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Chris and Hiroko’s Yakiniku Extraveganza

Written on November 9, 2009 by Mr. Stephenson in BBQ and Fire, Japanese, Meat, Mr Stephenson, Purveyors, Recipes, Sauces, Vegetables and fruits, fire cooking

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Chris and Hiroko’s wedding was lovely and a lot of fun. We had the pleasure of spending a bunch of time with them and a group of their close friends. It was a quick but excellent trip. We arrived in Vancouver on Thursday and spent Friday and Saturday afternoon prepping for the reception meal.

Ton Toro! It makes excellent rocket fuel when cooked over an open flame.

We planned the BBQ around three different meats: flanken or korean cut ribs (1/4 inch thick), pork belly, and chicken thigh. Hiroko brought some amazing ingredients from Japan, Windsor meats (at Main and King Edward in Vancouver) did not disappoint with the quality of their meat, and we did manage to find a hibachi which we used along with a gas grill for some of the meats.

We put a lot of effort into the sauces. Japanese BBQ is all about the quality of the meat and dipping sauces. I took the opportunity to dig into a bit of history and bunch of different flavours. The array of Japanese sauces, up to this point, had been a bit of a mystery to me. I always love a good ponzu or sweet miso sauce but, other than a number of early experiments, I’ve not sat down to really work through the flavors in any systematic way to be able to taste my way through them from scratch.

To the internet! “yakiniku+sauce” Mr. Google-san. I found a lot of stuff: some history, some more history that contradicts the other history (yah!), some good pictures, and some recipes that looked pretty good along with some that looked awful (I will leave these to the imagination). Looking at the research, it really does turn out that the tasty and ubiquitous Teriyaki is just one flavour among many that one can pair up with the grilled meats.

I started with two apparently traditional Yakuniku sauce recipes that I found. I certainly make no pretense of doing a traditional Yakiniku, but I did want to try to start with something that would be at least recognizable as a Yakiniku flavour. I’m not sure if it was because I was using a dark soy sauce and too much salt, but I found that the sauces were very very salty so made some adjustments to taste by adding more mirin, fruit and white wine. We used pear in the soy sauce based sauce for the rib marinade and a salt, onion, lemon, sesame marinade for the pork belly. Now I know that this is by no means a traditional Yakiniku marinade, but I though that a sweet apple/miso sauce would be nice for the chicken. Again I thought that it was way too salty so in the end I winged it. Check out the Yakiniku marinade recipes posting for an approximation of the sauces that I made. Sheree, as always, upped the game with clear feedback, a sense of direction and talked me off the edge of the cliff more than a few times.

A couple afternoon's worth of sauce making.

The plan was to use these sauces for marinade and dipping but I also wanted to make a few more sauces for variation. I ended up settling on ponzu, mustard/wasabi soy, chili vinegar/soy, and ginger soy sauces. This would give guests a range of flavors to experiment with for the various meats and vegetables we were going to be grilling up. The marinade, by the way, was used for a short amount of time, about 45 minutes, as I did not want to overpower the meat.

One of the best Japanese food websites I came across was justhungry.com . In it, Makiko, has put together a very clear survey of Japanese ingredients and cooking techniques from the perspective of personal favorite dishes and family recipes. She provides a brief and charming overview of the essential flavours used in soy based Japanese dipping sauces and where they are used. As Makiko encourages, these are the basics and one can modulate the proportions of the ingredients to personal taste. This is what I’m always looking for when learning something new – the cornerstone elements, structures and permission to mess about. For your reference, I’ve posted a little summary. If you’re interested in Japanese cooking, I would encourage you to check out Makiko’s site.

Dashi turned out to be a crucial ingredient for thinning some of these sauces out a touch. Rather than using wine, mirin or vinegar to cut the salt of the soysauce, I used dashi which is a broth made from various flavour packed ingredients. I made what is called Kombu (a seaweed) and Katsuobushi (bonito flake) dashi. This is a light but very robust broth that is packed with umami. You can, infact, see natural glutamate crystals on the surface of the kombu, and the bonito has a fabulously meaty aroma.

Chris and Hiroko after the wedding near Kts beach

Chris and Hirko near Kits Beach after the wedding.

With all this talk of Yakiniku, we can’t forget about the reason that we were there in Vancouver – Chris and Hiroko’s wedding! It was quite simply gorgeous. The weather did not really co-operate – we had a bit of a Vancouver fall day (um…rainy and chilly) so instead the planned beach wedding, we all met at the wedding commissioner’s home in Kitsilano. It turned out to be a lovely character home a stone’s throw from Kits beach. Chris and Hiroko looked dashing and the ceremony was to the point and elegant – growing together and taking care of each other was the message. It was touching seeing the two of them tie the knot.

After the wedding Sheree and I went to Chris’s best friend, Colin’s, place to prepare for the reception. It was three hours of mad sauce making, meat, and veg prep. We ended up enlisting the help of a few guests to finish up some of the skewering for the vegetables and the most excellent Ton Toro (pork belly).

Chris’s friend Rachel brought a tremendous set of appetizers including steamed wheat/spelt chinese style buns filled with veg, tofu and some chilies, an amazing artichoke dip with baguette and a lovely vegetable platter. We had a few moments to sample her good work and to pause and mill about as everyone arrived…and then it was go-time.

The cooking arrangement for the evening was an extraordinarily large gas grill – you could easily fit a lamb on this thing – and a little hibachi. I wanted to get some decent coals going on the hibachi for a good wood-cooked flavour, so I loaded it up with natural charcoal and added a half dozen 3″ chunks of oak wood for flavour. I figured that this would be a great place to do the ribs. I thought I would use the gas grill for the veg and the pork belly – being bit concerned that the pork belly would light on fire over the coals.

Just before the pork-belly-rocket experiment.

It was dark outside and there was no patio light so Colin was good enough to lend me his headlamp. It was a perfect BBQ nerd moment: fabulous meat, coals, gas grill, lots of guests, a giant beer, leather jacket, headlamp. Check and check.

I started with a quick run of ribs and chicken and they received good feedback from the party floor which was encouraging to say the least. I started up some of the pork belly on the gas grill, closed the lid and then tended to the ribs on the hibachi. Within a couple of minutes, flames were shooting out of the BBQ like a rocket – kind of a rookie mistake I realize. It was just a touch entertaining as I quietly moved the BBQ away from the outside wall and quietly asked for the fire extinguisher - just in case. Pork belly would make an excellent rocket fuel. After about 10 minutes they had burnt themselves out. When I opened up the bbq, there was one tiny, sad little black pork nugget the size of a quarter and hard as a rock. Next round, I resolved to leave the cover open and to move the slices of pork belly around a bunch to avoid another bacon-jet experience. These ones, with the revised cooking method, turned out great and were exceptional with the mustard soysauce and the ponzu.

An array of tasty treats. Veg, Chicken and Ton Toro in the foreground. Flanken cut ribs on the hibachi in the background.

Vegetable-wise, we did up a bunch of grilled peppers, shitake mushrooms, some roasted garlic, and a corn/shitake mushroom mix in a foil pouch. All of these we splashed on a simple combo of soy sauce, rice vinegar, vegetable oil, and a touch of sesame oil – super simple but a really magic combo of flavours that supported the veg well.

It took about an hour and a half to get everything grilled up. Sheree kept things moving into the party and also brought back some nibbles to share. The feedback from the guests was really great – they were experimenting with different meat/sauce combos and sending back reports of their favorites. This is what I was hoping for. The Japanese contingent were especially digging the apple miso sauce. One of Hirko’s friends said it reminded her of that sauce at a restaurant at home. She asked for the recipe which was the best compliment I could have received.

The evening continued: a few speeches, a stellar slideshow by Colin telling the history of Chris and Hirko’s relationship, some emailed words from our mom who could not attend, and a hilarious party game conducted by Akiko in which we all drew out the answer to a series of questions about Chris and Hiroko’s favorite body parts. The evening then moved on to dancing (Colin actually did the worm), drinking beer poured directly from from a minikeg on high, and – finally- a traditional cocktail fueled shoulder punching match between Chris and I which got a little out of hand and ended up with Colin receiving an accidental jab to the mouth (sorry Colin).

It was a great night and the Yakiniku was the perfect meal. It was casual, easy to eat, tasty and a just the right amount of special. I hope that it helped make the evening a memorable one for Chris, Hiroko and all the guests. It was certainly a real pleasure to prepare and, based on this evening, I think that I will definitely make it again.

Kombu and Katsuo Dashi Recipe

Written on November 9, 2009 by Mr. Stephenson in BBQ and Fire, Fish and seafood, Mr Stephenson, Recipes, Sauces, fire cooking

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This is the Dashi recipe used for Chris and Hiroko’s Yakiniku extravaganza.

Kombu and Katsuo Dashi

8 inch kombu (dried kelp)
2/3 oz. (I just used a small handful) katsuobushi (dried bonito) flakes
4 and cups water

Bring to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes. Strain and use as a soup base or sauce ingredient.

Yakiniku

Written on November 1, 2009 by Mr. Stephenson in BBQ and Fire, Meat, Mr Stephenson, Uncategorized, fire cooking

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Mr. Duess will love this one, its all about cooking things quickly…again as a way of emphasizing the freshness and quality of the ingredient.

Um...yum.

I have been invited to cook the dinner for my brother, Chris’s, wedding. It’s a casual affair with 30 or so people attending. He requested that the meal be relaxed and easy to eat whilst milling about. I, of course, want to do something special. He is getting married to a charming Japanese woman, Hirko, and I thought that there had to be a BBQ tradition of some sort in Japan. I did some research and, low and behold, I found Yakiniku!

Yakiniku is Korean BBQ modified for Japanese tastes, it was brought to Japan by Koreans after the war. I have read that the meat is cut into smaller pieces and the marinades are a bit lighter and less sweet, or the meat is not marinated at all. Consulting with the good folks at Sanko revealed some fabulous accompaniments along with some advice for traditional Japanese wedding gifts – cash. Yakiniku is described as being more about the softness and texture of the meat than about strong flavours. From what I’ve seen, people use a lot of apple and pear in the marinates.

Torrance Torihei's photo of Ton Toro - Yum

Mr Duess will also love this, one of the favorite dishes is Ton Toro, which is marinated grilled pork belly! I ran a little test last night with some fresh pork belly. I have to say that the combo of soya sauce, mirin, garlic and a touch of rice vinegar with grilled bork belly is a real pleasure. It turns out that this is also Hiroko’s favorite so I know I’m on the right track here.

In any event, it is a perfect way to do something casual but a touch fancy for Chris and Hirko’s wedding. Its also very quick to prepare so I will be able to enjoy the party as well as chefing up the meal.

Its going to be an interesting adventure. As a heritage cooking technique, it really involves tracing the lineage of the techniques (I’ve certainly done my fair share of…um…inquiry into Korean BBQ) to arrive at the right set of flavours and compliments to the meal. There is also the further element of our Canadian tastes in this exercise. Yakiniku was developed to make eating the internal organs of the cow more palatable – offal prepared in such a way will still not entice the uninitiated Canadian palette so we are choosing to stick to beef rib – both rib eye and shortrib, pork belly, chicken thigh and shrimp. I certainly know that I won’t be making authentic Yakiniku but I’ll be doing my best to make a tasty and fun interpretation of it.

I will be using what is at hand at the party – a gas BBQ at Chris’s friend’s place. I think that I will supplement this with a small tray of briquettes and some kind of hardwood – alder or oak I think for some wood cooked flavour. Alternately I might build myself a little hibachi or pick up a weber smokey joe – the more I think about this the more I think it makes more sense to do this over coals. I’ve ordered my pork belly and ribs from Windsor Meats who I’ve been told is the best Butcher in Vancouver.

I will certainly be taking my camera with me to the meal and will post some updates of the prep and the meal proper.

Cold smoked bacon

Written on October 22, 2009 by Mr Duess in BBQ and Fire, Curing, Meat, Mr Duess, Smoking

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The cold smoked bacon is ready for consumption. This is what it looks like:
IMGP5823

It turned out absolutely delicious. The 36 hour cold smoke, and the subsequent hanging in the basement, means that the flavour is highly concentrated, so a little goes a long way.

Here’s how to do it

Wait for fall. You’ll need low ambient temperatures, ideally in the low sixties, for this to work. Any higher, and the meat might spoil. You don’t want frost either, a cool fall day is perfect.

Start with a generous amount of pork belly. Mr. Stephenson and myself tend to buy an entire belly, partly because the result will be delicious and freezes well, partly because, if you’re anything like us, you’ll end up giving much of the bacon away to grateful friends. A man carrying smoked pork products is a man who’s welcome in most people’s houses and a slab of home smoked bacon beats a bottle of wine as a host present.

Cure the bacon as you would for the hot smoked version. The making bacon video shows you how. I use Michael Ruhlman’s basic cure, salt, sugar and a small amount of pink salt both for flavour and to make sure that botulism isn’t an option. Dredge the belly in the cure until well covered, then put into large ziplock bags and add any further flavourings.

4006362752_b9cf1cc054_o I made three different spice cures, one with smoked paprika, one with fennel and one with a Syrian sausage spice mix I’ve bought some time back in a Turkish store in Scarborough. Cure the meat in the fridge for three days, turning it daily. The salt will start pulling liquid out of the meat almost instantly, by the end of day three there should be a fair amount of brine in the bag and the meat should feel quite a bit stiffer.

After three or four days take the meat out of the brine and rinse with cold water. Poke a hole in it and tie a piece of string, so you can hang it. I hang my bellies into the unlit smoker, where I leave them to dry for 24 hours. Obviously this only works when the temperatures are low enough, if it’s too warm dry the meat in the fridge.

4005596541_389392e23d_o Light your smoker. I built a smoke house during the summer, I generate smoke with a smoke bullet from porkypas.com. Truth be told it took me a couple of tries to get the hang of it, but now I get consistent smoke times – without the bullet requiering attention – of four hours and up.

And that’s almost the end of it. Smoke the bacon for about 36 hours. I tend to smoke over a weekend. I start the smoker up at about 8:00 in the morning, then keep it going until close to midnight when I give it one last fill and go to bed. The next morning I clean the bullet out, refill it and let it run for another day.

Once smoked to your satisfaction, take the bacon out of the smoker. Sprinkle the meat side generously with cracked pepper, wrap in cheesecloth and hang in a dark, cool place – a basement is ideal – for about four to six weeks. The bacon will dry out and continue to cure. When the meat feels reasonably firm, the bacon is ready to eat.

Makin’ Bacon. The movie. Part 2.

Written on August 20, 2009 by Mr. Stephenson in BBQ and Fire, Curing, Meat, Mr Stephenson, Smoking, Tutorial, Video

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This is the video companion to the second part of our posting on Makin’ Bacon - Makin’ Bacon – Part 2. The Big Smoke.

As food-wunder-geek Alton Brown said, “Until you’ve made your own bacon, you haven’t eaten bacon”. So kick back, light up a nice blow torch (don’t ask…just watch), and check out the movie for the second part of our Makin’ BAcon tutorial.

To follow the story, you can also check out:

Makin’ Bacon Part 1 – doing the cure

Makin’ Bacon Part 1 – The Movie

Stay tuned for segments on hot smoking, and a review/tutorial on “The Smokinator 1000″ which turns the fabulously modest and flexible Weber kettle grill into an unbelievably effective smoker for less that $100. We’re certain that you’ll love it as we do.

Tags: bacon, smokinator, vacuumpack, weber

Makin’ Bacon – Part 2 The Big Smoke

Written on August 19, 2009 by Mr. Stephenson in BBQ and Fire, Curing, Meat, Mr Stephenson, Smoking

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Alright. Where were we. Oh yes. Home made or artisan made bacon is simply the best thing ever. Once you’ve had it, it is not an easy thing to forget!

When I dream of bacon - this is what I see.

We cannot say enough good things about the transformation that the humble pork belly makes when it is cured and then either smoked or simply roasted in the oven. You end up with an ingredient that will transform the simplest soup, stew, salad…um…scone, sandwich, burger, shepherd’s pie, braise….into something really sumptuous.

This is part 2 of our bacon tutorial. Its arguably the simpler part of the bacon making process if you’re familiar with smoking. It becomes even simpler if you simply roast it in the oven. Smoking is not necessary at all. An oven roasted bacon is a beautiful thing. The ever meat-tastic Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall reports that he smokes maybe a quarter of the bacon he makes. He finds that the oven roasted bacon makes for an excellent ingredient as well as being very tasty out of the pan. All this is to say that if you do not have access to a smoker, don’t fret – the oven is a perfect place to finish a bacon.

Our home made bacon has been sitting in the fridge for 5 days in its cure (See Makin’ Bacon part 1…or even better, Bacon – The Movie Part 1). We’ve been turning it once a day and rearranging the pieces so that the each take a turn at the bottom of the stack. After about 5 days, the flesh will firm up and will become a richer hue of redish pink rather than the light pink of the raw pork belly. If it still feels really squishy and looks light pink, give it another day.

Anywhere between 3 and 7 days the belly will be cured. The longer it sits in the cure, though, the saltier it will become. I find that, if I measured 50g (1/4ish cup) of cure per 3-5 lb belly, 5 days works quite nicely. It allows the spices to permeate the meat and the cure is solid but not too salty.

Some people rinse the belly at this stage. I find that when using this curing method, there is no need to rinse. You’ll also get the added bonus of keeping the spices on the meat which adds some nice texture and great flavor to your finished bacon.

Weber at 250 degrees at the top of the dome. This equals 230ish degrees at the grill surface.

Our lovely bacons after about 3 hours in the smoke. The "Smokinator 1000" smokebox is on the left hand side of the grill.

At this point you can either very simply wrap them in foil and roast them in the oven at 250f for about 3 hours to an internal temperature of 130f OR you can hot smoke them.

We’ll be doing an more in depth exploration of smoking at a later point. You can check out the soon to be released movie to get a brief overview. The short story is that you want to smoke it at 230ish degrees for, again, about 3 hours. I like either Oak, Maple, Alder and small amounts of hickory but you’ll need to experiment to get a taste that agrees with the taste buds of you and yours’. These bellies are being smoked in a combination of Oak and Alder (ignore what I said in the video…I changed my mind mid course). I went for a lighter flavoured smoke because I wanted to the spices and the quality of the meat to really shine through. It really gave the bacon a great light smoky flavour that complimented everything very well.

Once the bellies have been smoked or roasted, you’ll want to let them cool a touch, and then cut the rind (skin) off. Its helps to angle the blade up towards the skin while using long even strokes when doing this. It stops you from cutting into the layer of meat underneath.

From here you want to chill the bacons overnight and then carve into portions and freeze what you are not going to use immediately. We vacuum bag ours up and put groovy/nerdy labels (it is a fine line sometimes) on them for friends.

Cinnamon bacon cut into chunks, vacuum packed and ready for the freezer and friends.

Bacon in the cast iron pan with some green tomatoes from the garden.

When you cook this kind of bacon, you will discover that it is nothing like commercial bacon. It does not shrink in the pan at all. The best way to cook it is on low heat. I prefer a cast iron pan but any heavy pan will do the trick.When we finished the bacon, Mrs. Stephenson and I made ourselves these amazing bacon and panfried green tomato sandwiches on rye bread. So so good.

Please keep an eye out for future discussions on smoking and “The Smokenator 1000″ which is the most excellent and ingenious tool that we used in the Weber kettle grill to smoke the bacon.

I can personally vouch for the deliciousness of these sandwiches. They were spectacular.

Some excellent sources for diving deeper into makin’ bacon and meat curing are Michael Ruhmann’s Charcouterie and Mr. Meat, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Meat book. Two different approaches though both very committed to making excellent cured meats.

Stay tuned for the movie accompaniment to this posting. It’ll be coming within a day or so. In the meantime, best of luck with your bacon makin’.

Tags: bacon, smokinator, weber

The first run

Written on August 8, 2009 by Mr Duess in BBQ and Fire, DIY, Smoking

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While it is way too warm, and will be until fall, to properly cold smoke meat and fish, I wanted to at least try the smokehouse. In went some hard boiled eggs, a handful of heirloom tomatoes and some salt.

As you can see, it worked very well.

Tags: cold smoker, Smoking, smoking bullet

The cold smoker

Written on July 26, 2009 by Mr Duess in BBQ and Fire, DIY, Smoking

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The smoking bullet on it's first test run

Today I finally tested the cold smoking box I’ve been building. The smoker is about 6″ high, built from pine on the inside and cedar on the outside. The box sits on a concrete block foundation to keep it dry and has a shingle roof.

Smoke is generated by a smoking bullet, fixed to the outside of the box. Air is pushed into the bullet by an aquarium air pump. The smoke is only very slightly warm when entering the smoke chamber. In today’s two hour test run there was no measurable temperature increase in the smoke box.

I had thought about insulating the box – there’s 2″ of space between the inner box and the outside siding, but then I decided against it. After all, it’s a cold smoker, I want it to be cold and come fall, the ambient temperature is supposed to keep the goods from spoiling during the smoking process.

I built the entire box from pine boards, with the result that there were a number of gaps where boards were not butting up perfectly. To make sure that no smoke was leaking I covered the outside with construction paper, completely sealing the smoking box.

Smoking box on the left, storage on the right.

Here’s a shot of the finished box. The smoking box is larger enough for anything I would want to smoke – sausages, fish, even an entire pig’s leg will fit without problems. With a heater installed the box can also be used as a drying box, for everything from biltong to tomatoes.

A simple thermostat connected to an electric fan heater should do the trick just fine. The box isn’t airtight, although there’s remarkably little smoke leakage, so running a fan should not be an issue.

For today’s test run I put a bowl of kosher salt into the smoker, shaking it a couple of times to make sure that the smoke had a time to adhere to all the salt. It smells wonderful, can’t wait to use it.

Tags: cold smoker, Smoking, smoking bullet