So, I’m sitting on my couch yesterday, planning out everything for Thanksgiving dinner.  Since I only cook one Thanksgiving a year (we stopped celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving after Trudeau was elected), I had to go back and remind myself how to cook the spatchcocked turkey.  And I’m going through websites, leafing through cookbooks, trying to find it, and then I remembered…

OH YEAH I HAVE THIS FUCKING WEBSITE WHERE I POSTED THIS RECIPE LAST YEAR!!!

Anyways, I’m going to put the original post below, because I can’t say anything beyond what’s already there…

Ok, I did update the racist items that your drunk uncle is going to say…

And the Browns reference because they don’t totally suck anymore…

And Wong Wu’s was closed three years ago, not two…

But the rest of it is the same, so let’s jump into the wayback machine and head to the olden days of 2017…

One of the reasons that I’m not a trial lawyer is that I’m not quick on my feet.  Like, I’ll be in a conversation with someone, and I’ll take something they say as fact, which on its face is completely laughable, but again, not that swift of a thinker.  And then a few days later, I’ll realize that what they said made no sense, and a simple retort would have rendered their point moot, and I’ll say to myself “that’s what I should have said!”

That’s pretty much what happened when I cooked our Thanksgiving turkey.  It was a glorious bird, if I do say so myself.  And it didn’t hit me until a few days later, oh yeah, people would have loved to have had this recipe for their Thanksgiving.  Oops.

But the truth is, people don’t make enough turkey during the year, which is a shame.  I mean, turkey is delicious (if you’re one of those weirdos that say that turkey sucks and is flavorless, that’s because your mom sucked and was a really crappy cook, and you should be barred from spreading your genes into future generatio…I mean, you need to try this recipe).  It’s relatively cheap – usually turkeys run about $1.50/pound, and you can make so many meals out of one bird.  And, if you cook one outside of Thanksgiving, you don’t have to worry about rushing the carving to feed your shitty drunk uncle that’s going to spend half the night complaining about how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nancy Pelosi are going to force you to have MS-13 gang members over for the holiday next year.  So, do yourself a favor and start learning to make one out of season.

You’re probably saying to yourself at this point:

• I’m afraid to google spatchcocking, what exactly does that mean?
• How does he know my family so well?

These are valid questions!

Spatchcocking is a fancy way of saying we’re going to butterfly the bird.

What does that mean?  It means we’re going to take the backbone out of the turkey, and then flattening it out by pushing down on the breastbone until you hear it crack, because WHO’S YOUR DADDY MR. TURKEY YOU’RE NOT SO TOUGH NOW ARE YOU I OWN YOU I AM THE PATRIOTS AND YOU ARE THE SAD LITTLE RAIDERS WITH YOUR JON GRUDEN CHUCKY-FACES!!!

Now, you may be saying to yourself, that seems like a lot of work.  Why would I want to do this?  You seem to have a lot of aggression issues to work out that I’ve managed to get through, why should I crack this guy’s back to help you deal with your problems?

Well Mr./Mrs./Ms. Smarty Pants, the reason why is that you’re going to get the turkey to cook evenly and crisp up the skin to make it absolutely delicious.  That good enough for you?

Here’s the thing: there are two types of bird meat: white and dark.  And they need to cook to different temperatures (the USDA will tell you that white meat needs to be cooked to 165 degrees, and dark to 180.  I will tell you that you can do 150/165 and be just fine.)

When you cook the bird whole, everything gets smushed together, so it’s hard to get everything cooked evenly, so the breast gets done well before the dark.  Also, some of the skin gets bunched up into the meat, so it stays sad and flabby.  But, if you spatchcock it, everything is laid out in one layer, so everything cooks evenly, and all of the skin is exposed to the heat.  The benefit is that you’ll be able to cook your turkey in about half the time of a normal bird, and all of the skin will be cooked super crispy.

So let’s start with buying the bird.  For spatchcocking, you’re going to need to get a relatively small bird, no bigger than 12 pounds.  Anything bigger than that isn’t going to fit on a sheet pan.  Besides, do those 20 pound turkeys look natural to you?  Each one of them looks like Morganna the kissing turkey.  If you’re like the Duggars, or Phillip Rivers, or one of my ancestors that had 10 kids because no one understood birth control back in the 1880’s, get two 10-12 pound turkeys.

Now, there is going to be planning involved.  You’re going to need to get the turkey at least three days ahead of time so it can thaw out, unless you can manage to find a fresh bird somewhere (you’re reading my blog, so you probably can’t).  You could speed up the process by covering it in cold water for several hours, but you’ll probably give yourself salmonella, so just stay away from that.

The biggest inconvenience is that you’re going to need a good deal of refrigerator space for the turkey.  This would be a good time to get rid of that Chinese food from Wong Wu’s, which closed down three years ago.

Now, the day before you cook your turkey, you’ve got a choice to make – am I going to brine the turkey or not?  You’re not going to wet brine it, because it’s a pain in the ass and all you’re going to do is waterlog the turkey, and yeah it’ll be moist but so is a wet sponge and you’re not going to eat that, are you, never mind don’t answer that.

No, instead we’re going to dry brine it, if you’re so inclined.  All this means is that you’re going to coat the skin with a mixture of kosher salt and baking powder.  This will draw the moisture out of the skin, so it’ll crisp up and brown perfectly.  After 12-24 hours of brining, it’s going to get all light and transparent-looking, and you’ll know that it’s ready.

You can also decide not to, but really, if you’re going to take the time to hack a turkey in half, a few extra minutes of work shouldn’t be too much for you.  But, if you decide not to, you’ll probably be ok too.  Just be sure to salt it before you put it in the oven.

Now, the spatchcocking process.  Get yourself a good pair of kitchen shears – really powerful scissors will work in a pinch.  You’re going to cut the backbone out of it, which will take a few minutes.  Save the backbone, we’re going to use that for the gravy later.  Oh, and save the goodies in the plastic bag inside the turkey.

Once you’ve broken the breastbone and the turkey’s spirit, you’re ready to cook!

Now, that backbone you just took out.  You’re going to need to hack that into smaller pieces for the gravy.  If you have a cleaver, this would be a great time to use it.  Also, if you have a cleaver, stay away from me.  If you don’t, do the best you can to find some joints in it to cut through easily.

Once it’s finished cooking, and you’ve given it enough time to rest, it’s carving time.  Again, we’re going to the video, because I am not even going to act like I can teach you that.

When you start carving it, you’re going to hear that lovely crackling sound of super crisp turkey skin, and the bird will be the best one you’ve ever tasted.  And I’m sure you’ll drown it in too much gravy, but that’s on you.

Way back in the days of 2015, my soon-to-be-lady and I were trying to figure out where to go to lunch.

Me: Have you tried pho?

My lady: No, what is pho?

Me: Oh, it’s this great Vietnamese beef noodle soup with brisket and flank steak, and you can put all sorts of jalapenos and cilantro in it.

ML: I LOVE CILANTRO!! Where is this magical place?

Me: It’s downtown, Pho Lang Thang.

ML: Ewww!!  We went there for Sharon’s birthday lunch, and she told us to all get these gross sandwiches, and they had radishes and pate on it, and we all hated them!!

It took me a minute to know what sandwich she was talking about, and then I realized it was a banh mi.  Which, depending on where you go, can be a bit of a crapshoot.

(Needless to say, we don’t hang out with Sharon anymore.  Also, her name isn’t really Sharon; it’s Omarosa.)

Nevertheless, I talked her into giving the place a try, and we were hooked.  I like to think that had something to do with us eventually becoming a couple – that’s about as far as my charm goes, semi-exotic foods.

So, pho, as I said above, is at its base a beef noodle soup.  But it’s soooo much more than that.  The broth is so deeply rich with beef flavor, the noodles soak up the broth, and you can add cooked brisket, flank steak, meatballs (which are unusually springy), and raw steak that literally cooks in the broth.

Making it at home, however…that’s another story.

It turns out that making pho broth from scratch is quite difficult.  First, they use a lot of seldom-used parts of the cow, like beef knuckle.  Which, I don’t know, maybe you can find that easily, but down here in Houston the last Beef Knuckles-R-Us went out of business last year, so that’s not easy to come by.

The other main obstacle to making pho at home is the amount of time it takes.  A good beef broth usually takes 3-4 hours or so.  But pho and all its beefy goodness…20 hours!!

20 hours??  Ain’t nobody got time for that!!!  If I wake up at 7:30 on a Saturday, I’m napping by noon, there’s no way I’m staying upright for that long!

So my dreams of cooking pho were dashed, until…

Enter the Instant Pot!

Have we discussed the Instant Pot yet?  How is this possible?  The Instant Pot is fantastic!  It’s a pressure cooker that you can saute in as well!  How have we not discussed this?

This is weird, because typically Instant Pot evangelists put that out there within the first three sentences of introducing themselves.  You know, the same way people say things like:

• “Hi, I’m Tom, I have a great Crossfit class I can get you into!”
• “Hi, I’m Kyler, I’m a vegan, do you like killing animals?”
• “Hi, I’m Dan, 9/11 was an inside job, what do you think about chemtrails?”

Ok, I like the pot, but not like that.  Where the Instant Pot excels is as a pressure cooker (which I will not even pretend to be able to explain how it works, so let’s just assume it’s millions of microscopic evil demons jumping up and down on the food and telling the food to cook quicker because they have to be done by 8:00 so they can watch the latest Handmaid’s Tale episode because Aunt Lydia is soooooo dreamy!!)

Whatever the mysterious pressure cooker demons do, it allows you to make broths and other slow cook meals much faster than you can on a stove top, and without needing to worry about constantly tending to it – this is a huge plus for me.

And, with the pressure cooker demons on my side, I can use regular old soup bones and shanks instead of beef knuckles.  Who’s back in the game!

(Those are seriously three of the weirdest paragraphs I’ve ever written, I’m afraid that I could pass a pee test and still be fired for drug abuse based on those alone.)

Back in the sane world where we cook pho…

The broth itself isn’t terribly complex.  You’re just toasting some spices, sauteing a couple roughly chopped vegetables, adding the bones and the meat, and then let the cooking Gilead demons do their work.

(A quick sidebar about Instant Pot recipes.  You’ll hear IP evangelists tell you how you can cook stews and soups in just 30 minutes.  What they, and IP recipes, fail to acknowledge is the amount of time that it takes for the pot to come to pressure before the cooking begins.  Depending on how much you have in the pot, that could take anywhere from a few minutes to up to 30.  So, caveat emptor, or some other Latin.)

As good as the soup is, the toppings take it to another level.  Just a slice or two of jalapeno pepper, or a sprig of basil or cilantro, is enough to flavor a big bowl on their own.  A little squeeze of a lime wedge adds brightness to it.  Bean sprouts (good luck finding fresh sprouts anywhere) are a popular topping, and add a crunchy texture.  But don’t feel beholden to tradition; go crazy and add whatever else you’d like.  Sriracha, hoisin sauce, carrots, shreds of Urban Meyer’s reputation, whatever floats your boat.

I will not kid you, however.  This is not a simple to put together dish, or a one-pot affair of any sort.  In addition to the Instant Pot, you’re also going to need:

• a stockpot to cook the noodles in
• a colander to drain the noodles
• a bowl to hold the noodles after you’ve drained them
• a strainer to strain the broth
• a bowl to strain the broth into
• a bowl to soak the cooked meat in
• plates/bowls to hold the toppings
• serving bowls

This can make for quite a mess in the kitchen.  Around here, you could almost call it…Adam’s…Messy…Kitchen…

BAM SEE WHAT I DID THERE!!

Now, pho purists will tell you that the broth should be completely clear.  And if you’re a psychopath that worries about the Pho Police banging down your door, knock yourself out and strain it through a coffee filter or cheesecloth.  The rest of us that have less of an interest in making our lives more complicated will just use a strainer and be happy with it.

 

 

Last weekend, I decided to get all creative and stuff, and went to a farmers market to see what they had for sale, and then create a dish around it.

And I saw some ears of corn, and decided I just had to make a dish around them, because I’m sure they picked the ears this morning from their backyard and they’re totally fresh and no I don’t even need to check them because why would a farmer sell product that wasn’t totally fres…

Fuck that lying fucking farmer!

The next ear of corn had a worm in it, which was too fast for me to take a picture of.  Which, I guess I have to respect.  I mean, if you’re wanting to replicate the whole farm to lying farmer field, what better way to do that than to add a slimy worm to your nasty-ass lying corn.

By this point, I was determined, come hell or high water, to make a dish with corn as the centerpiece.  Also, using the phrase “come hell or high water” outs me as a 126 year old man that took his first date to a sodajerk for a phosphate and then spent the rest of his life blaming those damn Irish for the decline of civilization and got the off-the-menu Fox News only package from Comcast…where was I again…

Oh, yes, corn.  Luckily, there was another neighborhood farmers market right around the corner.  I think it was called Kroger.  This time I didn’t trust their corn so I pulled back the husks and saw that these ears, in fact, were telling the truth.  So, up yours, local corn!

Now, one place that did tell the truth was the farmer that sold cherry tomatoes, and holy shit were they good!  Even though they cost way more than supermarket tomatoes, they were so far and away a superior product that they were worth it.  I actually ate a few on their own, like candy.

(I can’t stress enough how amazing of an accomplishment this is.  When I was growing up, I would literally not touch a vegetable outside of corn/potatoes/mushrooms.  This is an undeniable miracle.  If you told my mom when I was a kid that this would eventually happen, she would say, oh sure, right, and around then there’s going to be an orange-skinned president that’s a narcissist megalomaniac and brags about grabbing women by theOHHHH I SEE HOW THIS ALL HAPPENED!!!

Sorry, if I knew this would happen, I would have stuck with the other vegetables.  My bad.)

So I’ve got the corn and tomatoes, and they’re good enough that I don’t want to drown them in too much stuff, so I figured that a good pasta salad would work.  Luckily, I had some orecchiette laying around, which makes sense, because it’s an ear shaped pasta.  You know, ear pasta…ears of corn…you get it??  I got all sorts of good dad jokes waiting for you.

I also had some basil laying around, as well as some pine nuts.

Now, I was all set to make a joke about pine nuts not being from pines, because I’ve never seen nuts in a pine cone, and why do they call them pine nuts if they’re not from pines.  But…the tiniest bit of research showed that they do, in fact, come from pine trees, just a small number of species.  So, there went that…oh screw it…

AND WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH PINE NUTS?  THEY DON’T COME FROM PINES, WHY DON’T THEY CALL THEM TREE NUTS?

Anyways, the not fake pine nuts need to be toasted to get the flavor out of them.  I’ve never seen a recipe where pine nuts weren’t toasted.  I guess it’s too much trouble for big pine nut to pre-toast them.

(Actually, there’s a perfectly good reason – they would go rancid – but still…)

Overall, this is a pretty healthy recipe – I sauteed the corn in some butter, but you could do it in some olive oil, or even dry in a non-stick skillet.  So it won’t kill you if you throw some shredded Parmesan cheese on top as well.

I liked Anthony Bourdain, probably more than the average person.  I read Kitchen Confidential, and I have two of his cookbooks (Les Halles is fantastic, Appetites…less so).  I appreciated that he could have done anything with his rags-to-riches fame and fortune, and he decided to explore the world, have lots of disgusting food, and meet people and listen to them – without interrupting – to show us that it’s ok to understand other cultures.

So when I found out that he’d died, I was saddened.  So I wanted to do a couple things to honor him.

1. I watched two hours of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, because I’d like to think he’d say something like “why do you hate food” to me
2. I made scrambled eggs, using his recipes

(sidenote: I always appreciated his harsh criticism, because I never felt like it came from a bad place.  He had high expectations of the food he ate, and he felt like the people preparing the food were up to the task to meet them.  It was never meant to make them feel small.  It wasn’t manufactured rage bullshit like Gordon Ramsay, who seems to get off on being generally mean and destructive.  Ok, I’m done there.)

His recipe starts out with diced bacon, so I sold my lady that I would be making bacon and eggs.  The next couple minutes went something like this:

 

Me: “Hey honey, I’m going to make bacon and eggs, would you like some?

My lady: “Yaaay, that sounds great!!”

Me: “Great, I’ll start dicing up the bacon.”

(takes bacon out of the fridge)

Me (internally): “Hmmm, I’m not sure it’s still good, but it’s bacon, it’ll be fine.”

Bacon (out loud, to me only): “Yeah, you should really throw me out, I’m past my prime.”

Me: “Oh, I can get by with it, it’ll be fine.”

(pause)

Me: “Wait, what?”

(pause)

Me: “Yeah, honey, it’s just going to be eggs.”

 

Anyways, I figured at this point, since I won’t be adding talking bacon to the eggs, I’ll need to add a little more butter to the pan than normal.  Then I realized that I would probably have done that anyways.

Then we get to the eggs, which I was able to get farm raised.  It doesn’t show up well in the picture, but the yolks were almost unnaturally orange.  That’s because their chickens eat plants, insects, scraps, whatever they can forage for.  Unlike the mass produced chickens that get fed grain, supplements, Chris Christie, whatever the producer can get their hands on cheaply.  If you can get your hands on farm raised eggs for a reasonable price, I highly recommend picking them up.  They are so choice.

The last ingredient that he uses to make the eggs oh-so-tasty is sour cream.  Which sounded great, until I opened the tub of sour cream and saw that it was well past its best days.  Interestingly, it didn’t talk to me, which you would expect dairy in a tub to do (bonus Mel Sharples content below!!!)

What we did have, however, was French onion dip.  Which is really just sour cream, dried onions, and other ingredients that I’m sure we don’t want to know about but taste absolutely delicious.  And I’m sure Anthony would cringe for a second, and then say, “that’s actually a pretty good idea”.

(This is a man that admitted that KFC mashed potatoes were his guilty pleasure late night post-drinking food, he can appreciate sodium bombs.)

(He’s also right, those potatoes are delicious.)

I added some diced chives, because we had some laying around.  By all means, use whatever you’d like to empty out the fridge, but I wouldn’t use too much – these are good enough to stand on their own.

 

One of the reasons that I’m not a trial lawyer is that I’m not quick on my feet.  Like, I’ll be in a conversation with someone, and I’ll take something they say as fact, which on its face is completely laughable, but again, not that swift of a thinker.  And then a few days later, I’ll realize that what they said made no sense, and a simple retort would have rendered their point moot, and I’ll say to myself “that’s what I should have said!”

That’s pretty much what happened when I cooked our Thanksgiving turkey.  It was a glorious bird, if I do say so myself.  And it didn’t hit me until a few days later, oh yeah, people would have loved to have had this recipe for their Thanksgiving.  Oops.

But the truth is, people don’t make enough turkey during the year, which is a shame.  I mean, turkey is delicious (if you’re one of those weirdos that say that turkey sucks and is flavorless, that’s because your mom sucked and was a really crappy cook, and you should be barred from spreading your genes into future generatio…I mean, you need to try this recipe).  It’s relatively cheap – usually turkeys run about $1.50/pound, and you can make so many meals out of one bird.  And, if you cook one outside of Thanksgiving, you don’t have to worry about rushing the carving to feed your shitty drunk uncle that’s going to spend half the night talking about chemtrails and how 9/11 was an inside job.  So, do yourself a favor and start learning to make one out of season.

You’re probably saying to yourself at this point:

• I’m afraid to google spatchcocking, what exactly does that mean?
• How does he know my family so well?

These are valid questions!

Spatchcocking is a fancy way of saying we’re going to butterfly the bird.

What does that mean?  It means we’re going to take the backbone out of the turkey, and then flattening it out by pushing down on the breastbone until you hear it crack, because WHO’S YOUR DADDY MR. TURKEY YOU’RE NOT SO TOUGH NOW ARE YOU I OWN YOU I AM THE PATRIOTS AND YOU ARE THE SAD LITTLE BROWNS!!!

Now, you may be saying to yourself, that seems like a lot of work.  Why would I want to do this?  You seem to have a lot of aggression issues to work out that I’ve managed to get through, why should I crack this guy’s back to help you deal with your problems?

Well Mr./Mrs./Ms. Smarty Pants, the reason why is that you’re going to get the turkey to cook evenly and crisp up the skin to make it absolutely delicious.  That good enough for you?

Here’s the thing: there are two types of bird meat: white and dark.  And they need to cook to different temperatures (the USDA will tell you that white meat needs to be cooked to 165 degrees, and dark to 180.  I will tell you that you can do 150/165 and be just fine.)

When you cook the bird whole, everything gets smushed together, so it’s hard to get everything cooked evenly, so the breast gets done well before the dark.  Also, some of the skin gets bunched up into the meat, so it stays sad and flabby.  But, if you spatchcock it, everything is laid out in one layer, so everything cooks evenly, and all of the skin is exposed to the heat.  The benefit is that you’ll be able to cook your turkey in about half the time of a normal bird, and all of the skin will be cooked super crispy.

So let’s start with buying the bird.  For spatchcocking, you’re going to need to get a relatively small bird, no bigger than 12 pounds.  Anything bigger than that isn’t going to fit on a sheet pan.  Besides, do those 20 pound turkeys look natural to you?  Each one of them looks like Morganna the kissing turkey.  If you’re like the Duggars, or Phillip Rivers, or one of my ancestors that had 10 kids because no one understood birth control back in the 1880’s, get two 10-12 pound turkeys.

Now, there is going to be planning involved.  You’re going to need to get the turkey at least three days ahead of time so it can thaw out, unless you can manage to find a fresh bird somewhere (you’re reading my blog, so you probably can’t).  You could speed up the process by covering it in cold water for several hours, but you’ll probably give yourself salmonella, so just stay away from that.

The biggest inconvenience is that you’re going to need a good deal of refrigerator space for the turkey.  This would be a good time to get rid of that Chinese food from Wong Wu’s, which closed down two years ago.

Now, the day before you cook your turkey, you’ve got a choice to make – am I going to brine the turkey or not?  You’re not going to wet brine it, because it’s a pain in the ass and all you’re going to do is waterlog the turkey, and yeah it’ll be moist but so is a wet sponge and you’re not going to eat that, are you, never mind don’t answer that.

No, instead we’re going to dry brine it, if you’re so inclined.  All this means is that you’re going to coat the skin with a mixture of kosher salt and baking powder.  This will draw the moisture out of the skin, so it’ll crisp up and brown perfectly.  After 12-24 hours of brining, it’s going to get all light and transparent-looking, and you’ll know that it’s ready.

You can also decide not to, but really, if you’re going to take the time to hack a turkey in half, a few extra minutes of work shouldn’t be too much for you.  But, if you decide not to, you’ll probably be ok too.  Just be sure to salt it before you put it in the oven.

Now, the spatchcocking process.  Get yourself a good pair of kitchen shears – really powerful scissors will work in a pinch.  You’re going to cut the backbone out of it, which will take a few minutes.  Save the backbone, we’re going to use that for the gravy later.  Oh, and save the goodies in the plastic bag inside the turkey.

Once you’ve broken the breastbone and the turkey’s spirit, you’re ready to cook!

Now, that backbone you just took out.  You’re going to need to hack that into smaller pieces for the gravy.  If you have a cleaver, this would be a great time to use it.  Also, if you have a cleaver, stay away from me.  If you don’t, do the best you can to find some joints in it to cut through easily.

Once it’s finished cooking, and you’ve given it enough time to rest, it’s carving time.  Again, we’re going to the video, because I am not even going to act like I can teach you that.

When you start carving it, you’re going to hear that lovely crackling sound of super crisp turkey skin, and the bird will be the best one you’ve ever tasted.  And I’m sure you’ll drown it in too much gravy, but that’s on you.

Ok readers, let’s have a little honest chat here – I believe that the kids call it “real talk” (I’m 45 going on 106, I say things like “the kids”).

We all love fried chicken.  It’s so delicious, the meat is so juicy, the buttermilk tenderizes the chicken and makes it so easy to chew.

Bullshit.

You want the skin.

You love the skin.

The crispy skin is the best.

Sometimes you get a full bucket of chicken just so you can peel the skin off, and throw perfectly good chicken flesh away just to devour the 12 secret spices and the fatty goodness of the skin.

And it’s ok.  We all love it, though I’d seek help for the last point.  Because it’s fatty and crispy and delicious when cooked up right.  So, no shame here.

This brings me to today’s recipe.  A few weeks back, I was making a recipe (which wasn’t good enough to make the cut for the blog) that called for skinless, bone-in chicken thighs.  And the only way to do that is to buy a pack of chicken thighs and skin them yourself.

So I’m skinning the thighs, and there is just a huge pile of skin when I’m done with it – almost a half-pound! (That picture would look disgusting, just plow through it)

I can’t throw all of that away.  What would the starving children think of me throwing that all away?  Would the pioneers approve of me wasting part of the animal?  Would the Pioneer Woman approve of me wasting part of the animal?  Hell no!!

(For those of you that think this sounds disgusting, ask yourself what pork rinds are?  Yep, pork skin.  And if that disgusts you, I don’t know why you’re still reading this blog.)

It took me no more than a minute to find an excellent recipe from Bon Appetit, which is incredibly simple – so simple that I can’t even justify using the HTML code to write it up.

First, preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  Then grab a couple baking sheets, and line one of them with parchment paper.

Now, your pile of gross looking skin that will turn into fatty crispy goodness.  Separate them and cut them into about 3 inch squares, or something close.  This isn’t a French Laundry dish, no one is going to look down on you if they end up looking like rectangles or trapezoids or Dom DeLuise.

Place the squartanglzoidLuises on the parchment paper, and flatten them out as best you can.  Then you shower them with salt and pepper.  A lot.  More than you think you need.  How you do it is up to you.  I prefer to throw it in the air like I just won the lottery and asked for the cash payout in quarters, so I can swim around in it and splash them around…or just sprinkle it on, whichever.

Once you’ve made it rain on the skin, cover it with another sheet of parchment paper, and put the other baking sheet on top of it so they don’t curl up into sad little balls.  Then put them in the oven for 1 hour.

SEMI-PRO-TIP: Open a window or two, or run the fan.  These get smoky and will leave a kind of unpleasant smell behind if you don’t.

Once you pull them out of the oven, they will look browned and smell like absolute heaven.  Your best move is to let them sit for a bit to come to room temperature, and then snack on them over a long football Saturday or Sunday.  You probably won’t be able to resist, and just start eating them right there, which will burn your tongue, but you were going to do that on a slice of pizza anyways, so go for it.

Alternatively, you could chop them up into strips and use them as a garnish on a delicate chicken dish, as a texture enhancement.

Nah, you’re going to just eat them whole.  And that’s ok too.  I give you permission.

Several years ago, I was talking with one of my friends (yes, I have more than one…usually) about food, and they were telling me about how ramen noodles had become a big thing.  Here’s a brief recollection of how that went:

 

THEM: You really need to try this new place, they do some amazing ramen noodle bowls.

ME: Wait, ramen noodles?  That’s like 20 cents a packet, why would I pay good money to get that?  I haven’t eaten that since high school, one time I cut up a hot dog and put it in the bowl, I thought I was some serious hot shit.

THEM: No, it’s nothing like tha…

ME: HOT DOG RAMEN IS THE BEST!!!

 

Fast forward about a year.  I was in Honolulu on the tail end of a long vacation.  I was exhausted from multiple days of hiking and sightseeing.  I was suffering from a mild staph infection, for which I had to convince the doctor to prescribe me anti-biotics for, and then had to wait in line at the pharmacy behind a woman that was reading the riot act to the pharmacist because they didn’t have her prescription ready and they made her late to work which seemed odd since she was wearing a bikini top and short shorts.

So I had very little energy to do much of anything, but I seriously needed some food.  And I’d heard a lot about this ramen place down the street, so I figured I should go see what they were doing that was so much better than my elegant hot dog ramen.

When I got to the restaurant, I saw this sign outside of it:

I suppose some of those are hot dog ramen in some sense, but that is NOT what I bargained for.  But, I was tired and didn’t feel like finding a new restaurant, so I went forward to try the non-porn ramen.

I ordered whatever bowl of noodles and broth, and got some fried things along with it.

Obviously they have different ramen packets over there.  But the noodles were thick and chewy, and the broth was super-meaty and perfectly seasoned.  Again, different packets.

Once I got home, I decided that I had to try and make it myself.  But, every recipe for the broth required you to boil bones for 12 hours or throw some crazy ingredients in like East Asian Yak Tail.  And I couldn’t find dry Asian noodles that were close to what I had in Hawaii, and there is no way I was going to make them from scratch (I will never understand home cooks that make their own pasta.  Yeah, it’s going to be better than the dry stuff, but the joy/pain ratio of making you own over the dry is extremely low.  It’s like building your own watch instead of buying one from a store…if anyone still wears watches…)

As I increased my ramen knowledge, I found that you can actually have thin noodle good ramen, which was helpful.  And, after seeing a recipe on Tasty, I found that you can use the instant ramen noodles in good recipes – you just have to throw away the packet.  Which, sometimes is very good to use, but it’s just a MSG bomb, and we can do better than that.

I’m not going to lie, though.  This is not a quick and easy recipe.  It won’t take as long as making your own broth, but there are a lot of elements to it, and you’re going to have to use some good time managements skills.  But, you will be rewarded with a restaurant quality ramen bowl in a fraction of the time they take to cook theirs.

This is a basic template, you can add and subtract however you’d like.  Don’t like corn?  Throw some bamboo shoots in!  Have some extra mushrooms around?  Slice ’em up and toss them in at the end!  Want to go the extra mile and marinate your eggs?  Do it!

 

Last weekend, my lady and I spent some time in New Orleans, and over the course of a few days we consumed somewhere between four and eleventy billion Bloody Marys.  And a few hurricanes.  And one of those hand grenade drinks that comes in those yard glasses that advertise it as the strongest drink on Bourbon Street which was not that strong oh my god I remember very little of that night after consuming it but the two are totally not correlated.

We made it home in one piece, and I decided that I wanted to incorporate the Bloody Mary into something I cooked, without taking the easy way out and just making some peel-and-eat shrimp with cocktail sauce.

(Sidenote: a Bloody Mary is basically cocktail sauce, with tomato juice instead of ketchup.  But it’s cool, because cocktail sauce is delicious, and really, are peel-and-eat shrimp anything more than a sauce delivery vehicle?  I’ve had maybe three shrimp in my life that made me say, oh this doesn’t taste like watery rubber, I would eat these on their own.)

I figured for something like this, a flank steak would work best.  Chicken would be overwhelmed by the tomato mixture, and fish would break down if I left it to sit long enough for the marinade to penetrate it.  So I went to the internet to look up recipes and see if anyone has ever done this before, to at least make sure that no one has ever tried it and said, do not make this, it turned my steak into mush and the marinade exploded and left huge stains on my ceiling, and when we tried to sell our house we had to put in the description “pay no attention to the red stains in the kitchen from the great Bloody Mary incident of 2006.

One recipe came back.  And I clicked on it, and saw that the author was…

Guy Fieri.

Guy.

Fucking.

Fieri.

No.

No, no, no, no, no.  We do not travel to Flavortown in this house, we make nothing that is righteous, and everything is in bounds and on the hook.

(BTW, I had to look all those expressions up.  Some of them.  Maybe.)

I did take a look at the method he used, and it lined up with what I had planned to do, so I went about creating my own recipe that would not only make a good marinade, but also the base for a great drink.  Not to toot my own horn, but I think I knocked it out of the park.

A few notes before I get to the recipe:

• This is my recipe, any similarity to an existing recipe is completely coincidental, so there will be no attribution.
• I served this with a simple salad and brown rice with lots of herbs – that recipe will come in a later mini-post.
• You could use a bottled mix, and get pretty good results.  Don’t.  It doesn’t take more than a few minutes, you’ll use the ingredients in other recipes, and you can modify it as you like.
  • Caveat: if you’re going to use bottled lemon juice and not fresh squeezed, then go ahead and use the bottled.  It’s not going to taste nearly as good.

This does call for using a cast-iron skillet.  I know that scares a lot of people off, because they think it takes so much time to maintain it, and if you mess one thing up then it becomes totally useless.  I used to think so too, but it’s pretty easy – I bought one at a flea market a couple years ago, and after a little cleanup it’s slicker than a non-stick skillet.  Here’s a great primer on how to bring an old one back to life.

There are few things that I like more than commercials for “as seen on TV” products.  Especially for products that solve a problem that you didn’t even know you had.  Like putting on your socks, or opening a jar, or breathing (you try and try, but you just can’t take in oxygen and convert it to carbon dioxide, and WHO HAS TIME TO LEARN HOW TO DO IT??)  And even more so when the first part is in black and white, and shows just how complicated life is, and then it switches to color to show how much better it is when you’ve solved the not-problem-problem.

Here’s my favorite one:

Before she discovered the green pan, this woman had no concept of how cooking worked – she probably thought if you banged two rocks together, a stir fry popped out.  But now that she has the green pan, she’s all, oh look at me, I’m Emeril Batali, come check out my 13 new restaurants that are opening this week, Iron Chef just called, they want me to be on their East Japanese Shark Fin Powder episode.

Anyways, this is a long winded way to say that I’ve discovered that the same way of thinking could apply to tortillas.  Store-bought tortillas are black and white, but homemade tortillas…that is living in space age technicolor.

Did you know that tortillas puff up when they’re cooked?  I didn’t until I made these.  You could treat these as little pita pockets if you wanted to, except these would actually taste good, instead of tasting like semi-pliable cardboard.

Did you know that tortillas are supposed to be tender yet chewy?  I didn’t either.  Check that, I kind of did, since Houston has amazing fajita restaurants, but I didn’t think you could make those kind at home.

This does take a little bit of work, but with some good planning it’s very doable.  IT.  IS.  NOT.  HARD.

(Also, this recipe will piss off the Whole30 people, and that’s a good thing.)

As the name suggests, you’re going to need bacon fat.  To do this, you’re going to need to cook some bacon to render the fat.  I should not need to convince you to do this – if I have to, get the hell off of my blog.

As a rule, whenever you cook bacon, you should be saving the fat.  It tastes much better than butter, and it keeps forever.  You’ll be passing the fat container down from generation to generation.

(Also, please don’t do that, I just made that up, it’s probably not true.)

(Also, make sure the fat cools for a bit before you pour it into a plastic container.  I learned this from experience.)

These are going to be thicker than your typical store-bought tortilla, but they’ll still be pliable.  If you want to get them super thin, you’ll need to invest in a tortilla press, which will set you back $15-20, and will take up a little space in your kitchen.

Also, these are going to cook best in a cast-iron pan.  If you don’t have one, you could use a non-stick or stainless pan, but it’s not going to get as hot as cast-iron, and you need the high heat to get the blister marks on the outside.  Get a cast-iron pan.  Chances are your grandma has one hidden away somewhere, and you can make sure she meets an untimely deat…I mean, ask to borrow it and never give it back.  I got mine at a flea market for $20, and it is so useful, and isn’t nearly as hard to maintain as people make it out to be.

 

When people go to the grocery store (or as my lady likes to call it, the market, but extending the “a”, so it sounds like it’s being spoken by a 1930’s New York socialite on her third cigarette on one of those long smoker-thingies – oh daahling, would you be so kind as to fetch me a vodka soda, I can’t possibly enjoy my Virginia Slims without a drink…ummm…where was I…oh yeah, right), they go into the meat section and breeze right past the baby back ribs.

Ask a shopper why they pass by them, and they’ll probably give you any number of answers:

• Waah, they’re too expensive!
• Ewww, they’re so fatty!
• Ugh, they’re such a pain to cook!
• Yuck, they’re so messy!
• Whatevs, I’m Taylor Swift and I have a personal shopper so I wouldn’t even be in your stupid market, and if I was I’d just be finding a guy to break up with so I can write a song about it!  Ohh, I could tell by the way you were looking at those mangoes, that you were going to cheat on me with some girl named Lila, so I smacked you on the face with a rack of ribs just so I could claim my man, and every time he goes to buy produce he’ll think twice before his eyes start straying!!!
  • I just sang that to myself, this isn’t the worst song I’ve heard this year.  Just sayin’, Nashville!

Some of those answers are true, some are bullshit, and some involve Taylor Swift.  But together, we’re going to debunk the bullshit, and ease your concerns about the truth.

BULLSHIT #1: RIBS ARE REALLY BAD FOR YOU

No one will ever confuse baby back ribs with health food.  They’re not healthy, they’re fatty.  But no one said you have to eat 20 bones at every meal (though I would quickly become friends with anyone that did).

Here’s a picture of one cut rib:

That’s a pretty good sized rib!  Put a few sides together, and you really don’t need more than three ribs to be satisfied.  Which helps keep the portions down and still gives you the satisfaction of cheating a little and crushing Dr. Oz’s dreams of eliminating fatty waste consumption.

Now you’re probably saying to yourself, “Adam, I eat the dino deluxe rack every time I go to a rib joint, how can I possibly eat just three ribs?”  Well,

• a) do it
• b) only eat ginormous racks of ribs when you’re on a business trip, because the calories don’t count, and neither do the hookers you pay for while you’re there (Bonus if you can find a way to roll the two together into a single line on your expense report!)

BULLSHIT #2: RIBS ARE REALLY EXPENSIVE

Yep, if you go to a BBQ restaurant (or if you’re in Cincinnati, Montgomery Inn because you have no concept of what actual BBQ is), a rack of ribs is going to set you back $25-30. If you buy a rack at the market, you’ll usually pay $2-2.50 a pound.  A 3.5-4 pound rack should easily feed a family of four (again, you’re only eating three ribs, not the Monday night super city slicker rib plate challenge at the restaurant down the road).

BULLSHITS #3-5: EVERYTHING THAT MAKES YOU THINK YOU CAN’T COOK RIBS AT HOME

Ok, so here’s where I have to be straight with you: you are going to have to make some compromises to make these easily at home.  And they will be very good, but they will not come out perfectly smoky like the ones you get at a true BBQ restaurant.

To walk through the various bullshits, I had to turn to resident BBQ expert Melvin “Little Mo Big Tex Smoke Daddy” Thomas Jr., owner of Bunkhouse Buck’s Big Boss BBQ, which has appeared a record 16 times on Guy Fieri’s Diners, Drive-In’s, and Dives.  Let’s hear what he has to say:

Melvin Thomas Jr. : Every true BBQ pit boss knows that the only way you truly make yourself a slab of ribs is by smoking them over a hickory fire (or mesquite if you want to go it Northwest Memphis style) using the 3-2-1-2-3-4-1 method for 16 hours, until you get a pink smoke ring but not too deep or you’ve ruined them and have to start over.

Adam: If you’re in a planned community like us, forget about being able to smoke anything.  And even if you’re in a normal house, do you really have 16 hours to spend with your life smoking ribs (it’s really more like 6, but go with me on this)?  Sure, they’ll come out great, but unless your life’s goal is to compete in weekly BBQ contests all across the country, baking them is perfectly fine.

MTJ: And no self-respecting BBQ master would ever par boil his ribs.

Adam: Yeah, ok, but again, we have lives so we have to simmer them for a little bit to move the cooking process along.

MTJ: Now, the mark of a true BBQ champion is their spice rub, and if I do say so, mine is the best.  The blend is a secret, but you can buy my rub for just $14.99, on my website, Amazon, or Etsy.  And you never, ever, ever sauce your ribs.

Adam: Most likely, the secret blend is just a lot of salt and brown sugar.  For these ribs, we’re going to use some of both, but the majority of the seasoning is going to come from the glaze (not a sauce, because sauces are added towards the very end because the sugar would burn if it’s left on too long).

BULLSHIT #6: REMOVE THE MEMBRANE

Unless you’re seriously bugged by it, just leave it alone.  Yes, the glaze won’t penetrate the bottom of the ribs, but it is a complete pain in the ass to remove and ain’t nobody got time for that.

Now that we’ve gotten those out of the way…we’re going to give them flavor in two stages.  The first is through the par boiling, which we’ll use a lot of vinegar, garlic, and salt to let them simmer in for a while.  The second is through the glaze, which is this fantastic combination of sweet (maple syrup and brown sugar), spicy (chipotle peppers and Tabasco), and sour (adobo sauce).

I made cornbread and green beans to go with this, but honestly, serve them with whatever you like; they’re going to taste great, and your family with judge you no matter what you serve them with.