BBQ Short Ribs February 12-13 2011 - Part 2

I've got the ribs on the smoker and I'm using a user program for the first time. If I set it up right I'll get

• 250 degrees for 2 1/2 hours
• Down to "Smoke"for an hour
• Back up to 250 until the meat probe in one of the ribs reaches 180 degrees

After 2 hours at 250 degrees

The rib with the probe was up to 154 degrees when the temp was at 250. Once the smoker went down to "smoke" (about 170 - 180) the probe dipped to 149, then 141. 

After 2 1/2 hours at 250 and 1 hour on "smoke"

I imagine the probe temp will start to rise again.
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I checked again at 3:20; the biggest rib with the probe was at 167 but the others were at 180 or above so I took the finished ones off:

Wrapped in foil; they got done sooner than I expected. They'll have to wait 'til Jeff gets here for dinner.

That bit on the lower left was actually a piece of meat that came off the biggest rib, which was a dinner in itself. It didn't have any fat in it and ended up way too tough; kind of like I expect my first brisket will taste like :(

The last big rib wasn't finished until 4:45.

Dinner is served

One of the better ribs; nice smoke ring.

The smaller pieces were good; the very lean pieces were too tough. I liked the rub. I think a do-over but I'll need to make sure that the ribs are similar in size. The Pellet Boss did not turn off automatically which is something I'll have to figure out.

BBQ Short Ribs February 12-13 2011

Time to bust out the Mak 2 Star General again. Last weekend would have been perfect but we got to busy. I hope it doesn't rain too much while they cook on Sunday.

So far I've cooked steak, baby back ribs, and St. Louis cut ribs on my MAK and my loaner last summer. On the pelletsmoking.com web forum I'm a member of there are lots of good recipes. Someone did some beef ribs a couple of weeks ago. I hadn't really considered doing beef ribs until I saw Cowgirl's entry. That was the inspiration, but these will be a bit different

• She coated hers with bacon drippings before putting on the rub. I didn't have bacon drippings so I used good ol' vegetable oil
• She used big beef rib racks. I've wanted to do something with short ribs for a long time, so I went that direction.
• No sauce for me

It's a 2 day process; one day for the rub and one day for the cooking. I picked up 4 1/2 lbs of  ribs at New Season's; they look fantastic just as they are

Made a rub based on Craig "Meathead"Goldwyn's Big Bad Beef Rub at amazingribs.com. This rub is light on sugar and is heavy on salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder. To get a nice fine rub I pushed it through a fine wire mesh strainer. I applied the rub, wrapped 'em up and put them in the garage refrigerator overnight.

Tomorrow after church I'll fire up the smoker. Here's the plan

• 2 1/2 hours at 250 degrees
• 60 minutes on "smoke"
• Back to 250 until they hit 180 internal temp

First Cook on the new Smoker

The weather was beautiful this weekend; a great time for the inaugural cook on my new Mak 2 Star General smoker. I set up 3 racks of St. Louis cut ribs which I bought at Cash and Carry; I also did 8 brats from New Seasons of various styles. I normally do baby back ribs but thought I'd try the meatier St. Louis cut this time.

Saturday afternoon

The cooker needed to be "seasoned" which I think really means burning off all the machine oil from manufacturing. So, I loaded in some pellets; turned it to high and let er' rip about 45 minutes.

Next, bust out the ribs and apply the rub.

The rub is Meathead's Magic dust, the recipe for which can be found at here at amazingribs.com. If you are interested in barbecue this is an excellent place to start.

Sunday

After church and swimming, I came home, loaded the smoker with apple pellets and turned in on to 225 degrees. Once it got up to temp at 12:30, on go the ribs for 3 hours. This was so much easier than using the Weber kettle grill with the smokenator. I didn't have to fuss with adding charcoal, wood, water, stirring the goals; sweeping the ashes out. I just set the temp and went in the house to start the barbecue sauce.

A view from the couch through the window.

Time to build the barbecue sauce; this is my favorite tomato based sauce. I got the recipe from Cooks Illustrated magazine; my take on it can be found here. 

A cool part about this recipe is you make your own onion puree. You chop an onion into quarters, put it in the food processor with a little water and whirl it until it looks like an onion slurpee.

The press it in a wire mesh strainer to get the onion water.

Heat a little oil in the bottom of the pan, bloom the spices for about 30 seconds then add all the other ingredients. Bring to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes.

Back to the ribs after a couple of hours.

After 2 hours of smoking,  I add the links; they show up on top here, but I put them on the side first and moved them upstairs after they cooked a bit.

After 3 hours of smoking, I put the ribs in foil with a little apple juice and back on the heat for 40 minutes. Then they came back out of the foil boats for another 40 minutes to firm up. 

Then I fired up the gas grill to high, moved the ribs over there, painted them with sauce and sizzled the sauce for a few minutes on each side. Here they are when all was done.

The smoke ring doesn't show through here; need to work on my picture taking skills

 Dinner is served.

Summary
They were easy to make, but they weren't my best ribs ever. They had a nice mild smoke flavor, but were a little tough and didn't have a rich meaty pork flavor. The smallest rack was the best leading me to think that they should have cooked longer. But that's part of the fun; figuring out what works and what needs work.

January 25, 2011 - The Mak 2 Star General

The next cooking blog post won't have pictures Ol' Blue in it. I finally broke down after a year and bought a pellet smoker. I rented one last year for Father's Day and enjoyed the ribs I did on it. I spent the summer working on smoking on my Weber gas grill and Weber kettle grill. The kettle was promising but I had to lift the lid too much to tend the coals, water, and smoke. If your lookin' you ain't cookin'; I'd loose heat every time  the lit came up adding to the cooking time. The gas grill is better in this regard; the lid can stay on; but at the low smoking temps; it's tough to get enough smoke.

So, having a gas and charcoal grill; I figured it was only logical to get a wood cooker. I saved my nickels and dimes and was able to order a Mak 2 Star General just after Christmas. I had my eye on the newer smaller one; but Carla was listening when I was on the phone with Big Poppa's Smokers and she told me "just get the big one; you know it'll be better". "Okay dear, whatever you say; I just want to cook you dinner".

They were working on some changes for the new model year; so it didn't ship until last week. It was delivered on a big pallet Monday. I unboxed it Monday night; then tonight Jeff came over and helped me assemble it. It took 2 hours from opening the bag of screws to finishing the clean up so I can park back in the garage.

Covered up. This is actually the back side of the cover; but the front side emblem is a little loud for my taste. The cooker is symmetrical, so it was easy to just turn the cover around. 

Tucked in bed for the night with the Weber gas grill; the charcoal grill is stored behind me in the picture.

It promises to be sunny this weekend so we'll be having summer in January: ribs, slaw, potato salad. Saturday  morning I'll head to Cash and Carry to pick up some St. Louis cut ribs; I'll rub them up overnight, then smoke them on Sunday probably with some brats on the upper rack. 

January 23, 2001 Chicken Rosemary Stew

This was on of my early recipes, coming from the old Food Network show How to Boil Water. It's a very simple recipe with a big payoff in taste. It has 41 reviews with a 5 star rating showing its popularity
You can find the recipe here.  The treat of this recipe for me is the carrots, they cook in the chicken fat for a while and then stew for 40 minutes and come out so sweet and tender.

or my version here.

I first made it back in 2003 or 2004 when Carla's parents Glenn and Tommie were coming over for Sunday dinner every week.  Glenn was very allergic to to celery, so I had to make it without. It was so nice to have them over to dinner; thinking about it makes me sad.

I'll spare you the line up before the cook. Here the chicken thighs have been fried for about 8 minutes.

Next, in goes the carrots and celery to saute until tender; about 10 minutes (these are big chunks of vegetables)

We add the broth and the chicken goes back on top; be sure to keep the skin above the liquid

Serve over noodles

Yum. Easy and tasty.

January 9, 2011 Chili with Beans!

Uh oh. I've been so vocal and demonstrative about my views of beans in chili, I'm really in for some teasing from everyone. I love  El Cid chili; but I read an article in the January 2011 Cook's Illustrated that looked delicious; beans or no beans.  My take on the recipe can be found here.

The ingredients; oh yeah. Notice this also has beer!

The intriguing part was that I would make my own chili powder by toasting some chilies and grinding them up in the food processor; then turn it into a paste with some garlic, chicken broth and other stuff. Here the dried chilies are toasting

Yes, it's Ol' Blue again. I love this pot. It gets a big workout in the winter. Here I've made the chili paste and have cooked it down with a lot of pureed onion.

We sautee the meat; add some more liquid (including the beer) and stick it in the oven for a couple of hours until it looks like this:

 This chili is sooooo tender and delicous. I'm still a fan of El Cid more than this but everyone else who tried it loved it. So, I'll make it again.

Freedom From Fear - Chapters 13 - 22

I've finished Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War 1929 - 1945
The last half of the book concentrates on World War II

• Chapter 13: The Gathering Storm
• Chapter 14: The Agony of Neutrality
• Chapter 15: To the Brink
• Chapter 16: War in the Pacific
• Chapter 17: Unread Ally, Uneasy Alliance
• Chapter 18: The War of Machines
• Chapter 19: The Struggle for a Western Front
• Chapter 20: The Battle for Northwest Europe
• Chapter 21: The Cauldron of the Home Front
• Chapter 22: Endgame

America had the luxury of being isolationist even though it wasn't in our best long term interest. Roosevelt's big struggle in the later half of the 1930's was to use the United States as a counter-balance to the aggressive designs of Hitler, Mussolini, and Japan. One of the biggest problems was what FDR called  "large misinformed public opinion" (p 393). Even after Pearl Harbor had been attacked there was an open question as to whether we would declare war on Germany; Hitler took us off the hook and declared war on us.

One of my "rose-colored" views of WWII was how everyone jumped in together and worked like one big happy family after Pearl Harbor. Not so much. Politics is always a consideration. After Japan had occupied the South Pacific and the export of rubber to the United States stopped, we invented a substitute. The Farm Bloc was instrumental in legislating that  a certain amount of the ingredients would come from grain alcohol rather than the more efficient petroleum based  compounds. In general the war purchases went to the biggest companies; the big got bigger (p 622). Another area where politics took precedence over what was right was the Japanese-American release from relocation camps in 1944. Their release was delayed for months until after the 1944 election.

The war strategy was also contentious and divided. England was strongly in favor of the North African and Italian campaigns; we took part of these over the vociferous objections of the US military. George Martshall went so far as to suggest that if the British insisted on the North African campaign, "the Americans should rewrite the fundamentals of their own highest strategy, abandon the Germany-first principle, and 'turn to the Pacific for decisive action against Japan'" (p578)  Roosevelt overrode those objections because he felt is was urgent that America take part of the fight against Germany and this was the only way to take part in 1942.  As it turns out the British were never in favor of the French invasion and slowed things as much as they could.

America's industrial strategy was to build a lot of everything. The focus was on quantity, not quality. Germany's approach was the opposite; build fewer things but each one would be almost perfect. "The Wehrmacht counted for tits margin of victory on 'qualitative superiority', on precision-made flawlessly performing, high-standard weapons.... [The result was] "lots of special ordering, and custom design that frustrated long production runs" (p648). One of the reasons for this was the virtue of necessity. The industrial force of the United States was "composed of ill-educated immigrants with scant industrial skills" (p 633). Since the dawn of the industrial age  "America's working class had placed a premium on organizing production around simple repetitive tasks that did not demand technical adeptness or extensive training" (p 623). This method allowed us to overwhelm the enemies with numbers of weapons.  "In the Pacific the disparities were especially dramatic. Every American combatant in the last year and a half of war...could draw on four tons of supplies; his Japanese opponent , just two pounds" (p 668 emphasis added) 

For years Russia clamored for England and American to launch a second front. By the time we were able to mount the D-day invasion in June 1944 Russia was making huge inroads on the eastern front and wasn't as demanding. One of the factors encouraging our invasion was the fact that had we not, Russia would have had a much stronger hand in Europe than they ended up with anyway. We had to protect or own interests against the Soviets.

As for the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was clear to me that there was no real discussion about it; it was just assumed that it would take place as soon as possible. Given the American experiences battling in the Pacific, I can totally understand it. 

Conclusion

After this tumultuous 16 year period from 1929 to 1945 American had changed mightily. The federal government had grown enormously and our place in the world had grown enormously. Throughout the early 1940's conservatives had successfully rolled back many parts of the New Deal. Many of the agencies had been shut down. But come the end of the day, "conservatives raised no hand against the child labor and minimum wage legislation, and banking and securities regulation. Those reforms were already firmly in place as untouchable pillars of the new social and economic order that Roosevelt had wrought out of the Depression crisis" (p783)

Looking forward

This is a fantastic book; it gave me a much better appreciation of the life of my parents' generation. It also has inspired me to go back and read about American history before 1920's. I've picked up a book on the Gilded Age: Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of America, 1877 - 1920 by Jackson Lears and will follow up with David Halberstam's book "The Fifites"

But before that, I'm doing my annual read of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. This little book is just marvelous. I highly recommend reading this. Years ago, when the kids were young, we would read it aloud. Heck; if no one is around I often read passages aloud to myself. One thing that always strikes me when I read this is how true to the original the 1980's TV movie of the story starring George C. Scott is.