Fall's here.

Today's Halloween and fall has finally hit Brooklyn. There's leaves everywhere. There's that fall smell in the air. And the clocks went back last night. Summer's finally gone.

Our oven died Friday, so I'm forced to cook on the stove top or in the grill. Didn't have time to make some Q, so I made a pot of chili. I've been making chili since I was a kid, but last night I decided to experiment. I added some Ancho chili powder, some ketchup, some red wine and black beans. Man, it was good.

I'm back

It's Monday. Sorry for the delay in posting. Last week was very busy. Friday was my father's 75th birthday and Saturday was my parent's 50th wedding anniversary. So it was another weekend without cooking. However, I did manage to grill some hamburgers last Saturday for the people setting up the beef and beer at my daughter's school. I got a lot of compliments from the people on the St. Mark Sports Association board about the food. The secret to good hamburgers -- cheap meat. Buy fresh ground chuck 80/20 fat or just fresh ground beef which is 70/30 fat. I bought some of both and mixed them together. Form the burgers by hand. Don't put any salt in them. Grill to medium rare. Don't over cook. Excellent.

For lunch today, I again went to Daisy May's BBQ for lunch. I've got to stop going there so often. They've become very inconsistent in quality over the last couple of months. Today, I had the sticky ribs; 4 spare ribs with a sweet sauce. They were tender on the inside, but dry and over cooked. The ribs I was given included one traditional rib, meaning one bone. The other three, I don't know what it's called, came from the slab above the main rib bones. These "ribs" were a piece of meat separated by small little bones. Tasty, but very fatty. I was very disappointed in the ribs today.

I don't know if the people at Daisy May's are reading my blog, but the baked beans with burnt ends actually had burnt ends in them! Unfortunately, the burnt ends were also extremely fatty. Now as Emeril says "pork fat rules," but these were chunks of fat which reminded me of that piece of fat you would find in a can of Campbell's baked beans. Again, very disappointing. I think I'm going to stay away from Daisy May's for a while.

I hope all of you are following and enjoying the links I put into my blog. Some of them are on topic, some aren't. You'll never know unless you check them out. One day, I'm going to do a blog entry where every word is linked.

Friday's Ramblings

Ok, it's Friday night. Nothing happening. Another weekend approaching where I won't be able to cook. I'm going through major withdrawal. Help me Fudo!

Tomorrow night I'm attending a Night At the Races at St. Mark School, which benefits the St. Mark Sports Association of which I am a board member. For $5 admission, you get roast beef sandwiches and all the beer you can drink. Last year we went through 5 kegs for 300 people. What a night! Bassett Catering provides the sandwiches each year. Thanks guys!

Hopefully when we do this again next year, I'll have a smoker that can handle food for 300 people. I'd love to do pulled pork or something different for next year's night at the races. Maybe do a real "Kentucky Derby" night. You know, BBQ, Burgoo, and Mint Juleps.

I've been trying to drive traffic to this blog, so if any of you reading this have noticed some changes, now you know the reason why. If any of you are reading this, please make some comments. It's lonely here in cyberspace. Actually it's lonely in real life too. But that's a story for a different blog.

Restaurant Review- Daisy May's BBQ

I've mentioned this place a couple of times before. Daisy May's is a takeout BBQ place on West 46th Street. Today's very quick review. I ordered the Chicken Plate Special - $8.

Tennessee Whiskey beer Can Style Chicken - Good, a little dry, nice smoky flavor, good sauce. Good skin too. Not crisp, but tender. Very small chicken.

Baked Beans with burnt ends - Fair. These have been much better on previous occasions. NO BURNT ENDS in the beans. C'mon guys. I've had this complaint before. Not as many beans either this time, more "bean paste" than whole beans.

Cajun Dirty Rice and Beans - Fair. Not very spicy, not a lot of beans and absolutely no meat.
I've been going to Daisy May's since it opened. It seems that they've been cutting costs lately by skimping on ingredients. Their quality is slipping. I know there's not much competition for BBQ in NYC, but there are hundreds of places I can get a great half chicken.

Food Talk

Today on Food Talk on WOR radio, Rocco DiSpirito and his guest - Tasmin Day Lewis (Daniel Day Lewis's sister) were talking about mastering recipes. They said that you should never make anything exactly the same way each time. Doing that would take all the fun and creativity out of being a cook. They also said that it was impossible to make a recipe identically each time. There are too many variables, from freshness of ingedients, to humidity, to quality.

Very interesting.

Mastering the recipe.

This weekend I didn't fire up the grill. I'm in withdrawal.

Instead, I cleaned out the refrigerator and used up all the food I bought for projects that I hadn't made yet. I also did some other house keeping, and we spent Sunday apple picking upstate.

I know this isn't related to BBQ, but if you're in the NYC area and are looking for a great place to go apple picking, try the Wilklow Farms in New Paltz. It's a beautiful hillside orchard with about 10 different varieties of apples. They also have an antiques shop, cider mill, pumpkin patch, etc. This is a great place to spend a fall day. They make the best apple cider doughnuts I've ever tasted. They're worth the trip by themselves!

Wilklow also has a hay ride through their farm and through the "spooky" woods. It's kind of tacky, but still fun. We passed the "possessed" pigs. They have about 30 pigs that have about one week left to live. After that it's to the slaughter house and to market. The driver said that I'll be able to buy some of that pig meat in November in the Brooklyn Green Market. I was hoping that they had a smoke house on the farm that I could check out. No such luck.

But I did get to work on one more aspect of my quest for perfect BBQ. One of the things I keep hearing from the BBQ masters is that you must be able to accurately reproduce your recipes each time. From rubs to sauces to meat, everything should be exactly the same each time you do it. Well, I've never measured an ingredient in my life. I don't like being that exact. It's one of the reasons I don't bake.

My daughter's school is asking for recipes for a cookbook that they will publish as a fund raiser. I was making cream of mushroom soup for my her, and it's my own recipe, so I thought I'd write this down for the cook book. So, for the first time in my life, I measured every ingredient as I made the soup. I tweaked, I poured everything into cups and measuring spoons, I added in 1/4 tsp. increments. The soup came out great.

Well, now I know how I'm going to spend the winter. I’ll be working out my recipes so that I can do them exactly the same every time. Working out the rubs, sauces and mops so that I can sell them after I win a few trophies. Look for WhiteTrash BBQ and WhiteTrash Rub in the near future.

Texas Hill Country Barbecue

American Heritage Magazine does an annual Overrated/Underrated poll on just about everything you can think about. This year in “underrated regional food,” they listed Barbeque.

The article was written by Danny Meyer and all opinions are his. Here’s the article….

“In the world of Barbecue, regional differences are debated with a rancorous and religious zeal both within and without the regions themselves. Denizens of North Carolina argue vehemently over the finest (and coarsest) points of chopped pig, as well as which quadrant of the Tar Heel State produces the tangiest, properly tomatoed sauce. While barbeque lore maintains that America’s choicest regions for Q are (in order) Memphis, Kansas City and North Carolina, I know exactly where I ‘d head were I told I had just one final weekend to ply my body with barbeque. The Texas Hill Country, a beautiful part of our nation (whose gateway is the incredibly underrated city of Austin), is the ultimate in barbecue purity. Those who think the sauce makes the Q will be disappointed. There is no particularly good sauce to be found there. Pit masters are proud to let “oaky smoke” and meat do all the talking.

Cattle is King in Hill Country, with exceptional versions of beef brisket, shoulder clods, ribs and spicy sausage (hot links or hot guts) to be found throughout the land. But it doesn’t stop there. Hill Country outposts serve exquisite pork ribs, gargantuan pork chops, and my favorite versions of smoked chicken as well. I’ve even become a sucker for stewed pinto beans, preferring them to the sweet baked beans one finds in other barbeque regions.

Though I have at least 10 must-return-to favorites, one can almost throw a dart at the Texas Hill Country map and not be disappointed, wherever it lands.”

My Favorite Texas Hill Country Barbeque place is Rudys.

American Heritage is on line at American Heritage Magazine.

WhiteTrash

It's a WhiteTrash word.

Here at WhiteTrash BBQ, we serve everyone. No disrimination here. C'mon in, have a seat and eat some meat.

WhiteTrash is everywhere!

Bloody Mary's Whitetrash Lover, WhiteTrash - Home Of The Inbred Punks!!!, WhiteTrash - The trailer park of the internet., WhiteTrash World, WhiteTrash Recipes (no relation), Poor WhiteTrash, WhiteTrash Trophy Wives, WhiteTrash Diner, More WhiteTrash Recipes (maybe related), WhiteTrash Xmas, WhiteTrash Pot Luck, Cletus'S WhiteTrash BBQ, Edgar Winter's WhiteTrash, Joelene's Trailer Park WhiteTrash, and finally, another WhiteTrash BBQ!

Winning has been confirmed

Just got my copy of the Kansas City Barbecue Society Bullsheet. On page 22 they list the results of Guitarbeque. Readers who have been paying attention will remember Guitarbeque as the New Jersey State Championship barbecue contest that I competed in back in August. I was cooking as a member of The Barbecue Brethren (see handy dandy link to your right)

Well there were 17 teams at Guitarbeque. The Barbecue Brethren took number 4 as over-all Champion Team, First place in Brisket and Second place in Chicken.

It is really nice to see it in writing. And thanks again to Phil and Dave for letting me be on their team!

We were interviewed by some folks at Food Network and hopefully you will be seeing our smiling mugs on TV soon. Unconfirmed rumor is that we'll be on The Secret Life Of... on November 1st.

BBQ Rubs

Rubs. What the hell is a rub? Well a rub is any dry spice mix that is put on the meat prior to the meat being put on the grill. Some people shake their rub on the meat - like using a salt shaker. Others rub it into the meat massaging every inch, clogging every pore with their spices.
Rubs offer a lot of flavor and help keep in the moisture.

Here's a link about rubs...
Using Rubs and Spices the Right Way

Smoked Turkey

On Sunday, while I was finishing painting my kitchen, I smoked a 9 lb turkey breast.

It was the first cool weekend of the fall here in NYC and I had a hankering for turkey. It's such a cold weather food, as it’s associated with all the major winter holidays. Turkey for Thanksgiving, turkey for Christmas, New Year's Day too, you can’t get away from it in the winter. Anytime there's a party with a lot of people, turkey is served. I like turkey. I really do. It tastes good. It's healthy, and it's really easy to cook, if you know how.

To smoke the turkey I fired up my Weber kettle. I built an indirect fire on both sides of the kettle using charcoal, maple and hickory wood. I lined the center of the cooker with tin foil to catch the drippings and got the cooker temperature to 250 degrees. Perfect.

I made a paste of butter, sage, thyme, parsley, black pepper and "sugar in the raw." I rubbed this into the bird, under its skin. Now, if you've never done this, you're in for a real treat. You make a small incision between the skin and meat of the turkey and slowly work your hand into it. The idea is to lift the skin from the meat without separating it from the rest of the bird. I find it easiest to do near the neck of the bird.

Now take some of the butter paste and work it into the meat. When you cook the turkey, the butter paste will melt as it seasons and moistens the meat. Be very careful not to rip the skin. The feeling of your hand under the skin as you spread the butter paste is just incredible. If you haven’t tried it yet, go ahead, try it. You’ll always remember your first time. I imagine it’s similar to the doctor’s experience when he gives you a ride on the stinky pinky as he checks your prostate.

One of the things I like about the butter under the skin process is that it reduces the amount of time basting the turkey. This is good because every time you open up your cooker to baste, you lower the temperature in your grill which in turn increases cooking time.

After about 3 hours, the bird was ready. The skin was a dark mahogany color and crispy. I also rubbed some of the butter paste of the skin before I cooked it. The meat was moist and juicy. It had a nice subtle smoke flavor to it. In other words, perfect. Dinner that night was the turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and peas. A great fall dinner.

Yesterday, I stopped in the deli and noticed that smoked turkey was selling for $8.99 a pound. I paid 89 cents. Man, I love being able to cook. So, when I open my restaurant, smoked turkey will defintely be on the menu. It's a money maker!

Next time -- fried turkey!