Ribs - Take 1

Ribs update:
Try 2.5-3hrs at 200; just did one for a little over 4hrs and the meat was way too soft (bones wouldn't stay in) but it seems like 2.5hr would be a happy medium

Cut the cumin content and consider dropping the cayenne as well - possibly also up salt. So maybe 30g Salt 5g Cumin.

Had 1g-3g of mustard in this one as well, uncertain what impact it had.

---
This worked fairly well, but needs work. I can't find my old recipe for the rub or anything else, so this is a process of experimentation/development.

The result from this one was tasty but a bit dry/lacking on tenderness, and felt like it had too much rub. Layla suggested reducing the cumin; I think I'll start by just not doing the extra rub.
High broiler may have been too much, or 3 minutes per side may have been too much. Let's try high for 1 minute per side next time.
Probably best to do the broiler step rib-side up once and then flip - the sauce sticks to the pan.


Changes to be made:
* Don't do the uncovered cooking step or just do it for 15 minutes or something (ie 3 hours at 200)
* Cook at 200, instead of 225
* I think I used to baste the ribs with the liquid from the foil, too.
* Don't sprinkle on the extra rub
* Broil only 1min per side for the sauce
* First broil should be rib side up, then 2-3 rounds of rib side down
* Trim membrane off the bottom - I decided not to do it this time and suspect it's a good way to both reduce fat (which layla likes) and get more rub into the meat (which everyone likes).

Potential future revisions:
* Longer cooking step
* Change rub recipe
* Try low broiler instead of high

Ingredients (for 1 Costco-sized rack):
10g Paprika
10g Cumin
10g Garlic Powder
6g Chili Powder
2g Cayenne
2g White Pepper
15g Brown Sugar
22g Salt
~1g Black Pepper

1) Mix all spices together (can toast and grind from whole spices if desired) thoroughly
2) Rub heavily on all sides of ribs and leave uncovered in fridge overnight, on a wire rack above paper towels or a sheet pan to catch moisture
3) Preheat oven to 225
4) Wrap ribs tightly in foil (Costco heavy-duty seems great for this)
5) Place ribs in oven bone-side up and leave for 2 hours
6) Unwrap ribs, sprinkle both sides with any residual rub, and cook uncovered for another 1hr
7) Remove ribs from oven and place on a broiler pan, bone side down. Brush with desired bbq sauce and place under high broiler for 3 minutes. Flip, brush underside with sauce, and broil again for 3 minutes. Flip again, brush with sauce, and boil again for final 3 minutes.
8) Slice and serve

Bacon Extra!

Costco actually had pork loins today, so I snagged one as well as the ribs for the previous "entry." I have a strong suspicion that these will be less good than the ones from Whole Foods, but while Whole Foods are out...

Calculator again:
https://eatcuredmeat.com/how-much-curing-salt-per-pound-of-meat-dry-or-wet-curing-tool-calculator/

This time, given the sheer size, I'm going to go with the wet brining approach. Total mass of pork is 2838g, and we don't need to correct for salt loss. Thus to get our 2.5% it's (rounding from the calculator) 10g curing salt, 100g Kosher salt, and 1.14L of water.

I'll have to prep the salts and water separately, possibly bringing up to a simmer first.

Procedure I'm thinking:
* Wet cure for ~5 days
* Flip over and do 5 more days
* Soak for 1hr in fresh water and clean surface --> I may just wash it, to be honest; equilibrium brining
* Leave to dry, flipping daily, for 3-4 days

This has me flipping it next Wednesday, taking it out on the 30th, and starting to eat it a on that Wednesday/Thursday.


Note: The Book suggests 1 gallon of 60* Brine and 81g of Cure #1 for 5kg. I'll have to do some math on that.

*http://seafoodacademy.org/brining-activity.php

Ribs

Getting this formalized.

I keep trying to figure out what rub I want...there's the foodwishes one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz7WHAjxDxk
https://foodwishes.blogspot.com/2011/01/you-want-your-baby-back-ribs-sure-just.html

Chefsteps:
https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/smokerless-smoked-ribs-incredible-barbecue-no-smoker-required
https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/apartment-rib-rub
Both of which are probably targeting smokier than I want.

And various ones from serious eats (links go to the main pages, not the recipes themselves):
https://www.seriouseats.com/2016/06/how-to-make-oven-bbq-barbecue-baked-ribs.html (https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2016/06/oven-barbecue-bbq-ribs-recipe.html)
https://www.seriouseats.com/2015/09/the-food-lab-complete-guide-sous-vide-pork-ribs.html (https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2015/09/sous-vide-pork-ribs-recipe-food-lab.html)
https://www.seriouseats.com/2012/09/how-to-make-a-barbecue-rub.html

Bacon Note: Apparently connective tissue starts breaking down into gelatin starting about 130F; if long times at 132 don't negatively impact texture and fattiness, there may be a good case for a longer sous vide step to help weaken the connective tissue layer.

Trouble is I specifically remember that my favorite rub had cumin in it.
Here's one that does:
https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/rib-dry-rub-recipe-1915626

For now I think I'll go with Kenji's

Found another one:
https://kristywicks.com/best-smoked-ribs-rib-rub-recipe/

Prehab/Rehab Notes

Based on all the stuff from PT.

NB: external rotation is rotation such that the main limb is rotating away from the body - hip external rotation has the front of the thigh moving outwards if you're in hip extension.
We hit a variety of exercises, so the list first:

Hips
* Sidesteps (with band)
* Monster Walks (with band around ankles)
* External Rotation mobe (lie on back with knees at 90, have one knee fall towards the floor without rotating your hips)
* Prone External Rotation (now with ankle weights)
* Clamshell with band
* "Squeeze Bridge" (this was with the "circle" thing orinally)
* Wall Ball Squats (single-leg squat with a med ball between a wall and your inactive thigh; start at about a quarter squat and keep all the weight on your heels)
* Single-leg bridges (inactive leg extended, don't let your hips rotate)

Neck
* Occipillow neck curl
* Occipillow rotation
* All-Fours Rotation
In all cases, trying to avoid recruiting the traps/pulling the head back

Shoulder
* IR/ER/45-degree --> IR and ER can be done with elbow at side, or as 90/90
* Standing CAR
* All-Fours CAR
* Wall Balls - front, side, taps (noon, 1:30, 3pm)
* Ys and Ts with light dumbbells
* Wall Walks (nowadays we're doing these with straight arms)
* Rows (banded, originally)
* "Scap Slides" or whatever on the wall (should do these throughout the day anyway)
* Banded Scap Slides

--

That's the "full" exercise list. There's also some diagnostic that needs to be done here.

Important notes:
* My shoulder/back issues are heavily due to my traps sitting too low, so Farmer Carries are also indicated here to help get the damn things to shorten up. This is another benefit to the scap slides.
* Hips are rotated a bit with the right one further forward and the left knee collapsing, meaning...
* Left side - missing external rotation range, plus issues keeping that knee "out"
* Right side - missing internal rotation range (potentially)
* Torso - some rotation towards the right side

Would be interesting to test what issues are actually coming up when I back step on the wall; you'd think the left hip being rotated "back" would actually help get my hips closer to the wall when turning that hip in, so maybe this is more a torso rotation problem.

The missing external rotation range on the left side is noticeable but may be a result of comparing against a right side in which the hip is already far forward. That being said, the inability to get into that same position on the left is a problem.

To be honest, I think that rolling out the area around the hips is the key there. That hip release trick from Starrett and Waterbury could also be a good thing to look at.

---

Proposed routine:

Rolling/Mobes
* Upper back Foam Roll
* Upper back Double-LAX
* Hip and Quad
* Open Book Stretch

Exercises (for now):
* Neck curls
* Neck rotations
* Band Clamshells
* Ball Circles
* Scap Slides
* Wall Walks
* Side Steps
* Monster Walks
* Ys and Ts
* ER/IR/45s

Question occurs whether it's worth splitting these up somewhat, e.g. having a stretching day or...something. Presumably the couch stretch and some hamstring stretching comes in here somewhere. The ideal here would be some full-body massage every so often...

Bacon Musing

Implications of the below:
* 132F for 1.5-2 hours in the sous vide should be acceptable to both sterilize the meat and minimize moisture loss and fat rendering. We're mainly concerned about bacteria on the surface, right?
* Sous vide step probably wants to take place before any long-term drying, as e. coli gets more resistant to heat as moisture drops (up to a point at least).
* May be some value in doing a test on the sous vide to see how long it takes a piece of meat to hit 132 throughout after you put it in. Sterilization for the very interior only starts once that gets above temperature, though realistically the parts of the meat that will have pathogens are on the outside (except for trich., which will die very quickly).

NB: There's a question here regarding rate of fat rendering at given temperatures as well. 132 degrees for two hours looks sufficient for total sterilization, while 150 degrees looks able to accomplish that in minutes. 130 may be low enough that the fat doesn't actually render, but takes a while to work (probably 3-4 hours in the sous vide, to get up to temp and then adequately disinfect? That being said, bacterial concerns are probably restricted to the surface.

"The Book" (see below) also describes dry-curing as involving something resembling a drainage rack. This partly explains the constant reapplication of cure.

Link for ref:
https://www.foodsafetymagazine.com/magazine-archive1/februarymarch-2004/the-danger-zone-reevaluated/
D value here refers to the time required to get a 1-log decrease (base 10). The only one that worries me here is that e. coli in ground beef has a D-time of 40 minutes at 130; that drops by a factor of 10 at 135, so 132 degrees might be a good sweet spot here.

Doing some work in Excel - looks like you'd expect a high-end D value of 20 minutes at 132, so for E coli you're after 2 hours to get a 6-order kill rate.

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2001-title9-vol2/pdf/CFR-2001-title9-vol2-sec318-10.pdf
(Elsevier basically ripped me out of $30 to get the article that linked that...)

So, 2 hours at 130 degrees should be easily enough to kill Trichinosis. Yay. That looks dated to at least 2001 (when trich cases were already going down a lot) so that should be fine.

Other things:
* Could be a benefit to slicing day by day rather than all at once. The pellicle will get thicker, but could/should be fine, and with the temperature low enough this may be enough to prevent spoilage completely. Possible that wrapping in foil will help to prevent it from getting too hard, though I suspect there's a limit to how thick the pellicle can actually get.
* Additional question here regarding why the cooked one doesn't spoil.

Based on "the book" (Home Production of Quality Meats and Sausages) "bacon is dried for 1-2 hours at 122F, dampers are fully open" followed by "Bacon is smoked and cooked for 3 hours at 130F, dampers are 1/4 open. If trichinae-free meat is used the cooking may stop when the internal meat temperature reaches 132F, otherwise cook bacon to 140F." There's a bit of an internal contradiction there in that a 130F smoker can't hit either of those temperatures but w/e.
USDA limits on sodium nitrate in dry-cured bacon is 200ppm for "rind-off" and 180ppm for "rind-on." Rind-on is if the skin's still attached so NBD.
Apparently I've been roughly hitting if not undercutting that - 1lb of bacon should be 1.3g of Cure#1, so 700g should be about 2g of Cure #1, which is what we've got this time. So we're good.
At some point soon we can start adding sugar - interested to see what does to shelf life.
That's for belly bacon though.

There's a later page discussing loins - "usually pickle cured. They can be stitched pumped and then placed in cover pickle for 3-5 days, or only immersed in cover pickle for up to 10 days. After curing they are smoked and cooked to 142-152F." So Curing-wise we're probably fine, temp-wise we're being a bit cheeky.

The book does recommend doing the mixture in two goes, doing half of the dry cure on Day 1 then adding the other half on Day 7. That said, the recc is "2-2.5 days per kg" so in our case we should be fine.

There's a specific recipe for Canadian Bacon but the temps on that go way high, 3 hour smoke at 150F followed by a brief hold at 170F until the meat hits 154.

(Book also has some fun notes on jerky, which we can totally make at home)

Trichinosis is a mild concern but seems unlikely.

May have hit on one issue inside of the book - "after drying, bacteria become much more heat resistant."

https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/topics/food-safety-education/get-answers/food-safety-fact-sheets/meat-preparation/bacon-and-food-safety/CT_Index/!ut/p/a1/rVNdT8MgFP0tPvhIgH73sVZbrdpFN13bF8Na6DCW1kLmx6-XbjGaTbdpBg9AOOdyz7lcWMAMFoIseE0UbwV5Gs6F84BukIP9ECUjH0foIr2_GV2GIfLGtgbkWwCpucaPguHajO69NMYoND_5v4wA7eJPYQGLUqhOzWHOJJegbIWiQh0jrtdeUL1rCBfHqOvbuieNBERUQNJ-wUsqB3pHalpRyWuxPJW8gjlCBivLGQaOjRiwKPYBMVgFXN_zTFxZLvbLDfEb2e0wL9nDXaO_Dq_rIUk1B1ywFmY1VVqDfKG9hBlrW62GMKreACOlAnJOqdIXDSUKdD3tSL-sJsxmRHuzVP-NBLNw8nAhKvq68vJ7QgjrqQWNrfMkNdHIWgf8UO4VYEs9tz5hGTDXprpfgPh2AETjCY7tExy7Nhz_sUo7AroHDphahw7oHDrg3z1M9uhj_vj8XAS6G4cGfFX6a_6jHbvm7q7xHtmV_VSfOrdnLE0BmXnItLvF-4Q10-Do6APh5-F8/
Another interesting link, as is this one:
https://extension2.missouri.edu/g2528

Bacon 4

Last batch of bacon was quite nice. The one I sous-vided was less tender and marginally less tasty but generally good; the uncooked one was in some ways nicer but went off fairly quickly, after only a couple of days. Part of this may be attributable to fridge temperature, and it may be possible to use wax paper or something to help preserve them longer.

The big loin one is still curing so no news on that one until this coming weekend. The bacon does, however, only keep for 5-7 days, ergo I need to have a continuous rotation going.

Given the loss of water and my annoyance at the last batch going off so quickly, I'm inclined to overestimate the amounts somewhat on the curing salt. Not sure of the chemistry on the water loss side, though. Easiest solution would probably be wet brining but especially with the fridge being fairly packed right now, I don't think I've really got the space. Also can't entirely trust the containers.

I think I'll overestimate things by 10% and see how that goes.

Two loins from Trader Joe's:

700g Loin

1.9g Curing Salt

19g Kosher Salt

770g Loin:

2.1g Curing Salt

21g Kosher Salt

We'll see how those do.

Bacon 3

Still based on the calculator!
https://eatcuredmeat.com/how-much-curing-salt-per-pound-of-meat-dry-or-wet-curing-tool-calculator/

The last batch went pretty well. Sous vide up to 145 still dried it out a lot, though - if we want to cook it we might want to take it lower than that - or probably just not do it at all, since the "danger zone" supposedly covers up to 140F. Sounds like 130F for a few hours is enough to sterilize though, so could be worth a look (https://www.foodsafetymagazine.com/magazine-archive1/februarymarch-2004/the-danger-zone-reevaluated/).

So far it seems like the best flavor comes from the raw version, too.

I suspect I might want to overestimate the salt content by 10% to account for losses during bagging.

Anyway, today I got a "bigger" loin from whole foods. Described as:
* 6 bones (normal)
* "Rib end" (suspect this got me something more than I wanted)
* Leave a quarter inch of the fat still on (this also seemed to leave some extra on that I wasn't expecting)

The result basically looks like the standing roasts from Costco. We'll see how this one turns out, but since the cross-section is about twice what I'm used to seeing on any bacon here or elsewhere, I should probably just ask for a regular loin roast. More research to be done!

--> Note after small amounts of reading: I'm thinking the correct one is still basically just loin end.

This came out to 1.7kg, giving 4.25g of pink salt and 38.5g regular for the 2.25 (I'm just using the recommended %s rather than thinking about it).

EDIT:
Based on this pic, which looks like the most exaggeratedly good version:
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/fresh-pork-back-bacon-on-white-271034354

I think we can safely just go with the loin part. As long as the foot is still on it's good.


Pork Loin Anatomy Reading
http://www.meatmadesimple.com/blog/how-to-buy-a-boneless-pork-loin
http://www.meatmadesimple.com/blog/cutting-a-boneless-pork-loin
https://www.thekitchn.com/whats-the-difference-between-pork-loin-and-pork-tenderloin-meat-basics-213408
https://amazingribs.com/tested-recipes/pork-recipes/pork-cuts-explained
https://www.clovegarden.com/ingred/ap_pigc.html
https://blairsmarket.com/Kickstrap/img/PorkCuts.jpg
https://cimeatbook.com/pork-cuts-a-visual-guide/

Notes here -
Above recommends that the meat should be firm, which sort of touches on today's situation - wouldn't have said that today's loin was all that firm
"Blade roast" may be the magic words to ask for with the butcher. I asked for "rib end" this year and think there's a decent chance I did get this, but not 100% sure
Apparently this is the section where you get country-style ribs, so if you're willing to have a longer conversation with the butcher you may be able to get something relatively customized