Bo ssäm (pork brûlée)

Okay, so our Momofukubinge has reached its apex. Bo ssäm, baby. We've made this before, but we were inspired by the recent New York Times article to do it again.

Bo ssäm is the Korean equivalent of a pulled pork sandwich. It's got the slow-cooked, fall apart pork. It's got the crispness of the cole slaw (kimchi). It's got the acid bite of a tomato chili sauce (ssäm sauce). The parallels are almost perfect, and the combination of acid, fat and crunch is nearly perfect. Delicious.

We've modified the recipe a bit from Momofuku.

1 whole bone-in picnic ham (8 to 10 pounds)
1 cup white sugar
1 cup plus 1 tablespoon kosher salt
7 tablespoons brown sugar

Mix 1 cup of sugar with 1 cup of kosher salt. Rub it all over the pork.



Put in the fridge overnight. Fire up your smoker, to a nice temperature of 225°F. We smoked for four hours at this temperature, with wet hickory for smoke, then transferred to a 300°F oven for another 3 hours to finish. I'd like to say that was by design, but the snow was falling too fast to keep the temperature in the bbq. vaporizing snow takes a ton of heat out of your bbq.



While baking, prepare your accompaniments:

2 cups plain white rice, cooked
3 heads bibb lettuce, leaves separated, washed and dried
1 dozen or more fresh oysters (optional - we skipped this time, but for the last time)
Kimchi (available in Korean markets)
Ginger-scallion sauce
Ssäm sauce

When done baking, remove the picnic ham from the oven. This final step is what takes this recipe to the next level. We're talking pork brûlée. Caramelized sugar, all over greasy, delicious pork. Wow. Ok, mix the last tablespoon of salt with the brown sugar. Rub all over the hot picnic ham, and heat the oven to 500°F. That's right, you're going to melt sugar onto your pork. Yes. Transfer the pork to a fresh cookie sheet and place in the oven.



Okay, so if we'd had a slightly better fan, we would have left the pork in the oven about a minute longer (the sugar on the cookie sheet was starting to burn), but this was nearly perfect. This takes less than ten minutes to start melting the sugar all over the pork. Remove from oven when it's perfectly melted and caramelized, or when the smoke starts to overwhelm your smoke detectors...



Tear apart the pork, into little pieces. I use forks to pull them apart, you want small chunks of beautiful pork brûlée.



Okay, now you assemble your little bo ssäm, a lot like a burrito. Take a leaf of bibb lettuce, and place some of the pork, rice, kimchi, ginger-scallion sauce and ssäm sauce in there. Curl it up like a burrito, and take a bite. Oh. My. Gawd. The heavenly mix of fat, spice, acid and crispy kimchi is mind-blowing. One of the best bbq tricks ever. This might replace pulled pork as our Superbowl favourite. Yum.



By Bbq Dude

Ssäm ssauce

And now, a quick post, to add a bit more Momofukuto your life.

A sauce that will go well with pork. Pulled pork, even. The ingredients are available at your local Korean market (I use H-Mart in Burlington, MA).

2 tbsp fermented bean-and- chili paste (ssämjang)
1 tbsp chili paste (kochujang)
½ cup plum vinegar
½ cup grape-seed oil

Mix the kochujang and ssämjang together. Add the grape-seed oil, and mix well until they're properly emulsified. Add the vinegar.

Serve, with pulled pork. Yum.

By Bbq Dude

Ginger-scallion sauce

We've stepped away from our good friend Momofuku for a while. Momofuku, by David Chang, preaches pork. It preaches Japanese/Chinese/Korean/American fusion, where kelp is served with bacon. And my favorite message, it preaches against authenticity as a principle. Authenticity matters not. It's taste that matters. Is it delicious? It has to be delicious.

Momofuku is always in my heart (we now use it frequently as an expletive while cooking - think Bruce Willis whispering "Yippy kay yay, Momofuku!"). But sometimes it takes a reminder to cook delicious Momofuku flavours, like this relish, published last week in the New York Times. I've adapted it slightly, in favour of deliciousness:

2½ cups thinly sliced scallions
½ cup peeled, minced fresh ginger
¼ cup grapeseed oil
1½ teaspoons light soy sauce
1 scant teaspoons plum vinegar
½ teaspoon kosher salt, or to taste

Mix all ingredients. Leave in the fridge for a few hours. Serve as a relish.

More Momofuku coming up...


By Bbq Dude

A lazy Saturday calls for...

...a Mandarin margarita.



I was inspired to create this cocktail for our New Year's Eve party. We started off the night with:

3 oz Herradura reposado tequila
2 oz Absolut mandarin
½ oz fresh-squeed lime juice
1¼ oz fresh-squeezed orange juice
¼ oz agave nectar (or simple syrup)

Rim a glass with tequila, and a mixture of white and dark salts. (The salts don't create any different flavor, but they do make it more beautiful to behold). Mix the above ingredients and pour over ice.

Serve.

By Bbq Dude