Year of the Pig

A few weeks ago, I got a new smoker because of the sorry inadequacy of my electric smoker. Do not buy one of those. They are lame. If you want a good and still affordable smoker for home use, get the one I got, the Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker, which you should be able to find for around 180 smackers. It comes recommended even by serious Pitmasters, and is capable of kicking out some top notch barbecue. Also, there is a great website obsessively dedicated to its use: The Virtual Weber Bullet which is quite helpful for getting you started and is loaded with clear instructions and lots of pictures. Here is a proud picture of my new Weber Smokey Mountain, happily cohabitating with Phil, the garden gnome:

Over the past two weeks I have fired off the Smokey Mountain a few times to test it out for shorter smoking sessions and have smoked trout and chicken a couple times, with good success. And so it was that yesterday was its maiden voyage for smoking ribs. The night before I had trimmed and generously coated 1 1/2 racks of spare ribs with Magic Dust, covered them with plastic wrap and put them in the fridge. Around 10 am or so I took them out and put them in the rib rack, ready for the smoke.

Then I got the smoker set up and lit a small chimney of charcoal, around 20 briquets. I decided to test out the Virtual Weber Bullet Page’s “Minion Method” which basically means that you start with a small amount of lit briquets on a pile of unlit ones, so that they gradually light the other ones at a slow, long pace, supposedly keeping a very steady, slow burning, low temperature fire.

I have to say compared to my other brief experiences with this smoker so far, this method really made it a breeze to operate at a steady temperature. After lighting a small chimney of charcoal, and loading the coals and meat in the smoker, it was off and running. I tossed 2 or 3 good wet chunks of hickory and a small handful of oak chips on the coals for smoke wood. At the beginning I babysat the smoker and adjusted the bottom vents some, but the temperature quickly stabilized right at what I would think is an ideal temperature of about 220-230 degrees (measured with a candy thermometer at the top vent). And that was that! The ribs were smoking away by around 11 am, and for the next few hours I went about my business. I checked on the smoker every 30 minutes or so, but it needed almost no adjustment, and just kept burning away at the right temperature. After a couple hours, around 1:30, I opened the smoker and turned the racks over in the rib rack and gave them a little spritz of apple juice:

After having the smoker open a while, I noticed that the charcoal did start to flare up from the oxygen, and I had to close the bottom vents all the way to try and keep the temperature down as it flared up, approaching 250. I was expecting to smoke the ribs for around 5-7 hours, so around 3 I opened up the smoker again, to turn them and spritz them again with apple juice. At this point they looked pretty close to done to me so I got my butt in gear making the sauce (see Apple City Barbecue Sauce Recipe from the last post) that I was planning to coat them with for the last 20 or 30 minutes of smoking. This sauce has ground up bacon and apples in it, so that is pretty cool. Everything is better with bacon right? So why not barbecue sauce!? I had cooked up the bacon earlier, and I whipped up the rest of the sauce as fast as I could, and gave the ribs a nice coating to let it set up for a little while. The sauce was quite tasty on its own, trust me, and at that point the ribs had a nice looking coating of Magic Dust that looked even better.

I let them smoke for another 20 or 30 minutes, and then opened up the smoker again. They looked wonderful!

I took them off. I had smoked 1 1/2 racks of trimmed spare ribs on the top grate, and the three large “tip” pieces that I had trimmed off on the bottom grate with some kidney beans.

I let the ribs rest on the cutting board for a little while. It was a lot of meat for me to contemplate since I was home alone with no one to share them with, but this was my first time trying ribs in my new smoker and it was nice to try it without feeling like I needed to feed anyone. I cut up some of the trimmings to put in the beans, and froze the others along with a half rack of ribs, to see how they hold up for freezing…

Of course, I didn’t hesitate to slice off a couple ribs for an early dinner, and sat in the back yard and tried them. My first impression was that they looked perfect to me with a nice solid but not charred outside. The inside showed a nice red smoke ring around the edge of the meat, the first time I have really gotten that in ribs that I have cooked. And how did they taste? Fine. Very, very fine. I was giddy about it really. The meat was juicy and succulent. The sauce and the magic dust rub gave it a nice spicy robust flavor that was delicious and went very well with the juicy, smoky pork flavor of the rib meat. The texture of the rib meat was firm and meaty, but moist and tender and full of flavor. I am sure there are lots of other ways I can learn to cook ribs equally well, but I really don’t know what I could do to make them much better. I just hope I can reproduce these!

These ribs were basically cooked following the “Apple City Barbecue Grand World Championship Ribs” recipe out of the book Peace, Love and Barbecue: Recipes, Secrets, Tall Tales, and Outright Lies from the Legends of Barbecue which I plugged in the last post. I used the rub and sauce from the recipe, but used different smoking methods and hickory and oak rather than apple wood, which I am sure would also be delicious. I think this rub and sauce are a winning combo, but if I had to give most of the credit to one over the other, I would say the Magic Dust is a real winner. Try it out!

As for the rib count for the Year of the Pig, counting what I had the day I cooked them and for leftovers over the next week plus the half rack that I froze, I had another 14 ribs, putting me well over the 3 pig mark at a 102 ribs. And thank you piggy!

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I made some ribs in my new smoker today, and they were fine. Very fine. Here are the recipes that I used, the full post will follow soon.

This Magic Dust is a very good rub. I recommend it highly.

Since I am most certainly violating copyright law, I should at least plug this book written by BBQ’er extraordinaire, Mike Mills (not from R.E.M.): Peace, Love and Barbecue: Recipes, Secrets, Tall Tales, and Outright Lies from the Legends of Barbecue, which is very good if you are at all interested in barbecue.

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I was down in Philadelphia for a gig last Saturday, and walked around for a while in Philly’s Chinatown. It had all of the standard Chinatown fare that you would have in New York, but a decidedly mellow flavor by comparison. You can actually stroll around at leisurely pace and not get trampled, and I like that. We walked into a Chinese Bakery because my friend Dave wanted to get one of those weirdo tapioca tea drinks with the super straw that my mom loved when I made her try one in Chinatown NYC a couple years ago:

Anyway, while I was waiting I perused the assortment of Chinese baked goods, you know, pork buns and bean doughnut thingies, etc, when what caught my eye? The PORKIN DOG! Certainly a great name and one damn fancy Chinese Hot Dog. Yowzers! Hmmm, most definitely a bargain at the low, low price of 60¢. Dave sported me the money, and we walked out with our very own Porkin Dog. When Dave had sucked down his last tapioca ball with an abrubt sloink, we tried our fancy dog. It had that unmistakable ultra-sweet Chinese dough with those nice little hotdoggers all arranged in that fun little clover, and topped with little soft onion bits and scallions. Hey, what can I say, it was a pretty good fancy hot dog.

We walked around a little more, enjoying the pleasant mild Summer Solstice weather. There was a dinky street carnival going on. While we looked around a bit I looked up to see a window with some (presumably clean) red, white and blue briefs hanging out to dry. I thought that
would make a nice image. And ain’t it nice to know that the residents of Chinatown, Philly are so patriotic!

PS–Can I just say from my limited times visiting Philadelphia, I think its a great city. Go Philly! Don’t forget to get a Philly Porkin Dog when you visit.

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M Shanghai had a gig at Cafe Lena in Saratoga Springs this past weekend and on my way into town I smelled the tell-tale smell of woodsmoke as I passed PJ’s BAR-B-Q. After the gig, I headed straight back to check out PJ’s. I may not be able to say it’s the best barbecue in the world, but that’s fine, this place is a real gem, and worth the stop anytime you are in Saratoga.

PJ’s is a seasonal restaurant open only during the summers in a former A&W Drive-in Restaurant. The Davis family (John PJ, Carolyn and their 2 Kids) opened PJ’s Bar-B-Q in 1984, and the restaurant is a sprawling group of buildings decked out with oddball signs and 1950′s memoribilia, and surrounded by picnic tables. The front area is the kitchen, where the menu board is posted over a window, and you place your order.

Out back, behind the kitchen, are two 20′ charcoal pits where PJ prepares all of the barbecue over charcoal. He says he used 40 tons of briquets in a season! To the right of the kitchen is a funky little dining room plastered with fifties music paraphernalia.

Then, behind the dining room is a spacious yard area with more picnic tables and even a dance floor which was in use by an in-love baby booming couple dancing to the fifties tunes broadcast on the WBBQ airwaves as we sat down to eat our “trifecta” combo platters. That’s right, and I love this part, PJ operates a low power (1-mile radius) AM radio station out of an outbuilding back behind the yard. Looking over the picnic tables we could see doors covered with 1940′s and 50′s radio charts swung open to reveal PJ standing in the small WBBQ studio looking like a king in his castle, queing up some records, and having a fine time of it.

That put me over the edge and all I could think say was, “Wow, this place is awesome!” Looking at the PJs website and his seasonal newsletter the Bar-B-Q Times reveals even more about PJ’s obsession with the 1950′s, check out his “fifties house” shown on HGTV. Also new in 2007, PJ’s is sponsoring Bar-B-Cruise-Ins. If you have a pre-1969 classic car (and as long as you aren’t a burnout) you can call in and reserve a parking space in the lot, and you even get a free BBQ dinner. That rules.

So enough of singing the praises of PJ, how was the Q? We split 2 of the Trifecta combo platters, which had PJ’s “award winning” spare ribs, some beef brisket, and bar-b-q chicken, (served with Cole slaw, curly-Q fries, and a cornbread muffin).

The ribs themselves were good and tasty, but not great and earth shattering. They had nice texture, a little spice, and a charred but flavorful exterior. And yes, I know it isn’t pig, but the chicken was good and respectable too, moist and tasty. Lastly was the brisket, which was not like any brisket I have ever had. It was dry thin slices more akin to jerky than to what I think of as brisket. It was ok, and would probably make a good sandwich, but isn’t really what I think of as barbecue brisket. I wouldn’t say that this was top notch barbecue, being somewhere between barbecue and grilled meat, but it was still good simple enjoyable fare in a very fun, friendly and pleasant atmosphere, that I would come back to visit many times.

Also, while I am not usually much of a soda person (except when I fall victim to a really good ginger ale) I would like to mention that PJ’s has their own loganberry flavored soda, called Crystal Beach which was pretty good, or at least very enjoyable while I was sitting at my picnic table taking PJ’s in.

PJ’s is a great place, make sure to visit if you are in Saratoga in the summer!

**Oh yeah, and I had 2 ribs at PJ’s bringing up the Ribulation for the Year of the Pig to 88 (2 pig, 28…so close to 3!!).

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Following up on the post about Porkslap, here are some highlights from a
forum discussion on brewing bacon beer:

…I tried to mix my two favorite things, bacon and beer. I started
out with a british bitter recipe and dumped in 1 lb of fried bacon
into the wort 30 min into the boil. I then added liquid smoke when
putting it into the 1st carboy. It doesn’t taste like bacon or smoke.
Any suggestions?

…I doubt you will get it to work. The very process of the boil and
rapid chilling caused proteins to drop out of suspension.

…I think it would be easier and much tastier if you just fried up a
batch of bacon when you drink your beer. Plus it will be crunchy. The
bacon, not your beer.

…You could try liquid smoke and pork bullion.

…Rauchbiers are like drinking a campfire while eating bacon strips.
Rauch malt or smoked peat is what you are looking for.

…I almost guarantee that if this WAS done, the salt in the bacon
would kill the yeast. Too much sodium=inhospitable environment.

…How about fry up about 2 lb. get it good and crispy (like bacon
bits) I imagine that will bring out more transferable flavor. Pat it
dry and treat it like an aroma addition, the last 2 min. leaving it
in until it is cool.

…did you fry the bacon and get it crispy BEFORE you added the
onions? You did add onions, right???

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This past weekend I made my first ever trip to Maine, to attend a wedding in Belfast. Alissa and I jumped at the excuse to get up to Maine, and we had a fantastic weekend enjoying the beautiful Maine coast in mid-June. We were early enough to avoid collision with the Maine tourist hordes, yet we had a beautiful weekend of long, sunny 80 degree days filled with dramatic New England light. Being so close to a National Park, we pushed on a little farther up the coast early on a Friday morning to visit Acadia, and just a couple of miles outside the park, I smelled the smell of burning wood, and turned my head to see an enormous barbecue rig parked on the side of Route 3, in the parking lot of some kind of Church or Tabernacle, right next to the Super Shoes. The sandwich board out front read, “CZY D P1t BBQ” and I knew I couldn’t pass this up. I got a quick OK from Alissa and did a 180, pulling up right next to CZY D’s montrosity of a BBQ pit.

I walked up to CZY D himself and announced that I would be interested in some Ribs. I complimented his rig, and he gave me a quick tour of the smoking chambers loaded with pork shoulders, brisket, ribs, chickens, sausages and BBQ beans. I was kind of in awe of the rig, which was apparently brand new, custom made from somewhere in Texas. He was obviously pretty proud of it. As his first Rib customer of the day, he announced that I would be getting a large (half) rack, which he packed up in a styrofoam box. I was on my way.

It was just before noon and we were again on our way to Acadia, this time with a delicious smell of smoke and ribs filling the cab of the truck. We sped along, headed for the first picnic area of the park, just over the bridge to Mount Desert Island. We got there and pulled into a parking spot. The day was gorgeous with a bright blue sky and we strolled down to the picnic tables looking out toward Frenchman Bay, carrying our box of ribs.

The ribs tasted good, but mainly because we were sitting out at picnic tables in a gorgeous place enjoying the great view and the very pleasant New England weather. The ribs themselves were nothing to write home about. In fact, in other situations, I would call them bad. The meat would barely stay on the bone so that you could hardly seperate the rack into individual ribs without it falling apart into a big meat pile. It was a large meaty rack of spare ribs, including the rib tips. I am fine with the boney and cartilagey rib tips, but these large ribs would probably be difficult to get tender from just smoking. In fact, the very large bones were soft from the cooking like they were boiled forever or pressure cooked. If you weren’t overly careful when biting meat off the bone your teeth could sink right into and through the bone, which when you aren’t expecting the taste of bone in your mouth, is pretty nasty. I would say that the meat itself was actually pretty flavorful, but that didn’t matter much cause the whole rack was drowning in a mass of sweet, sticky barbecue sauce, which was absolutely overwhelming. CZY D has him one fancy rig, but needs some lessons in cooking ribs!

Anyway, I still enjoyed my ribs, sitting there in the sun and planning our day ahead at Acadia, which is a really beautiful National Park. I ate 3 ribs then and one later, watching the sun set from the awesome vantage of Mount Cadillac, making for a total of 86 ribs in the year of the pig. Or, about 2 pigs 26, if you prefer.

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Awwright!

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Last week my good friend JGP was in town and Alissa and I met up with him in the West Village for dinner. Several people have mentioned that I should try the Spotted Pig and so that seemed like a good place to go. We met up over there and the wait was super long, so we went somewhere else for some drinks and appetizers. We headed back to the Spotted Pig around 10 to have some dinner and the place was still insane, but we got a little table upstairs in the corner. We did have a wonderful (non-pork) dinner, my favorite things being the amazing carrot salad, the cask beers, and the possibly perfect chocolate cake. However, I don’t think I can give the place a fair review because I could not deal with the amazing pack of sceney yuppies. Hell, I couldn’t even enjoy the porcine tchotchkes that were presumably everywhere, because there was no squeezing through the blob of yapping people. I do like the idea of the place being kind of upscale “simple” British and Italian Pub fare, but I can’t stand the vibe. If I could go there at an odd ball time when those people were all getting their hair done, I would go again.

That said, we had a great time amongst ourselves, and the food was obviously very good. I am sure there is lots of good stuff to try if you go there, and do not miss that chocolate cake. Thanks to JGP for a wonderful evening!

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This weekend was the 5th year for the Big Apple Barbecue, and the first time I have been able to attend. The event was Saturday and Sunday in Madison Square Park and takes on the task of educating New Yorkers about real Southern Barbecue (and also benefiting the Madison Square Park Conservancy).

I had heard of this event in years past as being more pain than pleasure to attend because of the mobs of hungry, hot New Yorkers waiting “on line” for their plates of Barbecue. I have to say that I think the event planners worked out their past problems this year. There were certainly still mobs of New Yorkers to deal with, but the lines were manageable, and you could easily get around and sample your barbecue of all varieties to your little arteries’ content. The weather was beautiful and mild to boot.

I regret that I did not get to sample as much barbecue as I would have liked and that I only stayed for an hour or so, but I was thoroughly impressed with the event. For either a barbecue lover or novice, there was a wide spectrum of American barbecue to see and sample, a chance that you rarely get in one place. The Pitmasters hailed from a wide range of the BBQ-belt (Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina) as well as from several of the real New York BBQ restaurants (Blue Smoke, Hill Country, Rack-n-Soul, Dinosaur) and each had a tent set up around Madison Square Park where each group prepared and sold one $8 plate of barbecue. For the most part, each plate consisted of one main item such as beef brisket, pulled pork, or ribs, and one side such as beans or coleslaw.

As for me, I sampled some pork, of course, and, believe it or not, not the ribs. I know. The pulled pork at Charleston, South Carolina’s Black Jack BBQ looked good to me. It didn’t hurt that the line was short, and I was hungry. As I went through the line, they had just taken out some pork shoulders and were picking them apart as I waited. They looked great, and the Blackjack pork-puller offered me the bone for my dog as it slid easily out of the shoulder. I don’t have a dog. I was served my sandwich and was happy to see an open spot at a picnic table right there in front of the tent. The sandwich was good, the pork was juicy and flavorful. Certainly it hit the spot. I sampled their mustard sauce, which was tart and spicy, and also good.

With my hunger sated, I walked around for a while and checked out the rest of the festival. I wanted to try it all, but alas, I did not have the stomach for it. I passed up some great looking tents, including the beef ribs from Hill Country (I figured there was no reason to sample one of the local joints) and the one that everyone wanted to see and sample, the whole hog from Mitchell’s BBQ of Wilson, NC. Certainly, it is always a sight to see whole hogs on the on their own custom smokers:

And how about them cracklins:

And this dude from Mitchell’s was possibly the most photogenic fellow at the festival:

I walked by the Blue Smoke tent and felt bad. Not a single person was in line for their apple brined and apple wood smoked chicken, which I am sure was delicious:

Now I love smoked chicken, and I appreciate that they were doing something besides beef and pork, but I bet they learned their lesson about chicken this year if it went like this all weekend.

Lastly, I tasted the Brisket and Sausage from Baker’s Ribs of Dallas, Texas. For the record, I thought the brisket was good, although not my favorite, and the BBQ sauce that they had was tangy and sweet, but kind of awful. Definitely not my favorite. I did like the sausage, though. It had a soft hotdog-like consistency with a wonderful maple and smoke flavor.

If you want more info and good pictures from this event, definitely check out this great blog, “Off The Broiler”, which has very good coverage of this event including two podcasts featuring interviews with many of the pitmasters and participants of the Big Apple Block Party.

Overall, it was a great event. Seems like the bugs have been worked out, and I can only imagine it will get better. Next year I will be there with more time and a Bubba Fast Pass!

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New York City is a place to love and hate, and the Ridgewood Pork Store, located in Ridgewood Queens, is a place of old world New York charm, a place to make you love it.

A couple weeks ago, Squidocto brought me some sample sausages from the Ridgewood Pork Store, and I was really impressed. The next time I found myself over at Squidocto’s place, a visit to the pork store was in order and we walked around the corner to the Ridgewood Pork Store, located at 516 Seneca Avenue.

From the outside of the store, there is nothing to really grab your attention at first glance. It looks like a plain Queens store front, with an awning advertising it as a “European Meat Market.” A closer inspection shows store windows loaded with kitschy Pig statues, European flags (I think I can identify Romania, Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic) and plastic flowers surrounding imported European foodstuffs and a selection of hanging cured and smoked sausages. That’s enough to make me curious.

Upon opening the front door you are immediately greeted with the savory smell of smoked meat, and a step over the threshold takes you into a cozy and inviting shop, filled with delicious looking jars and cans and various imported food. Despite all that, my eyes were immediately drawn past the nice looking meat counter, to the butcher blocks overflowing with sausages of every size and color.

We were promptly recognized and greeted by the proprietor of the shop, a friendly fellow who happened to be holding a whole, albeit small, pig. He saw my camera and lifted the pig up with a nice smile, jokingly posing for a photo:

Seeing the whole pig and all the normal butcher shop tools like a bandsaw and various saws and knives neatly tucked away in the corners and hanging from racks, left no doubt that the Ridgewood Pork Store makes all of its own sausages on premises.

Before I could take it all in or even ask a question, the proprietor (whose name, sadly, I did not learn) read my mind and eagerly began to slice up all sorts of samples for me, Alissa, and Squidocto to try.

Unfortunately for non-Romanian speakers like us, there was quite a language barrier, but that did not stop the pork store proprietor from showing us a great time. He eagerly sliced up more and more samples until we could sample no more. We did have a little difficulty discussing the finer points of the meats, but with some repeated questions and a little guesswork and interpretation from Alissa, we were able to get some good information about the meats we sampled. No matter what, it was a great place to go, and whatever the proprietor lacked in English speaking ability he more than made up for in enthusiasm and friendliness.

Of course what really makes this place are the great meats. So many meats were coming at us that it was a bit of a blur, but we tried a healthy variety of pork. I will have to go back for the beef. At some point we had to stop because the samples were just lined up and we could no longer remember all the varieties we had tried. I pointed out a few of the ones that were my favorites: his Chorizo, a Bulgarian Salami, some Canadian Bacon, and another sausage which I believe is called Banatska. He wrapped up goodly portions of each in paper and rang me up…a bargain at under twenty bucks.

The next day, back at home, Alissa and I took our time and sampled all the meats we had gotten. The Canadian Bacon was quite good, with a spicy, thick paprika-heavy rub caked onto the outside. It is very smoky in flavor and kind of piquant. It is delicious thinly sliced and packs a big punch of flavor in small quantities. While we were in the store we tried another interesting, red-tinted Canadian Bacon that was cured in wine. The Bulgarian Salami is the big boy in the picture, a really fine hard salami, potent and peppery. The Chorizo is wonderful, a course grind of smoked pork, heavily seasoned with Paprika and spiced so that it is red in color, and pretty damn hot. Squidocto sent me this link to the wikipedia article on Chorizo which outlines the differences between various kinds of Chorizo. This one is more like the Spanish variety, cured and ready to eat, not raw pork like the Mexican Chorizo I am more used to here. My overall favorite would have to be the Banatska. It is a thin slightly sweeter sausage with a heavily smoked flavor and a fairly hard and chewy outside. The inside is juicy and delicious. The fat in the center liquefies when you take a bite and the outside leaves you with something to chew on. Really really good.

For anyone that finds themselves out in Ridgewood Queens, the Ridgewood Pork Store is a place to visit. I think the owners have some other locations, and if I find out where they are I will post, and visit, them.

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