Has anyone ever BBQ’d a napa cabbage before? A colleague of mine who normally has pretty good BBQ-sense (although he uses coal, like many purists, and I use propane) suggested coring the cabbage, then inserting “butter and a couple ice cubes” before wrapping the whole thing in aluminum foil and placing it over high heat for “some time”.
I found a recipe online that suggests quartering the cabbage, buttering all the sides, and then wrapping those in foil (but no ice) and putting it over medium heat for 20 minutes.
Just curious if anyone here has any suggestions/advice. I’m going to try to make it tonight, along with a couple trays of chicken thighs (boneless/skinless) to last a few days worth of dinners/lunches.
I don’t have direct advice but “grease it up and wrap it in foil” is practically fool-proof in my experience. I would guess the cabbage has enough water content to make the ice (or even just added liquid) unnecessary.
It seems the ice/water would be present in order to steam the bulk of the cabbage, whereas the “hot coals” portion in combination with the foil in there to introduce some charring and caramelization/Maillard reaction.
With those intentions in mind, if it were me, I would quarter the cabbage (or eighth it, if it’s particularly large), lay the wedges out with the outer-leaf face down on heavy duty aluminum foil, season with at least salt, but possibly also add in some aromatics like onion and garlic, and then wrap the foil over the top to create a very tight seal. If your cabbage is not particularly fresh, you could add some moisture, possibly in the form of butter and put on the grill.
Thank you for the advice, everyone! I just put the napa cabbage on the BBQ now, and in about 20 minutes we’ll see how I messed it up.
I quartered it, buttered all the inside surfaces, and then salt and pepper (in the middle of a kitchen reno, so no garlic or onion in the pantry… or a pantry… right now), and then placed the two foils (half of the cabbage in each) outer-leaves-side down directly over a medium heat.
I’m also cooking the skinless, boneless chicken thighs on indirect heat on the other half of the BBQ, and when the cabbage is done I’ll pull them off, and then roast the peppers and chicken over direct heat for about 10 minutes a side.
I may also make the Chicken Katsu sauce (equal parts mayo and tabasco sauce, and then a healthy fistful of bread-and-butter pickles chopped super fine).
I will edit this post with pictures if the results are remotely photogenic.
Chicken turned out well (slightly overcooked, but tasty). Peppers were fine.
Napa cabbage turned out acceptable but not great. No char, for example, and although cooked through and well seasoned, it tasted more steamed than BBQ’d. Not really a complaint, but I was expecting more (any) caramelization. 30min on Medium… maybe it should be 20min on high? Or maybe each quarter has to be wrapped individually? Hmmm. Anyway, a worthy experiment, will try it again.
My turn with the icecream machine. I tried (as a starting point) churning my lemon-myrtle bavarois instead of whipping the cream in it. I have learned a lot from the experiment.
Start the motor before you pour the mixture into the churn. Otherwise freezing mixture will solder the paddles to the inside of the icebucket and the machine won’t work.
Next time, omit the gelatine from the bavarois recipe. Not that it spoils the texture of the icecream, but it makes the mixture become too thick to churn properly (that’s the same problem my sister had substituting Australian “double cream” where the US recipe said “heavy cream”).
Next time, more lemon-myrtle leaves or a stronger extraction, more sugar, and a bit less cream.
I believe I have inadvertently discovered how to make perfect chips. I triple cook - par boil, blanch at 150C and then quick fry at 190C. These are good, but not super crispy.
Last night I was making some for the boys. When draining I dropped them in the sink by accident. To pick them up again I needed to put cold water on them to cool them down.
Did the rest, perfect crispy chips.
Tonight, I drained the chips and deliberately put cold water on them. Drained that and then fries as normal.
I recently bought a small mill attachment for my kitchen machine (Küchenmaschine) and so far my favorite recipe is: Oatcakes. I had trouble finding oatmeal here for a while. Now I can make my own The recipe is from my Scottish Baking book.
I don‘t use porridge oats though, those are too fine. And I don‘t use self raising flour but full grain (which I made fresh today as well) and add some baking powder instead. I have a decent Cheddar I can buy here and I have started adding a dash of Piment d‘Espelette (because I recently bought a small container, otherwise I might just use Cayenne Pepper or Paprika).
These barely last for a day… it‘s a really small batch. Even so the flour grinding takes time. It is a very small mill attachment. But freshly ground flour is… incredible.
Made some BBQ wings today. Decided that I like wings enough to give this a shot when my boss recommended a dry spice mixture for them instead of BBQ sauce (which is way too messy and not worth the trouble in my experience).
Plus some zucchini and eggplant and peppers, as ya do.
Upside: Pretty tasty!
Downside: Slow. 45 minutes on indirect heat and then 15 minutes on direct heat. Still not as good as deep fried. Surprisingly expensive these days (chicken wings used to be cheaper than dirt, now it’s almost as expensive as chicken thighs).
When newlywed, we only had a small coal grill, mostly for burgers and such. After everything (else) was done would toss a couple bone in breasts for later. As long as I didn’t forget about them. Chop the meat for later. Often for deep dish pizza.
Speaking of bbq, does anyone know of a non tomato (also preferably non-coconut soy dairy gluten probably liquid smoke hot sauces, bell peppers or pepper base or cilantro). That taste like regular bbq sauce?
I will also say not mustard or vinegar based.
My tomato allergy has gotten worse. Tomato based bbq didn’t used to give me much of a reaction, but does now. When I cut some tomatoes up for @COMaestros birthday, it *smelled worse then onions do. I do like mustard but it’s not the same.
*I have the best sense of smell, I’m the one who knows when food is off spoiled, I also have that hate cilantro gene.
I have the usual struggles with baking blind. That case has to be lined with baking paper and filled with many-times baked rice, baked once to set it, emptied, baked a few minutes more to brown it, then filled and baked again. The rice holds the sides out and the bottom down in the minutes between the butter melting and the flour cooking. My sister even advises trimming off the browned top of the rim when I take the rice out.
We missed this so much. Not that we did it more than maybe two to three times a year before (1). But it‘s like a mini instant vacation for an evening. Best of all this particular place is in walking distance (15 min) from home (a pretty bad route though, wouldn‘t want to walk there on my own late at night). Inexplicably they have a 5x5 with no games whatosever… and they still have the same awesome sommelier—a true gem. If the food wasn‘t good, I would still go for the wine. Cannot do that often though but tonight the migraine seems to graciously let me have it
Sorry about the sideways image… Signal does that sometimes. Anyway! I have recently gotten my kitchen back after 17 weeks of renovations.
Technically, the renovation process started in November of 2019, but that’s a different story for a different time. Once the (third) contractors started working, it was 17 weeks until they finished and we now have a functional kitchen.
I’ve been throwing myself back into cooking, looking to save money (gosh ordering food is expensive) and to try and get a bit more normalcy in our lives. Just a touch.
I have recently discovered Adam Ragusea, an American Youtube cook who does pretty straightforward recipes that are often good. Rarely great, like Alton Brown, but good. And his directions tend to be really clear and well described. Plus, he’s kinda funny, and I like that. I’ve switched almost completely to his pizza dough recipe, as it gives a wonderfully thin crust, but last night I wanted to try his pot roast.
It’s not really pot roast, it’s almost beef stew. However, it is delicious, albeit a bit too tomato-y for my tastes and slightly too sweet for my partner’s. I think reducing the tomato paste next time (the recipe says 2-3 tablespoons, and I opted for the 3 this time because tomato paste is always spoiling in this house… I just don’t use it for very much), and if that doesn’t work I’ll swap out the crushed tomatoes for beef stock like he suggests.
The mashed potatoes have a little cheese on top because I think that’s a thing people do sometimes and I had a little cheese leftover from the last batch of pizza. I keep forgetting that thin crust pizzas take almost no cheese… 5-6 ounces at most. Anyway!
Pot roast-stew successfully done, and a healthy amount of leftovers for a few more meals. Alton Brown’s “English cut short rib” beef stew is way better, but also multiple orders of magnitude more complicated.
The recipe is from my Scottish Baking book.
