what's for dinner at your place

[bagman67]

Tri tips are on and I am about to start stuffing sausages, doing bratwurst and a garlic salami. Plus  a Amish breakfast sausage
oh, the fish looks good and will be doing 20 pounds of jerky, red pepper teriaki

I hate you.  If you tell me you smoked a sturgeon I will find your house and devour all your smoked meaty and/or seafood-y treats!

Srsly,  your tale of smoking meats has my mouth all a-drool.  Nice.

Bagman

 

[Jusatele]

Tri tips are on and I am about to start stuffing sausages, doing bratwurst and a garlic salami. Plus  a Amish breakfast sausage
oh, the fish looks good and will be doing 20 pounds of jerky, red pepper teriaki

I hate you.  If you tell me you smoked a sturgeon I will find your house and devour all your smoked meaty and/or seafood-y treats!

Srsly,  your tale of smoking meats has my mouth all a-drool.  Nice.

Bagman

I am sorry, I built this smoker to be the ultimate smoker,, Well be sorry what you wish for, it is so big and requires so much wood to stoke up you need to be prepared to do a lot of smoking or it is not cost efficient. But then the small smokers do not even touch the quality of product it turns out. Anyway I only fire it up 2 or 3 times a year as it is a pain, I created a nightmare.

 

[Cagey]

Yeah, but if you can do a couple/few hundred pounds of various meats in one or two sessions, you're all set. No messing around constantly.

Do you have a vacuum packaging system? Because that will dramatically increase the life expectancy and quality of frozen or even dry storage foods.

 

[Jusatele]

I use a seal a meal, get the long bag you seal either side, the pre sized bags are a waste as you do not use so much
with out a vacuum system you are pissing in the wind because you get freezer burn on so much food, this way I can preserve it for a long time.

PS, I can give you a lot of design ideas about a smoker, I really had to redesign a few things to get this right, but I do weld so it was easy for me to go through the process of hit and miss

 

[Cagey]

I use a seal a meal, get the long bag you seal either side, the pre sized bags are a waste as you do not use so much
with out a vacuum system you are pissing in the wind because you get freezer burn on so much food, this way I can preserve it for a long time.

PS, I can give you a lot of design ideas about a smoker, I really had to redesign a few things to get this right, but I do weld so it was easy for me to go through the process of hit and miss

I live essentially by myself, but I still like to make things that a single person normally wouldn't due to recipes that don't always scale well. So, I learned early on about the value of vacuum sealing, especially for making single-serving meals. Also, about how some things simply don't survive freezing (or reheating) as well as others, no matter how you package them. Raw pork, for instance, freezes well, but once it's cooked it's never anywhere near as good when brought back. Potatoes are the same way. Freeze 'em raw, and they're fine. Cook 'em first, and you're sorry.

 

[Nightclub Dwight]

I use a seal a meal, get the long bag you seal either side, the pre sized bags are a waste as you do not use so much
with out a vacuum system you are pissing in the wind because you get freezer burn on so much food, this way I can preserve it for a long time.

PS, I can give you a lot of design ideas about a smoker, I really had to redesign a few things to get this right, but I do weld so it was easy for me to go through the process of hit and miss

Yes, I'm interested in your smoker ideas.  Perhaps start another thread with that when you have time?

Once we buy a house, we want to build an authentic brick oven in the backyard for making wood fired pizza.  But I also want a real smoker.  Right now I just make do with a big round Weber kettle grill.  You can smoke small amounts with it, but its difficult to maintain the low and slow temperature, so its really just a toy until I can get the real McCoy.

 

[Jusatele]

well send me a email and I will send what I discovered works best

 

[ptirman]

well send me a email and I will send what I discovered works best

I have a bradley smoker which is made in Canada, works really well and is portable. I'll smoke ribs, chicken turkey and fish then finish on a grill. Works well. Would rather have a wood fired oven though for baking/roasting all sorts of things. Nightclub do you have pre-made plans for your oven?

 

[Nightclub Dwight]

No, I don't have any plans yet.  I've researched it and there are several plans out there, I just haven't spent any money on anything as I don't have a permanent place to build it yet.

These thing tend to go for a lot of money if you get a commercial kit or semi-premade unit, so that got me thinking about building one on my own.  I've been stashing away firebricks I've accumulated from various sources in anticipation.

I have a friend who is a builder and an artist, and I swear he can build anything imaginable.  I hope he will help me out with the design and construction.

Its probably way beyond my skill, but I am a fool for wood fired pizza and that alone motivates me to try it.

 

[Jusatele]

Pizza ovens are kind of simple, you can follow a design for those, smokers are the hard thing, The first one I built was terrible, I learned a lot replacing this and that till it worked, problem is there are no real resources to look things up and most of the plans are not that great. You need a good firebox, and that is a thing in itself, that firebox is going to be a thing you want to not only deliver heat and smoke from, but also be easy to maintain and easy to use. you will be making a fire, keeping that fire at a certain level, maintaining flavor wood in it, releasing said heat and smoke to the smoker part evenly, and, you will need to be able to clean it up easily. The smoke box is repetitively easy from there, the only concerns are how big, layout for such as sausages et al. making it a smoke box and not an oven and if you want it to be a smoke box/charcoal grill. That is a nice feature in itself as now when not smoking stuff you can use it to Grill. A line up of oven , gas grill with 2 side burners, smoker/charcoal grill and sink with running water is my dream and will be built when I retire and move back to Florida.

 

[Nightclub Dwight]

I grew two plants of hot peppers that were labeled "tabasco peppers" that I bought at Home Depot in the spring.  They are like little birds beak peppers almost an inch long and thin.  I picked a bunch when frost threatened a few weeks ago (no frost yet, and the remaining peppers are still  going strong outside.)  Anyhow, I put the peppers in a blender with vinegar and salt and made a hot sauce.  I knew it was strong as the fumes almost dropped me.  Its been in the fridge for a few weeks and I just tried it today on some black bean soup I made last night.  This sauce is way hotter than tabasco.  I love hot foods, but this is almost unreal.

Has anyone ever made hot sauce?  I'm wondering if it might mellow with age.  I know when you make fresh mustard it will mellow as it ages at room temperature, but referigeration will stop the mellowing process.  I'm wondering if hot peppers might work the same way.  Anyone have any experience with this?

 

[ptirman]

My "hot sauce" comes from an old Southern trick where one just puts hot peppers ( I cut into them first to expose the seeds) into vinegar in a shaker bottle then sprinkle liberally onto food especially greens. I use jalapenos and those small red chili peppers. Scotch bonnet's were just too hot for me. I don't know about the effect of refrigeration though.
Good luck with your wood fired oven. There is an Italian restaurant that has one near my house that makes outstanding pizza but roasts everything roastable (if a word) in that thing. Outstanding seafood, vegetables with simple olive oil, salt and a touch of lemon juice. Now my pavlovian response has kicked in! :laughing7:

 

[Jusatele]

home made tabassco, oh yea that stuff rocks
My experience is that aging makes the hot about the same, but what it does is let the stuff ferment a bit and taste better, kinda like blend and stuff

 

[big bob]

hope I got the right place this time

 

[bagman67]

Any time is the right time for a BLT.

 

[DangerousR6]

Any time is the right time for a BLT.

+1..... On thinly sliced toasted french bread.... :headbang:

I even used a bagel once for a BLT... :dontknow:

 

[Jusatele]

I took out some home made marinara and meat sauce from the freezer last night so it would thaw out, I always make about twice what I need for spaghetti and then dole the rest out into Pizza size servings and freeze it
Then around 2 this afternoon I made some fresh pizza crust and put it in a covered bowl to raise
about 3 this afternoon went to the garden and  picked some sage, parsley, oregano and pulled a garlic bunch. the cooked up 3 pieces of bacon
I stuck the cooking stone in at 3:45 at 425 to get it hot and punched down the dough, about 4 oclock I pulled the dough and the stone, and spun the dough to about 12 inches
set it on the powdered stone, poured out the marinara and spread it, covered the top with herbs, and bacon, covered with a 3 cheese combo and set it in the oven for 15 minutes.

are you salivating yet?

 

[Cagey]

Any time is the right time for a BLT.

Not in Michigan. Here, the only time to have them is in August/September, when the tomato crop comes in. Outside of that, the only tomatoes we can get are hothouse tomatoes, which are hardly worth eating.

 

[JamesL]

This is where it's at guys... Seriously..

 

[jackthehack]

Thanksgiving dinner (only 2 of us, so a turkey is pointless...)

Herb Encrusted Rack of Lamb
Garlic Horseradish Rosemary Mashed Potatoes (with au jus from the Rack of Lamb)
Cornbread Stuffing Balls with Prawns
Asparagus and Tomatoes with a Balsamic Vinegrette
Sweet Potato Creme Brulee
2010 duPeuble Vineyard Beaujolais Nouveau