Binderama60for60

The Granddaddy of All 60|60 posts

If you can, please FTLOG, read this one in a browser. Delicious and PICTURES!. www.binderama.com

Do not read this hungry.

I am an avid carnivore, a meat eater. Not ravenous like a medieval knave or one of those crazy Vikings, or a lion or hyena. I’m no savage.

When I eat meat I use utensils, a lot of the time. I even dress for the occasion on occasion. Sometimes I shower before partaking. Plus, my second-degree-of-separation friend RFK, Jr. just put steak back at the top of the upside-down pyramid where it belongs. This is indeed the golden age.

Meat Day began back around 2010. As with most great innovations of the 21st Century, it was born in a bar in San Francisco. I’d been drinking with friends in SOMA but needed to bail and run to catch the train home to Sunnyvale. Once on the rails, I realized I had stiffed my Boys. I texted an apology. They responded: “smoke us some meat.”

And so we did.

Mary and I have hosted several so-called Meat Days for friends and neighbors since then. The day is about meat, obviously, and all kinds: beef, poultry and fish, in all shapes, sizes and preparations, the raw and the cooked. Sides, salads, dips, broths, liquor. And something for the veegoes.

Am I missing anything?

By that time, I’d been a seasoned griller for years, the basic stuff. We had a Weber charcoal grill and a couple of no-name gas rigs. One day at the Sears in Cupertino we came across a smoker. We’d been seeing them trend on food TV. It was a simple front-loader fueled by propane and smoked by wood. $150. Done.

That afternoon we smoked our first salmon fillet and a rack of ribs. They were awesome. They were probably dreadful but what did we know?

Since that day we’ve become zealous meat, fire and smoke enthusiasts. We’ve cycled through an arsenal of contraptions that make fire under meat: a few high-end gas grills, a Traeger pellet smoker, more basic Webers, flattop griddles, paella pans, a deep fryer and the greatest of all, a Big Green Egg. Oh, and the Ronco rotisserie oven (“set it and forget”) is killer. And a couple of air fryers. A sous vide setup. Plus tools and baskets and apps and all that gak, some blow torches. Okay, that’s all. Lots of knives. Skewers. 

This post is gonna be long and meaty, a feast dripping with memories, disasters, recipes and tips for meat and more. I’m not an expert. I’m an enthusiast who just wants to shout it out to the world!

Before we get started: since you’re not actually tasting anything, you probably need a soundtrack to keep your palate whetted and your eyes glued to this post. (Thanks to David Mauroff for sharing the first track at one of our first Meat Days.)

Rock out on this Meat Day playlist.

The Menu

Let’s start with the ingredients for a typical Meat Day.

Smoked Brisket

This is the centerpiece, the sustenance and the star. We’ve probably smoked 15-20 over the years, sometimes experimenting, sometimes following recipes, and not always succeeding. Even so, here’s my advice from the experience:

• Be prepared for a long cook. It might be eight hours or 14, depending on the meat, weather, hardware, skills, and not a little meat whispering.
• Get yourself a USDA Prime cut. A whole brisket, flat and point. The point is fatty, the flat is leaner. You want a mix of both. A good Costco should have one, reasonably priced. Look for something in the 12-15 pound range.
• It pains me to say it: you’ll need to slice off most of the thick slabs of fat to get the smoke closer to the meat. There will still be plenty of fat to ooze into the flesh for taste and texture and food coma.
• We go with a simple rub, the so-called Dalmatian rub. Salt and pepper, maybe a little heavier on the salt. Don’t be chintzy, lay it on. Mary likes a little paprika too.
• Wood. Honestly, I am good with any of them: hickory, mesquite, cherry, apple, pecan. I want to taste meat not wood.
• Cook. This is why brisket is a joy to smoke. It takes a long time, there is very little work (unless you screw something up); and it fills the neighborhood with glorious, envy-building aromas. You really shouldn’t leave it unattended so it’s the perfect excuse for a full autumn day of football.

• Temperature. This is a big deal.
  • Try to keep the smoker temp anywhere from 215-240. That’s easy with pellet smokers but not so with wood fire grills. The weather affects the inside temp and moisture more than you realize.
  • Get a good digital/wifi thermometer (or two) to stick in the meat to monitor from the couch and TV.
  • The stall. At about 170 degrees the internal temp will stop increasing, it might even drop. Some folks take it as a sign to pull the brisket, wrap it and return it to the heat–the Texas Crutch. I let mine power through, it will get there eventually. It can be scary but I’m no hero.
  • As for when it’s ready to come off, opinions vary widely. I subscribe to Aaron Franklin’s 206 degrees. It’s not perfect, it’s not science, but it’s the number I shoot for.
• Rest. I learned a lot about this part from my friend Rick Okuni, a master.
  • At temp, take the thing off the heat, wrap it in butcher paper, then swaddle it in towels and put it in an insulated cooler.
  • A lot of people are good with an hour of resting. I like to go two or three, if possible. The meat breaks down even more, it’s still cooking, but it doesn’t get mushy.
  • Another lesson from Rick: take this time to shower to get the smoke off and out of you. Maybe some eucalyptus.
• Slicing. Find the instructions and follow them. You will ruin the meat otherwise, without doubt. I learned the hard way. You cut the point one way and the flat perpendicular. Serious.
• No two cooks are alike. You might nail it twice and turn in some leather the next time. Don’t get discouraged, but stop screwing it up, which you will on occasion.

Meatball Dipping Bar

In all modesty, this is a stroke of genius. And anyone can do it in any situation.

For the sauces, no limits. Marinara, ranch, bleu, bbq, queso, gravy, pesto, ponzu, peanut. What else you got? Now, add a few labels for your guests and stand back. No, really, get away from there.

Steaks

USDA Prime beef over fire, rare or medium rare. That is all.

Addendum to Steak. One of the first times I grilled a steak without adult supervision, My friend Eric Hartness and I were tossing back beers while the ladies worked up some salads and sides. By the time they checked in on us, the slabs were charred past tarnation. The sides were good though. And the beer.

Ceviche Shots

A few inspirations for this one: there’s a place on the Embarcadero in San Francisco called La Mar. Exquisitely prepared ceviche with lots of variety, citrus, coconut, red sauce. Order the tasting plate. In the Bay Area we also frequented Alexanders where they serve hamachi shots with yuzu, citrus and herbs, six at a time. There’s now an Alexanders in Pasadena where we just happen to be visiting this weekend. I will get dressed up for that.

Anyway, Mary combined the two concepts and served up ceviche shots on Meat Day. She crafted several varieties and then dispatched them into shot glasses, arranged them in a pan of ice. Yes.

Speaking of shots…

Meat Cocktail

The last time I visited Montreal, I was surprised to learn that Montreal smoked meat is a thing. Joe Beef is an institution there. Even more surprising: they serve a meat cocktail. What’s not surprising is that it is a fearsome beast to stare down, let alone shoot and digest.

According to Epicurious, it’s a “savory, potent, martini variation, featuring 2 oz of cheap sake, 2 oz of vodka, a dash of Worcestershire, and a chilled, 1-oz skewered piece of raw beef tenderloin used as a stirrer.” 

These things are so gnarly, you won’t want to throw down more than six or seven. Actually, odds are you will be one and done.

Gavello Bacon Fatty

Here’s a recipe inspired by the Weber cookbook, which is a must for any griller’s library. They dedicate it to Boston, we dedicate it to the street we lived on for Meat Days in Sunnyvale. Who cares, it’s awesome. Hot links, parm and artichoke hearts rolled in a thick blanket of ground sausage, wrapped in a lattice of bacon and smoked for two hours.

Here’s the recipe. Just make it. Now.

Bacon. I’m a Fan.

On Meat Day, God made bacon.

And it was good.

So stop messing with it. Bacon is most perfect all by itself, just as God intended. For one of our earliest Meat Days, Mary did a dessert of candied bacon in chocolate, with a little extra spice. Our neighbor (from the midwest) was not happy and let Mary know. After he passed away a few years later, his widow apologized for his behavior that day. He had a point: don’t mess with bacon. I never got to tell him he was right.

The above product is available at my Zazzle store. It’s the perfect gift for the sophisticated bacon lover in your life because it has Latin on it. “In Arvina Veritas”

Fun tangent: In the event production world there is a term: Show Bacon. On-site, for the crew’s breakfast buffet, there is (or had better be) a huge chafing dish piled deep with well-done, salty, start-me-up bacon. In my opinion, the longer it sits (and coagulates, crisps, stews and ages) the better.

The Rare and the Raw

Until I was in my teens, meat was served well-done. I don’t remember when it happened, but having a steak prepared medium rare or rare was an epiphany.

That was the gateway flesh for me.

Next thing you know, I got all Pavlovian on beef carpaccio with oil, arugula, parm and seasoning. Soon enough I’m strung out on steak tartare, raw yolk and all. These days, if tartare is on the menu, there’s a good chance it will get into my belly.

Raw Seafood

I doubt Fred Bernstein expected a shout-out in this 60|60 series. He was my raw-seafood enabler, my pusher, my sponsor, my pimp, my spirit guide. It’s because of Freddy that I ate my first oyster and sampled my first sushi. I haven’t stopped.

Oysters

It was late into a night of drinking at a dive bar in New Orleans. While others at the table slurped up the half-shells, I smoked cigarettes and swilled beer. Finally, Freddy insisted I join him at the sloppy sauce bar, enthusing that it’s the sauce that makes the oysters sing.

He whipped up something with ketchup, horseradish, Worcestershire, Tabasco. I don’t really remember the mix because of the aforementioned swilling and the anticipation of panic-eating in public and making a scene in front of my colleagues.

Important moment: One of the first times I took Mary back to Virginia to meet the Folks, she came home from Wegmans with a dozen oysters and shucked them for my Dad. She was Family.

Somewhere in the twenty-teens, our height of impulse and indulgence was to have raw oysters on hand at home. We ordered them from the Rappahannock Oyster Company in Virginia. Just passing through the kitchen might turn into a shuck fest. More likely, a Saturday morning was for shooters: while I shucked, Mary blended vodka with some spicy tomato concoction (V8+++). Top it with an olive, lime, a zesty pepperoncini and shoot it. We don’t do that anymore. No explanation needed.

Our Dads were Rockefeller men. We make Rockefellers on occasion, usually in an oyster pan on the grill.

Here in Scottsdale we encountered a variant on the Rockefeller at Beau McMillian’s Elements at the Sanctuary. Here’s the recipe. Prepare to hit a lot of ethnic markets and aisles. We used to Google the ingredients and take some screen grabs of the packaging to show the clerks and stockers what we needed. Even with that, the English-as-a-fourth language folks weren’t much help.

I spent my first 20 years repulsed by the idea of eating fish, save for canned tuna with a big dollop of mayo. So when sushi started trending in the 80s–people are eating raw fish?–I thought the world had gone mad.

Then something happened. The Japanese conglomerate Matsushita bought MCA/Universal, the company I worked for. Corporate hosted a reception at our site in Florida. There was sushi everywhere.. I don’t remember anything else on the buffet, and I was hungry.

Enter Freddy B. He surveyed the vastness and guided me to the most approachable offerings for a noob and naysayer. Rolls to get started, then some simple nigiri. Again, he emphasized how a good sauce gives life to the fish and rice. A little soy, a bit of wasabi, ginger, dip and devour. And beer.

Thanks

I met up with Freddy B. at a Universal reunion a couple years ago. I gushed my appreciation for him initiating me into the world of raw and for all that it has added to my cultural and epicurean existence.

The Seafood Tower

Mary and I shared our first tower in Cannes, France. Now we have one every Sunday. I kid.

It’s become a Christmas Eve tradition. And we had one last week when Mary went to our fave market. She came home and served up a whopper. Her secret: Source a bunch of fresh seafood and arrange it on a tower. So good.

For the record, our Christmas Day supper is Mary’s killer Beef Wellington.

Odds & Ends

Gravy

Yes.
On everything.
Everything.

Waffle Tots

We don’t go to a lot of sporting events, but when we do, it’s for the food. Thanks to Cousin Jaine, we sampled Italian beef and esquites at a White Sox game, before the anthem had even been sung. The Sheboygan brats at a Giants game in San Francisco opened our eyes to something we can get locally when we’re back in Michigan. (We are exactly 60 miles across the Lake from Sheboygan, Wisconsin.) Michigan meat markets are very brat forward.

It was the discovery of “nacho tots” at a St. Louis Cardinals game that got us really going. Basically, it’s everything you’d put on a plate of nachos using tater tots instead. Some people call them totchoes. We don’t.

Anyway, Mary had the genius idea, almost biblical: turn tots into waffles.

It’s pretty easy: let a bag of tots thaw and then place them in a waffle iron, press and cook until they become a perfectly crispy, salty, spudsy platter. It’s the canvas onto which you pile chili, cheese, pulled pork, whatever you want. Try some Italian beef au jus or sliced Sheboygans with all toppings.

If you don’t have a bag of tater tots in your freezer, we need to talk.

Smoked Paella

In our early days of smoking, we were looking for anything new to try. On our honeymoon in Bangkok, we visited a market where a chef was prepping paella in a massive pan, like five feet in diameter. It was good. We got inspired.

We found this recipe in The New York Times for a smoked version. It takes some procuring, prep (that’s mise en place to Mary) and some focused TLC, but it’s worth it.

Here are a few items we’ve added to the recipe over the years: More saffron for flavor and color. Some pimentos, for the same reason. Get yourself crumbled, oily chorizo; it adds a lot to the broth. Add more seafood to the mix. Anything. We smoke some scallops beforehand and add them at the end. Lobster too. Squid would probably be good too.

It’s now our traditional New Years Eve feast. Enough goodness for 10 friends, just for the two of us.

Turducken: The Story

Not sure what got into us; probably idle hands. We’d just moved to Sunnyvale, the first house we owned together. I was trying to coax my Parents to come visit for a Christmas housewarming. I promised: if you come for the holiday, we’ll make a Turducken. I don’t know why I thought that was effective bait.

Anyway, I lied.

This was probably October. Mary and I figured we’d better do a test run before we serve this to my Folks and Mary’s whole west coast Family. We found a butcher to do the hard work: deboning a chicken, a duck and most of a turkey. Mary made three different types of stuffing to be layered and encased inside the thing.

Here’s the process. Be warned: it’s not pretty and doesn’t end well.

• Stuff the deboned chicken with one flavor of dressing, let’s say cajun.
• Use cooking twine to seal the dressing inside the chicken.
• Then surround the sutured chicken with a layer of a different dressing, let’s say sage.
• Now insert the chicken and dressing onto the splayed, deboned duck
• Sew it closed.
• (I’m getting a little woozy right now).
• Slather onto the sutured duck whatever you’ve got as your third dressing. I can’t think about that.
• Place this nestled monstrosity onto the splayed turkey
• Wrestle it closed and stitch the whole ungodly menagerie together.
• <Gag>
• Now, having completely lost your appetite and sense of right and wrong, put the amorphous, unwieldy 20-pound crime scene into a turkey pan and stick it in the oven.
• Cook at 350 for eight hours.
• Take its internal temperature and continue cooking for another four hours.
• Realize that it’s nowhere near done and it’s almost midnight.
• Turn off the oven and go to bed.
• Have nightmares.
• When you wake up, turn the oven back on and cook for another four hours.
• Skip the thermometer. Just take it out.
• Cut a cross section in order to inspect what you have done.
• Sample.
• Discard.
• Regret.

My Folks did join us in Sunnyvale and enjoyed a traditional turkey feast with all the fixings. They didn’t ask about the turducken and we didn’t tell.

A Story: Wedding Prime Rib

Long before vegetarians ruined everything, I was at a wedding in Virginia where a prime rib roast was the main course. Nice, juicy, thick slabs sliced and served. When the woman seated next to me got her plate, she flagged the server, politely: “I’m sorry, I don’t eat red meat.”

The server looked confused, a bit pained. She scooped up the plate and hurried it away, returned in short order, and laid a fresh cut of the roast down before my neighbor.

It was the well-done end cut of the roast. She was proud: “Ain’t no red in it!”

My new friend got my broccoli. I got a double helping of prime rib, two ways. I’ll take the W.

Holy cow!

I could go on and on and on. All day. We got ribs, turkey, chickens, more fish and beef, sausage, salami, venison and other game. Brines, marinades, rubs, injectors, nose-to-tails (no).

Who wants to talk about equipment? Gas versus wood versus charcoal versus electric? Is it cheating to use a pellet smoker? (Yes, but it’s good.)

On that last note, the HOA where we spend half the year here in Scottsdale bans gas- and fire-based grills on our patio. We can’t use propane. We can’t make fire. We can’t make smoke. Why are we here? I don’t know.

So when we get back to Lake Michigan, we’re gonna be jonesing for some all-day, flame-cooked, smoky goodness. So much goodness.

And a heaping helping of Oceana County’s world famous asparagus. That’s a story for another day.