Bear Down Wildcats

Teriyaki skirt steak, steamed rice, salad

Kielbasa stew!

Spaghetti with pesto, made from basil from the garden

Bacon cheeseburgers with caramelized onions and sautéed mushrooms, scalloped potatoes, and salad.

I got a pound of coho salmon. Maybe I'll poach it and make some kind of lemon dill sauce.

I want to give this a try...............once (maybe twice).

Don't know that I'd ever make it myself before trying it, though I'd definitely like to try it if someone I knew was making it.

PieceOfMeat wrote:Don't know that I'd ever make it myself before trying it, though I'd definitely like to try it if someone I knew was making it.

My arteries are hardening just looking at it.

Pan-seared pork heart with lingonberries and Dijon mustard

Mashed potatoes

Salad

Dirty rice made with ground turkey. Pretty good.

azgreg wrote:Dirty rice made with ground turkey. Pretty good.

I'd imagine so. Dirty rice is great, but so is ground meat in anything, so double great.

I made pottage with leftovers: onions, celery, carrot, pork hearts, pork ribs, potatoes, and lentils. First I made a stock with the pork ribs until the meat fell off the bone, then I chopped up the meat and added everything to the stock and cooked it down into a dense pottage. The only problem is that it now is itself a leftover.

Tonight is roast pork tenderloin rubbed in a harissa sauce I made from scratch and a yogurt mint dipping sauce. On the side I'm roasting cauliflower and cherry tomatoes with thyme and garlic and finishing with a bit of lemon and parmesan.

Just a nice little tip for anyone who likes to smoke salmon: sprinkle 2-3 tablespoons of brown sugar per 1/2 lb filet on top. It makes the absolute best glaze.

I also use brown sugar in my teriyaki for salmon.

have a decent menu planned out for next week (since i'm trying to lose weight and all):

blackened swai fillets on a bed of greens with a honey scallion sesame dressing
roast zucchini "boats" with bacon/parmesan/basil etc
tandoori spiced grilled pork tenderloin on a bed of sauteed spinach and chickpeas
spinach/artichoke/quinoa casserole/quiche type thing
grilled honey spiced chicken breasts with cilantro/peanut rice noodles

My wife likes to get those froze chicken tenderloins. Anybody have a good way to prepare them so they don't dry out so much?

azgreg wrote:My wife likes to get those froze chicken tenderloins. Anybody have a good way to prepare them so they don't dry out so much?

Tenders? Or is tenderloin something else? Comes from the unused muscles on the back of the pig and cow, making for the best cuts. Just grilled pork tenderloin last night.

Did you brine the tenderloins?

It's these things.



She takes them straight from the freezer to the oven with a few spices.

brine it. though i'm sure that chicken is already packed with all kinds of wonderful additives and salts.

It's breast meat without skin, so it's just going to be dry. Buttery and cream-based sauces help, but then you're back to what she's avoiding in the first place. So I'd go for cooking them in canned condensed soup, like cream of chicken or cream of mushroom.

I do often grill skinless breasts, but always put a salt based rub on them to create the protein layer or whatever it is to keep the moisture in. Pappy's Herb and Garlic is my favorite, $3.40 for a big thing at Costco.

However, I do often cook chicken with the skin on, especially leg quarters. From Sunday.




Saturday grilled some ribs. Put a rub on, wrap in foil for up to 2 hours at 225, remove from foil and brown. Bone just slipped right out.




I think I have been barbecuing 5 dinners in a row. Last night, burgers with onions and pablanos, with some cottage style bacon which I found in the freezer when looking for burgers.

What kind of grill do you use Merk?

Top is "Santa Maria style" with red oak.

Bottom is a propane Weber.

I know charcoal is supposed to be better tasting, but you can't beat the convenience of propane.

I'd grill more often if I had propane-powered instead of just a charcoal Weber. Which is proof of the value of propane.

I haven't grilled with charcoal in years and years (would love to) but I mostly grill quick dinners after work and don't have time to build the coals up and wait forever. I have a nice Weber propane grill and it takes 5 mins to prep. works great.

Speaking of grills, am I the only one here who has literally not turned on his oven since April? I must have learned that in Arizona. Fear of heating a house while the AC is on. Fornophobia. I just use the grill outside or the stove-top burners.

Longhorned wrote:Speaking of grills, am I the only one here who has literally not turned on his oven since April? I must have learned that in Arizona. Fear of heating a house while the AC is on. Fornophobia. I just use the grill outside or the stove-top burners.

i still use my oven a decent amount but probably only about a third as much as I do in the cooler months. despite the heat I grill at least 3-4 days a week in the summer.

My dad in Tucson won't even put the crock pot on in the house in the summer. He moves it out to his Arizona room.

When I normally make ribs I prep them in the oven first, then move them to the grill. But my brother in Tucson showed me how he does the prep work on the grill to save his house from heating up, and it worked great. Since Cali had that heat wave last week I did the same thing.

how do you prep them on the grill? I want to make some ribs soon.

Yeah the only time I ever attempted ribs on the grill was a failure. They looked great but the texture and flavor was wrong. I still don't have a smoker. I know BearDown does them on his grill, too.

scumdevils86 wrote:how do you prep them on the grill? I want to make some ribs soon.

Put your rub on, wrap them in foil, then keep your grill on about 225. Put the ribs on the warming rack or on a side with the burner off . I do about 2 hours, or just short of that. Take them out of the foil, put bbq sauce on if desired (I don't), then brown them on medium. The meat just falls off the bone.

This is for pork ribs. Haven't bought beef ribs in 4 or 5 years, I like the pork so much better.

If you don't have good temp cotrol, or charcoal, Merks method can work with the oven set at 225 and then saucing and charing on a hot grill.

Made chili con carne with no beans. Big chunks of steak so tender they cut with a spoon. I started with ancho, guajillo, and New Mexico chili pods, made a smooth chili paste from those, and then a perfect chili with garlic, cinnamon, ezpazote, and chocolate. Had it with quesadillas. Basically this:

Made lasagna tonight.

azgreg wrote:Made lasagna tonight.

Do you ever find those no-boil lasagna noodles that you just layer in the dish with the sauce, and they come out perfectly cooked? I can't find those anywhere.

We use Ronzoni lasagna noodles. very happy with them.

Wow! Ronzoni makes them:

http://pasta-products-ronzoni.newworldp ... 00CT00ZX24

Is that what you use? I bet I could find that brand.

Yep, that's what we use. We get them at Fry's (Kroger's).

Ever heard of this and tried it? Can anyone say if this is true?

You take a small can of these (any brand):



... and you open it up:



.... and you blend it into a chili-adobe paste:



And you add it to whatever you're making (red chili, sauces, soups, stews, etc.), causing you to nearly ignite and crash through the roof, and then you transform into this kind of enlightened being in search of high levels of spicy heat who nobody else can fully understand but they just kind of follow you around the world on your motorcycle, hoping to learn and experience some small part of your deep transcendent power?

Do you know anything about this? Does anyone here want to volunteer to go first?

You could vaporize from the heat level. Nobody's entirely sure what the intended purpose of these little cans is. But they're here because of some kind of rip in space and time, and their status is mythic.

Completely bombed a brisket on the smoker last night. Was probably the juiciest brisket I have ever had, BUT, it was completely flavorless. It was weird, I guess best described as having no smoke flavor outside of a tab bit on the bark, and almost like I boiled the meat in water the whole time and without any rub/seasoning/etc. I've done probably 40 smokes on my smoker and this was the first time I have felt (with input from wife included) that it was a complete failure. At worst, I have had a few average cooks out of the 40 and nothing below.

No idea what happened along the way. It was a choice grade brisket, had good color and wasn't stiff. Not going to let the $50 go to waste, ill just dice the leftovers up and mix with bbq sauce for some flavor. Maybe add a little spices and make some tacos with it too. Weird though.

Longhorned wrote:

azgreg wrote:Made lasagna tonight.

Do you ever find those no-boil lasagna noodles that you just layer in the dish with the sauce, and they come out perfectly cooked? I can't find those anywhere.

Trader Joes.

rgdeuce wrote:Completely bombed a brisket on the smoker last night. Was probably the juiciest brisket I have ever had, BUT, it was completely flavorless. It was weird, I guess best described as having no smoke flavor outside of a tab bit on the bark, and almost like I boiled the meat in water the whole time and without any rub/seasoning/etc. I've done probably 40 smokes on my smoker and this was the first time I have felt (with input from wife included) that it was a complete failure. At worst, I have had a few average cooks out of the 40 and nothing below.

No idea what happened along the way. It was a choice grade brisket, had good color and wasn't stiff. Not going to let the $50 go to waste, ill just dice the leftovers up and mix with bbq sauce for some flavor. Maybe add a little spices and make some tacos with it too. Weird though.

So just make sure, is the next project something cheap?

ANGCatFan wrote:

Longhorned wrote:

azgreg wrote:Made lasagna tonight.

Do you ever find those no-boil lasagna noodles that you just layer in the dish with the sauce, and they come out perfectly cooked? I can't find those anywhere.

Trader Joes.

Thanks! Hopefully I'll get a chance to make the 4 + hour drive there and back and stock up before our first snow storm.

Longhorned wrote:Ever heard of this and tried it? Can anyone say if this is true?

You take a small can of these (any brand):



... and you open it up:



.... and you blend it into a chili-adobe paste:



And you add it to whatever you're making (red chili, sauces, soups, stews, etc.), causing you to nearly ignite and crash through the roof, and then you transform into this kind of enlightened being in search of high levels of spicy heat who nobody else can fully understand but they just kind of follow you around the world on your motorcycle, hoping to learn and experience some small part of your deep transcendent power?

Do you know anything about this? Does anyone here want to volunteer to go first?

You could vaporize from the heat level. Nobody's entirely sure what the intended purpose of these little cans is. But they're here because of some kind of rip in space and time, and their status is mythic.

Okay, this stuff is the bomb. Possibly the greatest condiment in the history of the planet. I'm cooking with it now.

I sauteed some pork bellies to render their fat, added chopped onions until they softened, and then raw rice and stirred until covered with the fat. Then I added chicken (from when I made the stock), and then the pureed chipotles en adobo. Everything turned gloriously red. Then I covered it all with chicken stock, stirred and am simmering until the rice is cooked. I'm calling it Mexican prison soup.

You kind of had me at Pork bellies Longhorned but then I remember that is really just a slab of bacon. Although it sounded uninviting it now actually really sounds like a flavor explosion

Homemade green chile enchilada stacks. I made the stock and reserved the chicken for them. I roasted Anaheim, jalapeño, and serrano chilies to make the green chile. The only things I bought were the blue corn masa to make the tortillas and the jack cheese.

Ham, garlic mashed potatoes, and sweet corn.

Chicken Marsala