Easy boeuf jerky

Wow, you need to do this.  It's cheaper than anything you can buy, just as good or better because of the varieties of spices that can be added and it's really easy.

I got a flank steak and cut it up into thin pieces (across and/or with the grain) and trimmed all the fat.  It's really important to trim ALL the fat.  It looks gross in the finished product and it does NOT render out.  I think I'll be choosing a less marbled cut next time like a top or bottom round.  And, cut it thin.  The more plump pieces don't have a good mouthfeel when eating them.

Take the trimmed pieces and marinate in a bag.  I used 1/3 soy, 1/3 worcesteshire and 1/3 mirin for about 4 hours.  I removed them pieces and lay them on the depicted cooling rack.  This was placed on top of a roasting pan and placed on a low-setting hotplate.  I adjusted the temperature on the hotplate so the air above the rack was about 90-120, hotplates have sloppy cycling.  I gave the pieces a final sprinkle of coarse salt and went about my way for a day.  No fancy airflow, just relied on convection.  A day later, jerky bliss.  We all liked it immediately.  It is Scoopy's favorite!

Twitter baguette giveaway...

Update Mar 25 
Thanks to all who stopped by or received in some way the demi baguettes this week.  I gave away about 15 in a couple days.  The ratio of flour to water (1.67 w/w) so far is the dominating factor in the volume and taste.  I also varied the shaping a bit this morning, 130 g (precooked weight, ca. 110 g final) was a nice size for a petit dejeuner.  I'll probably work on the final proof next, since the oven spring was too much.  I was baking in the morning of a busy day and rushed it a little.  Stay tuned for more giveaways...

Original post
My breads of the past months have, well - sucked.  Not real bad, just not good.  I just got into a slump of sorts that I couldn't figure out.  Based on my previous manic outburst, I climbed out of the rut with a new (or rediscovered old) ratio.  I'm up and running again and the volume is perfect.  Now, the crust is sometimes soft, sometimes perfect.  For a baguette, the perfect crust is razor thin, sharp and crackles as it leaves the oven.

At 20 liters per tablespoon of water, steam is an abundant commodity, even for a hack no matter what awkward technique one uses.  The real challenge for the home baker without an oven equipped for steam injection and evacuation is to remove the steam sometime into the baking cycle.  Therein lies the much bigger challenge for the home oven.  Ovens vary and this may be the source of reproducibility problems from person to person, recipe to recipe, etc.   The breads need to steam a bit and then bake in a dry environment.  I'm not going to go into to too much detail on this.   All I'm saying is that I'm in experiment mode and I'm baking faster than we can eat.

So, I'm introducing the first in an occasional series:  I bake early in the morning and you get to taste my experiments.  Tomorrow morning about 6, the dough will have risen overnight and I'll produce, by 7 am, some demi baguettes.  About 100-110 g with or without a good crust.  Don't worry, they'll taste good even if the crust isn't right.  DM me on Twitter and I'll reserve one for you and give you the address.  Just stop by at 7 and I'll toss one in your car.  For tomorrow, I should have about 8-10 available.   With your mini, you get a little pat of butter and jam.  Enjoy - and thanks for helping me not waste food and get some experimentation in. I love you guys.

On the importance of ratio

click to make big enough to read

A friend has suggested 1.618.. , I'm on it.

Saucisson Sec (finally)

Some time ago, I was muddling through my attempt at preparing one of the simplest dry cured sausage in Ruhlman's Charcuterie, saucisson sec. It's not fermented, just a simple mix of ground pork, garlic, salt and pepper and some curing salt.

I have a way of turning simple things into a 3 body problem. But, when I finish, I usually have a robust solution in which I know more about the process variables than if I nailed it on the first try. It's a frustrating way to learn, but learning is rarely uneventful.

The key environmental variables are 60°F, at least 60-70% relative humidity and some air movement. I won't rehash all the past attempts buried in my archives spent trying to find that environment. I will simply cut to the chase: I stuffed the sausage in beef casings and lay the links on a cooling rack suspended over some water in a plastic cooler in my basement. The open top of the high-walled container permitted air movement. The sides of the container coupled with the puddle of water in the bottom created a naturally bounded localized cloud of moisture that registered ca. 70% according to an accurate humidity probe and the temperature in my basement is about 60°F +/- 8°F almost all year 'round.

4 weeks of aging and voila. The sausage looks a little squat because it was on its side. So what. After I tasted it, didn't die, I fed it to others who enjoyed it immensely. The only changes? I didn't like the appearance of the wide beef middle casings - the biological reality of the appearance of these things is not pretty, I'm going back to simple small hog casings. And, I'll be using a finer grind. I like coarse for fresh sausage, it keeps them moist on cooking, but the dry cured, I believe, needs a finer grind.

A peek at the newest run (smaller casings, finer grind) about a week in:

Fermented cider

My efforts in the kitchen are often inspired by Rachel, thanks! She recently made cider and I couldn't resist co-opting my existing equipment to give it a pilot run. I used a couple bags of Gala organic apples from Kroger (not the beauty hand-picked ones Rachel used) and pushed them through a vigorously cleaned meat grinder. This option was interesting. It was fast and seemed to sheer the apples nicely. Then, using a vigorously cleaned sausage stuffer, pushed on the pulp to get some juice. I used a screen on the inside of the piston to prevent the pulp from getting in the juice.

I was curious to learn the juice extraction efficiency using this setup and to know just how sweet gala apple juice is for fermented cider (it tastes amazing before fermentation!). From 3 kg of the pulped apples, I got about 1.5 kg of juice and by refractometer 12° Brix. I skipped the campden tablet step and pitched a wine yeast. I should get a nice 4-pack of cider that's about 6% abv. I'll bottle with 2.5 volumes of carbonation. Here's the photo shoot.

galas and one granny smith

apples after the grinder

using a *cleaned* sausage stuffer

squished apples (apple cake?)

takes a lot of apples, ca. 50% by weight extraction of juice, meh

• Oops, had I read in advance and used pectinase, I'd probably have gotten a 6-pack out of this effort.  Next time.
• Book I used was Art of Cidermaking.
• Update 25-Feb-2011, most activity subsided and gravity around 00.  Small sample tastes really good.  I'll bottle in a couple weeks, once clarified.

Firedome refinements

A while back I outlined a few goals for the Firedome project. I want it to behave so I can feed the masses. Ideally, I'd like to be able to use downed wood from my lot (cheaper for long cooking sessions and little residual ash) and I really needed it to be charged on the fly.

I live by the tagline on this blog, yet I'm not a perfectionist. Developing an idea, for me, is a practical matter. Get the job done as good as I can given the timeframe. 80% of ideal is good enough - time to move to another project. Sometimes I wish I were a perfectionist, but life's short. Anyway, I think I'm finished with this. I'll cut one more dome out - no hinged door - Kate's generously donated Weber dome, your time has come, meet my angle grinder, you two go have fun.

So, here it is. Note the door stays open throughout the cooking. This enables a nice constant temperature and prevents the neighbors from being smoked out. A dancing fire prevents one from determining the headspace temperature accurately. All I could do is measure surfaces. The clay base was steadily in the 950°F range, ca +/-30F, the inside of the dome surface, about 700°F. It was windy so the heat wicked off the surface, but the base was pretty stable. All I needed to do was toss in chunks of wood from the front to maintain a fire. I only had little pieces and they burned quickly, so I'll be repeating this with bigger chunks (see bottom image).

This is one of two test breads I ran today. The first came off the grill and I tossed it straight to the neighbors for their breakfast. I think they liked it.

Before the next run, I went through our neighborhood and dragged back a bunch of fallen wood, chunked it down and am ready. But, not this weekend. I'm too ecstatic to face any irreproducibility. I'm taking a break to bask in the glory.

Pizza casserole

After a big pizza bonanza, the toppings get mixed in to some pasta and baked. Just don't call it Mac n cheese.

Superbowl Pita

The night before the superbowl, I made 4 kg of pizza dough for the big day.  I stored it outside in a loosely  covered container on my deck.  I used about 3/4 of it on the day of the superbowl and the remainder has sat in there for 11 days now. Since the raccoons decided to pass on it, I had to find a use for it.

Some time ago, Andrew convinced me a yeasted dough would last much longer than I expected.  I now believe a lump o dough has approximately 4-5 full rises before the dough is spent; eventually it gets too sour and needs to be refreshed with more flour.  The weather's been cool enough so the entire 11 days has been a long retarding period and it was ready to go tonight.  I made pitas for our hummus tonight.  They had a hint of a sourdough flavor and were great with the hummus.

The dough was scaled to ca. 200 g pieces, squished into circles and allowed to rest about 10 minutes uncovered.

I baked them in a 500°F oven on a preheated baking sheet. The sheet was enamel on steel. A new favorite baking surface of mine.

After the bacon's finished ...

A simple potato chip can be a special treat, especially cooked after the bacon. Mandolin-sliced Russets were soaked in water briefly and cooked slowly in a pan of rendered bacon fat.

Ale - first for 2011

[Lot no. for this batch bit.ly/gxZgon]

A week ago or so, Jim arranged a trip to Rockmill Brewery.  What a decadent surprise to have Belgian style ales that had been made just a few hundred feet away.  Thanks to all at Rockmill for your hospitality  (also, see Jill's post on the day's visit).  I arrived home inspired and tossed this ale recipe together with my new brewing rig with overhead stirrer.

Stirring a mash isn't common for a homebrewer.  Because of my background, I can't imagine heating a suspension without a stirrer, so I rigged one on my pot.  I was hoping for greater uniformity in temperature, and maybe slightly better extraction.  I was making an ale and first hardened Columbus' city water with 1.5 g epsom salts and 5 g gypsum for an anticipated final volume of 5 gallons.  I did a full volume infusion mash at a max temp of 153°F for 60 minutes, pulled the grains, boiled for an hour, chilled, fermented and bottled.  Pretty simple, not many snags.  The winter tap water is cold(!) this time of year, chills quick.  Here's some action shots of the brewing.  I'll save you a couple brews Matt and thanks for the outing Jim!

Recipe:
Breiss 2 row, 10-11 lbs
Crystal malt 60°, 1 lb
Black patent malt, 100 g
30 L water hardened as described in text
Northern Brewer Hops, 1.5 oz, 60 min
Fuggles, 1/2 oz 30 min, 1/2 oz 15 min to end
Wyeast, American Ale
OG 1.052 (refractometer)
FG 1.012
Bottled 26-Jan-11

Oh, some clips from our visit. Some of the manly men in our party sabered some bottles (I'm a clutz, I wimped out):
John: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5_12IG_Zyg
Ben: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsJvy24Iois

Spelt Crackers (better than last time)

click to enlarge, the image is much more clear when bigger

Spelt Crackers
spelt berries, 100 g, ground into coarse flour with a coffee mill
(berries obtained from a recent @GreenerGrocer's weekly market bag, thanks Amy)
unbleached white, 100 g
water, 150 g
yeast, 1/4 t
Mix these ingredients and let sit in fridge a couple days.
Remove from fridge (no need to warm up) and add:
vegetable oil, 20 g
sugar, 20 g
salt, 4 g
baking powder, 2 t

Mix resulting mess well with wooden spoon, knead a bit using flour when sticky, divide and roll each piece into 6 x 12" piece and place on baking sheet.  Score each sheet with deep grooves using a pizza cutter, the shapes should be the shape you want the crackers.  Then, dock the whole surface with the tines of a fork, be thorough.  Bake at 350°F until brownish.  Remove, from oven, cool a bit and snap pieces on the score lines.  They're a big hit here at the ranch.

I used unbleached white to give them a bit of  structure.  100% Spelt was too challenging (tender, tasty, but crumbly).  The yeast PLUS baking powder was an interesting mix; the idea suggested to me by Rachel having studied ingredient lists on cracker boxes, thanks Rachel.


Related articles

• Lavash crackers (nami-nami.blogspot.com)

Behold, the Piggle

Something a bit different today. Venturing into the domestic arts, I have formed a union between cow, pig, bbq, cooking and enlightenment. Inspired by Jim's tweet regarding the desire to have a bacon-scented candle, this is my brainchild (the kid helped put them together and the wife came up with the name at dinner last night).

All you low 'n slow guys out there should have a stash of pork fat from all those pork butts. It's a pretty soft fat, but smoked and wonderful with a nice color and crunchy bits. It's soft though, not perfect for a candle. Tallow, rendered suet, however, is pretty firm and standard for making candles. Taking a 2:1 (w/w) tallow to pork fat (bits and all) mixture into plastic dixie cups and melting it in a hot water bath, followed by placing a wick inside each provided an adequate candle (snip off the plastic dixie cup). I think we got a trace of water dissolved in the fat, because there is a bit of sizzle when they burn (bonus!). Listen carefully to the video. Unfortuately, they don't smell as wonderful as bacon, so next time the source of pork fat will be bacon instead of pork butt.

So, decent candle, good source of fat for sauteeing lentils or finding your way around the house when the apocalypse happens, but, keep in the fridge. I think they may go rancid quickly. Warm to room temperature before serving.

Spelt Berry Crackers (no, really)

This post is a work in progress and is promising.  Depicted here is a pictorial path to the crackers and my thoughts on future plans.  I post this early in hopes of others jumping in with experiments of their own.

I ground 135 grams of spelt berries using the fine setting on a coffee mill (these are abundant at thrift stores, do a dry cleaning with a sacrificial batch of grain, any grain, to remove residual coffee).

Even on fine, the ground "flour" will be pretty coarse. Here you can see the husks as well as the insides, we're going to use it all.

To this grain I added water (92 g), salt (3 g), vegetable oil (20 g), baking powder (1.5 t) and mixed it up. It's a coarse slop.

I plopped this on a piece of parchment paper, placed a piece of plastic wrap on it and gently rolled it out to something like a 15" diameter circle. The plastic was then removed to leave this.

These were baked at 375°F until an edge just started to burn, about 15 minutes. They were removed from the oven, cut with a pizza cutter while still warm and allowed to cool.

In my experience, any cracker's flavor evolves for hours after they finish baking. Their flavor is indescribable and, to my surprise, good! Not great, but that's where the development comes in.

What's next?
1. fats? Not a big fan of butter in most breads, I like vegetable oil in breads because of the texture it creates and the neutral flavor. Other fats might be good... lard? suet?
2. preferment? Why not preferment the grain flour to develop some sugar and flavor and then, just before baking, give it a shot of b powder to get the biscuit/cracker-like crisp.
3. grain? I only had spelt on hand. The original thought was for wheat berries. There are lots of options here for fun mixtures, etc.

Let me know of any ideas you all have and share in the comments.

Still testing my new homebrew reactor, soon the first run.