Am I going to let this week go out without a post?
Yes, yes I am. Been way too damned busy to post or even cook something worthwhile. We’re doing fine here at Meathenge Labs, just lacking time & inspiration. In fact, in the last 3 days my diet has been downright nasty. It’s even coming out the pores of muh skins. Leaves with the thought of specific Vegans that tout a diet that consists of meat will leave you smelling bad. Bullshit. A diet that is bad, nasty and isn’t good, leaves you smelling the same. It has nothing to do with eating meat. I usually smell great, hunky and full of goodness. Hooboy, not today though!
The photograph today is of my little grapefruit tree. While I mowed my garden and left it dry, I’ve been cultivating my citrus. Lemons, grapefruit, limes, oh my!
Cheers to you and yours, all is well here, just kinda boring. Sorry we’re normal.
xo, Biggles
MeatHenge
"If it ain't pork, it ain't sausage"
All right! We really do not care how you smell!. I think you need to take a trip to Omar’s and Catahoula’s and do a review. We need your Son’s opinions!
Do you want to race me with Giant Pumpkins in the Rode Creek? I need some more contestants.
Take a breather and come back refreshed – we’ll still be here.
Master Biggles,
Following up on the ‘in-house’ smokehouse experiment, went back and checked the ancient documents. I remember in the early days picking up an obscure tip that has served me very well since. It basically says that the temperature of the smoke as it is formed is very important to the taste it imparts. Of course the research was done investigating the deadly chemicals that smoke imparts to food, but it is so important anyway.
Almost all information today focuses on the temperature of the smoke as it contacts the meat. Any number of methods to cool or control the smoke temperature do not address the actual temperature of wood pyrolyzation at smoke generation. Research showed the least harmful chemicals were formed at 300-400 Deg F smoke generation temp. This also happens to make the ‘sweetest’ smoke for cold smoking fish and other food. It has proven out in practice for me.
In practical terms this means that smoking meat, at any temperature in the cooking chamber, ends up with two things going on simultaneously. One fire is for fuel and can burn very hot, while one fire burns very cold and barely smolders the wood to make the ‘nice smoke’. With burning log fires, the outside smolders while the core rages. So your little sawdust pan in the oven was indeed the ideal environment (for the ribs, not the kids). Since learning this little secret some of my best work has been done in a cabinet smoker with 2 elements, one for temp control and one tiny one to keep the wood chunks smoldering.
Funny how life changes with these tiny tidbits of information……….
Hey Salvage,
Yeah, that’s kinda what my mind has been working on over the last 3 or so years. Which is why I keep eyeballing possible donars with glee. Sausagemaker dot com has some “kits” for making your own, neat. I really want to be able to smoke some onions, chile peppers and bacon at 90F for 24 hours. Adding smoked red onions to soup/stews/chili is facking GREAT.
Biggles