The Official Food, Cooking & Gardening Thread

Batmobile_Engage

Squirrel Meat Aficionado.
Staff member
Dayum! Now, everyone on IGOTASTI knows where we're all going for Thanksgiving! :lol:

Just be sure to bring me some meat critters, skinned and cleaned though. I'm not gonna be skinning your week old, rigor mortis squirrels. Get to it while they're still hot!
 

Batmobile_Engage

Squirrel Meat Aficionado.
Staff member
Santa was nice enough to bring me a smoker this year for Christmas. I tried it out yesterday on a 7.7 lb. Boston Butt (bone-in pork shoulder) with great results. It smoked over apple wood chips for about 4 hours and then continued, wrapped in foil until the 8 hour mark.

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Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk
 

Alin

Diehard Car Enthusiast!
Damn! Living and eating like a true king! :bow:

How much does a smoker like that cost and how delicious was the result?
 

Batmobile_Engage

Squirrel Meat Aficionado.
Staff member
Damn! Living and eating like a true king! :bow:

How much does a smoker like that cost and how delicious was the result?

I think they are around $190, though this one was on sale before Christmas for about $120. It has a propane burner with a wood smoking tray above it.

I'm super pleased with how it turned out. I used apple wood chips and that seems like the perfect choice for pork.
 

Alin

Diehard Car Enthusiast!
I think they are around $190, though this one was on sale before Christmas for about $120. It has a propane burner with a wood smoking tray above it.

I'm super pleased with how it turned out. I used apple wood chips and that seems like the perfect choice for pork.

What else are you going to make?!
 

Batmobile_Engage

Squirrel Meat Aficionado.
Staff member
What else are you going to make?!

I'm not sure yet. I imagine this is now going to be a lifetime addiction. :lol: The one thing I do have planned for it, is two brined (in corning solution) deer hearts. They were trimmed, butterflied and brined for 7 days (in the same stuff used to make corned beef). That's probably going to happen this coming weekend. We'll see...
 

Batmobile_Engage

Squirrel Meat Aficionado.
Staff member
Corned, smoked venison hearts (there's two there, butterflied and trussed together during cooking) and a slab of smoked brisket.


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Alin

Diehard Car Enthusiast!
[MENTION=662]Batmobile_Engage[/MENTION] , you deserve some award for being the best chef on here. :lol:
 

Batmobile_Engage

Squirrel Meat Aficionado.
Staff member
Re: The Official Food, Cooking & Gardening Thread

@Batmobile_Engage , you deserve some award for being the best chef on here.

[MENTION=1]IGOTASTi[/MENTION] should make one.

Might I suggest a coat of arms featuring a Buck's head superimposed over two roasted turkey drum sticks, all perched atop a mountain of mashed potatoes and rutabaga, whence floweth a cascade of squirrel gravy. :welcome:
 

Batmobile_Engage

Squirrel Meat Aficionado.
Staff member
Re: The Official Food, Cooking & Gardening Thread

Smoked venison burgers! They came out perfectly medium-well after 80 minutes at ~200 degrees over hickory wood chips. My only critique would be to use either half as much (1 cup, rather than 2) wood chips or a more mild wood, than hickory. I ended up melting some cheddar on them and used onion buns, which was just the right bread. (They are not raw. The red color is a reaction between the meat and the smoke.)

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Alin

Diehard Car Enthusiast!
My mouth is watering. :bow:
 

Batmobile_Engage

Squirrel Meat Aficionado.
Staff member
Smoked Beef Short Ribs

They turned out amazing. I ate three last night and woke up with the meat sweats. :lol: They were literally dripping with liquid beefy goodness.


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Alin

Diehard Car Enthusiast!
What are the "meat sweats?!" :lol:
 

Batmobile_Engage

Squirrel Meat Aficionado.
Staff member
What are the "meat sweats?!" :lol:

^this. I gotta know.

Seriously guys? I thought everyone knew about the meat sweats...

(def): A variation on the food coma, the meat sweats are an as-of-yet medically unsubstantiated phenomenon in which, after eating a ridiculous amount of animal flesh, one's body is overtaken by a severe bout of protein-based perspiration.

(ex): Eat something smoked and dripping with liquefied tallow and you might (actually or just in your head, I don't know yet) think you can smell it in your sweat and pee up to a day later. Kind of a meat version of smelly asparagus pee. :lol:


https://www.livescience.com/62932-meat-sweats-causes.html

"If you're eating a lot of protein in your diet and you're not eating much of anything else, your body will be producing a lot of energy and a lot of heat. Of course, this could result in sweating."Metabolizing any type of food takes energy; one 2009 review of medical studies found that the body's energy use ratchets up by about 25 percent when digesting a big meal. As with exercise, that extra energy expenditure takes the form of heat. Expend enough energy digesting, and that heat can actually raise your core body temperature a bit. This is known as the "thermic effect of food," and it kicks in every time you digest.
So, where does meat come in? Here's the rub: Different food types require different amounts of energy to break down ? and protein, which meats are chock-full of, requires the most.
There are probably a few reasons behind this, Mukherjee said. One is that proteins are complicated molecules made up of lots of little chemical bonds. Each of those bonds needs to be broken by different types of enzymes before that protein can be metabolized. Creating all those enzymes takes some extra effort on your body's part.
Another reason may be that your body loves protein so much that it immediately uses the energy from digested proteins to start making new ones. "This process is also heat intensive," Mukherjee said.
Even the texture of meat can play a part in the resulting digestive battle. "Given the toughness of meat and its complexity, it needs to be chewed quite a bit before swallowing it," Mukherjee said. That means that more work goes into gnashing up each chunk of protein, which means more energy and heat are produced with every bite.
In other words, when professional competitive eater L.A. Beast told BuzzFeed that "eating a giant piece of meat is like going to the gym," he may not have been that far off."
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Alin

Diehard Car Enthusiast!
[MENTION=652]Grinder34[/MENTION] , sounds like we need to go visit [MENTION=662]Batmobile_Engage[/MENTION] and experience the "meat sweats" for ourselves and there's no better way than Ryan's Masterful Cuisines! :lol:
 

Batmobile_Engage

Squirrel Meat Aficionado.
Staff member
You just let me know far enough ahead and I'll get a huge chunk of animal prepped for the smoker. :fuji:
 
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Batmobile_Engage

Squirrel Meat Aficionado.
Staff member
Hell...if its the right time of the year, we could go shoot something ourselves and put that in the smoker! It doesn't get any more "field to fork" than that.
 

Grinder34

Track Monkey
1) If you could only eat one animal for the rest of your life, but any cuts from that animal are fair game, what would it be?

2) If you were now restricted to a single cut of a single animal, what would it be?

3) Favorite single herb?
 

Batmobile_Engage

Squirrel Meat Aficionado.
Staff member
1) If you could only eat one animal for the rest of your life, but any cuts from that animal are fair game, what would it be?

2) If you were now restricted to a single cut of a single animal, what would it be?

3) Favorite single herb?

1) Does that animal have to realistically be around me for that to happen? Because I would say Elk, except I'd have to go out west to get one. But yes, Elk is amazing and that would have to be my choice. ( Otherwise, I would be pretty happy with a southern Michigan Whitetail Deer in the freezer for as long as I live. :lol: )

2) That's an even tougher question in some ways. Tenderloin, which is on the inside of the rib cage/spine, is reeeeeally tender and wonderful. But it doesn't have quite as much of a meaty flavor of whatever animal you are eating. The back straps on the other hand, the loin on the outer side of the rib cage running down both sides of the spine, are arguably the best cut. Though there is always scarcity to consider, as tenderloins are usually 1/4 or less of the size of the back straps. So while that usually makes them more desirable, in this scenario that might make them less so. Do I magically get a freezer filled with nothing but tenderloins or do I get like 2 tenderloins per year. :lol: I'm probably overthinking this. Okay, back straps. Final answer. Elk back straps.

3) That would probably have to be Black Pepper. Garlic is a very close second. While often being classified as a culinary herb, neither of these are herbs in the Botanical sense. If I were strictly held to that definition, I would say Coriandrum sativum (Coriander or Chinese Parsley). I say this because it is an actual herb and if I could grow it (which I have in the past) it's seeds can be collected and ground into the spice "coriander" while the young green leaves are trimmed and collected as Cilantro. The roots can even be cleaned, boiled and mashed into a paste useful in dishes such as Thai curry. Maybe that's not how you envisioned the question, but I'm always thinking in terms of "in the event of the apocalypse...what would you rather have..." :lol:
 
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