Syzygies

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

Re: Cooked 8 Pork Butts/Shoulders for my Brother... Thanks for finding this thread, as eight butts are in my immediate future.

Re: Pork Butt capacity Thanks all. You will be with me in spirit. There will be perhaps 80, but an astonishing fraction of them are vegan (friggin' mathematicians like to follow their own drummer) so my Jiarby-scale gumbo pot may be in service for Rancho Gordo beans.

For Labor Day, I'm being asked how many pounds of Pork Butt I can comfortably produce at once. Not the theoretical limit, but a large load whose quality would be indistinguishable from just two or four butts. Any experience to share? Also, half a pound per person often handles large mixed crowds. For a younger, hungry outdoor crowd where alcohol could be a factor, what is a more conservative rule of thumb? Cost is not a concern, and we can distribute leftovers. I've seen six or eight people destroy a Pork Butt under the right circumstances in my back yard, but I've never seen this ravenous frenzy take hold in very large groups. But one can dream, and I'd like to be prepared.

Re: She's in Cali Roll it to the side of the house and start using it now! You'll kick yourself if you wait...

Re: Temperature for Grilling Salmon I like 250 slow, after a light brine (1/2 cup salt, 1/3 cup sugar per gallon water) for four to six hours. On a bed of basil in a Spanish cazuela, with apple smoke. Cook until melting, don't dry it out like everyone serves it to you, this will be rather close to 130 F internal for comfort. The salmon will then "spall" white goop. This really doesn't bother us. Those who are bothered (or are going for a pro look for appearance's sake) will give the salmon a couple of hours fridge time air-drying, to cure a hard surface that won't spall. Either way, I was just eyeing the dregs of our pesto basil, thinking it was time to have this dish again!

Re: Grates running from 12 to 6 oclock? Grate running from 12 to 6 o'clock? That would be for ribs, maybe. For butt we usually run from 9 pm to 6 pm the next night...

Re: Anyone up for a "share" in North Dallas? Yep, just what I would have suggested, a pallet is a good size.

Re: The "Stall" +1. I took my step-daughter to Build-A-Bear once during the holidays, and at checkout a sales assistant came over to up-sell us, boldly proclaiming that our bear wasn't wearing any underwear. The child was fine with "It's a bear!" and I was fine not offering any of my potential replies in the child's presence. Name something, and people think it's a bad thing. I always imagined that the dwell was actually a good thing, holding the temperature down while the collagens and such melted down. And we don't like the mushy effect of using foil...

Re: Konro grill

Re: Konro grill There's a brilliant version of these in Flushing, Queens, NYC, used for Chinese street food. It looks like a giant metal "L" laying on its back. One adds raw charcoal to the top of the vertical column at one end, and sweeps perfect embers out the bottom, to distribute all along the trough over which one cooks. Like the Konro, the trough gap is tuned for skewers. Best grilled street food I've had outside Thailand....

Re: help me decide! I was sure where you were going with this: Black cars get hot! So do dark KKs. Not really a problem, but they're already absurdly fuel efficient, this is just gravy.

Re: you've seen a lamb shank, now look at my beef shank!

Re: Brined and Spatchcocked Chicken VIDEO I was surprised to see the brine just cover the chickens. I nearly fill the bucket with the chickens in, then take out the chickens to see the volume of water, and mix the brine. This way, the water in the birds is inconsequential compared to the brine water, and I can just mix the brine the same way each time, without worrying about the dilution effect from the water in the birds. (If our tap is running warm, I take out more water after noting the volume, and add back in ice after mixing the brine. Add ice till the water level returns to the reference volume; this water level won't move as the ice melts. Or use kilos = liters.) In Paul Bertolli's "Cooking by Hand" he would have us estimate the water in the meat, add it to the brine water, and compute how much salt to add using this total. Essential for more monumental pieces of meat, where having the brine water dominate the meat water isn't an option. You're either making this computation, or intuitively compensating each time. One is more consistent, either actually making the computation or using lots of water. I'm reminded of a recent story about the baseball player Barry Bonds. Steroids aside, a dominant home run hitter in his prime. He was coaching a hitter whose head moved a foot while batting. The hitter got the movement down to six inches. No, no, no! Barry asked him to watch Barry's eyes through a slit, while Barry took a bat. Bonds' eyes didn't move at all. He was great at seeing pitches. I can see how not moving one's head reduces cognitive load here. I like the salinity after brining to be exactly what I was aiming for, not merely close enough. Even if one makes the computation, more water in the bucket means less variation in salinity on the way to equilibrium. This in turn makes timing less of an issue.

Re: Everyday Misc Cooking Photos -Standby Fridge Meat..

(Adapted from The Great Curries of India) So 12 lbs of house-cured bone-in pork loin for the neighbors produced a bounty of leftover (very) light ham. What to do? Make up freezer pouches of pork vindaloo: Clean up and cube 3 lbs of leftover pork loin. Dice 3 onions and saute in 3/4 cup olive oil. Make a blender sauce from 2 tsp cumin, 12 cloves, 2 sticks cinnamon, 20 peppercorns, one star anise, 2 tsp poppy seeds (all ground dry), knob peeled ginger, 12 garlic cloves, 2 TB tamarind pulp, 3 TB cider vinegar, 12-15 seeded Guajillo or similar chiles soaked to soften, with their water. Add more water as needed to make the blender go. (A Vita-Prep will have an easy time here, as would the Indian Sumeet processor.) Combine with onions, simmer and reduce as needed. Add salt (1 tsp or to taste) and a TB or so of palm (or any) sugar, to offset any bitterness from chiles or onions. Add curry leaves if available. Once the sauce has come together, add the pork cubes and very gently simmer. We froze in boilable vacuum chamber bags (our favorite and least expensive bags) for pairs of servings for lunches. Our Foodsaver alternative these days is no vacuum, one just needs a sealer with these bags, if a bit of air bubble is acceptable.

Re: you've seen a lamb shank, now look at my beef shank! I didn't say anything, not wanting to jinx your cook, but I've bought beef shank for stew. Specifically, for Robert Delf's Sichuan braised beef noodles, if anyone remembers that book. His Dan Dan noodles rock, using the leftover broth. I combine the two recipes. Even with a many hour wet braise, there simply isn't enough articulation of the flesh, enough dissolvable non-protein interwoven with the flesh, to make the kind of braise one dreams of. Barbecuing adds wonderful elements that a wet braise misses, but I've never seen barbecue perform miracles that were impossible using braise techniques. The Dan Dan noodles were in fact quite tasty, but using this cut is a missed opportunity, unless you're either poor and someone gave you the meat, or you broke down the side of beef and believe in using everything. Not to be harsh, just saying... I have long dreamed of roasting a beef clod, the 20+ lb answer to the question "you think that's a shoulder? How small was that animal, whatever it was?" Yet I never do, tomorrow will be lamb shoulder.

Every day cooking pictures n67213 n67214 Oh wait! Do I have the right thread?

Re: My KK has arrived!! Great account! You're bringing back all of our "first day" smiles.

Re: Lighting Looftlighter Thanks! I'm intrigued. I can see having both a Looftlighter and a Mapp torch. For low and slow I always use a smoke pot. Part of setup is nestling the smoke pot over the middle of the charcoal, and getting a small fire to start first right under the smoke pot. Nothing beats a Mapp torch for this specific task, which heats up the smoke pot as an incidental benefit. I can imagine what I'd do if the Looftlighter was my only option, but it would be more awkward. Two quart cast iron dutch oven, 3 1/8" holes in bottom, filled with chunks and/or chips of smoking wood, lid sealed on with flour paste. This is far more wood than one ever uses, going jungle, and the effect is simply different. We cannot conceive of going back.

Re: Lighting Looftlighter

Direct bird over remains of the fire I go direct, after a four hour brine in 1/2 cup sea salt, 1/3 cup sugar per gallon water. I wait till the fire has died down but the KK is still 500 F. The only part of "spatchcock" that has survived for me is cutting out the backbone. One day I forgot why I spatchcocked, and I haven't since. I quarter the bird. Less drama, carving later, but so what? This leaves the option of taking off the breasts sooner, but I've never needed different cooking times if I size the bird right. I like how quartering creates more roasting surface area. Where the spatchcock form comes into its own is indoors in a shallow pan, again at 500 F, salt, pepper and oil the bird over a bed of rosemary, lemon peel and garlic cloves. Pour in wine as one cooks and make a sauce later from the pan drippings and the garlic. The point here is the bones face down, taking the heat. This also favors the direct fire approach in a KK.

Re: morel site When I click on that link, all sorts of crap opens in addition to the intended Morel site. If he's using free web hosting, without regard to all the "worms" that lets in, how do I know his actual morels aren't also riddled with worms? (They do look beautiful, but would I give a credit card to such an infested web server? Not likely.)

Does Greek Easter count? n67186 A pair of butts for a friend's party. (I ordered a shoulder, but the butcher got the week wrong. My friend had arranged a caterer, but an emergency caused the caterer to cancel. So I got the call.)