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Speaker 1
Your resume is good in numbers given to give more people. You're listening to the Barbecue Nerds podcast, where smoked meat science and flavor is our favorite experiment. Hey, barbecue lovers, I'm David, your resident pitmaster and science geek, along with my co-host Frank. We're diving deep into the world of barbecue where tradition meets innovation. Now let's get to today's episode.

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Speaker 1
What about,

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Speaker 1
I know it sounds kind of odd, but what about taking pork and putting a middle eastern twist on it? Say, would like

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Speaker 1
so many like the sounds guys or rubs or like, vinegar sauces. Something that gives an earthy, crusty kick with smoky pork. And I know that, you know, when we're thinking Middle Eastern, suddenly we start to think of like, whole foods, things that have to be non pork.

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Speaker 1
But this is the there's so many great seasonings that come out of the Middle East that utilized properly. The flavors are just outstanding.

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Speaker 1
You think about your kabobs, for example, your chicken kabobs, your beef kabobs, all of that. That's a barbecue item, is it not? You know, you put it over a charcoal grill and flame. It's a grill.

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Speaker 1
What are the global ovens that are used?

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Speaker 2
Here's your

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Speaker 2
Middle Eastern flavor profile explained to me. A middle eastern profile. Because I've. I've not really been around that much.

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Speaker 1
So there's a lot of. So

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Speaker 1
here's where we're like you differentiate. So when people think Middle East and I don't know why this happens all the time, they start to think Greek food. They start to think of that like that yogurt, cucumber sauce. But when when we're really looking at Middle Eastern, it comes down to a lot of these different dry seasonings that are that you then end oil to or a wine to to make it into a paste.

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Speaker 1
So you could do your dry rub on the outside if you chose to. But it's better when it's made into a paste. And then that paste similar to like what you did with the chicken or the turkey. Wild back where you you took the AlphaGo and chimichurri rub and you put it on the skin. You could do just the same with a lot of you Middle Eastern rubs, were you coating the outside of the chicken or you're infusing it on that lamb shoulder?

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Speaker 1
Just like Hojo is, was mentioning here that he does a middle eastern flavor profile on whole lamb shoulder, so you can take the whole shoulder or the whole shoulder clod and rub that down with olive oil,

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Speaker 1
a little lemon juice, and then put your dry rub on to it so it becomes a little more pasty. Not to mention you also have the moisture that's going to be pulled out of the lamb.

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Speaker 1
That's all that fat and that grease and stripping down it makes for an excellent flavor profile. It tends to be a bit smoky. There are some other Middle Eastern ingredients that I use that have,

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Speaker 1
I'm going to say more of like a of a sweeter smell.

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Speaker 1
You might be familiar with this on rice pilaf. They tend to use some of these Middle Eastern spices.

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Speaker 1
And Trump ambassadors saying that Indian food smells amazing. That gets us into our masalas curries again, that gets us into a vindaloo, that gets us into, like, the butter chicken, things like that.

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Speaker 1
In fact, you'll find that for people who don't want to use tallow when, when they're cooking, they will go over to ghee, which is a clarified butter, rather than the animal fats that you'll get from your Lord's and from your Talos.

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Speaker 1
Wow. And here's chop and master going in with physically sourced the best way that he spelled it. And that tizzy sauce is that Greek yogurt that's combined with some other seasonings.

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Speaker 1
And most people see it as that cucumber sauce that's on the side for their the Greek salad at the €9. There, there. Yes. That's correct. Renee for the gyros lobster platter.

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Speaker 1
And how much garbage she created. Baba goodness. You take an eggplant and you roast it. So let's just, let's go back to just what, you know, standard charcoal barbecue instead of one of our big boy smokers that I have over my shoulder here. So you take that that eggplant and you roast it with fire and it gets very mushy, gets a smoky flavor profile to it, and then you can take it and put it into your immersion blender.

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Speaker 1
Or if you're really good, you chop it up finely and you just keep mashing it till again, it's like a paste.

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Speaker 1
I don't remember all the seasoning of how Joe wants to jump in and let us know what are the seasonings in Baba Ganoush to really help right about now. But that's what it is.

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Speaker 1
And how this

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Speaker 1
is your is your chickpeas, chickpeas and tuna.

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Speaker 1
You take the chickpeas and,

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Speaker 1
those get mashed up, adding some tahini, a little olive oil, some garlic. Mix that around. And you doing.

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Speaker 2
That mixing.

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Speaker 1
Up now, not tahini. You're thinking tahini which is a spice that has that,

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Speaker 1
that lime, lime, lemon flavor. No this is tahini which is a, which is,

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Speaker 1
another type of pasty type of substance that's added in order to make your, your hummus.

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Speaker 1
There's.

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Speaker 2
Nothing on the rim of the.

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Speaker 1
Homemade hummus.

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Speaker 2
You don't you don't put it on the rim of,

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Speaker 2
margarita glass.

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Speaker 1
I just you're talking about

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Speaker 1
I, I maybe in, in some of the countries closer to, to the Middle East. Maybe they do. You know, you never know. You know, fusion. You know, if you've ever watched the Adam Sandler movie, don't mess with your hand. You put hummus on everything. Yeah.

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Speaker 2
Oh my goodness.

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Speaker 2
Yeah.

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Speaker 1
So have saying that we're we're saying tahini wrong. It's Tajin. It's a Tajin.

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Speaker 2
Oh wait that's that feels better

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Speaker 2
to gin.

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Speaker 1
It's. Yeah. Well yeah it goes with your chicken fajitas and,

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Speaker 1
your your Casey Delilah's.

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Speaker 2
Of Delilah's.

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Speaker 1
And or you put it right there in your bloody Mary.

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Speaker 1
That one I could go for. There's not I that definitely deserves to be on the rim of a Bloody Mary.

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Speaker 2
Which one?

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Speaker 1
Tajin.

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Speaker 2
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought you were saying the other stuff. The other. What is the other stuff, homies?

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Speaker 1
Oh, you're talking about the tahini.

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Speaker 2
Tahini.

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Speaker 1
Tahini. Yeah. That's. That would be a very interesting type of margarita. I, you'd have a ring around your face of, of hummus.

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Speaker 1
Some. Instead of using a napkin, someone just come up with a pita and just like, you know, wipe it off. Wipe it off. It's it. Oh, goodness. Here it is. Hojo has has saved the day. Jumped in.

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Speaker 1
Here we go. So baba ganoush is eggplant, tahini paste, garlic, lemon juice and olive oil. Simple stuff. Great stuff coming out of,

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Speaker 1
the Middle East. He's right.

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Speaker 1
I love all those little dips and spreads. You know, being in Brooklyn with, like, my Israeli friends over there. And the Russians let you see all the Middle Eastern and Eastern European people.

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Speaker 1
They loved all these different dips.

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Speaker 1
Before we got involved with all the wines and all the vodkas that would go along with it. They weren't big beer drinkers, they were big vodka and wine drinkers.

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Speaker 2
Interesting.

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Speaker 1
Yeah. So maybe you're right. Maybe,

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Speaker 1
maybe there's. You're on to something here that we have martinis with a tahini rum.

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Speaker 1
Or a piece of eggplant that's on the toothpick. That's that's that's in there.

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Speaker 1
Instead of a dirty water with olive juice, it's a dirty martini with hummus, you get a little crazy.

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Speaker 2
You are getting crazy.

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Speaker 1
Oh, quite the fusion.

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Speaker 2
That was Joey Zavala.

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Speaker 2
What are we saying here, Joe?

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Speaker 1
Joe just dropped that up there. Well, I'm thinking I think you're dumb.

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Speaker 2
Cheesy. Hello, Pino. Harmony. Boy, that does sound good.

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Speaker 2
It's quite a guy right there. The Zavala.

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Speaker 2
It's awesome.

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Speaker 2
Too much fusion.

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Speaker 2
Trumpet says at some point you got to be careful with too much fusion. Could get the.

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Speaker 2
Yeah, it could turn out badly for you if you're listening on the podcast.

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Speaker 2
Yeah. Mess up the weekend.

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Speaker 1
It it's,

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Speaker 1
it's a quick weight loss remedy.

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Speaker 2
I guess so. Oh my goodness. Yeah. I don't know that I could deal with all them foreign things. You know, I've

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Speaker 2
but I do I do really enjoy anything you put on a tortilla taco wise. That's barbecue. I've had some really great stuff.

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Speaker 2
I do enjoy the Korean side of stuff sometimes. This depends on what it is.

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Speaker 2
As far as, like,

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Speaker 2
other kinds of fusion is when we start blending traditional regional barbecue

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Speaker 2
and you start combining those things, like if you take a pastrami, I don't know if you ever did this or not. This is one of my favorite things.

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Speaker 2
There was a guy up here in Saint Louis that his name's Ben Welch.

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Speaker 2
He made some of the best freakin pastrami I ever had in my life. He also had a homemade white sauce he made, and he put that horseradish white sauce on that pastrami. Son, let me tell you, it was the deal.

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Speaker 2
It was really, really, really good. He's,

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Speaker 2
He's got a different store now. He's not doing that no more.

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Speaker 2
But,

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Speaker 2
but that that is a real. That's fusion. You're taking some horseradish stuff and putting it with some pastrami, Alabama white sauce, and you're putting it on the pastrami. Which pastrami is what? Where's that from?

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Speaker 1
Pastrami is in your old world.

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Speaker 1
Yeah, that's old world, Eastern European like you have. You take a brisket and you can bring it, and that becomes your corned beef. Or you you,

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Speaker 1
take the same piece of meat after it's brined, extract a good amount of that, that salt brine and then pepper down the outside. The only difference is with your pastrami excuse you with your corned beef.

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Speaker 1
It's going to be smoked and then steamed. Whereas your your pastrami is going to be smoked. And then usually it's wrapped in

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Speaker 1
in some towels and then cooked for a while that way. So it retains all its moisture. And you make sure you have a really good,

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Speaker 1
black pepper book on the outside.

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Speaker 2
Absolutely. Yes. That's that's what he had. He had that.

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Speaker 1
Yeah. Yep.

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Speaker 1
Oh, yeah. You know, looks like,

00:10:05:12 - 00:10:07:14
Speaker 1
we've got the Celsius jumping in it again.

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Speaker 1
Heard you get a big.

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Speaker 2
Boy that would.

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Speaker 2
I didn't get off replying to it. I don't know what he's talking about.

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Speaker 1
Oh, we're getting them.

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Speaker 1
I think that was part of the deal.

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Speaker 1
That we have to solve the Middle East crisis.

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Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, but,

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Speaker 2
the horseradish stuff. So how hot do you like your horseradish? Do you want it to clear your nostrils the first bite? Like, when you bite in, you're like, oh, man, that's a lot.

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Speaker 1
I love.

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Speaker 2
All.

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Speaker 1
I love all radishes. I eat them like you're eating a carrot or you're eating, say, for like, even like the standard red radish that we find everywhere. I just pop them right in and eat them. So if it's horseradish now, I'm gonna eat it like a carrot. I just bite right into it. I love the the texture. I love the consistency, and I love the spice, the hotter the better.

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Speaker 1
I love that.

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Speaker 2
I'm not quite there, but I do like a really good hot horseradish, like prepared horseradish kind of deal. I'm not the guy that's going to bite into the root or whatever. I'm not that guy.

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Speaker 2
It sounds like you are.

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Speaker 1
It's medicinal. Properties are great for detoxifying in the liver, great for the.

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Speaker 2
Liver. Everything wants out. You bite into that thing. Everything wants out, you know.

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Speaker 1
That's it. It's a good flush.

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Speaker 2
But,

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Speaker 2
yeah, a good creamy horseradish, though. I really do enjoy on beef. Yeah. For sure.

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Speaker 2
Something that's not going to just burn my eye sockets.

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Speaker 1
So let's say you're making a, you know, prime rib and people tend to put horseradish. It's,

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Speaker 1
it's interesting, but they do. They put horseradish on the outside of their prime rib before they put on all of their, their other seasonings. In fact, here's Trump I'm imagining right here that he uses it as a binder. So I'm curious, like when you're doing that and you're talking about making it creamy, are you taking that horseradish?

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Speaker 1
It's ground up in a jar and then adding your own mayonnaise or other concoction to it, or do you buy it as or already made.

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Speaker 2
Already made.

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Speaker 1
For him?

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Speaker 2
Okay, typically, but I will say that homemade is always better. No matter what. I just never made it personally.

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Speaker 1
Sybil.

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Speaker 2
My friends in Saint James that symbols. If you ever make it to Saint James, Missouri, you go to check out Sybil's restaurant down there. Five stars, white table, white napkin race, pinkies, the whole bit.

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Speaker 2
They do make their own homemade, you know, creamy horseradish in there. That is the deal.

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Speaker 2
Can't you can't have beef without it.

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Speaker 2
Like it's a rule in there. But but yeah, I do enjoy a,

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Speaker 2
prepared horseradish. Straight. Which I think prepared is just most is what it is. I don't know that they do anything else to it. I think it's just, like, cleaned up, smashed down, and then,

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Speaker 2
then you would take that and blended in with whatever goes in the creamy horseradish.

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Speaker 2
I don't know this. I've never made it, never read the ingredients on the bottle. So correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears to me that it is like something like sour cream. Maybe,

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Speaker 2
Or mayo, I don't know, you tell me. I've never read the ingredients, but.

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Speaker 1
I think creamy.

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Speaker 2
Yeah, it's not as hot and it is amazing.

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Speaker 1
Yeah. I don't, I don't think that they're using sour cream. That's to me it sounds more like a baked potato, whereas. Yeah, like mayonnaise. You know, you think a Duke's mayonnaise has got twang? It's a great binder on the outside of chicken, I'm sure. Be a great binder combined with horseradish to put on the outside of of other types of proteins, other types of beef proteins, let's say,

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Speaker 1
and of course, you know, if you're, you're having if you go to a restaurant, you get a slice of prime rib, always on the side is,

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Speaker 1
a little bit of horseradish that they provide.

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Speaker 1
And I use,

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Speaker 1
you know, that's pretty standard.

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Speaker 2
You know.

00:13:56:02 - 00:14:20:14
Speaker 1
That's a wrap for today's episode of the Barbecue Nerds podcast, where smoked meats, science, and flavor always comes first. This episode is brought to you by Smoke Slinger, the craftsman behind some of the best barbecue pits and offset smokers in the game. Whether you're a backyard warrior or a pro, Pitmaster smoke slinger builds custom pits designed to help you cook your best barbecue ever.

00:14:20:16 - 00:14:40:09
Speaker 1
Visit Smoke slinger.com to see their lineup and bring competition quality smoke to your own backyard. A big shout out to smoke slinger fueling our passion and keeping the smoke rolling strong. And as always, keep those pits hot, the smoke rolling and stay nerdy about barbecue.