Made some Chicken thigh/legs. Dried the skin with some paper towels, and sprinkled some Kosher salt and pepper. Cooked them hot, but indirectly. Got some great color, and crispy skin. Roasted some peppers too.
The new grill worked great, and the propane charcoal starter was a breeze. The lid holder was really convenient, and the table is a lifesaver. After I was done, cleaning the coals was really simple, and after closing off the dampers, it cooled down much faster than my old grill.
After stumbling across a nice recipe for soft pretzels, my brain instantly went to burgers. I’ve covered burgers a bunch of times on here, so I’ll focus on the pretzel rolls.
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It’s been a while since I have updated. I have been still cooking and eating, but haven’t had the time to document any of it. So here is something. Adapted from The Meatball Shop cookbook.
Pre trimmed
I’ve had a pork butt in my freezer for a few months now. I expected to cook it on July 4th, for my annual Porkth of July, but things got in the way. So I ended up having to cook it in August. It took 3 days to defrost, and the weather wasn’t looking great. I wasn’t going to let that stop me.
National Hamburger Week / Month is back again! Now with Marisa pregnant, and having to eat her meat atleast medium-well, I had to think fast. How can I make a burger still delicious, yet still cooked all the way through. Boom, Juicy Lucy’s. Yes, made famous in Minneapolis, and covered on every single show on the Food Network, Travel Channel, and Cooking Channel. Essentially a burger with melty cheese in the middle.
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So I haven’t posted in a while. I was busy making something else, a baby. Marisa and I are expecting our first child in June. I’m not going to get into the details of how I made that. But I did brine and grill a whole chicken for Easter.
The chicken floating in a bag of brine
I made a simple brine of water, salt, sugar, chili powder, onion powder, and some peppercorns. I let the brine soak in for two hours(osmosis baby!). I patted off the excess brine from the outside of the chicken. After that, I butterflied it, so it would lay flat on the grill and have more surface area to get crispy skin. After that I oiled the outside of the skin. I didn’t put any rub on the chicken, because I didn’t want to add any more salt, due to the large amount of salt in the brine.
Happy New Year! New York had some snow, so I figured it would be a good day to make some pickles. This was the first time I’ve made dill pickles, so I figured I would experiment a bit. I jarred half of the pickles and the other half were set in the fridge.
Cleaning the cucumbers
First off, I picked up a bunch of small pickling cucumbers. I washed them, and cut off the flower end. Apparently there are enzymes in the flower ends that soften the pickles. So I chopped those off.
My ingredients
So, this is my first venture into homemade sausage. I’ve had an 8lb pork butt in my freezer since the summer, and needed something to do with it. Armed with only my Kitchenaid, grinder, and sausage attachment (and hours of youtube video research, and recipe websites.) There are a ton of recipes on the net, but this was my favorite. I know, top of the line web design, right? I think that is what added to the charm of the recipe. I made both the hot and sweet.
I ground the pork the night before. Once through the larger die. Then I added my spices, and then once again through the smaller die. This really destroyed my kitchen, so I figured I would put them in the casings the next day. I cooked up a little piece to taste, and I liked it. But I knew it was missing something, but I bagged the meat and put them in the fridge.
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