#charcutepalooza

[commonground-oc]

riding the charcutepalooza wagon

[davebeingdave]

Smoked turkey fresh from the oven (had to finish it there after 8 hours in the smoker). #charcutepalooza

[davebeingdave]

New Mexican Style Pork Terrine

I'm up against the gun. It's the big day and I've just put my terrine into the refrigerator to set. I'm hoping it will be ready this evening so I can try it before posting this addition to my blog. I put this off as long as possible. Possibly because all of the options sounded... To be frank they all sounded icky to me. I've never eaten a terrine or mousseline. I'm just a small town guy from Arizona. 

Once I decided to go for it, I'd planned to do an intricate terrine of trotters inlaid with my homemade Canadian bacon (back bacon) and sage leaves. Like I said though, I'm a small town guy and besides the green chili from Hatch, NM just started showing up in the stores. I knew what I really wanted to do. I wanted green chili in my terrine, green chili and pine nuts. Forget the sculpture in gelatin, besides it wasn't that clear to begin with. I want porky, nutty, green chili embedded goodness it's what I know. 

So here I sit writing about my hopes that it will set in time to slice off a bit for dinner. In the mean time I can describe what I've done. 

I started off with 2 pounds of trotters readily available at my local grocery. Unfortunately a whole pigs head was out of the question. My closest source for that is some 200 miles away. Besides, I don't even know if I'm going to like this. 

Into the pot I put the pigs feet, a carrot, celery, onion, garlic, along with plenty of sage, thyme, bay leaf, a piece of cinnamon stick, a couple cloves, salt and pepper. I kept feeling I was over doing it with the seasonings, but the book says to be aggressive so I was. I covered it all with water and once it came to a boil, I transferred it to my clay pot to cook slowly all night in the oven. After 10 hours at 200 degrees I did a gel test on a frozen plate. It didn't fully gel so I cooked it an additional two hours at 350 degrees.

After cooking I separated out the liquid into a container. Additionally I separated out the pork bits from the vegtables which I tossed into the garbage. After cooling over night I removed any fat from the gelatin with a spoon and then shot this video of my spoon bouncing on the surface. 

Additionally, I went through the pork bits carefully salvaging the meat, skin, and other tasty bits. Basically I discarded everything that was too hard like bone and too soft like fat. You have to be very thorough since there are some very small bones. 

Additionally I removed any bits of skin with hair like that shown below (this was a bit of a disturbing find that I hadn't expected). 

Next I chopped the bits to make them more uniform. These were placed into a medium plastic wrap lined bread pan along with diced green chili and some toasted pine nuts. To this I added some barely liquefied gelatin to just cover the bits. I folded closed the plastic wrap and set it in the refrigerator. Finally I placed another pan of the same size with two cans of tomato sauce inside of it for weight. 

Well, I'm happy to say that the terrine set in time. The plastic wrap sprang a leak. The gelatin over topped the pan and solidified on the refrigerator shelf around it (thank goodness for glass shelves that clean easily). That said it set with time to spare. 

As I removed the plastic wrap from the terrine, I could smell a wonderful bouquet of pine nuts and green chili. The look of what had been the bottom of the terrine was better than I'd hoped for. The first slice removed my fears that the pine nuts would just rip chunks of the terrine apart as I cut through it. The first taste with its varying of textures between the meaty bits, nuts, and gelatin alleviated all of my misgivings about what the end result would be like. The play of green chili, pine nuts, pork, and the earthy flavors of sage and thyme with a little something extra from the other seasonings all played well together well in my mouth. 

I am as of this moment a convert. Not only do I like it, but I think I'd make it again. As for the Canadian bacon that I'd originally intended, I wish I'd included it. I think the smokiness and color would have only added good things to the end product. 

I think for my next taste, I'd like to make a sandwich with it and some chipotle seasoned mayo. Although I have to say it's pretty darn good just as it is.   

[thehandsomesalami]

Pulled Pork

While I have very much enjoyed participating in the charcuteapalooza challenges this year, I’ve found that the one problem I’m facing throughout all this is that I have an inordinate amount of meat in the house.

I know what you’re thinking: “is that really a problem?” 

Okay, it’s not the worst problem in the world to have.  But everywhere I turn in my little home I seem to have some sort of meat curing, brining or just stuffed in the freezer – either waiting for me to do something with it or as the leftovers from the creations I’ve already made.  It’s gotten so bad that I'm sure the ragazza thinks we live in a butcher shop!

What’s of particular concern is the space in my freezer – specifically, that there is none.  From the top to the bottom there are stacks of pancetta and frozen bacon leftover from the earlier challenges alongside frozen ribs, pork butts and briskets just waiting for the next project.  Every nook and cranny of my freezer is stuffed with some form or pig, cow or lamb and there’s just no room for anything else. 

So after Easter, when I was trying to stuff even more meat into the freezer (the result of leftovers from a big family dinner at the house) I realized that I had to make some room.  And after giving the contents of the freezer a thorough review I realized that there was something I could take out which would easily make a lot more room:  the giant pork shoulder I had been keeping in there for the past month.

Now I remember when I bought the pork shoulder but I don’t remember why.  It could have been to make carnitas for one of our regular “taco nights” or I could’ve bought it to make a porchetta – but at this point I didn’t know and I didn’t care.  What I did know was what I was going to do with it now: I was going to make pulled pork.

I don’t think I’ve ever made pulled pork before and it’s not something I’ve had often in the past (I usually go for the brisket when we’re somewhere having good barbeque).  But with a great recipe from Ruhlman’s book I thought I would give it a shot.  The fact that pulled pork is one of the ragazza’s favorites may also have had something to do with it!   

So since it was a beautiful weekend and I had Sunday with nothing to do, I fired up the smoker and got my pork ready.  I had a lot of leftover rub for when I made the spicy pork loin, so I slathered that all over the pork shoulder making sure to get it in every crack and crevice.  Then I took it outside where, after preparing the smoker with some charcoal and hickory wood chips, I laid it on top, closed the lid and waited. 

Since this pork shoulder was so big I knew it was going to take a long time to cook.  So I grabbed a beer and a good book and sat by the smoker to wait.  Finally after four hours I took it off the smoker and brought it inside.  In the kitchen I placed the pork shoulder into a roasting pan with a little water in the bottom and then sealed it up in aluminum foil and stuck it in the 250 degree oven for a few more hours to finish it off. 

By the time the pulled pork was ready to come out of the oven it was late on Sunday night – but the wait was worth it.  When I took the roasting pan out of the oven and removed the foil I saw a piece of pork that looked simply amazing.  Roasting it in the oven had made the skin dark – but not charred and when we started to slice up the pork I couldn’t help but start tasting a few pieces – and it tasted great!  We used forks to pull it all apart and then I added a generous helping of homemade barbeque sauce.  After smoking it all day and then roasting it in the over I was exhausted – but when I put that pulled pork on a hamburger bun I knew that all the hard work I had done was worth it – it was absolutely delicious!  And if it passed the ragazza’s test for a good pulled pork sandwich then I knew I had done a great job!

[thehandsomesalami]

Smoking a pork shoulder on a lovely Sunday afternoon.

[davebeingdave]

Charcutepalooza March Challenge: Hot Smoking

Charcutepalooza info. 

I really can't remember the first time I hot smoked. I was probably around ten give or take a few years. I used to help my mom smoke chickens or turkeys a couple times a year. I’ll have more on that later. For this challenge I went all out. I used three recipes from Charcuterie by Ruhlman and Polcyn and then a couple of my own.

Smoked Pork

As I’m writing this I’m stunned by the different types of smoked pork I did without doing ribs and Boston butt which are my normal fare. Instead I did two types of bacon, pork loin, and pork sirloin.

For the bacon, I followed recipe for fresh bacon on pg. 41 and then smoked it to 150 degrees. The result was very tasty bacon that was given a pass by all when fried, however everyone agreed that it could have been sweeter. That said, when cut into lardons and served with a white bean soup that I made using a large strip of skin from the bacon for seasoning, everyone thought they were fantastic.

For the white bean soup, soak a pound of white beans in salted water over night. Rinse the beans and put them in a large heavy pan (I use my ceramic bean pot) cover with water, and add a large piece of skin from the belly (I used about a three by 9 inch strip). Simmer in the oven for 4 to 8 hours at about 250 degrees. For the last hour sauté an onion, a carrot, and a stalk of celery in olive oil with salt and pepper to taste and add to the pot. Fry your lardons and use them to garnish. I made French bread to go with this meal.

From a whole pork loin, I cut three nearly equal lengths. The small end and center piece I put into the brine from Canadian bacon pp 88 and 89. Because of problems with the weather I ended up leaving it in the brine for an extra day with no adverse effects (speaking of the brine it smelled so good I wanted to taste it). The large end I rubbed with the spicy dry rub for pork from pp 89 and 90 and wrapped in cellophane for 48 hours. I smoked them all until the thickest portion of the large end was 150 degrees.

The spicy pork was a big hit… so big that my dad seemed to cut himself a slice every time he walked through the kitchen for the next couple days.

The Canadian bacon was also a hit. We enjoyed it several ways, but probably the most satisfying was what I like to call an “Egg MyMuffin” a recreation from a famous fast food chain that used homemade muffins and Canadian bacon with real sharp cheddar cheese and a poached egg.

One of the best dishes I made was Carne Adovada. This is a simple dish in which pork is cut into cubes, marinated in red chili, and then baked and served topped with cheese to be eaten with a warm flour tortilla. It all starts with a simple puree of New Mexico red chili seasoned with garlic and salt to taste. I used a quart to marinate two whole pork sirloin pieces for two days. I rinsed the pork and allowed it to dry on a rack in the refrigerator. Next I smoked the pork with hickory (my preference for this would be pecan but I couldn’t get any at the time) for a couple hours. I cut the smoked pork into cubes and then covered them with the chili puree that I had marinated them in. This I baked covered at 350 until the meat was tender and the chili was bubbling (about an hour).

Before serving I stirred the meat and covered with a layer of cheddar cheese to melt. To eat tear pieces of warmed tortilla’s into pieces large enough to pick up a cube of pork with some cheese and red chili. Serve with beans and a salad.

Smoked Poultry

I’ve had an obsession with smoked poultry for as long as I can remember. Our first smoker (Little Chief electric) was a gift from an old couple that lived across the street from us when I was young. They were a multitalented couple from Oklahoma. He worked for the Santa Fe Railroad and was a musician of local renown (my uncle say’s he could start playing in the middle of nowhere and draw a crowd within an hour). To this day I have fond memories of sitting on the curb staring at the open door to his house through his garage as we listened to him play WWII era classics, ragtime, and contemporary music on both piano and organ.

While time consuming, there is nothing difficult about the process. Additionally it only requires 5 ingredients. You’ll need poultry of your choice (for this post I smoked a turkey and a duck), salt, sugar, hickory, and time (for best results I do it over three days).

Day one, clean any nasty bits left in the cavity of a thawed bird. Also, trim any excess skin and fat from around the openings at both ends of the bird. Rinse and dry the bird. Mix equal parts of salt and sugar together in a bowl. Apply the salt and sugar liberally rubbing it into the entire surface of the bird both inside and out. Wrap the bird in a towel to absorb any liquid drawn out of it. (I love the thin cotton flour sack type towels for this, but any will do so long as you can bleach it when you wash it.) Next, I put the bird in a bag (for turkey I used a garbage bag, the duck fit in a gallon ziplock) and put it in the refrigerator for 24 hours.

Day two, rinse the salt and sugar off of and out of the bird and dry it completely inside and out. You’ll want to leave it uncovered in the refrigerator overnight to allow it to continue to dry. A V shaped roasting rack turned upside down in the pan is a great stand for drying small birds like chickens and duck. Just stand the birds up supporting them on the v shaped grates of the rack and tuck the legs in between. It will work for a turkey too, but they have a tendency to flop over. The main thing is to have as little skin as possible touching anything else. The dryer the skin, the better the smoke will stick to the bird.

Day three, the bird’s skin should now appear dry and somewhat translucent. This is the perfect condition for smoking. At this point I will remove any quills left in the skin (the drying tightens the skin making this much easier at this point). I like to hang my birds to smoke by tying a slipknot around each leg and running the string between them up through the cavity to hang on a hook. This helps hold the cavity open for the smoke and allows you to stagger the birds in the smoker so they don’t touch. You can adjust the height by trying knots in the string. Be sure to leave several inches between the bottom of the bird and the bottom of the smoker. The string tends to stretch a bit and the legs will go akimbo causing the bird to end up lower than where it started.

I like to get a good 4 to 6 hours of smoke on the birds (this can vary depending on the source of the smoke, saw dust takes less time than say chips or chunks of hard wood.) keeping the temperature as low as possible. I usually can keep it between 180 and 225 degrees depending on the weather. If there is any contact between birds be sure to move them around as you add more chips to the smoker. When done the birds should have a nice amber coloration to them.

I like to finish cooking the birds in the oven. For the duck I scored the skin in a crisscross pattern across the breast and down the sides between the legs and wings. This helps the fat melt and drain away from the bird keeping it from being too greasy. My turkey was in the roaster, so I propped the duck up on canning jar rings in a baking dish. It only takes about 30 minutes to an hour at 350 degrees to finish cooking both birds (180 degrees in the thick part of the thigh).  Once cooked you'll see that the color is considerably darker than it was when they came out of the smoker.

I loved to serve smoked poultry cold. Side dishes vary depending on the time of year- anything you might serve with fried chicken or barbecue will go well.

[thehandsomesalami]

Spicy Smoked Pork

More nice weather means more time outdoors with the grill.  And the April Charcuteapalooza challenge was another opportunity to get some more practice using the smoker – and obviously another opportunity to spend a few hours outside drinking a beer or two while I wait for the smoky goodness that comes from using my new toy.

For April’s challenge we were given the option of smoking salmon, a pork loin or a pork shoulder.  Salmon would have been too easy, and a pork shoulder would have been too unwieldy – so pork loin it was.  With the pork loin I could’ve made Canadian bacon or spicy smoked pork, the difference between the two being that the pork loin is coated with a rub before being smoked while the Canadian bacon is brined before being smoked.   Both options sounded delicious, but in the end I chose the spicier option – a good choice, I think, not only because I really like spicy foods, but also because I suspect the ragazza was sick of seeing a giant pot full of briny meat in our fridge. 

Since I was nearing the deadline for completing the April challenge, I didn’t have the time to visit the Italian market to pick up my supplies – which meant I had only one other option for getting a good piece of meat close to home: Whole Foods.

Whole Foods…just saying the name sends a chill up my spine.  Every time I walk through its doors a little part of me dies.  It’s not because of what they sell - I think their meat and fish departments are pretty good (albeit very overpriced) – it’s because of what they don’t sell.  For example, one day I had to stop in on my way home from work because I needed sandwich rolls – just regular, ordinary sandwich rolls.  You would think that it would be easy to find something like that at Whole Foods, but that was not the case.  All I could find was a bunch of fancy, multi-grain, birdseed-topped things that would have been a dishonor to the delicious porchetta sandwiches that I wanted to make that evening.  Why couldn’t I just get regular sandwich rolls!  My blood is boiling just thinking about it!

But I digress.   

So after leaving the local Whole Foods last week I had in my hands a fantastic looking, albeit slightly small, pork loin.  It was only about two and a half pounds – smaller than what the recipe called for, but I wanted something that I knew would fit easily on the smoker and be a little more manageable.

When I got home I stuck the pork loin in the fridge while I prepared the rub.  I mixed up some salt, pepper, brown sugar and other spices and then covered the pork loin in the rub, making sure to coat every inch of it.  I wrapped the loin in plastic wrap, stuck it in the fridge for a few hours and then got to work preparing the smoker.

As usual I filled the smoker box with some charcoal and then some woods chips.  I used hickory wood chips, which I think, in the end, was the right call.  Then I threw the pork loin on the grill and, with a bottle of ice-cold Brooklyn lager in my hand, I waited. 

The pork loin ended up smoking for over two hours, but I had problems getting it up to a final temperature of 140 degrees.  Being appropriately fearful of trichinosis, I ended up sticking it in the oven for about a half hour and that finished it off. 

The results were fantastic!  The exterior looked great, and once I sliced into it I wasn't disappointed - it was nice and juicy, with a great smoke ring along the edge of the loin.  And the taste was magnificent – spicy, but not clear-your-sinuses hot.  Also, I was really happy that I used the used the hickory wood chips – it still gave the meat a great smoky flavor, but not overpowering (an issue I encountered when I made bacon with the mesquite wood chips a few months ago).

Of course I cut a few slices and made sandwiches for dinner (the ragazza and I do love a good sandwich).  With some tasty cheese on top (also procured from Whole Foods, I must admit), we ate very, very well that night.

I think this was by far my best effort on the smoker.  I was really pleased with how the pork loin came out; the looks, the taste - this baby was the complete package. This is a dish I can see myself doing a lot more – I think it will be a big hit at the next barbecue this summer and I can’t wait to go at it again.

[thehandsomesalami]

Pastrami

Now that the weather is finally getting better it’s time for me to start grilling again.  I can’t think of anything better than being outside with a beer in my hand, grilling up some burgers or sausages out in the sun.  In the summertime I’ll go out and grill anything – from porterhouse steaks to Portobello mushroom burgers, it's all been on my grill at one point or another and it’s always been delicious.

But while I may be pretty good with the grill, using the smoker has been much more of a challenge.  Turning the old kettle grill that was left out in the backyard into a smoker was the easy part – cooking with it has been another story.  My biggest challenge has been keeping the temperature constant in the smoker so as to thoroughly cook what’s inside.  It’s difficult because every time I want to throw a few more briquettes or some wood chips into the smoker box it involves taking off the lid of the grill and using gloves or oven mits to carefully remove the grill grate (with whatever I’m cooking laying precariously on top) before I can toss in the briquettes or wood chips.  This often changes the temperature inside the smoker, making it take a lot longer to cook everything completely.   Needless to say, this can be a real hassle.

But...it’s worth it.  It’s been such a treat to be able to get that great smoky flavor in the food I’m cooking and I’m amazed that I have been able to do it at home.  I never thought I’d be able smoke food in my tiny backyard in the city, but I’ve made it work (without annoying my neighbors) and the results have been amazing.

So after seeing a lot of my colleagues taking the March Charcutepalooza challenge a step further by smoking brisket to make pastrami, I decided that I had to give it a try myself. 

This time I started off with a much smaller brisket than the one I used to make corned beef – this guy only weighed about three pounds.  It was a lot less fatty than the last brisket I used, which I hoped would make it a lot more manageable on the smoker.  I brined it in a pot full of water and some pickling spice and I left it in the fridge for a week.  I then took it out of the brine, lovingly dried it off and covered it in crushed black peppercorns and coriander seeds.  

At this point it was ready for the smoker.  Once again I threw a couple of pieces of charcoal in the smoker box and waited until they had ashed over.  Then I threw in some wood chips that I had soaking in a bowl and laid the grill grate over the grill before putting on the brisket.  I stuck the probe of my digital thermometer into the middle of the brisket and, with a beer in one hand and a cigar in the other, sat down to monitor the progress.

Which bring me to another reason why it’s great to have a smoker: it gives you an excuse to stay outside for hours drinking beer!  I mean, I certainly can’t be expected to leave the smoker unattended, right?  You need to monitor the temperature of the meat and make sure the flame doesn’t get out of control—and if the added benefit is that this paesan gets a little bit of a buzz and a tan…well, who am I to complain?  I’m doing it all for the charcuteapalooza!

After a few hours the brisket reached an internal temperature of 150 degrees so I took it off the smoker and brought it inside.  It looked great – when I sliced into it, I could see that nice smoke ring along the edge that comes with smoking meat.  And not to brag, but the flavor was incredible – I could really taste the spice from the peppercorns and coriander; it was just so tasty!  With a little spicy mustard and between two slices of rye bread it made for an out-of-this-world sandwich.  I’m really looking forward to making some more the next time I can spare a few hours – which I have a feeling I’ll be able to carve out sooner rather than later.