Cooking with Tyrone

Been a while, but I had an experiment last night that turned out well!

Faux Carrot Kimchi

Kimchi's origins are in some asian country I don't feel like looking up right now. It is similar to sauerkraut, and is usually made out of cabbage, with optional other vegetables. They fill the cabbage with spices, pepper and fish sauce and then bury it in giant clay pots underground for months. I lack the facilities and motivation to go through all of that, so I'm making fake kimchi out of carrots.

4 carrots
1 Tsp Fish Sauce
2 Tsp Red Pepper flakes
1/4 Tsp 5 spice
1/2 Cup Rice Wine Vinegar
4 Tsp Sugar
1 Tsp Salt

Shred the carrots and mix all this shit together. Let it sit in the fridge for at least one day. It should be sour and spicy, use it as a condiment on stuff, or just eat it.
 
I'm not a chef I'm just a dude who watches a lot of food TV so prepare these recipes at your own risk

CARROT SOUP
A few nights ago I got around to making up a batch of carrot soup to use up some carrots. Measurements are weird because my kitchen is weird.

1 cookie sheet of carrots
1 onion
A thumb-sized chunk of ginger (1.5 inches or so?)
1/2 bottle champagne
3/4 bottle Pinot Grigio (opened, "probably from last weekend dude, go for it")
1 can chicken broth
1 can coconut milk
cinnamon
cloves

Set oven to 350. Peel carrots, drizzle lightly with oil and put into the oven for 40-60 minutes. You want them to get a little color but definitely no char.

At the same time as you start your carrots, get out your soup pot and put it on low heat. Add enough oil to make the bottom glisten. Add the onion, diced. Let it cook low for 40-60 minutes. Turn them down or off if they start to look like they might burn.

When the carrots are done, scavenge some wine, add it to the onions and crank the heat up to high. Attempt to light the alcohol on fire until you realize sticking your arm into a pot to light it is dumb, and that wine that has been open in the fridge for an indeterminate amount of time probably doesn't have much alcohol left anyways.

Chop the carrots small enough to fit into your blender easily and add to the pot. Add 1 can chicken broth. Add 2-4 cloves depending on the age of your cloves. Reduce heat to a strong simmer and reduce by half.

Peel and grate in the ginger, removing any of those weird ginger hairs. Remove from heat and fish out the cloves if you can find them. (They are probably soft enough to blend in smoothly but I'm not really sure?)

Blend soup in the blender, adding coconut milk as necessary because it's probably pretty glompy. Attach lid to blender securely if you aren't considering redecorating in orange stucco. Return blenderfulls of pureed soup to the pot and stir them together along with any remaining coconut milk. (reserve a tablespoon or so for garnish if you are a fancypants)

Add cinnamon, salt, and black pepper to taste.

I thought some cilantro on top might taste good but I didn't have any.

If you want to make it look all pretty make a spiraly pattern out of some coconut milk on top, and wiggle a knife through it. If you do it right it will look like a fancy cup of coffee. You will probably fuck up the first one.


SLOW-COOKED PORK
If the Richter scale measured flavor:effort put in instead of earthquakes, this would be a 10.0. It's not really "my recipe" but it's also too simple to credit anyone for it.

PORK
1 Pork Shoulder (Also called "butt" and "picnic shoulder")
1 Onion
Worcestershire Sauce
Brown Sugar
Liquid Smoke Hickory (optional)
1 serrano chili (optional)

Quarter the onion and spread the chunks evenly over the bottom of your crock pot/dutch oven. (If you don't have either of these things you already fail at low-effort cookery)

Salt the pork, then cover the outside in an even layer of brown sugar. Put meat into the crock pot. Add several splashes of Worcestershire sauce. Add liquid smoke and the serrano, chooped up if you want them. (You do)

Cook on low for 10-12 hours if crock pot.
Cook in oven at 220 for 5-8 hours if you only have a dutch oven.

Remove the meat and let it cool before shredding it unless you have heat resistant gloves or metal fingers. Do not discard what remains in the pot. Proceed to the sauce.

THE SAUCE
The meat is good, but the sauce is the key. The instructions here are also incredibly vague because when I make this sauce it is usually about an hour-long process, and I never end up with the same ingredients in there. The only absolutely essential ingredient in this is the pig juice. The rest of the ingredients are things that I have used with success.

1 Pig Juice*
Tomato Paste
Ketchup (not really necessary if you use tomato paste)
Red Wine/Cider Vinegar
Spicy sauce (my last batch used a mixture of sriacha and regular dave's insanity)
Garlic powder
Dried Oregano
Cayenne Pepper
Black Pepper
Cumin

*Pig Juice: Pig Juice is magic. You cannot buy it in any store. You may also notice that this recipe comes AFTER the slow cooker pork recipe. It can't be made without it. The pig juice will be in the pot after your pork has finished its slow cook. This mixture of water that sweated out of the meat, melted fat and collagen, Worcestershire, sugar and onion juice is the heart of your sauce.

Strain the Pig Juice into a sauce pot. Reduce it by at least a third (I prefer half) Add ketchup or tomato paste. I advise dried/powdered ingredients because they basically dissolve into the sauce, you can use fresh chopped stuff if you don't mind the sauce chunky. Add whatever else you like, the sauce will be fairly sweet because of all the brown sugar so I like to make sure to get a lot of heat in there too.


There would be pictures if I had a camera. More recipes when I feel like it!

This sounds pretty good, and I even have a slow cooker.

But is the tomato paste/ketchup really required? Wouldn't the pig juice make for a pretty good gravy without it?
 
The tomato stuff is for flavor and also because the gelatin in the extra juice makes it thicken into jello when its at room temp but when its warm its pretty thin and won't coat the meat; If you're having a sandwich it just soaks in the bread and if your having a burrito it all drips out.
 
The tomato stuff is for flavor and also because the gelatin in the extra juice makes it thicken into jello when its at room temp but when its warm its pretty thin and won't coat the meat; If you're having a sandwich it just soaks in the bread and if your having a burrito it all drips out.

Well, I wouldn't just use the drippings without doing anything to them. I'm talking about making gravy out of the drippings. I'm just not thrilled about making it a tomato based sauce. The only tomato based sauce I'd enjoy with pork would have to be a bbq style sauce, and I prefer to carmelize it over heat somewhat.

I like flour as a thickener, but corn starch works too. Pork gravy from this should be pretty good.
 
BBQ sauce is exactly what it is, I usually add tomato, vinegar, loads of paprika and some cumin and let it just simmer for as many hours as I'm awake/not in a food coma.

That juice is exactly what you want to make gravy with though, it's basically pork stock, although if you used s sugar rub it will be pretty sweet. Make a blonde roux and stir in the pig juice and you'll have a pretty awesome gravy.
 
So I found out that I can upload pictures from my phone to my computer with relative ease, I'm going to try and start posting a lot more recipies with pics.

Carrot soup. (Different than the other carrot soup)

Equipment:


Start sweating the onions with a little oil while you chop the carrots. Salt botht he onions and the carrots to help draw moisture out.

Once you have cooked out most of the water and the carrots are soft add in the red curry paste and fry it for a few seconds.

Add in the chicken stock and most of the can of coconut milk and blend with an immersion blender. If you do this in a regular blender do not fill it to the top and MAKE SURE the lid is on.

drizzle some of the remaining coconut milk on top in a gay swirly thing. This would also be good with some chopped cilantro on top but I did not have any.
 
Holy expanded, crappy resolution batman. Those pictures would actually look pretty good if you shrunk them down by a lot.
 
Hello again internet.

Meatloaf:
~1 lb ground beef
~.5 lb sausage
1 onion
1 bell pepper
1 carrot (did not make it into this one)
some hot peppers
dry stale bread ground into crumbs

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some ingredients

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chop all of the vegetables into tiny pieces. You can even toss them into a food processor, but make sure they are still kind of chunky, you don't want goo. saute on low heat until most of he moisture is out. Salt the vegetables liberally, it draws out the moisture.


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Take the vegetables off of the heat. Mix together your beef and sausage. Mix in vegetables. Add bread crumbs. I used some leftover garlic bread for bonus flavor.

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shape into a loaf at bake at 350 until internal temp is 130F. At 130, glaze with a mixture of equal parts brown sugar, balsamic vinegar and ketchup and return to the oven for 5 minutes. Repeat this and bake for 5 more minutes. Remove from the oven and let sit for 5-10 minutes before slicing.

THANKSGIVING STUFFING

Old bread
onion
celery (I like lots)
carrot
chicken stock
sausage
herbs

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This is the bread I used. It is some fancy shit with sundried tomatoes, carrots and chives in it. I got it for free because it was two days old and I run really fast when I'm hungry.

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cut it into small cubes

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This is some pre-seasoned sage sausage. Break it apart and cook it on low so that all its delicious fat renders out.

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Chop the onion and carrot and add to the sausage once you have a good layer of oil in the bottom of the pan.

(No Pic)
add your bread cubes and the chopped celery to the pan. Add chicken stock as necessary. The bread should be pretty damp but there should not be liquid pooled at the bottom.

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Bake at 350. I don't like cooking stuffing inside a bird so I use a pan. If you put stuffing into a raw bird you MUST cook it until the stuffing is 160 degrees in the center.


Turkey Money Shot. Roasted it with thyme compound butter underneath the skin.
(You will notice that this bird was roasted with stuffing inside of it. My roommate bought the turkey and insisted on stuffing it with stovetop stuffing.)
 
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Pork Ribs

I like to do my ribs (and honestly nearly any pork) on lower heat for a long time, preferably with smoke (for both me and the meat.) For these ribs I did a dry rub then cooked them in a standard weber over some hickory charcoal.

The rub: I didn't really measure any of these things, but they are listed descending by greatest amount

Salt
Brown Sugar
Paprika
Black Pepper
Chile Molido
Cumin
Oregano

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Completely cover your ribs with this 20-40 minutes before cooking, and let them sit out on the counter. You don't want to put cold meat onto a smoky grill or the smoke will condense onto the outside of the meat in an unpleasant fashion.

Now, your grill. If you own a smoker, chances are you don't need to be told how to use it, and it is by far the best option.

If you have a charcoal grill, try and find some real wood charcoal, not briquettes. Light them in a chimney, lighter fluid is for people who fail.

If you cannot find real wood charcoal, if you have a gas grill or if you just want to go nuts, pick up some smoking chips. Soak them in water (or the alcoholic beverage of your choice) for one hour, then wrap in tinfoil (I use a pie tin with tinfoil on top) and poke a few holes in the top. A few is definitely less than 10. Throw this whole package directly onto the coals or gas jets for the last hour of cooking. If your gas grill has one of those trays for smoking chips toss them in there and skip the foil packet.

Now, you want the ribs to cook on indirect heat, because you're going to leave them out there for a few hours. If you're using coals, heap them up on one side and put your meat opposite them. If you are using a gas grill only light half of your burners and put the meat on the other side.

LEAVE THEM THE FUCK ALONE FOR A WHILE. If your bbq is going at the correct temperature opening it will make your delicious ribs take longer by letting out all of your heat an delicious smoke. Tough it out, and only check on them once every 30 minutes TOPS once you have the heat at about 200-220.

Ribs money shot:
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A plate with some vegetables and shit:
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