Decisions, Decisions
Posted by TFG on February 17th, 2008
I decided to go with three of the four Essential Food Groups:
- Beef, in the form of sirloin, crusted with cracked peppercorns
- Pork, in the form of pork loin, with my secret rub
- Chicken, in the form of thighs, slathered in Miracle Whip with more of my rub
I got the Miracle Whip idea from an old boy somewhere out west about 10 years ago. It keeps them good and moist.
February 17th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Beef. No question. I treated myself to a strip tonight. Being an apartment dweller, I was forced to process it in a cast iron skillet. It was a little overdone, as it the skillet caught fire when it went a few ticks past “rocket hot” and I ended up with medium instead of medium-rare.
February 18th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Miracle Whip? My, my. I will have to try that.
February 18th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
The unmentioned fourth group would then be Shiners? Or, something of the barley and hops family in any event.
I can’t be far wrong with such a conjecture.
-k-
February 18th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
The best of the lot was the sirloin, no question. I’m just a beef man. I can enjoy other cuts, but I think I could smoke ground chuck and I’d love it. I highly recommend the cracked peppercorn thing. The longer the beef sits before cooking, the better, too. I’ve left them overnight in the icebox, and man, it just rawks. The peppercorns get soft and chewy, and the pepper taste suffuses the entire cut. It’s awesome. You could whip up a good sauce to go with it if you wanted.
Now, the Miracle Whip thing is, you have to really goop them up. I suspect it would work equally well on bone-in breasts, but for the price of thighs, I can’t justify breasts…not worth it to me.
Ken, I think you’ve been studying the TFG-Certified Food Pyramid. Except, I think sausage needs to fit in somewhere. The Food Pentagon?
February 18th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Hmm…, still sounds kind of uh, different, but I’ll give it a shot in a month or two when the grill goes back into service. But what works on thighs and legs may not work at all on breasts. There’s probably an innuendo or two there somewhere.
February 18th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
OK, don’t laugh, but…
The Miracle Whip is for smoking - a longer, slower, lower-temperature operation. When I cook chicken on the grill, which cooks a lot faster, I use mustard to hold the seasonings and to moisturize. And it browns up / glazes real nice. It’s not nearly as gloopy (in a quantitative sense), either. I got that from an old boy up north.
FWIW, I’m a rub man, not a mop man, too. I have been known to mop my chicken, though, simply because it’s the blandest of meats. A crust of CB Stubblefield’s finest certainly can’t hurt it. Takes a lot of work, though. Most of my chicken grill-work is pounded breasts and legs and such.
Yes, there are thousands of innuendos. Have you seen Lindsay Lohan’s nekkid pictures in the New Yorker? Lots and lots of innuendos…
February 19th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Uhh… did TFG just recommend steak au poivre? French food? You were OK until you talked about saucing it…
(I usually just bury the steak in kosher salt for about a half an hour and then scrape off the excess. That’s good for me.)
February 19th, 2008 at 11:36 am
Ahem…
You could whip up a good sauce to go with it if you wanted.
Now, having said that, the chicks dig the sauces. It never hurt anybody to have one or two in their bag o’ tricks.
I’m trying to culture you up here, son.