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Gregor said:
BBQ Sauce, the hot variety (not shown a similar batch of green pepper + whisky variation, but apart from the marking it looks nearly identical).

Production isn't that spectacular: steam some chopped onions in some oil, then add skinned tomatoes and slowly reduce in an open pot for the good part of a day, adding more and more tomatoes whenever the level in the pot fell enough to have room for more. Use an immersion blender to make short work of the parts that refuse to liquefy on their own, but not too fine.

Add nutmeg, cloves, allspice, garlic, salt, pepper, sugar (amount depending on sweetness of the tomatoes), vinegar, lemon juice and a good amount of port wine... finally it'll be canned for one hour at 95°C in Weck® glasses (50 and 160ml variants) so one can pull open a fresh one whenever needed without that much of a leftover (if any).

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Not as fancy looking as the nice things we're used to from Oliver... but people seem to generally like it as a companion for white and red meat on barbecue and the load will last about a year (till the last gets consumed, have not managed to keep them around long enough for them to spoil), depending on weather.

That looks great Gregor! And I'm hitting myself on the back of my head for never thinking about cooking a BBQ sauce and Weck'ing it. This is so handy, especially for spontaneous BBQ's ... I have this red sauce I make, but it can't be preserved for long. So this would be a great addition.

Can you be a bit more specific on the single amounts of the ingredients & cooking time. Would love to try this!

Kind regards,
Oliver
 
six-point socket II said:
And I'm hitting myself on the back of my head for never thinking about cooking a BBQ sauce and Weck'ing it.
Thinking about your Surfix... please be gentle with your head [wink]
I have this red sauce I make, but it can't be preserved for long.
Now you got me interested, both in the sauce and the reason why it can't be preserved.
Can you be a bit more specific on the single amounts of the ingredients & cooking time. Would love to try this!
It started with this recipe some years ago, then the ketchup (I used Heinz in the original version) got replaced, then tomatoes who were out of season got replaced, finally the sugar water can replaced with increased levels of sugar, acid (both lemon and vinnegar) and spices. Cooking time is needed to reduce the tomatoes toward a more sauce like consistency (do not use sauce thickener or your glasses will spoil), you can trade time needed to get rid of the excess water by increasing the manual labor (continuous stirring at high heat).

Should you (or anyone else) venture into Weck for the first time, here's what I can recomment:

Get the WECK-Einkochbuch and actually read it front-to-back prior to doing anything. It isn't that long but contains important information that will make you unhappy should you ignore it.

You also want the glass lifter, this funnel works great for Rundrand 60 glasses and that one for Rundrand 100 ones. Also I recommend to obtain enough plastic lids to have one tightly closing each glass that had been pulled open but not yet eaten clean concurrently, multiply that estimate by two to have enough so half can take a trip through the dishwasher while the others are in use.

For the rubber rings I would suggest to order about 10-20% surplus, while they can be reused in general... their lifespan isn't unlimited. Order more rings in case you have kids ;) and don't forget to order the clips, you need two for each glas being in the pot concurrently (the clips are removed after cooling), order twice the amount in case you want to go into mass production (so you can prepare one load while another is cooking).

For the cooking pot I can somewhat recomment this one (the tap is cheap plastic, but easy to replace) that works nicely so far (except the original tap, that didn't tap fast enough for my liking).

Also order an extra grid with the pot (that one matches the linked pot above) as it allows you to process another layer of glasses. In case you pick a different pot: You want one where the timer starts to run only after the target temperature has been reached, a nice loud alarm for 'done' is a plus so you won't have to babysit it. The kind of pot I linked allows for 17 Rundrand 60 glasses per layer:

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My preferred glasses are Rundrand 60 Zylinder 340ml (allowing for 2 layers in that pot, height wise), Sturz 160ml (3 layers) and Sturz 50ml (4 layers, in theory).

I also highly recommend the 'original' Weck shop that is the target of my links (for all except cooking pots as these are overpriced) as it's the closest one can cut away any middlemen, both delivery chain length and price wise (most others advertise the glasses without the lid, don't get fooled) - plus they deliver in cardboard boxes that close tightly enough to store empty glasses cleanly and secure, are sturdy enough to last you a good while when treated with care and fold down nicely while 'their' glasses are in use.

Hope this helps, in case there are questions... feel free to ask.
 

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That is awesome Gregor, thank you so much for putting that post together! I will let you know how it went.

I will post the recipe for the red sauce and a picture of it. It can't be preserved because it's not cooked. Fresh onions, garlic, parsley ... You can keep it in a fridge for a day or two, but after that, the "emulsion" starts coming back apart and it goes lumpy.

Gimme a day or so, to post the recipe and picture. :)

Kind regards,
Oliver
 
Hi!

So here's the promised "Red sauce" recipe.

6 tablespoons ketchup
4 tablespoons oil (regular, plant based - not olive.)
2 teaspoons mustard (Gregor: probably best to not use ABB or similar tasting mustards, use Löwensenf extra scharf or a mustard that tastes similar to it/ is comparable. Use German Kaffeelöffel to gauge quantity, not the actual equivalent of Teelöffel.)
1 clove of garlic (press)
1 diced shallot

salt, black pepper, paprika (both the sweet and the hot powder-variant)
parsley

You are free to spice things up with hot peppers, a bit of tabasco ... But it will mess with the overall taste, so I'd suggest sticking to the original for the first time, and then experiment. ;) I'd rather experiment with different grade peppers and paprika (powder). ;)

Sauce is on the lower left corner of the plate.

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Kind regards,
Oliver
 
Thanks for sharing the recipe Oliver.

Are the chunks in the sauce just the very coarsely chopped shallots?  From the picture, it looks rather chunky - almost like baked beans or chili.

About how much salt, pepper, and paprika do you add?
 
six-point socket II said:
So here's the promised "Red sauce" recipe.
Thanks for sharing. One question: What kind of ketchup do you base this on, Heinz?

Regarding Mustard... 'Penny scharf' (tube version) works well for me, to make things hotter quickly I prefer a ceramic peppermill filled with Piri Piri over Tabasco every day.
 
On Saturday, we made some Caribbean style fried snapper and sea bass.  Served with some rice and pigeon peas and fried plantains. 

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On Sunday, we made Crawfish Etouffee in the style of Hot and Juicy, which is more like a soup than traditional Etouffee.  We also made a shrimp po boy with homemade remoulade.

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Monday is the unofficial spaghetti night so I tried making Cook's Country Drop Meatballs.

It was a lot easier than frying the meatballs first, but overall I wasn't that impressed.  The meatballs produced a lot of fat in the tomato sauce that needed to be skimmed off.

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I had heard really good things about De Cecco pasta, but it tasted just like any other brand of spaghetti that I've had before.

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I have tried a bunch of different brands and really like this house brand available at Walmart and I believe Sam’s Club. Made in Italy, bronze dies. Good tooth good flavor. They make other shapes as well. Pappardelle is great.

Ron

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Gregor said:
GoingMyWay said:
The meatballs produced a lot of fat in the tomato sauce that needed to be skimmed off.
What kind of meat did you use?

I used 80% lean ground beef.  The recipe did call for 85% lean, but the grocery store only had 80% or 93% lean so I am maybe partially to blame for the greasiness.

rvieceli said:
I have tried a bunch of different brands and really like this house brand available at Walmart and I believe Sam’s Club. Made in Italy, bronze dies. Good tooth good flavor. They make other shapes as well. Pappardelle is great.

Ron

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Cool.  Do you recall about how much that costs?  We usually buy San Giorgio or Barilla, mostly whichever is on sale for 10 for $10.  I think the De Cecco was either $2.50 or $3 for 1lb.
 
GoingMyWay said:
Gregor said:
GoingMyWay said:
The meatballs produced a lot of fat in the tomato sauce that needed to be skimmed off.
What kind of meat did you use?
I used 80% lean ground beef.  The recipe did call for 85% lean, but the grocery store only had 80% or 93% lean so I am maybe partially to blame for the greasiness.
Possibly. An easy way I I found to get rid of excess fat swimming ontop of a pot of pasta sauce: use a slice of bread (
 
Great idea using a slice of bread to soak up excess fat!  I never would have thought of that.  I'll have to try and remember that the next time the need arises.

I agree, they all do seem to taste the same.  I tried making pasta once using the KitchenAid Gourmet Pasta Press attachment:https://www.kitchenaid.com/countert...achments/p.gourmet-pasta-press.ksmpexta.html.  That was not successful so I never tried again.  I have heard/seen really good things about the Philips pasta maker:https://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/philips-pasta-maker/.  I recently considered buying one.
 
It's the dough, not the tool. ;) While I personally prefer the pasta roller attachments - or our manual pasta roller. It's still the dough that makes it work - or not.

I won't dare to give any advice because 2 out of 3 times making pasta it still doesn't work out for us. But when the dough has the perfect consistency, the rollers work like a breeze.

So really, keep on trying.

Kind regards,
Oliver
 
Maybe I should try making the dough again.  I most likely used the pasta dough recipe that was in the KitchenAid manual.  There are definitely better recipes out there that I could/should try.

I really wanted the pasta rolling attachment for the KitchenAid, but instead I got the pasta press as a gift.

I could always pick up a relatively inexpensive manual roller and give that a whirl.
 
[member=66216]GoingMyWay[/member] i think that spaghetti is around $1.15 to 1.25 for a pound.

While pasta is made from mostly the same stuff, there are some differences in the production that have some effect. Extruding through bronze dies gives the pasta a rougher texture that lets it hold the sauce better.

Don’t get too wild and crazy with removing all the fat, that’s where a lot of the flavor and mouth feel in the sauces come from.

Here’s a quote from Marcella Hazan’s Ragu Bolognese recipe.

“The meat should not be from too lean a cut; the more marbled it is, the sweeter the ragù it will be. The most desiderable cut of beef is the neck portion of the chuck.”

No mention in the recipe of draining or skimming  [big grin] [big grin]

Ron
 
That's a good price.

I dropped the meatballs into the tomato sauce and then put them in the oven for 40 minutes, covered.  Normally I'd be stirring the sauce frequently on the stovetop.  I guess all of the fat rendered out and rose to the top of the sauce because there was no stirring.  I think that's why I was so surprised by the amount of fat that was floating on top.
 
The best pasta I've ever had is when we combined our Kitchen Aid and roller attachment with my neighbor's pasta recipe. He and his wife own a Ducati 996...a Ducati Monster 1200 (her bike) and a Motoguzzi 750 LeMans...think he's Italian? Did I mention he's also originally from Rome?

That pasta was absolutely the best I've ever eaten. I'll get the recipe from Marco and report back.  [big grin]

 
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