Corned Beef (with a side of thermal dynamics)

I had hoped to be writing this post with some fancy pictures and feel like a real cooking blog.  So sorry, that will have to wait for another time it would seem.

The weekend experiment with braising corned beef rather than my usual slow cooker method met with limited success.  The brisket came out firm with a less salty flavor than expected, and was a good consistency for slicing.  However, it was not something I would serve again without the sour cream sauce I made as a makeshift gravy.  Factors that could have contributed to this are:

1. Round Brisket - I chose a Round brisket rather than my usual Flat-Cut brisket for the corned beef.  There was much less fat from what I saw and I was not able to effectively position the fat cap on top during the braising to facilitate having it melt down into the meat during the cooking.  This may justify a future post studying the differences between flat cut and round after identical cooking methods... an idea I do not have a problem with as I love corned beef for so many reasons.
2. Makeshift Braising - I do not own a cooking vessel appropriate for braising that large a cut of meat.  At 4 pounds the brisket was large and I braised the brisket in an ovenproof dish with a tin foil tent to keep everything inside.  The meat was properly cooked, but it just did not have that consistency and flavor that I enjoyed when I slow cooked the meat in beer.

So, while the meat was successfully cooked and was more than edible, it was not the BEST corned beef that I have cooked.

Now for the Yorkshire pudding experiment.

Well... I'm down one Pyrex dish thanks to my incorrect assumption about it's thermal tolerances.  Many notes online said you could make the pudding in all sorts of vessels, but when I started pouring the Yorkshire pudding batter in to the hot oil, I got a shattered Pyrex dish and wet batter all over my stovetop.  It was a very awkward cleanup as my roasted veggies were cooking away in the oven.

The intent was to make a savory rosemary Yorkshire Pudding to go with everything, and what batter still remained I poured into my cast iron skillet with some hot bacon fat I still had.  The end result was not pretty, and I believe this has to do with not enough batter to fat and likely I had not heated the pan and fat up enough to meet optimal puffing.  But the flavors present were nice, enough that that me and my dinner guests wanted to try it again but as a brunch side dish properly cooked in the cast iron.  My take away lesson:  Metal only for Yorkshire Pudding.

I hope my lessons learned will help others, and I welcome comments and questions!  Coming up will be notes on my experiments in infusing alcohol at home, likely to become a multi-part series as I am finding while writing that there is a lot of information.

Welcome!

Oh, hello there!  I see you managed to find my corner of the internet where I decided to start posting my various cooking attempts and experiments.  Before diving in to the accounts of my foodie misadventures allow me to tell you a bit about who I am and some of the things that influence what I will be posting about.

My name is Abe Kwiatkowski, and I live in the great dairy state of Wisconsin.  Specifically Madison, WI; known for it's fantastic summer farmer's market and diverse food scene (much in thanks to the regular influx of students at UW Madison).

Midwest Nerds, Unite!

Like many of my fellow Wisconsinites I have a great love of the three food staples of the state: Beer, Brats, and Cheese.  The best beer is always produced locally, and Madison has a fantastic selection of local breweries and pubs that brew their own unique selections.  If you are someone from outside of Wisconsin that doesn't "get" what the big deal is about bratwurst, I hope to write an article during the summer that will help give insight to our obsession with this wondrous Bavarian meat-in-tube-form.  Cheese may be stereotypically Wisconsin, but I keep being told by my out of state friends that they have never been surrounded by so many different cheeses so often as when they visit here.

The "Nerdy" in Cooking Made Nerdy is thanks to a life long immersion in comic books, science fiction, tabletop games, and video games.  Much of what I cook gets taste tested by my local gaming friends, and many dishes I make have been inventions of necessity when feeding various gatherings of friends.

It's important to note that I am not a food professional nor have I been a culinary student of any sort.  Beyond early cooking lessons from my father I'm self taught and often learn a great deal from the collective knowledge of other food blogs and lessons from the always helpful Alton Brown.

What I will be showing you

I'm a single guy that works in IT, and this is not a blog about healthy cooking or lifestyle changes.  That doesn't mean I may not bring out dishes that are good for you, it's just that they get equal time with the kind of dishes that you eat just to indulge in, or dishes that that come together because leftovers need a second life.  There will be snacks, drinks, meals, and random experiments.  For me, cooking is about having fun and I hope you enjoy reading about what I make.