I ham a failure

There are actually wonderful things about living through a Minnesota winter, not many, but there are a few.
First, winter here gives you a relief from the oppressive humidity with skin cracking dryness. Second, it kills the swarms of mosquitoes for a few months. Third, you are able to expand your storage of refrigerated and freezing items to your front porch or steps when you need to more room.  Winter is a great time to try grilling new items or brining something that you need to store for a long time and you do not want to take all the room in your refrigerator.  Which is why I wonder why I took so long to do a long brine and grill of a fresh ham and put it off until spring arrived.  I am sure I have lots of excuses, but for now I will add this to the list of things I shall change when I make my next attempt at making my own ham using the wet cure method.

My goal was to create a flavorful ham starting with a fresh ham.  I have roasted a ham before using a method from Cook's Illustrated Best Recipes book, the maple glaze was excellent and I was lucky enough to remember to do this during a winter so I could brine this sucker during the winter months.  This time was going to be different, as I wanted to try something that would get me a longer brine which should penetrate the meat more deeply, plus I really wanted to have the smoky flavor from the grill, plus having the added bonus of sitting outside with a beer while I made sure the process was going correctly.

I did quite a bit of digging on many sites dedicated and came to conclusion that I would either need to build a large smoke house for the dry method or simply guess as so many people had wide view of opinions of the best way to to brine a fresh ham.  It ranged from 8 hours to 17 days.  I am not sure I could sell the rest of my household on building a smoke house while my to do list gets long so I went with the wet cure method.  I figured I would shoot for about ten days of brining towards to the middle of the range.

The next was to figure out the best brine to use.  For most items I grill I have found I put together what I like for the brine and it seems to work out great after a few trials and errors.  One of my other considerations was to consider how to preserve the meat carefully.  I, like many others I know have concerns about adding too many preservatives.  I have talked with natural butchers and they have experimented with things like cherry wood extract and celery salt, but it never sounded like they really were confident.  I went with ignorance and tried to lighten the salt load from recommendations as an aim to reduce the over saltness of some commercial hams I have tasted.

So, I ordered a ham from my friends at the local market and started my brine the day before.  The idea is that it takes time to allow the brine to cool after getting heated up.  In the past, I could either rely on a subzero winter day to quickly cool off the brine or I could make an concentrated brine, by using half the amount of water I needed and just add ice cubes to cool it down.  I just figured it was just as easy to make it the day before and cool it on the stove and then put in the fridge until the ham arrived.  I used a typical salt/sweet mixture plus extra spices. I would typical give you some details, but I am not aiming to give you bad information today.

For example, I was worried about making the ham too garlicky.  So I opted not to boil the garlic cloves in the brine, instead added them after everything had cooled.  Wouldn't do that again as you will see at the end.

I picked up the ham, it was 18 pounds, bone in.  I prepped the ham with cross cuts across the fat on the back to allow better penetration of the brine.

On to the wait, the ham rests in large container.  I rotated the ham daily, which is supposed to help with absorbing of flavor.  Not sure I believe that but it kept me out of trouble a few minutes a day.









So, after ten days, it was time to start the grill and get this going.

Using a electric starter.

 I have a Big Green Egg grill at home, which works great for grilling and smoking.  I filled up the fire box section for an expected 10 hours of grilling.  After the fire was going, I set it up using the Green Egg indirect plate to keep the direct flame away from over cooking the meat closest to the flame.

 Right at 9:00 am I had the fire going and I added apple wood chunks to get a nice flavor smoke started.

 It started great and I was looking forward to the process.  In this picture you can see I wrapped the thinner end of the ham to prevent over cooking.

You can see the first peek at 10:30 ish time.  I did a quick temperature check and it was at 65 degrees at this point.     

 At this point it is about noon and it is nice to see the browning appear, though the temperature is at 97 degrees.

 At 1:00 pm, you can see some the meat pulling away from the bone, temperature is at 115

 2:30 pm  temperature 143

 Moving towards the end 3:30 pm.  Temperature was 151, darn rain showed up!

 I hit my goal of getting it to between 155- 162, with a tempt of 159 at 4:00 a little earlier than I expected. I made a bourbon, orange juice, glaze, just to pretty it up a bit.

 I pulled it off nicely.  I use some insulated rubber gloves that make the process much easier and let it rest.

I open it up and it was nicely moist.












The results:  Well, I was not overly happy with the taste.  It came out as a wonderful, flavor of a roast pork.  Not bad, but not what I was shooting for.  The concerns over garlic intensity, were mistaken.  It has a slight garlic taste, but not what I was expecting.  My next attempt will be to try an injection method to get the flavor into the ham.  But I have 18 pounds of wonderful roasted pork to get through first, plus winter is always only a few weeks away in Minnesota, so once that rolls in, I should be all set.

In pursuit of cookie perfection

World's largest cookie

Haven't we all had it with making too much of a cookie?  Think about how many times have you heard someone say they have a great recipe of their chocolate chip cookie.  Once they share it, it usually has the some measurements and some instructions and magically you get their version of the greatest cookie alive.  However, one thing we miss is that many times a successful  recipe is not just a list of ingredients - hopefully with measurements - but some technique required to make it right.      

I can rightfully say this as a person that was raised with recipe instructions that consisted of "mix it until it looks right" or the vague handwritten instructions from my great grandmother's holiday cookie recipe that said "add a package of figs" - which I would guess the "package" of figs of have probably changed sizes over the last 60 years or so.  Though my favorite instructions I received from my mother over the phone was while explaining how to make her famous baked beans was to add a couple "serious squirts of mustard" or the classic "add a splurge of milk" to breadcrumbs while making meatballs.  Oh, my sisters have received similar instructions on making sauce as to "add enough oregano to the top of the sauce until it "sort of covers the top of the sauce".  Details, details.    Why let that get in the way.   

Some of these things are what paralyze some people from attempting to cook it is that they never were taught some basics to cooking or baking that help them understand the importance to some techniques.   One thing I have been noticing as I have dug into many websites and cookbooks to figure how to prepare something that peaks my interest , is that many authors will tell you what to do, but not why.  I think all that does is either hurts a person that is struggling to learn to cook on their own or they might make a tragic shortcut that will ruin their outlook to cooking or tragically their meal. 

How is that tragic?  Think of the times you might try something for guests or family.  It might be a special occasion and too much is resting on this meal and if it gets away from you, suddenly they are all secretly judging you and you will be either cut out of the will or defriended on Facebook.  Well, maybe you have better friends, but you never know.

So, cookies. 

I tried a cookie recipe from Cook's Illustrated that they have tested and proclaimed that they had figured out how to make a darn good cookie.   Actually, they claim it is a perfect cookie.  When you get someone claiming perfection - it is difficult not to be interested.  The beauty of their cooking instructions is they explain why they choose the ingredients in the recipe and what their expected outcome is for the recipe.  They also show their work, meaning they tell you what they attempted that did not work and how they adjusted to get it to what they want.  Translation - "Listen, I know you want to mess this up, but we already did those steps for you, so just trust us and follow along".   This not an actual quote from America's Test Kitchen, just what I imagine what would said after I sat behind them after a long day of listening to my questions. 

Weighing the ingredients

One thing I have learned as I have been baking and cooking is to be prepared and to trust weighing ingredients over measuring ingredients.  For many baking recipes this helps eliminate "scooping bias" that will vary between people.

Mise en place

So I started this recipe by gathering my ingredients. Of the other great steps I have learned is to gather the ingredients or to the mise en place so I am ready with everything I need.

One of the interesting techniques I had not tried before was to brown the butter.  First time browning butter, but the aroma as I was mixing the ingredients together was an encouraging sign they really had a great recipe. Browning the butter is one of the keys to creating the perfect cookie, as it helps to create the chewiness for the cookie and enhances the flavor of the cookie. A great tip for browning the butter was they recommending a nonstick skillet to help you actually see the color of the browning butter.  That helped as it seemed the butter quickly turned to dark rich brown color from the golden butter color quickly.

Mixing and resting the sugars

Interesting to see the difference after first mixing of the sugars, waiting for three minutes and then mixing again.  I did this two times and each time the sugar mixture texture became smoother and shiner. This step is created to help in the sugar to dissolve.

Stir in the flour, once everything was ready from the sugar mixture,  it all mixed together wonderfully.  The next step was to add the remaining ingredients 

After adding the flour, chocolate and nuts.

 Another tip that I have found true on many recipes is to not try to get through the baking process.  By putting the cookies on trays and baking them separately you get a better baked cookie.  Really, have we not learned by now that shortcutting on your way to cookie perfection is a path towards disappointment

Time to enjoy the fruits of our labor.

Milk and cookies, nah - espresso for me

I have always had hard time figuring out what makes certain cookies better than others.  The beauty of this recipe it lays out the pros and cons of trying different methods and explains the consquences of ignoring their steps.  Simple a great cookie and worth the little bit of extra effort.