As you can imagine I really enjoy open fire cooking and cast iron. I was surprised to find this in the box. I don't remember seeing any of these molds in Jane's kitchen. I'm not sure where she got this pamphlet. It may be useful if you have one of these John Wright cookie molds.
Every year we make adjustments and manage to make minor improvements to the process. After last year I made some adjustments to the pipe burner to improve the efficiency of the flame. This is one of the burners for on of our smaller pots.
I added new holes between the existing holes (we copied one of the existing burners) and increased the size of some of the holes to make them graduated. What I got was a very nice blue flame with no yellow.
It made a huge difference in getting the stew to temperature. It also made a hot spot in the middle of the burner that scorched the stew in that area. This is due to the shape of the carolina cooker pot being more pointed on the bottom that a more traditional/antique pot with a flatter bottom. I'll be welding some of the center holes shut and drilling new holes toward the outer edges of the burner.
The new jet burners worked great. We'll be building more. The keggle was another success. The convex bottom causes the boil to churn the pot and pretty much just shreds the chicken.
The big change this year was to how we process the stock. Everyone on the team has a bad back or shoulder or something. So we didn't want to crouch over to strain the stock into the 2 gallon buckets we use to chill/store it so we dumped it into my 15 gallon brew pot (Center). This allowed the fat to rise to the top and we drained from the valve, resulting in a lower fat stock.
My sister-in-law gave me this Cooks Signature cast iron. Cooks was/is carried by JC Penney's This has been stored in the shed since before her husband passed away. It was closed and as you can see the temperature changes allowed condensation to form on the lid and form rust "crystals."
After a little time in the e-tank and some TLC it's started to look better. It can use a couple more layers of seasoning but at least it's usable. This should be just the ticket for fried fish.
I used a 5 gallon bucket, Arm and Hammer Super Wash and a 12 volt bench top power supply.
Finding the super wash was the challenge. I eventually found it at the hardware store. The super wash is sodium carbonate (NOT BIcarbonate baking soda) that is used at 1 to 2 tbs per gallon of water to create a electrolyte.The alligator clip is attached to the handle which I leave sticking out of the water. You can just barely see the red wire has no clip. I twist that to a piece of wire attached to a sacrificial piece of scrap steel. Once the black dust created from the process has been cleaned off I put it on the gas grill for a few minutes to dry. Then I coat it with a very light coating of oil and let it "cook" for a hour. The oil/heat process is repeated until it's got the desired look.
Brussel Sprouts with potatoes, onions, carrots and smoked sausage. Seasoned with olive oil, salt, pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder. Brussel sprouts are halved then layered first so they brown. Then onions, sausage, potatoes and carrots are layered on. Cover with foil and bake at 400 for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake until browned; about 15-20 minutes.
Veteran's day means Brunswick Stew at church. We use the proceeds to fund various ministries around the community. This year marked the 51st year.
We use 6 pots ranging from 30 to 65 gallons. Each pot has about 25 gallons of vegetables and broth that must be cooked down before adding the chicken. The big pots get double that.
This is pot 1 aka Big Pot. It's 65 Gallons and is a converted church bell.
Pot 4 is 39 gallons
We cook the chicken ahead of time. Previous years this was whole chickens and would be an all day job. After covid I was not able to find whole chickens by the case and switched to thighs. This makes the process go much quicker and I think gives the stew a better flavor. We save the broth and added while cooking.
Stew night, cooking starts around 9:00. There's a couple hours of cleaning and leveling the pots that mush happen beforehand. Potatoes go in first, followed by the onions. No stirring at this point. That prevents the onions from sticking and burning.
After around 90 minutes we add the canned vegetables, stacking the cans in front of the pot so we can keep track of the quantity.
It's basically soup at this point.
I hold off adding the chicken until around 4am. Once the
chicken is added you must start stirring and there’s only 3 of us on the overnight
crew. The morning "stir" crew doesn't arrive until 5:30. You can see how full the smallest pot is at this point so we need to cook it down to add the chicken.
It's done when you can stand the paddle upright.
We usually get around 140-145 gallons. Originally, this was bottled in 1 gallon glass pickle jars. This was very labor intensive as all the jars were washed and sterilized by hand. Dropping a full jar was catastrophic.
We power-wash the pots which are then placed back on the
burners to dry. We then apply a thick coating of lard while the pots are
still hot.
