Primus Pulled Pork with Rustic Faux Gourmet Cole Slaw

I went to see Primus on Friday for the first show of the Green Naugahyde tour. Since this is not a music review I will simply say that Primus is awesome. But out of Primus some inspiration was born. When Les Claypool stepped off stage for a moment for a wardrobe change and came back wearing a pig mask it made me think of the album Pork Soda, which made me think of the pulled pork I was planning on making for Sunday football. So I decided to dub my pork, Primus Pulled Pork and the rest is now leftovers.

To give credit where credit is due I borrowed heavily from Nibble Me This. I am still an armature at smoking so… I did what I do best; learn from someone else but find a way to make it mine make it mine.

Primus Pulled Pork

6.5 Lb Picnic Pork Roast with bone in (the Boston butt is the bottom of the pork shoulder the picnic is the top)

1 C apple juice

Billy Bones Competition Dry Rub

Some uncured bacon…(more on this later)

The 6.5 Lb roast waiting for some loving.

I took a Cajun injector and pumped as much apple juice into the roast as I could. I think I got somewhere between ½ - 1 cup in it before it started leaking. Then I rubbed in some Billy Bones all over the roast. I put it in the fridge for about 12 hours to do its thing.

While the roast was chillin’ I got to work prepping my Big Green Egg. I cleaned it out and put a batch of fresh coals inside. I also started soaking 3 fist sized mesquite wood chunks and 1 hickory in some water. Now the waiting game begins.

I wanted the pork to be ready for football so expecting it to take about 1.5 hours a Lb I knew I would have to get a late start. At about 2330 I woke up from a power nap to go fire up the Egg (the soaking wood chunks were added before firing). I also took the roast out of the fridge to start warming up to cooking temp. 

By 0030 I had the egg, with the plate setter legs up in it, holding fairly steady at 240 degrees. I wanted 250 but I was willing to take what I could get at almost 1 in the morning. I draped the Bacon over the top of the roast, because everyone knows that bacon goes well with pork roast.

I then placed placed it in the roasting basket and put it in the egg. I think I watched it until about 0130 to make sure the temp was holding. Then I went to bed. Not an easy thing to do, to have that much faith that it was going to hold steady but I was tired and I can sleep any where, at any time for any reason.

I checked the Egg at 0630 and it was still holding steady. I woke up again at 0900 and checked it and it had dropped about 20 degrees. I made some adjustments to get the temp up and took the roasts temp. It was sitting pretty at 170 after 8 hours. At 10 it finally hit my target of 190 internal temp. I pulled it off the egg, wrapped it, put it in an insulated grocery bag and let it rest for about an hour. 

This is the roast right after coming off the grill and getting wrapped up. One of the strips of bacon seems to have not made it out alive.... I wonder where it went?

It then got pulled out of the bag and pulled apart with a few forks. It was falling off the bone. I used some Bone Sucking BBQ to finish off the BBQ if anyone wanted a “wet” pulled pork. 

Rustic Faux Gourmet Cole Slaw

½ cabbage shredded

3 medium carrots shredded (I used 1 white, 1 orange, 1 purple)

½ onion grated

¾ C Mayo

2 T Sugar

2T White vinegar

1 T Dry Mustard

Fresh Ground Himalayan Smoked salt

Fresh ground pepper

I am not sure what the word rustic conjures up in your culinary vernacular but in mine it translates in to this; I did not have the right equipment to shred the cabbage so I cut it as small as I felt like cutting it….

Mix the plant matter together.

Mix the spices, vinegar and mayo in a separate bowl. When thoroughly mixed add to plant matter. Stir. Refrigerate. 

Serve with some cornbread and the pork. Invite and army over for dinner or be ready to eat pulled pork for a month. 

Guinness Black Lager went well with this

My bad ass chicken recipe

This recipe really doesn't have a name. This was just something that I made up when I was living in Virginia Beach. I think my roommate Kris was my kitchen test dummy at the time. I think I got the idea from Chicken Cordon Bleu but it is really nothing like it. I apologies for not giving you a hard ingredients list but there is really no defined amounts. I will tell you what you need and how to do it. From there it is simple enough but pretty labor intensive. It is probably one of my girlfriends favorite dishes of mine but I rarely make it because of the amount of work involved.There is also a lot of room for improvisation in this recipe. Please read the entire recipe before you begin, it will help determine what you need to do  So, without further adieu...

My bad ass chicken recipe

Ingredients 
- Chicken breasts, filleted and pounded flat (you can also use chicken cutlets)
- Crumbled feta cheese (Crumbled blue will also work0
- Baby spinach
- Fresh Garlic, pressed, to taste
- Bacon (thick or thin cut depending on cooking method)
- Stuffing (optional depending on cooking method)*
- Bamboo skewers

Method: Preparation

Take the chicken fillets or cutlets and pound them flat, if they seem to be to thick to work with. Do not pound them so flat that they have holes in them or you will have problems later. I find that an empty beer bottle seems to do the trick.

Put a layer of spinach leaves on the chicken.

Put some crumbled cheese and pressed garlic in the center of the chicken. You want just enough that you can roll the chicken up without it leaking out all over the place. Make sure you tuck the ends of the chicken so as to create a cheese and spinach filled chicken roll-up.

Take the skewers and use them to hold the chicken shut, it should take about 3 - 4 per chicken. Trim the skewers so that there is only about 1/2 an inch sticking out on each side.

Take the bacon and wrap tightly around the chicken. Don't wrap so tightly that you rip the bacon or squeeze the stuff out.

Set chicken aside and move on to the next one, until they are all wrapped up nice and neat, like so:

Method: Cooking

There are two cooking methods that I have used for this dish, grilling and baking.

Grilling:
I originally cooked this on the grill. I used a medium low heat and put the chicken as far away from the flame as I could, because as the fat in the bacon renders you will get some vicious flare ups. Try to abate the flames as best as you can but keep in mind that the bacon serves two purposes in this cooking method. First as bacon cooks it will tighten up on the chicken, sealing in the juices and melting cheese. Second, and the reason why you want thicker bacon, it protects if from the flames. Cook the chicken until you get a 165 internal temperature.

When it is done cooking, pull it off the grill and let it rest for 5 - 10 minutes. Either remove the skewers or warn your diners that they are there (this is very important when grilling as the ends tend to burn off). The bacon can either be eaten or discarded. It should be rather charred and crispy on the outside but still tasty....

(I will add pictures when I get them for this method)

Baking: 
I have adapted a second cooking method for this dish, baking. To bake the chicken I use a 375 degree oven. I take the chicken and put it in a Pyrex dish full of stuffing. For this method thinner bacon is better as it will crisp up in the oven quicker than thicker bacon will. Cooking time is around 45 minutes but varies depending on the size of the chicken rolls (cook to an internal temperature of 165). At about the half way point I flip the chicken, for even cooking. When done, remove from the oven and let rest for 5 - 10 minutes. Remove skewers or warn diners that they are there.

*A note on stuffing. I often cheat with stuffing and will make boxed stuffing, unless i have the time to make my own. I have found Bell's Stuffing to be one of the few commercially available stuffing's that does not have High Fructose Corn Syrup in it. I am not sure why stuffing needs HFCS in it but I don't want it. That crap is everywhere and I try my best to avoid it. Also when making boxed stuffing I like adding sauteed onions and some diced up crispy apples (granny smith, honeycrisp, pink ladys etc...). I also replace the water with beer or chicken broth. When baking it uncovered like I am in this recipe I tend to add a touch more water than what is called for.

Sorry for being so wordy but this is my baby and I wanted to treat her right. If you have any questions about it, please ask in the comments and I will try my best to answer them.

Here is the finished product from last night with some Bell's Stuffing and some steamed Asparagus with pressed garlic thrown in the steamer bag.

Bon Appétit

Greetings

Welcome to my recipe blog. This is not my weekly recipe but more of an establishment of my mission statement. What I would like to do is to post at least one recipe a week of something I have cooked. I want to try and provide as detailed of an ingredients list and instructions as I can. However there will be plenty of times where I will not use an exact amount of something or use an exact technique but I will try and be as descriptive about what I am using or what I am doing as I can. It is cooking, not rocket science so have some fun…

I would also like to bring some of my friends on-board with this project. I know that many of them are no strangers to a kitchen and I think that the knowledge base that could be accumulated here is immense. So looking forward hopefully some of you will want to participate either by recreating what I am doing or by contributing your own recipes. Either way it should be good times.

Another aspect to consider is that I like to be challenged. So please feel free to either comment or contact me in some other way with things you would like me to take a stab at. Really I would like to make this as interactive as I can and as fun as I can. I mean, really there is no point playing in the kitchen if you are not having fun doing it.

A little about myself and cooking: I think my interest in cooking comes from my Grandma Stout and my Grandma Pat. My Grandma Stout was an amazing baker and just all round good cook. My Grandma Pat does fancier and more refined cooking. I can remember helping both of them out in the kitchen when I was younger. I am not sure if I was really helping of if they just put up with me in the kitchen… The other greatest influence was my mom. Of course most people will fiercely defend their moms cooking as the best in the world and that is understandable. My mom aside from being a mighty fine cook also taught me how to make something out of nothing, which is what she often had to work with.

For many of you this is probably the retelling of the abridged version of my life story…. For the rest of you … My formal culinary training consists of being a Navy cook for 7 years. More often than not it was mass production of food like substances more than it was actual cooking. But even in the worst case I still learned many of the basic skills of cooking during my time in the Navy. While I was in I also did a fair amount of cooking at home and really tried to refine those skills (thank you Kris for being a guinea pig). After my time in the Navy I went to school at Johnson & Wales and got a degree in restaurant management. I am pretty sure that the degree is not worth the paper it is printed on but I have it none the less. Now that I have totally divested myself from cooking for a living or for a scholastic endeavor my passion for it has picked back up (the Navy really did a job on ripping the passion for cooking out of me).

Now days I find that I primarily cook for me and my girlfriend. On occasion I will cook a little something something for a party, gathering or get together with friends. This seems to pick up during the summer when I am poolside and have access to a grill. If you have not been to one of my poolside cookouts you have no idea what you are missing…. So cheers! And here is looking forward to posting my first recipe. Not sure if I will be able to get to something this weekend or not as I have a term paper to write but I will hopefully have a chance to make something.