Cooking a whole chicken, especially on a barbeque or propane grill can be very challenging, however, there is a simple technique that you can use. Today’s Technical Tuesday video will demonstrate how to spatchcock a chicken.
Essentially, it is a technique where you remove the back bone and then split the keel or breast bone, which allows the chicken to sit flat on the cooking surface. This allows for a more even cooking of the chicken, and one that cooks much faster.
I find indirect heat is best when cooking a spatchcock chicken on a propane grill or barbeque. If using propane, crank up all the burners and get you grill as hot as you can, at least around 500F. Once fully heated, turn on half of the grill and leave the other side on high. Place the chicken on the side that has been turned off.
If using a charcoal bbq, same basic idea. Pile your charcoal on one side of the bbq, and allow the grills and bbq to heat. Place your chicken on the other side and cook to your desire.
This technique also works great in an oven. I tend to place it in one of my large cast iron pans and roast at about 450F.
I love BBQ. Truly, cooking over an open fire, infusing the food with the flavour of smoke has to be my ABSOLUTELY favourite way to cook. In fact, I will be doing a lot of low and slow BBQ over the coming weeks, and months. I’ve even been known to have the BBQ fired up to smoke ribs for 4-6 hours in the middle of a heavy dump of snow,
Now, I will say something here that may upset a few people, while others will know exactly where I am coming from. One of my things when it comes to food is to find some authenticity and to help people to understand what certain cooking terms actually mean.
When I use the word barbecue or BBQ, it has a very specific meaning, and that is food that has been cooked with heat and/or smoke produced from hardwood or the charcoal of hard wood. Now, this is not intended as a value judgement, but rather to make sure that we are speaking the same language. When you are using propane, you are grilling, not BBQing.
Now, if you do want to replicate the BBQ experience with your propane grill, you can always use smoking chips. There are a wide variety of types available and some of my favourite include mesquite, maple, and apple wood, all of which have their own distinct flavour. You can take these chips, soak them in water for an hour or so, and wrap these in foil. Simply then poke a few holes in the top, and place it under the grill and on top of the lava rocks. These chips will smoke (funny thing when they are called a smoke chip…lol) and give you that flavour that you crave.
Now, back to this weeks video. You can go here to see my video about prepping the ribs for cooking. I then rubbed them down with my own spice rub creation. There are lots of great rubs available in the stores if you don’t want to make your own, or you can even come up with you own. I often make minor variations to the one that follows, so please feel free to adjust to your liking.
Spice Rub 30g Smoked Paprika 30g Hot parika 30g Chili powder 5g Dry Mustard 5g Granulated garlic 2g Chinese 5 spice 5g Ginger powder 60g Salt 30g Brown Sugar 10g Black Pepper
Rub down your ribs, give them a few taps to knock of the excess powder, and refrigerate for 24 hours to allow the meat to cure.
After 24 hours, the ribs are ready to cook. The thing I love about this rub is that is so flavourful, allowing you to cook these in a number of different ways. I smoked these for about 2.5 hours in 275-300F heat. You can do the same on your propane grill, or even in the oven. Simply set your oven to 275F and let roast for 2.5-3hrs.
You will notice that I don’t add any sauce to these ribs. Cooking them low and slow following the 24 hour cure gives you juicy and tender ribs that I don’t feel need sauce. Please go ahead and add it if you wish.
I love the fall of the year, but probably for different reasons than most. When I think of fall, I think of long days spent on the bbq. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am on the bbq all summer long, but I tend to cook things that are a little quicker, since I don’t want to be next to a hot bbq for a long period of time when its hot.
But in the fall, I can take a full day to smoke some ribs, or a pork shoulder, or a brisket, or so many other great cuts of meat.
Ribs are my favourite. By a long shot.
So, for today’s Technical Tuesday video, I take a few minutes to show you how to properly prep ribs. There is a membrane on the back of the ribs, and removing it is one of the key steps in giving you the best ribs that you can have. If you have ever had ribs that you thought may have had some paper or plastic cooked on the back side of the ribs, you know what I mean when I talk about this membrane.
And if you are going to cook these ribs on a bbq or a propane grill, trimming the excess fat away, is another essential step.
Check out the video below, and watch me prep the ribs. And check back in a few days to see me prepare a dry rub and smoke these ribs.
One of the things that drove me to start this blog and YouTube channel was to help people cook better food at home. Back in March, not long after our whole world changed from Covid-19, I started posting pictures of some of my meals that I was cooking at home. This generated a lot of comments and questions about how I was making what I ate. I realized that a lot of people were struggling with coming up with new things to eat, but more so, they were getting frustrated when cooking as they did not have the skills to easily cook what they wanted.
And its why I did today’s video about making a gourmet grilled cheese sandwich. The humble grilled cheese needs to be humble no more.
Now, as I point out in my video, if you want to keep using Kraft singles, please, keep using craft singles. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a few tricks in my video to help you make your grilled cheese a little better without ever changing the ingredients that you use.
However, if you want to try something new, my video might inspire some ideas.
A few weeks back, I did a post about pizza that included a recipe for pizza dough. I gave the measurements in various forms, including both in ratios and in weight. I am a big believer of using weight to measure everything in the kitchen, but particularly in the bakeshop. Measuring your ingredients by using weight is far more accurate than by volume measurement.
Take for example 1 cup of firmly packed brown sugar. I do this each year with my students as an experiment and to show them why weight is far more accurate. I ask each student to get 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar, and then ask them to weigh this brown sugar that they have just measured. Each year its the same thing, no two students have the same amount of brown sugar. Some are close to each other, but it usually ends up with about a 10% difference between the biggest and smallest amounts.
Now, when I ask them to measure 150g of brown sugar, each student has exactly the same amount of sugar; there is no variation.
And the nice thing about using the scale, is that you can measure each ingredient directly into the bowl that you plan to use for mixing your recipe. You can simply add your ingredient, and then hit the “zero” or “tare” button, and reset the scale. It matters not what is in the bowl from that moment, since as far as the scale is concerned, it is starting from 0.
I will make one last comment about scales, and this is to note a limitation. Many scales now include a volume measurement scale, however, this only works with three ingredients; water, milk, and eggs can be measured at 1L=1kg or 1lb=1pt. No other liquids will be accurately measured accurately on a scale using the volume option since they do not have the same density.
Now, I do recognize that some people are more comfortable with volume measurements, such as millilitres and litres or cups and pints. If you do prefer to work with volumes, I would suggest that you have two different types of measuring cups.
liquid measuring cups
The above picture shows measuring cups designed for liquids, which we know because it has a spout designed for pouring the liquids out. These are not ideal for accurate measuring of dry ingredients such as flour or sugar.
dry measurement cups
The above picture shows dry measurement cups. These are designed to measure the most common amounts, and allows the user to scrap across the top to get an accurate measurement of your dry ingredient. It is well worth having both sets of measuring cups in your kitchen.
Garlic scapes have long been a favourite ingredient of chefs. To be honest, it was a bit of an inside secret amongst some chefs that I know, often keeping them for their own use. Its too bad really, since they are an amazing ingredient that have a wonderful garlic taste with the added bonus of having the bright herbiness of something akin to parsley.
I have three videos again this week. The first two are connected, and I will be going back to the 3rd through the winter.
Garlic Scape hummus with pita and tortilla chips flavoured with a garlic scape oil
I begin with pita and tortilla chips that I season with a garlic scape infused oil. These are a simple snack that you can make, and one that is really easy to modify and make to suit your tastes. There is not too much to these, Brush your favourite tortilla or pita with a flavoured oil, slice into chips, and bake for 6-8 minutes at 400F.
https://youtu.be/ImwR-jhC71M
The hummus is another great snack to have around the house. Its made with chickpeas, also known as garbanzo beans, which are packed with protein. In this variation, I substitute the traditional garlic gloves with garlic scapes which is a nice little twist. The recipe for this is as follows:
1 can (19fl.oz) Chickpeas 1 lemon, whole 10-15 garlic scapes 4tbsp (0.25 cup) tahini paste 2tbsp olive oil 0.5tsp cumin Salt to taste Water as needed
Add your garlic scapes, tahini, olive oil, cumin, and about a tsp of salt into the food processor. Top with your well drained chickpeas.12. How are those pita chips doing?13. Turn your food processor on high, using your rubber spatula to scrap down the sides as needed. Once it has been blended smooth, you can adjust your salt and add water to adjust the consistency.
Our final recipe of the week, is once again a twist on a traditional recipe, and is something that you can make ahead to use all winter long. Pesto is a great sauce that is typically made from garlic, basil, pine nuts, Parmesan cheese, and olive oil. In my version I use garlic scapes and pecans as substitutes.
To make this simply add roughly the same amount of each of the ingredients into your food processor and blend until smooth. Taste and adjust to your tastes.
I’m back with another Technical Tuesday video. Last week’s video was all about dicing onion and I had a few people comment that they would love to see a video all about dicing peppers as well.
Well, I aim to please, so that is what this week’s video is all about. Just like so many of our kitchen tasks, the easiest way to do it is not always the most intuitive way, so unless someone show’s us, we have no idea how to approach it. This often leads to us feeling frustrated, and when we are frustrated, we don’t enjoy what we are doing. And in my humble opinion, when we don’t enjoy what we are doing, its going to affect the way our food tastes.
There is nothing fancy about my approach to dicing peppers, and really, its a pretty simple technique. Its the type of thing that anyone can master after one attempt, so long as you have a good knife grip.
Have a look, and leave me a comment if there is anything else that you want to learn to do.
I love this time of the year. There is an abundance of amazing produce available including some very tasty tomatoes. I normally try to grow some, but with my kitchen renovations this year, I did not get a garden going. But, fortunately for me, my local grocery store brings in large quantities of Ontario field grown Roma tomatoes, which happen to be my preferred tomato for making sauce with. And there is little I enjoy more than to have a wealth of bottle tomato sauce in the pantry for winter pasta dishes. Its almost as if you can taste the sunshine coming right through the sauce.
bottles of sauce ready for the pantry
I did a video all about pizza last week, which upon reflection, I realized that I could have broken into a few different videos, giving people the option to watch a few short ones instead of one large one. Well, this blog and accompanying YouTube channel has been a learning process, so this time around, I decided to break down the different stages into separate videos. I also released an extended cut just in case someone wanted to watch it as one long video.
I begin with showing you how to peel a tomato. This sounds like such an easy task, but like most tasks in a kitchen, there are tips and tricks that the professionals use. This technique will hopefully help you work faster and ensure that you can increase the yield of your tomatoes.
The key is to use boiling water to cook the peels and then to drop the tomatoes into an ice water bath to stop the cooking process. This will allow the peels and only the peels to come off with little effort so that you don’t have to cut into the flesh of the tomato at all.
Once I have all of the tomatoes peeled, I move onto making a tomato sauce. Again, I demonstrate a very simple sauce that is easy to make using just five ingredients.
As I explain in the video, I do not season the tomato sauce at all, since I am unsure what I will be using this sauce for in the future. I want it to be a blank canvas that offers me as many options as possible. To make the sauce, I used the following amounts:
Basically, you take about 20% weight of the tomatoes that you have and add that for mirepoix. Mirepoix, or soffritto, as it gets referred to in Italian cookery, is a combination of onions (50%), carrots (25%), and celery (25%) and are some aromatics that form the basis for many, many savoury dishes from stocks and sauce, to soups, and is even used at the bottom of roasting pans for many meats.
Once I complete the sauce, I then go through the basics of home bottling or canning. Now, as I point out a number of times in the videos, there is always a risk when home bottling or canning. Botulism contamination is a particular risk when working with vegetable matter, so I would STRONGLY URGE YOU to seek out additional information and do not use my videos as your sole source. I have been doing this for a long time, and I feel confident that I have done everything safely, but proceed with caution. It only takes one mistake to create some very dangerous food.
One thing I do note in the video is that this sauce freezes extremely well, so if you have any concerns about bottling food for yourself, you can always freeze it for future use.
So there you have it. And you can click the link below if you want to watch the extended version
A few weeks back, I posted a video that demonstrated how to hold a knife properly, and afterward, I had a number of people ask me to demonstrate how to properly dice an onion. So, this weeks’s Technical Tuesday video will demonstrate that.
This is a pretty simple task, and with a little practice, you will be as good as I am, This is such an essential skill in kitchens, it is usually one of the very first things that we teach our students in the cooking program.
Have a look at the video below and you too can learn this important skill.
Pizza is one of the great foods of the world. I would venture to guess that there are very few people in the world that have not tried pizza in some form or another. Its such a great food that lends itself to so many variations and options. And its a really simple menu item you can add to your skills and master in very little time.
As a kid I ate many a Kraft “homemade” pizza where you simply added water to the flour mix, and then used sauce that came in a can. You could then add whatever toppings you wanted to make it your own. But it is really a simple thing to make, and the recipe that follows is pretty straight forward and works for me every time.
Now, you will notice in both the video and in the recipe that I provide a series of ratios for the pizza dough. Most bakers work with what’s called bakers math, meaning that every ingredient is scaled or measured as a ratio of the amount of flour that is being used. What this means is that you begin by weighing the amount of flour that you are going to use, and then the rest of the ingredients are a ratio of this weight.
So, as example in the dough I make in the video, the weight of the flour is 200g, and the salt needs to be 2% of that weight, so I used 4g of salt. Here is the remainder of the recipe, with volume measurements for those that don’t have a kitchen scale at home.
Ratio
Weight
Volume
Flour
100%
200g
1â…“ cup
Salt
2%
4g
1.5 tsp
Yeast (instant) or
1%
2g
1 tsp
Yeast (active dry)
1.5%
3g
1.5 tsp
Oil/fat
8%
16g
2 tbsp
Water
60%
120g
1/2 cup
Simply toss all the ingredients into a bowl, mix until you have a fairly smooth and elastic dough, and then cover and let rise. Its really not that hard, and for all my Newfoundland peeps, or fans of Newfoundland’s cuisine, this works great as a touton dough as well. More than once I have doubled this recipe just to have touton dough for breakfast the next day.
My dough is ready to rise.
The dough will take about 45-60 minutes to double in size, which is the perfect time to get everything else ready to go on the pizza. And this is the perfect time to make a quick pizza sauce for yourself. Again, this is pretty easy from what you will be able to see in the video, and it allows you to really develop the flavour that you want for your pizza. I always start with a fair amount of olive oil and then add sliced onions, letting them cook slowly so that they don’t brown too much. When they are ready, I add a LOT of garlic and then some dried herbs. Today, I used oregano, but sometimes I use basil or thyme, or a combination of a few different. The amount you add is up to you. Next, its time to add the tomato. Now, you can simply go with tomato sauce, and there has been many a time that I have used diced tomatoes, because that’s what I had on hand, In today’s video I used San Marzano tomatoes, which really pack a lot of punch in terms of flavour. Give them a shot if you see them at the grocery store. Allow your sauce to simmer until its the consistency that you want, and finish with salt and a bit of sugar if you prefer a sweeter sauce. But like I suggest in the video, its like making tea or coffee, everyone has their own taste preferences from the amount of sugar and milk, etc.
My sauce is all ready to go.
Once you have all your ingredients ready, you can go ahead an assemble your pizza. Its probably a good idea to turn on your oven before you assemble your pizza, and pizza always cooks best in a really hot oven, especially when using a cast iron pan like I did. If you don’t have a cast iron pan, you could use any oven safe skillet, or a sheet pan, but its best to use a heavy duty one so that it doesn’t buckle.
I always suggest a layer of Parmesan on top of the sauce since I find it helps to keep everything in place, plus it packs a significant amount of umami, (one of the major flavour profiles). Next is the cheese, and again, go with what you like. Don’t let anyone tell you its the wrong kind of cheese. I always go with my meats next, and then finish with any veggies I am going to add. And of course, a little extra Parmesan on top, and into the oven it goes.
Ready for the oven
If your oven is good and hot, it should take no more than 7-10 minutes to cook, but keep a close eye. Its much easier to cook it for a little longer than to reverse overcooking your pizza.
Fresh from the oven
With a little practice you can become a pizza pro in no time. There is something very rewarding about making your own food. And for those of you with kids, this is a great activity to do together as a family.
Enjoying a bite of the pizza.
Please have a watch of the video and let me know what you think.