Where my fellow cooks at???

[mac5155]

Mom made pulled pork last night and had us over. It was good but she let it cook too long. Turned into almost a broth.

She gave me the other half of the pork loin. What should I do with it?

[cheesesteakwithegg]

Mom made pulled pork last night and had us over. It was good but she let it cook too long. Turned into almost a broth.

She gave me the other half of the pork loin. What should I do with it?

Make as much bacon as possible

Spoiler:

I dont even know if you can make bacon from a pork loin, but it still sounds like a great idea

[blackjack68]

I'm thinking of making a burger with 1,050 slices of bacon on it.

[blackjack68]

Mom made pulled pork last night and had us over. It was good but she let it cook too long. Turned into almost a broth.

She gave me the other half of the pork loin. What should I do with it?

I use Boston Butt, Picnic or Shoulder for pulled pork, never loin.

I would get a nice marinade or rub let it sit for 24 hours, grill it to just below done and let it rest up so it's still juicy. Then slice it thin, serve on fresh bakery rolls with sharp provolone and perhaps a dab of BBQ sauce.

[tifosi77]

I agree with bj68, making pulled pork from a loin is a unique preparation for that cut.

Make the loin porchetta style. Traditionally, porchetta is made from a whole de-boned suckling pig. Not having ready access to such critters in my neck of the woods, I tend to make this preparation with either pork loin or belly, or a de-boned rabbit. (Which is a dirty great lot of work if your knife skills are anything less than stellar. I'm above average with a knife and it still takes me over 20 minutes to de-bone Thumper cleanly; a proper butcher could probably do it in 7-8 minutes, tops.) When you substitute proteins like this but use the same basic recipe, you are 'in porchetta'. Pork loin is 'arista in porchetta', rabbit is 'coniglio in porchetta' and so on a such forth and so like.

Get ye some sausage (removed from casing), brown it with some finely diced fennel and garlic, and season it up with ground fennel seeds and black pepper, and let that mixture cool. Roll cut* the loin, season the inside (pretty aggressively) with salt and spread the sausage mixture over. Roll the loin back up so that the layers of pork and filling spiral together (kind of like a cinnamon roll), and tie it off with some butcher's twine. If you have a rotisserie on your grill, now would be a good time to bust that bad boy out; indirect heat (call it 300 F or so) for a couple hours. If no rotisserie, then roast it in your oven at about 375 F for about 45 minutes to an hour. Let rest for at least 20 minutes before slicing. If you want to do a little lily gilding, you can wrap the little package in bacon or thinly sliced pancetta before cooking.

In Italy, they slice it super thin and serve it as sort of the ultimate sandwich filling. I prefer it cut a little more thickly and paired with a pan sauce made from the collected drippings cut with a little lemon juice and flat leaf parsley. Reserve the fennel fronds, too; they make a nice garnish.

There's a porchetta truck up in San Francisco that cooks like 7-8 of these things at a time on a rotating rotisserie. They have a sheet tray under the pork that's full of new potatoes and onions that cook in the pork fat as it renders and drips down.







*

Spoiler:

A roll cut is not the same thing as simply butterflying. The latter yields a relatively thick pad of meat between the outer edge and the filling. A roll cut will leave you with a squarish sheet of pork about 1/4" thick that will be more easy to roll up onto itself, which helps the slices maintain their shape when separated.

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The description/subtitles are a little off in the video, but you get the idea.

[mac5155]

[count2infinity]

i hate olive garden.

[Willie Kool]

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

[columbia]

Any opinions on the indoor smoker concept?
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[Godric]

Any opinions on the indoor smoker concept?
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I would never. At my former residence, I only needed to drive down Broadhead Rd for a mile and there was a deli that you could pay for them to smoke stuff for you... fish/pork/deer/etc

[tifosi77]

Eh, seems like a good thing. I can smoke outside pretty much year round, but I can see the utility of something like this if you lived in a variable climate zone where outdoor cooking wasn't practical for some period of time during a year.

[tifosi77]

On a related note........ it's end of (fiscal) year time at my company which means......... REVIEWS!! Woohoo. My counterpart and I have gotten raises and bonuses with each of our previous two reviews, and this year I think I might be up for a promotion. (Just a hunch, my boss certainly couldn't say anything.) Well, I've decided that if things work out, I'm going to take some of that cash and get me Modernist Cuisine and some newfangled kitchen tools.

Woot!

[columbia]

I just had some frozen wild salmon, which I contend is better than the "fresh" farm-raised version.

Discuss.

[tifosi77]

Generally, the freezing process completely destroys the texture of the flesh. There are not many fishing operations that can flash-freeze their catch quickly enough and to a cold enough temperature to preserve that texture. So unless your preparation is going to involve something where the texture of the flesh isn't super important (like a ravioli filling, for example), it is difficult to imagine a scenario where I would prefer frozen wild to fresh farmed.

There is also the ecological component to consider, but that can be addressed by buying the fish from purveyors who get their product from responsible sources.

[columbia]

Only one of them tastes like salmon and it's not the one from the farm.

[tifosi77]

Where is the wild product from?

[columbia]

I've worked at home for the last few days and am convinced that lunch is the true evil of the American diet.
That is absolutely when I have the most unhealthy meals. Today it was...

Giant soup bowl with:

Vegetable stock
Rice noodles
Loads of spinach
carrots
mung bean sprouts
sriracha
sesame oil
scallions

My cholesterol would not be over 200, if I could eat that well every day at noon.

[columbia]

Where is the wild product from?

Alaska.

[count2infinity]

I've worked at home for the last few days and am convinced that lunch is the true evil of the American diet.
That is absolutely when I have the most unhealthy meals.

i've heard that many other cultures do meals much differently than in America. My French teacher told me that in France, lunch is the "big meal" of the day. They go home, eat a big lunch, and come back to work. Then when they get home, dinner is normally a bowl of soup, bread, something light. Who knows, maybe we're doing it wrong here in America.

[the wicked child]

Pfft. France. What do they know about cooking anyway?

[mac5155]

Pfft. France. What do they know about cooking anyway?

I.Love.Crepes.

[columbia]

@tifosi77

Foie Gras Wars Back On
http://ruhlman.com/2012/04/foie-gras-wars-back-on/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I've never had it.

[count2infinity]

stupid is the only word to describe that...

[tifosi77]

Haha.... I actually commented on Ruhlman's FB page when he posted this article this morning.

This a completely bogus issue. Bourdain had a great perspective on this; animal rights activists get all in a tizzy over this because it's low-hanging fruit, involving rich people eating a luxurious ingredient that the 99%ers will never enjoy, and the French are involved. Win-win.

The process of feeding the ducks/geese takes all of about 3 seconds, and the animals voluntarily queue up at feeding time. They like it. In the wild, it is completely normal for ducks to balloon up to twice their normal size in colder months, with the bulk of the excess fat being stored in their liver. (normal for birds, not normal for people) All the farmer is doing is expediting the process for a couple weeks prior to slaughter.

Also, ducks raised for foie live a much better life than chickens raised for KFC or McNuggets, or cows that will become Whoppers. They are free-range (altho not always pasture-raised) and happy. Happy animals make delicious meat. Stressed animals do not; there are enzymes released into the body when an animal is under duress that make the flesh wonky. Around the world, there are probably farms that produce poor-quality foie using cage-raised quackers. But in this country, there are only two real producers of foie - Hudson Valley Farms (NY) and Sonoma Foie Gras (CA). And they are about as humane as you possibly can be when raising animals to be killed for food.

I've had foie gras a grand total of about six or seven times in my life. In all but one of those instances, it was remarkable; two of the preparations rank as #1 and #3 on my All-Time Best Bites Of Food list (Cotton Candy Foie Gras and the Bazaar and the foie terrine at Bouchon, respectively) The time that was sub-par, the product was so overcooked as to be unrecognizable. Could have been chicken liver. It was offensive - think not only of the animal that died to give up that gift, but think also of the animal that lived, that was tended to and reared with care, hand fed for much of its life. Think of the care and precision with which the animal was slaughtered and butchered. The attention to detail in cleaning the liver for market, and shipping it under controlled conditions. There is a reason foie costs $110 for a whole lobe..... and I had the bad luck to have this gift cooked for me by some knucklehead at a two-bit restaurant in SoCal who could not possibly have cared an ounce for any of the consideration that went into crafting the product he ruined.

[tifosi77]

Had friends down for Sunday lunch, made a few small plates:

Crimini with Amish Gorgonzola, Rosemary, Pine Nuts and Clover Honey

(nothing fancy, but still tasty)

Zucchini 'Nigiri' with Pesto Genovese

(This was served crudo, so it needed a brighter, more assertive flavor. Thought I had that covered by the last-minute addition of the Dijon vinaigrette, but it wasn't enough; next time I'll add some sambal)

Brussels Sprouts with Roasted Garlic and Bacon Mayo

(Not the prettiest plate of food.... I wanted to tame the inherent bitterness of raw Brussels sprouts, so gave them about 15 seconds in a hot pan with olive oil. Tamed the bitterness, alright.... but it also almost totally wilted the leaves. Need to find a better way to get the bitterness out while keeping the shape of the leaves.)

Pig Is A Blanket (or Pork Roll Ups)

(Raw ginger, lemongrass and orange zest inside with scallions to garnish, and glazed with a ponzu honey that was pretty darn good. Nice flavors, but I cut the pieces too large. As soon as you sliced into them to eat, the thing unraveled. Next time, I'll go for more of a lollipop type deal and make the thing a single bite.)