I’m overdue for a food post here. 🙂 I did this one a while back, and have just had too much drama to deal with.
Yes, UN-Fried Chicken
The Backstory:
Almost as fun as the cooking for me. It all started with the bottle of spice in the upper right corner of the picture. We found a cute little shop that sold spices for just about every kind of cooking you can think of. One of the bottles we bought was for fried chicken seasoning.
When it came time to do the chicken for dinner though, we were already behind schedule for the day and stressed out. I just plain didn’t feel like the mess of creating a batter dredge for the chicken. The end result is we decided to put the chicken on the smoker just using the seasonings without all the extra flour and oil.
Net Result:
Chicken that tasted exactly like fried chicken but with a deep smoke flavor also. It was really juicy and tender. Total winner; all the flavor of fried chicken with none of the fat and carbs!
Delicious!
We had it plain the first night, but the leftovers got served with veggies and topped with a bit of cream of mushroom soup as gravy:
This one was a fun experiment that turned out much better than I expected. It just goes to show that there are options for making classic unhealthy food into something healthy that still tastes great. It’s a process of discovery I’m enjoying more and more.
While I did mine on our Rec-Tec pellet smoker, this could just as easily be done baked in an oven. I’d recommend on a wire rack to let the skin crisp just a little as it bakes.
I teased in a reply to my burger post that I would be doing NY Steak tonight. I did too! The equally fabulous side dish ends up SORT OF getting the headline though. For those who don’t know, I *love* Tex-Mex cooking. Three peppers in particular are my absolute favorites; Chipotle, Tomatillo and Hatch.
Hatch chilis are green chilis grown around the Hatch, New Mexico area. They can get as hot as Jalapenos, but typically are fairly mild. Great for when you have somebody who doesn’t like hot food, but can appreciate savory, OR you want to add some flavor to an otherwise delicate food.
Trying to tell Hatch that they’re not the chili capital is like trying to tell a Texan they didn’t invent BBQ by the way. LOL. More on the side dish in a minute. First lets take a look at that slow cooked New York Steak:
Just a hair overdone today. They came out on the low end of Medium. Slow smoking them meant they were still moist and tender though
Slow smoked for almost 2 hours at 185 degrees (85 Celsius). You can see that delicious Hickory and Mesquite smoke ring in the first picture. Topped off with a little Sucklebusters 1836 seasoning rubbed in before cooking, and it’s nearly perfection.
Not an affiliate link BTW, just one of the companies I trust to do right by people and make a killer product. All their rubs and seasonings are good.
The show stealer turned out to be the baby Yukon Gold potatoes with hatch pepper seasoning though. Just something I found at Kroger. Fabulous flavor, and something I’ll try again. 🙂 Next time, I’ll try to do the Hatch seasoning myself and will hopefully have a recipe for you all.
Oh, and did I forget the Chocolate Sea Salt Caramel Mousse for dessert? 😀
Yes, a little more humor there as I try not to go full on redhead on our obscenely noisy upstairs neighbors. Either way, I’ve been neglecting the food posts portion of the blog here for a while so… It’s time for Monte Cristo sandwiches. If you’ve never heard of them, don’t worry. It’s an American thing and a spin on a French croque-monsieur.
Simply put, you egg wash some bread, pile on layers of ham, turkey and cheese (swiss in the standard version), and then cook the Monte Cristo in a pan to toast the bread, warm the meat and melt the cheese. Click on the link there to see what AllRecipe.com’s tasty looking version looks like. Mine turned out fairly close, and isn’t bad for a first try:
I went a little crazy on mine, using brioche bread, garlic aioli, and chipotle gouda and smoked cheddar cheese. Brioche may not be the best bread for such a creation. Given how soft it already is, it doesn’t hold up to the egg wash well. BUT overall I’d call this one a success with room for improvement. 🙂
My latest kitchen adventure involved slow smoking a tomahawk cut two pound Ribeye steak, and some homemade (not quite) Macaroni and Cheese. OK, so first the side dish.
I say not quite Mac because every pasta shape has a different name. The store was cleaned out of the usual mini sea shell shaped pasta I like (it does a great job of holding cheese), and most of what was left in-stock was known to be poor quality brands. I ended up settling on Orecchiette. Close enough, I figured.
Add in some diced panchetta and ton of cheese and we had the start of something good:
I know, odd combination of cheeses, but it worked… Other than how oily the cheddar was. After the cheese was melted and the pasta cooked, into the pan it went with some panko bread crumbs on top. Cook till the Panko is golden brown and we had a delicious side dish:
Yes, I got a little too much pepper on top to make a pretty picture. It did stir into the mix fine though.
Hint; they’re not really talking about food here, LOL
And then there was the giant, man-eating steak, slow smoked for two and a half hours:
Normally, I’d have pulled it off the smoker at 100 degrees internal temperature and then dropped it on the charcoal grill just long enough to get a nice sear and reach a perfect medium rare internal temp of 135. No charcoal grills allowed at the apartments though.
We divided the steak in two and each had half, since it was a steak-asaurus.
And that was Labor Day dinner here at Chateau de Silk.
Oh yes… The baked potato. A standard gourmet preparation there. After washing the potato, pat it dry, then rub olive oil into it and douse with salt, pepper and garlic. Baked unwrapped. You’ll get an amazingly tasty crisp skin. on the tater.
Yes, a 2 for 1 here. After trying the Korean Bulgogi recipe that’s been in my family for a good 40 years on chicken, I threatened to try it on pork as well. When I did spare ribs yesterday, I did just that. One one rack of ribs anyway. The other was old school Texas.
All that was missing was a little green onion added to the Asian ribs as garnish, and some sauce for the regular ribs, but that came later. 😉
The flavor was heavenly on both. I’ve seen a ton of complicated recipes to get ribs to turn out flavorful on a pellet smoker. Nothing beats plain old LOW and slow at 185 for 6 hours however. The only extra is a light basting with apple juice every 45 minutes or so to keep them moist. Results? Judge for yourself:
Magnificent smoke ring on both of them, and deep flavor. The Bulgogi ribs tasted like the best Chinese (well, Korean) restaurant food you’ve ever had. 🙂
OK so actually, Tri-Tip is sirloin, not round, LOL. I’m past due for another cooking post however, and I finally managed to find a tri-tip out here. That alone took an act of God. I had no idea when I moved that Tennessee was full of BBQ Philistines who didn’t know what Tri-Tip was, LOL.
These also came pre-marinated, which I didn’t care for, but it was a case of beggars can’t be choosers.
Meat Buying Tip: Do NOT buy the dry pre-seasoned meats from the local grocery store (or Costco). They use the old, nearly expired pieces to make those, and let the spices piled on them cover up that the meat is turning color. Pre-packaged marinade cuts of meat tend to be lower quality as well.
Anyhow, I managed to turn this one into a solid success:
Add in some side dishes and we had a great meal:
One problem with marinading meats shows in the slices above. It’s clearly tender, but the marinade blocked much of the smoke flavor from getting into the meat. The smoke ring is faint, and not very deep.
So let’s hop in the way-back machine and go back to the start though. 😁 I had talked last time I tried “beer can” chicken that I was going to do it again as soon as I got a normal sized porcelain ‘throne’, so that it would actually fit in the smoker. Well, the replacements came in a few days ago.
So, it was time to get busy! Since these chicken thrones make for virtually unlimited options in what you use to steam the inside of the chicken, I decided to do something really different. My uncle brought back a marinade recipe decades ago from Korea when he was in the Navy. Looking online, apparently it’s bulgogi, but it’s not anywhere as sickeningly sweet as the stuff I’ve tried from Costco and a few other places. So anyway… Yeah… Insert Hipster joke or meme here.
Being bulgogi, it’s intended for beef, but I branched out and tried it on chicken with great success (so long as you don’t over-marinate it). Here’s that recipe, in the quantities he used it for a couple of pounds of short ribs:
Korean Short Rib Marinade (bulgogi)
1/3 a cup of soy sauce
1/3 a cup of water
1/4 cup of white or yellow onion, chopped
1 or 2 scallions (green onions), chopped
2 Tablespoons of sesame seeds
2 Tablespoons of sugar
2 cloves of finely minced or pressed garlic
1/2 a teaspoon of pepper
A couple of quick notes here:
First, the original recipe also called for 1/4 a teaspoon of MSG. Given the bad rap that MSG has, I don’t use it though. I’ve also considered adding a tablespoon or two of freshly grated ginger, but haven’t tried it yet.
I’ve tried this on several cuts of beef such as tri-tip and tenderloin with great results. It works good with chicken also, but marinade times will vary. Beef you can do overnight and have great flavor when you cook. Chicken, you only want to do about an hour to and hour and a half per pound. I suspect it would work well on pork also IF it’s done for the same time as the chicken.
This is also one of those sauces that is best made the day before. It gives the flavors time to blend fully. That gives you the faint nutty flavor of the sesame seeds and the savoriness of the garlic and onion also. If you just throw it together and go, esp without thorough mixing, it’ll taste more like a cross between Teriyaki and Soy Sauce.
Lastly, Soy Sauce: I typically use low sodium soy sauce for food, BUT in the case of this marinade, I use regular soy sauce. The reason being that the marinade acts like a brine and tenderizes the meat. That’s primarily due to the salt in the soy sauce. Besides, with it being diluted with equal parts water, it’s not that strong.
Back to the Chicken!
So, I whipped up the marinade and put it and the chicken into a pot:
the smell was heavenly
Because this was a nearly 4 pound chicken, and the pot wasn’t exactly a snug fit, I had to increase all the marinade recipe portions. I used a full 2 cups of soy sauce and water. I could have used less if I had broke the chicken down but then I couldn’t have put it on the throne. About 2/3 of a cup of the finished marinade went into the ‘throne’ also, instead of into the pot.
I let the chicken marinate 4 hours, then pulled it out of the pot and patted it dry with a paper towel. The next step was to rub some salt pepper and garlic into the skin. Given that I was doing an Asian dish, I added some sesame seeds also. With that, we were ready to go.
If I had been thinking, and had any on hand, I likely would have substituted Chinese five spice for the salt, pepper and garlic rub. I smoked it low and SLOW for two hours, which got the internal temperature to about 125 F. At that point, I turned the pellet smoker up to 350 F and cooked it for another 25 minutes to get the internal temperature to a proper 165 degrees F and crisp up the skin.
It turned out better than I’d hoped. Between the marinade, and the steaming from the throne, the chicken was so moist and tender it was unreal. Add some homemade white cheddar biscuits and mixed veggies on the side, and it was a fabulous meal:
And if you really want to see how moist that chicken turned out, check out this drumstick:
The color is due to a combination of the marinade and being smoked low and slow for two hours. It was properly cooked to 165 F internal temperature (as previously mentioned). 👍
I wasn’t planning on posting about last night’s dinner. We simply did hot dogs as something quick and easy after having to take the cats to the vet.
Granted, they were GOOD hot dogs:
Even better than I had hoped actually, and we got them on sale for the same price as the standard run of the mill hot dogs. Even more so with Brioche bakery buns.
So here’s where the horror and comedy come in: I’m opening up the can of chili to heat up so we can have chili cheese dogs. The ONE brand of canned chili we liked while living back West isn’t out here, so we tried THIS…
The cats ignore me opening the can for a while, but eventually wander over and decide that the chili smells like cat food and start pitching a fit, LOL.
Well, I don’t know about cat food, but as it turned out, it was pretty bad. Not Hormel chili bad (nothing else, not even raw sewage is that bad), but I’ve had MUCH better. Time to look into making my own hot dog chili for those rare times we do them.
Still, the quality of the meat and bun and cheese saved the meal, and the finished product made a pretty picture:
OH and no, the leftover chili got tossed NOT fed to the cats. They did get a can of wet real kitty food though.
This at least gives me something to post today while I work on my Asian fusion smoked whole chicken for tonight. 😀
I’m a day late posting it too, but I’ve been in a mood lately. None the less, here’s the homemade meatloaf that I cooked on the smoker last night. 😊
OK, a little greasy in that fresh off the smoker picture, and I used a pizza tray as opposed to a bread pan so that more smoke would permeate the meat. Here’s the plated final result:
The bread items were lunch leftovers brought home by my other half, so that saved me a little cooking, LOL. The red around the outer edge of the meat is not ketchup either; that’s the actual smoke flavor penetrating the meat.
That shot shows the smoke ring, such as it was, and how moist the meatloaf was. Unfortunately I forgot and put the A1 sauce on the surface early, and that kept the smoke from penetrating deeper.
THE RECIPE:
First, credit where it’s due; my recipe is a modified version of “Not Your Momma’s Meatloaf” from the Traeger Grills website. Traeger actually has some fairly good recipes, BUT they don’t know how to use their own (junk) grills low and slow. Everything at least used to be 350 degrees. Might as well use an oven at that temperature. You won’t get any smoke flavor.
Ingredients:
1 1/4 Lb of Ground Beef – not more than 20% fat content to avoid excessive grease
1 Lb of sausage of your choice, or another meat like pork or veal. I used Italian sausage last night.
2 Eggs, beaten
1 Cup of bread crumbs.
1 Cup of milk
1/4 Cup of diced Onion, ideally a mild variety.
2 Teaspoons of Salt
1 Teaspoon of garlic powder
1/2 Teaspoon of Sage
1/4 cup Worcestershire Sauce
A-1 Steak Sauce or BBQ Sauce to be added later
Prep Work:
Prep on this is pretty easy. First, mix together everything except the meats and the BBQ or A1 sauce in a bowl. After it’s all blended together nicely, add in the meat and thoroughly work everything together. Typically, this is hand work, but I’ve found my Kitchenaid stand mixer works fine and keeps my hands neater. Just allow a little extra time vs hand mixing.
At this point, I add the meatloaf to a bread pan to give it some shape. If you’re preparing this early, you can cover the pan and put it in the fridge at this point. It’ll maintain a better shape during cooking as an added bonus.
Prep is very quick if you’re organized and the meat is fresh or defrosted. It should only take about 15 minutes.
Cooking:
There are a couple of options here. First is to just put it in an oven at 350 degrees and cook it for about an hour. If you go this route, just put the steak sauce or BBQ sauce on the top before it goes in the oven.
Side Note: Steak or BBQ sauce gives the meatloaf a more robust flavor than Ketchup in my opinion.
Now, if you have a smoker of either sort (stick burner or pellet grill), get it to about 200 degrees F and put the meatloaf on a wire rack or a ventilated pizza tray like I used. It’ll take a little over 2 hours to cook this way, but the meatloaf will be even moister and have that delicious wood fire flavor. When you’re about 20 minutes till finish, baste on the steak sauce or BBQ sauce, and turn up the heat to 350 or so. That will put a nice reverse sear on the meat, and make sure that sauce is baked on.
Putting the sauce on sooner will block the smoke penetration, which is why you wait if slow cooking.
Pull the meatloaf off the heat when it hits an internal temperature of about 140 F, let it rest for 5 to 10 minutes, then serve.
😀
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