2023: A Year in Food

Adventures in cooking anything I can get my hands on

Cooking is one of my core passions. If I’m not behind a computer, I’m most likely in the kitchen spending time on some new recipe or project. We designed our kitchen solely around this goal, including a dedicated 48” range and enough counter space for even the biggest meals.

It’s no surprise then that 2023 was filled with as much experimentation as ever. This year included nearly any cooking method you can think of, from smoking and braising to frying, boiling, and even sous vide. Along the way, we made great memories with friends and family and more importantly ate our fill. This is a sampling of some of the highlights.

Now, to the food!

Eat More Beef

We are meat eaters. It’s not the sole focus of our diet, but I firmly believe that meat plays a role in the best dishes. This isn’t a political statement - don’t take it a judgement of any diet. We just find that a good protein makes or breaks a lot of meals.

Sous Vide Surf and Turf

I’m no stranger to the sous vide. We break it out nearly 3 times a week and it’s the powerhouse behind most of my cooking. If you haven’t tried sous vide, do it now - you can get amazingly tender and juicy food and meat cooked safely below the recommendations. If you’ve never had rare pork, you’re missing out.

Sous vide surf and turf is a great way to level the playing field between your steak and lobster. We boil the lobster like normal, but sous vide the steak to achieve a perfect rare. Just dial in your temperature, pack it full of butter and herbs, and finish with a hot sear. The result is an incredibly juicy steak full of flavor that holds its own with lobster. We throw in homemade chimichurri for an extra kick.

Short Ribs

Short ribs are now in constant rotation at our home. While a bit of pain to find, they are straightforward to prepare, hands off, and delicious! We sear ours off and cook them in a mix of a full bottle of wine, beef broth, fresh herbs, brown sugar, spices, and a bit of butter. Just throw it in the oven for a few hours, simmer down the cooking liquids into a gravy, and serve with mashed potatoes or polenta.

Winter Stews

We experimented early in the year with stews mixing beef with options like lamb. If we can track good fresh rabbit nearby, that will be the next go-to.

Smashburgers à la Sawdust

Nothing like cooking during construction. Mid deck construction, the dying Blackstone came in clutch for a nice pile of smashburgers. I use a mix of 60/40 ground beef (90/10 or 93/7) and ground pork. Season before you cook.

Brined Pork Chops

After a lovely night at Lumen8 last year, we discovered their amazing brined porkchop and snagged the recipe. Since then, these are a twice a month fixture at the table and super easy to make. Just grab some thick cut chops and brine in a mix of water, apple cider vinegar, brown sugar, peppercorn, and your favorite herbs, and let sit for at least 12 hours. We then sous vide them to 132 and enjoy with polenta and broccolini.

Baby Led Ribs

Morgan’s first solid food was pork ribs. Enough said.

Seafood in a Landlocked State

Ah yes, Colorado, home of amazing beef, vegetables, and game. Let’s make seafood.

Boils Galore

We’ve gotten into a cycle of throwing crab boils 3-5 times a year. Nobody hates a crab boil! It’s super easy to make, sure to please, and a delicious way to bring people together and see your friend eat a disturbing amount of mussels. Our boil base is a heavy mix of white wine, orange juice, Old Bay, fresh herbs, and broth.

The great part about a boil is that everything is on a single timer. Start with your potatoes and corn, then add your Andouille sausage, and finally your fast-to-cook seafood. We tend to rally around a classic mix of crab, clams, mussels, sausage, corn, and potatoes, but get creative with additions like lobster. You can’t mess it up, and you won’t have leftovers.

And here’s a more humble personal boil:

Shrimp and Crab Delight

We find a lot of shrimp and crab options in Colorado. Getting fresh shrimp is relatively easy, but crab here tends to come precooked or frozen. When I don’t add these to a boil, I tend to serve them unseasoned with cocktail sauce and drawn butter or heavily coated in Old Bay.

Oysters

I’m a huge shucker 🥁 for fresh oysters on the half shell! Surprisingly, we can get a really fantastic mix of varieties either from Whole Foods or JAX. I shuck at home and prepare mignonette and cocktail sauce from scratch. Usually, I don’t even use the sauces. We’ll throw out a few dozen on a weeknight, at parties, or even at Christmas.

Honestly, just forget the sauces. Good raw oysters are amazing on their own.

Mussel Man

Fresh mussels cooked either in a boil or with garlic, wine, and butter cannot be beaten. Mussels are of course an acquired taste, but one that you need to acquire. Prepared properly (remove the dead, scrub, debeard), mussels make for the perfect appetizer. If you’re buying, I recommend another trip to Whole Foods for the best quality. Look for mussels that aren’t open, aren’t cracked, and are roughly equal in size. Expect a handful to go off on the way or during the cook, and dispose of these as you spot them. I like to pan cook mussels in a sauce heavy on the butter and white wine, with garlic and parsley. Just steam for 3-4 minutes and only eat the ones that open.

A Light Shrimp Pasta

Born out of necessity, this is an original I came up with last year. It’s a super simple play on a fresh tomato and basil pasta with the addition of shrimp. To make it, I cook down shallots and garlic in butter, cook shrimp into it and remove them, add in a few Roma tomatoes and generous amounts of basil, and finally reintroduce the shrimp. Mix into your pasta of choice and top with fresh parmesan.

Smoke 'Em if You’ve Got 'Em

I have nearly 1500 square inches of pure American smoker space at the house. I’m a firm (read: stupid) believer in all wood smoking, using just hickory to cook. No shame if you use pellets or gas, but you’ll find me dialing things in perfectly with full logs.

Cream Cheese and Garlic

Next time you smoke some food, throw on a whole brick of cream cheese and a few heads of garlic. Both work so well in the smoker and serve as perfect appetizers while you wait for the main attraction. For the cream cheese, I slice the cheese with a hatch pattern and coat it generously in my rib rub. Smoke for about an hour, or until it melts and develops a crust. For the garlic, keep it simple - slice the entire bulb in half, cover with olive oil and salt, wrap in foil, and cook for an hour and a half or until the cloves become translucent. Mix both together for the ultimate showstopper dip. I expected this to be a gimmick and have since added it to the rotation.

Porkchops

Porkchops don’t seem like a candidate for the smoker but turn out perfect! I go low and slow at 225 and cook them just until 140 (it’s safe). The result is a still super tender cut with just enough smoke to make them complex.

Wings

Smoked wings need no introduction. Smoking is the ultimate way to cook wings, and works perfectly with any preparation or sauce. I personally like to use rib rub for wings, but a nice equal parts mix of salt and pepper with a few highlight spices does the trick. They pair very well with any mustard-based sauce.

Ribs

Ribs are another easy staple. Five hours and they’re ready to go. We follow the Franklin method for the most part - put on mustard and a spice laden rub, smoke uncovered for 3 hours, then smoke in foil with sauce for 2 more hours. Perfect every time!

Bacon Time!

This is cheating as it’s from late last year, but you have to see this picture…

I tend to make about 30lb of bacon a year, loosely following the amazing Michael Ruhlman recipe. Spring for the juniper berries - they make a huge difference! It’s a really inexpensive way to get into curing and makes for an excellent gift or bribe to your contractors.

Chicken Sagas

Chicken makes up a bulk of our protein and for good reason. While not the most tasty or complex meat, chicken is a universal canvas onto which I can experiment and explore. It’s also cheap.

I’ve broken down somewhere around 15 whole chickens this year alone, and prefer to do so when I can. Haters will say it’s the same meat, but you at least feel more connected to what you cook. We roast it, make soups, and generally do all of the chicken-related things.

Cornell Chicken Is Gospel

If you visit our house, you’re likely getting Cornell Chicken. I don’t deviate far from Dr. Baker’s original recipe (more salt, more poultry seasoning) and it results in my absolute favorite chicken dish. Cornell Chicken comes out tangy, salty, rich, and with a really complex flavor that works perfect for anything from wings to breasts. If you can smoke it, even better - just baste every 15 minutes to develop a super crunchy crust and broil at the end.

Chicken Parm Sans Gluten

We summoned our inner Action Bronson and took a spin at gluten-free Chicken Parm. Take a homemade marinara, toss chicken in some GF Panko and italian breadcrumbs, cook a pack of the only good gluten-free pasta (Barilla Fettuccine) and it passes! No illusions - it’s fine, but not quite there.

Gluten-free is my wife’s doing. Absolutely do this with real breadcrumbs.

Cilantro Lime Chicken

A favorite weeknight recipe of mine is the mise en place heavy but delicious Nerds with Knives “Chicken with Lime, Garlic, and Cilantro.” It’s tedious to prepare yet straightforward and cooks all in one pan. I prefer to prep everything well in advance - there are too many intermediate steps to try to scramble ingredients together during the cook. Once it’s done, enjoy an incredibly tender, tangy, and delicious thigh with a gravy that you’ll save for later!

Miso Butter Wings

Our latest chicken-related discovery is mixing equal parts miso paste and butter to make miso butter. It’s pure crack - it goes on everything including vegetables like red cabbage and most meats, and amps up wings more than any other sauce I’ve had. If you’re going to make wings, do it right - I follow Kenji López-Alt’s dry brine method and give them at least 2 hours in the fridge to develop a fried-like crust in the oven. Or just fry them.

Drat, no pictures…

Fancy Meal Prep

We finish off with less sexy but still delicious meal prep for the year. We did less prep this year with a toddler running around, but still managed to freeze a ton of food.

Pasta Sauce

Pasta sauce is an awesome food to make in bulk. It scales super well and freezes nicely. I tend to make a sauce based on red wine, adding in the traditional mix of onions or shallots, garlic, fresh herbs, fresh tomatoes (canned is fine), and - crucially - beef broth and tomato paste. The result is a really universal sauce that goes great with anything and can be thrown in a sous vide to reheat. We vacuum seal it all in smaller bags and freeze for easy mid-week meals.

Just look at the size of this stock pot (pointer sighting!):

Butter Chicken

We got on a big butter chicken kick mid-year and went overboard. This is a fully traditional, from-scratch recipe and took FOREVER. We are still working through leftovers from just this one meal prep session and ended up with about 15L of butter chicken.

The best part is that when we have a craving for Indian food, we don’t have to pony up $25 a dish to get it delivered. Hop to the freezer, defrost, cook some basmati rice, and enjoy!

Here’s to more - and even more experimental - food in the new year!