Tonight Skim's school choir is singing the National Anthem at Chase Field and her church group is going camping. The only way for us to do both for her was to fix our van in time, and it's a complete beast and won't be done. Hard decisions now.
43 thoughts on “September 12, 2014: Conflict of Interest”
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Folks up north, keep your eyes open for aurora the next evening or two...
To the rib smokers around here: anyone have a good rib preparation? I've never actually smoked ribs before and this is usually a good place to ask for pork related goodness.
just the rub, or do you need advice on trimming spare ribs?
I am a big fan of Steve Raichlen's How to Grill.
The rub should be applied several hours ahead (or, preferably, the day before). A basic rub is 4 parts brown sugar to 2 parts each: kosher salt, granulated garlic, onion powder, and paprika, and 1 part each celery seed, black pepper and a spicy chile (cayenne or other). I often add rosemary and/or oregano. But this is something you can play with a lot.
Assuming spare ribs, you want to trim off the rib tips and much of the flap meat, then pull off as much of the exposed membrane as you can (some may still be covered up by flap meat on one end of the rack, which is no big deal).
I prefer to smoke my ribs standing (long way) in a rib rack. If you don't have a rack, you'll need to turn the ribs over every hour or so. Have a drip pan with 3-4 cups of hot water.
For the snake, I start by mostly filling my starter chimney with briquets, then pulling briquets from the can to build the snake, leaving 10-15 briquets to start the snake with. Light those as normal and pour/pile at one end of the snake, butted up but not overlapping with the start of the snake.
I usually leave my vents open all the way open. Once you've poured your starter coals on, put your grate on, get your ribs on, put the lid on, and go sit down with a book and a beer. You can check the grill periodically by holding your hand over the lid vents to check the heat level (or visually to see small amounts of smoke from your wood chips).
meat, your turn to advise and consent!
I was mostly interested in the rub. Actual meat prep I'm familiar with. I was planning on putting something on it the night before, I figured someone here had some killer rub recipe.
I picked up a 7 lb package of St. Louis style ribs from Costco and a rib rack for space reasons (and because I'll be working on the deck and won't have the time to check it every hour).
mmmm, loves me some dry rub...
That's what she said.
+1 folded WGOM buck
Mike Mills' ribs are the best I've ever eaten.
Thanks. I'll probably give that a go because I pretty much have all of that stuff on hand and those are all things that I like.
I've never actually used his recipe myself, but I was at one of his restaurants once, and... wow. Just wow.
http://amazingribs.com/recipes/rubs_pastes_marinades_and_brines/meatheads_memphis_dust.html
I've used meathead's Memphis dust to great success. His article on the science of rubs is a worthwhile read, but I still add some kosher salt to the mix.
I make my fuse 2 x 2 briquettes, and start about 8 in the chimney. The length of the fuse is a little bit subjective, but I've generally found that half the bottom of my 22.5 weber is 4-5 hours. I leave the bottom wide open, and the top a pencil's width (enough to dangle my digital meat thermometer's probe through). That's my go to method.
I've got a similar sized Charbroil, so I'll probably go about half-ish on the bottom (maybe a hair more). What about wood chunks? I was going to put about three decent sized chunks on top for smokin'.
I use (small!) chunks on top of every 2X2 for at least the first half of the snake. No soaking.
No soaking I knew. I recently tossed a couple chunks on top of my coals when grilling a pork tenderloin without soaking them and, holy crap, did that turn out good. No idea why I never thought of adding wood chunks when grilling things before.
Because of this thread I kneaded up a nice rack of St. Louis pork ribs w/ some dry rub (garlic/onion/paprika/chili powder/ground cumin/pepper/chipotle/br. sugar) a couple hours ago, and am about to go outside and light up my snake. Need to remember some wood chunks...
Mmmm, dry rub
"dry rub lights up snake."
sounds like an episode description on Midnight Blue.
If you have not seen James Brown's (the CBS football guy, not the Hardest Working Dead Man in Show Business) statement from last night's NFL pregame, it is making its way around on the Bookface. I recommend watching and sharing widely.
If the other James Brown made a statement last night I would actually want to see that, too.
I've never given a buck before, but you get all the ones I've got saved up.
My mouth actually dropped open listening to it. I was NOT expecting that. Bravo, JB.
Anybody still looking for Replacement ticket? Might have an extra.
Speaking of, where's the meet-up!?!
My wife and I will get to the area around 5. Don't know the plan. Can probably meet up with others.
How worried should we be that Kennys Vargas has only 4 walks in 174 plate appearances?
Having not seen him play much, I am going to say I'm not super concerned at the moment since his K/BB ratio in the majors is quite a bit different than in the minors. Maybe he's just getting used to seeing major league pitching, with walks suffering for the moment.
Yeah. I know he is only 23 (meme!) but you would think he would lucky into a dozen walks.
Maybe the coaches are telling him to just grip it and rip it so they don't risk people thinking Vargas will be another David Ortiz? I'm just assuming (hoping?) that a k/BB going from about 2:1 to 10:1 will correct itself eventually.
Marginally. He had decent rates in 2013 and 2014 in the minors. The comparison to Colabello is obvious, but Colabello had a strikeout rate of 30% this year and 32% last year. Vargas is at 26%.
I never thought of Colabello. I hope Vargas is not the next Colabello.
For one thing, there's about 6 years difference. My theory about walk rate in small samples is that if they are hitting the ball well, the walks drop because they hit the ball before they get a chance to walk. When they're not swinging well, they foul those pitches off. When the batting average suffers, see what happens to the walk rate then. If they can at least extend at-bats and get on base with walks to offset the hits not coming as much, then you don't have much to worry about. From what I've seen of Vargas, no one on the Twins has as much power, including Arcia, and he's willing to go to all fields. He needs to learn the zone a little better to avoid striking out so much, but that should come with experience.
A bit of a wonky read for a Friday, but good stuff here.
Is Javier Baez's Rocket-Powered Swing Built To Last?
Twins game has already been called, double header tomorrow.
Saw a link to this article on my Twitters and thought of AMR. Sounds like fun goings on at the Schell brewery.
Oh, Jace. Keep doing what you're doing.
Dad (Ted) bought Grain Belt, turned it into a cash cow, and lets Son follow his muse and make us all happy.
Things just keep getting better for the NFL. Adrian Peterson indicted in child injury case.
And I stumbled into a free ticket on Sunday. I will continue my streak of never paying to attend a NFL game, but still attend my first one in about a decade (the last game was when the referees screwed the Seahawks and the microphone carried Holmgren's expletive filled diatribe to all of Baltimore).
Wowzers, what a piece of shit.
He's getting really good at cooperating with authorities, though!
I think we all need to take a step back and look at the real issue here.
Purchased Furious on the way home tonight. Got complimented on the choice by multiple people in the store. Returned the compliment as they were making similar purchases. Now enjoying. A tough week at work, but for now, some of my actual fury is subsiding.
Is there anything beer can't do?