Category: Sciency Stuff

Steaks Sous Vides – The Perfect Steak

It doesn’t get much better than this people.

If you’ve spent much time reading this blog, you know that I’m all about temperature, because temperature is the only reliable way to gauge how your food is going to turn out.

Of course temperature and heat are different things.  Heat is about how much energy you’re putting into your food whereas temperature is a way to read how much heat is in food already.

Think about it like this:  If you decide to slow-roast a piece of meat on your smoker or in your oven at a low temperature over a period of hours, you’re putting a little bit of heat into it over a long period of time.  Conversely, if you sear a steak over a hot grill or in a hot cast iron pan, you’re putting a lot of heat into it very rapidly.

The reason it’s hard to cook that perfect steak, which is medium rare bumper to bumper with a crusty, golden edge is because there’s almost no way to cook it on low enough heat for it to turn out truly perfect.  Even slowly bringing your steak up to temperature in a 200°F oven before searing it (the method I generally recommend) is going to leave striations of doneness to a small degree.  Put too much heat in and it’ll be a bullseye of doneness with only the very center cooked correctly.

Enter the Sous Vide cooker – the solution to all of your protein problems.  No more striations of doneness, no more raw centers, no more accidentally-well-done food.  Just perfect, all the time.

How does this work?  Basically, when you cook something sous vide you hold the entire piece of protein at exactly the temperature you want for an extended period of time so no matter how much time it takes, you never overcook it.

So, what exactly is sous vide?  Sous vide is the process of cooking something in a water bath which is set to an exact temperature.  Essentially, what you do is you vacuum seal you protein in a plastic bag, either using a vacuum sealer or the water displacement method (I use the latter method; it’s cheaper and has never caused me any problems) to get all the air out of the bag and drop it in a pot of water that’s being held at a constant temperature until it’s cooked through; then you simply finish it off over high heat to sear the outside and there you have it – perfectly cooked food.

This is, in fact, the way high end steakhouses typically cook their steak.  Ever wonder how a table of five can order three different cuts of steak, one rare, two medium-rare, one medium, and one medium-well and they all arrive at the table at the same time, perfectly cooked, exactly as ordered, edge to edge?  The answer is sous vide.  They’ve had those steaks sitting in different water baths at different temperatures for hours, waiting to be finished off on a hot grill and brought to your table.

That’s the secret.

You can achieve these results at home too.  There are three ways to do this:

  1. Stove top method.  Heat water in a large pot to exactly the temperature you want, verify using a thermometer, and constantly fiddle with the temperature for hours until you’ve got whatever it is you’re making cooked through.  Forget it.  Too much time, too hard.
  2. Beer Cooler method.  This works astonishingly well.  Essentially, you get your water bath to a few degrees higher than your cooking temperature and the insulated walls of the cooler should hold your water at a relatively constant temperature for a few hours; long enough to cook a steak.  J. Kenji Lopez-Alt describes the process here.
  3. Purchase a sous vide immersion circulator.  It used to be that these things were too pricey for the average home cook, but due to the popularity of the sous vide method of cooking they are becoming increasingly affordable.  Generally, they’ll run you anywhere from $75-$150.  I got mine at Aldi for $49.99.  So far so good.

No matter what method you use, you really owe it to yourself to try cooking something sous vide the next time you have a couple hours.  Here’s a short recipe for the steak featured above.

Ingredients

For the Garlic-Herb Butter:

  1. 1 stick salted (yeah, i know) butter, room temperature
  2. 3 tablespoons fresh parsley, minced
  3. 2 tablespoons fresh basil, minced
  4. 3 sprigs fresh thyme, minced
  5. 2 cloves garlic, smashed into a paste (or squished in a garlic press)

For the Steak:

  1. 2 steaks (filet, strip, or ribeye), 1.5 – 2 inches thick (the thicker the better, ask your butcher to cut you a few steaks if the ones in the case are less than 1.5 inches thick – remember, you’re searing these off at the end and it is possible to overcook your steak during that process).
  2. 2 cloves garlic, smashed
  3. Fresh herbs (such as rosemary, thyme, etc), optional
  4. Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Instructions:

For the Garlic-Herb Butter:

  1. Mix all ingredients together in a small bowl until very well combined.
  2. Using plastic wrap, roll the butter into a log shape and twist the ends off (like a tootsie roll)
  3. Refrigerate until needed.

For the Steak:

  1.  Heat a water bath to 130°F for medium rare (135° for medium, anything past that forget the whole sous vide thing and just incinerate it on your stovetop; it’s easier that way).
  2. Season steaks generously with salt and pepper.  Toss each steak individually in a food-grade gallon size freezer bag along with the smashed garlic clove and herbs, if using.
  3. Using the water displacement method, seal the steaks in their bags.
  4. Introduce steaks to water bath and make sure they’re fully submerged, weighing them down if necessary.
  5. Hold steaks in the water bath at a constant temperature for at least 2 hours and not more than 4 hours.
  6. Remove steaks from bags and pat very dry with paper towels (Note:  they will look really weird – grayish brown and mushy – after coming out of the water bath; don’t worry, all is well).
  7. Sear the steaks over high heat, either in a cast-iron pan or ripping hot grill (surface temperature of heating surface should be 400°F – 500°F), 15-30 seconds per side.
  8. Remove steaks from heating surface and allow to rest; while resting, top steaks with sliced rounds of garlic herb butter and tent lightly with foil until butter is melted, 3-5 minutes
  9. Slice and serve

 

The Best, Easiest Roast Chicken

 

Stick with me on this one people:  Trust me.

If you do, you will be rewarded with the juiciest, tenderest most succulent chicken with the crispiest, most delicious crackling skin you’ve ever had.

A good roast chicken should be both simple and delicious rather than fussy and difficult.  The method described in this post is, in my opinion, hands down the best way to roast a chicken.  In fact, it’s so easy, so good and so delicious that it is now the only way I roast a chicken.  Here’s the how and the why:

The traditional method of roasting a chicken involves stuffing the cavity, trussing the bird, and placing it breast side up in a deep roasting pan and roasting it at 325°F for about two hours.  This method is time consuming, and poses an additional problem:  Uneven cooking. 

You see, you want the chicken breasts to be moist and delicious, and you don’t really want pink thighs and drums.  But when you place a whole chicken in a roasting pan, the breasts are exposed to the full force of the oven’s heat, while the drums and thighs are deep in the roasting pan.  This means that the breasts are getting incinerated into dry stringy bits of grossness while the thighs and drums take their sweet time coming up to temp. 

I’ve seen all kinds of attempts to solutions to the problem, all the way from icing down the breasts first to constantly rotating the bird in the oven (which, by the way, every time you open the oven door your oven loses 25° worth of heat and you extend the process to like 3 hours or more).

What if I told you there was a way to perfectly roast a chicken in less than an hour? Well, there is…

You may observe that the chicken in the cover picture looks a bit… flat.  That’s because it is.  In fact, it’s had its backbone removed and it’s been flipped over, breast-side up. 

A lot of people refer to this process as butterflying or spatchcocking.  It’s very simple to do. 

To spatchcock your chicken, use the following procedure:

  1. Remove your chicken from its bag and retrieve giblets and whatever else might be hiding in the cavity of the chicken.  Pat the chicken dry and transfer it to a large cutting board.
  2. If there are any giant pieces of skin or blobs of fat protruding from the tail end or neck end, trim them off.
  3. Place the chicken breast-side down on the cutting board, with the neck closest to you.
  4. Locate the chicken’s neck and tail, and feel along the back of the chicken to get an idea of where the backbone is (measure twice, cut once).
  5. Using a sharp boning knife or a sturdy set of kitchen or poultry sheers, remove the backbone from the chicken by starting on one side of the neck and snipping all the way down the spine to the tail.  Repeat on the other side.
  6. Snip the backbone into three pieces and reserve for making stock or a pan sauce
  7. Flip the chicken over breast-side up, and make sure the legs and thighs are flipped in such a way as to be fully exposed (like in the picture), not under the chicken.
  8. Using firm pressure, press down with your palm on the center of the chicken’s breast until it’s pretty flat, like you’re giving it CPR.  You may or may not hear the breastbone pop, but the idea here is to get it as flat as possible.
  9. Place your chicken breast-side up on a wire rack over a rimmed baking sheet that has been lined with aluminum foil.  You can put some lemon wedges under your chicken if you like.

Now, you ask, why have you gone to all the trouble of doing this?  Well, aside from making carving a cinch, having this nice flat chicken sitting on top of a wire rack rather than deep in a roasting pan means that the whole bird will come up to temperature at roughly the same rate.  In fact, pop the chicken into a 400°F – 450°F oven for about 45 minutes and, lo and behold, the breasts will be getting finished right around the time the thighs are up to temperature.  You’ve just saved yourself at least 90 minutes and your chicken will be juicy through and through.

A Word on Chicken and Temperature

If you’ve read enough of the posts on this blog you should have figured out by now that we always cook using temperature not time.  Speaking of temperature, the poor chicken is probably the most overcooked item on anyone’s regular rotation.  The reason for this is that chickens can house some really nasty bugs, not the least of which are salmonella and e. coli, both of which will leave you wretching up your guts for a few days – best case scenario.  Because we’re aware of this, we generally follow the USDA guidelines and roast our chicken until the internal temperature of the breast is 165°F and the thighs are 180°F – meaning that they are dry and sad and horrible, like this guy:

It does also, however, mean that even a total idiot can cook a chicken or a turkey and not poison anyone.  And that’s the audience that the USDA is shooting for: the general public, the total idiots, the lowest common denominator.  And that’s fine, because as a government organization, that’s their job – to protect the general public from themselves.

However, that is not my job.  My job is to help you get the juiciest, most delicious, succulent bird on the table that you can.  If you’re reading this blog, I’m assuming that you’re not a total idiot (if you are, and you’re still reading this blog, God help you).

So here’s the thing:  It’s not like salmonella (or anything bacteria, virus, amoeba, what have you) are alive at one temperature and then suddenly dead at the next.  The process of pasteurization, that is, the process of ensuring that food born pathogens are eliminated from food, is a matter of both time and temperature.  So the FDA (also a government organization whose job is to keep us safe from ourselves, but in this case it applies to restaurants and food vendors and producers, not individuals) has this to say about pasteurization and poultry:

FDA Pasteurization Time for Poultry

Temperature (°F)

Chicken

Turkey

13663.3 Minutes64.0 Minutes
14025.2 Minutes28.1 Minutes
1458.4 Minutes10.5 Minutes
1502.7 Minutes3.8 Minutes
15544.2 Seconds1.2 Minutes
16013.7 Seconds25.6 Seconds
165Instant<10 Seconds

What you will notice here is that the USDA recommends going all the way to 165°F because at that temperature, it’s a pretty much guaranteed fail-safe.  It’s also guaranteed nasty, dried out bird.  Bottom line here?  According to the FDA, a chicken that’s been held at 145°F for 8.4 minutes is every bit as safe to eat as a bird roasted to within an inch of incineration to 165°F.

Of course, 145°F for a chicken is a little on the rare side; it’ll still be a bit pink and gelatinous and people will know it isn’t cooked – at least to what they’re used to.  My recommendation is to insert a probe thermometer into the thickest, coldest part of your chicken when you put it into the oven, wait for it to hit 150°F, set a timer for 5 minutes, then pull it out of the oven.  That way, you’re well within FDA recommendations and just in case your probe thermometer is off by a degree or two or you didn’t get it all the way into the thickest, coldest part of your bird, you’ll still be fine.  I’ve been doing it this way for years and I’ve never poisoned anyone.  Do verify, using an Instant Read Thermometer, that BOTH the breast AND the joint between the leg and thigh BOTH read at least 150°F.

Okay.  With all that out of the way, here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:

For the Chicken:

  1. 1 Whole Chicken approximately 5 lbs (you can do two if you like, just make sure they’re about the same weight)
  2. Olive oil

 


For the Poultry Rub

  1. 2 teaspoons Kosher Salt
  2. 2 teaspoons coarsely ground black pepper
  3. 2 teaspoons MSG (yeah, yeah, it’s not gonna kill you, it’s perfectly safe, omit if you like, just double the salt… but trust me on this, use the MSG, sold as Accent and available in the spices section of most grocery stores)
  4. 2 teaspoons granulated garlic
  5. 2 teaspoons dried mustard
  6. 2 teaspoons dried powdered oregano
  7. 1 teaspoon dried thyme
  8. 1 teaspoon dried basil
  9. 1 teaspoon paprika
  10. 2 teaspoons baking powder (optional, for extra-crispy skin)

Special Equipment

  1. Wire rack set above baking sheet.  (Line baking sheet with foil for easy clean up.  No wire rack?  Use a grill grate).
  2. Probe thermometer
  3. Poultry sheers, sharp boning knife, or really sturdy scissors

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 450°F.  Arrange rack to be in the upper two-thirds of the oven.
  2. Combine poultry rub ingredients and whisk or shake to combine thoroughly.
  3. Spatchcock chicken according to instructions at beginning of post.
  4. Gently separate skin from breasts, thighs and legs by working your fingers underneath.  Leave in place though, do not remove.
  5. Drizzle chicken with olive oil; just enough for there to be something for the rub to stick to.  Season chicken with poultry rub from Step 2, above.  Be sure to get some of the rub underneath the skin also.
  6. Transfer chicken to wire rack on rimmed baking sheet.  Use an instant read thermometer to find the coldest part of the chicken breast.  Insert probe thermometer here.
  7. Place chicken into the oven, legs toward the back, and roast for 10 to 15 minutes.  Reduce oven temperature to 400°F and roast chicken until probe thermometer reads 150°F.  Turn off oven, set timer for 5 minutes.  Remove chicken and verify that the other breast and the joint between the thighs and legs on both sides are also at least 150°F.
  8. Let rest 10 minutes, then carve and serve.  Carry over cooking will bring your bird up to at least 155°F while resting, and that’s good enough for me.

Just look at the finished product:

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!

If you’d like to make a pan sauce, do the following while your chicken is in the oven:

Ingredients (This is more of a method than anything else, use what you like or what you have on hand):

  1. 1 tablespoon butter
  2. 2 tablespoons olive oil
  3. Kosher Salt and Freshly Ground Black Pepper
  4. 3 chicken backbone pieces
  5. A few shallots, or 1/2 of a minced onion
  6. 2-3 cloves garlic
  7. 1 cup dry white wine or chicken stock
  8. Handful of fresh herbs
  9. Juice of 1 lemon

Instructions:

  1. Melt 1 tablespoon butter and 2 tablespoons olive oil in a 10-12 inch stainless steel skillet or sauté pan over medium-high heat.
  2. Season the chicken backbone pieces aggressively with Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper.
  3. Once the pan is hot, add the chicken backbone pieces (remember those?) skin side down and sear until golden brown.  Allow to cook in the pan, undisturbed for 4-5 minutes – brown means brown.
  4. Once well browned, flip the backbone pieces over and continue to cook another 2-3 minutes and allow fat to render.
  5. Remove backbone pieces – you should now how some lovely fond built up in the bottom of your pan
  6. Add a few shallots or 1/2 a minced onion to the pan and sweat, scraping up the fond as the onion releases its moisture
  7. Add 2-3 minced garlic cloves and sauté with onion until fragrant
  8. Deglaze the pan with a cup or so of dry white wine or chicken stock and allow to reduce by 2/3
  9. Add a handful of fresh herbs (parsley, cilantro, thyme, whatever) along with the juice of a lemon (for acid) and continue to cook for another 2 minutes over low heat, or until sauce coats the back of a spoon and streaks the bottom of the pan when a spoon is dragged through it.
  10. Serve sauce over chicken.

What is Fond?

Truth be told, I’m quite fond of fond.  But what it is?

Properly pronounced, the word is fahn, which is French for “base.”  (Ask my wife and she will tell you that I butcher French pronunciations, but that’s neither here nor there.)  But that fond – that base – is that beautiful brown stuff you often find stuck to the bottom of a pan after searing meat, or even vegetables, over very high heat.  Especially for many beginning cooks, the temptation is to wash that stuff out before beginning the next phase of cooking.  I mean, look at the picture in this post – unless you know what you’re looking at, it doesn’t look very appetizing.  But believe it or not, if you do know what you’re looking at your mouth might be watering just a little bit.

Fond is a magical, secret ingredient.  You will never know it’s there in a final dish, but its presence packs a powerful burst of deep flavor which cannot be otherwise achieved.  It is the result of two chemical reactions present in the process of cooking food over fairly high heat – the Maillard reaction and caramelization.  Both reactions are similar in that they are a form of non-enzymatic browning, but with the Maillard reaction you have amino acids involved with reducing sugars which gives food that distinctive nutty, savory flavor whereas with caramelization you actually have sugars burning – which makes things taste like, you guessed it, caramel.  The Maillard reaction happens at a slightly lower temperature than caramelization (about 310°F and 330°F, respectively) but that is mostly irrelevant because when you sear a steak (or whatever) in a hot pan you’re likely above both of those temperatures so you’re going to get both reactions.

Anyhow, if you’ve read many of the recipes on this blog, or others for that matter, you’ve likely read things in the instructions such as “Deglaze the pan with ________, bring to a boil and stir constantly, scraping up any brown bits stuck to the bottom of the pan.”

Deglazing is simply the action of adding some kind of liquid (wine, stock, spirits – even water) to a hot pan to act as a solvent into which your fond will incorporate itself.  Bringing that deglazing liquid to a boil, and then stirring and scraping up the fond helps accelerate the process of dissolving the fond into the liquid in the pan; as it reduces due to evaporation it thickens, becoming a pan sauce.

Thus, this process of (A) browning protein or vegetables, thus creating a fond and then (B) deglazing the pan with liquid, and then (C) allowing the liquid to thicken is process of making a basic pan sauce to be served over a main dish, or building a base sauce for a more complex sauce, such as Classic Marinara Sauce.

There is an optional step between steps (A) and (B) which is often employed to add even more depth and complexity of flavor to a final product:  the flambé.  When you add a higher-proof alcohol to a hot pan and ignite it, you are doing several important things.  First, you are beginning the deglazing process (although a second deglazing liquid will likely be needed).  Second, you are adding the kiss of flame to whatever is in the pan (increasing caramelization, which adds sweetness and depth of flavor).  Third – and most importantly – you are actually ensuring that the beautiful fond you have in the bottom of your pan doesn’t burn.  It seems totally counter-intuitive that setting something on fire would prevent it from burning, but it does.  Here’s why:  The boiling temperature of alcohol is actually lower than the boiling temperature of water (173°F, to be exact).  By igniting the alcohol, you keep the temperature at the bottom of the pan right at that temperature – too low for anything to burn.  A few inches above the bottom of the pan, however, where the flames are, the temperature is higher – right around 330°F, the perfect temperature for a bit of caramelization.

So, what’s the takeaway here?  First, don’t throw all that brown stuff in the bottom of your pan out.  Figure out a way to use it – make a pan sauce with it, or use it to make a more complex sauce.  Second, don’t be afraid to add a flambé to your cooking process at some point – you will taste the difference.  Third, don’t be afraid to experiment – get out there and make something delicious!

 

Hack Your Gas Grill: Use it as a Smoker

If you’ve got a gas grill, you can still turn out some truly amazing, authentic BBQ.  Here’s how.

I know there are those people out there who are going to hate this post.  Trust me, I understand.  But ultimately, I’m about results – And if the technique yields sound results, then it’s a sound technique.  I have a BBQ smoker, and I love it – but most of the time I don’t have 12 or 15 hours to sit around and fiddle with a fire, and I if I can bring a 12 hour cook down to a 5 hour cook and turn out some BBQ that’s nearly indistinguishable from what I produce on my smoker, I’m down.  Also, many people may not have room for two or three cookers in their back yard (like I do).   This post is dedicated to BBQ lovers who want more of that smoke-kissed flavor in their lives.

In this post, we’ll be exploring two things:  First, how to use your gas grill as a smoker – and some of the sciencey stuff that goes on behind the scenes when using smoke.  Second, we’ll talk briefly about what types of wood to use and how.

Things You’ll Need

Grill

Smoker Box and/or Cast Iron Skillet

Wood Chunks

Stand Alone Oven Thermometer

Decent Instant-Read Thermometer

Meat

BBQ Rub (try Classic BBQ Rub, if you like).

The Key

Basically, the key to this whole thing is this:  You’ve got to learn to think of your grill as an oven.  That’s it.  Most of the time, we think of our grills as… grills.  In other words, we sear food (burgers, steaks, whatever) directly over high heat until it’s done.   We’re using primarily conduction and some convection to get heat into the food. When you roast or bake something, you’re using a little bit of convection and mostly radiation.  In other words, it’s heat in the form of waves penetrating your food.

Smoking is simply baking and/or roasting something in the presence of smoke.

I remember one Thanksgiving, the oven caught fire.  Faced with trying to figure out how to cook a 15lb turkey with no oven, I turned to my grill.  I lit one burner and plonked the bird down on the cool side of the grill and everything turned out fine, albeit a little dry.  That’s where the lightbulb went on.  Since then, I’ve developed a technique that I think is pretty damn solid.

The Technique

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and Bon Appetit has a great picture to explain this, so I’m just going to use theirs:

grilldiagram

A:  Single Burner Lit, B:  Pan for catching drippings, C:  Smoker Box, D:  Smoke, E:  Meat

All that being said, there’s a few modifications I’d make to the picture above:

  •  Remove all but one of your grill grates so you can slide the food from hot to cold without picking it up, if need be.
  • Place the smoker box directly on the flavorizer bar (as in the cover photo for this post), NOT on the grill grate.  Basically, I’ve never been able to get anything to smoke on the grill grate – not enough conductive heat.
  • Leave the lid off the smoker box, or simply use a small cast iron pan.
  • Use wood chunks instead of chips.  Chips burn up way too fast, whereas chunks will smolder for an hour or more.  The only time I use chips is as a starting agent; i.e., place some chips down on the smoker box with a few chunks on top just to accelerate the process a bit.
  • Don’t bother to soak your wood chunks (or chips) ahead of time.  This does nothing, other than make it take longer for them to start smoking.  I’ve timed, by weight, how long it takes wood chunks soaked for 24 hours, 1 hour, and not at all, from the time they start smoking to the time they burn up, and it’s the same.  What’s not the same is the amount of time it takes for them to start smoking.  Soaking wood chunks just extends your pre-heating phase.  Trust me, don’t waste your time.
  • Do keep a trigger spray bottle handy.  Sometimes when you open the lid (which you shouldn’t do too often) a lot of oxygen will very suddenly make its way to the wood chunks and they will burst into flame.  No need to soak them – just a couple squirts to calm them down again and shut the lid… continue on your merry way.
  • Invest in a $5 stand-alone oven thermometer to place on the grill grates.  Chances are the thermometer built into the hood of your grill (if you have one) reading as much as 50F different than the actual temperature at grate-level.
  • Shoot for 275F at grate level.  Actually, anywhere between 275F and 300F is fine.  275F is my go-to temperature for smoking just about anything, even if I’m using a traditional smoker.  Many people will say that’s high, but it’s basically been proven that the only difference between 225F and 275F is the amount of time it takes to get something up to temperature (duh), but might mean more time in the presence of smoke.  However, competition BBQ teams these days are sometimes smoking brisket at north of 300F.  The reason?  Once something has been basking in smoke for more than three hours, any appreciable difference thereafter begins to fade in a damned hurry.
  • Put about an inch or so of water into the drip pan beneath the meat.  This will eliminate the possibility of any flare ups from rendered fat, and keep everything underneath the hood nice and moist.

How to Smoke Stuff:  Cooking Times and Temps

These are fairly rough – but predictable – cooking times for various meats I’ve done using this technique.  Make sure to generously season your meat with a good BBQ Rub so that there’s something for the smoke to stick to.

I always use a two-step process.  During the first phase (three to four hours) you get smoke onto the meat.  During the second phase, you finish getting the meat up to temp (190F – 205F) by wrapping it in foil.  It’s such a common practice that it actually has a name – the Texas Crutch. I won’t go into a lot of detail here, but in between the two phases you’ll meet the nemesis of every BBQ Pitmaster – the Stall.  It basically happens at about 165F for most meats and basically, for an extended period of time, your meat will just sit there and do nothing at 165F.  Wrapping your meat at this point will help speed up the process.

Pork Butt (5-7lb): About 5 hours, 3.5 hours in the smoke, 1.5 hours wrapped in foil on the grill.  Wrap at about internal temp 165F, place it back on the grill for another and pull when internal temp is 190F – 205F

Brisket (6lb):  About six hours.  Wrap at 4 hr mark (roughly 165F), finish off for 2 hrs.  Pull at 190F.

Turkey Breasts X 3 (1lb each):  About 2.5 hours.  No need to wrap in foil (i.e., “crutch”) while cooking, just pull them at 165F, wrap them up in foil with some butter and let them rest for 20 minutes.

Types of Wood to Use

BBQ wood falls into two categories:  hard woods and fruit woods.  My go-to combination is equal parts Pecan (a hard wood) and Apple wood (a fruit wood), but I also use oak, hickory, cherry, peach and mesquite.  Here’s a basic run-down on some basic types of wood and how to use them, organized from strongest to weakest flavor:

Mesquite (hardwood).  Hot temperature, fast burn time. The mother of all hard woods, mesquite has a strong, earthy, leathery flavor.  It’s really only useful for very short cooks (less than 30 minutes).  Nothing can ruin a piece of meat quicker than too much mesquite.  However, it’s quite good on lamb, burgers and roasted green chiles and other veggies.  It quickly overpowers poultry, pork, and fish.

Hickory (hardwood).  Hot temperature, long burn-time.  The most commonly used hardwood, it’s pretty safe to use on anything other than fish.  Be warned:  It makes everything taste like bacon (which is either good or bad, depending on how you look at it).

Oak (hardwood).  Hot temperature, medium burn time.  Not as strong as hickory, and slightly sweeter.  Safe for use on anything except fish.  Good for slightly longer cooks as it’s flavor is more mild.  Post Oak is the go-to in Texas BBQ, and for Santa Maria BBQ the go-to is Red Oak.  White Oak is the mildest and is slightly reminiscent of Pecan.

Pecan (hardwood).  Medium temperature, medium burn time.  Mild, sweet and yet strong enough to stand up to even the gamiest of meats.  Great on anything.  Imparts a slightly nutty flavor.  If I had to use only one wood for the rest of my life, this would be it.

Cherry (fruitwood).  Medium temperature, long burn time.  The strongest of the fruitwoods, it penetrates meat fairly quickly and imparts a rich, earthy flavor.  It also tends to turn meat dark pretty quickly.  Good on poultry and fish, and as a mixer with another hardwood.  In my opinion, it makes beef too sweet.

Apple (fruitwood).  Medium temperature, medium burn time.  My go-to fruitwood.  It takes a long time for it to penetrate meat, so it works well in combination with another hardwood.  That being said, it’s awesome on fish by itself.

Peach (fruitwood).   Low temperature, long burn time.   Probably the mildest of the fruitwoods, peach is good for cold smoking fish and cheese, but not much else, in my opinion.

Note:  Never, ever use pine or anything coniferous – the resin will ruin your grill and impart a nasty, acrid taste to everything.  The one exception to this is if you’ve got some cedar planks that you have soaked for a while, they can be used to make some damned fine salmon – but that’s a whole other technique on a whole other post.

Happy Smoking!

The Intrepid Gourmet

 

 

 

 

Cooking 101: Using Heat

Cooking is about heat.  Being able to control heat , understanding how heat enters food, and what happens to food when it does, is a fundamental skill to master if you want to learn to cook. Fortunately, once you’ve got an understanding of what’s going on, it’s not that hard to figure out.

If you’ve cruised around this website much, you’ve probably gotten the picture that I have a horror of things that are burnt on the outside and gelatinous raw in the middle – that’s because figuring out how to use heat was one of the biggest hurdles I had to jump in order to become a decent cook.  For me, figuring it out it was a lot of trial-by-fire (sometimes literally).

I’m willing to bet that the #1 reason people struggle with cooking is the inability to control heat which stems from a lack of understanding the basics of what it is and how to use it.  I myself struggled with this for a long time – sometimes I still do if I’m not paying attention – but I hope that this post will shed some light on a few techniques that will improve your hand in the kitchen.

To get started, let’s get some definitions out of the way:

Types of Heat Transfer

  1. Conduction happens when heat is transferred through direct contact.  Thermal energy (the jiggling of molecules) being transferred through molecular contact.  This usually happens pretty quickly.  So, for example, if you have something with a lot of thermal energy stored in it (say, a hot cast iron skillet that’s been sitting on the stove for a few minutes), and a good conductor (say, olive oil), and you throw a steak on there, it’s going to cook pretty quick; i.e., a lot of the thermal energy stored in that skillet is transferred rapidly to the outside of your steak.
  2. Convection is when molecules that that have a lot of thermal energy trade places with ones that don’t, and take that energy with them when they move around.  For example, if you’re trying to boil some water on the stove, the molecules closer to the heat source will have more thermal energy transferred to them than the ones that are farther away.  If you stir a pot as it’s reaching boiling temperature, the whole thing will come up to temp more quickly.
  3. Radiation is when heat waves (i.e., infrared waves, or microwaves) penetrate a material and cause thermal energy to build up inside the material.  For example, when you throw a steak or a burger on the grill, you’re probably getting a little bit of conduction from the hot grill grates as it comes into contact with the food, but the majority of heat transfer into the food is coming directly from the heat source – your charcoal or your gas flavor bars.

Techniques Using Heat

There are a lot of ways to transfer heat into food: Steaming, boiling, sous-vide, sautéing, baking, smoking, broiling, grilling, pan frying, deep frying – even microwaving – but the thing is that most of these techniques fall into one of three categories:

  1. Low and Slow.  Low cooking temp, long cooking time.  Primarily radiation in the form of infrared waves and convection.  This includes techniques such as baking and smoking (which is essentially baking something in the presence of smoke; smoke does little to aid in heat transfer, but it does impart a wonderful flavor).
  2. Hot and Fast.  High cooking temp, short cooking time.  Conduction and radiation.  This includes techniques such as broiling, grilling, sautéing, pan frying and steaming.
  3. Immersion.  Medium cooking temp, medium cooking time, requires liquid.  Primarily conduction; includes boiling and deep frying.

As I discussed in last week’s Technique of the Week, the key to cooking almost anything is to get it to come up to temperature evenly and uniformly throughout – whether it be a 4lb roast beef in the oven (baking) or some minced onions in a frying pan with some oil (sautéing).

Okay, so, how is any of this useful?  Because precise heat control means precise cooking.

Example #1 If you’re going to cook a 4lb roast, you’re going to want to sear it using conduction (i.e. broiling or grilling), and then use radiation (i.e., baking) to bring it up to the desired temp in a uniform fashion.

Pro Tip:  Think of your grill as an oven.  Always use the ‘two-zone’ technique – one side for hot-and-fast conduction, the other side for low and slow radiation.

Example #2  Let’s say you’ve got some burgers you want to throw on the grill.  No need to low and slow them – just use high heat and a good conductor (cast iron skillet), or a lot of radiation (hot grill).  See 8 Tips for Making the Perfect Burger.

Example #3  Let’s say you’re making chili.  You’re essentially using immersion – you’ve got a lot of liquid in the pot, and it’s going to boil down over time to the desired thickness.  You’ve got to watch the heat, because as the chili thickens up, it will absorb heat more easily.  If you’re not careful, conduction will take over and you’ll burn stuff to the bottom of the pot.

Remember, practice makes perfect.  I’ve burned or under-done my fair share of things, but once I got the hang of controlling heat and more often than not using a 2-stage process (searing in one phase and essentially baking in another phase) everything became easier.  Hopefully this will make it easier for you too.

Otherwise, we’re all just stuck eating salads.

Good luck!

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*The cover photo and featured photo for this post: courtesy en.wikipedia.org s.v. ‘grilling’