At Home Brisket

Like At Home Tacos this will be the journal for briskets prepared at home.

1/15/14

So this entry starts with me stuck in a building where if I fire up my smokers everyone thinks the building is on fire and a rabid vegan comes out to try and convince me to give up meat.  Worse yet the seal on my oven has dried out and repeated call to management have gotten me no feed back on a eta for repair.

1/16/14

Midmorning knock at the door and there is our engineer with a new Hotpoint.  He really is a good kid and you can tell that he is feeling like Santa even though his communication skills have left us feeling in the lurch for the last week.

So out I go to a section of Milwaukee Ave. that is up for grabs and to  Ellengee for some briskets and pub burgers.

I have things to do Saturday and Sunday so I am going to initiate that oven quickly.  It has been too long since my chest freezers have had a proper amount of beef and since I have had the primordial pleasure of hauling home and cooking big meat.  I have Woody's Cook-In' Sauce so into the foil covered pan and then the fridge it goes.

1/17/14

I woke up at 2:30 AM.  Not usually glad when this happens but today I am.  I stumble over to the kitchen and breaking my rule of no lights from 7 pm to 5 am I turn on the light long enough to set the oven on 350 F.  At 3 am the brisket goes in.  At 3:30 am the tamp is turned down to 225 F and I go back to bed.  My pan is a bit shallow so the bottom of the oven is lined with foil just in case the fat melting through the meat over flows it.

Five AM and the day starts.

The juice is either removed or used for basting then removed.

3 PM it is ready to cut and I make a proper mess of the tip.

Thankfully I stop at that and later Sherry uses our electric knife to cut up the rest.

It is all good but there are folks who better like slices or chunks or ends or sides or bark.

At Home Tacos

This will be more of a journal than a blog post. Tortillas plus stuff equals taco will be the theme.  Will be in need of less carbs so at some point tacos might actually look like sushi.

1/15/15

I normally do the shopping.  Sherry normally does the cooking.  She had been making noises about making a pot of chili so I did my part and made sure the ingredients were available.  Her chili uses one secret ingredient that I will not share at this time. For that matter I will just say she made chili last night while I was at hack night.  So today at Jewel I bought ingredients for sort of standard tacos.  Tomorrow hopefully I will add text and pictures about those.  Today I nuked up some of her chili.  Added cheese because I was afraid the fat content might be too low.  Spooned that onto tortillas and enjoyed.

1/15/14 - supper

Here is what can happen when you take a picture without putting on your glasses.

Here are the main ingredients for a classic tortilla.

 After chopping, slicing and whopping.

 And just before they disappear.

1/16/14

Then Sherry said "Let there be breakfast tacos."

Tacos at Lomas Verdes

So I am north of Irving Park walking north on Milwaukee.  I pass a law office and think of the Kathy Bates tv series.  Then I come to the costume shop.  I know I have gone to far.  I guess maybe a lot of other people have gone to far... in costume.  So anyway I turn around, I repent, I know the reward is behind me.  I have dined there before.  Today's task though is to try most of their tacos.

So front to back and left to right we have relleno, pork, ground beef, chicken, steak, tongue and avocado.  I think.  To tell you the truth there was little taste difference except for the relleno, chicken and avocado.  I asked for four grilled jalapenos as well and got a cup of pickled jalapenos.  I swear I will need to learn Spanish properly if I continue to insist on eating authentic tacos.  The lettuce was beyond what I would serve.  So on a given day of just wanting a quick meal I would likely have two chicken or tongue tacos or one relleno taco.  On this day our mother of Lomas Verde seemed distracted with helping a young man that best I could understand had made his way in from Bollingbrook and had a promise of work on Adams in El Centro close to the Post Office.  So I got home without red or green sauce but I have plenty of that and until the snow all melts this is a neat place in the hood to grab a hearty meal.

Being My Own Derelict

Or as my sister might say of me he is doing his thang.

That in terms of this blog will be to stay a hermit a lot of the time and then turning into a whirling dervish or a look alike to Taz.

Brisket will normally be one pound sliced of whatever a place offers.

I am looking for a smoke ring and a bark that even in a sealed container will make anyone close to me salivate.  I want the fat to have been left on and flavored the meat.  I like the fat left on but expect to pay less for a finished product with the fat left on.  This is to me a simple yield to cost ratio.  I expect the meat to be tasty enough that it does not all make it home and we do not get the four nice meals a pound should provide us because we have nibbled at it constantly.  I expect a sauce but should not need it.

I have never met a taco I did not like so reporting on tacos is going to be interesting.  Expect a review of tacos at Rick Bayless joints, Taco Bell, Jack In the Box, box kits and even frozen and nuked.

Today I am a hermit because:

Tacos from Flash

This taco stand located just off a very busy six cornered intersection with long ramps can be confusing as it is located over Underdog so the signs have made some try to go down the dungeon steps.  Cash Only, BTW.

OK, so a bit of second hand info here first.  My wife had three hard shell ground beef tacos and one hard shell carne asada taco.  She liked the ground beef better but said 'they did not have much flavor'.  The tacos do come with red and green sauces that have plenty of heat but not really flavor.

The picture above is of four soft shelled tacos and they were ordered to be flour tortillas but three are corn.  Counter help was friendly but apparently we did not completely communicate.  All of the tortillas disintegrated.

The ground beef taco meat was larger than the BBs some serve so you get something to bite into.  Mild flavor though so of course as expected for Chicago.  Good solid food though just be ready to add spices if you like them.

The tongue was tender and the carne asada was not overcooked.  The chile relleno had substantial cheese but the pepper was under cooked.  Still though good substantial food.  If I lived in that area I would likely hit this place for breakfast several times a week with my own preferred spices in my pocket.  I might even try the breakfast tacos.

Brisket from Smoke Daddy's

Here goes the derelict again.  Now I will not mention this all of the time but I did want to mention that it was very comforting when not knowing for sure if we had walked in the right direction that I caught the distinctive whiff of what is distinctive to a bbq place.  That smell was nice as was the greeter and the warmth of the kitchen.

This brisket was very enjoyable at Smoke Daddy's as a sandwich and I found the atmosphere there one I would enjoy for a date night or to watch a sporting event.  They have an apple cider, mustard and sweet sauce.  The sweet sauce is closest to my preferred hickory flavored and brown sugar sauces.  I have reasons for avoiding sugar now but this little bit did not cause me any problems.  The container you see is larger than needed for the one pound of sliced brisket that I plan to use as my normal sample.  There was a covering of plastic wrap as well as the lid.  It was brought to me first sitting as it is and wrapped and covered in a normal grocery size brown bag with handles.  There were ample samples of each sauce as well.  We asked for a larger bag so it could sit flat on the bottom of the bag.  Luckily we also had a bag of tacos that made up the rest of the bottom and would keep it from shifting during our trip home on the buses and 'L'.  The greeter gave me directions on how to walk to the 'L' but also thankfully said yes the bus would take us there.  On that trip there were no hints of smoked meat smells.

As you can see the brisket is sliced thin not pulled and there is a slight smoke ring.  I did not taste any overt spices.  I enjoyed it reheated with the sauce.

The sandwich was on the menu but I needed to ask for the price of the brisket by the pound.  The waitress quoted me half what it should have been and did not get huffy when I said 'no, I do not think so'.  She checked and was attentive but not hovering the entire time we were there.  Worthy of her full tip which we paid on that eaten in and on the takeout.  The pound was sixteen dollars which I have found to be in the middle of normal for the area.

The Trip to Flash Taco and Smoke Daddy's

Be aware that I am a derelict and this will be a derelict blog.  That is that I am derelict in doing those things that are expected.  This I guess is one of them.  We had an appointment in Wicker Park that we needed to keep but we really did not need to go tromping around anymore than that.  I however chose for both of us to tromp around to a taco joint and a bbq joint.  Then when we were home I chose to tromp out Walgreen's and back.  Then I also trudged out to Jewel through the snow and Sears and of course back again.  The scene in Sears was indeed in stark contrast to the few days before Christmas.  Ghost town.  Close to the same on the buses and train but not quite so empty.

We took the Blue Line to the Damen stop and walked to our appointment.  We then went back to the six cornered intersection and got tacos at Flash Taco.  First time then on the Damen bus we found the southbound stop.  At the stop we saw a service dog we know.  Bus stop to Division where we figured out that if we headed south on the bus east was to our left.  We walked three blocks to Smoke Daddy's.  Funny the Division bus was not given as an option on the CTA trip planner.  This would be the place to plug the Visual CTA Chicago project currently in infancy on my Github.  After enjoying a brisket sandwich and sweet potato fries we did catch the Division bus to the Blue line at another six cornered intersection and home.

In this case the journey is the journey and the destinations.