BRFoodies Thanksgiving Jive Turkey

Thanksgiving, one of the very best holiday meals predicated upon great meat; foul or poricine. The premise of this blog has morphed over time, but the basic idea of being a place for me to track my favorite methods and recipes is rock solid. Time to talk some turkey! (Credit for the photo above goes to Kelly Spell- thanks for letting me steal this from Facebook )

A group of my friends (going by the self assigned moniker of @BRFoodies- see also the Tumblr blog) decided to beat the staid, stuffy, family traditional Thanksgiving by doing one of our own. We would take on courses in pairs and serve small (yeah right) portions while watching the Louisiana State University and Mississippi State University football game.

I took on the turkey. I’d been toying with the idea of cooking turkey sous vide ever since I watched this video and it’s sequel from Grant Achatz. Chef Achatz (you might have heard about this award winning chef and his battle with tongue cancer) just says screw the hassle of Butterball buttons, foil over the breast, carving complexity, and Aunt Millie’s gripes about how you cooked your bird. I agree. Thanksgiving should be about good friends, family, great food, booze, and football. I’ve seen too much T-day drama. I once saw a frustrated man slam dunk, a turkey carcass in dishwater out of frustration about criticism over his carving technique. I’ve seen people resort to buying turduckens to throw unfamiliar guests off kilter so they would be less able to complain. That kind of hassle is for the birds.

I’ve cooked chicken breasts sous vide before, but never a whole chicken. I picked up a chicken from a local grocery store, then disassembled it into breasts, legs, and wings. Bagging the chicken into my new favorite sous vide bags, Ziploc Vacuum Freezer bags, I added some butter, poultry seasoning, and some beer. Plopping the bags into a pot with water at 165F for about an hour and a half, I was able to produce a decent result. Even more exciting was the idea that I should smoke the bird before hand. Several times I’ve smoked turkeys for thanksgiving and really enjoyed it. Foul is an easy match for apple wood. So onto the grill for an hour’s smoking and then into the bag. Because I’d now dispatched several chickens, I also added some rendered chicken fat to the sous vide bags. If one was so inclined, it could almost be called a confit. This made for an awfully tasty chicken.

My attention now turned to brining. Grilling, smoking, or even roasting foul of any kind can dry the meat. We’ve all had chalky turkey breast. The kind of turkey that requires gravy and a mouthful of water to lubricate your throat enough to eat safely. Brining works by osmosis, that dreaded high school biology term, salt pulls more water into the muscle fibers. More water in the meat before cooking means more water in the meat afterwards. Brining can also help impart flavors to the meat. Again, I love paring apple and chicken or turkey. Soy sauce, beer, orange juce are also possible brine liquids. I'd be careful of liquids with lots of acid as you wouldn't want to cook the meat like is done with ceviche. Pork and beef can also be brined. Plenty of people also believe that brining makes a difference when cooking competition ribs. Cooks Illustrated does a great job describing brining methods, they also make the important point that not all kosher salt measures the same. I brined two chickens in water, apple juice, and unrefined sugar from a sugar mill in New Iberia Parish following the measurements Cooks Ilustrated suggests. I smoked both chickens for about two hours before placing them in a cooler for later. My friend Jay D. Ducote (you really should check out his blog) finished cooking them on his truly awe inspiring drum/keg grill and smoker for the famed Ford Family Tailgate before the LSU Western Kentucky game. I thought they were pretty damned tasty. They also come out a gorgeous lacquered brown.

These two important processes tackled I bought the turkey a week before our feast and waited for it to thaw (18 pounds of turkey, please come by and help me eat it all. I have so many leftovers). I decided to smoke the turkey first to impart that great apple wood flavor and then sous vide the turkey to give it some more flavor from the chicken fat, more apple juice/cider and beer. While the turkey thawed I picked up another turkey thigh to try the sous vide to see how much time it would require. I managed to fall asleep on the couch as it cooked, so it was in the bath for something like four hours. Way too long. Fortunately when sous vide-ing something this doesn’t make a difference, so long as the temperature doesn’t rise too far, the item cooked can’t be overcooked. The problem; however, was that the skin was, well, rubbery and unappetizing. If you’ve watched the You Tube videos of Chef Achetz mentioned earlier you’ll know that he pan fried each of the cuts before serving to make the skin golden and more crisp. I did this and was able to get the skin more to my liking. I also tried using my little crème brule blow torch (‘cause who doesn’t invent excuses to play with a blow torch) and found that the skin does turn, but not before fat explodes out from under the epidermis.

The day of reckoning arrived Friday. I began late that afternoon by preparing the brine, making sure to boil the liquid to be sure that the salt and sugar were completely dissolved. I then cooled off the brine, dumped it and the turkey into a kitchen garbage bag, and put that into a cooler with ice. It is important to keep the turkey cold, just as if you were storing it anywhere else uncooked. Saturday morning came around and I prepared my Weber kettle grill for smoking. I’ve talked briefly about this before, but I wanted to show you a picture of my setup. The pan below the grate (those are wood chips soaking before I get things going) is generally used to catch fat and hold water. The water’s purpose is twofold; to evaporate keeping the meat from drying out (alongside the brining) and to help moderate the temperature in the grill. The water boils off slowly taking extra energy from the fire, but if the fire goes out, it releases heat already stored. The foil covered bricks reflect heat back to the fire, and their mass helps moderate the temperature, and most importantly they help keep my coals in place. The thing sticking out of the grill lid vent is a candy thermometer I use to monitor the temperature inside the grill.

After smoking the turkey for about an hour and a half I pulled it off the grill and disassembled the bird for sous vide. I put the breasts in their own bags, then paired the wings and thighs in two other bags along with about a tablespoon of butter, a tablespoon and a half of chicken fat, an ice cube of apple cider, and a quarter cup of apple juice, beer and, cider mix that I’d made earlier. I could have frozen the mixture if I’d thought about it before hand. The advantage of freezing the liquids is that it makes pulling vacuum on the sous vide bags easier. As you use the Ziploc hand pump, or some home use vacuum bag machines, liquids can come out of the bag and into the pump. This makes a mess and can foul the pump. As the bag heats up, the frozen liquids thaw, it just means that the bath takes a little longer to come to temperature. Speaking of temperature, the new FDA suggested cooking temperature for all parts of the turkey and for chicken is 165 Fahrenheit (oddly enough, Fahenheit is also the name of a Chinese boy band- look it up). My sous vide set-up is VERY rudimentary (shown here used to cook some chicken). Anyone with a stove, a really good candy thermometer or oven remote thermometer and a freezer bag can do this. I have a pot of water on the stove and I check the temperature every so often with a decent remote oven thermometer I got as a gift a while ago. If the bath is too cool, I turn up the burner a bit and wait. If it is too hot, I add ice cubes to the bath. There are much nicer ways to do this, sous vide appliances can range from $300, immersion circulators like those seen on TV cooking shows are easily $1,000, and there are DIY kits that you can get for less than $200. I let the turkey bathe for about three hours before I pulled it out. I let it rest for a fifteen minutes while I set up my frying pan. I then placed each piece into the pan to brown the skin as much as I could.

Think that was enough steps? Was that easier than the standard roast turkey? Yeah, way too complicated. But I will say this: it was nice to have a smoked turkey that wasn’t dry. It tasted delicious. I’d sous vide another turkey again. I’d smoke a turkey again. But not unless someone very special asks nicely with some sort of bribe am I likely to do that again. It was a stunt. A show-off. Something to wow my foodie friends and a way for me to flex my cooking muscles. Which, along with the good friends, football, and booze, was all part of BRFoodiesThanksgiving anyhow.

You can't beat my meat.

Progress has definitely been made in my quest. Within the last week and a half I’ve grilled two steaks, a rib eye and a T-bone. While grilling the rib eye I placed my coals in the center of the grill, something I don’t usually do. See, I’ve become a fan of two tiered grilling, a zone on one side of the grill with coals piled high for direct heat and a second zone in the center of the grill for indirect heat where the coals from the first zone have tumbled down much like pebbles in a pile. This allows one to sear and still leaves quite a large bit of the grill’s surface area for indirect heat and warming of already cooked food. Someone cooking for a number of people or a variety of foods will appreciate this. Since I was cooking one steak, I didn’t really care about two tiered/zone cooking. I had quite a good pile of coals going and I fanned the flames (er, blew on the coals until blue in the face) to increase the temperature.

Using some fat trimmed from the side of the steak I prepared the grates for a room temperature, salt and peppered steak. That last sentence will raise red flags in some minds. First, I don’t think using an oiled paper towel would have been a bright idea with such a hot fire. Secondly, oiling the meat also seems silly when working with such high temperatures. In my opinion these two things just invite flare-ups and fires. I’ve also read that there are some who do not season steaks with salt until the meat is on the grill. Their idea is that salt will draw water out of the meat and make it more difficult for a nice seared and crusty exterior to form. I disagree. There is so little water and I was grilling at such high temperatures that any water should evaporate quickly without interfering with the Maillard Reaction (what forms the brown tasty crust). Grilling at lower temperatures with water on the surface may be a problem, but not when using a really hot grill.

I was able to achieve a wonderful brown sear on both sides. I was able to overcome my frequent flipping foible. However, I was unable to get over my concern for underdone meat. I left it on just a bit too long and ended up with a steak just on the wrong side of medium rare. I had no problems thoroughly enjoying it. The dogs did not get as much as they hoped, I’m sure.

My second attempt was a high-stakes steak. I had company over. It was time to impress. I halved and sliced two onions for sweating over low heat with plenty of butter while we prepped our steak and the rather good looking company made a wonderful pico de gaillo. Earlier that night we purchased a nice thick T-bone steak. I set the grill up with the extraordinarily hot coals in the center and used some fat trimmed from the steak to season the grate just as before. Plopped it on the grill, waited a few minutes, flipped it over, waited a few minutes flipped it back over to add some nice hash marks and on to the plate. We let it rest for a good while as I grilled off some squash, prepped with salt, pepper, and olive oil, and some thick sliced eggplant marinated in Soy Vay’s teriyaki sauce. The result is shown in the photo at the top. The steak was red in the center (looks a little more red in the photo than it was). Perfect. I now have rights to claim the ability to grill steak.

Not to worry. There are quite a few avenues of exploration left open here. As I mentioned in my last post I'd like to explore the use of compound butters, olive oil and other substances for basting while cooking on the grill. I'd also like to explore how to best cook a standard supermarket steak (1" or thinner), and how to cook a perfect steak indoors.

Photo Credit: My dining companion, @Ldeblieux

Post Secret

I have a secret. Something I’ve only admitted to a select number of people. I, Josh Who Grills It All, can’t grill a steak. Somehow my father, the recently reformed vegetarian of more than fifteen years, can. Even when he wasn’t going to eat it, he turned out some great grilled steaks. I have always envied him for that. This summer be it resolved that I will finally learn to grill a great steak.

I have a problem, several really. I want to flip too often. This means my steaks cannot sear properly or develop that wonderful and tasty browned exterior. I find that I am uncomfortable with the idea of serving steaks underdone. I leave them on the grill for far too long. This means that I produce well done steak. I want a nice rare or medium rare steak.

There are two ways to fix my problems. First, I can go to a store that sells thick steaks. Cuts about an inch and half thick. According to the reading I’ve done this means I should be able to leave the steak over high heat for a few minutes a side. Enough time to develop a nice browned and seared crust and leave the inside of the steak uncooked enough for a few minutes to cook in lower heat. Secondly, I can learn to poke my meat. I know, I know, too much information. Seriously, though if you gently prod your steak you can gauge how done it is by the firmness of the steak. Pretend like you’re going to smack your head. Stop, just before you move your elbow. Those of you who have a hard time with instructions, pull your hand back from your forehead. Now with your other hand’s index finger prod the muscle just below your thumb. I’m told that with your open palm relaxed that the resistance that muscle has to your finger is what a person should look for in a rare steak. As you move your thumb next to your index finger that muscle tightens up and that resistance is about equal to medium rare. Move your thumb into your palm and the resistance at that point is too done for my taste. So with these tools I should be able to produce lip smackingly delicious portions of bovine. We shall see.

Several blog posts to follow could include; My Compounded Interest in Butter, The Hotter It Gets, The More Hot It Gets!, EVOO-pops And How I Learned to Love Rachel Ray, How Bloodied Do You Want That Steak, Does Benadryl Prevent A Bad Malliard Reaction?, Ruth’s Chris Can’t Be a Proper Noun, Can it?, Does Doe’s Do It Right? Sous Vide Gore Vidal, and My Victory.

Late in my chili, Thanksgiving

1- I'm behind in my chili making. I know. I have plans to rectify that this weekend. My plans to serve chili this last week to a captive audience at work fell through because my roofer had an opening Tuesday. This leads to-

2- Nobody hates Satsumas. My father-in-law gave us a large box-full of the citrus last weekend. I ate a good few before Tuesday when I gave most of the rest to the roofing crew. A goodwill gesture. They disappeared within minutes. I'm looking forward to more when we visit next month. If you've never eaten one you're missing out. Satsumas, or Mikans, are incredibly easy to peel by hand and to me they taste like tangerine lifesavers- except better and like real citrus. I could eat a bushel without stopping. We also ended up with ten grapefruits. Those also usually turn out really well. I have yet to try one, so we'll see.

3. Thanksgiving is just around the corner. I'm not going to cook much at all this year, so my comments on T-day will have to be limited to tastings. The last 2 years I've used a Weber Grill recipe for BBQ turkey. The bird is brined first and I believe that step makes all the difference. Using the BBQ and some smoke from apple wood makes for an incredible flavor. It takes some time but it is well worth the effort.

I did once suggest to my parents that we try a Turducken or Tur-duck-hen. My folks used to catch a lot of flack from the family traditionalists who had nothing better to do than to critique the way everything was prepared and served. The idea was to throw the lot of them off guard. They wouldn't have a clue what it was supposed to taste like, how to cook it, how to serve it, or even how to properly eat it. Screw 'em. It worked to a degree. The item came stuffed with an awful green onion stuffing and the turducken came out dry. To my credit- no one gripped in the usual ways. My folks were spared from the needling that some of our stuffier kin would have heaped upon them.

Fried Turkey is something I'd like to try to make. I've had it a few times since moving to Louisiana and it has always been great. I'm really turned off by the Cajun Injector- think really large gauge syringe and horrible flavored marinade the color of burnt umber. From what I've heard the trick is to stab the Turkey like you're trying to kill Freddie Kruger- a thousand times over. Eeeww. No thanks. Please just season the fowl well and fry. The skin is really great. The investment in a decent burner and stand also serve well for boiling seafood- shrimp, crabs, and crawfish. Just a few months longer until crawfish season starts again.

Hopefully I'll have another post on chili this weekend or early next week.

Well pickled, well seasoned, not as well cooked. Chili and Steak.

My wife was enjoying a ladies weekend out with a friend as a sort of bachelorette party. I was left to rule the roost. I am so saturated by football and beer now that I'm good for another few weekends at least. Beer has always been a favorite topic of mine. I love beer. Hooray Beer. Friday evening I went to the closest local market and spent the obligatory 5 minutes contemplating my choices from the beer cooler. I can't just pick one before hand- you never know what strange and wondrous beverage they have in stock that you've never seen before. That night it was clear- a standard Budweiser and new to the market Budweiser Lager. I'd never seen the lager before (Sunday afternoon during the Saints game I did see a first commercial for the stuff) and I had to try it. Nice, reminded me of Killian's. Before I go much further I have to thank Joe P. for corrupting another young incorrigible mind before the date he became of legal drinking age. Joe introduced me to Guinness, Harp, Murphy's Pub on Clifton Avenue (I really miss being able to walk to a nice Irish pub for a pint- two of my apartments in college were strategically placed in relation to Murphy's), Patsy Cline, Bootsy Collins (J Erik Landrum may have had a hand in that as well) and steak rub. A fairly substantial bit of manhood there if you ask me. Beer in hand I proceeded to walk past the beef. I found a pair of lovely steaks, already seasoned (the steaks, not me), calling out to me. I posted earlier that I wanted to find thicker steaks for grilling, I found 2" thick steaks. Just right. I was set.

Saturday was spent watching Big 10 and SEC football. I found myself with a craving about midday. I was jonesing for Skyline Chili. Cincinnati style chili is like no other. This is not a Texas chili. It is not anywhere near the beans or no beans debate. Cincy Chili should technically be called a sauce. It is a topping for spaghetti or used on coneys. Originally created by Greek immigrants, the stuff has caught on in such a way that if one were to perform impromptu surgery upon anyone of means or sense living in the vicinity of the Queen City, one would find traces of chocolate, cinnamon, and oyster crackers in the subject's blood stream. No lie. I needed to fix my fix. To Google. To Cooks.com. A recipe that sounded close enough. Clove? Allspice? I knew about the other odd flavorants, but not these. Could it be? To SuperTarget. I needed pet food too. No jonesing there- my boys were low on kibble. Once back at the house I began. 1 quart of water and 2 lbs of beef. The texture made sense. Remember- sauce. The beef isn't browned first, it's boiled. If you have qualms about this- look away. Don't click on the link below. Scroll on to the next entry. Too bad. I love it. My wife even loves it- do you think I'd marry someone who didn't? Heckie Naw. The recipe calls out for a half hour of boiling. O.K. The recipe then calls out for the rest of the ingredients and 3 hours of boiling. Huh? Wha? Not nearly enough liquid to handle that. The bottom of the pot began to burn my precious Cincy Chili Crack. I added 12 ounces more- beer bottle's worth. I added another 12 ounces. I turned down the heat. Nomenclature and specificity folks are the issues here. The recipe calls out for 4 cloves of garlic. Fine- how do you want that prepared? I lopped them in half and let them cook down- don't do that- mince finely. Drop in 5 whole cloves, 5 whole allspice? Don't. Get one of those fancy cloth baggies to hold those whole spices along with the bay leaf for easier retrieval. You don't want your guests choking on a whole clove later on. Bad form. 8 ounce cans of tomato paste? Never seen them. How about 6 ounce cans? Whats four ounces between friends? The Missus and I gave it a shot Sunday evening for dinner. The recipe calls out for chilling overnight to make it easier to skim off fat. Besides chili is always better left for a day so the flavors have time to meld properly. I used 7% fat ground beef so that wasn't an issue. If you are completely unfamiliar with Cincinnati Style Chili please look at Skyline's website for serving suggestions. Use an incredibly generous portion of freshly shredded Cheddar cheese (don't use store bought pre-shredded- the texture is all wrong thanks to the anti-caking agents) Do use finely minced onion between the chili and cheese- do use drained beans. DO NOT USE Tabasco. This is one of only two times you'll see me insist that you don't. Use Frank's or Crystal, they are the closest I've found to what is served in any of the finer chili parlors. Franks, by the way, is also key to good chicken wings. There are other chili parlors out there that are just a nice but perhaps not as well known as Skyline. You'll find good chili at Gold Star, Empress Chili Parlor (the disputed origin), the classic Camp Washington Chili, Chili Time, and others. According to another Blogspot blog Cincinnati has more chili parlors per capita than any other city in the U.S. The final verdict: Close but not quite. It seems too thick somehow, perhaps too much chocolate. I've heard that cocoa powder is the way to go. I'm not throwing it away, in fact I plan on bringing it to lunch tomorrow. The recipe needs tweaking. I'll keep you posted as to my progress on this very important culinary front.

The steaks: Pre-seasoned. I know sacrilege. Consider though, that steaks I purchased from the previous tenant of the market were seasoned and cooked quite well. I grilled them over direct heat on both sides to sear. I placed them off to the side for medium heat to cook through. In the final stages I used a thermometer to check temps. I cooked to well done. Argh. I forgot what temperature medium rare is (140 F and I cooked to 160- way past done). They were still tasty and delicious. I enjoyed every freakin bite. Next time I will have my perfect steak. Potato- Waved a medium potato for a few minutes (don't forget to stab with a fork to help release steam). Buttered and seasoned with steak rub. Wrapped with foil and grilled. Can't beat that. Didn't even need sour cream or chives. Perhaps I was pickled enough that it didn't matter...

A helluva weekend. Beat that!


http://coconutlime.blogspot.com/2008/01/cincinnati-chili.html oddball recipe. not tried. let me know what you think.
http://www.skylinechili.com/
http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1926,158181-246204,00.html recipe I tried. Needs work, but a good start.