Tag: Recipes

Nuts to You (in the Best Possible Way)

The more I think about the dishes I like to cook, the more I realize that I most enjoy the low-effort, big-return recipes that make a party a little more special.

This spiced nuts recipe comes from my brother, Ed, who used to make this in commercial quantities for a small supermarket in Washington State. It uses three pounds of nuts, but can easily be scaled down, and the nuts will keep for weeks in a tightly sealed container or in the freezer for several months. And the spice and sweetness levels can be adjusted to your taste, too, of course, but we think this is a reliable starting point.

The recipe calls for walnuts, but I’ve also made it with pecans. Peanuts (skinless only) would probably work, although I haven’t tried them. Next time I make this, I’ll probably try a mix of nuts.

I’ve made this recipe several times, every time a hit. The key is to keep the heat low, stir every 10 or 15 minutes, and give the nuts the time they need to dry out before taking them out of the oven. Do that, and you can create an easy, signature snack for your parties.

Ed’s Spiced Nuts

Ingredients

  • 1 cup dark brown sugar
  • 2 cups granulated sugar
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt
  • 3/4 teaspoon smoked paprika (sweet)
  • 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 3 egg whites from large eggs
  • 3 tablespoons water
  • 3 pounds walnut halves or other nuts

Method

  1. Preheat oven to 300F. Prepare two half-sheet pans with parchment, which will make cleanup much easier.
  2. In a large bowl, beat egg whites and water until frothy.
  3. In a smaller bowl, mix dark brown sugar, granulated sugar, smoked paprika and ground cinnamon, making sure there are no lumps.
  4. Add nuts to the egg white mixture and stir until coated well and evenly.
  5. Sprinkle the nuts with the sugar mixture and toss to coat evenly.
  6. Bake at 300F in a single layer for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the nuts are dry. Give yourself some time, as it could take longer.
  7. Remove from oven and separate nuts as they cool.
  8. When completely cool, pour the nuts into a bowl or container(s) for storing or freezing, breaking up any that are stuck together.

So Far, A Salute to Pork

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The two picnic shoulders after 17 1/2 hours on the smoker. They’ll rest for a while before I pull and sauce them.

The last two pork shoulders — these guys are picnics — just came off the Big Green Egg. They’re about 9 pounds each, with the bone, and I put them on at 4:30 yesterday afternoon. They went about 17 1/2 hours later with the pit temp raised to 250 after being at 225 until 5 a.m. I took them off when one was 195 and the other 198 internal.

I’ve also put away the last five pounds of pork belly, which I roasted this morning in the oven. I did 10 pounds last night. This morning’s will joined last night’s in foil with some of the liquid from the bottom of the pan, and will be heated and crisped tomorrow afternoon.

This roasted pork belly recipe is so good that the first time I made it for Janet she took one bite and then looked at me kind of angry, as if to say, “How do I know you for 13 years and this is the first time you’ve made this?”

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Last night’s roasted pork belly. It started out as 10 pounds, roasted another five this morning, just to be sure. Each of these pieces should make about 20 servings in little tortillas with gochujang sauce.

It’s really good and as easy as it gets and the recipe is entertaining, if pretty foul-mouthed, so be warned. It’s here: https://deadspin.com/how-to-cook-pork-belly-which-thoroughly-kicks-bacons-a-1619788169.

The briskets will go on next, and I’m worried about them, as I always do, because somehow I always find a way not to play it safe. A few years ago I tried to cook two behemoths without trimming especially well and I got about 30 pounds of burnt offerings when the drippings caught fire. I’m more careful about trimming now, even liberating that pocket of fat between the flat and the point, but I’m worried that the two chests, which weigh 40 pounds between them untrimmed, will be too big for the two racks on the Egg.

The worst case will be that I take the points off and trim up the ends to fit, because it would be better to have not quite enough than to serve bad brisket. I could also smoke it on the Pit Barrel Cooker — I’ve seen videos that show a 16-pounder being done in six hours, but I have to say that the finished product didn’t look that good to me.

Anyway, enough of the Hamlet moment. I’m going to trim my briskets and see what I’m getting myself into.

Cooking for 104

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There are 104 people who say they are coming to my house Saturday for the 10th and final Salute To Meat, and these two pork butts will not satisfy them.

They are only the start of the last push. Two more will go on when they come off late Thursday morning, because my Large Big Green Egg will not accommodate all of the 35 pounds of pork shoulder that I will pull and my wife, Janet, will serve on King’s Hawaiian Rolls with a little coleslaw. Those rolls are smaller than slider-sized, perfect for two bites.

I’m saucing the pulled pork with a traditional North Carolina vinegar sauce, for which the very easy recipe is here: http://www.nakedwhiz.com/elder.htm#rubs. If you follow the link you’ll also be treated to an exhaustive and very entertaining treatise on the smoking of the divine butt.

Anyway, the next two shoulders will come off Friday morning and then the two Prime briskets, which will weigh in at about 35 pounds after trimming, have to go on the Egg, and I hope they will be done by 7 or 8 a.m. on Saturday. If they are not, I have a couple of Plan Bs.

Also on the menu:

  • 12 racks of St. Louis style ribs, a little over 35 pounds;
  • 10 pounds of home-cured bacon, to be served as deconstructed BLTs;
  • 15 pounds of pork belly to be cooked in the oven then cut bite-sized and put in little tortillas with gochujang sauce;
  • 15 pounds of beef rib-eye and dry-aged sirloin strip, which Janet will serve with caramelized onions and blue cheese, on crostini;
  • 10 pounds of lamb leg, which I’ll grill Saturday after marinating in lemon, olive oil and rosemary. Janet makes a great spicy mango sauce for it;
  • Open-faced Reuben sandwiches with the 20 pounds of pastrami that I cured and smoked;
  • And my friend, Mike Schroeder, is bringing kielbasa from Bristol, Conn., which I have to dole out after grilling it at the beginning of the party, because it is so good that people will eat so much of it that they’ll ruin their appetite for the rest. I always swear that I will not give them more than 5 pounds of it;

So with the pork butt and brisket, call it 180 pounds of meat, give or take. Of course, there is a lot of bone in the ribs, but I think we’ll have enough.

I have a Pit Barrel Cooker, and plan to smoke eight racks of ribs on it Saturday, the other four on the Egg if the briskets are done early enough to give me a six-hour window before the lamb and steaks have to go on. If they aren’t, I’ll go two rounds on the PBC, pulling the first set off a little early to hold, then finishing them on the grill when I’m ready to serve.

Today I’m making the gochujang sauce for the pork belly, which I’ll cook tomorrow and Janet will crisp and serve on little tortillas cut from Mission Soft Flour Tortillas. The sauce recipe, which was intended for Korean fried chicken but is fabulous with pork, is here: https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/10/sweet-and-spicy-chili-sauce-korean-fried-chicken-recipe.html.

I’m also picking up the beer, wine and soda and the perishables for the sides. There will inevitably be some stuff I forget, and that I’ll grab Saturday morning when I pick up the baguettes for the crostini and the ice for the coolers.

So far we seem to have avoided last year’s excitement, when our freezer failed while we were on vacation and all the meat for the party rotted inside it, and a tree on our front lawn got hit by lightning the night before the event and nearly took out my car parked on the street.

But it’s a good reminder that anything can happen, especially when you’re smoking brisket and cooking for more people than attended your wedding, and so it is well to keep one’s knees loose.

 

Planning The Last Waltz

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The steaks from 2016. The two in front were about to go back onto the grill for their final sear.

It’s only late February but it’s time to get serious about planning our 10th and last Salute to Meat, our annual summer party, which this year we’ll hold in early June. By the time we’re done we will have served considerably more than a half-ton of beef, lamb and especially pork at these parties, to an increasing number of guests each year.

Last year we had 84 RSVPs and 71 people showed. This year my wife, Janet, and I expect more, since we’re combining it with the retirement party for my colleague, Sally Hale.

The save-the-date email is going out tonight, and I’m going to start dry-aging a Prime sirloin strip roast. It’s going to go 45 days or so, then I’ll trim it and cut it into steaks about 2 1/2 pounds each and freeze them. It’s about 14 pounds now; after aging and trimming I expect to get about 10 usable pounds.

We are big fans of the reverse-sear method of cooking large steaks and roasts, and we’ll do that with the steaks and lamb. Reverse sear is when you cook the meat in a low oven, smoker or closed grill at a low temperature and then sear it when it’s almost done.

This makes a more tender steak, I believe, and it also eliminates almost all of that nasty grey band that you get at the margins when you sear first.

So I like to cook the steaks at about 225 degrees until they get close to the internal temperature you want — I usually look for 128 or so, aiming for medium-rare. Then you take them out to rest while you run the grill to about 450 degrees, or heat the broiler. Then the steaks go back for just a couple of minutes to get the char you want, then you pull them off and let them rest again, maybe for 15 minutes or so, depending on how long they were off the heat the first time.

You can also use a butane torch to crust them inside, handy in bad weather.

Janet, who actually does more for this party than I do, will cook a pile of onions very slowly and when they’re very brown and almost a single mass she’ll hit it with some Bourbon to deglaze the pan and run up the heat to burn off most of the alcohol. Then she’ll add blue cheese to the mix and we’ll put slices of the steak on crostini made from baguettes and the blue cheese-onion jam on that, and out they’ll go.

It’s always the last course, but the one I can start first, now.

I’m getting excited.

Meat, We Salute You

At the 2018 Salute to Meat, we had 71 guests, served 130 pounds of meat — some of which we wrapped and sent home with people — lovely music and a great time.

We also had the help of more than a half-dozen wonderful friends who helped serve food, set up and move things around the yard and sacrificed some of their own good time.

Paul, Steve and Dan
My friends Paul Caluori, Steve Kaplan and Dan Day, entertaining our crowd.

The kitchen work went the way things go every year, me running out to the smoker and cutting things in the kitchen, and I didn’t get to join the party until all the food had been served.

I remember a lot of meat, but also a lot of smiling faces and lovely compliments. The sky cleared during the afternoon after a long, dreary week of rain, and the weather was perfect.

It was a little tense, running out one course after another. But Janet and our friends Becky, Madonna, Sue, Donna and Sally ran assembly lines putting all the ingredients together for service on trays they carried. Everything except the brisket went out in finger-food portions, just a bite or two. I cut the brisket as people came into the kitchen for it, to keep it from drying out.

Kitchen food
These are the mini pastrami Reubens and the crostinis with steak and caramelized onions and blue cheese, back in the kitchen for people to pick at. Also on the table are Janet’s potato salad, beans and coleslaw.

I was least happy with the brisket, which was still pretty good. Both briskets came to a very thin end at the flat section, and I should have trimmed it off, perhaps grinding it for hamburger or sausage. After its long smoke that portion was overcooked and dry; possibly OK for hash, but maybe not much else.

It was like dust on a diamond, though. People stayed long after dark, talking and drinking, and the guests made the party. They mingled, talked to people they didn’t know, made friends. Every single guest was lovely, helpful and appreciative, and good company for everyone around them.

It was the kind of party for which every host dreams, an Everest achieved not for its food but for its totality, the good time people all seemed to have.

This afternoon the house is pretty much cleaned, except for the rented tables and chairs that the company will collect Tuesday. I need to return a couple of borrowed coolers and when the trash and recycling get hauled away there will be little evidence that we had a party.

But we’ll have plenty of wonderful memories.

AND NOW, THE RECIPE FOR HOMEMADE PASTRAMI, PROBABLY THE BEST THING I SERVED

Pastrami for the 2018 Salute
Janet made mini, open-faced Reubens from the pastrami. The Russian dressing is beneath the meat, then they got topped with sauerkraut and Swiss cheese before going under the broiler and then out to the guests.

I think everyone liked the pastrami the best. I had smoked it last Sunday and it took a long time to steam it from cold — about four hours — but it turned out really well. The recipe is from Serious Eats, and you can find it here: https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/10/barbecue-pastrami-recipe.html.

If you make it, do remember that the author has omitted the last and absolutely necessary step of steaming the meat to a temperature of 195-203 degrees. If you don’t, you’re going to get tough, dry meat. You can do as I did, smoke it several days in advance and then steam it when you serve. If you do that, it could take anywhere between two and four hours to steam, depending on its weight and shape.

Even if you’re going to serve it cold, I say you have to steam it first, and then wrap and chill it when it comes down to 140 or so.

If you’re going to serve it the same day you smoke it, when the internal temperature hits 165 you could wrap it tightly in heavy duty foil, maybe with a little water or beer, and then let it steam that way until it got to 200-203.  Let it rest, still wrapped — an hour isn’t too long —  and then you’re ready to cut it and serve to your grateful guests, or keep for yourself!