And he, he himself…the Grinch…carved the roast-beast! Dr. Seuss That’s all I want for Christmas – a roast beast. I’m cooking my rotisserie ribeye roast from last year; I plan to season and truss on Saturday the 23rd, then let it dry brine in the refrigerator until Christmas. We do the lap of Cleveland on Christmas day – up to see my family, then back home this year to host my in-laws. That means the timing is going to be tight. I need to put the roast on the grill as soon as we get home. (Doesn’t everyone grill on Christmas?) Yes, I’m playing weather roulette. December in Ohio is, shall we say…unpredictable? Sometimes we get a Christmas blizzard, Just to make the trip to the grill interesting. I found out (from my favorite food podcast) that turkey is the traditional Christmas roast in England.1 It’s a great idea for feeding a crowd, but like most Americans, I’m all turkeyed out from Thanksgiving. And in my family the traditional Christmas roast is beef. Like most …

I know you’re getting a lot of requests for support during the holidays…so here’s mine! Give me your money! I want to go full Scrooge McDuck, and swim around in a vault of gold coins! Bwahahaha! Ahem. Sorry. DadCooksDinner is a labor of love. I spent over 800 hours in 2017 working on it. Over the years, the blog has gone from making no money to making…some money. Not enough to quit the day job, but enough to make filing taxes a mess. (Even a popular food blog like mine is not the path to a Scrooge McDuck vault of gold coins.) As the blog grows, I try to be more professional (professionalish?). And I pick up more expenses. A test roast here, a pressure cooker accessory there, better blog hosting, a new theme…it all adds up. To help support DadCooksDinner, please consider contributing in one of the following ways: Holiday purchases through my Amazon.com links If you buy anything on Amazon after clicking through one of the Amazon links on this page, I get a …

Remember when I said that having a few jars of soup in the freezer made me feel good? A stomach bug is hitting us hard right now. (I won’t go into more detail – this is a food blog, after all.) I’m not up to writing today’s post, let alone making dinner. No one really wants dinner, either. I hit up my Frozen Assets and pulled out jars of Turkey Noodle soup from last week. (And a few jars of Turkey Broth for those of us with extra-sensitive stomachs.) Now I’m back in bed, finishing this little blurb. Next up – falling asleep while watching Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, my favorite sick day movie.

I see skies of blue and clouds of white. The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night. And I think to myself what a wonderful world. – Louis Armstrong (by way of Israel Kamakawiwoʻole) Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone! On this Thanksgiving, please consider a donation to fight hunger in my home town: Donate to the Akron-Canton Regional Food Bank [AkronCantonFoodBank.org] Thank you, and again, Happy Thanksgiving! Mike Vrobel November 2017

This post started as the last question in yesterday’s Thanksgiving Q&A, but I got on a roll…and it wound up being too long to fit. And…as always, I apologize in advance.   Thanksgiving is as much about logistics as it is about cooking. The menu is large, and the crowd is larger. Suddenly, the oven isn’t large enough, the stove doesn’t have enough burners, and there isn’t enough time to get everything done. (Even when I use my grills as second and third ovens.) Thanksgiving dinner for a crowd depends on planning, making things ahead, and not losing your head when chaos is swirling around you. So…how does a typical Thanksgiving look when I’m hosting the big dinner? Thanksgiving: Strategy vs. Tactics (vs. The Fog of War) Or, what happens when a plan meets the enemy – and the enemy is us. With apologies to Alton Brown. Romancing the Bird (A Good Eats Thanksgiving) inspired me and this post – but I didn’t realize that until after I finished writing. Monday: Dry brine the turkeys, put …

I’m not cooking a turkey this year! I don’t know what to do with myself! Thanksgiving is at my parents’ house, and ever since dad retired, he has thrown himself into cooking. (Hi, Dad!) He’s looking forward to cooking the turkeys this year – and who am I to stand in his way? And, Dad definitely has the turkeys covered. He’s smoking one and cooking the other one on the rotisserie. We’ll have plenty of turkey. There is no need for me to bring another one. My contribution is a huge batch of mashed potatoes, and a slightly smaller batch of green beans. And being Dad’s sous chef when necessary on the big day. So…anyhow…This relaxing before Thanksgiving. It’s a good thing? I think? (He says, looking around nervously for something to dry brine.) This does leave me with plenty of time to answer blog questions. And boy, do I get questions. In the month before Thanksgiving, I’m part emergency hotline counsellor, part turkey intervention specialist. Here are some of my favorite questions I’ve been asked …

FCC Notice: I am an Amazon Affiliate – anything you buy through my Amazon links will give me a small commission, at no extra cost to you. (You’ll see why I’m disclosing this in a minute…)   [UPDATE 2017-11-26: Thank you to my Canadian and British readers! My affiliate accounts met the minimum sales numbers, and won’t be closed due to inactivity.] Hello! I apologize for this post in advance. (Not a good sign – I’m already apologizing in the first sentence.) If you are not from Canada or the UK, you can skip the rest of this post. I’ll have more recipes and food thoughts next time. All you’ll miss is the minutiae of a US based blogger trying to keep their Canadian and UK Amazon Affiliate accounts open. Still here? Great! Welcome, Canadians and Brits! (Or people who care about the nuts and bolts of food blogging!) The Big Ask Canadian and British readers – I need your help. Can you do me a huge favor and order something through my Amazon links …

The companion video to my recent Pressure Cooker Vegetable Beef Soup recipe is up on YouTube. Check it out:

My new book covers are (finally) loaded for all editions on all stores! Whoo hoo! As my designer worked on my new blog theme, they asked if they could take a crack at my book covers as well. I think my old covers offended their design sensibilities. (Hey, I’m not a designer – those covers are what you get when you ask a computer guy to design something.) I jumped at the chance for them to clean them up, and love the new look: Now, the only thing that has changed is the covers – the interior is still the same, so don’t go out and buy a new copy. (Unless you’re me, in which case you bought one of each, just to have the new covers on my shelf.) [UPDATE: Sigh. The new cover is not showing on the paperback on Amazon yet. It is still working its way through their system. If you order the paperback now, you get the new cover…I’m pretty sure.]

After last week’s talk about draining ground beef, I have a follow up fat question. Reader Lysandra asked about the fat separator step in my Pressure Cooker Pot Roast recipe: What can I do if I don’t have a Fat Separator? I have three suggestions…maybe four: How to remove fat if you don’t have a fat separator Skip the defatting step. Who’s got time to let fat settle? Dump everything in a serving bowl and go. I do this more often than I’d like to admit, especially on busy weeknights. Let the pot settle, then skim. This is the old school method. Fat is lighter than water, and if you let everything settle, fat floats to the top of the pot. Do what they do in professional kitchens – get out a big spoon and start skimming. (In professional kitchens that is a large part of the saucier’s job – skimming the fat off of their sauces as they simmer.) I can scoop out a lot of fat this way, but it takes patience and a …

Q&A with a Commenter on my Quick Chili in an 8 Quart Pressure Cooker video: COMMENTER: I’m surprised you don’t drain your ground beef. DadCooksDinner: What? Why in the world would you do that? COMMENTER: To drain off the fat. After cooking. Everyone does it. If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you jump too? Every now and again I get asked “Why don’t you drain your ground beef?”. I was surprised the first few times I was asked. I had never heard of such a thing. Do I drain my ground beef? No! Why would I? Sure, it may get rid of some of the fat. But I want that fat in the recipe – fat is flavor. Speaking of flavor, I’m not just draining fat. I’m draining all the juices that escaped the meat – that’s even more flavor down the drain. If you worry about fat, buy leaner ground beef. “Ground Beef” is usually 70% lean, 30% fat. Maybe I could understand draining that. But, why not buy 80% lean ground chuck instead? …

As you probably noticed, my new theme went live! Thanks to Jasmine and Chris at RXVP, I have a new design, logo, and color scheme. We’re still cleaning up the details and a few messes. (I apologize about the weird right-shift on Tuesday’s email – that should be fixed. And, if you were looking for last week’s Thermoworks Smoke Gateway writeup, it is back online.) In honor of my new look, I’m trying something new – blog swag – a limited edition run of t-shirts and coffee mugs. Want to proudly display your love of DadCooksDinner, and my new Pressure Cooker icon? You can order from my Teespring storefront: https://teespring.com/stores/dadcooksdinner [Teespring.com] Men’s t-shirts are available in black and white, Women’s t-shirts are in black and purple, and the coffee mugs are in black and white. If you want one, don’t delay – they are only on sale for two weeks. The sale ends September 29 at 11PM EST. And, yes, I am mainly doing this to get my own t-shirt and mug. If you order one, …

The other day, my friend Judy said that Fall is the real start of the new year. “That’s it!”. She’s absolutely right – I think it’s the rhythm of the school year – but I always treat Fall as when I start new projects. (New Years Resolutions are for when those projects aren’t going so well…but that’s another story.) So, it’s appropriate that my blog anniversary is in late August. Specifically, August 20th, 2008. DadCooksDinner started when I posted a recipe (and I use the term “recipe” loosely) for Chipotle en Adobo Puree. It’s 2017 now – holy cow – and I’ve been writing here for 9 years. I’ve know I’ve been doing this for a while, but 9 years? That’s a lot of recipes. 2016–2017 recap As you probably noticed, I leaned into pressure cooking even more over the last year. This has been good for the blog, from a traffic standpoint; the Instant Pot is a cultural phenomenon, and pressure cooker baby back ribs, chicken legs, quick chili, and New York cheesecake are …

If everything goes according to plan, as you read this we’ll be moving my blog to its new theme and color scheme. If not, I’ll be shaking my fist at the computer gods, and we’ll be trying again in a week or so. Wish me luck! [Update 2017-08-27: And…not this week. Darn. We’ve rescheduled for the week after Labor day. So, stop back in two weeks to see what’s up…)

The cook at our house cooked rice in the instant pot, but since the stainless container was soaking in the sink from the previous use, the cook didn’t remember there was a container to put it in first! So it went directly into the bottom of the InstantPot. I’ve managed to get most of the burned and uncooked rice out of the InstantPot, but there are a few rice kernels inside. I removed the bottom of the InstantPot and was able to get more of them out this way also. Oil was used along with the water in the cooking process. – Commenter Treva Oh, Treva, I know exactly how this feels. Years ago, I was teaching Tim how to pressure cook his favorite side dish – black beans. This was a while ago – I think we were still using my Instant Pot Lux, or maybe my Cuisinart Electric Pressure cooker. Anyway, I showed Tim how to sort beans, and had him set up on the counter next to the kitchen sink. The pressure …

A question from reader Brian: “Why does every recipe I see for grilling rubs contain so much brown sugar, which burns nearly immediately on the grill? It doesn’t seem to add any real sweetness that I can sense, in the same way that I can tell where the salt, cayenne or paprika influences the taste. Seems odd to think that burnt sugar would be something I’d want to add to my ribs or chicken, and that the sugar is better left to sauce that you add after cooking.” I got this question from reader Brian (by way of my old friend Geoff) in a Facebook message. My reply to him turned into a rant, and then this post. I’ve warned against sugar and grilling in a couple of recipes, but never put my thoughts in one place on the blog. So, here’s my response: Brian, you’re right – grilling rubs with sugar in them are not a good idea. Sugar will burn, and I try to avoid it in rubs that are going over direct …

Country ribs vs Western ribs – what’s the difference between pork country-style loin ribs and pork western shoulder ribs?