Blessings Darlings!
The funniest part of Eating While Broke - and there really are LOTS of funny things to it - is the 'creating meals out of the stuff buried in the freezer' part. We're spending almost no money at the store any more - only milk, cat food, and a few odds and ends this week (small yogurt, can of water chestnuts, egg roll wrappers, etc) - but the Chubby Hubby thinks this week's menus are totally outstanding.
Sunday - Home made pizza, salad, fruit.
Monday - Stir Fry using Reduced price Mystery Raw Meat, home grown cabbage, home sprouted bean sprouts, and rice.
Tuesday - Shish Ka Bob, using reduced priced beef, home grown zucchini, and onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, served in home-made pita. May need yogurt for sauce.
Wednesday - Korean Seafood Pancakes and ... probably seasoned bean sprouts.
Thursday - Kalbi (Korean BBQ Ribs) using reduced price thin flanken, rice, green beans, salad
Friday - Fried Chicken - from reduced price chicken, potatoes, broccoli, salad
Saturday - Pulled Pork - last of those 50 cent a pound pork shoulders, cole slaw, rolls, fried leftover potatoes
Sunday - Egg Rolls from scratch, using the pulled pork and some salad shrimp. Will probably buy rather than make wrappers.
Monday - Rumaki - we now have a bag full of frozen livers from whole chickens we've bought. Will need to buy a can of sliced water chestnuts, spicy green beans, rice, salad
And when I type reduced price I mean the meat was already on sale but hadn't moved, so the store knocked the price down lower. Cabbage, bean sprouts, and green beans from the garden are the main vegetables used this week. Zucchini will start taking over next week. Garden cucumbers and more cabbage are in salads.
The fried chicken and the rumaki are the only things that use 'intact' pieces of meat ... and in the rumaki's case the pieces are accumulated livers from whole birds made extraordinary. The rest all use meat cut small and mixed with other stuff.
I've got sweet corn, but no idea where to fit it in. I may freeze it. Also have 6 granny smith apples, which I'll probably bake for desserts. As a result of that ... we may need to buy some whipped cream.
Frondly, Fern
Showing posts with label pulled pork. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pulled pork. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Monday, February 13, 2012
Pulled Pork
Blessings Darlings!
After I mentioned that my pulled pork rocked, Grey Raven mentioned that she'd love a good pulled pork recipe. Well, I can give you PART of one - the Chubby Hubby won't let me share his BBQ sauce recipe!
I usually start with a whole Boston butt/pork shoulder roast, bone-in. Because I can usually get that on sale cheap. They weight in at about 8 pounds.
The night before cooking I heavily apply Memphis rub, a Steve Reichlan recipe. You can see it here http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/aspen-2002-memphis-dry-rub-ribs. It's one of my favorite rubs, I used it the other day on the wings we had while ignoring the Super Bowl. Added tidbit - mixed half with brown sugar it's the rub I use on pork ribs, too.
For the smoking, I roll our trusty Char Broil BBQ/Smoker out of the garage. It has a separate smoker attachment, so you can smoke or grill with it. And it uses real charcoal or wood - none of this gas grill stuff for us!
I start before noon, soaking hickory chips (or cherry, I like both for this. CH only likes oak when smoking briskets). And, yes, I use chips, not chunks or logs of the smoking wood. I get more smoke and lower temperatures this way.
After they've soaked 45 minutes or so, I start the charcoal - in a chimney. I don't like the smell/etc of charcoal starter fluid. OTOH, I'm using Kingsford charcoal not natural charcoal, so it's not like I'm a total purist. Just a somewhat obsessed Foodie!
Coals well started, they go in the smoker attachment. Rubbed roast in the main body at the middle or far end from the smoker attachment so I can smoke it low and slow. Add a handful of soaked chips, close it all up (chimney open less than half way), and it's under way. Every 15 or 20 minutes I'm out there adding another handful of chips for two hours. At about 1 1/2 hours I add a bit more charcoal, too.
We've now reached the 2 hour mark. Instead of adding soaked hickory chips I add a hardwood log from our woodpile, and while that catches I plop the roast in a disposable aluminum pan and securely wrap the pan and roast in heavy duty aluminum foil. Back on to the grill, but now I let the temperature go hot and cook the roast thru - wood logs are the best for that. Wrapped, it stays juicier.
That goes on until the roast hits about 190 degrees. At this point my husband takes it in and pulls it. I know, Alton Brown lets HIS rest before pulling it, but the CH feels that resting makes it too hard to pull.
Once pulled, or at least once enough has been pulled for the family, we slap it on hard rolls, slather it with sauce, eat, and repeat.
Enjoy!
Frondly, Fern
After I mentioned that my pulled pork rocked, Grey Raven mentioned that she'd love a good pulled pork recipe. Well, I can give you PART of one - the Chubby Hubby won't let me share his BBQ sauce recipe!
I usually start with a whole Boston butt/pork shoulder roast, bone-in. Because I can usually get that on sale cheap. They weight in at about 8 pounds.
The night before cooking I heavily apply Memphis rub, a Steve Reichlan recipe. You can see it here http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/aspen-2002-memphis-dry-rub-ribs. It's one of my favorite rubs, I used it the other day on the wings we had while ignoring the Super Bowl. Added tidbit - mixed half with brown sugar it's the rub I use on pork ribs, too.
For the smoking, I roll our trusty Char Broil BBQ/Smoker out of the garage. It has a separate smoker attachment, so you can smoke or grill with it. And it uses real charcoal or wood - none of this gas grill stuff for us!
I start before noon, soaking hickory chips (or cherry, I like both for this. CH only likes oak when smoking briskets). And, yes, I use chips, not chunks or logs of the smoking wood. I get more smoke and lower temperatures this way.
After they've soaked 45 minutes or so, I start the charcoal - in a chimney. I don't like the smell/etc of charcoal starter fluid. OTOH, I'm using Kingsford charcoal not natural charcoal, so it's not like I'm a total purist. Just a somewhat obsessed Foodie!
Coals well started, they go in the smoker attachment. Rubbed roast in the main body at the middle or far end from the smoker attachment so I can smoke it low and slow. Add a handful of soaked chips, close it all up (chimney open less than half way), and it's under way. Every 15 or 20 minutes I'm out there adding another handful of chips for two hours. At about 1 1/2 hours I add a bit more charcoal, too.
We've now reached the 2 hour mark. Instead of adding soaked hickory chips I add a hardwood log from our woodpile, and while that catches I plop the roast in a disposable aluminum pan and securely wrap the pan and roast in heavy duty aluminum foil. Back on to the grill, but now I let the temperature go hot and cook the roast thru - wood logs are the best for that. Wrapped, it stays juicier.
That goes on until the roast hits about 190 degrees. At this point my husband takes it in and pulls it. I know, Alton Brown lets HIS rest before pulling it, but the CH feels that resting makes it too hard to pull.
Once pulled, or at least once enough has been pulled for the family, we slap it on hard rolls, slather it with sauce, eat, and repeat.
Enjoy!
Frondly, Fern
Friday, May 27, 2011
Holiday Eats
Blessings, Darlings!
I'm working on the food for the holiday weekend right now - menus and shopping lists.
Pulled pork meal: have roast, made rub, have slaw ingredients, have rolls, need to make sauce but have sauce ingredients.
Beer-can chicken: have beer, have can, have chicken, have rub. Have taters. Have green beans and have salad ingredients.
Brats meal: have brats, buns, more slaw ingredients, mustard, need chips.
Need one more dinner .... I guess eggs or spaghetti and sauce, since I've got all ingredients for those meals.
What's on your menu?
Frondly, Fern
I'm working on the food for the holiday weekend right now - menus and shopping lists.
Pulled pork meal: have roast, made rub, have slaw ingredients, have rolls, need to make sauce but have sauce ingredients.
Beer-can chicken: have beer, have can, have chicken, have rub. Have taters. Have green beans and have salad ingredients.
Brats meal: have brats, buns, more slaw ingredients, mustard, need chips.
Need one more dinner .... I guess eggs or spaghetti and sauce, since I've got all ingredients for those meals.
What's on your menu?
Frondly, Fern
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Cheap menus
Blessings Darlings!
I was asked what my menus are for this funds-free time/cash-flow problem. So, here you go!
Breakfasts are mostly hot cereal - oatmeal with dry milk, dry fruit, nuts or grits or cornmeal mush.
Lunches are soups, often with open face grilled cheese, and with an apple or orange. I make a gallon or so of soup once or twice a week. Currently we are having split pea soup.
The dinner menu is where the variability is. Now, while we are currently working on a $40 a week budget for 3 adults and two cats, before we were on an $80 per week budget. That allowed me to fill the freezer and pantry, and is allowing us to eat a larger variety of foods now. I'm only buying meat for one meal in the next 3 weeks, altho' I am buying eggs and cheese.
So, our dinners for the first 3 weeks of 'middle class survival' eating are:
Shrimp Yaki Soba, using cabbage, carrots, and home-sprouted bean sprouts.
Sausages (in hot dog buns), potatoes, cole slaw.
Stew with beef (beef is leftovers from a previous dinner.)
Eggs - veggie omelets for Chubby Hubby and I, sandwich for Spawn; and fruit and home made rolls. We'll do this once a week.
Pork Fried Rice, featuring more home sprouted bean sprouts.
Fried Chicken - we will have this 3 times - I made a lot and froze it because chicken was on a GREAT sale; home-canned corn, veggies
Pasta Carbonera, salad, veggies
Superbowl Sunday - okay, I'm buying a pound of deli meat/cheese and one tomato and making subs. But I'll make the bread and cole slaw myself. And pop corn, not chips.
Corned beef - I've a corned beef brisket in the freezer. This will be at least two meals, maybe 3.
Chicken or pork stir fry - more cabbage/carrots/bean sprouts in use, rice. Once a week.
Pasta with meat sauce, salad, veggies. Some pasta once or twice a week.
Home-made steak and cheese, because we have thin sliced raw beef in the freezer and I can make rolls. More cole slaw with this, and potatoes.
Tacos - filling half beef and half black bean. Taco bell has nothing on me. I can make tacos where the filling is only 38% beef myself!
Spanish rice.
Pulled pork (we smoked a pork shoulder that was at a GREAT price recently)
Veggie Flautas
Mackerel/salmon patties/crouquettes
Pancakes
Waffles
Remember
I can do this because I have a fairly full pantry. I've not even worked the canned ham or tuna into rotation, mostly because I think the guys will be using them for half sandwiches at lunch when we don't have cheese. Or we could use them at dinners with soups, an have peanut butter at lunch. We have options.
I was asked what my menus are for this funds-free time/cash-flow problem. So, here you go!
Breakfasts are mostly hot cereal - oatmeal with dry milk, dry fruit, nuts or grits or cornmeal mush.
Lunches are soups, often with open face grilled cheese, and with an apple or orange. I make a gallon or so of soup once or twice a week. Currently we are having split pea soup.
The dinner menu is where the variability is. Now, while we are currently working on a $40 a week budget for 3 adults and two cats, before we were on an $80 per week budget. That allowed me to fill the freezer and pantry, and is allowing us to eat a larger variety of foods now. I'm only buying meat for one meal in the next 3 weeks, altho' I am buying eggs and cheese.
So, our dinners for the first 3 weeks of 'middle class survival' eating are:
Shrimp Yaki Soba, using cabbage, carrots, and home-sprouted bean sprouts.
Sausages (in hot dog buns), potatoes, cole slaw.
Stew with beef (beef is leftovers from a previous dinner.)
Eggs - veggie omelets for Chubby Hubby and I, sandwich for Spawn; and fruit and home made rolls. We'll do this once a week.
Pork Fried Rice, featuring more home sprouted bean sprouts.
Fried Chicken - we will have this 3 times - I made a lot and froze it because chicken was on a GREAT sale; home-canned corn, veggies
Pasta Carbonera, salad, veggies
Superbowl Sunday - okay, I'm buying a pound of deli meat/cheese and one tomato and making subs. But I'll make the bread and cole slaw myself. And pop corn, not chips.
Corned beef - I've a corned beef brisket in the freezer. This will be at least two meals, maybe 3.
Chicken or pork stir fry - more cabbage/carrots/bean sprouts in use, rice. Once a week.
Pasta with meat sauce, salad, veggies. Some pasta once or twice a week.
Home-made steak and cheese, because we have thin sliced raw beef in the freezer and I can make rolls. More cole slaw with this, and potatoes.
Tacos - filling half beef and half black bean. Taco bell has nothing on me. I can make tacos where the filling is only 38% beef myself!
Spanish rice.
Pulled pork (we smoked a pork shoulder that was at a GREAT price recently)
Veggie Flautas
Mackerel/salmon patties/crouquettes
Pancakes
Waffles
Remember
I can do this because I have a fairly full pantry. I've not even worked the canned ham or tuna into rotation, mostly because I think the guys will be using them for half sandwiches at lunch when we don't have cheese. Or we could use them at dinners with soups, an have peanut butter at lunch. We have options.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Low and Slow
Blessings, Darlings!
Being foodies, we're celebrating the unusually warm October weather by continuing to heavily use the BBQ grill and smoker. Tonight will be a beer-can chicken. Last week it was a sirloin tip roast (I didn't name that, it was on the package). Last night it was .... drumroll, please ..... a truly outstanding pork shoulder butt.
It has taken us a LONG LONG time to master cooking roasts on the grill/smoker. We gave lip service to 'low and slow', but only really put it into action over the past few years. Now we'll probably never go back (except when using a pressure cooker, which is a TOTALLY different animal).
Yes, it took a LOT of time to do the pork butt. We - I sprinkled and Bob rotated the meat and rubbed it in - ever so carefully anointed it with rub (Steve Raichlen's Memphis rub) the night before. It sat on a platter in the dorm fridge overnight (some day I might post on where I keep raw meat, and why). The next morning, early, I started soaking the wood chips. The wood chips HAD to be hickory. They had to be chips, not chunks, as even the best-soaked chunks tend to smoke just a short while and then burn. The grates had to be washed, since there wasn't going to be direct heat to burn off the bits from the last thing we cooked on them. Washing grates is pretty miserable work, especially since my husband has a 'use no soap on them' rule. Thus, HE got to wash the grates. Charcoal was started in the chimney.
By 11:00 am, charcoal was in the smoker, soaked chips were on the charcoal, the rubbed roast was on the grates, and smoking had begun! For the next 2 hours I was outside every 15 minutes adding chips. The temperature in the grill stayed about 150 degrees.
At 12:45 I prepared to change gears. I started to pre-heat the oven to 325. Yes, the in-the-house-oven. Why, when the grill was already going?
Because I have learned, the hard way, that I can't maintain a great even temperature in the grill. I don't mind adding logs to the charcoal - the only way to get the temperature as high as I want it. What I can't do is keep an eye on it ALL THE DAMN TIME to keep it at the temperature I want, increasing and decreasing air flow, adding wood, rotating the roast because the heat comes in from one side and it takes lot of rotating to cook it evenly.
At 1:00 I wrapped the roast in heavy duty aluminum foil, put it in a pan for easy handling and to catch drips, and lovingly put it in the oven. Where it remained until 5:00.
The result? A hunk of pork with excellent flavor, a smoke ring to die for, and cooked to a turn. The meat 'pulled' easily, the fat and collagen melted and buttery. Meat was pulled, put on a crispy bun, the sacred Doctor Bob-B-Que sauce (my husband's creation) added. Cole slaw, of course, completed the meal. I wish good sweet corn was still available, but, alas, October is too late for that.
Don't you wish you were here?
Frondly, Fern
Being foodies, we're celebrating the unusually warm October weather by continuing to heavily use the BBQ grill and smoker. Tonight will be a beer-can chicken. Last week it was a sirloin tip roast (I didn't name that, it was on the package). Last night it was .... drumroll, please ..... a truly outstanding pork shoulder butt.
It has taken us a LONG LONG time to master cooking roasts on the grill/smoker. We gave lip service to 'low and slow', but only really put it into action over the past few years. Now we'll probably never go back (except when using a pressure cooker, which is a TOTALLY different animal).
Yes, it took a LOT of time to do the pork butt. We - I sprinkled and Bob rotated the meat and rubbed it in - ever so carefully anointed it with rub (Steve Raichlen's Memphis rub) the night before. It sat on a platter in the dorm fridge overnight (some day I might post on where I keep raw meat, and why). The next morning, early, I started soaking the wood chips. The wood chips HAD to be hickory. They had to be chips, not chunks, as even the best-soaked chunks tend to smoke just a short while and then burn. The grates had to be washed, since there wasn't going to be direct heat to burn off the bits from the last thing we cooked on them. Washing grates is pretty miserable work, especially since my husband has a 'use no soap on them' rule. Thus, HE got to wash the grates. Charcoal was started in the chimney.
By 11:00 am, charcoal was in the smoker, soaked chips were on the charcoal, the rubbed roast was on the grates, and smoking had begun! For the next 2 hours I was outside every 15 minutes adding chips. The temperature in the grill stayed about 150 degrees.
At 12:45 I prepared to change gears. I started to pre-heat the oven to 325. Yes, the in-the-house-oven. Why, when the grill was already going?
Because I have learned, the hard way, that I can't maintain a great even temperature in the grill. I don't mind adding logs to the charcoal - the only way to get the temperature as high as I want it. What I can't do is keep an eye on it ALL THE DAMN TIME to keep it at the temperature I want, increasing and decreasing air flow, adding wood, rotating the roast because the heat comes in from one side and it takes lot of rotating to cook it evenly.
At 1:00 I wrapped the roast in heavy duty aluminum foil, put it in a pan for easy handling and to catch drips, and lovingly put it in the oven. Where it remained until 5:00.
The result? A hunk of pork with excellent flavor, a smoke ring to die for, and cooked to a turn. The meat 'pulled' easily, the fat and collagen melted and buttery. Meat was pulled, put on a crispy bun, the sacred Doctor Bob-B-Que sauce (my husband's creation) added. Cole slaw, of course, completed the meal. I wish good sweet corn was still available, but, alas, October is too late for that.
Don't you wish you were here?
Frondly, Fern
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
