Banjo's Recipe: Brining Pork Spare Ribs

Why do we brine?

We brine meats in order to impart moisture, and sometimes flavors, into a meat.  This is particularly useful for meats such as turkey breast, which can be very dry after cooking.  In this case with pork spare ribs, I've cooked them many times but I have never tasted how one tastes after brining, so that's what I'm going to do!

Brining Vs Marinating

Brining adds moisture into a meat by osmosis, which is the cell's attempt to balance it's internal salt content with salt content outside of itself.  The meat is put into a liquid bath that contains a high percentage of salt.  As the cell attempts to balance the salt levels, moisture is drawn into the meat, swelling the cells with the additional moisture.

Marinating is similar to brining, but has a higher acid content, in an attempt to tenderize the meat.  Since my meat will be cooked via Sous Vide, which will tenderize the meat via time and temperature instead of acid, there is no need to marinate the meat.

I had wondered whether or not a brine would contain worcestershire sauce or soy sauce, as both are high in salt.  I have a lot of worcestershire sauce that is getting close to its age-off date, so I was interested in using it before having to chunk it.  However, in my research, I kept coming across worcestershire and soy being used in marinates, but not in brines.  Since I know both to be high in salt, I began to wonder, what is the difference between a brine and a marinate?

Research showed a marinate to be high in acid in an attempt to tenderize meat.  I checked a USDA source for the ph level of foods (ph is a measurement of acidity), and found that both worcestershire sauce and soy sauce are about as acidic as vinegar, so that explains why they don't show up in brines (salt, not acid) but do show up in marinates (acid and salt).

So, while either worcestershire or soy sauce can be added to a brine for flavor, I don't want to add so much that I've changed it into a marinate.  Dang - thought I was going to use up that worcestershire sauce!

Ingredients


Note: I prefer to use distilled water as our water has a lot of fluoride in it.
Note: I do not have a 6 qt lexan container, so instead I use a water cooler.  I use a water/ice mixture (just enough water to fill up to the ice) in the cooler instead of just water.  This also means I don't have to find room in the refrigerator!

Time
I'm going to brine the pork spare ribs for 48 hours.

Steps

1. Mix the brine ingredients into a container large enough to hold two (2) racks of pork spare ribs, about 9 lbs of ribs.
2. place spare ribs into brine container
3. Place container into refrigerator, which should be at a temperature of 40 dF or below.
4. Leave in brine for 48 hours.
5. At the end of 48 hours (or there about - not critical), remove ribs from brine.
6. Blot ribs dry with paper towels (do not rinse off).
7. Your meat is ready for use!

Brine Recipes

Alton Brown's (note: we are using his Boston Butt recipe):

Brine:

• 8 ounces or 3/4 cup molasses
• 12 ounces pickling salt
• 2 quarts bottled water
• 6 to 8 pound Boston butt
• Combine molasses, pickling salt, and water in 6 quart Lexan. Add Boston butt making sure it is completely submerged in brine, cover, and let sit in refrigerator for a minimum of 8 hours. 12 hours is ideal.

Douglas Baldwin's 

Brine in a 7–10% salt, 0–3% sugar water solution (70–100 grams salt and 0–30 grams sugar per 1 liter) in the refrigerator for 12–24 hours.

Links

• This is a very good, informative link to cooking pork spare ribs Sous Vide, along with brining the ribs.  BTW - Douglas Baldwin, who made the video this link points to, has an excellent site for cooking Sous Vide, as well as an excellent book.

Banjo's recipe: Pork Spare Ribs with Sous Vide

Meat
I picked up a package of Spare Ribs from Costco.  The package weight about 9 lbs.  This contains two (2) whole racks.

Preparing

• Prepare the brine (Banjo's Pork Spare Ribs Brine).
• Cut the pork spare ribs into sections small enough to fit into several vacuum pouches.  I will not place into the vacuum pouches at this time because I want to brine them first.
• Place the spare ribs into the brine.
• Place brine into the refrigerator for 48 hours
• After 48 hours, remove spare ribs from brine and blot ribs dry.
• Prepare any special sauce and place sauce into vacuum bags where you will be putting your spare ribs.
• Place ribs into vacuum bags and seal.  
• Note: if you have difficulty with this step with applying vacuum without sucking fluids out of pouch, then use Zip Lock Freezer Bags gallon size to put sauce and ribs into, then use 'water immersion' method to evacuate the air, or leave the sauce out.
• Note: if you prefer, you can put a dry rub on the meat instead, which should allow you to use your vacuum device to seal.

Brining
I will be brining the pork spare ribs.  Here is Banjo's Recipe

Cooking

• Cook for 48 hours at 135 dF.  
• Note: if this is your first time cooking Sous Vide, or low temperature cooking, then don't get alarmed about the low temperature for pork.  We are cooking the meat for a long enough time at this temperature in order to pasteurize the meat and to also tenderize it.  It will be slightly red in color because it will come be medium well when we take it out at 135 dF.  There are two things associated with this cooking - pasteurization and tenderizeation.  Per Douglas Baldwin's book, pasteurization will take 1 hour at 130 dF for meat 1.25 inches thick.  Notice we are above this temperature, and at a much longer time, so we are definitely pasteurized!  However, we are going this extra length of time in order to tenderize the meat....it will be "falling off of the bone tender" when we are through.  
• If you will be 'toasting' the ribs on a grill-with-a-dome, then 30 minutes before taking them out of their pouches, heat up the grill, placing your charcoal on one side of the grill while leaving the other side open so your ribs won't be directly over the hot coals (indirect heat).  I try to get my dome up to 400 dF or hotter - you aren't going to cook the ribs because they are already cooked - you are just trying to toast the outside, so hot and fast!
• In inclement weather I will toast our ribs under our oven's broiler. Simply place them in a pan to catch the drippings, meat side up, about 4 inches below the coils.  Place it on "hi", and monitor.  Since they are already cooked, I'm just toasting.  I leave the door open so I can watch to decide when to pull off.  This probably took at least 10 minutes (sorry, I forgot to time this).
• Remove ribs from  vacuum pouch.  You can either eat them at this point, or continue on with 'toasting' to brown.
• Toasting: Rinse the ribs off so you get the salt off of the meat.  (I didn't do this the first time, and they were too salty).  Blot the ribs dry, (this is important as it help speed up the process of toasting the meat) then place the ribs onto the side of your grill opposite the hot coals.  I like to put a aluminum drip pan under them to keep the oil from getting all over my grill.  Toast for about 10 - 20 minutes, or they acquire the browning you desire.  Your goal is to not leave them in the dome for very long, as you are wanting to toast the outside without additional cooking on the inside.

Links

• Banjo's Pork Spare Ribs Brine
• This is a very good, informative link to cooking pork spare ribs Sous Vide, along with brining the ribs.  BTW - Douglas Baldwin, who made the video this link points to, has an excellent site for cooking Sous Vide, as well as an excellent book.

Connecting the Dots - Insight into Sous Vide Hamburgers

I'm working on a recipe for Hamburgers / Cheeseburgers.  But I wanted to share some interesting insight while I'm testing a recipe.

I already had "one dot" on slow, low temperature cooking - the tenderization of tough foods (think slow cooked BBQ here or stews) through low temperatures for an extended length of time.

I also was aware of "another dot" that allows one to cook to lower temperatures but for longer periods of time in order to pasteurize foods.

What I had failed to do was to connect the "two dots".

In recent years, the USDA has recommended higher cooking temperatures for things like ground beef (hamburgers), eggs, etc, to elevated temperatures of 160 dF or so.  In other words, past well done - think charred little tooth-breakers.  They wanted us to do this in order to pasteurize the meat so it did not represent a health hazard.

Which means we need to talk about pasteurization a little bit - not too much, but a little bit.

To pasteurize is not to sterilize - sterilization means to kill all of the 'bugs', whereas pasteurization means to reduce the amount of them, something like 1 million to 1.  So  to pasteurize is to reduce 'the bugs' to the point where their numbers are able to be handled by our bodies.  So in particular where something is cooked, like ground beef, it is important to pasteurize the food before consuming.

However, in the case of hamburger, cooking at normal temperatures, pasteurization is done by heating the ground beef at a temperature high enough to kill the 'bugs' in the short amount of time the hamburger is cooked.

However, there is more to pasteurization.  The way the 'bugs' are killed is temperature and time.  A very high temperature, for a very short time, will pasteurize the food.  A medium temperature for a medium length of time will also pasteurize the food.  And, a low temperature for a long length of time will also pasteurize the food.

From making sure I was producing safe BBQ, I knew all of this from the research I had done.

The Sous Vide method (the translation means, literally, to cook in a vacuum), at its simplest form, is place the food within pouches, then immerse the pouches into a water-bath with a precisely controlled temperature, then cooked at a low temperature for a time sufficient to pasteurize the food.  Cooking it for a long period of time does not over cook the food, it just brings the food up to that temperature.  Cooking it for an extended length of time, typically way past the point of pasteurization, makes the food very tender.

I have been focused on tenderization of the food as the main benefit of cooking in the Sous Vide style, which requires fairly long times.

The two dots that I failed to connect were the cooking long enough to pasteurize, but no longer, as depending on the food itself, I may not need to tenderize.

So this is where the hamburgers come in (as well as any other food like soft-cooked eggs, etc): I can cook them at rare, medium rare, medium - all that would have been below the USDA's recommendation - but still end up with safe, pasteurized food.

So think about this - safe pasteurized foods attainable at lower temperatures but cooked for longer lengths of time:

• hamburgers at medium rare.
• runny eggs.
• chicken breasts that have juice.
• pork that has juice (BTW - the new USDA recommended temperatures for pork is 160 dF).
• home made mayonnaise, which uses raw egg - the eggs can be pasteurized now.
• turkey breasts that are juicy.

We are cooking our first batch of hamburgers right now using our Sous Vide Supreme, and are using a target temperature of 137 dF - about medium rare.  I'll finish them in an iron skillet to toast them.  A better choice may be to finish on the grill, or if you are lucky enough to have one, a Big Green Egg smoker.

I can't wait!

UPDATE: The hamburgers were moist and very flavorful!  I expect this will be the way we cook hamburger going forward.

Banjo's Adobo Recipe for Carne Asada

Background
Adobo can either be a paste-like marinade, or a thinner sauce made with the same ingredients used to stew meats.

In making Banjo's Sous Vide Skirt Steak Carne Asada, I use the paste-like version, which is what will be shown below.

The dried chiles that make up this recipe, can be difficult to locate, so I'll post some links below where you can order them. I was able to find two (2) varieties at a local Whole Foods, so those are the two (2) that I show in this recipe.

Time
It took me about 1 hour to make this but it was the first time I ever made it, so I was slow. Hopefully, you'll be able to do it in 20 minutes!

Sauce Quantity
This will make enough sauce for 2 - 3 lbs of meat.

HEAT: Mild to Medium, maybe 4 on 1 - 10, with 1 being no heat and 10 being Habanero. A tad less heat than Texas Pete hot sauce, and a lot less heat than Tabasco sauce. I think it is comparable in flavor to Tabasco Chipotle sauce, but a little less spicy.


Dried Chile Peppers
3 New Mexico Chiles
3 Ancho Chiles

Other Ingredients
1/2 cup of water
1 tsp ground cumin
5 allspice berries
2 cloves
1 1-inch piece of cinnamon stick (or 2 tsp powdered)
5 garlic cloves
1 tsp black pepper

Steps
1. Remove stems and seeds from chiles.
1.1. Slice one side of all chiles open from stem to end.
1.2. Pull stem and all seeds out and discard.
2. For each chile, open chile out flat and place into medium heated iron skillet. Work with one chile at a time until all are done. Use wooden spoons or tongs to hold in contact with skillet. Try to keep flat. Toast fully on one side before flipping to other side. Starting with the inside heat in pan - it will turn a lighter brown. Heat all of this side this way. Take a peek now and then to make sure it's not over heating and burning or charring. Flip over to toast the outside face down. It will show bubbles on the inside face when it is about done. You will need to gather experience over time on this step so you can get an estimate of your preference - the flavor will change depending on the amount of toasting, just like toasted bread.
3. Once all chiles have been toasted, place chiles and all other ingredients into a blender.
4. Blend until smooth.

Your adobo is now ready to be placed onto meat for grilling!


Links
If you don't want to make your own, here's a link to a commercial product. I haven't tried it, so I can't speak for it's quality. This site also ships other spices such as dried chile peppers.
Dried Chile Peppers

Banjo's Recipe - Sous Vide Skirt Steak Carne Asada

Last Update: 5/16/11, 7:38 PM

I an in the process of developing this recipe to cook, so this post will be modified several times over the next several hours/days before the full, final version is posted, so keep checking back.

Time
Prep Time Sauce
1. If making your own adobo sauce from my recipes, then use suggested prep time from there. Wherever you obtain the adobo sauce/paste, you will need about 1 cup of adobo sauce/paste. If you prefer to buy your adobo, see references and links below.

Prep Time Meat about 15 mins
- 15 minutes for Sous Vide to come up to temperature of 135 dF.
- 10 minutes to get meat cut and bagged, done while Sous Vide coming up to temperature.

Sous Vide Cooking Time
24 hours at 135 dF.

Grill Time
- 30 minutes to start and charcoal to become fully lit.
- 5 - 10 minutes for meat on the grill depending on your grill and your preferences of toasting to meat.

Hardware
1 1-gallon size zip lock bag
charcoal and grill
1.5 - 3 pounds of skirt steak depending on your desired portion sizes and number of people. 1.5 pounds should be about right for 2 people.
1 cup of adobo sauce paste for 1.5 pounds of skirt steak. 1.5 - 2 cups for 3 pounds.

Steps (partial - evolving. See 'Big Picture' below)
1. Cut skirt steak into serving portion size, and place into a 1-gallon zip lock bag, remove air, zip lock closed, and place into refrigerator.
2. Add water to Sous Vide and adjust setpoint to 135 dF. Place lid on Sous Vide.
3. Prepare Adobo sauce using this link.
4. Obtain bagged skirt steak from refrigerator, open up zip lock and pour in adobo sauce.
5. Remove air from zip lock, zip lock closed. Try to spread the meat around so it isn't overlapping, but some overlap is OK.
6. Place into Sous Vide at 135 dF.
7. Cook for 24 hours. The meat will be cooked in an hour or so, but the additional time will make the meat more tender. Work with whatever is convenient for you. If it would be more convenient to go to 30 hours, then that is OK. If more convenient to go to 8 hours, then that is OK too. Anywhere in a range of 8 hours - 30 hours is OK; the longer it stays in, the more tender it will become, but you don't want much! We like the tender/resistance at 24 hours.
8. 20-30 minutes prior to taking bagged meat out of Sous Vide, start up your charcoal grill. This will allow the charcoal to take be completely started and at maximum temperature before using. Place grate onto grill to get hot.
9. Use a wire brush to remove any carbon from previous cooking.
10. At alloted time for cooking meat in Sous Vide, remove meat from Sous Vide and place onto plate to take to grill. Because the meat is cooked, you don't have to worry about cross contamination from raw food, so you can use this plate to take out to the grill and to bring back in from the grill.
11. Place all meat onto grill surface directly over hot coals. it won't be here long! (see below for additional insight)
12. Toast the meat on a side until finished before flipping to other side. You will only turn once. To judge when to flip, lightly lift meat with tongs to examine heated side. When it looks like your desired amount of toasting has taken place, flip. Do not re-flip!
13. When both sides have been toasted to your desired doneness, plate the meat and take to serving area.
14. If desired, you can remove some of the liquid from the bag and place into a bowl and microwave to bring up to a temperature for use as a dipping sauce.
15. Any leftover meat can be kept in the sauce and rezipped and returned to refrigerator for use in the next couple of days.
16. If reheating within a couple of days, bring the Sous Vide back up to 135 dF. Once at temperature has come to setpoint, place the bagged meat into Sous Vide and warm back up to desired temperature. Allow 1 hour or more for this step. Do not overlap meat or you will have to go for a longer time. You want to ensure all meat has come up to 135 dF before consuming. It is OK to return to the grill at this point or to a skillet if desired, but be careful of obtaining too much toasting as it may make it bitter.


Big Picture
1. DoneI'm going to purchase Skirt Steak. I don't know what the standard sizes are yet at the supermarket, so not sure how much I will be buying.
2. DoneI'm going to marinate the skirt steak in a marinate suitable for Carne Asada. TBD: how long to marinate, and what will the marinate be.
3. DoneI'm going to cook the skirt steak via Sous Vide Supreme. I'm going to target 135 dF. TBD: How long I will cook the skirt steak in the Sous Vide Supreme
4. Charcoal Method - DoneI'm going to brown the meat. I will split the meat into two (2) servings so I can brown one (1) piece in the skillet while browning the other on the grill.

4.1 Cast Iron Skillet browning. Important: Pat the meat dry with a paper towel prior to placing into the skillet. This is important because water and hot oil can cause serious burns from splatter when the water on the marinated skirt steak hits hot oil. When browning in a skillet, it is important for all of the meat to make contact with the skillet, and for heat to transfer from the skillet to the meat. It's also very important for the skillet to be very, very hot. Usually, you don't cook items in a pan on high heat because it is difficult to get the heat to transfer fast enough from the outer edges to the middle of the meat without over cooking the exterior, or under cooking the middle. However, since the meat has already been cooked to the proper temperature via Sous Vide method, this is not a worry. Instead, you now have the opposite worry - you want to brown the outside while not transferring any additional heat into the middle because the middle is already at the perfect temperature via the Sous Vide. Therefore, you want high heat to brown the outside fast for a short amount of time so the transfer of heat into the middle of the meat is at a minimum.

Several methods are commonly used to assist in transferring heat from the skillet to the meat. Since liquids are of higher density than air, the amount of energy that is contained within liquid at a specific temperature is higher than the amount of energy in air at the same temperature. Also, heat migrates, or transfers, faster in liquids than in air. This all means that cooking in liquids will result in the food being cooked faster in liquids than in air. The Sous Vide method makes use of a water bath for this reason, instead of being an air enclosing oven.
- Water: Since water boils at 212 dF (at sealevel, lower temperatures at higher altitudes), the maximum amount of heat that can be transfered
- Oil: The temperature of oil is limited only by its smoke point. Some common oils have smoke points from 200 - 500 dF. (see references below)

Oil to use: Because the food will not be absorbing much oil, the fat content of the oil is not an issue in this cooking method.

Maximum Flavor: Because I'm after the maximum flavor, if I can obtain it, I intend to use Lard. However, if that's not available, then I intend to use Crisco. I would prefer not to use this oil because it has been hydrogenated, which results in the type of fats that the USDA deems least desirable. Lard has a smoke point of about 370 dF.

4.2 Grill Method. I use a Weber grill. I will place enough Lump Charcoal (this is not briquettes) to provide an area bigger in diameter than the meat it will be cooking. Since the meat will not cover the whole surface of my grill, I will not place charcoal under the whole surface of the grill; only the area where the skirt steaks will cook. I start the fire (my Weber grill has a propane starting lighter), then allow about 20 - 30 minutes for the charcoal to get very hot. I place the grill over the charcoal during this time so it burns off any residue and sterilizes the grill surface. I use a wire brush to remove any carbonized material from the grill in the area that will be cooked. Once the charcoal has reached the desired cooking stage, I use the palm of my hand to quickly glide over and above the grill area to determine the hottest points of the grill. I place the meat directly onto the grill, directly over the hottest point of the grill.
I will leave the meat here, occasionally lifting to observe the amount of browning. When the desired amount of browning has taken place (for your desires), I flip the meat over and repeat for the other side. I do not flip other than the one time. Depending on how hot your charcoal is and the distance from the charcoal to the grill surface, the time can vary. However, expect anywhere from 2 - 8 minutes per side. Since the meat has already been cooked, the plate it was brought on to the grill should not have had any raw meat on it and can be used to place the meat on to bring it back inside. Note: since the meat has already been cooked via Sous Vide, you are NOT trying to cook the meat through - you are trying to brown the exterior only.


Recipe Steps
- Under development. Check back for updates.

Results
- Under development. Check back for updates.

Suggested Changes
- Under development. Check back for updates.


References and Useful Links
Banjo's Recipe for Adobo for this Carne Asada
Commercial Adobo
A good web site.

An excellent web site for Sous Vide cooking

Reference: Oil Smoke Points

Reference: Oil Smoke Points

Briquettes

Lump Charcoal

Banjo's Sous Vide Pork Chops with Sauce

Banjo's Sous Vide Pork Chops


Note:
- please read these instructions all the way through before starting.

Total Elapsed Time: 3.5 hours
- .25 hours (15 minutes) for preparation
- 3 hours in sous vide machine
- .25 hours (15 minutes) on grill or skillet
- Note: this will produce cooked pork to the precise desired temperature, but it will have normal toughness for a pork chop. If you want to make it tender, then leave it in the Sous Vide for 24 hours.

Hardware:
- Sous Vide machine
- Pork Chops
- Balsamic Vinegar
- Olive Oil
- Lemon Juice
- Charcoal grill (optional)

Prep time:
- 15 minutes for preparation of pork and sous vide machine
- 20 minutes for sauce (prepared while pork chops are in sous vide machine)
- 10 - 15 minutes on grill or hot iron skillet (depends on how much heat and maillard browning you desire)

Sauce:
1 cup of balsamic vinegar
2 tsp olive oil
1 tsp lemon juice

Pork Chops
2 large thick cut pork chops

Sous Vide:
- Set temperature for 140dF and let it come up to temperature
- Prepare pork chops with salt/pepper and place into plastic pouch. If both in the same pouch, make sure they don't touch so the heat can surround pork on all sides.

Instructions at elapsed hour:minute
0:0 - 0:15
Prep sous vide
- Fill sous vide with water, and set for 140dF.
- Place pork chops into pouch

0:15
Pouches to Sous Vide
- When sous vide comes up to temperature (approx 15 minutes), add pork chop pouches to sous vide. Cover with lid.

0:15 - 3:15 (3 hours)
Cooking in Sous vide
- pork chops cooking in pouches

2:45 (30 minutes prior to pork chops being ready)
Prepare charcoal grill
- Start charcoal. Allow 30 minutes for coals to come up to maximum temperature.

2:50 - 3:15 (complete before taking pork chops out)
Sauce Prep
- Pour balsamic vinegar into sauce pan.
- Bring to boil, then reduce to high simmer.
- Stir frequently
- Continue until balsamic vinegar reduced by 2/3rd (you want about 1/3 cup of reduced balsamic vinegar)
- Whisk in olive oil
- Whisk in lemon juice
- Lower temperature to low simmer (or off heat and warm in microwave later)

3:15 - 3:30 (everything ready, waiting to complete browning on grill)
Grilling Pork Chops for browning
- remove pork chops from sous vide machine and pouches. They are cooked, now you are going to brown them for additional flavor. If using skillet, place just enough olive oil in pan to prevent pork chops from sticking, and bring up to temperature just below oil smoke point.
- transfer pork chops to hot charcoal grill
- heat, without flipping, on one side until they reach your desired browness. Lift edge up to observe, but do not flip until this side is complete.
- when this side has reached level of browning you desire, flip to other side.
- heat until this side reaches browning you desire.

Final
- Plate pork chops, and pour 1/4 of sauce on each pork chop (or in a dipping bowl), for total of 1/2 of sauce.
- 1/2 of sauce will remain for additional coatings if desired.

Enjoy!

Please send me a message of how this worked for you!

Meals for a weekly diet

The USDA says we need to concentrate more on a weekly view of food intake, or our weekly diet, rather than a daily view.

So, from a food portion viewpoint, my diet is now meal based, but from an overall perspective, it's weekly based.

Weekly Meals
4 days a week, a meat meal. 2 of those days are for fish, 1 day for beef or pork, and 1 day for chicken. These meals are for a single meal. So, out of a total of 3x7, or 21 meals, 4 meals are include meat, and 17 include no meat.

Every day, 3 glasses of fat free milk. These are taken with a meal, or otherwise. I sometimes take a glass of milk as a snack, so don't always have it with a meal.

Every lunch and dinner meal includes vegetables.

Every breakfast meal includes either steel cut oats, or a selection of fruit, sometimes raw or sometimes in the form of a smoothie.

I try to use fresh vegetables as opposed to canned, because of the additional sodium that is frequently added to the canned.

I try to eat higher fiber, lower fat foods, lower sugar foods in my food selection, so the bulk of my calories are from vegetables and fruits. This means cutting down on cheese, pasta and other high starch (high in sugars) foods such as white rice. On the cheese,I use lower fat, but it's preferred to intake fat free milk instead. If I'm eating cheese, then I drop a milk for the meal.

I'm targeting 1500 calories a day intake. I think one of my problems has been skipping breakfast, eating too big a lunch, and way too big a dinner. I think that kept me from getting a full feeling as the sizes were inconsistent. So now I'm also targeting similar size (bulk) for each meal, in general terms, and always includes breakfast. So 500 calories, more or less, for each meal, gives me the 1500 for a day. That seems to be helping, and I find that I'm feeling more full after each meal now than in the past.

I only weigh once per week. Hopefully, I see a drop of about 1 pound per week, but maybe not. That's OK; I'm still going to be losing weight as opposed to adding weight.

I'm trying to fit a diet into my day, not fit my day into my diet. Taking a weekly view on foods helps in many ways. For instance, we might be out on the road traveling, and fitting my diet into my day means we may be stopping at a fast food joint. On that day, I may be able to hit my target meal allocation, more or less, for the calories, but I may be over allocated on the sodium. On a weekly view, since I'm rarely not eating a home prepared meal and thus am in control of the sodium placed onto my food, I'm always low on sodium, thus the meal at the fast food restaurant doesn't cause me any issues about getting more sodium on this meal - I'm under on sodium on all other meals throughout the week.

Diet Supplements
Since foods high in Omega-3 are considered by the USDA to be beneficial, I take 2 1000mg tables of fish oil every day. I also take 2 1000mg tablets of flax seed oil to help with keeping my skin pores open, as I have an issue with this. I also take a daily multi-vitamin high in B12. I looked into taking a vitamin high in potassium, but in analyzing my meals, by increasing my vegetables and fruits I'm getting enough potassium now, but was definitely low this before.

How to Cook Shrimp

Here's the cocktail sauce we like to serve with our shrimp!

Buy 1 pound of fresh shrimp, which is about right for 2 people for a meal primarily of shrimp. We prefer ours with the heads off. If fresh, they should be gray in color; they start turning orange as they lose their freshness.

Get a colander and try it out in several of your tall pots. You want a colander/pot combination that will let your colander sit in the pot, suspended by the handles on the colander, inside the pot, without touching the bottom of your pot. You want a lid that will drop down onto the colander. It doesn't have to be too snug. You can also buy these enameled pots with lift-out strainer at the grocery stores

The idea here is that you will be boiling water in the bottom of the pot, which will be producing steam, but you don't want the water to rise up to the shrimp. It's OK for froth to rise up, but you are wanting to steam the shrimp, not boil them.

Pour the water into the colander. You don't want them to be crowded, as you want the steam to be able to work its way through them. We are able to cook 1 pound this way at a time, without over crowding them.

Keep the lid on until you see some steam coming out around the lid. Periodically lift the lid to see the shrimp. Using a long cooking spoon or ladle, stir the shrimp, so that all of the shrimp will get exposed to the steam.

Continue to periodically stir while steaming the shrimp, until all of the shrimp are a uniform orangish color - any gray means that shrimp is undercooked.

Pour onto a serving platter, pull off the shells, dip in the sauce, and eat!

Tip on taking the shell off: Pinch the shell at the first joint about the tail and pull, while with other hand hold at the bottom of the 2nd shell joint. This will remove 2/3 of the shell in one single stroke. Now remove the legs and shell in an easy twisting motion.

How to Make Seafood Cocktail Sauce

We cook a lot of seafood, and my wife has perfected the best cocktail sauce ever!

Ingredients
==
Ketchup, about 1 cup
Worcestershire Sauce, about 1/4 teaspoon
Horseradish (cream style, prepared), about 1 teaspoon
Lemon juiced, about 1/4 of lemon

Mix together.

I like mine hotter than my wife, so I add hot sauce (Texas Pete) to a separate serving for me.

You may want to adjust up/down the horseradish. It should be enough to have a kick to it, but not so much your nose is burning!

How to Cook Oysters

I've just completed writing a restaurant review for Bowens Island Oyster Roast, and decided I needed to write an article about the proper way to cook oysters.

Roasting oysters, such as the way they are prepared at Bowens, is not the way I prefer.

I'm going to show you the best way, developed over years of cooking oysters for small and large groups of people.

First, the oysters.

If you have oysters on the shell available to you, than this is the preferred method.

Steamed Oysters in their Shell
We buy our oysters by the box at a local grocery store, with 100 to a box. This is about the same as a bushel of oysters, which is how I bought them when I was younger, but stores don't seem to carry them this way now.

I take the number of people that are going to eat oysters, and divide by 6, and that's the number of boxes of 100 I buy. Since I can't buy a part of a box, I round up to the next box. So for 20 people that are going to eat a meal of oysters (not talking about those people that either don't like them, or not had them, but people that know they like oysters and know they want a full meal of them), I'll end up with 3.3 boxes, rounded up to 4 boxes, or 400 oysters.

For 20 people, you will need 5 turkey fryers (burners) in order to keep the people supplied with oysters in a constant flow. This is going to be a lot of work for the main oyster cook! These are the propane cookers with stand, a lift out boiling pot, and a metal pot. It's probably about 5 gallons.

We pour all 400 oysters into a hard-plastic pond liner (about 20 gallons) and cover with ice. We take them out one-at-a-time wearing water proof kitchen cleaner gloves, inspecting each one before it goes into the boiling pot.

Place about 3 inches of water in the bottom of the pot. Bring it to a boil. Do this for all the burners you have, as some oysters will have died and their shell will be open; you don't want to serve these. Use an oyster knife to pull the lid off of these or discard the whole oyster if not in a cluster.

Fill up, about 3/4 full, the boil pot (the one with the holes in it), and lower it down into the boiling pot. The water in the pot should be below the level of the oyster boil pot; if it's too high, then use a ladle to remove some. You'll be removing water from the pot all night, so you'll need a long handled ladle for this task.

Put the lid on, and kick up the burner to high. It will be making a roaring noise. You'll need to do this because the cold oysters will take a lot of heat out of the pot.

When steam starts coming out of the top of the lid, take a look. If there's just wisps of steam, you are too early - you want a cloud of steam rising up and through the oysters, indicating that all of the oysters have been heated enough to be cooked.

I like to leave mine in the pot until a froth bubbles up, but you'll need to experiment with this.

Do it this way, you'll be able to cook the oysters at a much more precise, lower temperature, than that used in roasting. For this reason, you don't have to be as precise as to the time to cook, they are harder to over cook, and all will come out at the same temperature. Plus, the steam helps clean everything!

Oysters from a Pint Container
Depending on where you live, you may not be able to obtain oysters in the shell (not the half-shell; that's a serving of raw oysters that have had their lid removed). However, you may be able to find, if your grocery has a 'seafood' or 'fish' section, oysters that have been shucked and placed into a pint container. I'm not talking about oysters in a tin can or sardine-like container. You should be able to see the shucked oysters through the clear pint container, in their liquid.

At home, depending on how many people you are serving, get a large pan, and pour all of the oyster liquid into it. You'll want the liquid in the pan to come up about 1/4 inch, or about half way up an oyster. It doesn't really matter if you have more water, it just will take longer to bring it up to temperature. You don't want less water then would come up half way on the oyster.

Bring the water up to a simmer, then immerse your oysters into it carefully so you don't splash hot water out of the pan. You'll want a pan big enough so you can serve one serving to everyone at the same time. If you have more people, either add more pans, or cycle between people. You want to serve a small serving to everyone, so everyone will eat their oysters hot before they have had a chance to cool down.

So you'll be cooking many servings. When its just the two of us, I'll cook the pint in 2 or 3 separate servings, so they are all hot.

Serve with Tobasco, Texas Pete, or your favorite condiment.

We usually don't put anything on them.