smitty55

I would suggest you contact Rocky's Reel Service and show them the pic of that spring. As mentioned it seems to be a fairly heavy spring that appears to be for keeping tension on some assy. Good luck.

A little psa here. Independent Grocer has whole briskets points on sale for $3.00lb ($40-$45) and trimmed pieces packaged up for $4 lb. ($22 range) Meat manager said he can hardly keep it on the shelves, considering it's way cheaper than burger even. He had to put one aside for himself to smoke. So I'm leaning towards doing them up in a brine with a #1 cure, so basically a corned beef and then smoke it. From what I'm seeing the prague powder isn't necessary but then it isn't considered corned beef and won't have that red colour and different flavour. Smokingmeatforums.com is a good place to wander around, check out post #27 in this thread. https://www.smokingmeatforums.com/threads/to-brine-or-not-to-brine-a-brisket.89757/page-2 Cheers

Not a problem at all, the braided sheath won't harm anything.

I think it was like maybe a dozen years back that I tried a "Cowboy" burger recipe that called for a mix of pork and beef to raise the fat content. Well let me tell you I was hooked right away, I often use it now with game or lean beef in burgers, meatloaf and meatballs. It makes a noticeable difference. I have ground my own mince pork in the past, if I see it on sale in bulk I will buy it and separate into small packages of maybe 3/4 lb. Plus we use it for making our own egg rolls as a meat base along with some chopped and fried coleslaw mix along with garlic, ginger and spices. We like them, look the same as yours. Back to those beef/pork mixes, I have on occasion bought some on sale from freshco for the convenience factor too, in 10 minutes you've got fresh meat loaf or meat balls on the fry pan or grill or oven. Granted it would be my third choice overall, but I can't recall anything real negatory with any that we've used. Well..., there was that one meat loaf that I just put down to wifey over doing it, it had some good shrinkage factor hehe Cheers

Maybe admin can move this to non outdoor or smoker recipes.

So I've been using big chief smokers for like close to 40 years now, I'm on my third one. I've always used wood shavings over the years. Couple of years back my daughter gave me a few bags of Jack Daniels pellets that I've used in conjunction with wood shavings. Wasn't sure how they would work in my smoker pan but they certainly did produce a nice thick smoke and do seem to burn faster than chips. Not a big deal but likely more costly to use. So the other day I see this ad on a local buy/sell fb site. It was for 40lb bags of Pitmasters competition blend at a great cost of only $30 cash. Our local butcher sells 20lb bags of Traeger pellets for $25 so this was a good deal. Turns out this lad drove down to the 401 from Carleton Place and bought a skid full of these bags and was selling off extras to recoup some of his costs. Fine by me. https://luxebbq.ca/products/pitmasters-choice-competition-blend-pellets?variant=31999911559230 So hopefully these will provide me with a good smoke also with my electric smoker. Has anyone here ever tried these before? My next session is going to include 2 racks of back ribs and 3 packages of pork tenderloins, so six of them. Freshco had them both on sale at the same price of 6.61/kg. I like my ribs but I'm an even bigger fan of the tenderloin, even better that I'm not paying for bone. This is a new email recipe I want to try from https://www.smoking meat.com/ If anyone is looking for smoking info and recipes I highly recommend checking that site out. He sells two rubs and a sauce recipe. I even found his original rub recipe online so I'm going to do up a batch of that one tomorrow and also a batch of Meathead's Memphis Dust dry rub recipe that I found on https://amazingribs.com/ Cheers

I downloaded and just watched it. Actually wasn't too bad, like you said he is quite the physical specimen and a very accomplished martial artist.

That rabbit wouldn't last long in my case.

Well with the weather today I wasn't about to do much outside, it was like walking into a sauna. I did move a bunch of bedding plants under the picnic tables to protect from the possible thunderstorms yet to come. Other than that it was out the back door to load the smoker and do the wood chip refill for about 5 hours. Did all the hocks that have been brining for over a week now, along with a large polish sausage and a garlic sausage that were just asking for more smoke flavour. Still had one empty rack so I put about 1/2 lb of paprika in a pie plate and placed on the top rack. Also did up another double batch of that asparagus soup, with leeks again. That was 8 more containers for the freezer and 2 cups left over for us tomorrow. Today's menu included a batch of that leek and fiddlehead cream soup that wifey did up yesterday. That soup is so good.

I'm figuring it's along these lines. https://www.coborns.com/recipe?id=30748

So wifey did another double batch of the asparagus soup yesterday. Two onions still left it 1/2 cup short so I grabbed a good handful of leeks to make up the difference. Well as good as this soup is the leeks added a wonderful subtle flavour to the mix, just what I was hoping for. So good. We kept 1 1/2 cups aside for fresh eating and filled 7 containers for the freezer. I have a feeling there will be more batches made up over the next while. Freezer to table with frozen base is like 15 minutes or less if microwave is used.

I know you said it's leaking bad but at that price for a new one I'd be trying to fix the leak first. That's just me though, I'll always try a repair before a replace most of the time.

Recipe please.

I'd be tempted to try it with smoked hocks. You're right, I probably should have grabbed a pile.

So I noticed last weekend that IG had pork hocks on sales for $1.69 lb. I've always seen those smoked pork hocks but at 8 to $10 each I never tried them. Well I bought 7 of them and presently have them brining in 2 gallon ziplocks in the downstairs fridge until the weekend. Researching recipes sure does seem to give a lot of leeway. One says to brine for 7-10 days, another for like 3-5 days. One also mentions soaking them once or twice in clean water after brining to remove the excess salt, drying them well and then further drying them for an hour in the smoker before adding wood chips to improve smoke adhesion. One recipe had them hanging off the racks instead of sitting on theme. Then of course there's a myriad of recipes to use them in after they reach 150, often involving a minimum hour boil to finish the cooking and get maximum flavour extraction from the bones and fat. Now my old baked beans recipe actually call for smoked pork hocks so that will happen, but at this time I'm not sure exactly what I will do with the rest, although I'm really leaning toward trying this slow cooker soup. https://thesaltypot.com/incredible-slow-cooker-smoked-pork-hock-soup-peas/ This looks good too. https://www.gastrosenses.com/blog/smoked-ham-hock-with-roasted-potatoes/ So any comments and recommendations are more than welcome as this will be a first for me. I'm thinking I should have bought more at this price as apparently they freeze quite well. Cheers

When I first moved out here from the city 20+ years ago I learned about a local farmer who sold fresh asparagus each spring, it was young ,fresh and so good. On top of that they made a cream of asparagus soup concentrate that they put in styrofoam cups and froze. You mixed it 1:1 with milk and it was real good. it was the honour system, you would just go to the fridge in their garage and leave the money. It worked great for years until some low life decided to steal the money and that was the end of it. Well I managed to talk Bernie into sharing his recipe with me. So over the years it's kind of been forgotten about. Then I saw asparagus on sale this week and set the wife to task to find the recipe. Well she did find it so I went and bought two bunches which worked out just right for a double batch of the concentrate. She made it yesterday, it's not complicated at all. We used an immersion blender in the pot at first once it had cooled down some and then added the roux, mixed in in well and then finished it all in the blender. Well let me tell you I had forgotten just how good this soup was, I had it last night and for lunch today. We put 8 containers of it in the freezer too. Well needless to say I'm going out to buy more asparagus today and we're going to do another double batch at least. This one is going to get some leeks tossed in for good measure as well. Well I did a search for Bernie's on my pc today and actually found it in a word doc so I figured I'd share it with you folks. Here's a c/p. Definitely recommend. Bernie’s Cream of Asparagus Soup 1-1/4 lbs. of fresh asparagus 2 tsp. (generous) chicken soup base (we used two chicken bouillon cubes) 1 cup chopped onions 2 cups water For the roux: mix flour and butter and lightly cook to improve flavour. 1/4 - 1/3 cup butter (more is better) 1/3-cup flour Milk or Cream Salt & pepper Cut tips from asparagus, chop, and set aside. Cut spears into about 1” pieces. Place asparagus pieces, onions, water, and chicken soup base into a pot – boil until tender, about 12 minutes. In the meantime make Roux of butter and flour. Place cooked asparagus mix into a blender and puree, add Roux, blend again until smooth. Divide into containers, add chopped asparagus tips on top, and freeze. To serve use equal parts of Asparagus Soup Base and milk, or cream, heat and serve adding salt and pepper to taste. Hints: We found that plastic blender containers are more likely to break than glass with the intensive heat. I used 10 ounce Styrofoam cups with plastic caps for storage and a convenient serving for two. The above recipe makes about 5 Styrofoam cups of frozen base, enough for 10 servings.

Doug the leeks are basically the first thing to green up in the bush. Head out for a tour in early May and you should be able to spot them if they are there. These ones have been up for a while in this pic.

Went out for my final pick of leeks today. This cold weather was a blessing, I could actually cover up well to keep the skitters at bay. Turns out I almost didn't even need any bug spray, this cold snap knocked then right down and I couldn't even hear the buzzing. Unlike the other days during the hot muggy weather when the skitters were crazy. I went out during that as the leaves were really starting to turn yellow fast. The bugs were so thick I decided to put on my mesh bug jacket, man those things trap in your heat so much it was literally like being in a sauna wrapped in plastic. I managed to last an hour and got 7-8 pounds. Next day my daughter came over for a pick. She was all sprayed down but only lasted maybe fifteen minutes before the skitters drove her out of the bush. Today I went to a different spot and about 30% of the plants were still green. In maybe 1 1/2 hour I got just under 8 lbs. I never use a shovel and always do my best to only pick the bulb and leave the rhizome and roots in the ground. Going to make up 5lbs of ramp butter and going to pickle up a few jars with a new recipe to try. I got a good 10 lbs of fiddleheads this season too so I'm happy with my spring foraging this year.

That was a good laugh Dave. I've seen that one before and I think it was about hockey then as well.

I make a lot of real good soups over the course of a year but at this time of year there's one very special soup that is at the top of the list. It's called Wild Country Cream Soup, apparently the recipe came from an old Harrowsmith magazine however I couldn't find any reference to it on google at all or their archives. It's a quite rich cream soup with fiddleheads and leeks(ramps) as the stars along with mushrooms and green onion supporting. The flavour is really amazing as one would expect with a full cup of chopped wild garlic in it, along with a little zing from cayenne. Even better that I can go out beside the house and pick the leeks like I did this afternoon. The owner of the property where I do my main picking requests a batch each year. Pic doesn't really do it justice, when chilled the soup if quite solid, when hot it's still thick and creamy, even a small bowl goes a long way. Cheers

It's been heavy with black flies for the last week or so around here but this heat wave has knocked them down pretty good but now all of a sudden the mosquitoes have shown up so not near as bad, they hardly leave a mark.

Heya Todd. Bad enough you can't get to Kipawa at all, even worse is the forum getting hacked. Know any experts on forum admin, I'm sure Greg would love some help. Cheers

That works real good and you can even change flavours.

I have both of them but haven't watched yet. Good to hear.

A neighbour buddy of mine has been guiding for well over 30 years and he swears the best batter comes from Brodie xxx self rising flour. For breading he uses Zatarains Fish Fri blends, they're a 125 year old company from New Orleans. I saw him post a pic of it just recently. Whenever I'm over at the Walleye Lounge there's often a box on the counter. Not in this case though, Jim had the place spruced up real good for the tv crew. This was 7 years back, there's been solid improvements to the seating and other changes since then. This used to be used as a real garage, complete with a hoist mounted in the loft at one time. It's a huge log structure, more than double garage wide and with a high peak and large loft. It matches the even more impressive log home. I can't recall exactly what that floor cost him but I think it was up towards 20G, it's real nice. With apologies for the side track