Thank you Book Monster, redtail23, Sapo, Kotick and Snowcarpet for the additional advice. It’s all helpful and will be used. Sorry I didn’t get back here earlier.
I made the neckbones! I roasted them first. I didn’t have a roasting pan, but I did have a small rack that fit perfectly over the cast iron skillet. Then I thought, well why not do more so I got out my other, never before used, 10" cast iron skillet and put a second small rack over it. Then I thought, well, I should just do them all, so I got out my 13"x9" cake pan and luckily I had a rack that fit perfectly over it. Thanks to some last minute advice I got from lissener via IM, I poured a bottle of Corona beer over them and put them in the 350 degree oven. After about a half hour I checked. He had said to baste them but there wasn’t really any liquid. I had split one bottle of Corona among the two skillets and the cake pan. I got out another bottle and poured more beer in the 3 pans.
I took them out of the oven a half hour later and put all the meat in my tall pasta pot. I decided to make the recipe I linked to earlier, because it seemed easy and I had all the ingredients. redtail23, I deglazed! I know how silly that must sound to long-time cooks, but it was a pretty big deal for me. The concept of scraping bits from the bottom of the pan wasn’t unknown to me, but I didn’t know what it was called. I thought “deglazing” was some mysterious esoteric thing that only “real” cooks did. I added 6 cups of water to the pasta pan, took about a cup of it back out and put it in the first skillet. I tried using a silicon spatula to scrape the pieces but it wasn’t doing a very good job, so I got out a wooden thing I hadn’t used much. I didn’t know what it was for, but now I realize that it’s made for scraping things. It’s almost like a spatula, wooden, but the end curves. I tried using it and it was as if it was, indeed, born to scrape, and the meat bits came right up. I poured the liquid from the first skillet into the 2nd skillet, scraped, then poured it all into the cake pan, which was positively black on the bottom. Not really a “burnt” black, but a very well-cooked black. I scraped and the bits came right up.
When the bottom of the cake pan was clean I poured it all into the pot with the neckbones. I added the garlic powder, salt, pepper (I have a peppermill so I grinded into a cup, then measured out 1 teaspoon. I could picture real cooks being able to judge just how many cranks would make about 1tsp), the chopped onion and green onions. I got the water to a boil, then turned it down to a simmer and let it cook, covered, for an hour and a half.
I guess I was under the impression that the meat would fall off the bone, just like chicken does when I’ve cooked it in the Crock Pot, but that wasn’t the case. Some meat did fall off, but most didn’t. It was very tender and delicious though. The recipe said to add 2 cups of rice, but there were so many neckbones that I was afraid not all the basmati (which is all I had) rice would get cooked, and I hate crunchy rice, so I took a strainer and picked out all the meat. The liquid at the bottom of the pan was dark and smelled great. I put in the rice and put the lid back on.
I stood there looking at the neckbones and out of curiousity I tried one. Oooh it was delicious! I ate several just standing there at the counter (I was very hungry by that point). This is definitely a dish for carnivores, especially those who want to re-create the caveman eating experience in the comfort of their own homes. It’s messy and you’re gnawing at animal bones to get every last bit of meat. Delicious, but maybe not for the faint of heart. I wasn’t paying attention to the rice cooking time, so it probably cooked about 25-30 minutes instead of the 15 the recipe called for. Well, it was supposed to cook over fire for 15 minutes then sit with no fire for 15 minutes. When I dished the rice out it was dark and moist and also smelled great. When I tasted it my eyes popped a bit. Wow, was it good! I’m used to white rice and had never put any seasoning in mine before, not even salt. This was yummy yummy! The meat was going cold by then but I ate some more anyway. Next time I’ll wait until the rice has cooked about 10 minutes, then put the meat back in the pot, on top of the rice, then put the lid back on, to warm the meat up again.
After eating, I let the rice cool some more, then refrigerated the rice and meat. I’m not quite sure how to heat it back up. Does meat do well re-heated in the microwave, or should I just put it all in a pan and warm it up on the stove?
Clean-up wasn’t easy. The racks were a bitch to clean, but I found an old toothbrush and used it. I worked for a long time to get all the dried dripping meat off the racks. They were the type with 1/2 inch squares, so there were lots of corners for the meat/liquid to get caught. Thanks to cooking over fire for at least 15 munutes too long, there was a layer of burnt rice at the bottom of the pasta pot, but soaking and scraping with that wooden thingy worked on it.
The neckbones were amazingly cheap, 5 pounds for under $3.00. I’ll buy some more and make Lemur866’s stew.
Snowcarpet, I’m glad to hear that the sausages are easy to cook, and that they can be frozen. The sell-by date on them is tomorrow. The sell-by date on the chicken is day after tomorrow (and by the way, the sell-by date on the hommus is Feb. 6). The casings seem very thin, so I’ll leave them on. I didn’t know they were meant to be eaten.
I’ve eaten one of the avacados as a snack and I know I need to get the others eaten soon. I’d make something Mexican-y but I’ve already frozen the ground beef and ground sirloin.
Question for the wok folks, can I wok rice that’s already cooked or is that how it’s done anyway? I have a ton of this neckbone rice left and I could experiment with some of the chicken. Though, pork-ish rice and chicken? Sounds weird.
Sapo, I’m going to use your technique for one of the chickens quarters, thank you. I’ll make a redtail23 baked potato (I loved your posts, thanks!) If the potato is cooked at 400 and the chicken at 350, how does that work? Can I split the difference at 375? Thanks for the poaching info too.
Book Monster, I get what you mean about “some.” I just wanted a base number to start with. I love garlic too. I was thinking about putting some cloves in with the neckbones but the recipe called for garlic powder. I wonder why not actual garlic? Is this a case when garlic flavor is ok, but actual garlic is a no no? Why might that be?
Thank you all again! Every single post has been helpful and will be helpful in the future.
