blackjack68 wrote:When mashing potatoes...
Hand mash?
Mixer?
Ricer?
I'm old school hand mash with butter, salt, pepper and a little bit of milk. Sometimes some minced garlic.
Anything other than a ricer will develop too much gluten and make the mash all gloopy. You can go the extra mile and pass the riced mash through a sieve to really smooth out the texture, but even I don't usually go that far. You also want between 25% and 50% of the final volume to be butter. 50 is way ott, but there you go.
Peel the potatoes and put the reserved peels in the milk/cream to steep for half an hour or so; the vast majority of the potato aroma is in the peel, so you want to retain that.
Speaking of salmon, I wasn't thinking clearly and bought some frozen fillets at Kroger.
They were not good, so I made some salmon croquettes yesterday. Now *that* was good.
It's one of those dishes that I grew up eating, but never knew was a Southern thing, until I decided to make it myself and looked up a recipe. :shrugs:
I finally picked up a bottle of California Olive Ranch and I can definitely say that it's better than any of the others (that I've tried) in the $8 range.
California Olive Ranch and Santa Barbara Olive Company are my go-to cooking oils, mostly because they're relatively inexpensive for the quality, and 'local'.
Four CA oils, one Tuscan, two Spanish. I usually have the CAOR arbequina oil, and another Spanish arbequina in the pantry, but I need to replenish the stores. In all honesty, this is probably too much oil (the stuff is perishable, after all), but I'm all growds up and I can do what I want.
I cooked some spare ribs and didn't even bother to use the grill. Sauce the top side and cook for 1 1/2 hours at 300. Flipped them over and sauced the other side and cooked for another 90 minutes. Flipped them again, generously sauced the top again and broiled them for about 7 minutes, for a decent char.
Mercy.
I know we've had several threads on barbecue sauce (and I started one of them), but I've settled on:
Publix band hickory sauce + some chipotle hot sauce. It's rich and somewhat hot, but has nothing to do with sweet, honey, ketchup or "bourbon" flavor.
Last edited by columbia on Sun Apr 13, 2014 6:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
columbia wrote:Proof that things don't have to be complicated:
I cooked some spare ribs and didn't even bother to use the grill. Sauce the top side and cook for 1 1/2 hours at 300. Flipped them over and sauced the other side and cooked for another 90 minutes. Flipped them again, generously sauced the top again and broiled them for about 7 minutes, for a decent char.
Mercy.
You don't have to but charcoal and smoke do add something. And I love a little char on my ribs.
columbia wrote:Proof that things don't have to be complicated:
I cooked some spare ribs and didn't even bother to use the grill. Sauce the top side and cook for 1 1/2 hours at 300. Flipped them over and sauced the other side and cooked for another 90 minutes. Flipped them again, generously sauced the top again and broiled them for about 7 minutes, for a decent char.
Mercy.
You don't have to but charcoal and smoke do add something. And I love a little char on my ribs.
Yeah, that barbeque sauce I use definitely has some liquid smoke going on. It's decent, if you are too lazy to start a fire on the grill. I will say that I prefer to cook them in the oven for a few hours, even if I'm grilling them.
water, flour, yeast, and salt... yup. It's dough alright.
I think the biggest thing here is letting the dough sit (for 18 hours in the instructions). All pizza doughs I do sit at least 24 hours before getting made into pizza. I don't think this will be any different from normal pizza dough (or any less work than kneading the dought a bit before letting it sit).
Just bought one of these: " onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. I did an empty test-run yesterday with some hickory chips, and I got plenty of smoke. As a downside, the thermostat on it seems pretty inaccurate, so I'll need to use a separate thermometer to set the temperature. Also, as the reviews mention, the cord it tiny, so an extension cord is needed for pretty much any use. I have grounded outlets on my back porch, so using it outside is no problem. If this device works out, this thing could be a great low-cost smoker.
Yeah, it's a good idea to buy a good thermometer anyway. I have two basic ones (for the main oven and for the toaster oven), and a thermocouple probe when I need more precision. I did a rack of lamb last night using a low-temp cooking method (chill meat, super high-heat sear, cool to room temp, cook at 175°F to a core temp of 130°F) and found that the thermocouple probe was showing just how hopelessly inaccurate both the built-in and the separate oven thermometers were. I had to set the controls on the oven to 185°F-190°F to maintain between 170°F and 175°F, and all the while the separate thermometer sitting on the oven rack showed a steady 180°F.
i briefly owned a grill a few years ago, but it was junky and there wasn't any convenient way to get from the house to the grill. considering that and my total ignorance on the matter, and i've only grilled a few times in my life. but we just got a new grill on saturday. combine that with my thermapen (which makes it almost impossible to screw up meat), and it's a total game changer. 3 days in a row with great results.
i know this isn't really breaking news or anything...but grilling is wonderful.
The key to grilling (and all steak cooking IMO) is not to cook to the temperature you want, but stop cooking like 10 or so degrees before that temperature.
mac5155 wrote:The key to grilling (and all steak cooking IMO) is not to cook to the temperature you want, but stop cooking like 10 or so degrees before that temperature.
yeah...i'm starting to figure that out. my pork chops were perfect last night and i pulled them at about 130. the other night, i pulled my salmon at about 5 degrees under cooked, and they ended up too done.
