Category Archives: Pork

Chili Verde

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Despite our lack of snow, winter is here and I’ve wanted to make a hearty stew. I showed this Chile Verde recipe from Simple Recipes to my dear wife, and the next thing I knew we were on our way to our favorite mercado to pick up the ingredients.

2 pounds tomatillos
1 head garlic, whole
2 jalapenos
1 bunch cilantro leaves
5 pounds pork shoulder (aka pork butt)
2 large white onion
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon ancho chile powder
2 1/2 cups chicken stock
1 (7-ounce) can diced green chiles
Olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

This recipe boosts the flavor and adds some smoky goodness to the dish by fire-roasting all of the veggies first, so set your grill up for a direct cook at 500°F. While it is getting up to temp, prep the veggies by husking the tomatillos and cutting the onion in half, leaving the root end and skin on.

Put the tomatillos, onions, and jalapenos directly on the grill. They will cook at different rates, so use a pair of tongs to keep everything moving. Start the onions cut side down and flip when they get some nice grill marks, about 3 minutes. Let them finish cooking skin side down so they kind of roast in their own juices. Turn the tomatillos and peppers often so that they pick up a nice char. Remove the peppers when the skin is mostly blistered. Pull the tomatillos and onions when they start to soften. Put the garlic on just as you’re taking the smaller tomatillos off and cook for just a couple of minutes until the papery skin starts to char.

Once the veggies are done, you can move inside to the oven or set up the grill for an indirect cook. I opted for the “more fire = good” option and set the Big Green Egg up for a 350°F cook using the plate setter and a trivet to diffuse the heat.

While waiting for the veggies to get cool enough to handle, trim the excess fat from the pork butt and cut the meat into 2-inch chunks.

Load the meat into a large, oiled Dutch oven and season with a little salt and pepper. Move the uncovered Dutch oven to the grill and let the pork cook, stirring every 15 minutes, until the meat is browned and most of the fat has rendered out, about 2 hours.

While the meat is cooking, peel the garlic, skin and quarter the onions, and skin and seed the peppers. Load all the roasted veggies, cilantro, and half the chicken stock into the food processor for a whirl.

Pulse all of the ingredients until they are finely chopped and start to form a smooth sauce. Add more chicken stock if needed.

Once the pork is nicely browned and rendered, pour off all but a couple tablespoons of fat from the Dutch oven. Pour the verde sauce over the pork and add the cumin, green chiles, oregano, chile powder, and the rest of the chicken stock. Stir to combine. Add just enough water (about a cup) so that the meat is just floating in the sauce.

Put the lid on the Dutch oven, close the grill, and let everything simmer together for an hour, stirring about every 15 minutes. 

Add another cup of water to the Dutch oven and let it cook, uncovered, until the pork is falling apart and the chili has reduced to a thick stew (about 1 hour). Adjust the seasoning to taste with salt, pepper, and a maybe a little more chile powder.

Served as a stew with tortilla chips on the side. It’s also great with rice and beans (with plenty of corn toritilas for chasing the sauce) or cook it until it’s a little thicker for taco filling.

The Verdict: ★★★★½ This thick, meaty stew was wonderful. I left just enough fat in the pan so that the sauce was luscious and rich. The pork and cumin provided a meaty base while the peppers and the tomatillos added a nice green heat at the top.

The original recipes included some anaheim or poblano chiles, and I would add those next time to give the dish a little more “middle” heat.

The Nutrition: Lusciousness comes at a price – 439 calories per 2-cup serving and 11 Weight Watchers points. Drain off more of the oil and serve it over sauteed bell peppers and onions to make it a little healthier.

ONE YEAR AGO – STICKY HOG BARBECUE SAUCE
TWO YEARS AGO – COUNTRY-STYLE RIBS

 

A McRib it Ain’t

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It is astonishing that a company can throw a load of chemical crap together and still call it food.

Well, there’s no restructured meat product, ammonium sulfate, polysorbate 80, or azodicarbonamide here. Just some fine smoked rib meat picked off the bones from the Minimalist Rib cook, shredded a bit, loaded onto an Udi’s gluten-free bun, and topped with a little Honey Hog barbecue sauce.

Yummmmmm!

Minimalist Ribs

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Every so often you just need to break a recipe down to the basics. I make some fine ribs (if I do say so myself), but I think I’m starting to get mired down in all the bells and whistles - mustard slather, spice rubs, misting, foiling, 3-2-1, saucing, blah, blah, blah…

In an attempt to pare down the ribs to their smoky/savory/tender essence, here’s my minimalist recipe:

3 racks of baby-back ribs
Fresh-ground sea salt
Fresh-ground back pepper

I set the Big Green Egg up for a raised direct cook at 300°F. I didn’t use a plate setter to diffuse the heat, but did use a Woo2 extender to raise the cooking grid up about 4 inches further from the heat.

While the Egg was getting up to temp, I seasoned both sides of the ribs with the salt and pepper. Yep – nothing but salt and pepper. And just a moderate coating, as you can see, they weren’t caked with seasoning.

I put in a good sized chunk of apple wood for smoke, and when the smoke changed from white (bad) to blue (good), I put the ribs on bone side down for an hour, then flipped them and let them go for another hour.

I figured it would take about 3 hours at 300°F, but when I flipped them at the 2 hour mark they were already showing signs of being done – the slabs started to crack when I picked up one end with a pair of tongs and the meat had also started to pull back from the bones. I left them on, bone side down, for another 30 minutes. By the time they hit the 2 1/2 hour mark they were so done that it was tough to take them off the grate in one piece.

I let the ribs rest for 10 minutes and served them dry with some Honey Hog Sauce on the side.

The Verdict: ★★★★½
I gotta admit, I was surprised at how good these ribs tasted right off the bone – no sauce or anything. They were smoky and tender and very flavorful. They even had a pretty good bark (that crispy crust on the outside) from just the salt and pepper.

Would the ribs have been better if I had slathered/rubbed/basted/foiled/glazed them? Sure, but not necessarily a whole lot better. The ribs and smoke are bringing the majority of the flavor to the party all by themselves. The rest is mostly window dressing. Tasty window dressing, true, but simple recipes like this sometimes show you just how little tweaking and fussing the basic ingredients really need.

I knocked off half a point because the doneness across the ribs was a little uneven – the leaner flat end was pretty crispy while the fatter curved end could have used another 30 minutes on the grill. This might have been from using raised direct heat, but it also might have been from using smaller ribs that showed a big difference in thickness from one end to the other.

The Nutrition:
While ribs won’t ever be diet food, these weren’t that bad – 460 calories for 8 ounces of meat (4 to 6 bones worth), 12 Weight Watchers points. Leaving out the sugary rubs and serving them dry with the sauce on the side helped to cut a lot of carbs. Rather than the traditional sides, we lightened it up with corn (frozen from this summer) and cauliflower fauxtatos – look for a pre-Thanksgiving post on this great (borrowed) idea.

Cottage Bacon

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This is my take on old-timey country bacon that’s made from the meatier pork shoulder roast (aka pork butt). It’s like a cross between country ham and traditional bacon – smoky, salty, and just a little sweet. I like to make up a big batch of this and freeze it off in breakfast-sized portions.

2 pork butts (pork shoulder roast), boned and trimmed
1 tablespoon Morton’s Sugar Cure per pound of meat
1 teaspoon white sugar per pound of meat
1/2 cup maple syrup
2 tablespoons ground black pepper

The meat needs to cure before it gets smoked. This takes at least a week and preferably 10 days. These particular butts were both just under 8 pounds, so I cured them separately because I didn’t have a container big enough for both of them.

Place each butt in a large zip-top bag. Combine the black pepper with 1 tablespoon Morton’s Sugar Cure and 1 teaspoon white sugar per pound of meat (so each butt got 1 tablespoon pepper, 1/2 cup Morton’s cure, and 8 teaspoons sugar). Rub the cure all over the butt, making sure to cover all sides. Pour 1/4 cup of maple syrup over each butt, and turn to coat.

Seal the bags and store the butts in the fridge. Liquid will begin to collect to collect in the bags, indicating  that the cure is working. Cure for 7-10 days, flipping the meat over once a day.

After the butts are cured, remove them from the bag and soak in cold water for 3 hours to remove some of the salt. Let them drip dry on a rack while you fire up the grill.

Set your grill up for an indirect cook at 300°F. On the Big Green Egg this meant filling the firebox with lump charcoal and using a plate setter and drip pan to diffuse the heat. When the cooker is up to temp, add some chucks of wood for smoke. Apple or hickory work great here.

Smoke the butts until the internal temperature hits 140°F. That took about 5 hours for these butts. At this point the meat is cured, but not fully cooked. Stash the meat in the fridge to cool, and then slice to your desired thickness.

I ran the butts through my Chef’s Choice 610 Electric Food Slicer at about a 1/4 inch thick setting.  This is thin enough that the meat will fry up quickly but not so thin that it starts to fall apart.

The Verdict: ★★★★☆
This batch of cottage bacon had some great flavor. I like the addition of maple syrup and how the sweetness plays off the saltiness and bits of pepper. Pork shoulder has a good amount of fat in it, but not nearly as much as the belly meat that bacon is usually made with, so it fried up nicely on the chewy side of crispy versus chewy.

These butts had had the bone removed when I bought them. That makes slicing them a lot easier, but the meat wasn’t as compact as I would have liked and some of the little bits that stuck out got overcooked during smoking. I would tie up the butts (oh, that sounds wrong) with butcher’s twine next time.

Peanut Pork Burgers

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2 pounds ground pork
2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger
2 green onions
5 cloves garlic
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1/2 cup Asian sweet chili sauce
2 tablespoons peanut butter

Put the garlic cloves in a food processor and pulse until minced. Add the ginger, green onions, oil, fish sauce, chili sauce, and peanut butter and give them a whirl until they are well-combined.

In a large bowl, combine the pork and the sauce mix. Work everything together with your hands. Form the meat mixture into 6 to 8 1/2 inch thick patties. Stash in the fridge so all of the ingredients can mingle and the burgers stiffen up a little.

Set your grill up for a direct cook over high (450°F) heat. Grill burgers about 5 minutes per side, or until the meat hits 160°F internal. Remove from grill and let rest 5 minutes before serving. Top with a dollop of sesame mayo if desired.

The Verdict: ★★★☆☆
“Meh,” that’s the sound Owen, our little gray cat, makes when he is unimpressed with my  attempts to entertain him. It’s his way of saying, “Look, nothing personal here. I’m sure it’s a fine stuffed mouse, and you’re doing a heck of a job waving it around, but it’s just not exciting enough for me to get up off my fury butt and bat it around. Sorry.”

That’s how I felt about these burgers. There’s a lot of good stuff in them and tons of flavors to enjoy, but the end result was something less than impressive. Not bad, just not memorable. I might make them again sometime, but it’ll be with a lot more garlic, ginger, and something crunchy like water chestnuts or ground peanuts.

 

Last Hurrah Ribs

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Labor Day is pretty much the end of summer up around these parts. The air is turning light and cool and we’re getting a lot less daylight. I fire up the Big Green Egg mostly year-round, so I’ll still be out grilling, but the days of sitting out on the deck in shorts and t-shirts are numbered.

We were supposed to spend it hanging out with my family, but my dear wife came down with the crud and we were both out of commission for most of the weekend.  I didn’t figure I’d be doing any cooking, but she perked up a bit on Monday and out of the blue asked if I’d make her some ribs.

Sure thing, honey.

I tried a variation on my Express Ribs technique; cooking the ribs hotter and faster, then braising them in foil, and finally finishing them unwrapped. I set the Egg up for a raised, direct cook at 300°F with some apple wood for smoke.

I seasoned a couple of nice racks of baby back ribs with a heavy coat of Tasty Licks Ribit Rub. The ribs went on bone side down for an hour, then I flipped them ribs bone side up and let them go for another hour.

Then I removed the ribs to a sheet of heavy-duty foil and wrapped them up tightly. I did the same thing with a second layer of foil. The ribs then went back on, meat side down, for an hour.

After an hour of braising, I removed the ribs from the foil and tried to put them on the grill bone side down. I got one rack moved over intact, but the other was so done that it had started to fall apart before I even touched it.

I got both racks over to the grill as best I could and sauced them with the new version of my Sticky Hog sauce and let them cook for another 10 minutes. Since flipping them was not an option, I gave them a final coat of sauce and (carefully) moved them off the grill.

I let them rest for 10 minutes before serving.

The Verdict: ★★★★★
My dear wife LOVED these ribs. I was just happy that she was feeling better, so I sure wouldn’t argue with her. As done as they looked coming out of the foil, I was afraid they’d be mushy or soft. But going with a raised, direct cook meant that they were falling apart tender, but they still had a good bit of bark and some nice chew to them. Perfect way to say goodbye to summer.

The new sauce is a real winner too.