Smoked poultry of any sort just doesn’t work for me. Also smoked fish. The only things I like smoked are some pork cuts, some more hearty sausages like bratwurst and some beef. None of it do I prefer to roasted/grilled, but it’s as good.
Speaking of which, one year a friend talked me into assisting with a smoking extravaganza for a large party - a butterflied, whole suckling pig on a rented barrel smoker. NEVER AGAIN. It took the better part of a day (including all night) with three of us working in shifts of two (to help keep the other one awake, basically). Was it an interesting experience? Sure. Was it good? Sure. Was it the best BBQ/smoked pork I’d ever had? No. Was it remotely worth it? Not even fucking close.
Like some above I’m usually a cake mix guy and save my effort for the frosting. But I wanted to thank you for the video of the yellow butter cake. The image of that unbelievably light batter in the pan has inspired me to make the cake soon. (She’s very delightful personally as well. I know her name and know of her book, but never saw her before.)
Individual tastes are a thing, so don’t take this as one of the tired “But you haven’t tried it right/mine/this way!”
But two things I’ll mention anyway.
First, the only smoked poultry I personally like as much, or (in some cases) better smoked than roasted is duck - the much stronger flavor of the meat stands up and complements the smoke much better.
That said, if you over smoke it, yeah, you ruin the duck. Smoke (IMHO and others will absolutely disagree) should be an accent to the flavor of the meat.
The second, and it really isn’t an exception, is that a lot of meats that do well smoking are benefiting from the long, slow, moderate heat of cooking with the smoke flavor just a controllable added bonus. So especially on the tougher cuts of beef and pork, which are high in collagen, a long slow cooking process without smoke are just as good, with the smoke adding an additional (welcome or not) flavor.
IMHO, YMMV, etc.
I will say that my FiL had a manual smoker, and switched to a semi-automated one, and confided to me that if he had to do all manual again, he probably wouldn’t - so, yeah, it very easily adds up to Never Again due to the finicky work load, at least until you’re so practiced that it’s all reflexive.
Whereas we make yogurt in part because it’s easier to buy whole milk than to buy unsweetened, unflavored, full-fat yogurt.
It is, in fact, pretty easy and very reliable.
It’s quite easy, and very reliable. I’d never seen her before i looked for that video, either. But linking to it was way easier than typing up the recipe. And there are obviously no copyright issues.
I made sauerbraten once. Its the very thing that I would add to this thread. I like snitzel and spatzle and the other German food I have tried, not fancy food but hardy and good.
Sounded like a good idea at the time. Marinated the roast for the full recommended time. Five days, maybe, not sure. Took no short cuts. Lot of work. Was awful.
I’ve made eggs benny lots. Hollandaise sauce is pretty simple once you get the hang of it.
Lemon juice mixed into mayo does a pretty good faux Hollandaise. Never heated it just dump it on eggs and toast.
I cook the version from Mastering the Art of French Cooking once a year around Xmastime. It really only takes about 4-5 hours from start to finish and about half of that is idle cooking time. I do skip the last step of straining and thickening the broth, and just serve it as a soup, and I chop the beef into bite-size chunks which don’t take as long to cook through.
In my experience, the onion that goes in at the beginning pretty much disintegrates into the broth by the time it’s done cooking. The braised pearl onions add texture and variety, though I’ll admit it’s a pain trying to brown them without the layers separating.
On that note, my recipe I’ll never attempt again is her lobster thermidor. It came out alright, but it was way too much work and I’d rather just bake some lobster tails and serve them with butter.
What was awful, exactly? The sauerbraten, the amount of work, or both?
Sauerbraten is also something I made once, years ago, and never again. I don’t remember it being all that much work, other than the waiting several days for it to marinate in the fridge. I also don’t really remember how well it turned out. Ok, I think.
I think the reason I never made it again was because while the prep wasn’t crazy bad, and the sauerbraten turned out fine, the prep amount / deliciousness ratio wasn’t worth it for me.
I’ve made sauerbraten a number of times, and it’s about 15-20 minutes to prep and cook the pickling liquid, then maybe another 15-20 minutes of active work when you cook it days later. Maybe I use a simpler recipe but it’s pretty straightforward.
It wasn’t hearty, tasty comfort food. The flavours weren’t interesting or even pleasant. I’m not a fan of the old world allspice/ nutmeg/ ginger spice regimen for savoury dishes.
That stuff belongs in a crappy muffin. The shitty recommended cut of meat (rump roast? bottom round?) was dry and characterless as one would expect.
Not terribly complicated to prepare, but way more effort than the result could possibly be worth. A decent medium range roast such as sirloin with gravy and vegetables is much less work and in an entirely superior class of result.
If I am going to slow cook some lean, tough, cut of meat, it should at least be something with a lot of connective tissue that is going to render down to gelatin. You need something to make it juicy. Some bone for flavour wouln’t hurt.
Bottom round should be reserved for stew or door stops.
For real. I love reading that recipe – isn’t it 6 pages? – but the result sounds like something you could make 90% as good in 1% of the time using a few shortcuts.
Oftentimes I think Julia is presenting The Classic French Technique just to document her own incredibly thorough research for the ages, getting the full dress treatment down in English for the first time, and with the added bonus of the servantless American cook being able to actually make it the old way if they really, really wanted to.
I had nothing for this thread until your post. Then a flood of trauma came back from my single foray into making Pretzels from scratch over a decade ago. Nobody got time for that.
It takes up 3 pages in my edition, and the steps are as follows;
Boil lobster with aromatics and wine
Simmer mushrooms in their own juices with butter and lemon juice
Add mushroom juices to lobster cooking liquid and reduce
Strain liquid and simmer
Make a roux, incorporate the cooking liquid, boil, and “film” with heavy cream
Split lobsters, discard innards, sieve roe and tomalley
Combine sieved mixture with mustard powder, egg yolks, and heavy cream
Gradually beat the reduced cooking liquid into the egg-cream-mustard-roe-tomalley mix
Boil mixture, thin with cream, and “film” with more cream
Remove meat from lobsters and cut into chunks
Saute lobster meat in butter and flambe with cognac
Fold mushrooms and most of the sauce into the lobster meat
Scoop lobster-mushroom-egg-cream-mustard-roe-tomalley-cooking liquid mix into shells, top with cheese and remainder of sauce
Bake and serve
I think it was at about the point where I had removed a giant sea-bug’s egg-sac and pancreas and was forcing them through a sieve that I thought to myself “This isn’t cooking, it’s alchemy.” By the time you’re done I’m not even sure if it matters what kind of aromatics you boiled the lobster with.
In contrast, my preferred method for serving lobster is as thus;
Cut open lobster tail and spread shell to expose meat
Bake lobster tails
Serve with clarified butter and a side of spaghetti aglio olio
Before the internet, I made potstickers on a long rainy weekend, using eggroll or wonton wrappers. I had a little crimper and made dozens and doens of half-moon potstickers, shrimp, ground chicken or pork, scallions, a bit of cabbage - can’t remember but they were all delicious. Onto a baking sheet into the freezer , none touching! Then carefully put into containers into the freezer to be brought out and cooked gently another time.
Us, on the other hand: sauerbraten is our go-to Christmas dinner now. The setup for the marinating step is fairly easy. Cooking is easy. The final step (straining the sauce and thickening it with gingersnaps) is no biggie. There just wasn’t a lot of hands-on work.
Spaetzle is a huge pain in the ass. I bought a flat thingy with holes in it, that you set over the pot of hot water and basically smoosh the batter through, and even that didn’t help much (in hindsight, the water should not have been boiling; it basically cooked it on the flat thing). I do make it, that one day - but the next day, we have packaged egg noodle with the leftovers.
I have a vague memory of making spatzle but I certainly didnt use any kind of special device. Checked a few recipes just now snd they all use a spatzle maker so maybe I am misremembering.
I guess the sauerbraten just isn’t to my taste. Thickening the gravey with ginger snaps wasn’t that hard - straining it was more of a bother. But itceas still more trouble than my typical gravey from scratch and no where as good
I live in cattle country, decent beef is easy to get. When it comes to beef I just prefer an even half decent roast or steak to BBQ or sauerbraten or other dishes focused around slow cooking and sauces. I do cook roasts slow - at 175f.
Dean Ween’s recipe for Sunday gravy explicitly tells you that “you’re gonna fuck this up anyway”. I’ve tried making it a few times, and while it didn’t come out badly or anything, I definitely feel like I could’ve done better.