How do you cook it?

The Oi said:

Butcher makes a huge difference.

Since I started smoking, I've been going to the butcher exclusively for shoulder and brisket. Brisket and shoulder are pretty crude hunks of meat, but there was still an obvious difference.

I've yet to buy steak or ribs at the butcher but I will do so.

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Since you're smoking meats, you might want to consider making your own sausages.

My wife started doing this (she's studying to be a chef now). We use a Kitchen-Aid mixer with the meat grinder and sausage maker attachments.

You grind your own pork, add your own seasoning, the run it back through the grinder for the second time but now through the casing.

It literally takes less than 10 minutes to make your own ground meats, and takes very little time to clean the mixer (just run bread through the grinder before washing).

I can only imagine how good they'd be in a fucking smoker.

thermometers are not the worst option, if they are inserted into the steak before it is cooked

if you puncture a cooked or partially cooked piece of meat you will lose juices

We also started making our own gyro meat, as a taste of home. My wife wanted to do something special and she knows I love Midwestern foods. No place has better food than the Midwest.

So she learned how to make gyro loaf. All you need is a food mixer and the rotisserie attachment for your grill. The shit is absolutely PERFECT.

If you can't find the Greek gyro-style flatbread, we started using a Jewish flatbread (name escapes me but starts with an "M") and it's very much like gyro bread.

You'd think the shit should be fatty, but, there's very little fat in it at all. It's one-piece of flatbread, some ground lamb shoulder and fresh vegetables.

gourimoko said:

Since you're smoking meats, you might want to consider making your own sausages.

My wife started doing this (she's studying to be a chef now). We use a Kitchen-Aid mixer with the meat grinder and sausage maker attachments.

You grind your own pork, add your own seasoning, the run it back through the grinder for the second time but now through the casing.

It literally takes less than 10 minutes to make your own ground meats, and takes very little time to clean the mixer (just run bread through the grinder before washing).

I can only imagine how good they'd be in a fucking smoker.

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THis sounds awesome. WHat kind of pork am I buying?

And yes, smoked sausage is tremendous.

A smoker is half the price of one of those Kitchen-Aids. A friend of mine got into making his own sausage. It's a lot of trial and error before you get used to the appropriate cut and appropriate amount of meat in the casing... but if you nail it, it's awesome.

this was one of the best days for consistent awesomeness in any thread in a long, long time.

natedagg said:

this was one of the best days for consistent awesomeness in any thread in a long, long time.

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Agree 100%

Great thread. Wish @gourimoko would hurry his black/egyptian/filipino/swedish ass up and tell me how to make sausage meat.

(I'll leave it to @NoTitleTown to police this post and determine whether it's "ok" or not.)

Found an awesome butcher shop just over the border in South Carolina and did some shopping today.



Can't wait to do some cooking now.

Cooked up that duck bacon earlier tonight in the form of duck bacon jam.



Pretty simple recipe. Cook the bacon, saute onions in the bacon fat, deglaze with coffee, add in sugar, balsamic, water, and the cooked bacon (chopped up), then simmer it for about 45 minutes and let it cool after that.

Came out really well for my first time making jam. It's got great flavor. I spread it on some biscuits I made tonight, and tomorrow for lunch I'm going to make crostini with the jam and some sharp cheddar. If I ever make it again, probably the only change I'd make it cutting the bacon into slightly smaller pieces so it's easier to spread.

Jack Brickman said:

Cooked up that duck bacon earlier tonight in the form of duck bacon jam.

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Holy hell.

Cooked up the rabbit last night. Beer braised it with a mix of some local beer (NoDa Hop Drop N' Roll because that was the only beer in my fridge), chili sauce, and a couple other things. If I ever use this recipe again, I think I'd go with a darker beer like a porter or stout. It was good as-is, but I think a good thick porter would make the sauce (which is just a water/flour mixture added to the liquid from the braising plus some additional beer) taste better.

It was good enough to get me laid, though, so bonus recipe points for that, although the two bottles of wine probably helped too.

Jack Brickman said:

Cooked up the rabbit last night. Beer braised it with a mix of some local beer (NoDa Hop Drop N' Roll because that was the only beer in my fridge), chili sauce, and a couple other things. If I ever use this recipe again, I think I'd go with a darker beer like a porter or stout. It was good as-is, but I think a good thick porter would make the sauce (which is just a water/flour mixture added to the liquid from the braising plus some additional beer) taste better.

It was good enough to get me laid, though, so bonus recipe points for that, although the two bottles of wine probably helped too.

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Dunno, but it sounds like you may have used raw flour and that might be why you're thinking you need a darker more full bodied beer.

I wouldn't recommend ever putting raw flour into a liquid to thicken it. You should instead make a roux of flour and butter in your hand, just squeeze butter and flour into well a blended paste with your hands. From there, you should pan-fry this, constantly stirring until you get it brown. The color will change from white, to yellow, to gold, and then from there to progressive stages of orange, red, maroon, brown and then black. Where you stop is up to you and what flavor you're trying to get out of the sauce. This is what you should always do to thicken a sauce if it calls for adding flour.

If this is too much of a pain, or if you are going for a much lighter sauce, then use corn starch, make a slurry, then add the slurry to your cooking liquid -- it won't have that raw flavor and will act as a better thickener.

When making a white wine-based sauce for poultry, I'll use corn starch if I don't have time to cook down enough ingredients to release enough starch into the sauce as it is. If I'm making a thicker, more full-bodied stew or gravy, then I'll use flour.

I'm not sure about the recipe you're using as the flavor profile isn't something I'm familiar with, but I usually cook game with fruit and wine, and I wouldn't ever add flour to that as it would mask the notes in the sauce - corn starch (or preferably a full-bodied stock) would be my preference.

Jack Brickman said:

Cooked up the rabbit last night. Beer braised it with a mix of some local beer (NoDa Hop Drop N' Roll because that was the only beer in my fridge), chili sauce, and a couple other things. If I ever use this recipe again, I think I'd go with a darker beer like a porter or stout. It was good as-is, but I think a good thick porter would make the sauce (which is just a water/flour mixture added to the liquid from the braising plus some additional beer) taste better.

It was good enough to get me laid, though, so bonus recipe points for that, although the two bottles of wine probably helped too.

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You eat like a fucking King all the time, it seems.

I bought Star Wars Mac & Cheese the other day and was fucking thrilled.

SixPACK said:

You eat like a fucking King all the time, it seems.

I bought Star Wars Mac & Cheese the other day and was fucking thrilled.

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Definitely not all the time, but I just went to a butcher shop and spent 115 bucks, so my fridge and freezer are currently stocked. I've still got the venison sausage and ground venison to cook up, in addition to cheddar and jalapeno sausages, a pound of quality ground steak (probably gonna make meatloaf or chili), and a couple of other things.

Oh, and a crapton of extra rabbit and duck bacon jam.

Jack Brickman said:

Definitely not all the time, but I just went to a butcher shop and spent 115 bucks, so my fridge and freezer are currently stocked. I've still got the venison sausage and ground venison to cook up, in addition to cheddar and jalapeno sausages, a pound of quality ground steak (probably gonna make meatloaf or chili), and a couple of other things.

Oh, and a crapton of extra rabbit and duck bacon jam.

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Man God damn dude, what the fuck butcher you going to and getting all that for only $115 bucks???!

The best butcher near me fucking sucks.