Sourdough Scones

I whipped some of these up today, at least that's what I am calling them. I was intrigued by a recipe in one of my favorite cook books, The Wooden Spoon Bread Book. I've had this cook book for ten, maybe fifteen years, great book. In the book it is called skillet bread and emulates a pioneer-era bread made in a cast iron skillet. To me it tasted like scones.

Maybe they tasted like scones because once again I screwed up and used baking powder instead of baking soda. Maybe, but I don't think so. The bread doesn't sit to double in size like a normal sourdough bread recipe which leads me to believe that the starter is added for flavor not for the yeast action.

Once again I used lard to make a bread recipe and I am beginning to lean away from using it. I can taste just a subtle hint of it in the bread and don't care for it. I think lard might be fine in stronger flavored foods or if you use jelly on your bread but I think bread is just too delicate. I'll have to try again but I think buttermilk might mask the flavor in biscuits. Frying in lard is another story. That usage I really like and have made excellent hash browns and potato pancakes.

Here is the recipe if you would like to try: Sourdough Scones.

Hash Brown Secrets

I've been making a lot of hash browns this week. Why? Well number one is because I'm broke and have half a bag of potatoes laying on the counter. Ordinarily I would forget about a bag of potatoes until they started to rot and then throw the bag away. Almost like a government subsidizing program. But since I am penniless I thought I should do a better job of utilizing what I have. Not the best way to feed a family but it works for two meals a day for just me.

I LOVE hash browns. Especially extra crispy with cheese and onions. But homemade hash browns are amazingly difficult to make. I suspect that restaurants use frozen shredded potatoes to make theirs which is significant. I suppose I could do the same thing but then I lose out on the challenge, the reward and have to pay extra for it.

If you just shred your potatoes and then fry them you'll either end up with a soggy mess or burnt potatoes and pan if you're going for that extra crispy style. Believe me I know. Try to add more oil to prevent the burning, it only gets worse and oddly, sometimes your hash browns smell or taste like fish.

I think I have found three keys, the potato, the pan and the fat.

On the potato it isn't which potato you use but how you use it. I've made great hash browns with Idaho baking potatoes, Yukon Golds, even blue potatoes. The problem with potatoes is that as soon as you cut them, they begin to oxidize. They go brown very quickly. Therefore you need to shred your potatoes and then put them in a bowl of water so that they avoid air contact. Even better is to shred them directly into water. If I'm not up to using my box grater, I use my food processor with a grating disc but fill the bowl half way or more with water. That way the potatoes shred directly into the water. If you want the whitest potatoes, add a dash of white vinegar. You won't be able to taste it but the vinegar will prevent the potatoes from browning once you take them out of the water. Good if you aren't moving fast.

There's one more key to the potato. As I said, I suspect restaurants use frozen potato shreds. Why is this significant? Because in order to get any crispiness to your hash browns you need to have DRY potato shreds. This is doubly important after you've had your potato shreds soaking in a bowl of water. At the minimum, spread your potato shreds out onto paper towels and press them dry. But if you really want to do this right, you need a potato ricer. The difference is night and day. Save your money and skip that cheap aluminum one at the store. I busted one of those on my first press. Get a nice stainless steel one that you can run through the dish washer. I have this one. And please don't make the mistake of many a moron and try to press a whole potato through your ricer. You will break it for sure. Ricers are for pressing boiled potatoes into fine mush before whipping into mashed potatoes. This ensures no lumps. But they are also great for squeezing the moisture out of some foods. After you've pressed the water out of your potato shreds, spread them out on a paper towel and pat out any remaining surface moisture.

Now the pan. I've tried every pan I own and I think I've got it now. The pan does make a difference. Stainless steel and anodized aluminum (Calphalon) will give you nice crisping of your potatoes but they will also stick to your pan, no matter what temperature you use or what you fry in, oil, butter, Crisco, lard, doesn't matter. They'll taste good, but you'll be frustrated. A non-stick pan removes the frustration of your hash browns sticking but you'll have a hard time browning them. That's the nasty secret no one tells you about non-stick cookware, it doesn't brown. The only way you can get any browning with non-stick is to use butter. But you have to be careful of not burning the butter. So if you must use non-stick, use a 1:1 combo of butter and oil. Just remember by the time you get the butter to brown your hash browns, they'll most likely be burnt.

So which pan works? Good ol' seasoned cast iron. I fried up my hash browns in my 12 inch cast iron skillet this morning and not even the first shred of potato stuck. It was beautiful. I found it works best to spread the potatoes over the full surface of the pan (scattered a la Waffle House) and then after they have begun to brown, scrape then back to the center into a patty just bigger than your spatula. Let them continue to get brown and crispy on the bottom and then flip the patty over to brown on the other side. Ideally you only want to flip once. This method gives a crispy outside with tender cooked hash browns in the center.

Last but not least, the fat that you use for frying is important. Forget spray, it won't work. Butter has two problems. One it burns at a low temperature and two, part of butter is water. Remember, you need dry potatoes. Adding oil to the butter helps, but the results are disappointing. Oil is an option but then you end up with your potatoes floating in oil and my experience is they soak up the oil by the time it's time to flip and then the potatoes burn after you flipped them.

So today I used my recently rendered lard. Cool, huh? Just a tablespoon. And at $2.38 to make my tub, it was far less expensive than oil or butter. And using only a tablespoon, it's probably better heath-wise than either the oil or the butter. But the result was amazing. The hash browns were perfectly crispy but lighter than any hash browns I've made before. WOW!

So to recap, to make great home made hash browns:

1. Prevent your potatoes from browning by plunging under water.
2. Press your potatoes shreds dry with a potato ricer.
3. Use a large cast iron skillet.
4. Fry in a tablespoon of lard.
5. Only flip them once.
   

More Greasy News

Today I minded Rose since she came home from "school" yesterday because she was throwing up. I tried to get in as much stuff when she was distracted playing with play-doh or her trains or her oh too brief nap. I wasn't able to do any "real" cooking though.

While we were playing with play-doh I got out my small cast iron skillet and reheated my lard from the other night on the lowest heat setting on the stove. As it melted I could see a thick viscous white sludge settling on the bottom of the pan underneath the clear golden melted fat. I poured the liquid off and filtered it through some cheesecloth into a container. Capped it and put into the fridge. Now I had refined lard.

While I was at it I decided to do the same with a coffee cup full of bacon drippings I kept in the freezer. Same process and now I have some nice refined bacon grease. The solid lard is a nice white, the bacon grease a little brownish.

Later, after nap time while Rose was eating a snack, I decided to make some biscuits with my newly refined lard. They didn't turn out that great but the deck was stacked against me since I have never made biscuits before. I had a recipe for beaten biscuits. I think they might also be called blistered biscuits. Apparently once upon a time this method involved beating the biscuit dough 500 times with a rolling pin. The alternative is to use a food processor which I luckily have. (LOVE IT!)

These biscuits are a breakfast biscuit, especially for country ham. After I made them I realized what they were. I've had them before. Kind of hard to describe them. They aren't flaky and crumbly like you would find at Hardee's, McDonald's or Cracker Barrel, hence why they are ideal for breakfast sandwiches. They have a crunchy crispness to them kind of like the cheese biscuits at Red Lobster. I'll have to try to find where I've had this style before.

Mine did not turn out too well. One reason is they hardly rose. I don't have any biscuits cutters. I tried to roll the dough out into a log and use a sharp knife to cut rounds off, cookie style. Doesn't work. Second, they took longer to cook than the 20 minutes the recipe called for. Oh well. Finally, there is an ever so slight off aftertaste from the lard. It's not bad but it is there. Strangely it tastes like shortening. I bet the bacon grease would be good for biscuits. So I guess I need to get some nice sharp biscuit cutters to do this right.

Next time.

Lardy, Lardy!

Last night I attempted to render some lard. Good God Why! you might ask. Why not is my answer. I've been dieting heavily for the past few months and cooking and the thing that I am becoming more sure of is, there is nothing bad for you, well except for HFCS and aspartame and to some degree soy, but that is another post. It is all, ALL, a matter of moderation.

I don't know why we have become so antilardian. Damn food Nazis. Recipes that do call for lard call for reasonably small amounts. I suppose there is an issue if you eat the entire pan of biscuits, but then again your issue is greater than just the lard content. Lard has no trans fatty acids, less total fat than butter and has less negative cholesterol impact on you (don't take Wikipedia's word for it, check the USDA). And I can make it myself.

I read up on-line about rendering your own lard. See below for some of my references. In the end I did it my own way, for boetter or for worse.

As an initial experiment, I didn't want to invest a lot, so I used salt fatback which is as common as candy down here in the South at every grocery. Not the best source but cheap and easy to get. I thought being packed in salt would be an issue so first I rinsed the two slabs well and then I blanched them in boiling water for a minute.

Now that I had removed the salt as best I could, I scored the two slabs into cubes and then sliced the cubes off of the thick pork skin. Then I threw it all into my Staub Round Cocotte (Dutch oven)and covered the fat with water. I'm not sure if throwing the skin into the pot was smart or not but this was my first attempt.

I set the pot on the stove on low heat (3 on my electric range) and let it simmer away until there was only about a half inch of water left. It took probably six hours. I chose to use the stove rather than the oven just so I could keep an eye on it easier.

I strained the renderings through a fine sieve and put the half cup or so of lard in the fridge to solidify. Cheesecloth would probably have worked better. I think it turned out ok. I'm not sure, I didn't get the cracklins that everyone talks about. Now I just need to make some bread or something to try it out. If it seems like it's right, I hit a local butcher up for some proper pork fat.

Next I'm going to try making tallow.

Online references:
Make Your Own Lard
Homemade Lard
Rendering Lard: A First-Timer's Guide