Archive for June, 2010
And so we have another use for our stainless steel turkey fryer. You don’t have to pack it away in the garage just because it’s not Thanksgiving. You can steam & boil in that pot. As we’ve seen previously, you can even cook maple syrup down in it in the early spring. Check out our blog, Another use for your Bayou Classic Turkey Fryer: Maple Syrup. We’ve already made a Low country boil, South Carolina style, and we’ve made a New England Clam Bake. This time we’re going way down south to Louisiana. We’re going to have a good old fashioned crawfish boil.
1 sack live crawfish, 35-40 lbs
1 ounce dry crawfish, shrimp & crab boil ( Zatarain’s has a great one for this, they also make some extra spicy versions.)
5 lbs halved new potatoes, red, white or a combo of both
5 large onions
2 cups butter or margarine
18 ears of corn on the cob
10 lemons, halved
3 ounces liquid shrimp & crab boil( again Zatarain’s makes a few different varieties)
1 small bottle Louisiana hot sauce
Now you want to clean and thoroughly wash the crawfish before boiling them. Fill a plastic kiddie pool, large tub, or a large ice chest and pour the sack of live crawfish in. Gently stir with a large paddle to mix the the water. Stir for 3 minutes, then rinse and repeat the process. Repeat 4 or 5 times until the water runs clean. Remove & dispose of any dead crawfish…they’re usually the floaters! After purging and cleaning, don’t leave the crawfish covered with water, as they need air to stay alive. Keep the crawfish in a cool or shaded area until you’re ready to start cooking.
Fill your turkey fryer half full of water. Bring it to a slow boil.Add the dry crawfish boil and continue to boil another 15 mins. Add potatoes, onions & margarine then reduce heat to a simmer. When the potatoes are almost tender, add the ears of corn. Cook 5 more mins. Turn heat off & let stand for 15 mins. Remove the vegetables and put in a foil roasting pan covered with foil.
Bring water back to a rolling boil. Squeeze the lemon juice into the water & then throw the rinds right in. Add the liquid boil and the Louisiana hot sauce. Boil for 15 mins. Add the crawfish and boil for another 5 mins. Remove from heat & let stand until the crawfish have sunk to the bottom. Drain & serve with your corn & potatoes.
By now you’ve probably heard people touting the merits of deep frying—from the fact that it creates a crisp, delectable crust while locking in moisture, to the lightening-quick speed that it cooks food. But if you’ve never deep fried yourself, you indubitably have some questions about the process. And one of the first that always comes up is which oil to use with your Presto Dual ProFry deep fryer.
There is a general consensus in the culinary world that peanut oil is the gold standard when it comes to deep frying, although safflower, sunflower and canola oils are used as well, particularly when peanut allergies are an issue. The reason these oils are ideal for frying is that they have extremely high smoke points, so they can withstand the high levels of heat required. Some people may say that you can strain and reuse your oil, but this isn’t the wisest choice. Once oil has been heated, it begins to breakdown and its integrity is compromised.
A marinade, or wet seasoning, makes meat better by adding moisture, increasing tenderness and adding flavor. It can be used to season any type of meat; beef, lamb, pork, poultry, fish or seafood that you want to grill up on your Brinkmann charcoal grill.
Marinades can be one of the most important ingredients at any cookout. A good marinade keeps your grilling moist and flavorful. This is especially helpful with thin cuts of meat, like boneless chicken breast or fish fillets, that tend to dry out quickly.
Most marinades all have basic starter ingredients. A fat, an acid & then flavorings like herbs & spices, etc. An excellent example of this is good old Italian dressing. It has oil (the fat), vinegar (the acid), a mix of spices, and probably some garlic & onion mixed in. It is a basic marinade. I know lots of people that use it. I have been known to quickly marinate a London broil in Italian dressing in a pinch. One of my favorite marinades is a little bit of olive oil, orange juice & Chinese 5 spice. It is great on boneless chicken breast.
How long should you marinate be for you grill? Some items take longer than others to marinate. Some marinades are more potent than others. A light herb marinade will take longer to make an impact than orange juice with chipotle chiles & garlic. Rule of thumb… fish absorbs marinade quickly!!!! Depending on how flavorful you want your fish, you can marinate it from 15 mins up to 2 hours. Some shrimp marinades that I have seen up to 3 hours… but never any longer! The same goes for boneless chicken breast. Steaks, chops, & bone in chicken breast can be 1-3 hours. Thicker steaks & chops, & halved chickens 3-8 hours. Larger pieces of meat, like a pork tenderloin or a whole chicken, can be marinated 6-12 hours. A really big piece of meat, like a whole turkey or a big pork shoulder can be marinated overnight, say like 12- 24 hours. This is still just a guide line. Take it with a grain of salt. Cooking is always a science of experimentation, trial & error.
Find yourself a cookbook or look online. Try out someone elses marinade recipe that looks interesting to you. Then start experimenting to make the marinades that are right for you. 
I started out with this grilled shrimp marinade from Mario Batali, that included orange juice, fresh cilantro, red chili paste,chipotle in adobo sauce, olive oil, garlic, scallions & salt. I have since experimented & did it with lime juice, less cilantro, fresh parsley, and all the other stuff. I did put fresh chipotle instead of the chipotle in adobo sauce. It was definately different than the other recipe. Lighter, fresher taste. I still want to experiment with the lime juice recipe until I perfect it. And that’s what it is all about. The flavors & spice of life. Let’s get cooking!!!
Where I grew up, we did this in a pit, in the sand, with rocks, seaweed, and a wood fire. I also know that you can add cleaned and dressed fish & chicken in the pit… but we used to cook the chicken, fish, and sausage separate, on the grill. Not everyone lives near the shore so…we have found yet another use for your Bayou Classic Turkey Fryer.
The secret to doing this right is to add the ingredients in the right order, just like a Low Country Boil. Items that take longer to cook go in first.
If you are in a region to get fresh seaweed, it would add to the authentication of the recipe, and a nice salty touch, but if it’s not available to you… don’t worry about it.
3-4 large onions, cut into wedges
8 cloves garlic
2 12 oz. bottle beer, a pale ale or pilsner will do
2 cup water
Fresh seaweed, well rinsed (optional)
2 1\2 lbs. new potatoes (red, white, or both)
2 lb sausage, cut into inch long pieces(something on the hot side)
Coarse salt
4 to 6 – Approx. 1 1\2 lb lobsters (washed)
4-5 doz well scrubbed hard shell clams( can be substituted with soft shell or combo of both)
6 ears corn, husked and halved
2 lbs mussels, (optional) scrubbed well and debearded
2 1/2 pounds shrimp (unpeeled)
4 tbsp butter (optional)
Lemons
Combine onions, garlic, beer, and water in the 32 qt stock pot or larger. Cover with a layer of seaweed or place your steamer basket on top of onions & garlic.
Add potatoes, sausage, and 1 tbsp coarse salt. Bring that to a boil. Add lobsters. Cook over high heat for 15 mins. with the lid on. Add the clams and corn. Cook, covered, for 6 mins. Add mussels and shrimp. Cook, covered, another 5-8 mins…until the clams and mussels have popped open, and the shrimp are cooked.
Remove your steamer basket with all of it’s ingredients.
Strain the liquid in the bottom of the pot. Add butter to it to use as dipping sauce.
Discard any seaweed & get rid of any clams and mussels that did not open.
Serve with your dipping sauce, or just melted butter & with fresh lemon wedges to squeeze on your clam bake.
Serves 4-6 people.
This recipe may be downsized and cooked in a stock pot on top of your stove or up-sized with a larger stock pot on your outdoor patio stove.
President Johnson threw barbecues. He got his favorite Pitmaster Walter Jetton to cook up a meal that often fed hundreds of people. These meals would be cooked on an open air fire pit. Walter would cover every part of 
the pit’s surface in ribs, roasts and meats of every variety. To keep the meat moist he “mopped” it, with a real mop. Hence the barbecue term, “mop”. You can even find little “mops” to bbq with on the market today.
Mops are used to keep the meat moist. Typically a cross between a marinade and a bbq sauce, but they are usually a thinner consistency than sauce. Mops are usually more on the tart end, than the sweet end, as sugar burns. Basically if you are smoking at low temperatures sugar is okay but if you are grilling you should avoid it. When using a sweeter mop, you want to add this toward the end if grilling, so as not to burn the project you’ve been working on for the past few hours.
If you just want a thin, mild mop start with water & maybe some lemon juice or orange juice. Water based would work better with fish & boneless chicken breast. If you want to increase the tenderness of meat, use vinegar. You want to enhance the flavor so you can start with liquids like, beer, wine, Worcestershire sauce, or fruit juices, or a combination of these. From here you want to added seasonings to the mix. You do want it to complement the flavor of whatever you’ve got on your Brinkmann grill, but also to complement other flavorings that your using. Rubs, marinades, whatever.You could even boil the marinade you used already, add some water to keep it thin and use that.
Mops can be easily made from other things. Add water, beer or vinegars to barbecue sauces and mop that on. Add a couple of tablespoons of rub to a cup of cider vinegar or beer then mix in some peach preserves or seedless raspberry jam. Just always remember the burn factor on sweet sugary mops. Only at the end when grilling or low temperatures like in your bbq smoker. You want to apply your mop about 3 or 4 times during cooking at regular intervals. If you’re grilling something for an hour, mop every quarter of the hour. If you are smoking something for 12 hours, mop every 3 hours. This will add the moisture and extra flavoring that you need to make great bbq…outstanding!
National Presto, the makers of Presto deep fryers, is recognized as a leader in the electric housewares industry. This is due to its long history of innovation which has created major new categories of products.
The company was founded in 1905 in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. They manufactured industrial-size pressure canners for commercial canneries. At that time National Presto, then called Northwestern Steel and Iron Works, was a major producer of fifty gallon capacity pressure canners. The company also began production of thirty-gallon canners for hotel use and soon thereafter developed ten-gallon models suitable for home canning. In 1915 the company installed an aluminum foundry for the specific purpose of manufacturing large-size pressure canners for home use. In 1917, The USDA determined that pressure canning was the only safe method of canning low-acid foods without risking food poisoning. At this point all commercial canneries were forced to equip themselves with facilities for the pressure canning of their products. This was a great leap forward for Northwestern as they became one of the leading manufacturers in the industry worldwide. The company’s products were marketed under the trade name “National,” and the company name was changed to “National Pressure Cooker Company” to more closely identify with it’s famous brand.
With it’s vast experience in manufacturing pressure canners and to more adequately meet the needs of the consumer, in 1939 the company introduced the first saucepan-style pressure cooker and gave it the trade name “Presto.”The Presto® brand soon became synonymous with pressure cooking and in 1953 the company officially changed it’s name to “National Presto Industries, Inc.”
At this point in time they were beginning to manufacture many electric houseware products, like irons, electric fryer pans, griddles, and electric coffee makers.
In the 1970′s, after the invention of the PrestoBurger® hamburger cooker, National Presto introduced a new concept in deep fryers. The FryBaby® electric deep fryer was an electric counter top deep fryer. Prior to this, many people used 
large heavy duty cast iron deep fryers on their stove top.The FryBaby used just two cups of oil to quickly and easily make two servings of food. It automatically maintained an ideal frying temperature, and a snap-on lid allowed the oil to be stored right in the unit. Introduced in 1976, the FryBaby deep fryer was an immediate success and led to the introduction of the family size FryDaddy® deep fryer in 1977, and the larger GranPappy® deep fryer in 1978.
National Presto Industries, Inc has had a consistent program of product innovation. With the objective of quality manufacturing and aggressive marketing, National Presto Industries has been a leader in housewares for over 100 years, and it will continue to be in the years ahead.
If you don’t love others you can’t cook. People who have no love to share eat poorly, and they don’t cook. If you love cooking, you will cook, at whatever level. People who like to be around a table, who like to share—they’ll try to cook, even if it’s only an egg. I would much prefer to eat an egg with friends than caviar with strangers.
-Chef Philippe Legendre
Now one of the reasons I put this little ditty is because it is true. I did stop at Rutt’s Hut today. And, yes folks, they’re in it for the money, but , they love their customers, regulars & out of town tourists. Not only do they deep fry hot dogs, they have many things on the menu, fried, not deep fried, and breakfast too. They love their local firemen and participate in local functions as well. As I said before, putting a hot dog in a deep fryer is something I thought very strange. It works. The ripper is just deep fried until the skin rips. The Cremator is deep fried until it’s a dead dog. The Ripper was great but The Cremator was awesome!!!! So was their relish…a pickle, mustard combo that had a sweetness to it that just made the dog better! If you’re ever in Northern Jersey, make Rutt’s Hut a definate stop on your list!
Brining is a process of marinating meat or fish prior to smoking or grilling.Your meat is soaked in brine before cooking on your bbq smoker.
Brining makes cooked meat moister.This is especially helpful for thin, boneless, de-skinned chicken that no longer has an fat to keep it moist. Hydrating the cells of muscle meat tissue before cooking allow the cells to hold water while they are cooking. This prevents the meat from dehydrating. This is also especially helpful with your Thanksgiving turkey. No one likes a dried out bird.
Brines typically are loaded with salt. In many foods the additional salt is also a preservative.Brines are used to smoke fish so that it “keeps” even longer.
Brines are not just salty water, though that is what the term brine means. Brine is water saturated or nearly saturated with a salt. Many people add spices, sugars, and other liquids to their brines to add more flavor and color to their dish. It is not uncommon to add brown sugar, coffee, bourbon or beer to a brine. And to spice things up you can add garlic, whole peppercorns, allspice, etc. Now we have a party! Have fun with it. Use your imagination.
Smoking with planks has been around for ages. Most people know about smoking fish, like salmon , on cedar planks. In this day and age, you can find planks, not only in cedar, but alder & maple as well. You can cook smoke anything that you want to on these planks. Today we are going to cook beef fillets, though you can use many different cuts of beef here.
First you want to soak your cedar plank for at least an hour….in water or add fruit juice or wine for unique flavors. Use your imagination.
4 6-8 oz beef fillets
1 large clove of garlic, peeled and cut in half
salt and pepper
Rub the fillets with the cut side of the garlic clove. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Fire up your Brinkmann grill to high. You want to sear each side of the fillet for about 60 secs over direct heat (450-500 degrees).
Turn your grill down to 350 degrees for indirect grilling. Place your soaked plank on the grill, and close the lid. Let it heat up for about 3 mins. Flip the plank over and place the beef fillet on the heated side of the plank.
Cook for about 12 mins for medium rare (approx 125 degree internal temp. with a meat thermometer) to 16 mins. for medium well(approx 130 degrees).Cooking times will vary depending on the thickness of the meat. A thicker cut of meat could take up to 25 mins. to cook. If that is the case, turn the grill temp. down to 300 degrees for lower, slower cook.
Keep a spray bottle around in case of flare ups. And the planks will be hot, so have your tongs and pot holders handy.
It is suggested to use the plank only once, but you can save your used plank and break it up to use in your bbq smoker at a later date.
This weekend I will hopefully be visiting “Rutt’s Hut” in Clifton, NJ.
I heard about this place watching a program on one of the food related program. I believe it was The Travel Channel’s Deep Fried Paradise.
Rutt’s Hut is known for their deep fryer hot dogs. Sounds gross you say? I thought that when I first started watching the program. I mean who would deep fry a hot dog? By the end of the program, my curiosity was peaked. So I promised myself the next time I am in or around NJ that I would find Rutt’s Hut and get myself a Ripper(deep fried til the skin rips), or a Cremator(now that’s a dead dog.)The restaurant is also known for their mustard-based relish made with cabbage, onions and carrots. I will let you know how it was upon my return.
I did actually consider deep frying a hot dog, at home, after the episode was over. Then I changed my mind…that’s alot of oil to heat up, just to deep fry a hot dog. I said to myself “Maybe next time I get the fryer going.” Then I forgot about it. Well maybe after visiting Rutt’s Hut I will be awe inspired to crank up my PrestoCool Daddy deep fryer just to fry a hot dog.