Thanks for the link. That is a lot different than the ones I was browsing around at. Most of the ones I've seen are enclosed. Yep. Some are more useful than others depending on your cooking style. Some are small and afforable and can save a lot of time and/or effort, and others not so much. Like, immersion blender? Super useful, small, inexpensive. I know a lot of people love their sous-vide but I didn't end up swinging for one of those yet. I may or may not get a rotisserie but like to hear about what it can do and if it would be a good thing to incorporate into my kitchen and cooking style.
Do you ever make a sandwich and it just speaks to you? I made this tuna and duck egg salad sandwich on sourdough for lunch. Remember kids, always put horseradish in your tuna salad. Your tastebuds will thank you.
'wildered that looks like it's out of a magazine. I have to question the horsey sauce though. On another note, a few weekends back the SO and I went to friends house where I partook in perhaps the best food thing I have ever had, porkbelly bbq burnt ends. I don't have the words to describe how delicious they were. I have since placed an order for a batch. They looked like these:
Speaking of pork belly... I had amaaaazing ramen last weekend, and now I'm trying to recreate the experience. Tonkatsu broth has been boiling on the stove since 10am, and the chashu is in the dutch oven now. Also made menma, ajitama, miso butter corn, and blanched some Chinese broccoli. This better taste good because my house smells so aggressively like pork that I think I might have to move.
@shegirl My God. That looks amazing. You are making me so hungry. I'm in a small town and can't get cuts like that easily or affordably. However you can buy whole animals to slaughter. I'm about to go buy a freaking pig.
Scratch that, I'm definitely buying a pig. How did your SO make his pork belly? I've had it sort of BBQd before but also in Asian food where it is prepped way differently. Like eh? https://jesspryles.com/recipe/bbq-pork-belly-burnt-ends/
Mao's pork belly was a big dish I had in China now that you are mentioning Asian Pork Belly. I might just make that next week for one of my meals. Anyone else food prep? I cook my lunch and dinner and portion them out on Sunday. I have a bunch of pyrex bowls that are the perfect size but suck when reheating the meal. I had some cheap plastic meal containers but they eventually fell apart and were kind of bulky in the fridge. Wondering if anyone has any good products for this?
I use these, a bit more expensive but I like glass for containers. https://www.amazon.com/3-Pack-Glass-Meal-Containers-Compartment/dp/B075FC8NFF
We have that same thing except with 2 compartments. No dividing line through that bigger compartment. Ours has a plastic lid with handles that snap down on 4 sides and a rubber seal along the perimeter that you can pop out. It has survived reheating pretty well, just always unpop the handles for heat escape. I think I got ours at biglots. We dont do a formal food prep here. I usually buy groceries for 2 or 3 large meals, breakfast and snacks and cook a few times a week. Leftovers are eaten in 3 days usually. I've tried making more but we get sick of it or it just isn't fresh. What kind of stuff do you food prep?
Got probably a half dozen things I rotate. Comes and goes in waves and Im always looking for something super simple because it can eat up a huge chunk of your weekend day. Meatloaf takes 5 minutes to prep and 45 to cook. Most are based off of the sausage I make with my deer. Jambalaya and Gumbo with andouille, Italian sausage dishes, sausage and peppers and spaghetti dishes. Hell Ill make breakfast sausage links and just cook up bacon and hard boiled eggs for a week of breakfast for lunch. Once I find something I like I have no issues eating it everyday for a week. Ill also prep a meal and cook it fresh each night, stir fry or British Indian dishes. Those you got to freeze the later week portions of they go bad. Trying a new recipe can be a crap shoot. I tried Cioppino a few weeks ago and it was just not 7 days good, Shrimp Bisque tasted great but thick cream soup got old.
man and here I am barely being able to eat leftovers. If it's not fresh, I just can't do it. The deer eat very well and love us for it. I think chicken popovers and most kinds of broth-based soup are the only things I can regularly eat as leftovers.
I guess I could freeze portions. Usually the only things I freeze are partial batches of marinated meat. Like I'll chop and season one of those huge trays of chicken breast and just use half of it for a few meals, freeze the other half. It works out pretty well because the meat gets more time to marinate as it thaws and saves me the effort for next time. We eat a lot of stirfrys (usually with broccoli or bok choy plus other veggies) and curries (indian and thai) with chicken, turkey chili. Lots of burritos with ground turkey and black beans. Shepherds pie. I made a huge batch of chunky red meat sauce and a box of the protein plus pasta for lunches this week. I buy cabbage just about weekly and find something to do with it, last week it was a conecuh sausage and cabbage dish. Sometimes do Italian sausage with onions/peppers/can of tomatoes with a little pasta mixed in. I don't usually make a lot of pasta because I don't care for it but hubs does and its easy to send with him to work. I've also done a big casserole dish with loaded greek salad and a big mason jar of greek dressing, that was easily gone in 2 days between the 2 of us. It's better fresher anyway but making a huge one to portion out over a couple days is way easier than chopping a million different things multiple times a day and I will stuff my face with that stuff for two meals a day til it is gone. I should make some gumbo, that would be a good thing to try that I haven't made in awhile. The sausage here sucks and there isn't fresh seafood available but I could use some of the conecuh in the freezer and chicken. I sort of stay away from seafood dishes unless I can use some frozen tilapia because everything available is frozen and it isn't even inexpensive for how crappy it is. For breakfast for awhile we were eating knockoff Mcdonalds egg mcmuffins. It's not something you can really prep ahead of time but doesn't take too long to make. The texture of the egg is so good. What Cioppino recipe did you use? That's something I've wanted to make but we might not have the ingredients needed to make it happen.
I used Giada's recipe. Im not a fan of fennel but I tried it as listed to see what it "traditionally" taste like. I might try it again without since Ive seen a lot listed without it. Chinese market near me has a wide variety of seafood and sell little seafood medleys that's fun to cook in an Iron Chef sort of way.
Not to try and dissuade you from getting a whole pig, because supporting small local farms is awesome; however, if you JUST want a pork belly and have a Costco in your area, they sell whole, uncured bellies relatively cheap. From there, here's the basic recipe that I use to make pork belly 'burnt ends': Cut one whole pork belly into cubes (1.5"x1.5" approximately) Season with your favorite BBQ rub. (I like to do something a bit spicy that will help offset all the sweetness later) Place cubes on a wire rack and put in the smoker for 2-2/12 hours at 250 Dump the cubes into a disposable aluminum pan and add in BBQ sauce, a LOT of butter and brown sugar (you could use honey too) and mix to combine Cover with aluminum foil, back on the smoker for another 60-90 minutes. Remove foil and cook for an additional 15-20 minutes so sauce can caramelize and thicken. Enjoy a mouth orgasm.
@jdoogie I might try out the Costco, will check out some other places around town too. This seems like such a good summertime snack. I like that I don't actually have to fire up the grill to make this. I'm not rushing out to buy a pig asap, but there are a lot of animals that come up for sale once the FFA kids finish showing their animals. Not quite time for that yet, but soonish I think.
Make sure when/if you do get the full pig that you specifically ask the processor to keep the belly whole if they can. Depending on how they butcher their animals, they tend to split the hogs down the middle therefore splitting the belly. A lot of times you'll end up with a bunch of packages of "fresh side" which is just the belly cut up and uncured.
That is really good to know, thanks. I've been looking up pictures of butchering pigs and the cuts of meat you get from different parts and have a list of desired cuts. I think there's like 3 places in this small town that does slaughters, I should probably just go chat with each of them and see how much they work with me vs do their standard cuts.
So, typically the way it works (at least here in Ohio), you find a farm that you want to buy the animal from and they have a processor they work with if they don't do their own butchering and from there you can work with their processor on what cuts they can do/offer. Or you could do it backwards in a way where you find a processor that will give you the cuts you want and see if they have some farms that they work with to find you the animal(s) you want.