The food thread

So here is the finished Lechon. Very good again.
Not going back to using belly, no chance.
4x the price and double or triple the fat and I don't enjoy it any more.

EDIT: You wouldn't know it by looking, but even this leaner meat is not dry. The picture says otherwise but it's pretty moist.
Now that the technique has been learned, I will brine it going forward
 

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Funny, I dont consider the major organs like heart or liver any different than muscle. I also really love lengua. Tripe, kidneys, lung, are a bit much for me in general.

Bread. To me its a scientific explanation of cooking. Balancing ingredients within a formula to achieve a desired result. After I stopped thinking it was a mystery that only grandmothers and European artisans had learned through years of tutelage or necessity, approached it with a written formula and processes, changing only one variable at a time it led to a better, more thorough understanding of it and now I'm able to look at a recipe and understand it completely and make changes I see fit, all within the confines of the formula.

After all, its just flour, water, salt. Thats it. That's the formula. Work within your desired balance of those learning how extra things affect each category and its easy.
 
I'm okay with most all parts of an animal. I mean how can you have Pho without the two types of tripe or tendon?
How can you have hamburger without heart of kidney?
How can you have sausages without intestine?
Tongue and bung? Well they just sound good when you say them.
Brains? Yummy.

It's all in the prep, both physical and mental.
 
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I'm okay with most all parts of an animal. I mean how can you have Pho without the two types of tripe or tendon?
How can you have hamburger without heart of kidney?
How can you have sausages without intestine?
Tongue and bung? Well they just sound good when you say them.
Brains? Yummy.

It's all in the prep, both physical and mental.

Like my Taiwanese friend told me when I asked them what was in that sweet, delicious chinese sausage.

"Don't ask, just eat it"

A case where the parts are less than the whole.
 
When you type

cook bratwurst beer

into Google, you get hundreds of recipes. 98% of them tell you not to boil the bratwurst, but simmer it below the boil. Add ingredients T, U, V, W to the simmering beer. Remove brats after X minutes, dry them off, then cook on a charcoal grill for Y minutes. Serve on lobster rolls, with some or all of the extra ingredients that were simmered.

However it's tough to tell whether the author is from Florida or Utah or Delaware or British Columbia or Wisconsin, so it's tough to gauge the Wisconsin-ness of the printed recipes. Add that to my lack of a charcoal grill, and I find myself wanting recommendations from Badger State residents.

Some commenters (whose Wisconsin authenticity is impossible to determine) are adamant: use cheap lager style beer. The brats come out terrible when you use artisan beer made from hifalutin ingredients. In my first batch this morning, I used lager beer in cans which I bought from Trader Joe's, 6 cans for $6.99.
 
I’ve tried it both ways simmer first (sauerkraut, caramelized onions,caraway seed, couple of juniper berries,lager beer) then grill ……..or grill then simmer. I prefer the latter as the brat seems more flavorful, trick of grilling first is not to burst the skin letting all the juices out (its harder than you might think!)
No matter how you do it you’d have to really try hard to make a brat taste bad! 😛