You guys are on point this weekend! This all looks amazing. I love this thread so much.
Gratz on making the diet delicious, @Eric_Majkut!
So I didn’t cook this, nor eat it, so I decided to put this here because my dad did. I couldn’t make it north with them this year but this is a somewhat common site for any big gatherings with my dad’s family where you have space for this sort of thing. I am… always weirded out by the presentation but I will actually eat this once they carve it.
We’ve also done the big in the ground approach as well, when there is a place you can dig a giant hole of course.
That’s hard core.
Added some shrimp korma to the mix tonight. Came out a little watery and bland. This recipe is very very hard to perfect!
We had a cow once on what I affectionately call the death farm. My dad thought it was funny as hell to call him T-bone. I didn’t eat beef for about a year after he went to slaughter. I can potentially eat something that still has a face on it and legs, but I cannot eat something that had a name and that I had to feed, forever.
I have a closer picture now. It’s even more disturbing or as my family would call it, tasty. I thought about erasing the T-shirt but… you’re born into the family you have, you do not choose it. Also, that’s not my dad.
Have done the pit in the ground with my in-laws. Great stuff.
I might have a lot of criticism for my dad and his… views, but he always plates me from this kind of thing. He has accepted long ago that his two eldest daughters are scared of spiders and food with faces on them. The youngest. well she’s the odd ball.
The pig looks surprised.
As a southerner and also from the state of North Carolina, pig pickin’s are like an actual pastime here. That makes me wonder if some of the other NC folks have been to one?
@Nesrie, I wouldn’t feel bad about eating that, they are usually insanely delicious.
This weekend I did sous vide bacon, straight from Kenji’s advice and blog on it. No pics, but then again I still have some par-cooked and I can get a few pics once those are seared.
I was very decidedly … meh … about it. The thought process is that it comes out similar to braised pork belly, actually, since it is in it’s own fat and juices, more like pork belly confit. Since it has cooked so long, the fat rends so much that it’s almost a melt-in-your-mouth quality once finished. I did mine at 145 for 18 hours.
But the flip side is that you usually want a little crisp to your bacon. So the trade off is to sear one side. Crisp, but still tender.
It didn’t quite end up that way. It did kind of fall apart, so much so that it’s hard to get pices separated to put into a skillet to sear. But extremely floppy and loose, enough that you want to end up crisping longer, or a little on the other side, which leads you to the same results I get with far less time. Cooking bacon in the oven at 350 for about 30-35 minutes.
There was no amazing moment, and I’m not sure I’ll try it again, unless I switch brands of bacon just to see if that was the issue.
I’ve never been to an amateur hosted one, sadly, but one of my favorite bbq stops in the state, Grady’s, isn’t very shy about their whole hog roasting process taking place out front, and little bits of crisp skin work their way into the picked pork they serve within. It’s so fuckin good!
To be honest, it was probably better than an amateur one. Those are usually tended overnight by 1-3 people who get to do it maybe once a year, if that. Rarely, you do get someone really good at barbeque that will host one. It says something about pork that even those who don’t make it often have something taste so delicious.
If it’s falling apart it’s probably too thin, and not going to be worth the effort. You need thick cut bacon, the thicker the better. I did it with just regular thick cut and it was great. Not great as in I won’t eat bacon any other way, but great as in if I have the sous vide bath running already and want bacon in the next day or two I will definitely plop a bag in.
It was definitely thick cut, I think the issue is that the packaging was pretty tight, so though it expanded some due to liquid release during the cook, the bacon itself was very stuck together afterward. I had also cooled it, thinking that would help a little, when it may have added to the issue of pulling it apart.
But in the end, it was like having softish rendered bacon. And I feel like I could have gotten there with a low heat setting in the oven a lot quicker. Perhaps not -quite- melt in your mouth, but more bacon like for sure.
It could also be I just couldn’t disassociate the way I’ve always had bacon with this new method. I still have half a pack to sear, I’ll try it on something instead of eating it straight.
If you had asked me, when growing up, what my brother or my favorite dish was, we would have hands-down said meatballs. In our case, it refers to a Chinese meatball dish made by my grandmother, featuring pork meatballs and sour-pickled mustard greens. A great number of my family’s stand-by recipes actually came from a popular Taiwanese cookbook (Pei Mei), but I think this is one of the few that didn’t, and has more organic family roots. It’s a pretty basic meatball process: fry them to brown the sides a bit, them simmer / braise / steam with the flavor bits.
Pickled mustard greens (ignore the gnarly garlic scapes above, they’re unrelated):
Greens get chopped and a bed of them is placed in the pot, with the meat on top, and some ginger, soy sauce, and some sugar to offset the sourness:
Aaaaand, done:
Served with rice and a general-purpose vegetable.
I love Thai but I’ve never had anything similar to a Thai meatball. What’s the flavor like?
Erm, Taiwan? The dish is Chinese, although offhand I can’t cite the region. The greens are a vietnamese brand though, I think.
The greens are a sour pickle, but you rinse and squeeze them off so you aren’t getting pickle juice, just the vegetable, and there’s sugar and soy sauce to offset that. While they sort of look like just a garnish, they do impart flavor to the whole dish. They’re basically a cabbage, so I feel like maybe there’s a kind of german sauerkraut / meat combination that’s kind of analagous? It doesn’t taste like eating pickles. They’re really more just a little bright note.
The meatballs themselves are very simply seasoned, mostly salt, soy sauce, and some shaoxing wine.
Ahh fuck. reading comprehension fail. Sorry man. That makes MUCH more sense now. :)
It looks great!
Also, one of my favorite roast dishes uses pickled peppers, pepperoncini to be exact. You toss those in, as well as a small amount of the brine. It imparts a great flavor to the dish overall. I could see where these greens would do the same.
And to anyone interested in that dish, it’s Mississippi Pot Roast and it is very worth making.
I’ve never had avocado toast. Is it any good?
Yes, depending on how you make it. I like a nice hearty crusty multigrain bread. Thick slice, pan toasted (when time allows) with sliced avocado smashed directly on the bread. A little salt and pepper and it’s pretty good.
