Easy as 3,2,1 Make Gravy

3,2,1 Make gravy.

A basic guideline for making gravy is 3 Tablespoons of flour, to 2 tablespoons of fat (butter) to 1 Cup of liquid (stock).

Step one is to melt your fat.

Step two is to whisk in your flour and cook for 3 minutes over medium high heat to cook out the raw flour taste. This hot fat paste is called a roux. You can cook it longer for a darker gravy. But the longer you cook it the less liquid it is able to hold, if you want a darker gravy add a tablespoon and 10 extra minutes to your roux.

Step three is to slowly add your liquid into the roux while whisking like mad! If you don’t keep up the maniacal whisking you will have lumpy gravy, not good. Keep it smooth by whisking hard and pouring slow.

Taste and season with salt and pepper. There your gravy is ready to enjoy. And enjoy it right away or keep on stirring until ready to enjoy.

Brussel Sprouts w/ Smokey Bacon Sous Vide

Ok enough of the focus has been on the sous vide-ing of meat lately. Let's try our hand at one of my favorite veggies, brussel sprouts. Most people are either in the love or hate camp when it comes to brussel sprouts. My belief is you have either had them cooked properly or not. I can't think of another veggie I love more than a brussel sprout, or as they are called in the country side of Belgium, big city sprouts.

We start by cutting off the nub end and splitting them in half. Then we take some of our home smoked bacon, and crisp it up in a fry pan. Come on now this isn't a vegan blog, have to add some bacon.

While the bacon is crisping up give the sprouts some seasoning love of salt and pepper. Once the bacon is crisp, remove from heat and let cool slightly then add the bacon and its rendered fat to the sprouts with a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil. (Added the olive oil as there wasn't a lot of rendered fat from the bacon)

Now its time suck. Vacuum seal the mixture and place in your water bath. Sous vide is a great way to cook as all the vitamins, minerals and flavor are sealed in the food, there is no leaching of beneficial nutrients or taste. I set the temp at 185 F and let cook for about 2 hours.

While the sprouts bathe, I reduced a couple of tablespoons each of balsamic and sherry vinegar, over high heat into a nice thick syrup to drizzle over the finished veg.

Here is the finished product, they suffered a little color loss, but the flavor was great and they were not mushy at all. Since they were cooked in a sealed environment they were infused with the smokey bacon flavor, that made me wonder if there is a way to graft bacon into plants while they're still growing. Next time I do 'em I would lower the temp to 170 and pull them after an hour, just to maintain a little more color.

Dry brine for Turkey

So here we are that time of year, inviting the family over to watch football, eat a large bird and hopefully not hear about Aunt Edina's varicose veins. Let's focus on the bird for now, most likely a turkey. For the last decade or so people have been stressing the soak of their Tom Turkey. I am all for the brine when it comes to smaller cuts of meat, what I have against the turkey brine is the amount of space and time it takes to make it and keep it safe. If you have a meat thermometer there is a much easier way to go in creating a tasty and moist bird. And that's a dry brine. Basically all the stuff you put in a wet brine but without the water. Here are the ingredients for our dry brine.

1/3 cup kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon celery seeds
1 teaspoon granulated garlic
1 teaspoon granulated onion
1 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
The zest of one lemon
1 sprig rosemary
3 sprigs of thyme

Add all your dry ingredients in a bowl and finely chop the leaf bits of the thyme and rosemary. And then add to the dry ingredients.

Then zest your lemon adding the zest to the mix and stir to combine. The mixture is now ready for your bird, idealy the dry brine would be applied 36 hours before cooking. A night in advance would be sufficient. Generously coat the exterior of the bird and interior of the turkey.

Keep refrigerated, turning the turkey over at least once to distribute seasoning. Remove the bird from refrigeration at least an hour before cooking. And roast at 375 F, until the internal temperature of the thigh reaches 165 F. Remove from oven and let rest at least 30 minutes before carving.

Lazy Lamb Sirloin Sous Vide

A few weeks back I spotted these pre-seasoned lamb sirloins and thought I'd give'm a try in my Sous Vide Supreme. A test run on being lazy by not seasoning and sealing my meat. (That sounds a bit dirty)

Since these were decent looking cuts of lamb seasoned and vacuum sealed I pick'em up to put them to the test. I knew the packaging could withstand the low temp of the lamb cooking temp, so I wasn't worried bout it losing its seal. I've seen other bloggers cooking pre-packaged beef cuts like this before, so I knew it would be ok to try.

I placed them in the water oven at 56 degrees C or about 133 degrees F and left them in there for about 4 hours. I am sure they would have been done in 2 but I had other chores to do that day, so using the laziness I mean convenience of sous vide cooking I left them standing in a perfectly cooked state till I was ready to eat them. One of the greatest joys of sous vide cookery is the ability to leave cooked food suspended in a state of readiness.

After cooking the juices had a slight milky grey color about them, but once I cut open the package there was a wonderful aroma of lamb-ie goodness, rich and meaty.

But after removing from the bag & blotting dry with paper towels you could see they retained their pink medium rare consistency all the way through. And I proceeded to heat some oil in a pan to give them a sear of two minutes per side, to get that Maillard reaction you just can't get from the bag.

Sizzle 2 minutes, flip and sizzle 2 more minutes. Then let rest a few minutes.

As you can see the lamb is a perfect medium rare all the way through and it was very tender. I strained the bag juices, and de-greased the searing pan, deglazing with a red wine before adding the strained juices and mounting with a little cold butter. Served with tarragon and dijon butter noodles, with green beans. My 91 year old father inlaw chowed down on it, and he loved the fact it was so damn tender. For me it needed a little pinch of grey salt to boost the seasoning, but it was tender and tasty. For convenience sake it was easy, taking a step out of the normal sous vide process, taste wise it was good not stellar. I wonder when sous vide cooking instructions will appear on the packaging of these type of products? It would be another way to sell it to the lazy consumer, who wants perfectly cooked meat.

Pot Roast Simple Easy & Delicious

As winter approaches here is a hearty and delicious pot roast recipe. Not only a satisfying meal, but easy to make as well. Besides salt, pepper & oil, it can be made with just six ingredients, a 2-3 pound chuck roast, 2 onions sliced, 5 garlic cloves, a handful of dried mushrooms, 2 cans whole tomatoes and half a bottle of dry red wine.

Start by coating the bottom of a dutch oven with some vegetable oil, and heating it over high heat and then brown the roast about 4 minutes per side till you get it nicely browned. Making sure to season it with a generous sprinkling of salt. Pre-heat oven to 300.

Once the meat is browned on all sides, remove from pot and add onions, stirring the onions to lift up brown bits at the bottom of the pot. And give a decent sprinkle of salt.

Then add the wine, garlic, tomatoes and dried mushrooms. Stir to combine and make sure the mixture comes to a boil for a few minutes.

Place meat back in the the hot mixture, remove from heat and cover.

Place covered pot in oven and let braise for 3 hours.

Sample the sauce mixture and season with salt and pepper to your taste. Enjoy over mashed potatoes or rice.

Green Chile Sous Vide Style

As fall approaches I can't help but think about roasted green chilies and the best damn stew/condiment most people out side of New Mexico or Colorado know nothing about, I am talking about Green Chile. Mean Green the stew that is satisfying on its own in a bowl, or as a condiment poured on eggs, potatoes, hamburgers, pasta, rice....... Name a food I'd put Green Chile on about anything.

The best chile for making Green Chile is a Hatch Chile Pepper from Hatch, New Mexico, but it is a rare find in the Bay Area so I had to improvise using a combination of Anaheims, Jalapeno, and Pasilla peppers. Hatches have the perfect spice, the California Anaheims tend to be milder than the Hatch Pepper, so the Jalapenos brought the heat and the Pasilla give a nice color and a rich rounded pepper flavor.

To get the best flavor out of the peppers they need to be roasted, you can do it on your BBQ, under a broiler or stove top like I did.

After charring the peppers need to hit the sweat lodge. Any environment that traps the moisture of the charred peppers works, here I have used a bowl with plastic wrap, but you could use a paper bag, a pot with a lid, anything that will allow it some sauna action to loosen the skin away from the flesh of the pepper.

Remember when removing the skins you are going to get capsaicin,the stuff that makes chilies spicy, on your hands. To avoid feeling a little burn on your hands, wear food handler gloves or after peeling give your hands a quick wash in veggie oil before using soap and water, the capsaicin dissolves in fat.

Now getting to the meat of it I have to invoke the PFR law. That is Pork Fat Rules, since this ain't a vegan blog we'll talk about our butt, pork butt that is. A nice 2 pound piece of boneless pork butt was treated with a generous rub down of kosher salt (I guess not so kosher), black pepper, dried garlic and dried onion powder sat in the fridge overnight.

The pork butt and peeled peppers, seeds included, were then vacuum sealed and ready for a 12 hour hot bath, in my Sous Vide Supreme, water oven.

Set to 80 degrees Centigrade, our submerged chile pork pack is transforming itself to the most tender and delicious green chile.

After its bath you can see the juicy pork stock transformation from our over night bath that we will use for the base of our stew!

Not that it really needs it but everything is better with beer, so we added a little beer to a sock pot to bring to a boil with our pork stock.

While the beer and stock come to a boil, shred the pork and chilies. Then add the shredded pork mixture to the pork stock and lower heat and allow the shredded pork to heat up.

Once heated, enjoy in a bowl with a tortilla if you're a purist, but if you are a fanatic like me you'll add pour it on everything. Mmmmm green chile doughnuts.....

5 ingredients, less than 10 minutes, a meatless meal

Bacon Explosion 3 the Brat Edition

Making bacon

So here we go again another week long campaign in pork products, today we are starting on making bacon. First you have to cure it and the curing ingredients clockwise from the left are kosher salt, pink salt (you can only find it at the Barbie Store), brown sugar, black pepper and a little dried rosemary. Mix till equally combined.



Spread curing mixture equally over the bacon, today I had two 2 pound pork bellies.


Mmmmm salted and sugared.



Now they're bagged and tagged and I will gently flip them daily in the fridge for the next week before we rinse off the cure and then let them air dry over night in the fridge and before we smoke them. Cue Homer Simpson, Mmmmmmmmmmm BACON!

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Samgyeopsal Gui or Korean Pork Belly part 3

So after cooking for 24 hours at 160 F, took the pork belly out and chilled in an ice bath to bring down the temp to safely store in the fridge.

Out of ice bath and on to a tray ready to be squished.

High tech compression device, a heavy pot on a sheet tray.

After a few days of chillin in the fridge, the pork belly made the trip with us to the cabin at the river to serve as our first night's meal.

I sliced one up and left one whole for the grill. Since it was already cooked and ready to eat, next time I would just leave it whole because the slices became overcooked on the grill, still tasted amazing but leaving it whole and then giving a little char works much better. Also I wanted to get a taste before putting a char on it. The bowl on the right is the pork jelly.

Made a quick sauce out of the pork jelly that sorrounded the belly in the bag, spicy bean paste, sparkling rose and a little sugar, butter would have made it a little more saucy, but it was spicy and had a nice acidic bite, and Paula Dean didn't come up with this recipe I did.

Getting the char on the grill. The best part is getting that pork skin a bit crispy, that's right I didn't mention it before for the best tasting part of this beauty is the skin, leave it on even if there are a few hairs on it still.

Ready for slicing!

Sliced and ready to eat. Let me tell you it was Smurfing delicious! Next time I might shorten the sous vide time and increase the heat, and for sure I would leave it whole and sear off then slice. It was delicious and all who enjoyed it wished I had made more and next time I will.