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The foolish restrictions and outright closures of restaurants during the WuWHOflu has denied us easy access to some of our favorite dishes. After a brief period of working through all of our home cooking standards, as well as easy-to-make foods which we would not normally have consumed, we and many of our fellow disquans have elected to broaden their culinary ranges at home.
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A family friend who suffered terribly under the ineffective quarantine restrictions found himself homeless. Not wanting to lose all of his stuff while he figured out what to do next, he placed some large items in my shop and put a couple of smokers on my side porch. For a long time my son and I had considered buying a smoker but we never did because school and work kept us away from the house too much. Smoking can be an all day commitment, especially for brisket, but now we found ourselves at home, with a vertical propane/charcoal/electric smoker, and an offset wood burning smoker. We were also further liberated by the lack of commuting time.
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Until the past couple of months we've been smoking beef, pork, chicken, fish, and vegetables two or three times per week. We've each developed our own rubs and learned a bit about how to finish tough meats, especially spare ribs, without making them mushy. My wife's chemotherapy has made her sensitive to smoke, so now we only do it when we know the wind will be blowing the smoke away from the house for as long as we plan to cook.
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We've learned a bit about woods. Pecan is still our favorite. Hickory is great too. Pre-made charcoal also makes for a very nice flavor. We had a nasty ice storm here in OKC while the leaves were still green and on the trees. My son and I snagged some apple from the clean-up, but we haven't done anything with it yet. We've had good luck with non-traditional woods. Magnolia, while significantly less energy dense, makes for a nice flavor. We just have to use more of it. Hackberry leaves a good neutral smoky flavor. Elm had been disparaged to us, but we tried it anyway. We were careful to let the wood get hot enough to burn clean before we started the oxygen starvation by closing the lid on the offset. Elm worked just fine for us under those conditions.
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Have your WuWHOflu home cooking experiences been positive? Have you tried something new? Did you revive some old family recipes?
