Greetings from South Florida

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aprilized

Fire Starter
Original poster
May 5, 2015
35
32
South Florida
Hello;

I'm happy I found this forum and I'm looking forward to looking around.

I'm a professional chef working on a private yacht in South Florida. I've been cooking professionally for 21 years.

I do a lot of practicing at home when I'm not on the vessel which is often. I go through many phases of learning new techniques and cooking styles. I go from spending a few weeks on French bread and pasty to Korean and Japanese street food to whatever I feel like I have to work on to have a large repertoire.

Now I started working on a project where I'll be teaching myself to brine, salt, smoke and dry cure charcuterie from all over the world. I start with simple, unsmoked sausage and work my way up from there.

I'm using a regular, rectangular, covered gas grill with an attachment smoker (with pellets) for hot and cold smoking. I also use a small, hand held cold smoker for work when I want to smoke raw fish, sauces and dressings and anything else where I incorporate cold smoke. This is a very quick smoke where the flavor only lasts a short time after it's served. 

I have a kitchenAid counter top mixer with a meat grinder attachment and a sausage stuffing attachment. I may purchase a separate, slightly more heavy duty grinder in order to keep smears to a minimum and work faster. I feel the sausage stuffing attachment on the kitchenAid is quite good.

I already prepared my first recipe, a mild merguez and it turned out great. The photo shows it served with a spicy tahini sauce. 

I'm making it a point to use the best meat, spices and casings I can in order to see how things work out when the best ingredients and supplies are used. If things aren't working out, I want to make sure it's not the ingredients and supplies. I'm ordering my meat from a local farm a little further up north and the product has been excellent so far.

I've already placed my brisket for a 10 day brine in the fridge today and I'm planning on making a Montreal style smoked meat (that's where I'm from). It goes from brine to smoke to steam and I'm looking forward to see how it works out. Montreal smoked meat isn't easy! hah... It's basically a pastrami with some specific spices, long brine, medium long smoke and long low steam or braise.

It looks like there's a lot of great information here and nice to meet you all.

Thanks :)



 
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Welcome to the site Aprilized.  Great looking pictures.  They make me wish that I was still in South Florida. 
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I predict that you will fit in perfectly round here.  Enjoy your stay.

Points !!
 
Welcome Aprilized, I can't really understand a lot of what you said. I don't speak chef. Good luck to you in your travels thru recipe land. BTW, How much backyard space is there on a yacht? Joe
 
texas.gif
  Good morning and welcome to the forum, from a nice day here in East Texas. Lots of great people with tons of information on just about  everything.

Gary
 
Welcome to the board! My sister used to live in Kendall and I really miss grocery shopping around Miami, it's a foodie's paradise.
 
Looks great.  Im doing the same thing this summer.  Take a look at the stuffer thread.  You may want to get a LEM 5lb stuffer or a Northern Tool (plastic gears) stuffer.  Makes the job much easier.  Im also going to get the grinder attachment for our Kichenaid but will probably go with the Chef's Choice all metal one.  What sausage is that?  I'm waiting for my Amazen pellet smoking tray to arrive (5X8).  I too will be smoking on a gas grill.  My results are still to be determined but it looks like it's going to work just fine. 

BTW - It's my dream to someday retire down south and sail the winters.  You are so lucky. 
 
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Glad you joined the group. The search bar at the top of any page is your best friend.
About anything you wanna know about smoking/grilling/curing/brining/cutting or slicing
and the list goes on has probably been posted. Remember to post a QVIEW of your smokes.
We are all smoke junkies here and we have to get our fix. If you have questions
Post it and you will probably get 10 replies with 11 different answers. That is
because their are so many different ways to make great Q...
Happy smoken.
David
 
HI there;

These are merguez. They're made with lamb and pork fat. They're usually quite spicy but I made them mild.

A
 
Welcome. What a great sounding job. My wife is from the Miami area and we've visited many times. As mentioned, you'll find all kinds of good info here.
 
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