Bronze Behemoth Game On! 2

[DennisLinkletter]

lump charcoal is not wood burned down in to coals. So using lump is not the same as burning wood down in to coals.

Well yes and no.. but sorta kinda..
Generally lump charcoal is wood that is heated in an oxygen free environment to remove most of the volatiles. The remaining material is charcoal.
If you burn wood (heat it) is off-gasses.. creating flame.. when that flame burns out, that's charcoal less the nasty tasting part.. but still full of the nice flavor. Put it out at this point and you have great charcoal.
If you have properly carbonized oak charcoal it's exactly same as the wood burned to this point..
Problem is to be safe and ensure no flames and acrid flavors, most charcoal makers over cook a bit.. result less flavor and harder to light.

When you add smoking wood, same thing. You want to let if off-gass and the flame burn out.. at this point the smoke is that nasty dark grey-ish color and acrid.. it even burns you eyes.. once it's gone the smoke will turn to a blue-ish color.. that's what you want your meat to bath in.. The cast iron pots with wood in them force the volatiles down thru the hot coals where they can be re-burned and be cleaned up a bit more.. sorta an afterburner.

When an organic material is heated the volatiles turn to gas and ignite.. With lump charcoal there is a fine line between under carbonized where the charcoal actually off gasses like wood and this gas burns in a flame.. Under carbonized charcoal like this will give off acrid flavors and nasty grey smoke.. If you over carbonize you burn off too much of the volatiles, you will get a flavorless burn that is very hard to light..
In most lump charcoal the smalls are usually over carbonized and the larges pieces less or a bit Under carbonized.. That's why the best charcoal is all the same size pieces..that way they can cook it uniformly..

That's also why Kingsford can consistently produce such a uniform product.. Like it or not, every bag will be exactly the same. With their new competition type (100% wood), I'm guessing it's a good thing although I've never tried it. Of course they don't have it here in Bali.

Done my home work for the Komodo Charcoal that's in the works..

[DennisLinkletter]

Lump is not made by burning wood in a fire, and then putting out the fire to get the coals. Lump is made by putting wood in a metal vessel, a retort, and heating it to drive off all the volatiles and non-carbon molecules until all that is left is carbonized wood, aka "lump". The coals a BBQ joint uses are different, and contain a lot more of the flavorful volatiles and lignin. They start a fire with the wood they want to use, let it burn for a while until the "first part" of the burn is done, then shovel the coals in to the BBQ pit. These burning coals are NOT the same as lump charcoal, and contain more flavor compounds.

Argh.. this post was not up when I started my longwinded TMI charcoal post..

But when all is said and done.. Common sense would dictate that it is basically oak at different stages of carbonization.. a clever manipulation of clean smoke from wood and charcoal should be able to duplicate the results.
But that takes a set of skills.. I'm guessing it's easier to hit the nail on the head consistently by burning down the wood to coals and using that material..
And makes customer's think they are getting something that involves lots of work.

[mguerra]

I know a few folks here cook on briquettes, I have only thrown a few in my lump fire when I bought a bag by mistake. But yesterday I bought a bag of Stubb's briquettes just to try them out of curiosity. Who likes 'em, and why?

[johnnyboy]

Ha! Doc, I take it you don't like them. Is it the same Stubs that makes sauce?

[mguerra]

No, I did not say I don't like them. I just started using lump some time ago, in fact even prior to getting my KK. I had used briquettes in my metal grill, of course. I have not used them in the KK because initially I only ever did low and slow cooks. I was not sure how long they would last for a 12 hour or more cook, so I just used a full basket of lump. But now I do a lot more grilling in my KK. So just for grins I decided to try some briquettes. And yes, it is the same Stubbs who makes the rubs and sauces. The briquettes are billed as being only hardwood and some vegetable binder. We talked a while back in one of our threads about these wood only briquettes. I'll go back and look for that thread. If memory serves, there were some called Rancher and maybe Wicked Good makes some as well.

[johnnyboy]

Nakedwhiz has a good write up here about briquettes/contents. Highlighting Kingsford new Competion briquettes.

http://www.nakedwhiz.com/productreviews ... tition.htm

[mguerra]

This may not seem all that interesting, but as the old saying goes, it's the simple things in life...
For a really easy and fast go to cook, try boneless skinless chicken thighs. I lay them all out on a tray, douse them liberally on one side with Special Shit, (sorry, I'm not the adolescent who named this stuff), put them on the top grill with a good hot fire, rub side down. Now cover the top side liberally with the rub. Cook five minutes with the lid closed and then flip them. Cook until your Thermapen hits 175 or so. Doesn't take long as this meat is fairly thin. Take them off, rest under foil for a while, and enjoy! You may never eat white meat again.
http://www.specialshit.com/
Generally I don't use too many store bought rubs because you never know how much salt is in them. This was given to me as a gift so I tried it. Damn good on chicken. We have been chowing on this a lot lately! You can just use any seasoning or rub you like.
I have talked many times before about a " good hot fire". Just open the daisy wheel all the way, spin the top damper well open, and that will get it. That will typically get a dome temp of 350 to 400ish. I use this for most all grilling and simply cook the meat to my desired finish temp on the Thermapen.

[mguerra]

I spent this afternoon at a whole hog class. We took a half hog and broke it down. First, out came the leaf lard, which we rendered and then strained. Pastry chefs go nuts for this lard. Then we took out the tenderloin, took off the belly, cut out the spare ribs, took off the picnic and the butt (shoulder), then the feet and the hocks. Cut up the chops and so on. For today's class this chef used the shoulder for sausage, pate, and rillettes, not pulled pork like we do. We made chorizo, kielbasa, and white boudin. The boudin was French, not cajun. It was made with cream and breadcrumbs, as well as some chicken, but not rice. We took a piece of loin, butterflied it, filled it with herbs and spices and then rolled it back up in to a roulade and tied it. We made a cure for the bacon which they cure for six days and then smoke. The chef made something I never had before, roasted pork belly. He took a big piece of belly, crosshatched the fat with knife cuts, put on an aromatic herb rub, placed it in a pan with wine, onions and some other aromatics and popped it in the oven. It was out of this world tasty. We made Tasso ham and rillettes, and something that was so good I could not believe it, head cheese!!! We boiled the head and the feet with a big cheesecloth sack of spices, removed the ears and julienned them, took off as much meat and fat as possible, discarded the snout, chopped up the tongue and mixed all that meat and fat with the incredible spices and lemon zest. The huge pot of water used to boil the head was reduced to four cups and all the fat skimmed off. This was a thick, collagenous reduction. Then all the meat, fat, tongue and ears were put in a loaf pan and the reduction poured on. We tasted it at this point. HEAD CHEESE! Oh my gosh it was so good I could not believe it. Then a weight was put on it to compress it and it went in the fridge. We made a pate with shoulder meat and fat and a pork liver. The liver was maybe 25% of the total. Fantastic. The whole affair took about 5-1/2 hours.
If you live in or near Austin, TX, you should go do this! The class is put on by Dai Due Supper Club, eight people per class, about four classes a year.
I was surprised how good these fatty, weird preparations were, but they were superb. Did I say HEAD CHEESE!? Never in a million years would I have tried the store bought version of this. And it was probably the best thing we made today.
This was a fresh, humanely raised hog from a local farm, prepared by a supremely skilled chef/butcher. Tomorrow we pick up everything we made today except the bacon, which I suppose they sell next Saturday at the farmer's market. Unfortunately I live two hours from Austin so I will not go back to get mine. My niece lives there and she will be the lucky recipient. But I told her to reserve half of everything for me and I'll get it next weekend! An absolute dream day for a foodie.

[DennisLinkletter]

Great post..
Thanks for sharing..

[primeats]

Sounds like a great time Doc. Somehow I feel a little satisfaction when I hear of a person who has experienced something like this. I would have enjoyed the charcuterie lesson above all, and you really should try a commercially made head cheese to realize how bad it is and what a masterpiece that you have created! Hats off to you sir!

[mguerra]

There is a girl there at Dai Due who knows how to do curing. Pancetta, guanciale, salame, pepperoni, sopressata, prosciutto and on and on. I begged her to put on a class! We will see...

[mguerra]

A while back we were talking about doing a super low temp cook for a beef round roast. This cut is normally really tough and dry and hard to get tender and juicy. Well, here's something interesting. I had my butcher process a hog last year(ya'll remember?) and I was not sure what to do with the ham, the back upper leg. That is the round, of course.
So I had it cut across the femur in to 2 plus inch thick roasts, or really thick steaks. So these would be round roasts, or round steaks. This was raw, not cured, you understand. Today I cooked one. I slathered it with mustard, much like is often done when we do a shoulder. Doused that heavily with a rub one of my patients made, and roasted it indirect on a hickory fire. It cooked at 350 to 400 til an internal temp of 150. I foiled it, wrapped it in a towel and rested it for an hour. It was awesome! Very juicy and very tender, far more so than I expected. I would say it was medium. Took about 2 hours maybe. The juiciness and tenderness was outstanding, far more so than a beef.

[slu]

This may not seem all that interesting, but as the old saying goes, it's the simple things in life...
For a really easy and fast go to cook, try boneless skinless chicken thighs. I lay them all out on a tray, douse them liberally on one side with Special Shit, (sorry, I'm not the adolescent who named this stuff), put them on the top grill with a good hot fire, rub side down. Now cover the top side liberally with the rub. Cook five minutes with the lid closed and then flip them. Cook until your Thermapen hits 175 or so. Doesn't take long as this meat is fairly thin. Take them off, rest under foil for a while, and enjoy! You may never eat white meat again.
http://www.specialshit.com/
Generally I don't use too many store bought rubs because you never know how much salt is in them. This was given to me as a gift so I tried it. Damn good on chicken. We have been chowing on this a lot lately! You can just use any seasoning or rub you like.
I have talked many times before about a " good hot fire". Just open the daisy wheel all the way, spin the top damper well open, and that will get it. That will typically get a dome temp of 350 to 400ish. I use this for most all grilling and simply cook the meat to my desired finish temp on the Thermapen.

I just tried the Special Sh...t seasoning. Cooked a quartered chicken indirect at 400 over the Halls Hill hickory charcoal. It was great. The seasoning is well balanced. Thanks for the tip doc!!

[mguerra]

This month's Cooks Illustrated has some GOOD recipes for grilling sauces. Last night we cooked a pork loin which had brined all day. I cooked it on a hickory fire, indirect, 350 to 400 degree dome, til it hit 150. Then I slathered on the glaze and cooked for a few more minutes to get it just caramelized a little, but not burnt. Delish. It was a sweet glaze made with apple butter, apple juice, caramelized sugar, apple cider vinegar and some other stuff. Penny made it and I wasn't paying attention, but it is damn good. Pick up this month's CI! You won't regret it. We are really bummed that Gourmet magazine went under, Bon Apetit is OK, but just not the same league as Gourmet was. But Cook's Illustrated is a staple around our house. After work I'll put up some photos.

[kravnh]

Gourmet Magazine has been somewhat resurrected, if you own an iPad. There is a free app, called Gourmet Live, that has a weekly issue that will include 1 or 2 recipes and a few articles. You can save up to 12 items in your "Favorites" list. However, for $9.99, you can upgrade to "unlimited," which allows - you guessed it - unlimited favorites to be saved. The also sell back issues and recipes grouped by theme, i.e., Cinco de Mayo recipes, for $.99 each.