Ultranormal

  • BBQ That Butt With What You’ve Already Got

    BBQ That Butt With What You’ve Already Got

    When I moved to Savannah, I had only ever been a consumer of fine smoked meats (you know, BBQ). I didn’t know the difference between BBQ and “grilling”. I was a poor unfortunate Yankee who didn’t know what he was missing.

    Thanks to my own personal BBQ Yoda (the one and only Murray Wilson), I got some education and now smoke my own meats regularly – usually pork shoulder (a “butt”) but I’ve also smoked brisket, chicken, turkey and rabbits.

    One of the most daunting things when I was just starting out was that I thought it would be really expensive to get started. Thankfully, I was wrong. Assuming you have even a small gas grill, you can make some delicious BBQ with some experimentation and tweaking (all reversible, of course) of your current equipment!

    If you’re going to buy anything, I’d highly recommend a Maverick thermometer. It has a grill temp probe and one for the meat, and it’s the easiest way to keep track of the fire and know when you meat is done that I’ve found (also the best balance between price and performance).

    That’s really the only thing you’ll have to buy that’s more than $20. Here’s your parts list:

    • A pork shoulder. The Kroger brand has always worked just fine for me, but you can go as crazy as you want – but when you’re just starting out, I think cheaper is better in case something goes wrong.
    • 10×13 disposable pan. You know, the big aluminum ones you take potato salad to picnics in. If you have a smaller grill, get one that will fit on one side.
    • Two disposable pie pans.
    • Hickory wood chips. Not chunks and not saw dust. You want chips.
    • Cherry wood chips. Again, not chunks and not saw dust. You want chips.
    • Your existing gas grill. You can use a charcoal grill, but I’ve never done that so… umm… find those instructions somewhere else.
    • Olive oil
    • Sriracha
    • Raw sugar (though white will do)

    In order to BBQ and not grill your meat, we need the following:

    • Indirect heat
    • Low, constant temperature (“low and slow”)
    • Good smoke

    In order to do that, we need to take your existing grill and create a hot side and a meat side. The wood chips and fire will be on the hot side, and the meat on the other.

    The Night Before

    • Clean your grill.
    • Make sure you have a full propane tank as it can take up to 1/3 of a tank (or more depending on how well your grill retains heat) for a single BBQ session.
    • If you have lava rocks you use to keep things even, use them. If not, you might want to get some.
    • On one side of your grill (left or right, doesn’t really matter), take the grate off and put the disposable pan right on top of the burner, then replace the grate (the meat will go on top of the grate over the pan so you don’t have pork fat running all over the button of your grill… and there will be a lot of pork fat).
    • In each of your disposable pie pans, put half hickory and half cherry chips in and then cover with water. Put them some place out of the way so they can soak overnight.
    • Go to bed.

    In The Morning.

    You’ll definitely want to start as early as you can, because they’re not kidding about BBQ being “low and slow”.

    Before you put the meat on in the morning:

    • Put one of the pans of wood chips on the hot side on top of the grill grate. You should cover the pie pan with aluminum foil and then poke about 10 smallish holes in the foil to let the smoke out slowly.
    • Set up your grill temperature probe. It should go on the meat side as close to where the meat will go as possible, but with a little space around it.

    On to the Meat!

    Back in the kitchen, it’s time to get the pork ready for the fire!

    • Take your pork shoulder out its packaging and rinse it with cold water, then pat dry with paper towels.
    • Rub the meat on all sides and in any crevices with olive oil.
    • Wash your hands, and then rub the meat again on all sides with Sriracha. Don’t worry, it won’t be hot once it’s been on the smoke for 10 hours. It helps protect the meat, and adds some lovely flavor.
    • Wash your hands again, and then sprinkle raw sugar over the meat. The sugar will help create the “bark” (the dark crunchy bits on the outside).

    2015-05-14 07.10.39-1

    On to the Grill!

    • Take your pork out to the grill and put it as far away from the hot side as you can, fat side up.
    • Insert the meat temperature probe in the thickest part of the meat, but make sure it’s not touching the bone.
    • Plug in both probes to the thermometer and turn it on.
    • Light one burner (the one on the farthest side, away from the meat and under the wood chip pan).
    • Close the lid and now comes the fun part!

    Watching Things

    • You’ll want to watch the grill temp pretty closely at the beginning. For a gas grill, and for a cooking time less than 24 hours, you’ll want the grill temp to be between 225-250. As soon as you get there, you want to keep it there. If it goes over 250, turn down the burner and see where it settles. This is the most annoying part, but you should be able to dial it in the first hour – and then you only really need to check it every 30-45 minutes while it cooks.
    • Smell the smoke every hour or so. You’ll want to replace the chips with the second pie pan once the smoke starts smelling acrid – which for me takes about 3-4 hours.
    • The meat temperature should climb to 100 degrees (not celsius) fairly quickly, and then for me, looks like it gets “stuck” at 170. That’s fine – that’s where the fat really starts rendering out and the meat gets… awesome.
    • You’ll want to take it off at 190, which can take anywhere from 7-12 hours at 250. It’ll take you a few attempts to really be able to predict how long it will take – and there are a lot of factors that can affect it – wind, outside temp, humidity, etc.

    Butts at 160

    Once It’s Done

    It’s not really done! After you take it off the grill, you’ll want to wrap it in aluminum foil, then old clean towels (that you’ll most likely ruin in this process, but they’ll smell great), and then put the shoulder in a cooler for at least an hour – two is better. I know, it’s hard to be patient.

    Once it’s done resting, unwrap it, and then you should be able to “pull” it with two large forks, or with your hands.

    Serve with white bread and anything else you want. You can serve it with sauce, but it won’t need it. The meat should be perfect on its own. Really.

    I mean, this is worth it, right?

    Pork Butt, off the grill.

  • On Manly Men

    I’m tired of what scared man-children are doing to my industry, to social media, to my country and to women. It’s self-defeating. It’s wrong. It’s violent and it’s cowardly.

    SO… Men. Stop being cowards. Stop treating people like crap. Stop threatening them. Stop lashing out like toddlers having tantrums because you’re afraid for no reason. Stop making up reasons to be scared and start living.

    Look at your behavior. If you really think that threatening women, doxing them, swatting them, demeaning them, pushing them out of your communities because you’re threatened by them… if you REALLY think that makes you a manly man – you’re an idiot.

    Being a manly man means being comfortable with yourself and not being threatened when someone else wants the same.

    Being a manly man means being courteous, debating on the merits and not throwing tantrums when someone else wants a turn to speak. It also means admitting when you’re wrong.

    Being a manly man means not being afraid of people who are different just because they’re different. It means being curious and adventurous – and not afraid to treat people like you want to be treated – or better, how they wish to be treated.

    Bullies aren’t manly men. Bullies, at their core, are afraid and have to use intimidation and violence to project power. But, they have no power. Once a bully is outnumbered, he’s just a coward again.

    Be a manly man and welcome everyone into your communities. You’ll find you’ll have more fun, learn more, and your community will be stronger for it.

    Let’s make stories like this one a thing of the past.

    And in case you’re confused, there’s nothing wrong with being a man. There is something wrong with thinking that your gender means you’re somehow entitled to affection, attention, recognition or leadership. If you really believe in a meritocracy, you’ll judge people by their results and not by what they look like, how they worship or where they’re from – and that means untangling centuries of bullshit about ability, the meaningless signifiers of “success” (for example, all our presidents have been men, therefore to be a good president, you have to be a man – or the funny bit of trivia that almost all Fortune 500 CEOs are white men over 6 feet tall). Just because historically, someone hasn’t been allowed to do something doesn’t mean they can’t. And just because this is how we’ve done it in the past doesn’t mean that’s the best way going forward – especially if it’s a cultural affectation that doesn’t actually have anything to do with the outcome.

    So, being a man – it’s not bad. But, it’s not the only thing. Being kind is more important than your gender.

  • Kevin’s Year in Music: 2015

    It’s been a great year for actual music, but a sad one for me personally. Why? Rdio died. I loved Rdio for years – even when I was working at a music startup building a competing service, I still loved Rdio. And now it’s gone. I tried Google Music, and had to give up on it because it lacks any idea of social, and does some very strange things with explicit lyrics. Now I’m on Spotify and it’s all right. It’s not perfect. It’s definitely not Rdio – but it’ll do.

    Enough sadness, let’s get on to the music! Last year, I just threw together a list of the albums I liked and put them in three categories. That was a cop out and saved me from having to pick a single album. This year, I’m picking a single album that is my favorite of the year! And then a couple more than I really liked.

    My album of the year is…

    Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Sit by Courtney Barnett! It’s funny. It’s fun to sing along with, and the songs are actually about things. This album came out early on this year and I kept going back to it all year.

    It was really hard to pick just one album but I did it. Courtney’s biggest competition was from an artist that my friend Bryan told me about – Ghostpoet. His album, Shedding Skin, is fantastic. It reminds me a lot of Massive Attack, which is always a good thing. You should listen to it, a lot.

    There were a lot of really good albums that came out this year. So many that my Kevin’s 2015 Favorites playlist has 340 songs in it and if you listened to it all at once, it would take 23 hours and 29 minutes. So, get started!

  • Chocolate Orange Chess Pie

    Chocolate Orange Chess Pie

    It’s my first recipe! Hooray! I made my first chess pie, from Callie Spears’ great recipe on Munchies, over Thanksgiving and loved it. It was super easy to make and delicious – my favorite combination!

    For Christmas, I decided I needed to do something different with it and thought of the chocolate oranges I got as a kid. And thus was my chocolate orange chess pie born!

    This is adapted from Callie Spears’ recipe linked above. Follow her directions for the pie crust – it’s fantastic. It’s fluffy and buttery and perfect with the filling. Just remember that it has to rest for an hour before you roll it out, so include that in your timing.

    Ingredients for The Filling

    • 1.5 cups of sugar
    • The zest of half a navel orange
    • 2 tablespoons fresh orange juice (maybe from that navel orange you just zested)
    • .25 cups of AP flour
    • 3 tablespoons of cornmeal
    • 3 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder
    • 3 eggs
    • 1 teaspoon vanilla

    Directions

    1. Add all the dry ingredients in a large bowl, whisk to combine.
    2. Add all the wet ingredients to the bowl.
    3. Whisk everything until smooth.
    4. Put that stuff in the pie shell.
    5. Bake at 350 for 40-50 minutes. This took longer than the original to firm up. When you check it, shake the pie a little. If it wobbles a lot, it’s not done and will run when you got it. There should be just the tiniest little wobble in the middle.
    6. Take it out and cool completely on a rack.

    It’s really rich, so I like mine with whipped cream on top.

    Enjoy!

  • Learn the Secrets of BBQ from a Champ

    I’m a big fan of Wiley’s BBQ on Whitemarsh Island, and attended his BBQ class in February and learned a lot. It’s a great way to get over the fear of smoking meat, and learn a lot of tricks without having to figure them out for yourself. It’s also where I figured out the recipe I use for my pork butts (which will be a future post)!

    They’re doing another one in a few weeks, and if you’re not doing anything on the 17th of January, I highly recommend it!

    More details and you can sign up here

    (And this isn’t a paid advertisement of any kind – the class is truly fantastic and gave me the confidence to smoke all kinds of stuff this year: turkey, pork shoulder, pork tenderloin, rabbit, etc)

  • Cook, Eat, Write… Day One

    This is all Tom Kohler’s fault. At a friend’s Christmas party, we were talking about food and he insisted that I start a food blog to hold all my thoughts, theories, recipes and discoveries about food in Savannah and the Low Country.

    And here we are. It’s the day after Christmas and I’ve registered the domain, set up email (kevin@cookeatwrite.com), and am sitting here writing this while everyone else sleeps off all the turkey and ham from yesterday.

    We’ll see how things go, but here’s what I plan on doing here:

    • Writing about everything food-related. I’m thinking of this as everything from producers to consumers and all the stops in between. I’m fascinated by where our food comes from, how we can become small-scale producers in our own backyards, and how we can do a better job of being mindful of where our food comes from. I also love to cook and eat, so there will be some recipes, some restaurant reviews and some tips on where to find people making or providing interesting things in Savannah. For example, did you know that there are at least three great Asian grocery stores in Savannah? Well, there are!
    • Recipes for everything from BBQ to desserts. I can’t stay out of the kitchen and trying new things. I’ve made Momofuku Ramen twice – the new version and the old version. I’m addicted to trying pie and bread recipes, and sometimes come up with my own twists on them. This is where I’ll share those.
    • Interviews with local producers, providers and chefs. I’ve never done interview like that before, but there are a lot of really interesting people doing amazing things here and I’d love an excuse to pick their brains.
    • Links to cool food things to do.

    I’m not sure what the publishing schedule will be yet, but I expect I’ll have something to say at least once a week.

    I hope you’ll come along for the ride!

    Thanks for reading,

    Kevin Lawver

  • Importing Rdio Playlists (and Your Collection) Into Google Music

    My beloved Rdio is dying, and soon. They ran out of money, sold all their assets in a fire sale and have given their users about a week to find a new music home. I tried Apple Music, but quickly ran into limitations (song limit, my patience with their awful UI, horrible apps for importing songs, etc). Asking around, it looked like Google Music was the next best option.

    And then the problem was, how to I get almost 5 years of musical history from Rdio into Google Music? All those favorites playlists from 2011-2015, the road trip playlists, the special occasion playlists… all of those will just disappear.

    It took a lot of experimentation, but I found a way to export my playlists (and entire collection) from Rdio to Google Music. Here’s what you need (sorry, this is going to require some Terminal time):

    • First, you need to install the Rdio Enhancer Chrome Add-on.
    • Sign up for the Google Music free trial.
    • Install gmusic-playlist – it’s a python library for interacting with Google Music. It has some dependencies, so you’ll need to follow the README instructions carefully.

    After you’ve gotten those installed, you need to do the following to save your playlists and collection in a format that’ll work with the importer:

    • Go to Rdio in Chrome.
    • Click Favorites.
    • You should see an Export CSV button. Click it. Depending on the size of your library, this could take a while. It’s going to generate CSV files for your entire collection. My 35,000 song collection took 3 CSV files, and about 5 minutes to generate and download them. Chrome will probably ask you if this site can download multiple files. Say yes and wait for all of them to download (15,000 songs per file).
    • Once you have all those files, it’s time to do playlists!

    For each playlist you want to save:

    • Click its link in the left nav bar.
    • Click the 3 dots in a circle button (next to the share button), then “Extras”, then “Export to CSV”.
    • That’ll download another CSV file.
    • You should open up each CSV and delete the first line (the header) or you’ll end up with “Did She Mention My Name” by Gordon Lightfoot in all of your playlists. If that doesn’t bother you, go ahead skip this step.

    Now that you have your collection and all the files you want to save, it’s time to set up the gmusic-playlist importer. After you unzip it, open the folder and then open preferences.py in your favorite text editor and make the following changes:

    • username should be your google login email address.
    • Change the track_info_order line to look like this: track\_info\_order = \['title','artist','album','trackNumber'\] (the only change is to change “songid” to “trackNumber”).
    • Change allow_duplicates to True.
    • Change search_personal_library to False.
    • Save the file.

    Now you can follow the gmusic-playlist directions to import all those CSVs. Google Music has a limit of 1,000 songs per playlist, so your collection will be broken up, but at least you’ll have all your songs!

    Update: I tried to like Google Music. I really did. But, it has some fatal flaws:

    • Their new releases page is bad and not updated with actual new releases.
    • There’s no social at all. It’s awful.
    • The Web UI is just broken enough to be really frustrating, and all the web apps for it are hamstrung by the web’s brokenness.
    • They do very strange things with explicit lyrics.

    So, I was going to update this post with instructions on how to import your official Rdio export into Google Music, but… don’t do that.

    I’m trying out Spotify Premium again for the first time since I started using Rdio, and they’ve paid attention. Social is better. Sharing is better. The queue is persistent between sessions. They have more music than Rdio did, or that Google Music has. Their new releases page is actually mostly up to date.

    Instead of using this process to import things to Google Music, use the official Spotify Rdio Import tool. It takes about five minutes and works really well.

  • Dealing With Your Kid’s Email: A Nerd’s Approach

    My kids both have Google Ed accounts for their school work, which comes with an email address. Some of the parents in the school’s Facebook group were asking how to set up the school email account on their phones, which feels like overkill to me. I don’t log in to my kid’s email – I just have all of their incoming email forwarded to me (which I then filter to get it out of the way so I can read it later).

    And here’s how to set that up if you’d like to do the same thing!

    • Go to Gmail and log in as your kid.
    • Click the Gear icon on the top right side of the page and click Settings
    • Click on the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab.
    • Now click the Add a forwarding address button.
    • Put in your email address that you want emails forwarded to and click Proceed.
    • It’ll send a confirmation code to your email. Grab that and put it in the verify field.
    • Now click the radio button next to Forward a copy of incoming email to…, select your email from the dropdown and then choose keep Gmail’s copy in the inbox from the second dropdown.

    And there you go. Now you’ll get all your kid’s emails in your inbox. Lucky you!

    Now, for bonus points, filtering. I have a ton of filters to keep my inbox nice and clean, and my kids’ emails have their own filters. Here’s how to set one up:

    • After you set up email forwarding, you’ll start getting emails to your kid in your inbox. You need one of those to start with. It doesn’t matter what it is as long as your kid is one of the recipients.
    • In the search box at the top of GMail, search for to:yourkid@whatever.com (replacing “yourkid@whatever.com” with their actual email address).
    • Once the results come up, click the More button and choose Create Filter.
    • The To field should be filled out with your kid’s email address, so go ahead and click “Create filter with this search”.
    • This is where things get fun. Here are the settings I use for my kid’s email:
      • Label it with the kid’s name.
      • Skip the Inbox
      • Mark it as read.
    • With those settings, they never hit the inbox, but, I have to remember to check it periodically, so it’s probably a good idea to leave them in the Inbox to start and not mark them as read – just apply the label.

    That should help you keep up with your kid’s school emails without going crazy! Good luck!

  • Accidental Greatness: Sriracha Chicken Quesadillas

    I have accidentally created the greatest food ever: the Sriracha Chicken Quesadilla:

    You need to:

    • Preheat the oven to 350
    • Slice two onions into quarter inch slices
    • Slice two bell peppers (or mini bells) into quarter inch slices
    • Four boneless chicken breasts

    Assemble:

    • lay the onions out on a roasting pan or cookie sheet so there’s no overlap
    • put the peppers on top of the onions, again, no overlap.
    • drizzle olive oil over the onions and peppers, then salt and pepper.
    • put the chicken breasts on top of the peppers and onions.
    • salt and pepper the chicken then drizzle with olive oil.
    • squirt sriracha over the whole thing.
    • bake for an hour at 350.

    Once it’s done, cut up the chicken, throw some into a tortilla with some of the onions and peppers and sharp cheddar cheese and then griddle that thing until the tortilla is crispy and the cheese is melted.\
    And now eat it all up.

    I should have taken a picture, but I didn’t because I couldn’t wait.

  • We’ll Never Understand

    So far, I’ve seen statements from at least 3 politicians, who have no problem expressing strong opinions about people outside their religion and race; who never let their own ignorance keep them from pronouncing judgement on others, say today that we’ll “never understand the motivations” of the monster who killed 9 people last night in Charleston.

    Why reserve your whip-smart judgement now? Why be so “sensitive” and offer your “prayers”? Could it be because your ignorant ramblings maybe inspired this guy?

    Media figures and politicians demonize entire races and religions all the time, saying, like Glenn Beck did, that people are “willing to lay down their lives” for whatever batshit crazy cause they’re spouting off about. And then, when some crazed lunatic actually DOES WHAT THEY SO SLYLY SUGGEST, they clasp their hands and say they’re praying for the victims and say we’ll never understand what drove them to do such a horrible thing.

    We know. They were inspired by parents, by the talk radio hosts they listen to, by the politicians that pander to any loony zealot who will vote for them (or give them money), by the mentally unhinged bastards who say we’re at war with everybody.

    So, maybe instead of just praying for the victims, we should stop being such assholes and preach the religion we say we follow? Preach peace. Preach understanding. Preach forgiveness and humility. Teach your kids not to be racist. Teach your kids to love their neighbors (no matter who they are).

    These tragedies are avoidable, and praying for the victims is the least you can do. Condemn violence. Condemn racism. Condemn those who make targets out of innocent people. And if you are one of those people, stop it already. You’re the problem. Be a part of the solution.