Search results

Yesterday I hot smoked my latest batch of Candian bacon. (Sorry, no pictures.) I'd bought two full pork loins and cut each into three roughly equal pieces. Dry cured them for about two weeks, then cold smoked them for about six hours, finishing with the hot smoke a couple days later. Chris...

Speaking of my tires, not my head, though tips in that regard wouldn't be unappreciated. Specifically and rather oddly, my lawnmower tires. I've got a self-propelled walk-behind mower where the front wheels can be engaged to pull the mower. After four or five years of use this year I noticed the...

A recent email from ThermoWorks linked to a blog post about reverse searing hamburgers. The testing they did showed that a burger cooked entirely over high heat spent just 30 seconds in the desired "finished" temperature zone of 153F to 157F. (The assumption is that carry-over will take the...

I did a halved, spatchcocked chicken on the Weber kettle the other day and it took a lot longer than I expected. I think the problem was the chicken I had was 50% larger than the recipe I was following. Never one to let a known source of the problem stand in the way of acquiring new equipment...

On my trip to Costco today I noticed a Smoke Hollow charcoal grill. The charcoal pan height is adjustable over at least a 6" range. The grates are cast iron, allegedly porcelain coated. The charcoal grate is a lesser metal but appears fairly beefy. The side tables are supposed to fold down...

I did three batches of smoked almonds today using the recipes on the web site as a starting point. I did simple butter and salt smoked, a variation on the jalapeno smoked, and the curry almonds. With the jalapeno smoked I didn't have the green or red Tabasco sauce so I improvised using Cholula...

There were a lot of small bits of meat left on the turkey carcass. Too small to bother picking off to eat, but collectively enough that it seemed wasteful to just chuck it out. What to do? Soup! I started by making turkey stock in the Instant Pot. Broke the carcass in half and nestled the...

The forums here are excellent for BBQ and grilling, and can provide a wealth of information on other cooking topics as well, but I'm wondering if anyone knows of active forums where more esoteric cooking related topics are regularly discussed. For instance, this probably wouldn't be my first...

I wasn't entirely sure where to post this but figured this forum would be a good catchall. About six weeks ago I had occasion to try to make cinnamon extract. I won't go into why. It's a long story. I didn't follow any kind of recipe other than noting most people used cheap vodka as a solvent...

It's getting cooler outside, which means cheese smoking season! I was at Costco last week looking for likely candidates. Picked up some medium cheddar, some sharp cheddar, and some Gouda. (That's some Gouda cheese! Ah, that never gets old.) Those are my standbys. Looking for other options I...

I posted about this is the kitchen equipment forum when I was looking for a citrus juicer recommendation, but this forum doesn't seem to be getting much love so I'll post the actual recipe here. Cafe Rio is a Mexican restaurant chain out west that has several drinks made fresh in the restaurant...

While reading about the new tariffs on soybeans going to China it occurred to me this will probably drive down the cost of soybean-based products, such as tofu. Can't say I'm a huge fan of tofu. Don't hate it, but as long as there are pigs and cattle and chickens available, I don't really see...

There's a chain of Mexican restaurants in the west called Cafe Rio. When I lived in California there was one just a couple miles from my house. Their food is quite good -- particularly the freshly made-in-the-restaurant tortillas -- but the thing that kept me coming back on a weekly basis was...

I got an Instant Pot 8 Quart Duo model for Christmas. I had really wanted the Ultra model because I find the dial your own temperature feature intriguing. I've never done sous vide so this looked like a way to get into that plus get all the other Instant Pot capabilities. Unfortunately, the...

I've been making Canadian bacon fairly regularly and would like to be able to put more smoke on it without cooking it too long. Another thread mentioned the A-Maze-N line of products and that got me looking. Ended up finding one on Ebay at what seemed a decent price so I went for it. Now I'm...

Bought a prime packer at Costco a couple months ago and it's been sitting in the refrigerator ever since. Based on my reading here I was sure it was still fine. No leakage, despite quite a lot of protein seeping out of the meat into the cryobag over the last week. I figured it was time to...

ThermoWorks is always sending me email. That doesn't in any way distinguish them from other merchants. My email box is loaded every day with efforts to sell me something. Why I need to hear from Park Seed every single day is beyond me. But I digress... What does distinguish ThermoWorks is that...

Just a heads up for those of you with Costco memberships. My local Costco had fresh, never frozen, minimally processed Butterball turkeys yesterday (11/13) for $0.99/lb. An entire case full of them. Fresh "organic" turkeys were $2.99/lb. There appeared to be a wide variety of sizes of the...

I've previously made Canadian Bacon using a wet cure. When the local megamart had half pork loins on sale I picked up two and decided to try a dry cure. I measured out a goodly quantity of salt, Prague #1 salt, and sugar for a basic cure. Then I carefully weighed the amount of basic cure for...

Cruising the aisles at Costco today I came upon a prepared dish I'd not seen before -- pulled pork macaroni and cheese. I didn't get any because I know I can make both those ingredients way better than anything I'm going to find prepared in a store, but I did find the basic idea interesting. I...