of 70% (a guess, but better than using 0% by ignoring the effect). For example, using an 11.76 lb bone-in loin in 9 liters of brine water, for a target salinity of 2.5% I compute [tab=30:2ng56q3x]0.025 * (9000 + 0.7*454*11.76) = 318 g salt If one is very consistent about the ratio of water to meat in brines, one can ignore this effect and simply learn a different target salinity as one's preference. For example, I could have used 3.5% salt to brine water above, ignoring the meat. However, the next time I used a bigger piece of meat in the same brining container, it would taste too bland if I didn't increase the salt by guessing. The calculation avoids the guessing. I've always been able to taste the presence of added flavorings: some combination of allspice, peppercorns, cloves, juniper berries, onions, carrots, celery, parsley, thyme, bay. For a controlled study with Michael I'd be tempted to leave out the veggies, but it would be hard to miss the cloves or juniper berries. We do use a smoke pot: A two quart cast iron dutch oven with three 1/8" holes drilled in bottom, lid sealed on with flour water paste, filled with apple chips or chunks, and nestled in the fire. This would be way too much wood any other way, but one experiences a distillation effect of only part of the wood smoke, leaving out the harsher elements, and the smoke harmonizes with other flavors as just one more ingredient, rather than dominating. It may be the case that with other methods of smoke generation, the effect of brine flavorings is easier to lose. Our taste buds are more different from each other than we realize. I know this cooking with my wife, we each pick up different flavors more clearly. I think conventional smoke tastes like the food got caught in a house fire, but other people love that effect. And I have wine-tasting friends who can identify tastes hours later far more clearly than I can.

Re: Crispy Skin Nice idea, it reminds me of letting salmon develop a "pelicure" in the fridge after brining. I've tried the hairdryer approach with mixed success (it helps e.g. deep-fried Thai duck), I'll have to try this. We prefer our chicken at 500 F for half an hour, direct main grill over well-developed coals, after a light brine.

Re: Please click on the Social Media icons on this page No!! Go to the MAIN forum page, or anywhere BUT here. If you share this page, you share this message!

Re: Thermocouple fails hot; which controllers fail cool? Well, the butt was good enough that everyone is encouraging me to simulate the equipment failure in the future!

So I have an old BBQ Guru Pitminder - the one that puts an oven dial on your KK, no frills. I gave away a fancier unit to a friend, the Pitminder is exactly what I want. They don't make this unit anymore, the closest match now is their flying blind NanoQ, which requires keeping track of button pushes or using an external thermometer for monitoring temps. (The KK dome thermometer is nice, but it isn't by the meat, and convergence takes a while.) Alas. Anyhow, I've experienced a number of probe failures over the years, most recently putting on a pork butt last night. (Luckily it wasn't my six butt cook last month.) I didn't notice till the KK was in the 300's, fine except I'm serving early this evening. I had a replacement probe and that did the trick. I cranked the KK way down overnight, shades of one of my favorite cooking descriptions in Legends of Texas Barbecue, where the restaurant chef let the brisket fire go out each night, to rebuild in the morning. So the Pitminder fails hot with a broken probe, blowing constantly. One can imagine trivially implementing any number of other scenarios, in digital logic here. The easiest would be to fail cold. More ambitious would be to both sound an alarm, and cycle at whatever proportions worked last time for that temperature request. The chef might not be entirely consistent on top hat position, fire construction, or outdoor temperature, but any decent guess here would be far better than the alternatives. So does anyone have experience here with how other units handle probe failure?

Stone Soup Well that was fun! I highly recommend showing Komodos by inviting said party to bring by some meat for a hands-on test drive. Burgers and rib eye, yum...!!

Re: Hoping to see Komodo in SF Bay Area before purchasing I'm in Concord, about 20 minutes north of you...

Re: Thoughts/pros/cons of adding Tapatalk support? LOL r u sure? phones spillcheck?

Re: More Sear basket fun I took a screen grab of the "you do not have the required permissions..." message replacing each image for me in this thread. Alas, I can't even see the screen grab after posting it, I get the same error message!

Re: Pork Butt capacity n67298 So just filling the charcoal basket with Dennis charcoal would probably last me 48 hours at 210 F, there's always half left when I'm done with pork butt. On top is a two quart dutch oven sealed with flour paste, with three 1/8" holes in the bottom, filled with Hickory and Apple wood chips. Aka "Smoke Pot". None too much smoke, actually rather subtle. Then a 16" terra cotta plant saucer as heat deflector and drip tray, lined with foil.

Re: Pork Butt capacity n67297 n67296 n67295 n67294 n67293 n67292 So slowing down the fire a bit till morning did the trick. An hour to go, and everybody is in the 180's, top or bottom deck. I don't like pork all the way to 200 F, it tastes like rope to me, though when other people cook more quickly I'm sure the effect is different.

Re: Pork Butt capacity Well, I've always cooked very slowly (say, 210 F) for 20 hours or so. I went with six butts 9 lbs each or so for a total of 55 lbs, three on each deck. What I'm seeing on my early morning spot check is that the top three are ahead of the bottom three, nearly ready to serve with seven hours to go. I turned the guru down to 195 F and I'm basically going to ignore this otherwise, mixing the various butts as I pull them. I'm a bit surprised, as in my experience the KK always stabilizes to a very consistent temperature independent of location. I did choose the smaller three butts for the top deck, that could be the main factor here. Other than that, because of shrinkage it would seem from this experience that any load where you can manage to close the lid at first will cook just fine. Large loads don't cook slower. Especially with how tight the KK it, large loads will create a very moist cooking environment, consistent with your reports on how big cooks came out. The pot beans have taken more attention. My 22 quart commercial gumbo pot is nearly full, with Rancho Gordo Sangre de Toro beans. Also simmering overnight, with no signs of overcooking.

Re: Hot Smoked Swordfish plus one