Pizza Crust - Medium Thin Crust - Between Chicago and New York

Like I stated elsewhere in this blog, this is primarily a place to store some of my favorite recipes and to share them with friends.  Most of us are pretty serious cooks and need little direction in terms of technique.  You may therefore find some of the recipes a bit short in this area, even though I've tried to include enough information to make them useful to everyone.  The following pizza crust recipe is one such example.  

This is my go to crust.  It's not east coast or west coast, but somewhere between.  The time in the refrigerator lets it build flavor and improves the texture.  If you have a last minute pizza emergency and don't have time to refrigerate it, no big deal.  It will still work, but just won't develop quite the same depth of flavor.

The numbers in parenthesizes are bakers percentages.  Following the recipe is a copy of the dough calculator I used to arrive at the quantities, based on the percentages I chose.  If you're interested in such things, you'll find the following web sites interesting.

A Pizza Primer

Pizza Making Hints and Tips

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Pizza Crust 13”

310 Grams

62% Hydration

This dough is very moist and slack, requiring a well floured surface and good working techniques.  It produces a firm, thin crust that is crisp on the outside and softer on the inside.

191 grams / 6.7 ounces bread flour (100%)

118 grams / 4.16 ounces / ¼ cup water (115°) (62%)

0.8 grams / 0.03 ounces / ¼ tsp Active Dry Yeast (0.42%)

2 grams / 0.07 ounces / ½ tsp sugar (1%)

6 grams / 0.2 ounces / 1¼ tsp kosher salt (3 %)

Mix on medium speed (Kitchen Aid #) 4) for 5 - 10 minutes.  This is very slack dough and in small single batches may require the bottom of the mixer bowl be scraped after the first 2 – 3 minutes of mixing. 

Transfer to a lightly oiled mixing bowl and refrigerate, covered, for 12 – 24 hours.  Remove from the refrigerator about 2 hours before you plan to form the crust.  After 2 hours place the dough on a work surface, punch down lightly and form into a tight ball.  Let it rest for an additional 30 - 45 minutes before shaping the crust.

If produced in larger batches, this dough can be weighed, portioned and stored in the refrigerator for up to 6 days.

Bake on a pizza stone, placed on the lowest oven rack, for 8 - 10 minutes at 550° F.  

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Contest Chili

As you might guess from the name of this blog, I’m a chili head!  I make no apologies to any foodie when I say that chili is one of the best dishes ever to come out of America.  I mean really, how many dishes can we claim as our own?  Certainly not pizza, not barbeque, not even apple pie!  No my friends, when you think about it, we just don’t have that many dishes we can call our own.  You say, “As American as apple pie”, I say, “As American as chili”!

For the record, I’m a chili purist.  We’re talking about authentic southwestern style chili con carne here. Chili as we know it was almost certainly a product of the American south west and provided nutrition for early frontier settlers. Historians are almost unanimous in their view that chili originated in America.  It is not a Mexican dish!  Like many things food, there is some controversy about the original ingredients, but all agree that chili originally contained beef, dried chili peppers, wild onions, fat and salt.  Many historians say that oregano and cumin should also be added to that list.  Please note that they are also unanimous in the view that it did not contain tomatoes or beans! In fact singer, songwriter, Ken Finlay wrote a song called, “If You Know Beans About Chili, You Know That Chili Has No Beans.”  Amen!  If you like beans in your chili, and I occasionally do, then add them as a garnish at the end. 

The recipe that follows is not your typical homemade chili.  I originally formulated this recipe to compete in chili cook offs.  Like most modern day contest recipes, it contains no fresh ingredients, but instead relies almost entirely on high quality dried herbs, spices and vegetables.  This is done to insure consistency from batch to batch, which is very important in the contest world.  Using fresh ingredients, onions and garlic for example, you never know how those you buy today will compare to the ones you purchased last month. You might find this month’s onions more or less sweet, or the garlic might be more or less pungent.  Using dried ingredients eliminates this problem.

You will also notice that the various ingredients are added in stages, or as they are referred to in cook off lingo, “dumps”.  This is done to insure that every flavor component is in perfect balance at the moment the judges taste it.  In the home kitchen, this probably is not necessary and you can add all the ingredients at one time.  The only exception would be the arrowroot, limejuice and vinegar thickening, which should be added at the end.  In addition, I would hold off on the cumin until the last hour of cooking, as cumin can become bitter if over cooked. 

Finally, you will notice that my recipe contains a small amount of tomato sauce.  In this case, it‘s used as a seasoning rather than a fundamental ingredient. If you did not know it was there, I doubt that you would be able to detect any tomato. It rounds out the flavor and helps tenderized the meat.  As a chili purist, I stick by my statement that tomatoes have no business in chili!☺

That’s it, try this and let me know what you think.  Remember, this is a “contest’ chili, sort of a race car among chilies. If you prefer a more street-legal chili, feel free to change it up.  Fresh onions and garlic work great and you can experiment with different chili powders. Just, please no tomatoes or beans!☺

Red Rocket Chili - Contest Brew

Cut 2 pounds of Tri Tip into 3/8” cubes.  Sprinkle with ½-teaspoon season salt, set aside. 

In large Dutch oven, fry 2 strips thick bacon, cut into 1/4” dice until well rendered.  Remove bacon.

Brown meat in bacon fat.  Drain any excess liquid.  Add:

• 1 Can (14½ oz.) Swanson Beef Broth
• ½ Can Swanson Chicken Broth (Add remainder only as needed)
• 1 Can (8oz) Hunts Tomato Sauce
•  1 Tbsp. Worcestershire Sauce

Bring to boil and add Packet #1:

•   1 Tbsp. onion powder
•  2 tsp. garlic powder
•  1 Tbsp. Mexene Chili Powder

Cover and simmer for 1 hour and add Packet #2:

•  3 Tbsp. Ancho chili powder
•  1 Tbsp. California chili powder
•  ¼ tsp. Jalapeno powder
•  2 tsp. ground cumin (toasted)
•  1 tsp. Mexican oregano
• 1 tsp. Marjoram
• ¼ tsp. black pepper
• ¼ tsp. white pepper
• 2 Tbsp. paprika
• 1 tsp. chicken bullion crystals
• 1 packet Sazon Goya

Continue cooking with lid on for 30 minutes. Add Packet #3:

• 1 Tbsp. cumin
• 1 tsp. garlic powder
• 1 tsp. onion powder
• 1 Tbsp. Mexene Chili Powder
• ¼ tsp. brown sugar

Continue cooking with lid on for 15 minutes.  Add:

• 1 Tbsp. arrowroot mixed with ->
• Juice from one lime
• 1 Tbsp. white vinegar

Leave covered and simmer for an additional 15 minutes, or until meat is tender.  Adjust seasoning and liquid.

Serve with standard toppings.

Popeye’s Red Beans and Rice – The Real Deal

This is my version of Popeye’s® Red Beans and Rice.  I think I’ve tried every “copy cat” version of this recipe that exists on the Internet and I’ve never found one that really hit the mark when it came to flavor, texture and color. That’s not to say that many of them didn’t taste good, because they did.  They just didn’t taste like the ones I get at Popeye’s®.  I should point out that my goal was to develop a copy-cat recipe, as close to the original as possible.  I realize that this is not a traditional New Orleans recipe and is absent many traditional ingredients.

I have a science background, so for me it seemed natural to start with some research.  First, I went to Popeye’s® website and found the ingredient list for their red beans & rice.  The next step was to decipher and simplify the list, to figure out what was really in their recipe and what flavor profile each ingredient added to the dish.  The first thing I realized was that the names of many common food products were disguised within the list.  For example, one of the ingredients listed is refereed to as, dressing.  When you break down the ingredients that make up the dressing, you discover that it is simply margarine. In other words, what we call margarine, they call dressing.  Similarly, what they refer to simply as pork fat, is specifically smoked bacon fat.  When all was said and done, it turns out that the recipe is pretty simple, consisting of only 5 basic ingredients.  These are rice (long grain), dark red (kidney) beans, bacon fat, margarine, smoke flavor (liquid smoke) and season salt.  The season salt consists of, dried onion, dried garlic, paprika, dried parsley and msg. There is also a small amount of sugar, both white and brown.  Note that there is no meat, celery, bay leaf, green pepper, or any of the other traditional RB&R ingredients. 

The next step was to figure how much of each ingredient to use, what ingredients (if any) should be omitted and what unlisted ingredients might be necessary to arrive at the desired flavor profile. The last step was to figure out how to put it all together so that the dish would have the correct taste, texture and appearance.  For these final steps I relied on a combination of other “copy cat” recipes, my personal experience in the kitchen and a lot of trial and error.

I think the result is copy cat version of Popeye’s red beans and rice that is virtually identical to the original.  I encourage you to try it and let me know what you think. 

The Recipe 

3 (16 ounce) cans small dark red beans (Goya)

2 smoked ham hocks

1 cup water

½ teaspoon onion powder

½ teaspoon garlic powder

½ teaspoon brown sugar

1 teaspoon paprika

Pinch (1/8 teaspoon) cayenne pepper (or to taste)

½ teaspoon MSG (Accent)

½ teaspoon Kosher salt (more or less to taste - be careful here, you don't want to over salt)

¼ cup bacon fat (do not substitute)

1/3 cup diced onion

½ teaspoon or 1 capful liquid smoke (Wright's Natural Hickory Seasoning)

For the rice:

2 cups uncooked long grain rice

1 tablespoon butter

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1. Sauté diced onion in bacon fat until translucent.  Do not brown.
2. Add 2-cans beans, (including liquid), ham hocks and water.
3. Bring to boil and reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 1 hour until the meat loosens from the bone.
4. Remove the ham hock from the beans and set aside to cool.  Add all remaining ingredients, except the beans.
5. Using a food processor, blender, or immersion blender (my favorite), process the beans until they are nearly smooth.
6. Drain and rinse the remaining can of beans and add to the pot.
7. Continue to cook over low heat, uncovered, stirring often (you don’t want the beans to scorch) until the beans reach the desired consistency.  Remember that Popeye’s® RB&R are rather liquid, much like the consistency of a thick soup or chowder.

Make rice in the traditional manner, using the ingredients listed above.

If you’ve followed my directions carefully, you now have a pot of red beans and rice that I hope you agree, come as close to Popeye’s as any you’ve tasted.  At this point you have the option of removing any meat from the ham hocks, cutting it into a small dice and returning it to the pot.  Popeye’s recipe doesn’t include any meat, but doing so will add a layer of flavor and allow you to use the leftover meat.

A few notes:

Where it’s important to the final outcome, I‘ve listed specific brands, namely Goya Small Red Beans and Wright's Liquid Smoke. If you can’t find these brands, just make sure your beans are plain, unadulterated beans (no sauce) and the liquid smoke is natural and not artificial.  Artificial smoke flavor imparts a distinctly chemical taste and is unacceptable in this recipe, (or any recipe IMHO).

Don’t substitute onion salt for onion powder.  The same goes for garlic powder.  The products I use came from The Spice House (available on-line at, http://www.thespicehouse.com) and are referred to as granulated garlic and granulated onion.  In any case make sure whatever you use contains just onion and garlic; no salt, no sugar.

The ham hocks I used came from my local grocery store and were naturally smoked.  Don’t use ham hocks that are artificially flavored or smoked.  They will give an off, chemical taste that will ruin the dish.  If you can’t find naturally smoked hocks you’d be better to omit them.

The bacon fat came from standard, store bought hickory smoked bacon. Every time I fry bacon I save the fat, just like Mom used to do.   Avoid maple flavored, honey cured, etc.  You want just plain smoked bacon.  This is one of the main flavor components in the dish, so please, no substitutions.