Well, I’ve got a couple cooking projects going on today. I’m planning to be home all day, so I’ve started up a lamb leg in the Sous Vide. It’s a 5 lbs New Zealand lamb leg from Costco, all tied up.
1 Tbsp salt
2 Tbsp melted butter
1 Tbsp (actually, a bit more) fresh rosemary
1 tsp pepper (or so)
6 big cloves of garlic
14 Kalmata olives
I put all that in the food processor and went until the garlic and rosemary were minced. Then, I dropped the lamb and the paste into a Sous Vide bag, spread the paste over the lamb somewhat (I didn’t do a great job with this), pulled out the air, and dropped it in the Sous Vide at 140℉ for 6 hours. Really - it should be done after 2 or 3. I started it cooking at 1400.
1. The recipe my mom sent me called Amway Grand Plaza Grilled Chicken Midwest - in my Google Docs Recipes folder
2. [https://ohsweetbasil.com/how-to-smoke-chicken/](https://ohsweetbasil.com/how-to-smoke-chicken/)
Other great info and ideas at these links - at some point I’d like to try the brine/minimal method:
Anyway - here’s the plan today. Make a marinade of the ingredients below, divide this among four butterflied (spatchcocked? silly name) chickens in plastic bags, marinade overnight. Then, smoke for four hours at 220℉, with the goal of getting internal temp on the breasts to 160℉-165℉. Let the chicken rest, then carve it up.
* 1.5 Tbsp Worcester sauce per pound of meat
* 2 Tbsp Duke's Mayo per pound of meat
* .5 Tbsp minded garlic per pound of meat
* 85% Ground Beef
Tonight we’re trying this recipe, and I made 8 7.5 oz burgers, starting from almost 3.5 lbs beef. I dropped all but two bagged burgers into the deep freeze, and dropped the other two in the indoors freezer, and then sous-vide’d those two at 130° for 1 hour, so they should come out on the rare side of medium. The others I’ll save for another day. After sous-vide’ing, I will crisp up the outsides for about 1 minute each side in a hot cast iron skillet.
I began prep on Sunday night with 16 lbs of pork butt split into three parts, and 5.5 pounds of salmon. I used the typical salmon recipe, this time I did one quart of brine and still separated things into 4 bags. I used this pulled pork recipe, and this dry rub recipe per Ben’s recommendation. The pulled pork recipe looked to be a reasonable beginner’s complexity, too… I considered this pork butt set to be just three of the one used in the recipe, so I had 1 cup of dry rub that I used on the three.
I used a 16.5 lbs brisket from Costco, $2.99 per pound. Turned on the smoker to 225, added hickory wood chips. Trimmed 1-2 lbs fat off, took just over half an hour to trim. Sliced it in half so it would fit in the smoker. Took out two smoker racks to help it fit.
Some notes from the first time I used the smoker - I made smoked salmon. The result was awesome - I’ve made it a couple times since then, and am just dropping this here for future note.
I really just followed the instructions. I used Diamond Crystal Kosher salt, as he recommends - which, BTW, is probably going to become my goto salt. I used Costco salmon without the skin on - it worked perfectly. I brined in Ziploc bags - no problem. The whole thing came out perfectly. I think I only brined for a few hours, then dried for a few hours. Since then, I’ve brined and dried for longer, but this first batch of fish really needed no improvement.
Sarah and I did a big trip of the UK and Ireland in October 2017. I’ve made a series of blog posts about these, intended to be informative to the person planning a similar trip. The posts are listed in order, below.
Sarah and I are in line to get on our Norwegian Air flight home. I guess it’s time to wrap these posts up.
Some things to mention.
There’s lots of free WiFi. Still, having data access over the air is amazing. Google Project Fi gave me data access everywhere for the same price I pay at home. Phone calls are a bit expensive, but who makes those? WiFi calling is normal and texts are free.
We took some side trips from Dublin - one to Cork/Blarney castle/Midleton, and one to the Cliffs of Moher with a few extra stops in there…
It’s easy to take the train from Dublin to Cork, be and from there you take the Cork bus to Blarney castle and Midleton (Jameson’s major distillery). The train leaves from Dublin Heuston station (pronounced like the Houston in Texas), and takes a couple hours. Buy tickets online, print them on the machine at the station, and hop on! Electric outlets and wifi are provided.
Land at Dublin airport, take a trip through passport control, buy a Leap card at the tourist desk inside, put €20 on it, step outside to the bus stop, hop on the Airlink 757 bus, get a tour of downtown from the top of a double decker bus, step off 30 minutes later in downtown Dublin.
