BBQ List
 

        Doug and Cheryl <ruralutah@qwest.net>
                                     
RE recent discussion of the "emulsifying" properties of
mustard:

Not wanting to drag my lazy bones into an all day smoke, I
picked up some "boneless beef country style ribs" at
Wally's...these are strips cut from the chuck...some fat
embedded, but lots of tough meat exposed on the surface,
with no fat over it, and no collagen in it, to tenderize.
Figured I'd need a pretty oily mop to make it do what I want
it to do, which is get *almost* falling-apart tender.

Took a mop BigWheel recently posted (Beef Short Ribs
(recipe)), considered one Garry Howard recently posted
(Ready to cook (includes recipes)), tossed in my love of fat
and tendency to ignore the advice of cardiologists, and came
up with this:

1 cup cider vinegar
1/2 cup (yep...4 ounces) unsalted butter
almost 1/2 cup bacon drippings (I only had about 3 oz on
hand)
3 TBSP prepared mustard (I used Heinz, any old thing would
do)
3 TBSP ketchup
1 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp granulated garlic
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp cayenne

Now here's the emulsifier thing...once I'd heated this brew
enough to melt the butter, and stirred it with a wire whisk,
the oils and the vinegar did not separate out...by now, it's
cooled to room temp, and still, the oil part, and the
vinegar part, are mixed...I'd say that mustard is a potent
emulsifier, and that that property of it, is prolly very
relevant to a lot of what we're doing, when we do Q. Some
others have already said it, more scientifically. I'm just
reporting an odd observation.

Doug.