Hold the tomato too as long as you are at it, because I didn’t have any of those items on hand tonight in spite of planning on making chicken burgers. Undaunted, I forged ahead with the grilling plans, Big Butz Chicken Dust in hand (well, on the chicken breasts, not really in my hand), Zucchini Bites on the grill (Pigdog would say zucchini bites regardless of where it is located), and a couple of spare burgers for Auntie’s lunch tomorrow. And a run-on sentence to begin this post…

So what does one put on a Chicken-Dusted chicken breast when one is out of traditional burger toppings? It turns out that cabbage slaw (in the fine tradition of pulled pork sandwiches) works quite well. Especially when you have upscale Dave’s Killer buns to pile it all on.

As I told the kids, this ain’t no Burger King, and you can’t have it your way. Unless you’re the cook, and tonight, this was just fine. Especially after working all day (all week, for that matter) and having to rebuild the site late at night following an unfortunate issue with a WordPress plugin and a restore from a previous backup.

Hope I didn’t lose any of my three loyal readers out there…

Last night I attended a banquet at one of the local upscale eateries and had something they called Apricot Pork. According to the menu, the apricot glaze was made with apricot, soy sauce, and ginger. The glaze was very good, but I was a bit disappointed with the meal due to the pork (tenderloin, it appeared, but possibly a loin cut) being slightly overcooked (as in a bit chewy and dry, but not so bad it was shoe leather in disguise).

As I sat there discussing it with one of my dinner companions, it occurred to me that with a little work I should be able to replicate the sauce, and I already know how to properly cook pork tenderloins. Here’s proof.

I recreated the sauce using about 3/4 of a small jar of high-quality apricot preserves that SWMBO had left unattended in the refrigerator, minced fresh ginger from a chunk about the size of my thumb, and a couple of tablespoons each of soy sauce and red wine. Everything went in a sauce pan and simmered for about 15 minutes while the pork and sweet potato grill fries were cooking away on the BS Keg. The results were nothing short of spectacular.

The sauce was fruity, sweet, salty, and spicy in pretty much that order as it hit the taste buds. The tenderloins were sliced thick on a bias and were properly tender and juicy. So much so that what little leftovers there were are already being fought over for lunch tomorrow.

This was a do-again meal. And yes, cooks privilege will prevail; those leftovers will be in my lunch tomorrow.

Much to my wife’s chagrin, I don’t cook burgers very often. Usually it is once a year, generally around July 4. But occasionally I cook them on request. Like tonight.

Not much to say about a burger on the grill. Might have something to do with writers’ block brought on by all the blood leaving my head to deal with what I put in my stomach.

Yeah, that was my plate, and I ate all of that. Not real proud, but real full. Now pardon me while I go keep a date with the couch…

Bienvenidos a Sin Excusas Barbacoa en Cinco de Mayo. Where the only Spanish we speak is food and names and whatever we can coax out of Google Translate. But we do know Mexican food, which seemed like the thing to do today, if for no other reason than to avoid a blog post entitled “Cinco de Thai-o”.

It’s also a place where we didn’t have any chicken for pollo asado, but we did have game hens in the freezer. Borrowing liberally from recipes freely available on the Internet (hat tip to The Pioneer Woman), I marinated up a couple of game hens.

The recipe is essentially the one at the link above with a bit more fruit, a dash of cumin, and a shot of tequila. Along with a pot of beans, the hens cooked up on the BS Keg for about an hour, followed by horrible photography skills resulting in unrecognizable pictures of grilled hens. But I was able to get a reasonable one in the house.

The asado was served with fresh pico de gallo, guacamole, jicama slaw, and the aforementioned beans. Not shown was the chili-flavored flour tortilla used to turn most of the ingredients below into one heck of a tasty soft taco.

I swear the blurry photos in this post weren’t the result of shots of tequila in the cook. Although I may go celebrate the completion of this post with one…

Older Daughter scored a small portion of bear shoulder on Wednesday from one of her resident’s recent hunting trips. She had no idea what to do with it, but figured I would be able to put it to use. She wasn’t wrong, even though I don’t recall ever having (much less cooking) bear before. But not having koalafications never stopped me from cooking unfamiliar things before.

After a bit of research, I decided to pull out the dutch oven and cook up some bear stew. The bear shoulder was cut into very small chunks and marinated in a mixture of red wine, soy sauce, and Worcestershire sauce for about 4 hours. It then went in the dutch oven on the BS Keg, where once browned it was joined by onions, carrots, potatoes, mushrooms, thyme, rosemary, garlic, salt, pepper, and a bottle of pale ale. From there it was simply a matter of keeping the fire going for the next 3 hours, then adding some flour mixed in water to thicken the sauce. No pictures exist of the stew in the dutch oven; I figured that a picture of a dutch oven with brown gravy covering the stew would be too grizzly for some of my readers. But that didn’t stop me from pandaing to those who want to see the finished result.

The finished product was very similar to the beef stews we’ve cooked up in the past, although there was a definite gamier flavor. The meat was very lean, yet tender. And the dinner conversation was punny; it seems my children have picked up the family tradition of mangling the language at every opportunity.

Fur what its worth, at least they didn’t call me ursanine for any of this. After all, they still respect their paw…

Younger Daughter showed interest in learning to loaf last night. Meat loaf, that is…

She actually stood around for most of the assembly process and may have actually learned something. Based on her comments, it was likely how easy it is to open a can of corn and season with some butter, basil, salt, and pepper so that it actually tastes decent.

The corn was tasty (as usual), but the meatloaf was the star. This particular batch featured Big Butz No Butz sauce both in the mix and brushed on top prior to cooking. Other than that, the meatloaf was the basic recipe of ground beef, pork sausage (hot), onions, peppers, mushrooms, parmesan cheese, oatmeal, and an egg. Somehow I seriously doubt that Younger Daughter retained any of this.

I do know that the finished product was good as I had to threaten the kids with dire consequences if they tried to use the leftovers for sandwiches in their lunch today. After all, leftovers are used at the discretion of the teacher, not the students…

I always wondered what happened to the WSM cover…

Via Fail Blog

No, there won’t be any pictures of broccoli over ice cream with a nice teriyaki sauce. That’s the other kind of sundae. But there will be pictures in a wok without the ice cream…

Some nights you just don’t feel like cooking. Good thing I felt like prepping, as that took way longer than the actual cooking portion of this meal.

As for eating, it was gone even faster. At least I have indentured servants, er, children, to do the dishes.

They need to earn their keep somehow…

And leftovers. Beginning with fish tacos (grilled cod, leftover cabbage slaw, tomatoes, avocado, and a greek yogurt-based sauce).

That was yesterday. Tonight was pizza night, featuring pizzas made with the successfully hidden leftover brisket. Both pizzas used TJ’s herb dough, Big Butz No Butz sauce, and a blend of shredded mozzarella and feta cheese. The first was also topped with SWMBO undesirables (onions and peppers).

The second pizza was built to SWMBO specifications and had mushrooms and fresh basil in addition to the basic ingredients.

If you haven’t made a pizza using Big Butz No Butz sauce I highly recommend you do so. Spread it on thin; a little goes a long way. It provides just the right bite to go along with the flavor and goes great with brisket, pulled pork, and grilled chicken pizzas.

And no, Tom didn’t pay me to say this…

Time is relative. At least according to Einstein. Point in case? This brisket was cooked in under 7 hours, about half the time it normally takes me for one this size.

I don’t have any pictures of it post-slicing-and-dicing, largely due to time constraints (it was Pinochle Night on Friday). Those same time constraints led me to experimenting with “hot and fast”, which in this case involved about 2 hours of smoking the brisket on the WSM at 250°F, then raising the temperature to between 300°F and 325°F for the rest of the cook.

The result was a flat that was slightly drier than I prefer, but one that still had a nice smoke ring and mesquite flavor. The point was very moist when chopped; my only regret was not having time to turn it into burnt ends.

Judging from how fast the leftovers (what few there were) are disappearing, it appears that everyone was quite pleased with the experiment. Next time I will slow the process down a bit and see if the flat is a bit juicier.

Now I need to go hide the rest of the leftovers if I want to have a brisket pizza anytime in the near future.