Pork, Too

I went into Niki Segnit’s The Flavor Thesaurus for ideas for a rub and used this: Anise seed, red chili flakes, clove, coriander seed, cumin, garlic, and ginger, while adding the rub standbys — paprika, salt, pepper (white this time) and brown sugar. It was good. Why it cooked in five hours and the thing the other day took 16, I have no earthly idea.

The Most Correct Smoked Pork I Ever Made . . .

I just did the most correct smoked pork I’ve ever made. It went something like this . . .

1) Started early: The first time I tried a butt or whatnot I began early in the morning for a late afternoon/evening party, which was not enough time. People say to expect 1.5 hours a pound. I think it takes even longer. The past couple of times I had the thing in the smoker for four or five hours, which apparently is as long as you need to get it smoked up (the idea being that anything longer doesn’t really add anything further), then put it in the oven for the remainder of time. The last time I did it I started around 8 p.m., kept it in smoke until 12 or 1, then put it in the oven under foil at 225 degrees. It basically wasn’t ready by the time I needed it (noon), which brings me to . . .

2) The oven temperature: By the way, I’m convinced, and it didn’t take much convincing, that there’s no reason to keep it on the grill for 16 hours or so. It’s an asinine proposition, in fact. Not only does it not need it — i.e., smoke doesn’t do anything after four or five hours — but what in God’s name would you want to stay up all night stoking a grill with charcoal every half hour when you could put the thing in an oven with a constant temperature? And the right temperature, I now know, is 250 degrees. I got nervous last night and turned it down to 225 while I was sleeping (2 something a.m. to 6:45 or so) but I shouldn’t have — I turned it back up after waking up and it still took a while — until 12:45, which was OK this time.

3) The wood: I used hickory before and this time I tried apple wood — there was a ridiculous sale on Amazon for wood so I got a bunch. Apple wood smells super nice when it’s burning. This tasted good is all.

FYI: I took it out of the oven at 200 degrees, which I’ve never attained before — usually I’m in a pinch because the whole thing is taking too long so it comes out at 190 or something. This took forever to creep up there — 188 to 200 must have taken two or three hours — but it makes a difference. So the thing was about eight pounds. It went on at 8:15 p.m., came out of the smoker at 1 a.m. or so and then didn’t get out of the oven until 12:45 p.m. So way longer than 1.5 hours a pound. Crazy. But it didn’t matter because people weren’t here until later, so whatever. I actually think our stove turned itself off because it assumed we forgot, probably around the 11 hour mark.

Also, this was not the butt or what I usually get — the guy at the butcher store asked if I wanted the skin and I shrugged and said sure. I’m googling and I *think* it was part of the shoulder but I’m not sure how. Whatever. It was still good. This is roughly the rub I used; it was late and I did the first thing I googled.

Oh, and putting “pork shoulder vs pork butt” into the Yahoo image search engine first yields a warning that there may be unsafe-for-mixed-company pictures included and then actually includes unsafe-for-mixed-company images. Fucking morons. Seriously, was it “pork” or “butt” that did it? You guys are ridiculous.

Many Intelligent And Even Not So Intelligent People Have Wonderful And Quippy Things To Say About “Timing,” None Of Which Will Appear In This Space

Note to myself regarding cooking steaks over charcoal: next time try 4 minutes one side/3 minutes the other instead of 5 minutes/4 minutes.

Grilling Season

Starting to grill now that the weather is nice: this recipe for grilled broccoli was good; we used the grill basket thingy.

Duck Week

We had breast on Tuesday and dug legs on Saturday, mostly because — or, entirely because — of a, er, clerical error at a very busy Whole Foods just after work. Having already made the blackberry sauce (here), we set out to find duck breasts locally; not easy. I’m pretty sure we ran into Greek Easter, which is either a month before or a month after or a week before or a week after regular Easter, or at least Greek Easter (observed). We finally found a place that sold them. When I went in he thought I was asking for “duck bread.” I thought he was asking me if I wanted “dog breast.” They proudly advertised that they sold “all-natural” meat. I never really considered how dystopian that sounds.

We’ve only made duck breast once, and it was one of those French-sounding kinds. (After googling “magret,” now I feel bad about it; not because I don’t like and support foie gras but when you put it like “Magret refers specifically to the breast of a mulard or Barbary duck that has been force fed to produce foie gras” it makes it sound like a fuckin’ Perdue chicken.) So I was confused when I saw this gargantuan lump of fat with a measly hacked up runty bit of red flesh. Maybe they screwed up and sold me a hunk of duck fat?

As it turns out, no, that’s what normal duck breasts look like. The only thing is that it seems most of the recipes you see online assume the overstuffed fuck-you kind of breast. Which is to say, adjust timing accordingly. This (these?) breast(s?) was OK but just a little too cooked in parts. The sauce was good.

And then there was the question of the four duck legs in the fridge. We couldn’t eat them that night because they take hours to cook, so we cooked them on Saturday. This was the recipe we used. It’s crazy how rudimentary those old Times pages look. At the same time, why? Are they static pages or something? You wouldn’t just update the style sheet? Maybe it’s done on purpose? It’s fascinating and ridiculous.

But it’s a great recipe. Jen wanted to make sure the skin was crispy. That it is. It’s also not overcooked at all. Mark Bittman calls it “crisp-braised.” It was super easy and super addictive. Nothing was left over.

One thing, though — why does a “whole duck leg” look suspiciously like two full duck legs? So we had what I would consider to be eight duck legs. I don’t know if the reboot means “two” or “four” or what. One thing I was surprised by was that given the interest in the vegetables that he continues to dice them. I’m assuming they don’t cook through correctly in the initial saute if they’re in bigger chunks, but wouldn’t they cook in that over for and hour? Maybe not; I definitely woudn’t know.