The Lazy Gourmet

[Rusty Edge]

I thought you were supposed to make a sourdough starter.

That seems to be the fad. I had a sourdough starter going, last fall, but ditched it before I traveled. It is a way to pass the time, and the sourdough fermentation process destroys some of the harmful glutens and other lectins. Ultimately I decided that bread is best used as a treat, rather than a staple. It's calories without much micronutrients.

[Geo]

Ultimately I decided that bread is best used as a treat, rather than a staple. It's calories without much micronutrients.

My tummy disagrees with you, especially for freshly baked bread rolls.

[Unorthodox]

I've been happy to see real sourdough back in the store.  Bread itself is hard enough at altitude, but sourdough does NOT like our dry air coupled with the altitude. 

My go-to for locally made bread is rye. 

[Elok]

Just discovered the joy of homemade corn tacos.  Those little corn tortillas are cheap, and I had some leftover bacon grease and adobo pork that needed using up.  I fried the tortillas in the grease, took them out when they got somewhat leathery, slapped some pork on with cheese and sour cream and folded it over.  It stiffened shortly after, forming a semisolid shell.  They were slightly effort-intensive but quite tasty.

[Rusty Edge]

Our Easter dinner was steak teriyaki and baked potatoes. Best flavor ever.

My wife prefers the Weber to the Traeger for steaks so that's what I used, but I improved the flavor this time by waiting until the coals were perfect for cooking, and then adding a handful of Traeger oak pellets for smokiness. Caution, there is a minute or two of flare-up when you add the pellets.

Been grilling again. Grilled some pizzas, 4 variations. The Pizza god is, of course correct- more cheeses, more better. Next time I make one it will be a cheese crust- I'm thinking based upon Parmesan  Regianno and Gruyere, with fresh Mozzerella  and probably Manchego and/or Asiago on top.

====

I was using the Webber tonight, because the Mrs. prefers it for burgers and steaks.  Also, after researching on the internet there is a grilling/smoking controversy, just as there is one about the right way to cook a steak. This one suggests that you not do seafood in a Traegger, unless you have a dedicated one, because they aren't easy to clean completely (Usually not for several meals) . If you don't have a dedicated seafood machine or thoroughly clean between, some people can taste fishiness in their meat. So for now I am only doing seafood in my Webber.   

SO, first I cooked a burger, three steaks, and a brat.  I got the coals just right, then took a fist full of  oak pellets and immersed them in water for about 3 seconds, then tossed them on the grill, and knocked the stragglers out of the grate and onto the coals. Excellent flavor, eye burning smoke, but no flare-ups.

Then, after I took the meat off, I took a fist full of Alder pellets, held them under a faucet for 3 seconds, then tossed them on the grill and knocked the straggler pellets through the grate onto the coals. I had an ahi tuna steak, a salmon steak ( Sockeye, I think, possibly Coho ) and two scallops wrapped in bacon. The bacon had been cooked in the oven to render most of the fat, but it was still flexible enough to wrap around a scallop and secure in place with a toothpick.  I put all of the seafood on a soaked cedar shake, and grilled it for 15 minutes. I didn't flip anything and probably should have. Regardless, I could taste the alder smoke.

So it was a major success. I've concluded that you don't need a pricey pellet grill to develop all of these flavors, just a fist full of wet pellets when you're ready to cook to serve as a sort of seasoning.

Don't get me wrong, I still love the Traegger.  I wish I'd had one sooner. It's a precision wood fired convection oven, suitable for baking, smoking, slow roasting, etc. You don't have to worry about a torch side and a cold side while cooking in the wind and cold. With it's temp sensor and meat probe, you have amazing control between 165 and 450 in 5 degree increments. Except for the bottom edges, which are hotter, the rest of the grilling area is remarkably consistent on both levels.

So, at this point I prefer Alder for seafood, Apple for pork and chicken, and Oak for beef and baking. Well, I always liked hickory and mesquite charcoal for beef/turkey and pork, too, but the Mrs. does not. So I haven't considered those in the last 15 years.    I've used the Traegger signature blend, which is a good all purpose pellet if you only want one.

[E_T]

Something different
https://www.pupperish.com/ancient-food

Cambridge Professor Tries Out Recipes From Ancient Mesopotamia That Are Nearly 4000 Years Old


With the lockdown and a lot of free time on our hands (not to mention flour, yeast, and effs enormous home supplies), we all started to cook. Most of us, sadly, with little or no success (which doesn’t prevent us from sharing the dishes online).

Some people take this process to completely another level. One of them is Bill Sutherland, a professor of conservation biology at the University of Cambridge.
He decided to try to create meals from 3770-year-old recipes carved on a Mesopotamian tablet. It is claimed that the dishes like Elamite broth and lamb stew “are the oldest recipes existing.”

[Rusty Edge]

I'm a confirmed convert. I cook bacon in the Traeger on a cooling rack atop an oven tray. 375 degrees, apple pellets, about 25 minutes. The rack and tray allow the smoke to circulate without the grease making a mess inside the grill.

[Unorthodox]

Alright, it's grilling season, and with the house being torn apart, I'm looking at plenty of it over the summer (winter for Dale). 

So, let me hear about your burger secrets. 

First, IMO, there's two ways people try to make a good burger.  Fixins or mixins. 

Fixin wise, the most Utah thing out there is:

Blue Bacon Burger:  Utah original (fairly well documented), though some national chains are making poor knockoffs lately.  Basic burger patty, thick bacon, swiss cheese, lettuce, tomato and Blue cheese dressing. 

Mount Ogden Burger:  The other claimed Utah original, seen it much more widely across the country, Patty, ham, swiss, lettuce, tomato, "Fry Sauce" (this is a totally Utah thing, but thousand island dressing is a common substitute) 

It's the mixins I'm more interested in. 

A little history with me:

We were dirt poor, and mom approached burgers as an economic way of feeding the family.  Anything that would extend that meat was fair game.  Thus, for most my childhood burgers were closer to meatloaf.  Always a package of lipton onion soup mix was going to be in.  Most common other items to mix into the burger were zucchini and carrots.  Oats, bread crumbs, etc were never unheard of.  Add an egg or two if they don't want to stay stuck together. 

By comparison, the prepacked patties they now use are tasteless. 

About 20 years ago, I found a pile of recipes in my grandma's trash bin.  Among these is a depression era recipe for hamburgers, and it's become the basis of my own tinkering since.  Though, I've yet to take it all the way to it's ultimate step. 

It goes thus: 

The recipe calls for getting castoffs from the butcher, with certain cuts to look for to run through your meat grinder.  Jumping it into today, you want equal parts ground sirloin and ground chuck.  This yields a fairly lean burger. 

Mix that together, and smash it all as flat as you can make it.  To this, you're going to add your spices.  Now the recipe gets lost here with pieces impossible to reproduce ('grandpa's mustard' and 'moms chili paste' are just nowhere to be found).  But the gist of it still lives. 

Make a paste out of liquid and dry spices.

Last night, I used Dijon mustard with a bit of soy sauce and Cholula hot sauce mixed with garlic salt, pepper, minced onions, and thyme. 

Anyway, spread the paste evenly across your flattened ground beef.  Roll it up into a loaf, and knead it until mixed.  Spread flat and repeat. 

Make your patties.  This is where I break from the recipe, make thick burgers and grill. 

The recipe calls for thin patties.  WHICH YOU THEN ROLL IN PEANUTS and fry.  (Peanuts at the time of the great depression were extremely economical and would have been a great way to extend your meat)  One of these days I'll work up the courage to try the peanuts, but I don't know how that'll fair on the grill, and I don't care for fried burgers much. 

While I haven't tried the peanuts yet, and I do fiddle a bit still, there IS now a standard recipe I've boiled down on these burgers.

2.5 lb Ground sirloin (mostly because for some reason that's how it's packed at the store instead of even lbs)
.5 lb Bacon.  You can either grind the bacon, or chop it up tiny. 

Mix those together and spread out onto a cookie sheet. 

Spread on top:

~3 Tbls Inglehoffer stone ground mustard https://www.amazon.com/Inglehoffer-Mustard-10-Ounce-Squeezable-Bottles/dp/B000EY3OMS
~2 Tbls Cholula green pepper sauce https://shop.cholula.com/Green-Pepper-Hot-Sauce/p/CHS-GPEPPER&c=Cholula@HotSauces
6 cloves minced garlic. 

Spread that out, roll it up into a loaf, and knead it. 


Make patties and salt (or experimental season mix) at the grill while cooking. 


And don't worry about the Jalepeno from the cholula.  Mixed in like this it adds no heat, just a pepper flavor.  When I want a spicier burger, we add the heat with the seasoning mixes at the grill. 

[Bearu]

I plan to make some simple Russian soups known as рассольник, rassolnik or beef, pickle, and barley soup, and щи, shchi or cabbage soup. These soups possess relatively simple cooking instructions. I included the recipes I plan for use below this entry for the interested parties.

Shchi:
https://www.thespruceeats.com/traditional-russian-cabbage-soup-shchi-recipe-1135534

Rassolnik:
https://natashaskitchen.com/beef-barley-and-pickle-soup-rassolnik/

[Rusty Edge]

I should share my findings from recent months.

*I wound up substituting some Webber apple pellets because I couldn't get Traeger brand pellets. I should have tried a different flavor instead. There was an ash/soot buildup in the igniter. The fire strangled while I was trying to cook.  I won't repeat that mistake.

* I got an inexpensive tube smoker. You fill this stainless steel perforated tube with pellets, light it with a torch, wait a minute, then lay it on it's side in the grill. It smolders and produces lots of smoke and flavor. The handful of damp pellets method I spoke of before is as like to smother the fire or cause a flare-up as an excellent result.

* Grilled some 3-2-1 ribs today. ( Rub, then 3 hours smoking, add apple juice, honey, brown sugar, wrap in foil  Then 2 hours slow cooking, Remove foil, brush with sauce, cook 1 hour ) Tasted great. But really, ribs aren't a value compared to pork loin. You're buying bone and gristle. For six hours work I could replicate a favorite restaurant meal. In the future I'll likely be ordering ribs from a BBQ place instead.

* You may well wonder why I bought ribs. 1) My wife likes to eat them 2) It's 2020. There have been supply chain problems here in the upper Midwest due to Covid in the packing houses. I go to the store with my ideas and my credit card, but the meat case only has 3 cuts of pork. I buy some and freeze it, because I don't know if the shortages will be worse when I come back in two weeks. Well, usually not worse, simply a different set of random meat  cuts to choose from. In this case I got tired of that awkward shaped rack of ribs sliding out every time I took something out of my freezer.

* The insulated blanket for the grill really works.

[E_T]

 In this case I got tired of that awkward shaped rack of ribs sliding out every time I took something out of my freezer.

[EDIT]
It so wanted to be cooked and eaten...[/edit]

[Geo]

I so wanted to be cooked and eaten...

 
Apocalypse Now? 

[E_T]

corrected it

[Rusty Edge]

On the pizza front I've made a bacon/baby shrimp/cocktail sauce pizza a couple of times, and been delighted with it.  Trouble is, it's not something the in-laws would eat. I guess there is something to be said for an all-for-me pizza.

[Buster's Uncle]

I've had excellent anchovy before.  I think the trick w/ making fish pizza is make sure the meat is dryish, so the juices/flavor don't overwhelm the rest of the pizza -unless that's what you want.

I haven't actually investigated...