Archives for posts with tag: Pork
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Breakfast for Dinner: Scattered and Chunked Hash with an Egg

By rcoomber
August 29, 2012 //
2

“You’ve never been to a Waffle House?” Wif asked, in the tone of disbelief she reserves for when she discovers that my New Jersey upbringing never exposed me to wonders only found in the Southern United States. Other such wonders include distilleries in barns and rampant illiteracy.

“No. I mean, maybe on a trip to Hilton Head or something, but I don’t remember.”

“Oh my God, they have, like, six different kinds of hash. Scattered, smothered, uh, covered…”

“Ok, I don’t really care. It only matters what we’re doing right…”

“Oh, and chunked! Chunked is when they add ham. Scattered is when they spread it out over the grill and get it extra brown, I think.”

“Again, I don’t really care ’cause I know how to make hash whether Waffle House has a name for it or not.”

“You’re no fun.”

“Nope.”

Despite being no fun, I can make good hash.

For the Hash:

  • 8 medium red potatoes (about two per person) sliced in the food processor with the grater disk
  • 1 medium onion processed with the grater disk
  • 1/4 pound sliced country ham, or whatever ham you have available
  • 1 poblano pepper; heat directly on the burner to blacken the skin; let cool, and remove the skin
  • A solid handful of herbs, diced at the last minute (whatever you’re in the mood for — we used a combination of rosemary, oregano, chives, and marjoram)
  • 3 tblsps of neutral oil (peanut, canola, or vegetable)
  • Plenty of Salt and pepper to taste

Heat griddle or pan to medium-high. Add oil. Saute potatoes, ham, and onions. Let brown and stir every 5 minutes or so, making sure to let the potatoes brown (i.e. don’t touch them every two seconds; be patient and wait a full 5 minutes or longer, depending on desired browness). When about 75% of the hash is browned, you’re probably done. Dice the herbs and throw them in at the last minute.

For the Ketchup:

  • 1 lb. tomatoes, diced
  • 1 medium onion, diced
  • 1 clove of garlic, minced
  • 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
  • 5 little thai chilis, diced
  • 2 tbsps neutral oil (peanut, canola, or vegetable)
  • Lots of salt and pepper to taste

Heat pan. Add oil. Saute onion on medium heat till translucent (about3-5 minutes). Add the diced garlic and cook for another 30 seconds. Add the rest of the ingredients and let simmer on low for half an hour or so. Put everything in a blender or food processor and puree. If it’s thick enough, you’re good.  If not, cook it some more.

For the Eggs:

  • 1-2 eggs per person
  • 1 cup of white wine vinegar
  • A little salt to taste
  • Chives or other herb to decorate the top of the egg

Fill a pot with water, and add a cup or so of white vinegar. Bring to a boil, and reduce to a simmer. Add eggs (but not more than 3-4 at once because it will get the water too cold) and simmer for about 3 minutes for a medium egg and 4 minutes for a large egg if you want the yolks runny (and why wouldn’t you?).

Altogether:

Suck it, Waffle House. My hash is pretty.

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Suckling Pig Roast Deux

By rcoomber
August 2, 2012 //
0

Last year Wif and I headed to my parents’ Catskill Mountains house in Andes, NY.  It was documented in excruciating detail in six posts: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, and Part VI. We bought a 19 pound suckling pig, and roasted it on a spit. Results were mixed, and the cooking was harrowing.

This year we decided to roast another, smaller suckling pig — just 12.5 pounds.  To make things simpler, we eliminated the spit and decided to use a simple camping grill I found on Amazon for $20.

With the theme of keeping things simple, I didn’t brine the pig either.  I just liberally salted it inside and out.  Then I stuffed the body cavity with lemons and herbs, and added a loaf of bread to hold the aromatics in.

We started the fire an hour before we put the pig on, using a mix of wood and coal to control the heat and the flames.

In a brilliant stroke, one of my friends suggested we move the pit to the front yard, with the spectacular views, instead of the swampy backyard.

Good call.  It was a lot more pleasant to have it out front.

To make sure the pig wouldn’t stick to the grill, we wiped a vegetable oil soaked rag over the grill, let the oil burn off for a few seconds, and repeated that twice more.  It makes just about any grill non-stick (thanks America’s Test Kitchen!).  The fire was hot at first, so we got a nice sear after just 20 minutes or so.

We kinda got fearful then, so we cooled it down some.  So we ended up cooking it thoroughly, but not to the point of lovely meltiness that I was looking for.  There’s always next year.

It was gorgeous.

All butchered up, we had plenty of food for the nine adults and five little people, along with a side of potato salad, asparagus, other veggies, and so, so much beer.

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Part VI — Spit Roasting a Suckling Pig Post-Mortem

By rcoomber
July 21, 2011 //
7

This is the last in a series of posts.  It was preceded by Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, and Part V.

What did we learn from spit roasting our first suckling pig?

  1. Buy a quality spit and motor.  Make sure that the spit you buy can handle twice the weight of the pig you purchase.  If your pig weighs 20 pounds, your spit should be able to handle at least 4o pounds.  Or else it will fail.
  2. Order your pig early.  It is not easy to find a suckling pig these days.  Even if you find a consistent purveyor of suckling pigs, they can often take weeks to deliver.  Order at least a month in advance.
  3. Brine your pig.   I found it gave the pig excellent flavor, and helped to season the entirety of the pig — especially the thicker pieces of meat, and those that were hard to get to, or covered in thick skin, like the ribs.   Brine it the night before.
  4. Build a good fire with solid coals.  Give yourself plenty of time –maybe 2 hours — just to build your fire.  You want to have two sections:  a section that burns hot and created coals and flames, and section with just coals over which you cook the pig at about 250-275.
  5. Stuff your pig with aromatics, hold the stuffing in with bread, and tie it with butcher’s twine soaked in water.  Choose a theme (I went with French country) and add aromatic herbs, vegetables, and maybe some citrus or other acidic item so that the flavors perforate all the meat (I ended up using thyme, sage, lavender, lemon, and garlic, though I forgot the lavender and garlic).  Also, buy a loaf of bread to stuff in last to hold everything else in.  The bread will also toast nicely, and absorb delicious juices.
  6. Center the weight of your pig on the spit.  This may take a few tries, but make sure you get that sucker centered, or it will rotate too fast and too slow, alternately.  Or you get a robust spit motor, and it won’t care (See #1).
  7. Don’t panic.  In all likelihood, something will go wrong.  Don’t panic.  Remember, even if you drop it in the fire (which we did) you don’t eat the skin anyway.  Plus, if everything goes wrong, you can always  stick the sucker in the oven.  If it won’t fit, cut it up and stick it in the oven.
  8. Be patient.  This will take a while (at least 5 hours) so give yourself plenty of time.  I would even suggest cooking it to 200 degrees so it’s fall off the bone, or to 150 so that it’s at medium (the temperature of the meat will raise an additional 10 degrees once you remove it from the fire, so it will end up at 160.  We cooked it to 175, as some recipes suggested.  This left the meat in the after-medium zone where it is tough, not as flavorful, and not cooked enough to be fall-off -bone tender.
Keep the dogs away from the ingredients.
Ingredients:
  1. A suckling pig, 10-20 pounds
  2. A quality spit with a good, plug-in motor
  3. Plenty of butchers twine, soaked in water
  4. 20-80 pounds of coals — I would buy at least 60 to be safe, but you can also use wood
  5. Oven thermometer
  6. Small boning knife to butcher the pig
  7. Quality rubber gloves to remove the pig from the spit
  8. Large cutting board
  9. Lots o’ salt
  10. Fresh herbs
  11. Appropriate veggies
  12. Citrus or other fruit
  13. Stuff for a sauce
Ultimately, it’s a wonderful male-bonding experience, even if you completely alienate your wives.
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Categories Sustenance

Monday Meal: Slow Cooker BBQ Pork Sandwiches

By symbolandsubstance
July 18, 2011 //
0

The second meal you can make from Slow Cooker Pork Shoulder, and you use the other 1/2 of the cabbage head you cooked with the shoulder. As a bonus, I have my recipe for BBQ sauce. You can of course use store-bought; it is after all, Monday!

BBQ Sandwiches and Cole Slaw

Ingredients

About 3 cups of pork shoulder, shredded

½ head of green cabbage, shredded

1 carrot, grated

½ cup mayonnaise

3 T apple cider vinegar

1 T brown sugar

4 sandwich rolls

1 cup BBQ sauce (store-bought or make your own)

Directions

  1. Stir together apple cider vinegar, brown sugar, and mayonnaise in a small bowl. Season with salt and pepper if desired.
  2. Combine cabbage, carrot, and mayo mixture. Let sit for one hour.
  3. Open rolls, top with shredded pork, BBQ sauce, and cole slaw.

Bonus Recipe: MYO BBQ Sauce

Store-bought BBQ sauce is totally appropriate here (as is, for the record, store bought cole slaw. It is Monday, after all). We had a lot of ketchup in the house, so I decided to make my own.

Ingredients

2 cups ketchup

2 T Worcestershire sauce

2 T Dijon mustard (I like the grainy kind)

1 t liquid smoke

¼ cup apple cider vinegar

1 small Vidalia onion, diced

1 clove garlic, minced

1 small hot pepper, minced

1 T olive oil

Directions

  1. Heat a pan over medium heat. Add olive oil, then sautee diced onion for a few minutes until it is translucent. Add in the garlic and hot pepper and sautee gently over medium low heat for about a minute.
  2. Add in all the other ingredients. Let cook for about 15-20 minutes over low heat. Taste frequently to see if it meets your liking!
Slow Cooker BBQ Pork Sandwiches [PDF]
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Sunday Spread: Slow Cooker Pork Shoulder

By symbolandsubstance
July 17, 2011 //
3

Ah, the slow cooker. While summer and slow cooker may not seem to go together, it is a great way to cook meat without having to heat up the oven – and therefore the house. It’s also great for busy – and long – summer days that get so packed with activity. That said, this meal would be wonderful on a cold January night as well.

This makes enough for eight meals – two of pork, cabbage, and potatoes and two of BBQ sandwiches, which will be tomorrow’s “Monday Meal.”

Slow Cooker Pork Shoulder, Potatoes and Cabbage

Ingredients

2-3 lbs of pork shoulder, removed from the bone (have your butcher do it; I had Hub!). Reserve the bone for cooking. Cut into chunks that will fit in your slow cooker.

½ head of green cabbage cored and cut in large chunks.

1 lb potatoes (about 5 medium size potatoes). Can use Yukon Gold or red potatoes.

1 cup chicken stock

¼ cup apple cider vinegar

Kosher salt and pepper to taste

Red pepper flakes (optional) to taste

 

Directions

1. Place cabbage and potatoes (no need to cut them, just wash them well) on the bottom of a slow cooker in a single layer. Season with salt and pepper.

2. Place pork shoulder and bone on top of cabbage and potatoes. Season with salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes (I used about a tablespoon of the flakes).

N.B. You can, if you desire, sear the pork shoulder in a hot pan with about a tablespoon of olive oil before putting it in the slow cooker. I did not but Hub usually likes to add this step when cooking meat for a long time.

3. Pour in stock an apple cider vinegar. Cover and set to cook – should cook 6-8 hours in slow cooker.

4. When done, take out pork and bone. Remove skin and shred pork. Reserve half in a container for another use (BBQ Pork Sandwiches).

Let’s get a close up of those yummy Yukon Gold potatoes.

This is great with a salad of summer veggies, like beets, carrots, and greens.

N.B. If you’d like a bit of a healthier option, you can use a pork loin instead of the pork shoulder. I justify it by the fact that you end up eating just a little of the tasty meat – but the cabbage and potatoes have been cooked in quite a bit of pork fat, so just FYI.

Slow Cooker Pork, Potatoes and Cabbage [PDF]

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Some of You Who Have Found Our Site Are Sketchy

By rcoomber
July 14, 2011 //
1

I was reviewing our site stats just now, which tells us how many people are visiting the site, what they’re viewing, and how they found us.  One of the searches that somehow led to our site (likely because I’ve written extensively about purchasing, transporting, brining, building a fire for, stuffing, mounting, cooking, nearly ruining, cooking, removing from the fire, and serving a suckling pig) caught my eye:

If you can’t read that, it reads “spit roast sex.”

Internets, we need to talk about this.  This is a family blog.  We can’t have you coming on here looking for that kind of smut, and then have you read about cooking.  You need both hands to cook, and that’s no way to baste a pig.

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Spit Roasting a Suckling Pig V — Butchering and Serving

By rcoomber
July 14, 2011 //
8

This post was one in a series.  The other parts are available here:   Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, and Part VI.

Finally, after the pig had been purchased, transported, brined, had a fire built for it, stuffed, mounted, cooked, nearly ruined, cooked, and removed from the fire.  What next?  Let’s take the meat of the bones.  A lot of the butchering can be done by hand.  First, peel off the thick skin.

The body will look something like this:

Then use a knife with a small blade to cut the meat off of the bones.   I was a little disappointed in the end product.  I expected the meat to be more consistent since the pig was so young and had only drank milk.  Instead the different cuts of meats like the pork belly (often smoked and cured and used as bacon) was different from the pork shoulder, was different from the loin, which was different from the tenderloin, which was different from the ribs, etc.   The rear legs were also different from the rest of the pig.  In part because they did not spend as much time on the spit, but I think that a good part of the diffence was due to the different cuts of meat.

Next time I think I will cook the pig longer, letting it get to around 200 degrees instead of just 175.  That will get all the meat consistent, and fall-off-the-bone tender.  The risk will be that it will literally fall of the bone and into the fire.  Maybe we’ll get it to 175 over the spit, and finish it in the oven.  We’ll see.

Also, a good strategy for the vulchers who will inevitably swarm your pig carcass while your butchering it:  give them some of the bones you’ve already taken the meat off of, and let them pick off of that.  It works for dogs, and it works for grabby hungry people.

Ultimately the pile o’ meat looked like this:

The full dinner, with some roasted vegetables:

I also made a sauce to go with the pork.  Ingredients for serving probably 20 (i.e. 8 more people than we had) include:

  • 1 stick of butter (1/2 cup) — or substitute 1/2 cup of oil (preferably Extra Virgin Olive Oil, if it’s on hand)
  • 1/2 cup of flour
  • 1 cup of milk
  • 1 cup of white wine
  • Several sprigs of thyme
  • 1/4 cup of dijon mustard
  • Salt and pepper to taste

I started with a bechamel, which is a combination of a rue and milk.  Take a half cup of butter (1 stick) and a half a cup of flour, and stir them together with a wire wisk over medium low heat.  You can substitute oil if you don’t have butter (which is what we had to do for our sauce).  When the flour’s rawness is cooked out, and the rue starts to get a little color (after 3-5 minutes) slowly add a cup of milk in a thin stream, allowing the sauce to become a thick white mixture, with the consistency of frosting.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  I added a 1/4 cup of dijon mustard,  a cup of white wine, and the leftover juice from the lemons that were in the cavity of the pig.  A few sprigs of thyme went in as well.  I let that cook together on medium for 10-15 minutes, to let the flavors marry, stirring consistently.  Add some more salt and pepper to taste.  It looked like this while it was cooking:

You can see the thyme in there.  I removed it before serving, and also tested to see that the salt and pepper were good.  There was way too much for the 12 people we were serving, but I thought better to have too much than too little.

The pig was a hit, but there was plenty of room for improvement.  Post VI will be a post-mortem debriefing, as well as a consolidated explanation on how to roast a suckling pig and succeed brilliantly.

Next time…

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Part IV Spit Roasting a Suckling Pig — What To Do When Your Motor Fails

By rcoomber
July 12, 2011 //
9

This post was one in a series.  The other parts are available here:   Part I, Part II, Part III, Part V, and Part VI. When the motor failed on our sad little spit, we had to make a decision — get the motor working again somehow and re-spit the pig; finish roasting it in the oven; or turn the spit by hand. First we tried to get the motor working.  To do that, we determined that we had to lighten its load.  So I cut off our pig’s legs, and stuck them in the oven at 275, the same approximate temperature we were roasting it over the fire.With the lightened load, the motor worked for another five minutes before failing again. Next we tried to figure out how to turn it by hand.  We (I write “we,” but I had all but abandoned the effort at this point, suggesting we just put the whole thing in the oven; I also lamely claimed that I was employing an effective management technique by telling everyone else that what they were doing was stupid and wouldn’t work, thereby inspiring them to succeed) found a piece of metal that fit over the end of the spit such that we were able to turn the spit by hand.  We figured that if we allowed the pig to sit in one position for just 5 minutes or so, then spun it slightly to a section that was not well crisped yet, we could imitate the motor’s action, granted in a much slower fashion. We also probably lost a little juice by turning it this way as opposed to spinning it continuously with a motor.  Continuous spinning allows rendered fat to drip back onto other parts of the pig as it spins, thereby basting the meat in its own juices.  Without constant motion, the drippings were lost to the fire.  But this was a good alternative, given the circumstances. Overall, this new strategy worked.  Sorta.  We did leave it in certain positions for too long, thereby scorching a lot of the pig.  But only the thick skin of the pig got burnt, not the delicious flesh, so it wasn’t too big a deal.  We would not have crackling, or a cooked football, but not a huge loss. Next problem:  it started to rain.  Our simple solution was to cover it with a piece of plywood from the garage. This portion was relatively boring, and involved a lot of simply watching the pig, making sure it wouldn’t burn.  Most got bored, and left. About 6 hours from when we started, temperatures taken from the middle of the thickest parts of the pig (175 degrees) indicated that it was done.  First tastes were had.  Hooves were especially popular for nibbling, as Andy makes clear below. We then carefully removed the pig and spit from the supports onto a cutting board, and acted triumphant! In fact, we were still pretty concerned that the sucker would roll off the board. ‘Cept Andy.  He was still flashing the number 1. Next step:  butchering and serving your spit-roasted pig.

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Roasting a Suckling Pig Part III — Stuffing, Tying Up, and Mounting Your Pig

By rcoomber
July 8, 2011 //
10

This post was one in a series.  The other parts are available here:   Part I, Part II, Part IV, Part V, and Part VI.

This is the part of a pig roast that is most ripe for sexual puns.  But I will take great pains to avoid them.  That’s probably a lie, but it felt right to say.

I chose to go a French countryside kinda route with my stuffing recipe (instead of perhaps a Cuban version, which might have included oranges and cilantro or something).  I removed the pig from the brine, and let it drip dry a little.

I quartered 5 lemons (3 of which I had zested for the brine); meant to halve a couple heads of garlic (but I forgot); took a couple large bunches of thyme, and a solid amount of sage, and stuck that all in the cavity of the pig (I also meant to add lavender, but couldn’t find any and was super busy).    Don’t be afraid to really get in there.

Be sure to block any muppet-like mongrels, as they will be happy to eat your pig raw.

Problem solved!

I added a loaf of french bread last, which helped to hold in the rest of the ingredients.

The plan was to heat up the lemons, which would turn their juices into delicious steam which would pick up the flavor of the other ingredients and permeate   the meat,  imparting all the ingredients’ flavors throughout.

At this point I also retied the pig.  The butcher tied it pretty well, but he gave me some extra string to make sure everything held together tightly.  I pulled the string around wherever I thought we needed it, had my friend hold the overhand knot with his finger, and finished tying the square knots to finish off the trussing.

Next, we had to mount the sucker.  I wasn’t too involved with this part of the process.  The key is to get the pig balanced, which is really tricky, since a pig is not meant to be balanced by a pole stuck through its butt and out its mouth.  Nothing is meant to be balanced that way.

Our first try forced the pig’s head into an awkward position, but made for a good picture.

We respat (?) it, in part using a hatchet to hammer the spit forks into some bone so they would grip the pig well enough to spin it.

On the second attempt the head looked more comfortable, and the pig seemed better balanced.

However, once we actually started turning the spit, the motor would struggle to turn it at points, and the pig would accelerate too much at other points in its spin cycle.  Also, the spit we bought was bowing slightly, putting further strain on the motor.

The spit we bought, which was run on only a D battery,  was simply not powerful enough to turn the pig.  We needed a plug in spit.  Next time, we’d get something heavy duty and serious, like this, or this.  Our dinky $50 version just wouldn’t cut it for 20 pounds of meat.

Then we hit a double snagzaster.  Though the spit ran for about half an hour, we needed it to run for about 6-8 hours total.  At the same time that the motor was about to give out, some genius decided to baste the pig with way too much bacon fat.  Alright, it was me.  The excess bacon fat caused a flare up, which burned the butcher’s twine, which released half the stuffing into the fire below.

Also, the motor stopped working completely.  We took the pig off the spit and decided to regroup.  We were not going to let this relatively large snagzaster deter us from roasting this pig outdoors on a spit over a fire!

Well, at least my friends weren’t.  I wanted to just put it in the oven, but the rest of the men disagreed.  So we had to find a solution.

Up next, perseverance…

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Spit Roasting a Pig II — To Build a Fire

By rcoomber
July 7, 2011 //
9

This post was one in a series.  The other parts are available here:   Part I, Part III, Part IV, Part V, and Part VI.

To build a fire for a pig roast, you’ll need to start a couple hours in advance of when you plan to begin to roast the pig.  You could go three ways with this portion:  build a fire out of purely coal-coals; build a fire from wood; or a combination thereof.  We decided to do a combination.

You’ll need a large, flat, dry, and not too windy place to build your fire.  Our planned location had a couple inches of water in it, so I laid down a bunch of flat rocks, so we could build the fire on top of them.  The idea is to get the fire burning till all you’re left with is coals.  If you have actual flames , the flames will burn your pig, and that’s bad.  Since you’re trying to cook through a foot or so of meat, low heat and slow cooking — “low and slow” — are the words of the game.

Here’s how our pit looked:

Then we made a little teepee with dry, thin kindling.  We then filled the middle of the teepee with crumpled newspaper and cardboard.

1 Match Was All It Took -- Patented Mr. Janes/Mr. Schreiber Cub Scout Technique

Then we hit our first snag/disaster.  It was a snag-zaster.  The rocks I used to raise the pit above the water were, in fact, sandstone, which explode when heated.

Whoops!  I really should have known, especially since one of my friends asked, “Hey Bob, those aren’t exploding rocks that you put under there, are they?”

“Nope,” I answered confidently, before unconfidently adding, “Uh, yeah, no.  I don’t think so. . . “

Then the rocks started exploding.  I didn’t think it was too bad at first.  After eight or nine exploded sending hot rock-shrapnel through the yard, a thorough dousing was in order . . .
then some rock removal . . .

then tossing the bad rocks . . .

and then we could start over.  Instead of our exploding hot stone base, we decided to go with the safer, smarter log base for attempt 2.

Another teepee, another 1 match wonder, and we were restarted.

Eventually, we figured that we would build the larger, flaming fire on one side of the pit, and then place the pig across the other side of the pit.  When the coal-coals and wood-coals stopped flaming, we’d rake them to the pig-side of the pit.  We placed an oven thermometer alongside the pig, so we knew when the fire got too hot or too cold (we sought to roast it at about 275F).

And the fire was ready!  Next step, stuffing the pig!  Get ready buddy.

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