The Perfect Summer BBQ Side Dish

Roasted Potatoes w/ Rosemary

This was a summer party “must have” growing up. So simple to do, yet flavorful and always a huge hit. I have taken this family recipe and put my own twist on it. Rather than leaving a potato salad out in the summer heat, add this side to any back yard BBQ. This will be the talk of any 4th of July celebration.

What you need:

Baking pan/cookie sheet with edges, large bowl, tin foil, mortar and pestle (optional)

Ingredients (Makes 10-15 servings):

5 lb bag of red potatoes (if you can find purple, use a combination of red, yellow and purple for a great presentation), chives, EVOO, 1 container cherry tomatoes, 2 yellow or red onions, 1 ear of corn, fresh rosemary, salt and pepper, sour cream (optional).

Directions:

 The corn needs to be cooked first. You can use frozen corn, but corn on the cob usually keeps small chucks of kernels together, and is easier to eat with a fork. Boil the corn until it is tender, then remove it and let cool. At this point you can preheat your oven to 425 degrees. Slice the potatoes into bit size pieces. Halve the cherry tomatoes and chop your 2 onions into large pieces. Add the potatoes, tomatoes, and onion to your large bowl. Next, you want to add a 1/2 cup of olive oil. Spread it over the mixture evenly and toss it all together, lightly seasoning with salt and pepper. Add a healthy amount of fresh rosemary. Chop the small rosemary leaves into smaller pieces, or grind them in a mortar and pestle if you have one. Add about 1/4 cup of ground rosemary to the large bowl. Toss again until the chunks of veggies are evenly coated. Cover your baking sheet or cookie sheet with tin foil. Try to have the tinfoil bend up on all 4 sides like a bowl (you do not want a lot of oil leaking onto your pan). Pour the mixture in your bowl onto your cookie sheet. Spread the contents evenly. I find that if you have the contents piled too high, the mixture cooks inconsistently. If needed, use 2 pans rather than just 1. Let the mixture cook for 40-45 minutes. Around the 20-minute mark, use a spatula and shuffle the potatoes around so they don’t start to stick to the tinfoil. To be safe, you can do this again after cooking for 30-35 minutes. While cooking, slice the corn off the ear from top to bottom. After 40-45 minutes, the potatoes should be a fully cooked and just starting to turn golden brown. The onions and tomatoes should be soft and tender. Using a spatula, scoop the contents into a bowl. Add your sliced corn over the top and lightly toss once or twice. Finely chop 4 strands of chive and add them to the bowl as a garnish. If you would like to add a little extra flavor, add a tablespoon of sour cream and carefully toss until consistent. Let the dish stand to allow the tomatoes to cool slightly, then serve warm. Cheers!

The Magical Broth that Cooks Your Dinner

Pho

Pho (pronounced like Fah) is an amazing Japanese dish that takes hours to make, but the rewords are well worth the wait. The best pho is made up of a meticulously crafted broth that simmers for hours on end, then strained and poured over a variety of veggies, meats and noodles. There are many combinations including veggie, seafood, pork, beef and chicken, or a combination of these mixed into one. I set out to make a pho that was flavorful, authentic, and didn't require most of my day to make. With that said, I give you my personal crafted pho recipe. It makes 4 servings and takes about 4 hours to make, but 3 of those hours are simmering, so you can tend to the other million things going on in your life. Because who has time to spend the entire day in the kitchen, right?

Beef Pho with greens, tripe, hoisin sauceand sriracha.

Broth:
6 qts water
2 lbs ox/beef tail
3 lbs beef neck bone
1.5 lbs beef marrow bones
1 large yellow onion, quartered
6 star anise
4 whole cloves
4" ginger root, halved
1 cinnamon stick
4 Tbsp fish sauce
1 Tbsp coriander
1 Tbsp fennel
1 Tbsp salt
1 Tbsp sugar

Bowl options:
1 lb thin sliced beef
1 lb sliced tripe
1 lb fresh (or dried) pho rice noodles
Thinly sliced onion
Bean sprouts, soaked in water
Lime wedges
1 finely sliced Thai chili
Scallions, soaked in water
Cilantro
Thai basil
Hoisin sauce
Sriracha

Directions:
Parboil 3 sets of bones for 10 min. Remove bones, flash chill in cold water. In a clean pot add 6 qts water. Add bones back to water. Broil ginger and onion so slightly toasted and add to water. In a skillet, lightly toast anise, cinnamon, coriander, fennel and cloves for 5 min. Place in cheese cloth and add to water. Add fish sauce, salt and sugar. Bring to boil and reduce to a simmer for 3 hours. Remove any oils or residue floating on top. Remove contents and strain broth with a fine metal strainer into another pot. Remove any remaining oils floating with a spoon or baster. Bring back to a simmer and the broth is ready to serve over selected contents in your bowl. Soak dried noodles in hot water for 15-18 min or cook fresh noodles in boiling water for 20 seconds. Fill a pho bowl 1/3 full of noodles. Add remaining desired ingredient options. Pour the broth over all ingredients until almost fully submerged. Add additional sauces (Hoisin/Sriracha) to meet your desired flavor. Cheers!

The Greatest Condiment On Earth

Bacon!

Lets talk bacon. Clearly its one of the greatest creations. You head to your grocers "bacon section" and you have center cut, thick cut, maple, honey, brown sugar, lean, 0% sodium, 0% pork and everything in-between. Then you look at the price and it never makes any sense. I always liked thick cut bacon, but who are we kidding, Ill eat any kind put in front of me, even turkey bacon! 


Shortly after I started curing meats, I learned that there are 2 major curing agents; curing salt #2 and pink salt. Most meats that are cured will contain one of these 2 ingredients to help preserve the meat. Bacon needs a basic cure mix made up of regular salt, sugar and pink salt. Adding your mixture to a nice, fatty slab of pork belly with a few extra flavors added in will give you some of the best bacon you've ever had! I would recommend buying maple sugar for a sweet bacon and garlic, cracked black pepper and spices for a savory bacon. 

The Basic Cure

• 1 pound (450 grams) kosher salt

• 8 ounces (225 grams) sugar

• 2 ounces or 10 tsp (50 grams) pink salt 

The Process

Let me start off by saying its easy, so don't feel overwhelmed. Go to your grocery store and ask the butcher for a 5 pound slab of pork belly. Pork belly is pretty cheap by the pound compared to bacon, so you won't be spending very much. I usually will purchase a whole 15 pound belly from Restaurant Depot (membership required) for around $40. Place the slab of belly in a gallon sized ziplock bag or a non-reactive (plastic or glass) covered container. You want to spread about 4 Tbsp of your basic cure mixture all over the belly. Then, choose a flavor from below and spread that over the belly as well. Place the container in the fridge for 7 days. You want to turn the meat over every other day. The moisture from the meat will start to be extracted from the cure mixture and pool in your container. Leave all of that goodness in there! The meat will soak in that salty liquid and become cured (hence the turning every other day). After 7 days, dump out the liquid and soak the meat for 2 hours in fresh water. After 2 hours, dump out the water and leave the meat in the fridge overnight to let any extra liquid drain from the belly. 

Flavors (per 5 pounds)

Sweet:

1/2 cup maple sugar

3 Tbsp burbon

4-5 drops liquid smoke (optional)

Savery:

4-5 smashed garlic cloves

2 Tbsp whole peppercorns, cracked (place in a plastic bag and hit with a rolling pin)

10-12 Bay leaves

1 tsp toasted fennel seeds

1 tsp toasted coriander seeds

Cooking

After the meat has drained overnight, take the meat out. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Place the belly in a roasting pan, or use a cooling rack in a cookie sheet if you don't have a roasting pan. Let the belly cook for 2-2.5 hours. Ideally you want the center of the meat to be 145 degrees. When you're done, pull the meat out, let it cool enough to handle, and cut it up into thin slices (you choose how thick you want it). Thats it, you're done! Fry a few pieces up whenever you want some bacon! Keep the bacon in your fridge or freeze (vac-sealed is best) any extra you want to save. Use the refrigerated bacon within about 2 weeks. Cheers!

Forget Store Bought Salsa...

Homemade Salsa

Salsa has become as common as ketchup or mustard. The difference is that there are hundreds of kinds of salsa. The grocery stores have entire sections of salsas. They come in multiple flavors, different levels of heat and even with famous baseball players and celebrities on the label. I have made many of my own flavored salsas. The one element that sticks out in my mind with homemade salsa is freshness. When you crack open a jar of homemade salsa a few months after making it and it tastes as fresh as the day you cut the vegetables, there is an amazing sensation that comes over your taste buds. I have yet to find a jarred salsa in the grocery store that can match such a fresh and wonderful taste. After multiple attempts, I have come up with a recipe that is fresh, consistent and well rounded. One small change and you can make the batch as mild or as hot as you would like. You can even split a batch and have mild, medium and hot just by adding additional hot peppers as you go. This recipe needs to simmer for at least an hour and an additional 45 minutes in the canning bath. 

What you need:

Canning equipment (jars, lids, pot, etc.), Large stockpot

Ingredients (Makes 10 quart-sized mason jars):

24-26 salsa tomatoes, 3 onions, 1 green pepper, 3 limes, 3-15 habaneros (depending on the level of heat you want), bushel parsley, bushel cilantro, 3 cans petite diced tomatoes, 1/2 cup ketchup, salt and pepper. 

Directions:

Some people choose to de-skin the tomatoes. I personally leave the skin on. If you choose to de-skin the tomatoes, dip the tomatoes in boiling water for 30-60 second (until skin begins to split), then remove and peel the skin off. Slice the tomatoes vertically in half. Lightly squeeze the seeds out (some seeds can stay in the tomatoes). Dice the tomatoes into small even pieces. Add the tomatoes to the large stockpot and place the heat on medium. Add the cans of petite-diced tomatoes. (Why use the cans of tomatoes? The cans add liquid to the salsa without watering it down. I found this helps the flavors blend better.) Add the ketchup and the juice of the 3 limes. Cover the pot and begin dicing the 3 onions and green pepper. Add the onion and green pepper to the pot. Next, mince the habaneros and add them to your salsa mix. (Be careful! Gloves may not be a bad idea and DO NOT touch your eyes or nose after cutting, it will burn!) This step is where you can decide how hot you want the salsa to be. Mild should be 3-5 habaneros, medium 6-10, hot 10-15, and extremely hot 15+. (See note below for multiple levels.) Add salt and pepper to taste, I would recommend a tablespoon of each. Let the mix simmer for 1 hour. Prepare the fresh cilantro and parsley by chopping them into fine pieces. These will burn if you add them now. Wait until you have simmered the salsa for 1 hour, then add them and stir with the heat off just before canning. While you wait for the salsa, prepare your canning jars by sanitizing them in a solution or running them in your dishwasher with the heated dry cycle on. Begin boiling water in your canning pot. Once ready, ladle the salsa into the jars leaving a 1/2” space of clearance from the top of the jar. Carefully put the self-sealing lids on the jars and place into the canning pot of boiling water for 45 minutes. Remove the jars, let cool, then label and store your salsa until you are ready to enjoy! Cheers!

NOTE: For multiple levels, add additional habaneros as you jar the salsa. If you split the batch in two, add half the recommended amount of habaneros to your second portion of the batch. Example: For half medium and half hot, start with 6-10 habaneros for the entire batch. After canning the first half, add only 2-3 habaneros to the second half of the batch.

From The "Pit" at Home

Pulled Pork

I’m a huge BBQ guy.  As a kid, I had been to summer BBQ’s, pig roasts and always loved the BBQ rib sub for school lunch, which later I realized was pretty much trademarked as the McRib® by Mickey D’s. But then I found out what true BBQ was!

In college I dated a girl with family out in Texas. I took a trip to the lone star state and after getting a taste of Texas BBQ, my eyes were opened to what I had been missing. Smoked brisket, pulled pork, beef ribs, pork ribs, dry rubs and sauces; I was in BBQ heaven. Rarely do I come across a place with the same amazing flavors produced by hours of careful monitoring and babying of every square inch of the grill. The only exception I have found in the Boston area so far is a personal favorite in Brookline, Village Smokehouse. Its close, but not quite the same as Texas BBQ. So, similar to many things in life, if they can’t get it right, you have to do it yourself! Hence, I give you my spicy BBQ pulled pork recipe. Fair warning; this takes at least 16+ hours. If you have a smoker, you can get the perfect smoky flavor of a smokehouse as well. If not, you will still have some killer BBQ pulled pork!

What you need:

Crockpot

Additional Tools:

Smoker (optional)

Ingredients:

5-8 lbs pork butt or pork shoulder, 6oz of cola, ¼ c. Worcestershire sauce, 1 large onion, 8 cloves of garlic, 20 oz. favorite BBQ sauce, 1-2 hot peppers (optional), 1 T. salt, 1 T. pepper, ¼ c. yellow mustard or brown mustard, 1/4 c. brown sugar, 3 T. paprika, 1 t. chili powder 

Directions:

The preparation is pretty easy here. Most of the time is in cooking and you can prep the night before. Store your pre-filled crock in the fridge over night if you don’t want to do this first thing in the morning and let it cook all day while you are off doing whatever you need to do.

In a bowl, mix paprika, black pepper, salt and chili powder. This is your dry rub. Completely cover your pork with all of the mixture. Don’t be afraid to get dirty, its going to happen. Clean your hands off and open the bottle of mustard. If you don’t have squeeze bottles, spoon about a ¼ cup of mustard into a bowl. Squeeze or spoon the mustard all over the pork. Cover the entire piece of meat. When you have finished you should see nothing but red and yellow. Take the pork and set it into your crockpot fat side up. Finely dice up the onion and add the cloves of garlic. A red, yellow or white onion is fine (I prefer red). Toss the onion and garlic into the crockpot around the meat. If you like it spicy, also add one or two small hot peppers (I usually use one habanero). You need about 20 ounces of your favorite BBQ sauce added to the crockpot. Add the Worcestershire sauce and then top off the pork with the cola. Why cola you ask? The acidity of the cola helps break down the meat and the caramel/sugar adds a nice sweet flavor to the pulled pork.

If you are done and it is 5:30 in the morning, well done, you are clearly a morning person! Otherwise, put the lid on the crock and toss it into the fridge. The timing comes down to your schedule. I prefer to prep in the afternoon and put the crock into the fridge. Around 11 or midnight, Ill put the crock into its holder; turn it to low, and let cook for about 8-10 hours (depending on the size of pork used).  At this point your kitchen smells like heaven and you want to devour the entire pot. 

If you have a smoker, take the meat out of the pot (it will most likely be in a few big pieces) and put it into a metal bowl (disposable is best, the bowl will be covered in soot). Leave the sauce in the crock. Smoke the meat for about 2 hours, and then return it to the crockpot. 

If you don’t have a smoker, skip to here. Remove any bones from your meat (usually pork shoulders and butts have 2 big bones and 1-2 small pieces). While the pork sits in the sauces, take 2 large forks and start to pull the pork apart. This should be very easy and all the meat will take about 5-7 minutes to pull apart. Mix the meat with the sauce and let sit for another 20 minutes on low. If you like a more saucy pork, add more to your taste now. Take a second to wipe the drool off the side of your face, grab a big toasted bulky roll and some coleslaw, pile on an absurd amount of pulled pork and enjoy! Cheers!

The perks of the job.

Beef Jerky

Beef Jerky has been a favorite of mine since I was a kid. I had a neighbor across the street that would make beef jerky. I would mow his lawn every couple weeks in the summer and he would pay me with a $20 bill and a few pieces of beef jerky. I’ve had beef jerky from the jar in the convenience store, the Jack Links bag of jerky and even the classic machine formed treasure, Slim Jims (I don’t think it can even be called real beef). Still, nothing matched the taste of the homemade stuff.

When I went into high school and had my first real job, my summer days were in the sporting goods store, not mowing my neighbor’s lawn. The store didn’t hand out paychecks with a piece of beef jerky either, unfortunately. But on occasion if I ran into my neighbor and he had a fresh batch made, he would come out and give me a few pieces. I had asked multiple times how it was made, but it always seemed so complicated to do myself.

Fast-forwarding to my post-college life, I looked into making my own beef jerky. It is not as hard as I once thought as a youngster; you just need to have a food dehydrator. There are quite a few brands on the market, both fancy and basic, but they all do the same thing. I went onto eBay and bought a used machine for about $30. From there, the rest has been history in the making!

What you need:

Food Dehydrator, electric outlet timer (optional)

Ingredients:

3-8 pounds top round beef or similar

1/4c. Soy sauce

Cola

1T. Onion power

1T. Garlic powder

Squeeze of lemon juice

1/4c. Teriyaki sauce,

1/4c. BBQ sauce,

3T. Brown sugar

3T. Honey

Crushed red pepper flakes to taste

Black pepper to taste

Directions:

Start with a small batch and work your way up as you find flavors you like. The recipe above is the main go-to recipe I use. You can easily tweak the recipe and add more of a certain flavor you may fancy, or venture off into your own mixture. Start by trimming the fat off the outer edges of the meat. Next, you need to slice the meat thin. This is not an easy task with a large piece of meat. If you have a deli slicer, that is the best option for even, thin pieces. For the majority of us who don’t own a slicer, the best way to get nice even slices is to put the meat in the freezer for an hour to an hour and a half. The meat will be semi solid, but still easy to cut. Slice pieces to a desired size, but make sure they are not thicker than a 1/4 in. A 1/8 in is an ideal size. Place all of the sliced meat into a large bowl. Add your dry ingredients and toss the meat so the pieces are evenly covered. Add all the remaining ingredients. When everything is evenly coated, use cola to fill the bowl until all of your meat is submerged. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place the bowl in the fridge for 24-36 hours. Once the meat has marinated, plug your dehydrator into your timer (if you have one) and set it to stay on for 8 hours. Make sure the dehydrator is on the meat setting or set to 165 degrees. Place the marinated meat on the dehydrator racks. Try to keep all the meat evenly spaced. The pieces can be touching, but don’t overlap them. If you want a little more pepper flavor or a little more heat, you can lightly sprinkle black pepper or crushed red pepper flakes on the meat once the trays are full. After the 8 hours, you will notice the meat has shriveled to about half the size of the original marinated pieces. Don’t freak out, his is normal and the beef jerky is done! You can eat the jerky immediately. Seal the jerky in a plastic bag and consume with in about a week. Fair warning, it never lasts that long and you won’t want to share! Cheers!

The grill master is no pro...

The Beef Burger

The burger seems to be as American as America gets. The beach, the backyard, the 4th of July; Its all about grilling burgers. You have the grill fired up and neighbors three blocks over can smell you cooking. For many, it brings back memories of childhood and past warm weather holidays. When you sink your teeth into that mouth-watering burger you can’t wait to taste all those juicy flavors. But then BAM, it hits you like sandpaper on your knuckles. The burger is dry, overcooked and slightly disappointing. Who are we kidding; it’s very disappointing! Why is this? 

Lets backtrack to the grill. There are a few issues with what the so-called “grill master” did while cooking. Most likely they made the #1 mistake with burgers on the grill; slapping the spatula down on your juicy, flavor-filled hunk of ground "Angus grade" cow, just so that pyro could see flames flying sky high out of the grill. All of those mouth-watering juices you wanted to taste just went up in flames... Literally. 

Note: NEVER PRESS DOWN ON THE BURGERS. Use a hot grill to get a nice sear on the burger. The seared bottom will hold the juices in and as the burger cooks, the outer meat will cook enough to hold those juices in for when you finally flip the burger over. Only flip the burger once to make sure those juices stay in there. You want to flip the burger when its about 65-70% cooked. The last 30% will sear up the other side, melt the cheese and then you are done! Toss it in a toasted bun with your favorite sauces gently doused on top and enjoy the burger that you were hoping for! Cooking times vary by grill and temperature, depending how well done you want your burger. No matter what, the rules apply to all your beef burgers. Cheers!