Again with the dead blog!

It's been a long time since I've posted, just been busy with other things I suppose.  I spent a lot of weekends playing with the Bradley Smoker and the PID temperature controller.  There were some intermittent issues with the controller just losing power randomly, not a good thing to go out to check on things and find the smoker off and cool.  I assumed it was just a flakey electrical connection but the issue kept coming back even after rewiring everything, after rebuilding the thing several times I was able to finally determine that the issue was the fused main switch I had used.  Since bypassing the switch/fuse it has worked flawlessly.

Both of the food-related items I had backed on crowd funding sites that I was hoping to have delivered before Christmas have had their shipping dates backed up.  The new WiFi Nomiku (Kickstarter) has just started mass production so hopefully I'll be able to post a review of that soon.  The Paragon Induction Cooker (Indigogo) has had the expected ship window backed up to sometime in February, once that little piece of tech arrives I'm going to try and get back in to homebrewing!

For Christmas I like to make a standing rib roast, and this year was no exception.  We picked up a nice loin-end rib roast at Mariano's, since opening up a store near us a few months ago it has become my go-to grocery store.  Not as cheap as Jewel but they seem to be a little higher quality, now that they've been bought by Cincinnati based Kroger's we'll see if that continues to be the case .  I had the butcher cut off the bones and tie them back on, then on Christmas morning I seasoned the roast liberally and browned in some rendered beef tallow in a carbon steel pan.  The carbon steel skillet is something I wanted to get after reading an article in Cooks Illustrated about them, unfortunately by the time I saw the article it had been out a few days and the pan they chose as their best buy was sold out everywhere, the only ones I could find were selling for over 10 times MSRP (around $400 for a $40 list pan).  I picked up the skillet shown at Cost Plus World Market for under $20, but it isn't showing up on their website anymore.  Here it is on Amazon for a little more.  After searing all sides of the roast and letting it cool down a bit I placed it in a big zip-lock bag along with a few closes of garlic, herbs and more beef tallow then evacuated as much air as possible and placed it in a 130°f water bath for about 5 hours.  At that point the roast was removed from the bath and allowed to cool for 30 minutes before being finished in a hot (400°f) oven to produce a nice crust.

I had heard about these amazing popovers they serve at BLT Steakhouse in New York City and wanted to try them out.  They make the recipe available on their website so I decided to give it a try.  I'm not a big fan of volumetric measurements for things like flour so I tried to weigh everything out so I could reproduce the results if they worked out, they did so here are my weights for a 1/2 batch (6 popovers).

4 eggs (200 grams)
2 cups whole milk (scalded)
2 cups bread flour (240 grams)
Salt (5 grams)
Gruyere cheese (170 grams, grated)

Preheat the oven to 350°f.  Put the popover pan in the oven to heat up, I put some beef tallow in each cup to melt.  Mix together the flour and salt.  Scald the milk.  Whisk the eggs until frothy (I did this in a stand mixer fitted with a whisk).  Slowly pour the hot milk in to the eggs while whisking to prevent scrambling the eggs.  Fold the dry ingredients in to the egg mixture just until you get a smooth batter.  Remove the popover pan from the oven and spray with vegetable spray.  Fill each cup about 3/4 of the way full with batter.  Top each with 1-2 Tb grated gruyere cheese.  Bake at 350°f for ~50 minutes, turning the pan 1/2 way through baking.  These turned out fantastic and I think they'll be a new Christmas tradition.

The meal was rounded out with potatoes dauphinoise (I used some that I had vacuum sealed in the freezer from last year, don't tell anyone!), asparagus, a mushroom/pearl onion beef gravy, dinner rolls (in case the popovers didn't work out) and a chocolate cream pie for dessert (that deserves it's own post so I'll do that next week).

Food related gifts included a book (The American Plate:  A Culinary History in 100 Bites) and a Modernist Cuisine Spherification Kit.  I've played around with spherification before but now that I have a decent kit I'll have to revisit the technique.

Homemade digital temperature controller for New Original Bradley Smoker

I've been having fun using my Bradley smoker but the control on the model requires a lot of fiddling with to achieve and maintain the desired temperature.  To make things easier I decided to add a digital temperature controller to my setup, but to make things harder I decided to make one myself instead of purchasing a pre-made unit.  Pictured to the right is what I came up with.  It consists of a Mypin TD4 PID controller with 25A SSR and heatsink, a K-type thermocouple probe, a IEC320 C14 main power switch with 10 amp fuse all housed in a styrene plastic project box .

Power is output through a standard 15 amp duplex outlet.  These come standard with both plug sockets connected so you only need to wire up one set of terminal connectors to power both outlets.  For this application I wanted one outlet to be regular uninterrupted AC power while the other would be run through the solid state relay (SSR) to control the heating element.  To make each outlet independent you just need to use a set of clipper to cut out the copper tab that connects the two terminals on both sides.

Once I had all the parts it was time to get started.  The first obstacle was to cut openings in the styrene project box for the PID controller, power connector/switch and outlets.  My first attempt didn't work out too well, I tried to use a rotary tool with a cut-off disk attached to cut out an opening.  This resulted in big globs of very hot plastic landing on my hand and the cut-off wheel shattering.  I then used a zip saw attachment for the rotary tool, but wasn't really able to control it very well and ended up with a hole that was too large for any of the components (if anyone asks I'll claim that the odd hole on the bottom is there for ventilation).  What finally ended up working for me is using the cut-off wheel to cut a slit on each side of the cutout and then using a jab saw with a metal cutting blade to finish the cuts to make the openings.  The outlets and PID controller were mounted right on the open edge of the box to save a few cuts. Holes were drilled for the mounting screws for the SSR heat sink, switch and outlets and a hole was drilled towards the top large enough to thread the thermocouple leads through. Now came the wiring.  Three wires come from the power switch, black (hot), white (neutral) and green (ground).  The ground wire was connected to the green terminal on the outlet.  Wire nuts were used to connect three leads to both the black and white wires coming from the switch.  One set (black and white) was connected to the PID controller to power the instrument.  The other two neutral (white) wires were connected to the silver terminals on the outlet.  One of the two remaining hot (black) leads was connected directly to the top gold terminal of the outlet, the final black lead was connected to the bottom gold terminal after passing through the SSR.  Finally, the control signal wires (in this case I used thinner black and white wires because that's what I had) from the PID control were connected to the DC side of the SSR.  The polarity of these connections matters so you need to be sure to connect (-) to (-) and (+) to (+).  The thermocouple was threaded through the drilled hole connected to the PID controller (again, polarity matters) and everything was mounted to the styrene case with nuts and bolts.  Finally, the top of the case was screwed in to place.

This project took a lot longer to complete since it was the first time I had attempted something of this nature.  I have not been able to try out the control box on the smoker, but I did plug a lamp in to the SSR outlet and verified that it does what it's supposed to do, when the thermocouple probe was immersed in hot water the PID started turning the lamp on and off and finally keeping it off once the measured temperature exceeded the set-point.

I spent a lot of time trying to plan out this project to end up with something that would not only work for the original purpose, but also be able to be used for other things.  Besides being used on the smoker I could see using it for home brewing to control the temperature of the mash.  I could also switch the PID controller to cooling mode, plug in a small refrigerator and use it for lagering beer.  Plug a submersible heater in the bottom outlet and a circulating pump in the top outlet and you'd have a decent sous vide setup.  The other benefit of building a stand-alone controller is that I didn't need to make any modifications at all to the smoker itself, which will be handy if I ever decide to sell it for an upgrade.

It's here!: Bradley Original Smoker Edition.

For years I've had a charcoal "bullet" smoker, and while it can produce some great meals it has a lot of drawbacks.  The main thing is that it's difficult to maintain temperature, doing so requires constant attention and fiddling which can be a challenge for long cooks.  As a result, after an initial flurry of smoking things I really haven't used it much over the past several years.  Lately I've been seeing a lot of barbecue programs on TV and have become re-interested so I started looking for a new smoker that would be easier to use and require less attention.  I looked at several types of smokers, fueled by charcoal, propane and electric.  In the end, a warehouse deal from Amazon sealed the deal and I ordered a Bradley (new) Original Smoker.  The Bradley is an electric smoker that uses sawdust pucks called "bisquettes" for the smoke.  The bisquettes are loaded in to a hopper and are fed one-by-one on to a heating element in the smoker chamber to produce smoke at a rate of one every 20 minutes.

Here is a video of the unboxing.

One thing that I didn't know until the day after ordering was that the smoker itself does not come with any of the required bisquettes, so I ordered a variety pack which was set to be delivered the day after the smoker itself.  I had intended on smoking a whole chicken, had it prepped, rubbed and ready to go.  Unfortunately the bisquettes didn't come until late in the evening so I had to go ahead and just roast the chicken in the oven rather than let it sit overnight with the rub.  Still wanting to make sue of the smoker I went out the next morning and picked up some baby back ribs.

Preparation was simple, I pulled the membrane off the bottom of the rack of ribs and liberally applied a rub (salt, pepper, sugar, paprika, cayenne pepper, celery salt, lemon pepper) then allowed it to sit for a few hours in the refrigerator.  While the ribs rested I set up the smoker, turned it on and put in 5 bisquettes for the seasoning process.    That involved about an hour of smoke at temperature to drive off any manufacturing residues and get the smoker ready for business.

The night before I had run all the removable pans, grates and bowls through the dishwasher.  Assembly of the smoker is pretty easy, the drip pan goes on the bottom and a water filled metal bowl is put in place.  The water-filled bowl is there to catch the still smoldering bisquettes as they are pushed off the heating element by the next one, this keeps ashes from flying up on tot he food.  Above that is a heat deflector followed by up to four metal racks.  The smoke generator slides in the side and attaches to a couple of metal pins, there is a power cord running to the smoke generator box and another running from that box to the smoking chamber for the main heating element.  Controls are simple, just a power switch and a dial that allows you to set the temperature from low to high.  There is also a button to advance the bisquettes.  Once you get the smoker loaded and closed you'll have to baby the temperature a bit by adjusting the dial and top vent, but once you get it where you want it seems to be pretty stable.  I put the ribs in and adjusted the temperature to about 225 degrees f.  For smoke I used a mix of apple and mesquite bisquettes for the first few hours, then again for the last 20 minutes or so.  All told the ribs were in the smoker for about 6 hours.

The ribs turned out pretty darn good, and since the smoker was running anyway I put the chicken I had roasted the night before in as well for a little smoke flavor.  All in all I'm pretty happy with the Bradley smoker.  I feel that I'll be able to do things with it that weren't possible with the old bullet smoker, like leaving it running unattended while I'm away at work or asleep for long cooks.  In order to improve the temperature stability I'm looking at wiring up a PID controller with a thermocouple and solid state relay to let me dial in a desired temperature and not have to worry about overshooting it when I'm not around.  Those parts should be here tomorrow.  I'm thinking of picking up a bone-in pork shoulder roast for this weekend to make some barbecue pulled pork.  Other things I want to try out before the end of summer is short ribs and eventually brisket.  That was something I was afraid to even try with the bullet smoker, but now may be a possibility!

July 4th Menu

For the 4th this year the menu included cedar plank salmon with grilled corn/mango salsa, sous vide potato salad, grilled asparagus and grilled corn.

The only salmon I had access to was pre-portioned, frozen the individually vacuum packed.  I placed the packets in a 125f water bath for about 45 minutes to thaw and get up to temperature, next time I'll probably go a little lower (like 115f-120f).  The salmon was then put in the refrigerator until time to grill.  I placed the salmon fillets skin side down on a soaked cedar plank, spread some honey Dijon mustard on the top, sprinkled with lemon pepper and topped with a slice of fresh lemon.  The grill was set up with a standard two level fire, the plank was put over the hot side until it started to smolder, then moved to the cool side.  Since the salmon was already cooked I just needed to let it heat through and absorb some of the grill flavor.  Once done I topped with a grilled corn/mango salsa consisting of some previously grilled corn, diced mango, diced red onion, diced hot red pepper, cilantro, lime juice, salt, pepper and olive oil.

The potatoes for the potato salad were cut in to pieces, tossed with salt, pepper and champagne vinegar and vacuum bagged with a knob of butter.  They were cooked in a 185f bath for about 3 hours, I kind of got distracted and forgot about them for a bit so they were in the bath longer than intended but doneness turned out great.  They were chilled overnight and mixed with the dressing and other ingredients a few hours before serving.  The dressing consisted of mayonnaise, balsamic vinegar, champagne vinegar, celery salt, black pepper, chili/garlic paste, diced celery, thinly sliced radish and thinly sliced green onion (white and green parts) along with red pepper left over from the salsa.  I dumped the potatoes in the bowl where I had mixed the dressing and folded them in, next time I'll dirty another bowl so I can put in just enough dressing to coat the potatoes, these were a little over dressed.

The other sides were grilled asparagus (tossed in olive oil, salt, pepper before being grilled) and grilled corn (just soaked for a few hours before going on the heat to get a char).  Both turned out great.

Dessert was an apple pie from the Hoosier Momma Book Book of Pie cookbook, I picked it up a Costco last year when the author was signing copies.  Turned out great!  It was served with a vanilla/caramel gelato.

Memorial Day: Peach stuffed banana bread

For Memorial Day I was planning on making a peach cobbler for dessert, I had a can of peaches in the pantry and all the necessary ingredients so it seemed like a no brainer.  The day before the holiday I noticed that we had some bananas that were getting really brown and that would need to be used soon.  Lately I've been making banana bread from my late Mamaw's recipe so that would be a good way to use the bananas.  But did I want to have two sweet things needing to be eaten at the same time?  The solution was to combine them and make a peach stuffed banana bread.

The banana bread recipe is pretty simple, but you need to do things in a particular order for it to come out right.  The ingredients are:

3-4 very ripe bananas
1 ts baking soda
3/4 ts baking powder
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 ts vanilla
2 cups AP flour (divided, I use the scoop and level method for measuring)
1 stick butter, melted

First the oven is preheated to 350 and a large loaf pan is prepared by cutting out a piece of parchment paper to fit the bottom.  The pan is sprayed with release spray, the parchment put in the bottom and sprayed again.

Now that that's done it's time to make the batter.  The bananas are peeled and put in the bowl of a stand mixer, the baking soda is added and the mixer turned on, mixing the bananas with the baking soda seems to help them break down.  With the mixer still on the baking powder is added, followed by the sugar, eggs and vanilla.  The speed is turned down to low and 1 cup of flour is added, then the melted butter and finally the final cup of flour.  Only mix until the batter is smooth and you don't see and lumps of flour.  Quickly pour the batter in to the prepared pan.  For plain banana bread you can just bake for 60 minutes, then let cool in the pan for around 10 minutes before turning out and letting cool on a rack.

This time I decided to stuff the banana bread with peaches.  I poured a can of peach pieces in light syrup in to a colander and reserved the liquid.  The peach pieces were pushed in to the batter, trying to keep them from touching the sides of the loaf pan.  Once all the peaches were in place the banana bread was put in the preheated oven to bake, since I had never done this before I added 10 minutes to the normal bake time for a total of 70 minutes.

Here is the result.  The extra baking time was definitely needed to allow the batter around the peaches to cook.  After the oven was turned off I left the loaf pan in there for 10 minutes with the door open to help drive off a little more moisture, then allowed the bread to cool in the pan for 10 minutes before being removed.  It was a little more difficult to turn this out of the pan since I didn't want to mess up the peaches on top but with a little extra care it came out just fine.  I didn't know if the flavors of bananas and peaches would mesh, but they're actually pretty good together!  The peach stuffed banana bread was served with a whipped cream made with heavy cream, powdered sugar and some of the reserved syrup from the can of peaches and some vanilla frozen custard.

Memorial Day: Crock fermented sauerkraut

Last time I made naturally fermented sauerkraut I used a clean jar as the fermentation vessel, this time I decided to use my fermenting crock.  The recipe has only three ingredients...shredded cabbage, salt and caraway seeds.  The crock is 5 liters, and since you want to limit the size of the head space I bought the biggest cabbage I could find.  The cabbage was prepped by cutting in to quarters and removing the core.  The cabbage was shredded and placed in a bowl to be weighed.  The amount of salt to use for sauerkraut varies, 2.25% to 2.5% seems to be the what is recommended.  I had just over 1900 grams of cabbage so I weighed out 44 grams of pickling salt and mixed it in to the cabbage along with 2 Tb caraway seeds.  Over the next 15 minutes I would roughly mix the cabbage every 5 minutes or so while the salt started to pull the liquid from the cabbage, then everything including the extruded liquid and cabbage core was put in the crock and weighed down with the weight stones and short, wide cup filled with water.  The lid was put on the crock and over the next several hours I pushed down on the stones until enough liquid had been pulled from the cabbage to submerge everything, then the water channel was filled to keep out oxygen and the cabbage was left to ferment for 8 days undisturbed.  On day 8 pulled out a sample and liked how it tasted, the cabbage was still crunchy but it had a great sour flavor.  I moved the sauerkraut to a plastic container and put it in the refrigerator to stop the fermentation.  For Memorial Day the sauerkraut was served with grilled sausages and warm purple potato salad.  Crock fermented sauerkraut not only tastes great, but it provides a lot of health benefits.  That's good, because I have a LOT of it left!

Memorial Day: Purple Potato Salad Sous Vide

The side dish I decided to make this Memorial Day was a warm potato salad, but I didn't want to go for a standard German potato salad.  For the potatoes I picked up a bag of small purple potatoes at the supermarket, no reason, they were just on sale.

I usually have a water bath set up in the kitchen, but sice this was going to be a pretty hot bath I put a couple of sisal fiber placemats under the Cambro to protect the granite countertop.  I set the circulator to 90C and turned it on.

The potatoes were cut in to bite sized pieces and tossed with olive oil, salt, pepper and granulated onion.  I smashed four garlic cloves and threw them in as well.  Everything was put in to a Foodsaver bag along with 2 tbs butter and vacuum sealed, then the pouch was placed in the still heating bath.  In order to allow the bath to heat up as quickly as possible a blanket was wrapped around the bath and dish towels laid over the top.  Once the bath hit 90C a timer was set for 30 minutes.  When the timer went off the pouch was retreived from the bath, cut open, and the potatoes were dumped in a colander placed over a bowl.  A vinaigrette was made by whisking the liquid drained from the potatoes with 2-3 Tb honey dijon mustard, about 1/4 cup olive oil and around 2 Tb white wine vinegar until an emulsion was formed, which was then tossed with the still hot potatoes.  Thinly sliced onion, diced Anaheim pepper, capers, chives and a little cilantro were folded in and the potato salad was covered and allowed to sit for 30 minutes for the flavors to marry.

This potato salad turned out really well, the potatoes were tender but not to the point of falling apart and because they were mixed with the vinegraitte when they were still hot they absorbed a lot of flavor.  By cooking the potatoes sous vide and incorporating the bag liquid in the vinegraitte all the potato flavor stayed where it belonged.  I'll be adding this recipe to the summer holiday rotation.

Crock fermented, low temperature processed dill pickles

This was a project 6 weeks in the making.  A while back I stared making naturally fermented sauerkraut in glass jars, and since that was working out so well I had the urge to take things to the next level.  The opportunity came around Christmas, when I received some Amazon gift cards and decided to use them to buy my own stoneware fermentation crock.  The crock I selected has a 5 liter capacity, straight sides, stone weights and a water channel around the lid to help keep out oxygen while the fermenting is going on.  The first thing I tried was sauerkraut, and it turned out OK but not great.  After doing a little on-line research I believe that the issue is that I didn't fill the crock with enough cabbage, which left a large air space in the crock above the weights.  Next time I'll shred up two heads of cabbage and see out it turns out then.  I also read about a method of making sauerkraut where you ferment the head of cabbage whole in a brine and then shred it, might be interesting to try but I'll probably wait until it's a little warmer out to give it a try.

One of the things I've always wanted to try but never did was to make my own fermented dill pickles.  The process is simple, you take cucumbers, put them in a crock with herbs, spices, and a brine, then wait.  I looked around and found several recipes but was confused about the amounts, they all measured the salt in volume instead of weight and none specified what type of salt was used.  In the end, I assumed they were using pickling salt, found a weight for a given volume of salt on the Morton website and calculated the weights I would need.

The first step was to measure out all the ingredients I would be using.  The recipe called for 8 cups of water (Brita filtered), 1/4 cup white vinegar (5% acidity), 144 grams of kosher salt, 2 TB dill seeds, 2 TB yellow mustard seeds, 4 TB pickling spices mix (Spice House), 4 cloves of garlic, a dried chili and a couple sprigs of fresh dill.  The water, vinegar and salt was mixed together until dissolved, this resulted in a brine of about 7.4%.  I saw recipes using brines anywhere between 2.5% and 10% so this seemed like a reasonable level.  While the salt was dissolving I washed the pickling cucumbers and cut 1/4" off the blossom end, I read that if this isn't done enzymes present in that area will cause the pickles to get mushy.  The while spices were toasted briefly to wake them up and places in the bottom of the crock, then the cucumbers were packed in tightly (to help prevent them from floating), garlic and fresh dill places on top of the cucumbers and the stone weights added.  Next the brine was poured over and I shook the crock a little to let any trapped bubbles rise to the surface.  Once the lid was put on some watter was added to the channel to seal the crock but allow produced gasses to escape.  The crock was put aside in a cool corner and left alone to allow the magic to happen, a few times a week I would add water to the channel to keep the crock sealed.

The recipe I used said it would take anywhere between 4 and 6 weeks of fermentation before the pickles would be ready.  How long the fermentation takes depends on the strength of the brine, a weaker brine of about 2.5% can give you what are known as "half-sour" pickles after as little as a week of fermentation.  A stronger brine will inhibit both the types and rate of bacterial growth, which requires a longer fermentation and will result in what are called "full-sour" pickles.  After 4 weeks I opened the crock and pulled out a pickle to try.  The first thing I noticed when cutting up the cucumber
was that it wasn't completely pickled through to the center, it needed a little more time to finish.  The flavors were good, but I found the pickle to be a little too salty for my taste.  I added another cup of filtered water to the crock to reduce the brine concentration to around 6.6% and closed it up for another 2 weeks.

This past weekend it was finally time to open up the crock and process my pickles for storage.  Pickles will lose their crispness if they are heated to above 85C (185F), the temperature at which the natural pectin will start to break down.  Normal canning procedures where you process in boiling water will result in a limper pickle, so I opted to go with a lower temperature process using a water bath maintained at 180f with my Nomiku immersion circulator.

Here you can see the crock sitting next to a stockpot where I'm sterilizing jars for canning.  Apparently some of the brine was able to seep through the walls of the crock and evaporate, leaving a salt residue on the sides.  Hopefully this will provide a safe haven for the good bacteria to sit between fermentations so future batches will just get better and better.  The cucumbers here removed from the brine, cut in to spears (quarters) and packed in to sterilized jars.  Each jar received another teaspoon of mixed spices (dill seeds, mustard seeds, chili flakes, pickling spices) and a clove of garlic.  Brine from the crock was ladled in to the jars to about 1/2" below the rim and the lids placed on loosely to allow gas expanding during the heating to escape.

Here is the bath set up with the Nomiku for processing.  It's difficult to see in this photo, but I am using a cork from a bottle of wine to raise the circulator so the top of the jars falls between the Nomiku's max and min level markers.  Once the jars were placed in the bath container I added just enough water to bring the level up to about 1/4" to 1/2" below the top of the jars, the Nomiku was set to 82.2C (180F) and turned on.  I placed the lid on the bath container to help keep in the heat and the jars were allowed to process for a few hours.  Once I was sure that the contents of the jars had reached 82.2C and held there for 30 minutes I removed each jar from the bath, tightened the lid and put it back in the water.  I now added additional water to the bath to raise the level above the tops of the jars.  This was done to kill any bacteria that might have been survived by being above the water level during the first phase of processing.  after 20 more minutes in the bath the jars were removed to a cooling rack, as the jars cooled the centers of the lids popped down indicating that a good vacuum had formed.  These should be shelf stable for a good long time, but I don't intend to allow them to sit around for long.

The pickles are very good and still have a nice snap to them, unlike the quick pickles I'd made in the past.  I still find them to be a bit on the salty side, even after diluting the brine down to 6.6% after week 4.  Next time I'll try using a 5% brine and see how that turns out, I expect the weaker brine will cut the fermentation time down by a few weeks.  Before I make another attempt I'm going to do some research and try to come up with my own blend of pickling spices, the ready-made mix I used for this batch is more for corned beef than dill pickles.