Category: Food

Apples!

Making apple sauce is a lot less time consuming that I thought it would be — a little bit of water in the bottom of a large pot (so the apples don’t burn to the bottom). Fill the pot with apple chunks, a stick or two of cinnamon, and put a lid on it. Bring it up to a boil, turn the temp down, let them boil for 15 or 20 minutes. Take off heat and cool a bit, then run them through the blender. Voila – you’ve got apple sauce. If you re-use the liquid in the cooking pot for another batch or two, you get very tasty apple juice too.

Hot and Fast Smoked Ribs

Unfortunately, I don’t think we’re going to be able to replicate this exactly — had a bunch of bad temperature probes, so we didn’t realize how hot our smoker was going. We usually do the 3-2-1 thing at like 225F … but the smoker chamber was over 300 degrees. So I did a quick search for “what happens if I smoke my pork ribs at 300” and discovered the hot and fast method. Absolutely no idea that was even a thing!

So we put the ribs on at about 6PM, and it was about 9PM by the time we were eating. I coated them with some spice rubs about an hour before we started cooking. We brushed them with a butter/spice mixture after about an hour of cooking and again about half an hour before pulling them. They were tender but not mush, crispy, tasty (a little too much salt in places, but that’s just the rub), moist, and incredible. While I have no idea what the temperature we cooked these things at, we’re going to try to use this method again after we get some good temp probes.

Peach Butter

While peaches are on sale for a buck a pound, I made peach butter — puree peaches in a food processor, then cook it for about 12 hours on low in a slow cooker. Leave the lid off for the last hour (or three) to allow it to thicken up. It’s great on a peanut butter sandwich.

Homemade Jerky — Take 2

This time, I got larger cuts of meat and was able to cut with the grain for a chewier jerky. I also used setting ‘6’ on the slicer for thicker jerky that wasn’t as crunchy/dry. I used the same beef recipe as last time, and this time I used a pork loin to make pork jerky

  • 1 cup soy sauce
  • 1/3 cup Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 cup water
  • 1/2 cup maple syrup
  • 3 Tbsp cracked peppercorns
  • 2 Tbsp lemon juice
  • 1 Tbsp hot pepper flakes

Beef Jerky:

And pork jerky:

Homemade Jerky

Scott got some jerky from a local butcher — something like twenty bucks, and he could have eaten it as a snack one night and been done. It was really good, though, and inspired me to research making our own. In an amazing coincidence, a local grocery store put a lot of eye of round on FlashFood,  so I was able to get about 5kg (~11 pounds) of beef for $3/lb.

I made two different recipes — one with smokey guajillo peppers that I use for chili and one with hot pepper flakes. The base marinade was the same, though: for every 1.5 kg of beef, use 1 cup soy sauce, 1/4 cup maple syrup, 2 tbs garlic, 1/3 cup medium ground black pepper, and 1 cup of water. To one batch, I added about 1 tablespoon of red pepper flakes. To the other, I broke up and added pieces (including seeds) of two dried guajillo peppers.

I used the food slicer to slice the meat about 1/4″ thick (we prefer the thicker slices it turns out). Unfortunately, the clearance beef was pre-cut into medallions. Another ‘note for next time’ is to cut with the grain instead of across!

Tossed this in the marinade to coat well, then put it all into a glass food storage container, and left it in the fridge overnight.

The next day, I dried the slices off slightly and laid them out across the food dehydrator trays. I was able to “cook” it all in two batches.

Let the food dehydrator “cook” for about 6 hours at 165F, and we’ve got homemade beef jerky!

and

Black Raspberry Coulis

To go with our smoked lamb, I made a coulis with maple syrup and black raspberries Anya picked and froze last year. Easy recipe — a pint of black raspberries (thawed) and about 1/3 cup of maple syrup (this would be a “to taste” kind of thing!). Boil for about ten minutes to break down the berries a bit, run it all through a blender, then use fine mesh cloth to strain out the seeds. It will set up as a jam once it cools, but it’s a nice sauce to drizzle over food whilst it is still hot.

Brisket

We smoked a brisket and lamb shoulder this weekend — basic salt & pepper rub, smoked with fruit wood, then brought inside to finish cooking. We’re going to order some butcher paper to see what that’s like because wrapping it always gets the bark soggy!

Grilled Lamb

For Mother’s Day, we grilled lamb steaks. Anya made a garlic sauteed corn, and we had some cherry whiskey (since there was cherry wood in the wood fire … figured that would match). Quick salt and pepper on the steaks, then seared over the fire and cooked for about 20 minutes. Rested inside, and we had a delicious meal.

Yamitsuki Shio Cabbage

Ingredients:

1.5 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp sesame seeds
1/2 tsp Chinese-style chicken bouillon powder
1/2 tsp grated garlic clove
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
half of a green cabbage, sliced into squares

Method:

Mix together everything except the cabbage. Mix into the cabbage and allow to sit for a few hours in the fridge. Serve.