Tuesday, April 28, 2009

DC's City Paper on the "Hot Link"...

i get a little homesick when i read pieces like this... boy a half-smoke from Ben's Chili Bowl...

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=561&navCenterTopImg

The Missing Link

(Photographs by Darrow Montgomery)


We like to think the half-smoke is D.C.'s indigenous street food. So why don't we know anything about it?

The first half-smoke I ever tried came off a downtown D.C. vendor cart at the corner of 5th and F Streets NW. I was relatively new to Washington at the time, and yet I’d already heard that this sausage was exclusively a D.C. thing. I’d even gathered from a few recent D.C. transplants that I’d never make it as a local until I’d sampled a few half-smokes. Eating processed meat struck me as a particularly lame path to D.C. cred. But it cost only $2.25, chips and soda included.

What the vendor passed me was a plump, gelatinous frank with a circumference nearly twice that of a typical hot dog. On the vendor’s recommendation, I had it smothered in mustard and diced onions. At first bite it seemed to taste no different from your everyday dirty-water dog, but as I worked my way down the frank, I was hit with more and more spice. In the emulsified beef I could see the tiny culprits: Flakes of what I figured was red pepper.

Since then I’ve eaten more half-smokes than I can count—off carts, at local greasy spoons, out of butcher shops—and yet I don’t think I’ve ever been served a half-smoke identical to that first one. In fact, many of the half-smokes I’ve eaten barely resembled one another. And the more vendors and half-smoke lovers I chatted up, the more D.C. grillmen whose ears I bent, and the more regional meatpackers I called, the further I got from a firm definition of the half-smoke.

Depending on whom you ask, the half-smoke is simply a smoked sausage. Or it’s a sausage that’s been smoked only halfway—whatever that could possibly mean. Or maybe it’s a half-smoke because some cooks prefer to split it in half when it goes on the grill. Or its “half” comes from the fact that it’s often made from equal portions of beef and pork. But then how do you explain all those half-smokes downtown that are advertised as all-beef?

And if the half-smoke means nothing to anyone outside D.C., why can I buy a box of “Ragin’ Cajun style” half-smokes at the local meat shop?

Most local foodies who happen to be lifelong Washingtonians can agree on one thing: The half-smoke is D.C.’s signature street food and arguably its only indigenous dish.

But what the hell is a half-smoke, and how did it get here?

(Photograph by Darrow Montgomery)

Ever since the hot dog emerged in American cities, countless politicians have demonstrated their worthiness to voters by making a spectacle of their sausage consumption. Smoked links have served as cheap sustenance for the common people as far back as ancient Greece, where Homer wrote of blood sausage roasting over a fire, so the thinking goes that wolfing down a few dogs might mean something to Joe Citizens at the ballot box. As New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller reportedly quipped while on the hustings in 1969, “No man can hope to get elected in New York state without being photographed eating hot dogs at Nathan’s Famous.” The same can be said for Washington D.C.’s Ben’s Chili Bowl.

No politician has used chili dogs and half-smokes as shortcuts to D.C. accreditation quite like former Mayor Anthony A. Williams. Long accused of being aloof, overly academic, and insufficiently black, Williams compensated for his lack of common touch by associating himself with Ben’s Chili Bowl at every possible turn. He mentioned the place in his inaugural address, and he made it his first stop after he won office in 1998, according to the Washington Post. In a January 2005 Q-and-A with the Post, Williams cited Ben’s as the “restaurant where my constituents would most likely run into me.” And when he was spotted eating a turkey chili dog there in the summer of the same year, some observers took it as a sign that he might actually seek a third term.

How did Ben’s and the half-smoke become such icons of Washington culture? “As I think about it, I often wonder if Bill Cosby didn’t play a major role,” says Virginia Ali, who co-owns the Chili Bowl with her husband Ben. The story goes that Cosby first came across the half-smoke when he was in the Navy and stationed at Quantico in the 1960s.

(Photograph by Darrow Montgomery)
“The newer generation, they’ll call it a kielbasa, but the older guys know what it is.” —Travis Hackney(Photograph by Darrow Montgomery)

When he came to town in 1985 to promote the premiere episode of his soon-to-be-watershed sitcom The Cosby Show, he spent some time at the Chili Bowl being mobbed by fans and telling a reporter how he used to take a young Camille Hanks there on dates. Subsequent press reports about Ben’s often noted how Cosby could devour three of the sausages in a single session. And when Cosby went on The Oprah Winfrey Show, the talk-show host surprised him with a batch of Ben’s half-smokes she’d had brought in for the taping, allowing Cosby to bring a small piece of Washingtoniana into the homes of millions of Americans.

In 2000, the Washington Post Magazine queried readers in a contest to determine Washington’s “signature dish.” The undisputed winner: the half-smoke.

Tom Carey can testify that the half-smoke is indeed a geographically defined food. He’s an account manager with Esskay Inc., the Towson, Md.-based distributor of one of the District’s bestselling half-smokes. “It’s a D.C. item,” insists Carey. “Twenty-four miles down the road they don’t know what they are.” Carey believes the name comes from the fact that a half-smoke has “half the seasoning” of a Polish sausage—in other words, it’s halfway to being somebody else’s sausage. “That’s what I was told, anyway,” says Carey. “But that and 50 cents will get you a cup of coffee. I wouldn’t put much [stock] in it.”

If anyone knows how the half-smoke took root on our streets, there’s an outside chance he would have once worked at Weenie Beenie, that resilient grill opened in 1954 in the Shirlington section of Arlington by one-pocket billiards champion and trick-shot legend Bill Staton, four years before Ben Ali opened his now-famous Chili Bowl in the District. Weenie Beenie remains one of just a few local eateries that have been grilling the item since an apparent half-smoke heyday in the 1950s.

The grillmen at Weenie Beenie serve the half-smoke the same way they did back then: split down the middle so that it’s hinged, grilled face-down and then flopped onto its back, and dressed with house-made chili sauce, mustard, onions, and relish—“all the way,” as the cooks call it. (The owners subscribe to the theory that the name “half-smoke” derives from its being cooked in this split fashion.) And they still serve their unique breakfast-style half-smoke sandwich conceived decades ago: a split sausage laid atop a fried egg and blanketed with American cheese—a cheap, relentless attack of sodium and protein that does a fine job of sustaining the day laborers who wait for work each day in a nearby parking lot and who account for much of Weenie Beenie’s business nowadays.

“The newer generation, they’ll call it a kielbasa,” says manager Travis Hackney. “Or they’ll ask for the ‘bigger hot dog.’ But the older guys know what it is.”

The more meatpackers and half-smoke lovers I chatted up, the further I got from a firm definition of the half-smoke.(Photograph by Darrow Montgomery)

Travis’ father, owner Theo Hackney, has been at the helm of Weenie Beenie since November 1956, when he used to roll out of bed before dawn to put more than 40 pounds of half-smokes on the grill to prepare for the morning onslaught of working-class customers. (The 76-year-old Theo still arrives at one of Weenie Beenie’s sister grills, Burger Delite in Alexandria, at 4:45 to get a jump on the half-smokes and other breakfast fare.) When asked about the different kinds of half-smokes available back in the day, Theo says there was just one—“the original”—and that it was the best Washington would ever see.

By “original,” he means the sausage that was distributed by D.C.’s own Briggs and Co. meatpackers. These popular links were grilled in the small, aluminum food shacks that dotted the roads throughout the Washington area at mid-century—places much like Weenie Beenie, most of which have long since died off. Back then, says Theo, the half-smoke was as ubiquitous as it was flavorful.

“Those little kitchens were sitting all around town, and they sold three items: half-smokes, hot dogs, and hamburgers. Very few of them even had French fryers in them,” recalls Theo. “The original half-smoke was extremely good.”

Virginia Ali confirms that the Briggs half-smoke was the half-smoke she and Ben knew when they opened their doors in 1958. A sign heralding Briggs hot dogs and half-smokes hung in their window.

This “original” half-smoke was no emulsified dirty-water dog. It was a high-quality sausage made up of coarsely ground pork and beef—the kind of heterogeneous texture that assured you your frank came from actual animals rather than a technologically enhanced paste. Augmented with precious few additives, it came smoked and enclosed in a natural casing that snapped on the first bite. It was meant to be grilled.

(Photograph by Darrow Montgomery)

In the years following World War II, the Briggs meatpacking company distributed its half-smokes to markets and grocery stores throughout the city from its plant on 11th Street SW, in what was then the city’s robust meatpacking district. Among the family butcher shops and greasy spoons from that era that survive today, it is generally assumed that the half-smoke was born sometime decades ago in that long-demolished Briggs plant.

Owner and co-founder Raymond Briggs, a lifelong Washingtonian who was born on Capitol Hill in 1896, was the son of a butcher. His father, Frederick, ran a meat stand at the northwest corner of the old Center Market, at Pennsylvania Avenue and 7th Street NW, which at the turn of the century was D.C.’s largest market, covering two square blocks in the city’s business district and providing space for some 700 merchants. It was there as a child that Raymond learned the meat business from his father, helping unload the smoked sausages and hams that were transported by horse and buggy.

When Raymond came of age, he launched a meatpacking company with two of his brothers. Briggs and Co. grew into one of the largest packers of its kind in the mid-Atlantic, and the Briggs name was eventually recognized by any homemaker who shopped at Safeway or any Senators fan who ate a dog at the old Griffith Stadium. At some point, probably in the 1930s—exactly when is hard to pin down—Briggs began selling its half-smoke sausage.

There is no definitive half-smoke creation story. Ask a street vendor where this locally renowned sausage sprang from, and you’ll be greeted with a blank stare, then informed that you’re holding up the line. Ask an old-guard butcher at one of the city’s meat-and-produce markets, and you might be lucky enough to hear a story, but whatever the butcher knows about the District’s meatpacking history likely came from his old man—or his old man’s old man—and any such story will usually come with the disclaimer that it can’t be trusted.

But 69-year-old Jack Dekelbaum has some reliable memories of the Briggs empire. His family meat shop, Leo Dekelbaum & Sons, which opened in 1935, still sells half-smokes at its location in the Florida Avenue market in Northeast D.C. (Due to health reasons, the Dekelbaums will be selling their shop at the end of this month after seven decades in business.) Dekelbaum recalls having to run to the Briggs plant to pick up hams and hot dogs for his father and uncle as far back as the late 1940s. “Once you hit the Southwest side coming from Southeast, you could just smell the meat smoking,” he says of the Briggs plant.

When he was a kid, Dekelbaum says, legend had it that the Briggs folks had concocted the original half-smoke in a kitchen laboratory at the plant, where they devotedly searched for that unique interplay between protein, fat, spice, and smoke.

“It was a secret recipe they formulated themselves. Briggs was just one of the best local brands.” —Jack Dekelbaum, on the original half-smoke(Photograph by Darrow Montgomery)

“It was a secret recipe they formulated themselves,” Dekelbaum says. “They were the first and the biggest sellers of half-smokes and hot dogs for many, many years. Briggs had [what they called] ‘the famous half-smoke for the City of Washington.’ They had one which was skinless and one which was skin-on, more in the European style. It was generally pork, beef, and all types of spices. Hot and mild.” As an observant Jew, Dekelbaum never learned of the quality of a Briggs half-smoke by way of his palate—he just knows they were one of his father’s most popular items. “Fifty-four to a box—I still remember the count,” he says. “We sold more half-smokes than anyone else in the city….Briggs was just one of the best local brands.”

And what a name to bestow on a sausage: half-smoke. The curt, mysterious phrase seems as if it were designed to be barked inside busy city grills.

Although we may never know who was in the kitchen when that first half-smoke sizzled on the grill, it’s likely that Raymond Briggs himself had a hand in the original recipe. Briggs died in his home on Connecticut Avenue NW in 1988, but his two surviving daughters remember him not as a distant, uninvolved CEO type but as a devoted butcher.

“My father used to bring [sausages and hams] home every night, and he was always trying to perfect them,” recalls Briggs’ 80-year-old daughter, Mary Jayne Winograd. The Briggs children served as taste testers. “We were kind of guinea pigs,” explains his other daughter, Margaret Delp, also 80.

Both Winograd and Delp say their childhoods were filled with half-smokes and hams. Their mother used to cook the sausages as part of the lavish family breakfast they had every Sunday. The half-smoke was pretty much a morning thing back then, and the Briggs family ate theirs alongside hotcakes.

Even given Raymond’s gustatorial enthusiasm, the Briggs children don’t know for certain that their father was the man who gave D.C. a sausage link of its own. “I have no idea as to how it was developed,” laughs Winograd, a little surprised that anyone might care. “I’m not really sure who was behind it—maybe it was my father, maybe it was his father, Frederick.”

Says Delp: “I would think it was my father, but I don’t know that for sure.”

(Some people erroneously assume the half-smoke was created by Raymond’s brother Albert, who founded AM Briggs, a meat and poultry distributor that had no relation to the sausage company but still survives on Queens Chapel Road in Northeast D.C. The two companies still get confused. “It’s kind of funny,” a worker at AM Briggs told me over the phone. “Here we are selling thousands and thousands of pounds of meat [to hotels], but we’ll always have some guy who walks in here looking for a few half-smokes.”)

Whether he created the half-smoke or not, Raymond Briggs, by all accounts, was proud of his company’s signature sausage. When D.C. native and renowned local foodie Joe Heflin was driving a cab while in college during the late ’60s, he once gave the sausage maker a ride to his home in Bethesda, Md. After the two enjoyed a pleasant conversation, Heflin recalls, Briggs ran inside and came out with Heflin’s tip—a package of half-smokes. “And at the time that was a good tip,” says Heflin. “The pack of half-smokes was worth more [money] than most people gave.”

Eastern Market butcher Bill Glasgow Jr., whose father launched the Union Meat Company in D.C. in 1946, remembers the name Briggs and the term half-smoke being so linked in the meat business that he believes the company had exclusive rights to the sausage name. “It was like Kleenex,” says Glasgow. “ ‘Half-smoke’ was their name, and Briggs’ was the definitive half-smoke….You couldn’t say you had your own.”

But Briggs and Co. eventually grew too profitable for the half-smoke’s good. When the time was right, Raymond Briggs sold the outfit to another meat distributor. A stickler for quality, Raymond stayed on as a consultant with the new company for two or three years until he was essentially told to beat it. According to Winograd, the new conglomerate “literally destroyed the product, wanting to make it cheaper.”

“In the very few times there’s been a manufacturing issue, we’ve had a hell of a time finding a replacement.” —Nizam Ali on Ben’s Chili Bowl’s half-smoke(Photograph by Darrow Montgomery)

The Briggs half-smoke lives on today, though in name only to most minds; the thick, gelatinous frank sold under the Briggs banner more closely resembles an oversize hot dog than the bratlike sausage of yesteryear.

It’s a shame that the spicy frank found on downtown carts has become so widely considered the definitive half-smoke. Far from being handmade sausages, these smoked, casing-less links are created in an industrial process known as emulsification, whereby water and lower-grade pork or beef cuts are fused into what meatpackers refer rather disturbingly to as “batter.” It all makes for a satisfying and exceptionally cheap quick bite, but it’s not the half-smoke to which out-of-towners should be introduced.

A close approximation to the original half-smoke can still be found at Weenie Beenie, where the mild sausage “is as good as we think we can get,” says Theo Hackney. “It still doesn’t hold up to the old Briggs half-smoke, but it does a fairly good job.”

As for Ben’s, there are some local grease connoisseurs who feel the Chili Bowl’s stature as a cultural landmark of black Washington long ago outgrew the quality of its grub. These foodies would never publicly trample on a piece of D.C. history like Ben’s, but in trusted company they’ll recite the same litany of complaints: Ben’s chili can be too runny; the fries lack crispness; and the chili burger falls short of the restaurant’s renown.

But Ben’s half-smoke remains unimpeachable. It doesn’t come cheap—$4.55 on its own, with or without chili, which is costlier than even the hamburger—but when it comes to sausage, you get what you pay for. Ben’s version has everything a good half-smoke requires: the snap that comes with a bite, courtesy of a natural hog casing (“that pop,” as Virginia Ali likes to say); the coarsely ground pork and beef insides, bound just tightly enough to hang together but not so tightly as to make the link stiff; and, finally, just enough kick to remind you where you are and exactly what you’re eating.

“In the very few times there’s been a manufacturing issue, we’ve had a hell of a time finding a replacement,” says 37-year-old Nizam Ali, Ben and Virginia’s youngest son, who now runs the Bowl with his brother Kamal. In a pinch, the Alis once tried to sub the regular half-smoke with kielbasa. Patrons took notice. “If [the packing plant] is down for 24 hours, you’ll find a replacement and people won’t like them. We’ll put up a sign: ‘These are not our regular half-smokes.’ ”

Nizam isn’t exactly forthcoming when I ask him where the Chili Bowl gets its half-smokes. The sausage world by necessity is shrouded in secrecy. Packers are known to guard their recipes lest a competitor start churning out a nearly identical link and thereby poach distributors, and small grills like Ben’s sometimes rely on the uniqueness of their tube steaks.

“We don’t tell cooking shows, either,” Nizam says, somewhat apologetically. “Not to be overly secretive, but we’re famous, and we’re just one business in a changing community.”

“My father used to bring [sausages and hams] home every night, and he was always trying to perfect them.” —Mary Jayne Winograd(Photograph by Darrow Montgomery)

Since a good half-smoke is something you have to go searching for, I decide to get my hands on every sausage within the Beltway that meat distributors market as a half-smoke. It may not be the healthiest way to spend an afternoon, but I figure only a rigorous taste test of some half-dozen, locally store-bought links can determine which half-smoke is the half-smoke.

After retaining two City Paper co-workers to sample the various links with me, I reach out to Greggory Hill, chef and co-owner of the West End eatery David Greggory Restau Lounge, to function as both a grillman and judge. Hill seems like a logical choice; he’s not only a native Washingtonian who grew up eating half-smokes, he’s also a partner in M’Dawg Haute Dogs, a hot dog joint that will open soon in Adams Morgan’s nightlife district. Hill and his collaborators, Scott and Arianne Bennett, owners of the Amsterdam Falafelshop on the same boozy strip of 18th Street, will serve a dozen sausages that patrons will top themselves. At least one type of sausage has already been chosen.

“You’ve gotta have the half-smoke,” says Arianne Bennett.

When I approach Hill about a half-smoke bonanza, he explains that he and the Bennetts nearly killed themselves with sausage just days earlier. In their search for the right brands for their eatery, they had already sampled some 40 different dogs in an eat-a-thon, says Hill. Still, with hardly any coaxing, Hill agrees to a second round of battle—this one exclusively with the smokes.

I round up the hot and mild versions of five brands sold under the banner “half-smokes” at local stores: Kunzler, Gwaltney, Chesapeake Valley Farms, Briggs, and Manger’s. The first three hail from B.K. Miller Meats & Liquors in Clinton, Md., where half-smokes have been sold for much of the store’s 93-year history. (“There are definitely different levels of quality,” owner Blaise Miller III warns.) The latter two brands are purchased from Union Meats and Canales Quality Meats inside Eastern Market.

From the kitchen Hill first brings out a pair of metal trays filled with the grilled sausages from Gwaltney. Their skin provides a decent snap, but the innards seem especially homogenous. “Not that different from your average kielbasa,” one tester opines. The mild and spicy versions taste so marginally different that after a few samples we’re not sure which is which.

Next come the Chesapeake Valley Farms half-smokes. The bind in these is so loose that they break down when Hill tries to boil them dirty-water-style. One of them crumbles in his tongs. “This is really bad,” another co-worker groans. “Like liverwurst with heat put on it.” After just a few bites from the hot and mild we cast these mealy links to the side.

Hill then brings on the half-smokes from Kunzler. We find its consistency not much different from a supermarket hot dog, but the hot version is by far the spiciest yet. So far it’s Hill’s favorite. “It’s got texture, flavor, and spice,” he says. “When I want a half-smoke, I’m looking for a bit of heat.”

Considering their name, the Briggs half-smokes disappoint. They have a nice herbal flavor but not much kick. Worse yet, they have a gelatinous consistency that proves hard to work through with such a thick frank. I cast the carcass of mine onto the pile, as the diner bar is starting to look like the aftermath of a Coney Island wiener-eating competition. I can feel the panel losing steam.

Then Hill comes bearing a tray full of the final half-smokes, from Manger’s. The slices are visibly arresting; from feet away we spot globules of fat, and the mood brightens. “When I see this much fat on a sausage,” one taster explains, “it just makes me happy.” The skin snaps. The pork, beef, and grease balance nicely. And the spice builds as we work our way through the links.

“Now that’s a half-smoke,” says Hill. It has the closest resemblance to the sausage link of his youth. When I ask if he knows which half-smoke he’ll serve at the new eatery, he nods to the Manger’s. “Maybe now,” he says.

It may break a few hearts to hear that the best half-smoke at the bar in fact comes from Charm City. Seventy-one-year-old Alvin Manger, president of Manger Packing Corp., says the family company has been making sausages at the same location in West Baltimore since the 1880s. “We’re one of the last old German butchers in the area,” he says.

Manger Packing developed its half-smoke specifically for the District about 25 years ago, when it saw an opening in the market. Although Alvin Manger is predictably vague when discussing his half-smoke’s contents—“pork and beef…salt and spices,” he says—he does claim to supply half-smokes to the secretive folks over at Ben’s Chili Bowl. But he also says Ben’s sausage couldn’t be replicated by someone buying a standard Manger’s link from Eastern Market.

“We still keep Ben’s a little bit unique,” says Manger. “We made a deal with Ben’s and we keep our word.”

But such tinkering and customizing suggests there is no definitive half-smoke, just different versions. To see whether Manger’s half-smoke is unique, I overnight a box of them in dry ice to sausage expert and cookbook author Bruce Aidells, also known as the “King of Sausagedom,” in California. (True to his nickname, Aidells is actually in the midst of eating sausage when I first reach him by telephone.) After a close examination, he notes that the spicy half-smoke seems to be a close cousin of both the Texas hot link or smoky link (pork butt, garlic, cumin, red-pepper flakes), a popular item in the Lone Star State’s barbecue joints, and the Louisiana chaurice (pork butt, beef chuck, garlic, chili powder, cayenne), which is one of the spiciest sausages in that region’s cuisine.

“I do go out of my way to check out barbecue all over,” says Aidells, “and I’ve had similar sausage in barbecue joints around the country.”

Perhaps our signature sausage isn’t so unique after all. Gelatinous or course, spicy or mild, skin-on or skin-off, boiled or grilled—the half-smoke is whatever you want to think it is. That would be a disappointing discovery, if the half-smoke didn’t still have one inalienable trait—that you can only eat it right here.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Recipe: Confetti Pasta Salad with Chicken

from cooking light... nice potluck type pasta salad for summertime...

Confetti Pasta Salad with Chicken

1/2 cup water
1/4 cup dry white wine
3 (4-ounce) skinned, boned chicken breast halves
1 large garlic clove, sliced
1 1/2 cups plain low-fat yogurt
1/4 cup light mayonnaise
2 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
2 teaspoons spicy brown mustard
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
4 cups cooked tubetti or ditalini (very short tube-shaped pasta) (about 1 1/3 cups uncooked pasta)
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup finely chopped red bell pepper
1/2 cup finely chopped green bell pepper
1/2 cup finely chopped carrot
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

Combine the first 4 ingredients in a saucepan; bring to a simmer. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes or until the chicken is done. Remove the chicken pieces from broth; cool and coarsely chop. Bring broth to a boil over high heat; cook until reduced to 1/4 cup (about 5 minutes). Cool.

Spoon yogurt onto several layers of heavy-duty paper towels, and spread to 1/2-inch thickness. Cover with additional paper towels, and let stand 5 minutes. Scrape into a bowl using a rubber spatula.

Combine the reduced broth, yogurt, mayonnaise, and next 7 ingredients (mayonnaise through black pepper) in a large bowl. Stir in the chicken, pasta, and the remaining ingredients. Cover and chill thoroughly.

Yield: 8 servings (serving size: 1 cup)

CALORIES 209 (17% from fat); FAT 3.9g (sat 1.1g,mono 1g,poly 1.4g); IRON 1.8mg; CHOLESTEROL 30mg; CALCIUM 106mg; CARBOHYDRATE 25.7g; SODIUM 359mg; PROTEIN 16g; FIBER 1.9g

Monday, April 20, 2009

Buttery Dinner Rolls Recipe

These look EXACTLY like the rolls my grandmother makes... talk about flashback... gotta try these and see how close they are....

http://chezannies.blogspot.com/2009/04/buttery-dinner-rolls-recipe.html

Buttery Dinner Rolls Recipe

Buttery Dinner Rolls

Have you ever wanted to look for a recipe for something and then ended up with so many choices that you are paralyzed on which one to try? Or even more crazily, you try to incorporate a bunch of them into one recipe?


That’s how I was recently while looking for the ultimate dinner rolls. I’ve tried baking buttery dinner rolls using Rose Levy Beranbaum’s recipe from “The Bread Bible” before. they’ve turned out really well but I want something that will knock my socks off and make me want to keep eating them (even though with each buttery bite, more fat makes its way to my hips). That’s what I’m looking for baby!


Which Roll Rocks?

So I looked up a bunch of recipes for buttery dinner rolls and after looking, comparing and reading reviews, I decided to try the recipe I found on Food Network. I actually baked up a batch of these Food Network dinner rolls along with a double batch of Beranbaum’s recipe just to be able to do a comparison of taste. And no, I’m not on a carbo-load. I just had a dinner event to go to and my contribution was bread.


So after baking them both, I will tell you that they are both good. There are some differences between the two buttery dinner rolls. Both are reasonably easy to make (especially if you have an electric mixer to do the kneading for you) but one is more time-consuming. Beranbaum’s recipe requires an overnight rest in the fridge for the sponge (for maximum flavor development) followed by three more rises. The Food Network recipe only calls for two rises and can be done in a day.


It’s Not Just Flour, Yeast and Water

The other difference in the recipes is in the ingredients. Beranbaum’s recipe does not call for eggs whereas the other one does. Beranbaum’s also asks for dried milk powder (which I substituted with Coffeemate—because that’s what I had handy). The Food Network recipe calls for milk. That recipe also called for more sugar. Also Beranbaum’s recipe calls for the rolls to be dipped in melted butter in the last rise—that makes them super delicious but also means getting your hands oily while buttering them up. The other one just asks for them to be brushed on top with butter after the rise.


Overall, I think if you like your rolls to be sweeter and more enriched, the Food Network recipe is better. But Beranbaum’s recipe is also delicious and I find the texture more pleasing but less like sweet dinner rolls and more like plain dinner rolls with a buttery fragrance (from the lack of egg). At the end of the day, I was conflicted. I enjoyed them both but the time and effort in making Beranbaum’s recipe made me think that the Food Network one is a more useful, daily recipe.


I’m going to post both recipes here so that you can decide for yourselves which you’d like to try.


Butter-dipped Dinner Rolls


from The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum
makes 12 dinner rolls

Ingredients:
Dough starter:

6 oz (170 g or 1 cup plus 3 Tablespoons) unbleached all-purpose flour
¾ cup plus 2 Tablespoons water, room temperature (70° to 90°F)
1 Tablespoon plus ½ teaspoon honey
¼ teaspoon instant yeast


Flour mixture and dough:


5.5 oz (156 g, or 1 cup plus 1 ½ tablespoons) unbleached all-purpose flour
(use only Gold Medal, King Arthur or Pillsbury)
2 Tablespoons dry milk, preferable non-fat
½ teaspoon instant yeast
4 ½ Tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 1/8 teaspoons salt
4 Tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled


Method:


For dough starter:


1. In a mixer bowl or other large bowl, combine the flour, water, honey, and instant yeast. Whisk until very smooth, to incorporate air, about 2 minutes. The sponge will be the consistency of a thick batter. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and cover with plastic wrap.


Dinner Rolls Dough Starter

Dinner Rolls Dough Starter

For dough:


2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour (reserve ¼ cup if mixing by hand), dry milk, and instant yeast. Sprinkle this on top of the sponge and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Allow to ferment for 1 to 4 hours at room temperature. (Or for maximum flavor development, ferment for 1 hour at room temp, and then refrigerate for 8-24 hours). During this time the sponge will bubble through the flour blanket in places: this is fine.
3. Mix the dough. Using a mixer, add the butter to the bowl and mix with the dough hook on low speed (#2 if using a KitchenAid) for 1 minute or until the flour is moistened enough to form a rough dough. Scrape down any bits of dough. Cover the top of the bowl with plastic wrap and allow the dough to rest for 20 minutes.


Dinner Roll Dough Before the First Rise

Dinner Roll Dough Before the First Rise

4. Sprinkle on the salt and knead the dough on medium speed (#4 on KitchenAid) for 7 to 10 minutes. It will not come away from the bowl until toward the last minute or so of kneading; it will be smooth and shiny and stick to your fingers. Scrape down any dough clinging to the sides of the bowl. If the dough is not stiff, knead it in a little flour. If it is not at all sticky, spray it with a little water and knead it in. (It will weigh about 22 ounces/629 grams.)


Dinner Roll Dough Ready for Second Rise

Dinner Roll Dough Ready for Second Rise


5. Scrape the dough into a 2-quart dough-rising container or bowl, lightly oiled with cooking spray or oil. Push down the dough and lightly spray or oil the surface. Cover the container with plastic wrap. Allow the dough to rise (ideally at 75° to 80°F) until doubled, 1 ½ to 2 hours.
6. Transfer the dough onto a floured counter and press it gently into a rectangle. It will be full of air and resilient. Try to maintain as many of the air bubbles as possible. Pull out and give it 2 business letter turns (ie. left to center, right to center, flip and repeat) and set it back in the container and oil the surface, cover, and allow the dough to rise for 1 to 2 hours or until it doubles again.
7. Shape the dinner rolls. Cut the dough into 12 even pieces. Work with one piece at a time, keeping the remaining dough covered.
8. If the dough is sticky, flour your hand—but not the counter, so that the dough has a little resistance to help shape it. Roll each piece of dough, cupping your hand over it, to make a smooth ball. Seal the small indentation that forms in the bottom by pinching it tightly. This will help to make a tight skin on the outside of the roll, which will give it an even shape during baking.
8. Pour the butter into a small bowl. Dip each dough ball into the melted butter and coat all sides, then place it pinched side down in the pan, making 3 rows of 4 rolls each (if using a square pan or just arrange in a round pan as evenly as possible).
9. Cover the pans loosely with oiled plastic wrap, and allow the rolls to rise for about 1 ½ hours, until double; the center of the tops will almost reach the top of the pan. When the dough is pressed with a fingertip, the indentation will remain.


Buttery Dinner Rolls After the Third Rise

Buttery Dinner Rolls After the Third Rise

10. Preheat oven to 400°F 1 hour before baking. Have an oven shelf at the lowest level and place an oven stone or baking sheet on it, and a sheet pan or cast iron skillet on the floor of the oven, before preheating.
11. Quickly but gently set the pans on the hot baking stone or hot baking sheet, and toss ½ cup of ice cubes into the pan beneath. Immediately shut the door, and bake for 20 minutes or until medium golden brown (an instant-read-thermometer inserted into the center will read about 212°F). If planning to reheat the rolls to serve later, bake them only for 15 minutes or until pale golden (about 180°F).
12. Remove the rolls from the oven. Unmold and cool them top-side up on wire racks until just warm, about 20 minutes, then pull apart.


Buttery Dinner Rolls

Buttery Dinner Rolls

Homemade Dinner Rolls Recipe

by Tanya Holland / Food Network
makes 24-30 dinner rolls

Ingredients:
1 (1/4-ounce) package dry active yeast
1 cup warm water, about 110 degrees F
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg, beaten
2 teaspoons salt
1 cup milk, scalded but cooled to warm
4 ounces melted butter, plus 2 ounces
5 cups flour, plus more, as needed


Method:


1. In a standing mixing bowl with dough hook, dissolve yeast in warm water. Let sit until lightly foamy, then stir in sugar and add egg, salt, warm milk, and 4 ounces of butter. Slowly add 5 cups flour, adding more as needed to make an elastic dough. Mix well, then roll out to floured surface and knead dough for about 5 minutes.
2. Place dough in oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and set in a warm place to rise until double in bulk, about 1 hour.
3. Lightly oil your baking pan (I used round pie tins, the original recipe calls for muffin pans, your call).
4. Punch down dough and form dough into 1-inch balls. Arrange balls in baking pan and allow to rise an additional 1/2 hour.
5. Preheat oven to 425 F.
6. Brush with remaining melted butter. Bake in preheated oven for 10 to 15 minutes, until golden brown.


Enjoy both recipes and let me know which is your favorite! There is nothing like having fresh dinner rolls warm from the oven! Yum!


Cheers, Annie

Free-Range Trichinosis or Disinformation Campaign by National Pork Board?

Recent NY Times op-ed and response i found in Huffington Post...

Free-Range Trichinosis

By JAMES E. McWILLIAMS
April 10, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor

Editors' Note Appended

Austin, Tex.


IS free-range pork better and safer to eat than conventional pork? Many consumers think so. The well-publicized horrors of intensive pig farming have fostered the widespread assumption that, as one purveyor of free-range meats put it, “the health benefits are indisputable.” However, as yet another reminder that culinary wisdom is never conventional, scientists have found that free-range pork can be more likely than caged pork to carry dangerous bacteria and parasites. It’s not only pistachios and 50-pound tubs of peanut paste that have been infected with salmonella but also 500-pound pigs allowed to root and to roam pastures happily before butting heads with a bolt gun.


The study published in the journal Foodborne Pathogens and Disease that brought these findings to light last year sampled more than 600 pigs in North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin. The study, financed by the National Pork Board, discovered not only higher rates of salmonella in free-range pigs (54 percent versus 39 percent) but also greater levels of the pathogen toxoplasma (6.8 percent versus 1.1 percent) and, most alarming, two free-range pigs that carried the parasite trichina (as opposed to zero for confined pigs). For many years, the pork industry has been assuring cooks that a little pink in the pork is fine. Trichinosis, which can be deadly, was assumed to be history.


Agricultural scientists have long known that even meticulously managed free-range environments subject farm animals to a spectrum of infection. This study, though, brings us closer to a more concrete idea of why the free-range option can pose a heightened health threat to consumers. Just a little time outdoors increases pigs’ interaction with rats and other wildlife and even with domesticated cats, which can carry transmittable diseases, as well as contact with moist soil, where pathogens find an environment conducive to growth. The natural dangers that motivated farmers to bring animals into tightly controlled settings in the first place haven’t gone away.


This news is especially troubling for connoisseurs of fine pork. Pork lovers, supporters of sustainable meat and slow-food advocates have long praised the superior taste of the free-range option. According to the Web site of Legacy Manor, a Maryland farm that raises free-range pigs, it is “the way food used to taste.” Given such superlative enthusiasm, it’s worth wondering how this latest development will play out among the culinary tastemakers.


It may be objectively true that animals living in a state of nature produce sweeter meat. There are hunters in East Texas who track wild hogs, slice off their testicles so the beasts will fatten and lose their gamy taste and then shoot them months later. These gentlemen swear by the superior flavor. Don’t count on me to challenge the taste assessments of people who thrive on such blood sport. If they say it’s better, it’s better.


But most foodies aren’t going to hunt wild hogs in East Texas. Instead, they look to free-range pork as a more civilized step toward wildness and, by implication, a more “natural” taste. But here’s the catch: Free range is not necessarily natural. And neither is its taste. In fact, free range is like piggy day care, a thoughtfully arranged system designed to meet the needs of consumers who despise industrial agriculture and adore the idea of wildness.


To equate the highly controlled grazing of pigs with wild animals in a state of nature is to insult the essence of nature, domestication and wild pigs. A free-range system is engineered in part to achieve a producer’s market-driven goal: protecting his squealing investments from nature’s most obvious threats while allowing them a modicum of muscle-enhancing movement. Pigs lucky enough to land in this verdant playpen are endowed by the hand of man less with survival skills than with the ability to generate flesh retailing for $12 a pound.


Free range is ultimately an arbitrary point between the wild and the domesticated. That this arbitrary point is tricky business should come as no surprise. The long history of animal husbandry has been a fervent quest toward intensified control. Free-range pork boldly countered this quest, throwing it into partial reverse. The problem was that it went far enough to expose animals to diseases but not far enough to render the flesh truly wild. What people taste when they eat free range is a result not so much of nature but of human decision.


Even if the texture conferred on pork by this choice does lead to improved tenderloin, the enhanced taste must be weighed against the increased health risks. If we have learned anything from our sustained critique of industrial agriculture, it is that eating well should not require making such calculations.


Let’s not forget that animal domestication has not been only about profit. It’s also been about making meat more reliably available, safer to eat and consistently flavored. The critique of conventional animal farming that pervades food discussions today is right on the mark. But it should acknowledge that raising animals indoors, fighting their diseases with medicine and feeding them a carefully monitored diet have long been basic tenets of animal husbandry that allowed a lot more people to eat a lot more pork without getting sick.


The fact that we’ve lost our way and found ourselves locked in the mess of factory farming, should not deter us from realizing that — if we genuinely hope to produce pork that’s safe and tasty — instead of setting the animal world partly free, we might have to take greater control of it. Do not underestimate the importance of this challenge. After all, if clean and humane methods of production cannot be developed, there’s only one ethical choice left for the conscientious consumer: a pork-free diet.


James E. McWilliams, a history professor at Texas State University at San Marcos, is the author of the forthcoming “Just Food: How Locavores Are Endangering the Future of Food and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly.”


Editors' Note: April 14, 2009
An Op-Ed article last Friday, about pork, neglected to disclose the source of the financing for a study finding that free-range pigs were more likely than confined pigs to test positive for exposure to certain pathogens. The study was financed by the National Pork Board.

*************************************************

Paula Crossfield

Paula Crossfield

Managing Editor of civileats.com

Posted April 15, 2009 | 09:22 PM (EST)

Memo to NYT "Free-Range Trichinosis" Editorialist: Food Safety Advocates Can Handle Transparency

Last Friday, an op-ed hit the pages of the New York Times written by James McWilliams ("Free Range Trichinosis") purporting that free-range pork was more likely to be contaminated with the deadly parasite trichonosis than its industrially sardined and antibiotic-overdosed cousin. The writer chose to take this information from a single study funded by the National Pork Board, a lobbying group for industrial pork operations, and neglected to mention that the the two free-range pigs (out of 600) had tested positive for antibodies of trichinosis, not specifically the disease itself.


The food policy wonks leaped, quickly exposing the holes in McWilliams' alarmist piece. (My two-cents is here) It seemed that leaving out the important details above left the author without a leg to stand on, yet The Atlantic was quick to give McWilliams a platform. He weakly defended his position, calling the National Pork Board funding matter a distraction, and half-heartedly admitted that he may have been wrong to leave out the details of seropositivity. His limp-wristed retort included an admission that he was in fact a sustainable food supporter, playing devil's advocate.


The only problem is, as McWilliams admits, this was a piece for lay readers, who without further information, could stop buying sustainable pork after reading such claims (and they won't just be going vegetarian, as the author might have hoped).


Its worth congratulating the food writers who gave a retort to this piece, and it speaks to an important fact McWilliams seems not to have gotten: established sustainable food advocates and newbies alike can handle transparency.


This got me thinking about what a more considered and productive devil's advocate would have done in this situation. Instead of seeking only to shock the public with misleading information, a more nuanced critique (I'll admit, it might not have made it into the Times, but thats another matter) could have presented the possibility that free-range pork is not all it's cracked up to be, and balanced out this one-sided slam.


The root of the story, and the one I'd like to understand better, is the role of antibiotics in pig husbandry, and by extension, whether antibiotics are necessary or positive in any way. An honest contrarian would have also disclosed the role of other serious pathogens like MRSA, which have been found in industrial pig operations where antibiotics are being used liberally to fatten up pigs. This would have served to give a better picture of hog confinement in general -- otherwise, McWilliams is only hurting the cause he claims to care about.


A well-rounded critique of the work sustainable food advocates are doing in all arenas is a fair one worth considering. Unfortunately in misleading the general public, and laying the contrarianism on thick, McWilliams didn't start a conversation, but instead just threw a rotten tomato.


The issues our food system faces are very serious, and one thing we can safely say is that industrial-scale animal operations have seen their day in the sun. Consumers are becoming more conscious of the treatment of the animals they eat, and from a food safety perspective, we can pretty confidently say that industrially raised meat is less safe. (Fortunately, there is more than one study to back this up). That being said, we have a lot of work to do, and everything we do will not be perfect.


Unfortunately, it seems that McWilliams has fallen prey to the wiles of marketing. In seeking to market himself as a contrarian, McWilliams has even penned a book called Just Food: How Locavores are Endangering the Future of Food and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly. Now honestly, did he pick out that title to scare the trichonosis out of people, or what? If he were a true sustainable food advocate, perhaps he would have written a book titled, A Closer Look at Locavorism: What's Not Working and How We Can Fix It. I might have been more excited to read that.

Friday, April 17, 2009

Recipe: Thai Son-in-law Eggs

another posting lifted from great food blog, "House of Annie"... i love asian-influenced stuff. Hell, what am i talking about... this is not asian "influenced" at all... it's straight-up, no chaser asian... looks good, though...

http://chezannies.blogspot.com/2009/04/thai-son-in-law-eggs-recipe.html

Thai Son-in-law Eggs Recipe

I made these Son-in-law eggs recently when I had a glut of hard-boiled eggs after Easter.

Thai Son-in-Law Eggs

Thai Son-in-Law Eggs

The first time I had son-in-law eggs was in Hawaii (yes, at that amazing graduate dorm). My Thai friend, Pepper introduced this to me and we set out to make it together. It’s a really delicious dish!

Crispy or Chunky?

My memories of how the son-in-law eggs was made back then are vague. So I looked up a bunch of recipes online to check if my memory of the dish is correct. Most of the recipes I found asked for the shallots to be fried till crisp.

But the way I remember Pepper and I made son-in-law eggs was to pan fry the shallots until the shallots were just softened, and then add the tamarind juices and other seasonings. Then we added the eggs to the sauce and let the eggs soak up some of that yummy flavor.

I guess that makes my take on son-in-law eggs a little non-authentic. But it’s still a very good dish because the sautéed shallots in the tamarind sauce gives it a chunkier, chutney-like quality. Whatever it is, I just like it this way so I’m going to stick to that. Try it out and let me know if you like it too.

Fried or Boiled?

Another one of my memories of making son-in-law eggs include how difficult it was to fry the boiled eggs. They have a nasty tendency to pop and splatter on you! In my opinion, the fried part of the egg is too chewy and doesn’t have a pleasant texture anyway.

I think I have made this dish only one other time since then, and that time I chose not to fry the boiled eggs. I thought it was perfectly fine. So if you have a distaste for frying, I would say try doing it without. It seems to taste just as good.

For this post, I decided I would give frying one more shot and, yeah… (Reminder to self: nix the frying and just cook the eggs in the yummy sauce.)

Thai Son-in-law Eggs Recipe

Ingredients:
6 hard-boiled eggs (deep fried if you prefer or left plain if you don’t care)
1/4 cup tamarind paste mixed with 1 cup warm water to soften and mushed to extract juice (it normally comes sold in a block or sometimes in a plastic tub but some stores also sell the extract in liquid form—if you get that kind, please add about 3 Tbsp to the water and more later if you need more tang)

Tamarind Pulp and Water

Tamarind Pulp and Water

2 Tbsp palm sugar (brown sugar will work too but palm sugar gives a nice smokiness that you won’t get from brown sugar)

Palm Sugar (Gula Melaka)

Palm Sugar (Gula Melaka)

1 tsp fish sauce
1-2 Thai bird-eye chili (use as many as your heat tolerance will allow), halved
4-5 shallots, sliced thin
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Method
1. If you plan to fry the eggs, heat a pot filled with oil (enough to cover 1/3 of the egg) and roll them around until they are blistered and golden brown. Be careful, they tend to pop and spit at you.

IMG_2715

2. Remove eggs and set aside to drain on paper towel

3. Heat 2 Tablespoons oil in a sauce pan. Add shallots and sauté over medium heat until softened and just beginning to brown.

4. Strain the tamarind pulp and pour the tamarind juice into the saucepan with the shallots. Add fish sauce, palm sugar and bird-eye chilli.

Straining Tamarind Pulp

Straining Tamarind Pulp

5. Bring sauce to a boil. Put eggs back into the saucepan and coat eggs with sauce. Reduce heat and simmer for 5-10 minutes until the sauce thickens slightly. Taste sauce and adjust seasoning as necessary. The flavors should be a balance of sweet, salty, tangy and spicy.

6. Remove eggs and cut them in half lengthwise. Arrange on plate. Spoon the sauce over the eggs and garnish with cilantro.

Thai Son-in-Law Eggs

Thai Son-in-Law Eggs

Enjoy over rice!

Why do they call them “Son-in-Law” eggs anyway? I honestly have no clue and looking it up online didn’t provide any one, good answer. Ehh…whatever it is, it’s a delicious recipe and I hope you will try it out.

Cheers, Annie

Thursday, April 16, 2009

WSJ: The Best Burger (3.10.07)

Need a Real Sponsor here

The Best Burger

The beef patty on a bun is America's contribution to world cuisine. Our food critic takes a cross-country -- and artery-clogging -- journey to find burger perfection.

March 10, 2007

Patties of ground beef weighing from 1 ounce to 15 pounds, often not seasoned and cooked until gray, then served as a sandwich, usually between two halves of a compressible, flavorless untoasted bun, are this nation's leading contribution to world cuisine. In their fast-food form, burgers provide quantitative evidence for the charge, more widespread than ever, that Americans are a bunch of insensitive louts.

But all across the country there are places, almost all of them locally owned operations, that cook and sell my idea of a first-rate burger. And I've been on a hunt to find the best of them. After braving aortic clogging in several dozen of the nation's most highly touted burger joints and burger temples, I found burger perfection -- in the form of a simple bacon-topped double patty dusted with cayenne -- in the heart of a big city, but along the way tasted everything from fast-food's big names to haute-cuisine burgers with foie gras.

After a certain amount of time spent wallowing in burgers, you inevitably begin to see complexity where most people just see a simple dish. But a fellow who is about to announce his choice for the WGB (World's Greatest Burger) should have an aesthetic, a set of standards that guide his judgments in burger court. So here is mine.

Hamburger Heaven

[Question of the Day]

If you could have only one thing on your burger, what would it be? Vote and share your thoughts in the our forum.

Plus, see a map of Raymond Sokolov's cross-country burger odyssey.

First, the burger is more than the sum of its parts. You take a bite of all of it at once -- the meat, the bun, the condiments and any other additions such as raw tomato, lettuce, fruit, nuts. At the hallowed Primanti's on Pittsburgh's gritty 18th Street, they put the fries inside the burger. And it's pretty good.

If you are any good at burger degustation, you should be able to add all those sensations up in your debauched little sensorium and then, and only then, try to sort out what went into it. It should start with beef, the humble ground chuck -- not the pricier ground sirloin or any other variant. Chuck has the Goldilocks amount of fat, not too lean nor too much like hand cream. Chuck also has the right mouth feel; it gives the teeth something to do. You also want a patty thick enough so that it can be charred yet remain moist within. I like mine medium rare, because I want the fat in the meat to get hot enough to melt and spread its flavor. The patty should be seasoned with salt and pepper, at the very least.

The bun is a crucial component of the dish. Toasted bread is not bad for a change-up, but a bun is better, gives better grip and more al dente contrast to the meat. The best bun is a sesame bun, lightly toasted and warm. There is nothing wrong with the braided pretzel bun at the Rosebud in Chicago, but the raised pattern is an eccentric distraction and the bun too doughy, in my view.

[And the Winner Is: Miss Ann, right, of Ann's Snack Bar in Atlanta, above. Among the runners-up is Detroit's Miller's Bar, left.]

And the Winner Is: Miss Ann, right, of Ann's Snack Bar in Atlanta, above. Among the runners-up is Detroit's Miller's Bar, left.

From there on, individual preference rules. The eminent burgerologist Jimmy Buffett disclosed his recipe for a "cheeseburger in Paradise" thus:

I like mine with lettuce and tomato, Heinz Fifty-Seven and french-fried potatoes.

Big kosher pickle and a cold draft beer.

I applaud all this but see no reason why the great man doesn't go for a couple slices of bacon, very crisp, and a sunburst of melted cheddar.

One other thing: If it's too big to fit in your mouth or hold easily in your hand, so big that you have to use a knife and fork, well, I'm not coming back.

I can't pretend I have sampled every good burger in every Hamburger hamlet and town. Nor was it humanly possible to follow up every recommendation. So this is a necessarily subjective report on a vast territory, an assessment by one person of one dish and the obsessive passion it provokes.

No one knows just how the first American burger chef took the ground beef patty that came over with German immigrants in the early 19th century and turned it into a sandwich. The hamburger steak (no bun) appeared on a New York restaurant menu as early as 1834, but the evolution from the naked patty that Eastern European cooks like my grandmother from Lithuania called a cotelette or kutlett is a mystery. At least three traditions champion different men as the culture hero who turned a chopped beef patty into a sandwich. The most vehement keepers of the flame congregate at Louis' Lunch in New Haven, Conn., where the faithful insist that a certain Louis Lassen put what we would call a burger patty between two pieces of bread in 1895. You can still buy a descendant of this ur-burger there, but don't you dare ask for a bun.

Another contender for the burgerbirther title is a Texan, Fletcher Davis, who may have served a hamburger at a stand at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. Out of respect for this Lone Star claim, we flew into Austin, where we remembered with awe the burger we ate at a stand known as Dirty's in 1971. Local legend has it the grill had finally been cleaned after years of ritual neglect. I doubt this explained the impressive lack of flavor in this thin and lackluster sandwich. (One did much better at an antiseptic retro drive-around place not far away called P. Terry's.)

At the other end of the hamburger spectrum, highflying chefs have taken our classic burger, given it a makeover with luxury materials and the culinary equivalent of bling. I do not love these "gourmet" burgers made by men who wear toques blanches instead of T-shirts. Their fancyburgers are as awkward and condescending as pop songs recorded by opera stars. I don't cotton to funky meats, ostrich or the buffalo burgers Ted Turner sells in a chain that, with characteristic humility, he calls Ted's Montana Grill. Like many good chefs trying to survive in a business-casual world, Daniel Boulud has tried to put his stamp on popular comfort food by adding foie gras to a burger at his Manhattan DB Bistro Moderne. The talented Laurent Tourondel has lost his way at BLT burger in Greenwich Village with a menu of overwrought burgers with too much class for their own good. Other chefs around the country grind up precious Kobe beef for burgers that just ooze fat and melt weirdly in your mouth. I don't want truffles either. I want the slightly chewy mouth feel of chuck in my burger. The best compromise I found between these $50-plus concoctions and the humble drive-in sandwich is Danny Meyer's open-air Shake Shack near his much grander Eleven Madison Park.

Mr. Bartley's Cheddar Burger

Cooks at Mr. Bartley's Burger Cottage in Cambridge, Mass., start with 85%-lean custom-ground chuck. A stainless-steel machine called an AccuPat designed to make meatballs produces 7-ounce patties that are just 4 inches across. (Forming the balls by hand, "especially today with gloves," creates too much heat, says Billy Bartley, son of the founder.) Each burger is placed on a hot flat-top grill, lightly weighted and flipped only once. The roll -- "It's an envelope," says Mr. Bartley, "a means of delivery" -- is a sesame-seed roll that is smaller in diameter than the cooked burger.

Here is our take on how to make a Bartley's cheeseburger at home.

  • 7 ounces of chuck, 85% lean, ground
  • Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • Neutral oil, like grapeseed or canola
  • 1 slice of the sharpest cheddar that can be sliced without crumbling
  • 1 sesame-seed bun, toasted

Season the meat with salt and pepper, and form into a 4-inch-by-1-inch patty. Handle the meat as little as possible.

Heat a large, heavy skillet over medium heat until very hot. Add a small bit of oil to the skillet, and swirl to coat the bottom. Add the patty and cook, turning once, until cooked to desired doneness (about 7 minutes per side for medium-rare), pressing down slightly on the patty with the back of a spatula every so often. For a cheddar burger, add the cheese to the top of the patty after flipping it. Serve immediately on the bun.

Shake Shack, which will awake from hibernation March 21, draws crowds because, despite its finesse, it does not highhat. The burger concept -- the most successful food idea since mother's milk -- does not need to be improved with culinary finesse and luxury ingredients. If you're not content to eat a great burger made from average beef on a normal bun, you've missed the point. Are you French?

[Mr. Bartley's]

East Coast Classic: The beef is 85% lean.

I love a good hamburger. But I loathe bad hamburgers, especially the most famous fast-food burger. The only Big Mac attack I ever get is a headache after eating one. For this caper, I did not hang out at the big burger chains, stuffing myself with thin, dried patties and Kleenex buns in cookie-cutter stores with all the atmosphere that regimented teenagers glum about their coolie wages can provide. I'm an equal-rejection consumer, choosing to have things my way not at McDonald's, Burger King or other places of their ilk where I am sure to be gravely underwhopped.

I confess that I did make the pilgrimage to the oldest operating McDonald's, in Downey, Calif., outside Los Angeles. The attached museum was a hoot with its vintage McDonald's stuff and pictures of old stores, but the Downey store itself lived up to the company standard of predictability: All burgers were mediocre, dry and tasteless. The decor was as tacky as anywhere else in the McEmpire.

The only exception to the curse of the chain that I know is In-N-Out Burger, which achieves a friendly, immaculate atmosphere with its red and white tiles and teenagers out of a Spielberg film of suburban life. The burgers are unspectacular -- fairly thin, cautiously seasoned -- but they do pass the char and juice test, barely. For its spoiled Hollywood mogul fans, In-N-Out must fulfill some yen to escape from high-pressure lunches at Spago.

Am I immune from this Rousseauian urge to retreat to the simple life through burgers? Not at all. As I ate burgers from coast to coast, I realized that my passion in this area is a simple, id-driven lust. I love a burger just like the burger that I got from dear old Dad. Or with him, in a "bar and grille." This led me to little, intimate places, distinctive and unpretentious diners and taverns like the bar in Cheers but with better burgers: thicker, charred, seasoned.

In Detroit, where I consumed my first hamburger in 1944, the returning native can motor from one end of a metropolitan area devastated by urban renewal and economic implosion to the other, tasting excellent burgers in settings that preserve or recreate the ambiance of better days. Miller's Bar serves handmade hefty, grilled-to-order burgers -- nicely charred, with optional slices of raw onion, on waxed paper without plates -- to capacity lunch crowds in a cheerful, low-key bar-restaurant on Michigan Avenue near the once-worldbeating Ford Rouge Plant in downriver Dearborn.

Ford's, as older locals call it, is, to put it politely, on the wane, but inside Miller's, it's easy to feel like it's the day the place opened in 1950 and the Tigers still are playing in Briggs Stadium at the downtown end of Michigan Avenue. An eight-point buck's head is etched in the mirror behind the bar, and the bartender reminisces with a regular about the most burgers eaten at Miller's in one sitting: "I've seen 11."

The portions are much smaller at The Hunter House in the posh northern suburb of Birmingham. Just a mouthful, really, but a mouthful topped with fried onions, the same way they did them here back when the Red Crown gas pump in the corner of the little diner was still filling 'em up.

By the time it took to drive the 15 miles downtown to Slow's Bar BQ, I was ready for a burger with a forward-looking attitude. The people who opened this temple of eclectic barbecue two years ago this St. Patrick's Day had to be optimists. Slow's is at the bleak edge of Detroit's Corktown, the Irish enclave where Briggs (later Tiger) Stadium now stands derelict and the most prominent competition for Slow's is a bar called O'Blivion's; aross the way is another monumental hulk, Michigan Central Station, where we once caught the Wolverine to Chicago and no trains chug any more. Inside Slow's, customers start arriving around 11 a.m. Premium beer flows. Pulled pork is pulled. And I get my best sandwich of the day. The beef is charred. The cheese is Gouda with a nice snap. The bun doesn't ooze away under finger pressure.

This is an important point, practical and historical. Burgers are finger food. The bun, among its other virtues, keeps your hands dry, or should, and lets you pick up the meat without making you wish for a finger bowl.

This principle made me wary of the one-pound burger at Nick's Tavern in Lemont, Ill., a Rust Belt backwater some 20 miles south of Chicago's Midway airport. Indeed, Nick's is more successful as a shrine to the Chicago Bears than as a burger Shangri-La. A fellow in a billed cap cooks your giant burger to order, steaming it, in effect, under a metal cloche. No detectable salt perks up this slab of meat.

You'd be much better off spending your cab money on a loop from Boston out to Cambridge, Mass., for a textbook well-charred burger at Mr. Bartley's Burger Cottage in Harvard Square. At seven ounces, it's a hair shy of the ideal, but perfectly cooked and nicely enveloped in a sesame-seed bun.

I found another classic burger in Seattle at the unpretentious Red Mill Burgers in the quiet Phinney Ridge neighborhood near the zoo. Following Northwest Coast custom, even the basic burger has lettuce.

But wait. I can hear a million Angelenos wondering, "When will he get to L.A.?" Yes, there are great burgers in Los Angeles. I love the Apple Pan. The burgers are cooked to order, flavorful, just big enough for lunch. Nevertheless I think the best burgers in America are three time zones away...in Atlanta.

The Vortex, a pseudo-biker joint that you enter through a human mouth, serves an estimable burger, as good as any in Tinseltown. Even better is the well-charred number with beautifully crisped thick-cut bacon at the Earl, in East Atlanta.

But the outstanding hamburger experience I found in an odyssey of several months and thousands of miles was at Ann's Snack Bar, a justifiably renowned little diner on a broken-down industrial stretch of highway.

Miss Ann, as habitués call her, is a woman of commanding style and ready banter. She works alone at her grill, patting each ample patty lightly as she sets it down. Her masterpiece, the "ghetto burger," is a two-patty cheeseburger tricked out with bacon that she tends closely in a fryolator.

Observing Miss Ann in action would be enough of a show, one perfected over many decades. But while she demonstrates the extreme economy of motion of a superb short-order cook, she simultaneously carries on a running dialogue of lightly sassy repartee with customers she knows.

Then Miss Ann dusts your almost-ready patties with "seasoned salt" tinged red from cayenne pepper. It looks like a mistake, too much, over the top. But when you get your ghetto burger in its handsomely toasted bun envelope, you regret doubting the lady for one second. The big burgers stand up fine to the spice. This is the next level in burgerhood. And it just barely fits in your mouth.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Essential Elements of "Real" Barbecue...

Brilliant post on BBQ from a blog called "House of Annie"... http://chezannies.blogspot.com/

Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24: Ultimate Rib Showdown, Part 1

March 29, 2009

First things first. I have to do this because there are a lot of people out there who call something barbecue when they’re really missing out on the essential element of real barbecue. There are many different definitions and usages for the word “barbecue”. You may disagree with me, but here is the one I use:

bar-be-cue (bär'bĭ-kyū') (also spelled "barbeque”, “bar-b-q”, “bbq”, “’cue” or simply “Q”)

n.: Meat cooked in the heat and smoke of a wood or coal fire.
v.: A method of cooking meat over a wood or coal fire.

barbecue pork spareribs

I see a lot of recipes out there for “barbecue” ribs which call for slathering the ribs with barbecue sauce and then grilling them on a gas grill. Worse, there are so-called “barbecue” recipes which call for boiling the ribs first and then drowning them in sauce while baking them in an oven. I just think these are shortcuts to making tender ribs but cannot compare to the true taste of barbecue that only wood smoke and time can impart.

In order to test this theory, I made plans to cook pork spareribs using these three different methods, to see which one tasted better than the others. With the weather starting to warm up here in San Jose, I pitched our plan for the Ultimate Rib Showdown as a Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24 event, and Foodbuzz accepted our submission! We invited FoodGal Carolyn Jung and Michael from Cooking for Engineers, along with their respective spouses, plus some other friends over to our house. Their job was to taste and score the ribs cooked with the different methods. Then we’d tally up the scores and see which one came out on top.

Which rib cooking method is the best? Boiled, grilled or smoked?

The Prep

On Friday night, I mixed together a rib rub using a recipe I found on Fine Cooking by Paul “the Barbecue Baron” Kirk. I deviated from the recipe a bit, using granulated garlic and onion instead of the garlic salt and onion salt that the recipe called for. I also prepared the barbecue sauce recipe found on the same page.

Saturday morning, we went to Costco to pick up ten slabs of pork spareribs. We got them home, and prepped them “St. Louis style” by pulling the membrane off the insides of the ribs, and cutting the flap meat and the rib tips off. Each slab was then cut in half. I coated six of the slabs of pork spareribs with the rib rub and set them aside.

The Cook

Two uncoated slabs went in a large stock pot, covered with water, and simmered them for 45 minutes. Then I pulled the ribs from the water and let them cool before coating them with the same rib rub as the others. At about 5 pm, I put the boiled ribs in a 350*F oven and baked them for one hour.

Boiled Ribs

boiled ribs

Four of the rubbed slabs went in my trusty Weber Smokey Mountain cooker, along with two more slabs prepared using my tried-and-true salt and pepper rub. I used mesquite lump charcoal for the heat and cherry wood for the smoke. The temperature in the WSM maintained a steady 250*F throughout the cook. I did not baste, turn or even peek during the entire 4 hour cook.

Pork Spareribs in the Weber Smokey Mountain

Pork Spareribs in the Weber Smokey Mountain

The remaining two rubbed slabs went bone-side down in the center of the gas grill, with only one side burner set to medium. This gave a constant 250*F temperature in the grill. For smoke, I used maple wood chips wrapped in a foil packet and placed over the lit burner. After two hours, I flipped the ribs over and replenished the wood chips.

Pork Spareribs on the Gas Grill

Pork Spareribs on the Gas Grill

To Summarize the Cook:

  • Eight slabs of pork spareribs were coated with the same rib rub recipe
  • Two slabs were boiled for 45 minutes, coated with the rib rub, then baked
  • Two slabs were grilled
  • Four slabs were smoked
  • Two slabs got my “salt and pepper” rub and then smoked

The Standard

I felt that this test of rib recipes needed a “standard” recipe. Something that represented what people could find if they went to a barbecue joint here in town. There aren’t a lot of barbecue joints here in San Jose, though. The most popular by far is Sam’s Bar-B-Que on Bascom Rd in nearby Campbell. But they didn’t have pork spareribs on their takeout menu.

Texas Smokehouse BBQ does sell pork spareribs to go. I checked them out on Yelp.com, where they have a solid 4-star rating. I’d never been there before but since it was closer than any other barbecue joint, I decided to try them out. I called them up and ordered a slab (with sauce on the side)for pickup at 3 pm.

The first thing I notice is that these aren’t St. Louis cut. They give you the whole slab, including the rib tips.

Pork Spareribs from Texas Smokehouse BBQ

Pork Spareribs from Texas Smokehouse BBQ

Finishing Up

The grilled ones came off first, at about 3.5 hours of cooking time. How do you tell when the ribs are ready? When you hold them with the tongs and they bend loosely, almost to the point of breaking.

Grilled Pork Sparereibs are Done When they Bend

Grilled Pork Sparereibs are Done When they Bend

Next came the smoked ribs. Four hours in the smoker leaves the meat with a nice red bark. The bones are starting to pull back and most of the fat has rendered off.

Smoked Pork Spareribs on the Weber Smokey Mountain

Smoked Pork Spareribs on the Weber Smokey Mountain

Last to come off were the baked spareribs. They certainly smelled good while they were roasting. Not much fat had accumulated in the bottom of the pan, since most of it was boiled off in the water beforehand.

Boiled and Baked Pork Spareribs Out From the Oven

Boiled and Baked Pork Spareribs Out From the Oven

The Freak Out

We cut each slab into individual rib portions and plated them up. Of course, we had to test each rib for “quality control” purposes. Each tasted different, but Annie noticed that something was not right. “It’s not salty enough,” she said.

Uh oh.

Remember when I said that I deviated from the recipe by using straight granulated garlic and onion instead of the garlic salt and onion salt that the recipe called for? Well I forgot to add back the missing salt. So the rub ended up being unbalanced on the sweet side.

Annie freaked out. “You didn’t put any salt?!”

“The recipe doesn’t call for salt!”

“There’s no way that a meat recipe doesn’t have salt.” She looked the recipe up and noticed that the ingredient list said garlic salt and onion salt and celery salt. “There is salt in this! You just didn’t add it! We can’t serve this! It won’t taste good! You just screwed up your own showdown! Aaaaah!”

“Stop being so negative! It’s done, so what can we do to fix it?” I grabbed the canister of Morton’s table salt. “Let’s just salt it now with this.”

“No, let’s use the kosher salt instead.”

So we sprinkled all our slabs with kosher salt, covered the platters with foil, and hoped for the best.

The Set Up

Before the guests arrived, I set out the four platters of ribs, and labeled them A, B, C and D:

Ultimate Rib Showdown: Pork Spareribs Cooked Four Ways

Ultimate Rib Showdown

When everyone had arrived and were all ready to eat, I explained to them what we were about to do. Each person would get a plate, a pencil, and a scoring sheet.

(I made this scoring sheet up based on my research into how barbecue competitions are judged and scored.)

Ultimate Rib Showdown Scoring Sheet

They were here to taste and judge four ribs, cooked with different styles. I didn’t tell them which rib was cooked with which style. And then, we all got to eating and scoring.

Scoring the Pork Spareribs

 Scoring the Pork Spareribs

The Comments

When everyone had finished scoring, we could relax and start talking. I revealed which ribs were cooked which way:

A. Grilled
B. Texas Smokehouse BBQ
C. Boiled and Baked
D. Smoked

The Texas Smokehouse BBQ ribs were a dead giveaway because they were obviously a different cut, and also there was only one slab’s worth of ribs on the platter instead of two. Interestingly, everyone agreed that the Texas Smokehouse ribs were not very good.

Some people thought that the grilled ribs were boiled, and vice versa. Either the tenderness of the grilled ribs threw them off, or the flavor on the boiled ribs fooled them.

People were surprised when I revealed that all of my ribs were coated with the same rub. The ribs tasted differently, depending on how they were cooked. They thought I used different rubs for the different methods.

Nope.

The Results?

When all was said and done, we went inside to eat the rest of the meal, including a fantastic cornbread made by Annie (which we will blog about in another post), a sublime potato salad made by Carolyn, a wonderful bean salad by our friend Betty, and two awesome pavlovas by our friend Felicia. Not to mention the ethereal 2004 Two Hands Bella’s Garden Shiraz brought by Manuel. We had a great time just talking about food and life in general.

Midway through the meal, I tallied up all the scores. I’m happy to say, there was a clear winner and a clear loser. In fact, the scores fell pretty much in line with what I expected. Although, two of the scores were closer than I would have thought.

So, which rib won the Ultimate Rib Showdown? Does Smoked stand out above the rest? Did Grilled burn the competition? Or will Boiled and Baked put out the others’ fires?

You’ll have to read our next post to find out ;-)

Aloha, Nate