(Yeah, yeah, I know. Big surprise, huh?)
This past weekend was most excellent. Very low stress, and I got to try some new and cool things.
We started out on Friday evening by meeting partran for dinner at Osteria di Tramonto in Wheeling (I note that there are plans to open another Osteria di Tramonto in Rosemont at the new Le Meridien hotel there). The meal was excellent, as always. We took the opportunity to sit at the counter into the kitchen and were rewarded with some entertaining banter with the chefs, as well as a complimentary plate of steamed mussels! I’m normally not much of a fan of mussels, but these were just delicious. I had the veal saltimbocca, while Dan had a seared (monstrous) pork chop. The meal was great, as was the company. We had a great time. Good luck, Partran, as you head out west in a few weeks!
On Saturday I was up and about early for my project of the weekend: smoked pork butt (or pork shoulder – same thing). It was a very educational project, and I learned a lot about smoking. I went to Home Depot bright and early and picked up a small bag of charcoal (Kingsford Briquettes – none of that match-lighting stuff!), a chimney charcoal starter and a five-pound bag of hickory wood chunks. Once I got home, I made up a dry rub for the pork (a mixture of a couple different dried chiles, onion and garlic powders, Turbinado sugar, thyme, marjoram, bay leaf, allspice, ginger, cumin, cinnamon, and pepper), applied it, then went down to fire things up. The smoker worked reasonably well, but I learned something: the higher-end smokers (i.e. $150.00 or so) are a lot more adjustable, with vents on the top and bottom to help control the temperature. Ours is…not a high-end smoker. Alas, it has no vents. This meant that instead of maintaining the ideal smoking temperature of 225-250 degrees F for 10-12 hours as I was hoping, instead it ran closer to 275-325 F for about 7 hours before I ran out of charcoal and the fire died. I improvised by wrapping the pork butt up in foil and put it in the oven for another three hours at 275 F until it came to 180 F internal temperature. Perfect! We let it cool a bit and then pulled all the meat off, shredding it, and throwing away the bones and fat and chewy bits.
How was it? Oh. My. Goodness. It was utterly delicious. Unfortunately, I also learned that a 6.3-pound pork butt reduces down to three pounds even of pulled meat once you’re done. I think in the future, I’ll probably go for things which take less smoking time, like poultry or smaller cuts of beef or pork. The temperature thing may be sorted out by more carefully metering in the charcoal, but overall the experiment was a success. I need to remember: “Don’t let the great be the enemy of the good.” Just because you can’t get everything exactly perfect, doesn’t mean that you can’t get a damn fine result out of what you’ve got.
On Sunday I made up a batch of Miss Piggy Barbecue Sauce and the finished sauce was just wonderful – sweet, spicy, mustardy. Yum! To compliment the BBQ, I decided to make Alton Brown’s Asian Slaw. Once dinner time arrived, roho and genet brought potato salad to add to the menu, and steviemaxwell brought his usual charming self (and sodas as well 🙂 takaza made Texas toast for the BBQ and I’m pleased to say that we went through half of the Miss Piggy sauce – I think Stevie had a small serving of the Bulls Eye sauce I had on the table, but everyone preferred the yummy mustard sauce. The slaw, unfortunately, was a disappointment. There’s a whole lot of interesting flavors in there, but they don’t come together in a cohesive whole. For the amount of preparation that goes into it, I wasn’t happy with the final product. No one cared, though because, dude: BBQ. So, so good.
The meal was capped off with a yummy yellow cake with chocolate whipped cream frosting that Dan made and decorated festively for the occasion of the finale of The Amazing Race. We watched the show, and most of us were disappointed in the results. But Stevie’s weird anyway, so we’ll discount that. We followed this with some Simpsons and Family Guy as we struggled through our digestive torpor, then saw everyone off for the evening. Hmm – we need a new excuse to get folks over for dinner on a weekly basis 🙂
The meal was fantastic, the company better.
I feel the same, though. 🙂 Yours and Dan’s entrees were definitely more oustanding choices than mine, but I’m not going to complain about roast chicken vesuvio that good. 🙂
That pork chop and the veal were do die for.
That sounds just awesome. I’ve always meant to try to make a pulled beef brisket BBQ, but it seems like so much work I just head to a restaurant if I have to have it. If I had a huge batch to make, though, I’m sure it would be worth it!
We used to go to a BBQ place in North Carolina that made the most amazing smoked brisket – no wet sauce here, just a fiery dry rub that made your mouth sting, but it was oh-so-good. If I could figure out what is in that rub, I would definitely give the brisket a shot, even if it meant babying things along for 12 hours or so.
Consider it blasphemous if you wish, but my well-used Coleman electric smoker really turned that chore into a pleasant task. Literally thousands of pounds of trout, salmon, pike, venison, chicken, turkey and various other things went through that $79 appliance, with results that *rarely* failed to please (no fault of the machine, but a few of my experiments just didn’t turn out like I’d hoped). 🙂
Hey, I’m not one of those BBQ zealots, for all that I lived in North Carolina, where BBQ is a religion. If electric does the job, I’m all for it! The smoker we have is, quite frankly, a huge pain in the butt; I may even investigate an electric unit just to have a back-up.
I really miss having one of those around now, us apartment dwellers don’t have much of an opportunity to use one.
My favorite marinade for smoking fish and chicken was a cup of brown sugar, two cups of pickling salt, 1/4 cup of mashed pearl onions, and a tablespoon or two of mashed garlic in just enough water to submerge 10-20 pounds. For the “greasy” fish like lake trout (but not salmon, that tastes great as-is), add the second tablespoon of garlic and a few teaspoons of Tabasco. Or just add the Tabasco anyway if you like it. 🙂 Cure for 24-48 hours in the refrigerator, keeping all submerged. If you like salty, just pat dry and smoke. If you have to watch salt, rinse in cold water and pat dry before smoking.
One of the surprisingly good things from a smoker is smoked northern pike, and in northern MN that’s a common resource. It’s very easy to turn into pike jerky though (which is good in its own right, but it’s not smoked fish anymore). I, being unable of course to leave anything in a stock configuration, mounted a programmable temperature controller unit on my smoker to allow me to smoke 4 hours at 150 degrees and then slowly raise the temperature to 200 for finishing. It’s hard to mess up chicken, but having that capability makes it much easier to smoke delicate fish like pike.
Sounds delicious! I haven’t tried making BBQ since the move–have to pick up a smoker and try that out.
+1(,000) on the Race results, too. We were pulling for the BQs to take the win. Alas, another unsatisfying win…
OMG – you MUST get thee hence to The Q Shack. It looks like their store across from NCSU on Hillsborough St. closed (I swear, that’s where stores go to die, even more so than Waverly Place in Cary), but they still have some locations in Durham. Their beef brisket is to die for, and their pulled pork is excellent as well. I also recommend Danny’s, though that’s mainly all about the sauce.
Oh, and someone had a good point: All-Star seasons suck, regardless of the show. I’m hoping they get back to some good old-fashioned racing next season.
This is true; I’ve yet to see an All-Star season that really satisfied on any of the shows recently. I was frustrated with this field in particular, since there were some other teams that they completely overlooked (Ken & Gerard? Derek & Drew? Kris & Jon? THE CLOWNS?) that would have made for a much more competitive–and fun to watch–field than what they wound up with. Contrary to Mirna’s opinions, this was not so much the “best of the best,” just the “best of the ratings, as determined by the producers.”
Also? They really need to get rid of the Yield. There’s more than enough inter-team drama on the Race without it, and it never seems to produce the effect on the actual competition that they’re looking for.
OK, rant over. 🙂
I have heard definite recommendations for the Q Shack, so I’ll have to check them out. Danny’s is excellent for pulled pork–great sandwiches. I’m a big fan of Eastern NC barbecue (chopped with vinegar), so I’ve been hitting those places first since we moved back, but I should branch out a bit. Thanks for the recommendations!