Cook's Country June - July 2017

WHERE IS COOK’S COUNTRY ? The easy answer, of course, is Boston. That’s where our kitchens are, and that’s where we live and work. But Boston is just a tiny speck on the map of Cook’s Country—a massive, sprawling map. Cook’s Country covers the entire United States, from Maine to Hawaii, Key West to Nome. We travel incessantly across the nation, from the wide-open fields of Wisconsin to the bustling streets of New Orleans, to learn who’s cooking what, why, and—most important—how. We’re equally passionate about rural traditions and urban traditions, as well as the traditions of all those in-between places. We love down-home food as much as uptown food, because in our minds, it’s all part of this great country we call home. In this issue, you’ll notice some…

Primary Burners In your grilling recipes, you often refer to a “primary burner” on a gas grill. How do I know which burner is the primary burner on my grill? –Thomas Flynn, San Diego, Calif. Most gas grills feature two or three burners (depending on the manufacturer and the age of the grill). In our gasgrilling recipes, we often call for adjusting the primary burner to a specific heat level and adjusting any secondary burners to a different heat level (or even turning them off ) to set up hotter and cooler zones. These adjustments allow for indirect cooking (grill-roasting) in the cooler zone or cooking a variety of ingredients at different temperatures (searing steaks in the hotter zone while grilling delicate vegetables in the cooler zone, for example). As…

Corn for a Cookout Ted McBride, Macon, Ga. We serve a lot of corn on the cob at our backyard summer gatherings. To keep it hot and serve a crowd, I cut husked cobs in thirds, boil them, and drain. Then I melt a stick of salted butter on high in my slow cooker. Once the butter is melted, I turn the cooker to “warm” and toss in the boiled corn (and sometimes other seasonings such as garlic powder or hot sauce), give it a stir to coat, and throw on the lid. The cooker holds a lot of the mini cobs, and they’re already buttered, so guests can easily grab one without stopping to doctor it. Taco Tip Greg Gullage, East Longmeadow, Mass. Hard taco shells can be a…

EQUIPMENT REVIEW S O D A . B E E R . S E LT Z E R . Juice. Water. Whatever your preferred beverage, few things are better than a frosty drink on a hot summer day. A cooler loaded with loose ice is the standard way to keep your drinks cool—and your sandwiches from spoiling—in the heat of the sun, but we wondered if there was a better solution. To find out, we selected eight ice packs priced from $3.49 to $29.99 and put them through their paces in the test kitchen, using laboratory probes and a computer to track their temperatures during a range of tests. The ice packs came in two basic styles: hard-sided packs of varying sizes and soft “ice blankets” that can be used…

IN 1 9 9 9 , THE year Kreuz Market in Lockhart, Texas, celebrated its 99th anniversary, Roy Perez shoveled several pounds of smoldering coals from the restaurant’s barbecue pit into a metal washtub. With a few media representatives in tow and a police escort to divert traffic, he and a coworker dragged the washtub down the road to the establishment’s new location, where he carefully emptied the coals into a brand-new pit. The gesture was more than a photo op; this fire had been burning continuously for a century, and pit master Perez refused to allow it to go out on his watch. Superstition? Maybe, or maybe just efficiency: Kreuz’s hungry regulars expected barbecue even on moving day, and Perez, determined to serve them, needed a hot fire. Seventeen…

BEEF SHOULDER CLOD, a large boneless cut taken from the shoulder, delivers supremely beefy flavor underneath a dark crust spicy with black pepper and cayenne and well seasoned with salt. But shoulder clod can range from 13 to 21 pounds of meat. Twenty-one pounds! I’m strong, but 21 pounds is a bit much for me, and besides, I couldn’t find a local butcher with clod on hand. I looked instead for a more manageable cut of meat with similar characteristics. I considered top and bottom blade roasts, both cut from the shoulder, but soon settled on chuck-eye roast, a versatile piece of meat cut from a portion of the shoulder clod. I rubbed my first roast (weighing in at 5 pounds, enough for a small crowd plus leftovers for sandwiches)…