MasterChef Tryouts Submission and Cast Iron Therapy Original Recipe: The Winston.

Yesterday I promised that my next post would be something to knock your socks off. Well here it is, my latest original recipe, the Winston. I’m not going to say this is a quick thing to do, and there’s a few different recipes involved in the making of this.

I’ll just lay out what the Winston is before I get too far into storytelling mode.

It’s an open faced sandwich with a buttered and grilled French roll, slathered with an aioli, which is topped with slices of grilled country style rib glazed with root beer barbecue sauce, slather with even more root beer barbecue sauce, and top all that with a generous pile of light and tangy honey mustard barbecue sauce.

What brought about the Winston? It was actually the dish I came up with to serve to the professional taster for the MasterChef casting call a few months back. While I haven’t been selected to be on the show (at least I don’t think so!) I can state this one awesome fact.

The taster went for seconds. Not trying to brag too much, but he didn’t do that for anyone else on my row! Ok, maybe I’m bragging just a little bit. But there you have it, not just from my opinion, or even my friends’ opinions, but also the actions of a professional taster.

Why the Winston? I wanted to showcase the ribs which has been a friend favorite, but in a way that mitigates the lack of impact of it coming straight off the grill, and I didn’t really trust the tasters to completely remove the last of good temperature from their calculations of how good a dish is. An open faced sandwich sounded like a good idea to me, and was met with hearty approval from my chums on Google+. I’d say the results show that their faith was not ill placed!

For those of you who are curious about the MasterChef tryout process, here’s a handy picture to get you started. This laminated piece of paper highlights what all the preparation, hard work and waiting comes down to in the end.

 

Another taste of my summer–Root Beer BBQ Sauce Part 2–Ribs!

This is a follow-up to the earlier post about Root Beer BBQ Sauce. This is one of the best ways I can think of to use the barbecue sauce to impress friends, coworkers and family. With the combination of herbs, spices and the sweet juicy sauce coating your pork ribs, you’ll have yourself a great time.

Everything in place here, 4 pounds of ribs, some of my special dry rub (roughly 3 parts kosher salt, 1 part dried chervil, 1 part dried parsley and 1 part cayenne as you feel like adding), and a small container of the barbecue sauce.

Cut the ribs into manageable pieces so you can fit them onto the grill. The less pieces you have, the less times you have to use your tongs to move things around. But smaller pieces give you more maneuverability. As it was, these two rather large pieces took up quite a bit of the grill.

Then take your dry rub and coat the ribs with a nice light layer. My method is to make sure as much of the surface is touched with salt without going overboard. Cover this up…

And get your grill ready. Here I am using my friend Mike’s chimney starter, which seems to have a decorative “hole in the wall” motif. Still worked fine though. After the coals get to about this level of glow, set the coals along one side of the grill so you have a hot side and a cooler side.

Here’s Mike’s dog trying to convince me to feed him now.

If you’ve arrived later than you’d like due to perhaps an exam that took longer than expected and your ribs cooking time would be long enough to starve your guests, I recommend you have a great friend like Dominick who brought his own grill and made us his hot Italian Sausage.

He even slashed some of them in half and filled them with delicious cheese. So yes, having other prepared friends is a key part of an enjoyable backyard party.

I’ve missed a few steps here, but I was enjoying the company of friends and some good brews.

1. Place the ribs on the hot side, and get a good sear on both sides, perhaps 10 minutes a side.

2. Move the ribs to the cool side of the grill. If the grill is a bit small to completely move the ribs over, you can use some foil as I did to shield away enough heat. Cover the grill and adjust the baffles accordingly to keep the heat from going crazy, but also to keep it from dying as well. It’s not an exact science, but a timer of some kind and some beers works great during this step.

3. After an hour of that, check on your ribs and then brush one of the sides with sauce. Cover and wait about least 20 minutes. Flip over again and wait at least another 20 minutes. With the case of a hotter grill setup like this, you probably want to wait no longer than 45 minutes for this step, but the main thing to do is make sure the ribs don’t dry out or burn.  So keep an eye on them every so often and keep the ribs on the cold side, and eventually you’ll be rewarded.

And here’s the finished product. The military combat knife isn’t necessary for the carving but it’s a nice touch.

Cut through each rib for serving, make sure to grab one before they’re all gone…

…because if you blink, that’ll be your last chance to have one. Have a good grilling season everyone!

Summer is still going strong - Root Beer Barbecue Sauce

Nothing says that summer has truly arrived like the first barbecue of the season. Steaks, burgers, chicken, hot dogs, there are many ways to ring in the rapidly heating days of June. There would be some who say you can't have a barbecue without having a good barbecue sauce. I'd disagree, as I find that marinades, brining and simple good seasoning are all tried and true methods that can bring out the best in your many preparations of grilled meats. 

However, there is a lot to be said about a well executed sauce. With the right combination of sweetness, depth and tang, a sauce can really accentuate the taste of your grilled goods.

Root beer barbecue sauce isn't anything new, but it's novel enough to turn heads. 

Here's what you need. A saucepan, a good amount of rootbeer (there it is in that container. I needed the two liter for the previous post), ketchup, spices, citrus juice. For spices I'm using of of Penzey's chili mixes and I'm also experimenting by using up some apple butter, as I think it would be an interesting substitution for brown sugar. There's also a saucepan I thankfully decided would be far too small for my needs before getting started. The thing about reductions, which a root beer barbecue sauce essentially is, is that they bubble quite a bit, often rising as much as 5 times the height of the stuff was originally before actually reducing. So be on the generous side when selecting your pots people.

Here we've got the root beer bubbling with some of the ketchup. I went with at least 2.5 times the amount of root beer as I've got ketchup. Part of this was from rinsing the bowl of ketchup with more root beer to get everything cleaned off.

A nice healthy sprinkling of chili spices for the heat and flavor of the sauce. Note I'm not adding any salt because I intend to use this with a rack of ribs that I will be salting the night before. I think the sweetness and tanginess of the sauce will mix well with this long salting method.

Now for the X factor, the apple butter. I'll... let you know if things don't go as well as planned. But so far so good.

Have to stir the sauce up as we start to boil, just to keep it from scorching. It's going to be a while.

As things get active, you get a lot of steam, which you want to happen. More escaping water = A reducing sauce.

It's hard to tell, but here the bubbles start to become a bit more solid, rising in larger bubbles with walls supported by a thickened liquid. When the bubbles start to calm down a bit from this rush of bubbles test the sauce by lifting up a spoon of it. It's pretty obvious when it's not ready, as seen here.

This thickness is about ready. It probably could have reduced even more, but I was getting hungry for other things and wanted to move onto a late brunch. Sorry, just human folks. Anyway, take the saucepan off the heat and let it cool and set a bit.

Then when you're done "attempt" to pour it nicely into a clean container to use later. If you could be messier than this I'd appreciate it. And there you  have it. A root beer barbecue sauce. I'll be using this on some pork ribs later, stay posted!

Basic root beer barbecue sauce:

1 part ketchup

At least 1 part root beer, can go high as ten or more

Spices of your choosing (pepper, Italian seasoning, chili seasoning, cayenne, if it sounds good go for it)

.25 parts citrus juice (optional)

.5 parts sugar (optional)

Salt if you aren't going to salt your meat

1. Mix your ketchup, root beer and other wet ingredients into a saucepan large enough to deal with a bubbling sauce. Set heat to high.

2. Mix in any spices and other ingredients.

3. Stir the sauce as it heats.

4. Once it reduces down to either a sauce or a syrup, you're good to go. If you've hit a thick syrupy consistency, it's time to stop because it won't get much better than that.

5. Allow sauce to cool. Use right away or store for later.