DIY Sriracha

Hello internet friends, I know it's been awhile since I have last posted. The situation is, I've relocated from NYC to SoCal, and I've been busy moving and re-acclimating. So far, sunny California has been treating me well. It's almost impossible to find a good slice of pizza but the burgers and beer are pretty amazing.

I'm going to make an effort to get back to posting on a more regular basis soon. For now, please enjoy this awesome video about making your own Sriracha from SkeeterNYC that I found on BoingBoing.

 

If you don't know what Sriracha is, please read this informative comic from The Oatmeal.

Pardon the Interruption...

 (scary cake, via The Kitchn)

I know I've been slacking off on posting lately. It's been mostly due to the impending end to my graduate student career and related thesis writing activities. Basically, posting is going to be very sparse until August. Until then, I'll try to keep you updated with the goings-on in the food interwebs. Also, my CSA is starting next week, so I'm planning to have some related posts on seasonal veggies.

For now, please entertain and inform yourselves with the following items of interest:

Snake Oil in Your Snacks - Don't believe everything you read on food packaging, or How yogurt isn't going to solve all of your bowel problems.
The Bisphenol A Saga Heats Up - This endocrine disrupting compound is showing up more and more places - previously, in Nalgene bottles and other plastic bottles, and now in most canned food, too.
Dismal Reports on Dietary Supplements - In other snake oil news, food supplements are mostly bunk.
Your Fetus Can Taste Your Food - Turns out, what you eat while pregnant has an effect on what your baby will prefer to eat once it's born.
Why Bananas Turn Black in the Fridge - Cold damages these tropical fruits and causes their cells' vaculoles to leak causing phenol oxidation. Got that?
Do Spices Really Only Keep For Six Months? - Unsurprisingly, they don't spontaneously go bad after this period, but ground spices do lose flavor over time.
Keep 'Em Separated - Why you have to keep egg whites and yolks separate if you want to whip up some nice foamy egg whites. You don't want lipids in your protein foam do you? DO YOU?!
Eat Your Way to a Better Tan - Science says, eating your veggies can help give you a healthy, sun-kissed glow.
Vodka Watermelon - Okay, there isn't much science in this post, but there should be. Osmosis, anyone? Also, delicious boozy watermelon... mmmmm....

Finally, because it is awesome, this video on DIY Plum Wine and Plum Syrup. Japanese green ume plums are in season now, if you can find them:

Speaking of "in season," its finally getting into real summertime here in the Northeast, so get thee to a farmer's market! Radishes and snap peas and strawberries, oh my!

DIY Bacon Part II: The Smoke

It's time! After a week or so of anxious waiting while your pork belly cures, the time has come to seal the deal and smoke your bacon!

Previously, I showed you how to cure fresh pork belly to begin making your own American-style bacon. What really separates American bacon from other types of cured pork belly, like Italian Pancetta, for example, is the smoking process. In this post I'll tell you how to smoke your cured pork belly to complete your bacon!

First, a little bit on smoke. Smoke is a collection of airborne solids, liquids, and gases that arise from incomplete combustion (burning) of a material. The composition of the smoke depends on what material you are burning. In the case of smoke used for food production, we are talking about wood smoke, specifically from burning hardwood, including oak, maple, or hickory wood.

(some smoke)

Human beings have been smoking meat for pretty much as long as they had meat to smoke. Dating back to prehistoric times, humans have used the smoking process as a means of preserving meat. This happens by a couple processes. First, chemicals that are present in wood smoke (including phenols) help to prevent fats from going rancid and others (including formaldehyde) prevent bacterial growth. However, since the smoke only gets at the outside of the meat (or whatever you're smoking), it doesn't completely prevent the food from going bad. Since smoking meat over a fire is often accompanied by heating and drying of the meat, this also helps the meat from going bad, as long as you've heated and dried it enough to prevent bacterial growth. Unfortunately, what you end up with in this case is something like beef jerkey. For a moister smoked meat, like the bacon we're making, curing the meat beforehand with salt and sodium nitrate will prevent bacterial growth within the meat, so we don't have to heat or dry it as much. However, because the meat is not thoroughly dried and salted, and because it is so available to us in our modern kitchens, bacon should always be stored in the refrigerator.

After the fold, Materials and Methods for smoking your bacon, with pics...

DIY Bacon Part I: The Cure

It's that time of year again - the sun is shining, the birds are singing, the farmers' market has the very first things that actually grew this year (hooray ramps!), and those of us with access to one are itching to use our outdoor grills. The rental Gods have bestowed upon me and my apartment a "backyard" (actually more like an alley with two spindly trees in it) in which I can grill things to my heart's content. As a kickoff to this grilling season, I decided to do a DIY food project I have tried once before (with much success): curing and smoking my own bacon.

(bacon!)

It may seem a like a lot of work, but actually making your own bacon is very manageable (and, I think, fun and rather satisfying). I have found the most difficult part of the whole process has been to find the primary ingredient: raw, uncured pork belly. I was recently delighted to find this at my local Fairway Market, but it can also be found at Asian or Latin markets or ordered from your friendly local butcher.

The next steps to make American-style bacon are to 1) cure the meat and 2) smoke it. The first part, the cure, is the subject of today's post. Curing meat is a process that preserves meat by treating it with salt, sugar, and a preservative like sodium nitrate. Salt is of primary importance when curing meat, since high levels of salt are the primary method of preservation here. Salt inhibits the growth of microorganisms by absorbing all available water by osmosis, preventing spoilage. Sugar and other ingredients in the cure add flavor to the meat.

The use of sodium nitrate (or nitrite) serves several purposes, including inhibiting bacterial growth (including the growth of toxic botulinum bacteria, the cause of botulism) and giving cured meat its characteristic flavor and pink color.  Sodium nitrate or nitrite causes this color by breaking down into nitric oxide (NO) within the meat and binding to the heme group within myoglobin, an oxygen-binding protein present in muscle tissue. This prevents oxidation of the iron-containing heme and causes it to appear a red color. We will add sodium nitrate to our cure in the form of pink salt or curing salt, which is 93.75% table salt combined with 6.25% sodium nitrate or sodium nitrite and dyed pink for identification. It's available for purchase here.

(pink salt)

Materials and Methods for curing the pork belly, as well as pics, after the fold:

DIY Kombucha

There's a cool story over at the New York Times about homebrewing kombucha, a fermented tea. This stuff has recently become popular in bottled form at many health food and grocery stores, but apparently it's not so hard to make yourself.

(via BoingBoing)

DIY Chicken Stock

(this is NOT chicken stock)

Once you figure out that making home made chicken stock isn't difficult, you'll look back with shame and sadness at all of the wasted roast chicken carcasses of your pre-enlightenment days.

Home made chicken stock is full of finger-licking goodness due to the presence of gelatin. Gelatin is formed when collagen, a protein found in animal connective tissue, is hydrolyzed (broken down). This process takes some heat and time to occur. That's why bones, tendons, ligaments and cartilage, though not tasty on their own, become tasty through the miracle of a long, slow simmer. It's also this finger-licking-goodness that you miss when you use powdered stock - it generally contains salt and chicken flavor but lacks delicious hydrolyzed proteins. Stock that comes in a can or carton is better, but still can contain some artificial ingredients and is generally inferior to homemade stock.

Lucky for us, homemade stock is easy and cheap to make! The Kitchn has a great DIY guide to making home made chicken stock, but here is my take (somewhat similar, with some hacks to make it easier and a little cheaper).

Chicken Stock Protocol

Materials: roast chicken carcass, vegetable scraps, garlic (optional), whole black peppercorns (optional), 2 pots large enough to hold everything, strainer, cheesecloth, several containers to hold finished stock ( about 1-2 quarts per chicken)

1) Take the remains of one or more roast chickens (bones, cartilage, and bits of meat, avoid the skin) and put it into a pot that fits snugly.
2) Add in several handfuls of vegetable detritus. I use celery ends, carrot ends and peels, onion ends and skins, herb stems, etc., but use whatever you have got on hand. This makes great use of what is otherwise garbage and saves more useful veggies for another meal. Add in a couple crushed cloves of garlic and some whole peppercorns if you have them.
3) Cover the solids in the pot with about an inch of water. Bring to a low simmer for 3-4 hours - you will see some bubbles, but try to avoid a real boil.
4) Line a strainer with cheese cloth and place that inside another pot to catch the finished stock. Pour the chicken stock and solids through the strainer.
5) Aliquot stock into containers to be refrigerated (about a week) or frozen (indefinitely). For this purpose I like the re-usable twist-top storage containers or re-used takeout soup containers.

Notes:
- If you notice that there is a lot of fat floating on top of the stock, refrigerate overnight then remove the solidified fat with a spoon and then freeze or use the stock.
- If you don't have enough time or materials to make stock after roasting a chicken, put the parts in a bag or plastic container in the freezer until you do have time. In the mean time, toss any veggie scraps that you generate into the container for making stock.
- This method can be used for any amount of chicken leftovers - just scale up.
- You can also make other kinds of stock this way - try turkey stock after Thanksgiving, or buy a bunch of soup bones and make beef stock.