Keeping a Christmas Tradition Alive: Ford's Suet Pudding

Well, I've gone and done it again.  Grandma told me that I shouldn't do it, but I disobeyed her and did it anyway.  The process was gruesome, and the results were...hmmm...let's say "undesirable."  But it is finished, and I 'm glad it's over.  Yes indeed, I have made the suet pudding.

Before I go any further with this post, I feel that it is necessary to put a few disclaimers here in the beginning:

1) What you are about to read is true to the best of my knowledge.  Yes, it is sprinkled with a great deal of my own unfavorable personal opinion, but I'm being honest here, folks.

2) No matter what I may write here, I mean no disrespect to my elders, ancestors, or forebears, nor their elders, ancestors, forebears, and kin, no matter how poor their culinary preferences may have been.

3) No matter what I write here, I mean no disrespect to anyone who enjoys this sort of food.  I'm just too narrow minded to understand it.

4) Finally, I'd like to apologize for including this recipe on my blog.  I try to present foods here that I think are good.  This is a complete departure from that focus.

Perhaps some of you are wondering what in the world suet is.  Suet is the fat which is found around the kidneys of cattle, and it is where beef tallow comes from.  It is also the stuff that some of my family members have been making Christmas pudding out of for as long as anyone living or dead could remember.  My grandma's grandma made this pudding every year at Christmas.  Her maiden name was O'Donald, and she was Scotch-Irish.  I don't know whether her Scotch-Irish ancestors made this pudding, or whether it was a responsibility that was foisted on her by her husband's family whose surname was Ford.  My copy of the recipe is labeled "Ford's Suet Pudding," so I'd like to believe that Grandma (O'Donald) Ford, whom my own grandmother has romanticized into the epitome of grandmotherdom, is not the person who is responsible for this gastronomical travesty.  Either way, the recipe obviously originated in the British Isles, and I imagine it is chief among the reasons that the English are not generally revered for their cuisine.

I did a little research before writing this post and confirmed my suspicion that what we have always called suet pudding is the same as plum pudding, which is a very close cousin to the "figgy" pudding mentioned in "We Wish You a Merry Christmas."  For some droll and informative reading about this historic dessert, I recommend visiting this site about figgy pudding and this site about plum pudding.  The first site mentions the "interminably long" cooking time for these puddings and notes that they are steamed because this method was "very popular in the days before regulated heating."  Sounds like a recipe that is tailor-made for the woodburning cookstove, doesn't it?

My grandma still has and uses the kettle that Grandma Ford used to steam this pudding on her wood cookstove many years ago.  After Grandma Ford, my great-grandma Gladys made the pudding.  She passed away in 1975, and then my grandma took up the job.  Grandma taught me how to make it, not because I like to eat it, but because--as anyone who knows me will concur--I am interested in tradition.  Grandma has retired from making the suet pudding, but I have taken up the job in the interest of giving my great-uncles an annual taste of their childhood.

I have to say, though, that my tenure as the pudding maker is probably destined to be fairly brief because I don't think that anyone in the younger generations much cares for this stuff.  I've introduced it to friends and in-laws on Nancy's side, and I have yet to run across anyone who likes it--and I can totally understand why.

To commit this heinous bit of cookery, the first thing that you must do is locate some suet.  Unfortunately, both of our local meat markets are more than willing to part with the stuff.  Judging from the price that they charge, demand is not very great.  Some years, they have just given it to me free with an expression on their faces which causes me to suspicion that they have tasted this pudding and feel pity for anyone who has judgment poor enough to willingly make it on his own.  The recipe only calls for a cup of suet, but once you see the stuff, that seems like way too much.

This cup of suet is ground together with a cup of currants and a cup of raisins.  My grandma likes to use golden raisins to prevent the pudding from being so dark.

I am a raisin lover--have been since I was a toddler--and this seems to me a cruel thing to do to a raisin.

Grandma told me that the pudding is improved (as if that were really possible) by grinding this mixture three times.  She almost always did this by hand, and I have done it by hand, but I have to tell you that it is work.  This is a thick, sticky mess.  The worst problem with this process, though, is cleaning the grinder afterward.  Grandma's hand grinder is from the days when Methuselah was a teenager, but it is cleverly engineered and opens up for easy cleaning.  Mine does not, and getting the last remnants of this sludge out of it is not easy.  Therefore, I don't regret using my Goodwill Warehouse grinder, even though it is electric.

The raisin, currant, and suet mixture after three grindings.  You
don't need to tell me what it looks like.  Trust me, I already know.

To the ground fruit and fat mixture, you add 1/2 c. molasses, 1 c. brown sugar, 1 1/2 cups sour milk, 2 1/2 c. flour, 1 tsp. salt, 1 1/2 tsp. soda, 1 tsp. baking powder, 1 tsp. nutmeg, and 1 tsp. cloves.

Because the ground fruit and fat mixture is so
sticky and difficult to incorporate, Grandma
always used her mixer for this task.

The complete mixture.  Don't say it.  I know what this looks like, too.

I'm sure that my great-great grandmother probably put this pudding into some sort of metal mold and then steamed it in the big kettle.  I understand that originally it would be suspended from a cloth bag along the side of the large iron kettles in which the English would cook their entire meal simultaneously.  However, we grease a few metal food cans and fill them halfway full.  I also used a wide mouth pint jar successfully.

The pudding ready to be covered with foil and steamed.

I cover these with foil and then steam them in our little water bath canner.  To steam in this fashion, you just have to have about an inch and a half of boiling water in the bottom of the canner.  The puddings rest on the jar trivet in the water.  The original recipe says to steam for three hours.  This would be necessary if the pudding were all cooked in one container.  Since we cook it in small cans so that it can be easily divided among those who will receive it, steaming for an hour and a half is all that is needed.

Remove from the steam when they are done.  The cooked pudding keeps in the refrigerator indefinitely. 

As if the pudding weren't bad enough, when you go to serve this, you are supposed to pour a little hard sauce over it.  I'm not a fan of hard sauce either.  To make it, you cook 2 cups of water, 1/2 cup sugar, and 2 Tablespoons of cornstarch together until it is thick, stirring pretty much constantly.  Grandma Gladys always put a tablespoon of butter into this as it cooked also (terrible waste of good butter, in my opinion).  When it has thickened, you remove from the heat and add a 1/4 tsp. of lemon flavoring and a dash of nutmeg.



Perhaps if you click on this picture to enlarge it, you can see the
sauce better. This plate belonged to Grandma Gladys and has very
likely held suet pudding in years past.

There you have it: Ford's Suet Pudding, our family's traditional Christmas "treat."  All I can say is, you've been fairly warned.

Christmas Caramels

Marjorie the Margin Gem and I have been bonding over the last three days. Winter storm Draco hit our area on Wednesday afternoon, causing my drive home from school to be rather scary. Things proceeded to get worse for those who were traveling, but Nancy and I hunkered down and rode out the storm with no difficulties. We had filled both of the woodboxes on Wednesday morning, pumped the cistern full of water, and purchased the groceries which were necessary for our plans. We were set.

The wind blew, and a heavy, wet snow fell during the night, putting our electricity out for a period of two and a half hours.  I love it when the power goes out, but ours rarely does, and I was disappointed that it happened in the middle of the night when I couldn't enjoy it.  However, at 9:30 on Thursday morning our power went out again and remained out until after four o'clock in the afternoon.  Other than the fact that we had to bathe instead of shower (our basement shower uses a sump pump to drain), a snow day without electricity was pretty much the same as a snow day with electricity for us.  I was terribly disappointed when the power came on before nightfall, though, because we weren't forced to use our oil lamps.  Next time maybe.

On Thursday, I checked papers because I honestly thought that we'd be in school on Friday.  We didn't get nearly the amount of snow that was forecast for us, and the sun was shining brightly.  What we couldn't see in our protected little valley was how windy it was everywhere else and what havoc that was playing with the roadways.  Thus, Friday was a snow day also, and while I should have been checking papers, I abandoned that task in favor of beginning to make goodies for Christmas.

I started by making caramels.  I remember when my dad first made these.  When he announced that he was going to be making caramels, I was excited because I love caramel anything (so long as it isn't contaminated with nuts).  I know that I was pretty young when he first did it.  I also suspicion that I was sick because I remember that he handed me the spoon to lick after I woke up from a nap.  I remember being colossally disappointed with that spoon.  You see, when Dad said that he was making caramels, my youthful mind assumed that the result of his efforts would taste exactly like the golden nuggets of goodness that came from Kraft. 

Dad was delighted with them, however, and they have been a tradition at Christmas for a number of years now.  I think that they are my brother's favorite Christmas candy.  They are not difficult to make, and they are particularly well-suited to being cooked on a wood cookstove because of their long cooking time.  The recipe comes from the Kitchen Klatter Cookbook, a southwestern Iowa go-to cookbook which is a compilation of recipes from the radio homemaker show and magazine of the same name.  I give more details about the Kitchen Klatter legacy in my post about apricot bars.  I can't say enough good things about this mid-twentieth century cookbook.  It doesn't include a lot of beautiful photographs, and the directions are obviously written for people who have had some experience in the kitchen, but I haven't yet run across a recipe in it that I didn't like.  Many of the recipes have personal notes on them, and, having milked a cow for ten years, I appreciate the fact that they are very conscientious about telling you whether you can use "country sour cream" or "commercial sour cream" in the recipes which call for it.

This recipe appears on p. 457 in the candy section and is simply labeled "Caramels." To make them, you first combine 2 cups of sugar, 1 cup of cream, 1 3/4 cup corn syrup, a dash of salt, and 1 cup butter in a heavy-bottomed pan which has a capacity of at least four quarts.  Bring to a boil directly over the fire.

Bringing the ingredients to boil over the firebox.

Once it has come to a boil, move the kettle to a cooler part of the range where it will continue to boil, and let it do so for a half hour.  Stir occasionally to make sure that it isn't scorching.

The mixture boiling on the reservoir side of the stove.

As the mixture cooks, it turns a pretty amber color.

 After the thirty minutes is up, add another cup of cream.  Put the mixture back over the fire until it returns to a boil.

Coming back to a boil after the second cup of cream was added.

Return the kettle to a cooler part of the range where it will continue to boil until it has reached the consistency you desire.

Here is where things get a little interesting.  You can use a candy thermometer to decide when the caramel is done cooking, but I prefer the cold water test because I have better luck with it.  What I do is put very cold tap water (not difficult to come by at this time of year) into a coffee cup.  Then I let a few drops of the candy fall off of the stirring spoon into the cold water.  When it isn't yet done, it makes a beige puddle at the bottom of the cup.

I'm sorry that this is blurry.  I don't think that I know how to take
close-ups with our camera.

I take these caramels off the stove when they are at the softball stage.  At that point, the drops of caramel in the cold water look like this:



 When you stick your finger down at the bottom of the cup and stir everything around, the caramel forms a soft ball--hence the "soft ball stage."

The soft ball of caramel after I stirred it around in the cold water.

If you want your caramels to be a harder finished product, you can cook the caramels longer.  When they are done, pour the caramels into a buttered 9 x 13 pan.

When they are most of the way cooled, cut and wrap.

A couple of the caramels removed from the pan.

Here is the way the recipe appeared in the original cookbook:

Caramels

2 cups sugar

2 cups cream

1 3/4 cups corn syrup

1/8 tsp. salt

1 cup butter (may be half margarine)

1 cup chopped nuts

 

  Combine sugar, 1 cup of the cream, corn syrup, sal and butter

or margarine.  Boil 30 minutes.  Then add the second cup of

cream and boil until it makes a firm ball when dropped into

cold water or until it reaches 260 degrees on the candy

thermometer.  Add nuts and pour without beating into well-

buttered pan.  Cut into squares when still slighly warm.

 

 

These have an old-fashioned, homemade taste that I hope you'll enjoy.

Boiled Cider Glazed Pork Loin

When people ask me what my favorite Christmas memory is, I have to say that Christmas 2002 was my favorite.  My grandparents on my dad's side passed away within a week of each other in June of 2001.  At the time of their deaths, they owned the farm where I live now.  I was raised here; my dad was raised here, and my grandfather was raised here.  I had been living in our house since 1998, but as the farm passed from my grandparents' ownership into their estate, unfortunate circumstances beyond my control dictated that I leave the farm while it was sold.

To make a long and emotionally exhausting story very short, in early 2002 my brother and I were able to buy our farm from my grandparents' estate with the incredibly generous help of my parents.  I would just like to take this opportunity to publicly admit that at the time, I was so caught up in the turmoil of the year's events that I did not even begin to realize how great a sacrifice that my parents--escpecially my dad--made for us.  A decade later, I'm still only beginning to realize the magnitude of what he did, and, though I would find it awkward to tell him face-to-face, I've got to say that I stand in awe of my dad's colossal charity toward his children, and I am totally humbled by it.

Needless to say, Christmas 2001 was a stressful one, and I was feeling the loss of our family home quite keenly.  So when Christmas 2002 was approaching and I was back at home and the farm was still in the family, I asked to host Christmas for my immediate family so that we could be back celebrating in the house where everyone except my mom had grown up.  I was celebrating the birth of my Savior that Christmas, but I was also celebrating being home for Christmas.

Preparations began right after Thanksgiving.  Every day after I got home from the bank where I worked at the time, I cleaned, decorated, planned, or cooked something in preparation for the big day.  At the bank, my co-workers asked every morning about the progress that had been made the night before and kept tabs on my activities.  Susan, the teller, was quite interested in the dietary aspects of the whole prospect and brought in her favorite holiday cookbook.  It was a vintage Ideals publication with beautiful 1960s-style photographs of various foods made from the recipes within, and it further spurred me on. 

I dug out old family recipes and pored over cookbooks after I had gotten too tired for physical labor in the evenings.  It has always been my family's tradition to have a large breakfast together on Christmas morning, so I was making decisions for both meals, trying to seek the right blend of familiar traditions and appropriate new additions to the Christmas menus.  In the days immediately preceding Christmas, the Qualified Range was busy with boiling candies and baking various sweets.  For the main Christmas dinner, I had carefully selected foods and pans that could all fit in the Qualified's oven because the oven on the electric stove that I had then was on the blink.

I used a couple of the recipes from Susan's cookbook, but I used its recipe for pork loin roast as a launch point for my own creation that turned out surprisingly good.  This recipe was such a hit that we used it for our church's annual Valentine's Dinner in February of 2003, and I made it again last Sunday for dinner. 

First, prepare an approximately eight-pound pork loin by rubbing it with a combination of 1 tsp. allspice and 2 tsp. salt.  Place the loin in a covered roaster with about a 1/4 c. of water, and roast it in whatever combination of time and temperature you prefer.  I had to cut the loin in half so that it would fit in our large enamel roaster.

I took advantage of the Margin Gem's ability to hold a constant fire while we are gone to church, and cooked the loin "automatically" by filling the firebox with as much wood as I could and then dampering it down.  When we got home, the internal temperature of the meat registered one hundred seventy-two degrees--done! 

I still needed to make and add the glaze, but since the pork was already cooked, I put the lid back on the roaster and slid the whole thing back in the oven, leaving the oven door open.

To make the glaze, I combined 3/4 c. boiled cider, 1 c. red plum jam (or you could use currant jelly), 1/2 tsp. allspice, and 3 TBLS. ketchup (I used some of our homemade).  Bring to a boil and simmer two minutes.  I spread part of this glaze on the loin, covered it again, and put it back in the oven with the door closed while I finished mashing the potatoes and making the other last minute meal preparations.  The rest of the glaze was moved to the coolest part of the cooktop to remain warm so that it could be served at the table.

Unfortunately, in the rush of getting the other foods finished and to the table at the same time for the ten of us who were eating together, I forgot to take pictures of the pork loin once it was glazed and of the glaze itself.  Sorry.  As a consolation, I will show you the picture that I did manage to take of the honey-kissed carrots which had baked alongside the pork loin in the oven while we were gone.

Here is the recipe in a more accessible form:

Boiled Cider Glazed Pork Loin

 

8 lb. pork loin

 

Rub with:

1 tsp. allspice

2 tsp. salt

 

Roast pork loin using your preferred method.

During last half hour of cooking time, glaze

with the following:

 

3/4 c. thick boiled cider

1 c. red plum jam (or currant jelly)

1/2 tsp. allspice

3 Tblsp. ketchup

 

Simmer glaze ingredients for two minutes.  Pour

about half of the glaze on the pork loin during the

last half hour of the cooking time, reserving the rest

to be served at the table.

 

 

 

I mentioned my earthly father's sacrifices for his children earlier.  As we prepare for the Christmas season, I urge you to remember that the reason that we celebrate Christmas is because of the sacrifice that our Heavenly Father made when He sent His Son to become one of us, to die for us, and to offer us the gift of eternal life with Him.  Hope you are having a blessed Christmas season!

 



Boiled Cider: A Task I Wouldn't Try on a Modern Stove

These colder days when the cookstove is being fired constantly are the perfect time to try those old-fashioned recipes which demand long, slow cooking.  Boiled cider is one of those foods which hearken back to bygone days when various foods could cook for hours, if not days, on the back of the woodburning range.   The gentle heat of a wood fire seems to have a unique way of intertwining aromas and marrying flavors which is lost in today's rushed cooking. 

Crock pots or slow cookers do their jobs well, but they are, in my opinion anyway, not quite the same as a kettle simmering on a stovetop.  Furthermore, during the short intervals of my culinary life when a wood cookstove was not available, leaving a kettle to cook all day over a gas flame or electric burner was simply never an option because I am bothered by the energy consumption that these methods involve.  (Disclaimer: I was accused the other day at the lunch table of being an environmentalist because we heat with wood and have only used our clothes dryer twice since February.  I'm not an environmentalist; I think of myself as just old-fashioned.  My wife tries to put a more humorous spin on the situation and likes to tell people that I'm allergic to the use of gas and electricity, and my students at school think that I'm Amish because they don't know the first thing about the Amish.  The whole unvarnished truth of the matter is that I'm just a raging skinflint, and I don't like to see our hard-earned money fall unnecessarily into the hands of the power company or the propane provider--especially when we've got more firewood available to us than we know what to do with.)

At any rate, boiled cider is quite simple to make, and the end product is fascinating and versatile, though I haven't spent nearly enough time experimenting with it, and it is one of those foods which is perfect for a wood cookstove.

What I do is this:

1. Pour a 1/2 gallon of apple cider into a large, wide kettle.

2. Add a cinnamon stick.

3. Place on the back of the stove and let simmer slowly until it is reduced to 3/4 of a cup of liquid.  Only occasional stirring is necessary toward the end of the cooking time.

The cider just after being put on the stove to simmer.

This takes several hours.  In Jane Cooper's Woodstove Cookery: At Home on the Range, the recipe for boiled cider says that a gallon of apple cider may take as many as twenty-four hours to reduce to one quart.  The batch of boiled cider that I made using the above measurements in the pot that you see in the pictures took approximately six hours.  In both pictures, you see the kettle in the center of the stovetop, but it migrated further away from the firebox for a while too.

The boiled cider a few minutes before I removed
it from the fire.  By this time, it was only a thin layer
covering the bottom of the kettle.

What happens as the cider boils is that it becomes a syrup, the thickness of which is totally dependent upon how long it is left to cook.  A thinner syrup can be canned and later diluted with water to make "a refreshing drink," according to Ms. Cooper, so basically, you've made a cider concentrate.

If you use the proportions that I have listed above, however, what you will end up with once it is cool is a very thick syrup which is not unlike molasses or corn syrup on a very, very cold day.  It is thick, and the flavor is intense and delicious.  A side benefit of boiling cider is that your house smells lovely during the process, too. 

"So now what do you do with it?" you may be asking. 

My answer is, "Whatever you want to."  I'm going to try using it in places where I would have ordinarily reached for the honey jar.  However, in my next post, I'll share a recipe that I devised ten years ago this month which calls for the whole 3/4 of a cup of boiled cider.  Stay tuned!  I promise that it will be worth it.

Note 10/19/2017: Made sticky rolls using this instead of dark corn syrup.  It worked well but was met with mixed reviews.  Some didn't like it, others raved about it.  I think I'd try it again.

Century-old Recipe for Meatloaf

Not too many years ago, Nancy, her mother, and I had all gone down to Clearfield, Iowa, to visit Nancy's grandparents.  Nancy's grandma Ruth, an avid cook in her day and still a food aficionada at age 97, had apparently been rummaging through old cookbooks and had decided to send a couple home with Nancy's mom.  I was not the driver on the two-hour return trip, so I sat in the back seat and read the cookbooks.  One of them was the 1915 Clearfield Presbyterian Church Cookbook.  The Clearfield Presbyterian Church is long gone, but a recipe that caught my eye needs to be carried into the future.

The recipe was simply labeled "Beef Loaf," but what made me pay attention to it was the ingredient list.  Most meatloaf recipes are fairly similar in nature: meat, meat stretcher, an egg or two, some moisture, and your seasonings.  What caught my eye about the ingredients was that this recipe included ground bacon.  Now, I'm an unashamed meatloaf lover, and I've had meatloaf that was draped in bacon, but the idea of grinding bacon and including it inside the meatloaf was intriguing to me.  Furthermore, with not nearly enough shame, I will admit that I believe the following verse: "Bacon and butter make everything better."  Thus, I definitely had to try this recipe! 

The first try was a success; the second try earned me an "I sure wish I could make a meatloaf like you" at a church dinner.  Thus, this recipe has now become one of my "go to" recipes when cooking for a potluck, so I pulled it out for the Nightingale Circle Christmas Potluck which we hosted at our house last Wednesday evening.  Here is what you do:

 



1. First crush enough saltine crackers to make a cup of cracker crumbs.

2. Grind one pound of bacon and set aside.

Normally, I would be ashamed to show you that we have an electric
food grinder.  (We have a hand-cranked one that I have used many times
for this recipe.)  However, we bought this grinder a few weeks ago at the
Goodwill Warehouse in Omaha.  You pay for your merchandise by the
pound there, so I estimate that this vintage deluxe Kenmore grinder cost
us less than $6.70.  Aren't you impressed?  You'll see why I wanted it if I
write a post about making suet pudding for Christmas.

3. Mix cracker crumbs, eggs, milk, dried onion, and salt and pepper.

4. Add the ground bacon.

5. Add the ground beef and mix thoroughly.

6. Shape into a loaf and put into a baking dish. 

Keep in mind that you've got four pounds of meat here,
so you need a big pan.  This Pyrex dish is 11" x 14" and
holds 4.8 quarts.

7. Bake in a moderate oven for approximately 1 1/2 hours.

You see the meatloaf cooking here in the stovetop oven.  I actually started it in
the Margin Gem's oven, but I had to finish it on top of the stove
because the dinner rolls wouldn't fit in the stovetop oven, so they had
to be baked in Marjorie's oven.  This stovetop oven is coming in handy!

8. During the last ten minutes, I like to glaze it with two cups of homemade ketchup, about 3/4 of a cup of brown sugar, and two teaspoons of dry mustard.

Mix all of that together until it is smooth and poor over the top of the meatloaf.

The finished product with about half of it gone.

Notes:

a) At first glance, one might think that this meatloaf is bound to be greasy since it has a pound of bacon in it.  Surprisingly, most of the bacon fat cooks out during baking, and there is no greasy texture or taste.

b) Because the bacon fat cooks out, the hot fat tends to sputter a lot in the oven, so be prepared to run a damp cloth over the inside of the oven after it has cooled down to being just warm.

c) The original recipe did not call for the dried onion or the glaze, but it was quite bland without them.  The original recipe also called for a tablespoon of butter.  Despite my mantra above, I leave that out because it seems superfluous even to me.

The recipe:

 

Beef Loaf

 

3 lbs. ground beef

1 lb. ground bacon

2 eggs

1 cup cracker crumbs

1 cup rich milk

3/4 cup dried onion (or to taste)

Salt and pepper to taste.

 

Mix all together and shape into loaf.  Bake approximately 1 1/2 hours in moderate oven.

During last ten minutes, glaze with the following:

 

2 cups ketchup

3/4 c. brown sugar

2 tsp. dried mustard

I hope you enjoy this one as much as I do.

"Automatic" Cooking on a Wood Cookstove

My mother has always taken great advantage of the "Time Bake" feature of her electric stoves in order to be able to have Sunday dinner cook automatically while we were at church.  Nancy and I would occasionally do the same thing with our 1951 Hotpoint electric range, which we sometimes used in conjunction with the Qualified Range until we began remodeling our kitchen.  Usually, whatever meat dish we were having would be cooked in the Hotpoint, and then we would cook the side dishes on the Qualified once we got home.  The reason that we never cooked the whole meal in the woodburning cookstove was because the Qualified couldn't hold a constant fire for the time that we were gone to church since it wasn't airtight.  It would have been able to start the cooking with no problem, but the oven temperature would have dropped to a point where meats couldn't have been safely consumed.

The 1951 Hotpoint was delivered to a used appliance store to hopefully be refurbished and resold shortly after we began serious work on our kitchen in 2011.  I will admit to having been sad to see it go.  However, it had some quirks that Nancy found particularly unforgivable, and the new plan for the kitchen doesn't allow any space for it anyway.  The good news is that because Marjorie the Margin Gem is an airtight cookstove and is able to easily hold a fire while we are gone, I've begun to experiment with having her cook our dinner while we are gone to church.

In The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Cookery, Addie Norton is quoted as saying, "If I put a fire in that woodstove and go out of the house, it's not gonna get hotter.  It's gonna get cooler.  That wood's gonna burn up and it's not gonna hurt nothing."  For the most part, I would say that is true.  The exception is that if you fuel the fire right before you leave it, the fire will first get hotter and then will get cooler.  In an old style cookstove, this cycle will take less time, and the extremes in the hottest point and coolest point in that short cycle are most likely to have a wider gap between them.  In an airtight stove, the burn time will be longer, and the extremes of temperature will not be as discrepant.

Knowing how the heat of the stove will behave governs one's decisions regarding how and what to cook when you are having your wood cookstove cook "automatically."  For our initial experiment, I chose pork roast and mashed potatoes.  I seasoned the roast, put it in our red spatterware roaster, and slid it into the oven.  The oven was running at about 400 degrees at the time that the roast was put in. 

The potatoes were peeled and quartered and then put in a Saladmaster saucepan with a vented lid.  I chose that particular pot because I could put the lid on it tightly, but the chances of the potatoes boiling over were lower because the steam vent on the lid would have reduced the chance of that happening.  I was also only cooking a small amount of potatoes, so the pan was plenty tall in order to provide additional protection against boiling over.  The potatoes were placed between the rear middle and right lids.

Pork roast in the oven and potatoes on top of the stove
ready to cook while we are gone to church.

I then filled the firebox with large pieces of wood, turned the damper down, and completely closed the drafts.  We left at about nine in the morning and got back home at about 12:45.  When we returned, this is what we saw.

Cooked potatoes that were still very hot but no longer boiling.
They did boil, though.  You can tell that by the starch that is clinging
to the sides of the pot.

A completely cooked pork roast.  I know that the top looks burnt,
but there was a thick layer of fat on the top side of the roast.  I cut
the blackened part away since it was not meat anyway, and a tender,
succulent pork roast lay underneath.  The oven was still at a safe
temperature to hold the meat.
 

I put a pint of home-canned green beans on the stove to boil while I mashed the potatoes and carved the meat.  Nancy cut some pre-cooked bacon into the green beans and set the table.  Within minutes of coming home, we sat down to a wood-cooked meal that looked like this:

Yumm!

We deemed this experiment a definite success and feel that we have yet another reason to be glad that we upgraded from the Qualified Range to the Margin Gem.  I can't wait to try other combinations of dishes.  If I were to cook another pork roast in this manner, I think that I would add a little water or stock because I think that a little added moisture would have prevented the top of the roast from becoming overly browned.  My grandmother-in-law says that I also should have put the potatoes in with the roast.  I would have thought of this with a beef roast, but I guess my mother never did that with pork roasts, so I didn't think of it.  I don't think that the moisture from the potatoes would have been sufficient to prevent the over-browning, though.  At any rate, stay tuned for more "automatic" cooking experiments!

Roasting a Turkey in the Wood Cookstove

My parents will be hosting our family's Thanksgiving celebration this year, but Nancy and I have hosted it several times since we have been married, and it is certainly one of my favorite meals to cook.  Of course, the centerpiece of most Thanksgiving dinners is the turkey, and the last one that we roasted in the Qualified Range in 2010 was the best one yet.  Fred, one of our neighbors and a longtime family friend of my mom's side, was a guest at our dinner that year, and he raved about the turkey.  He swore up and down that the reason that the Turkey was so delicious was because it was cooked in a wood cookstove.  I have read that some people believe that foods cooked in the oven of a wood cookstove are better than those cooked in modern ovens because both electric and gas ovens are vented, whereas the ovens on wood cookstoves are basically sealed when the door is shut.  The thought is that this helps keep the flavor in the food.  All theories aside, 2010's bird was fantastic, and I want to share how we cooked it.

I didn't have the energy that year to get all of the pies baked on the Wednesday evening before, so Nancy and I had gotten up early to bake the pumpkin pies.  I tend to keep the oven pretty hot for pie baking (see my post about that here), and our timing was such that when the last pie came out of the oven, it was imperative that the turkey be put in right away.

To prepare the turkey, I used a Reynolds oven bag, following the directions on the box for shaking flour inside the bag before putting the turkey in and cutting slits in the top of the bag.  Then, I rubbed butter all over the top of the bird to add a little flavor and encourage browning.  I sprinkled the top of the turkey with salt, pepper, paprika, and probably some Mrs. Dash.  We stuffed the turkey's cavity with part of the dressing that we made according to our family's tradition (I'll blog about that sometime).  We sealed the bag and put it in the oven, which was running at about four hundred degrees at that time.

Just before putting the turkey in the oven, I had fueled the fire, so the oven continued to run hot for at least the first forty-five minutes that the turkey was in the oven.  The turkey developed a beautiful, golden brown crust right away.  After that, we let the oven cool to about 325 until the turkey was cooked, timing it according to the directions for the oven bags.  Ideally, you want your turkey to be finished cooking about a half hour before your meal is to take place.  A meat thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the breast should register 180 degrees.

We then spooned the stuffing out of the turkey's cavity and mixed it into the rest of the dressing.  The turkey was permitted to rest for at least fifteen minutes; then it was removed from the bag to a platter for carving while all of the wonderful juice that it had been swimming in was made into gravy.

At every Thanksgiving dinner we've hosted, as soon as the turkey is out of the oven, I add quite a bit of small fuel to the fire and return the oven to about 400 degrees in order to dry out the dressing a little, brown the marshmallows on the top of the sweet potatoes, and cook the gravy.

Making sure that the turkey gets a chance to brown well while it is roasting also helps to ensure that the turkey gravy will have an appetizing color.  If your gravy is too light to be appealing, though, don't despair.  My grandma taught me that a little coffee added to the gravy aids in giving it good color and is usually undetectable as far as flavor goes.  If no coffee is already made, I've seen her put a few granules of instant coffee into the gravy to get the same effect.  Trust me on this one; if you do it right, no one will be the wiser.  Just remember to always taste the gravy as you are making it, adjusting your seasonings to fit your palate.

If, while the turkey is cooking, the top of it begins to brown too much, just lay a couple of pieces of foil over the top. This may be necessary because most wood cookstove ovens are hotter at the top than at the bottom. If the turkey is cooking too slowly, it helps to remove the stuffing from inside the turkey and cook it separately from the bird.

An additional consideration that a wood cookstove cook must make while cooking Thanksgiving dinner is the fact that there is usually a large pot of potatoes to cook along with other top-of-the-stove side dishes.  Generally, when I'm using extra large vessels on the cooktop, I keep a hotter fire because of the extra BTU's needed to heat the larger pots.  However, the hotter fire would result in the oven being too hot for roasting the turkey.  Thus, I always have to remember to put the potatoes and other sides on earlier than I normally would because they will take longer to come to a boil.

The only pictures that I have of any of the turkeys that I have roasted in a wood cookstove are some that my aunt took in 1999.  This was actually the second turkey that I had roasted in the Qualified range.

Thanksgiving 1999's roast turkey at the Qualified.  Note the large
stockpot of mashed potaoes over the firebox.  The other two pots
are carrots and green beans.

Man was I young then!  I don't look anything like that anymore.

Making the gravy.  The potatoes have been removed from the
range for mashing, and the two vegetables have been moved to
the coolest part of the cooktop because they are finished.

Astute blog readers will notice that the stovepipe angle in the pictures above is not the same as in other pictures of the Qualified Range.  When these pictures were taken, the Qualified had only been installed in our current house for a few months (I had it installed in our little rental house next door for about a year and a half when I lived up there).  I hired a professional to line the old kitchen chimney with stainless steel and install the Qualified in my present kitchen in the summer of 1999.  He configured the stovepipe so that it had a very direct route to the chimney, which is what is recommended to optimize draft.

However, I didn't like the look of the funky angles, and it was difficult to take the pipe down and put it back up for routine cleaning, so I changed it after a while.  We didn't install wall protection behind the stove until 2005 (a year after Nancy and I married), so until then, the stove stuck out into the kitchen quite a bit further in order to meet the clearance requirements.  In fact, the wall protection was installed on the weekend before Thanksgiving that year because Nancy and I were hosting, and we wanted to have more room to work and for our guests to travel through the kitchen (Have you ever noticed how people tend to gather in the kitchen during get-togethers, even when they aren't helping with the meal preparation?).

Hopefully, our kitchen will be finished by Thanksgiving of next year so that we can host the celebration again.  I'm looking forward to cooking a really large meal on the Margin Gem since it is so much bigger than the Qualified and has a warming oven to boot.