I Am Going To Become The Smoker

Hello again.

I really want to make this Substack thing a little more consistent, so I’m going to stick to at least once a week, if not multiple times a week. My problem is I’ll usually come up with two or three ideas I love, want to get them out the door, and then I never want to do it again. So how about I don’t try and make each one good? Is that good? Does that work?

On Privilege and College

I wrote a big tweetstorm about this yesterday, and it’s been on my mind ever since how a certain sect of people really do not like the idea of college debt forgiveness.

Generally they fall into a few categories:

• I had to pay off my college debt, why should they not have to?
• What about people who chose not to go to college, shouldn’t they get a check?
• What about people going to college next year, or who just graduated?

All three of these are manifold layers of selfishness and pearl-clutching. It’s also a litmus test of internalized privilege and empathy. Do you recognize the elements of privilege and/or luck that played into your success? Even if you did work hard, do you not think that people should have access to education? Do you think that education is a right or a privilege? And if you don’t think it’s a right, why not?

And why do you think people should be sidled with $50,000 or more in debt for an education? I know the response here is “they chose to get that education and take on that debt,” which is a myopic view of the fact that even the simplest jobs these days require a college degree.

My least favourite argument is that we shouldn’t “reward” people for choosing “unproductive” degrees that aren’t immediately contributing to getting a job. Simple answer: education should not simply be for the acquisition of a job afterwards, and it is cancerous to society to make it that way. Furthermore, I bet every one of the assholes making this statement did a bunch of pre-requisite garbage that doesn’t equate to anything that they do in work.

Anyway.

COVID

People are stupid as hell and COVID is killing people. I have left the house five times since May and masked up, but apparently people don’t want to do that because of politics or whatever. It makes me really mad.

I’ve seen friends of mine unmasked eating outside, and please, if you are one of them, please stop. Please encourage your friends to stop. If you’re a person who goes to sports bars and watches football right now, please stop, watch it at home. Please stay home. Please do not go out unless you have to. I get it if you have to go out for work, you shouldn’t have to, but I get it.

Anyway, it is very sad.

Mr. Hungry’s Yum Yums - Ribs

As you know if you follow me on Twitter, I got a smoker - a Traeger Timberline 1300 if you’re curious. I’ve cooked a lot of meals on it, eaten far more than I should have too. I really enjoy it because it’s rewarding, hard to mess up and lets me create something that isn’t on the computer.

Yesterday I made kurobuta ribs from Snake River Farm. They’re currently out of stock, but keep an eye out and they’ll come back in. I use oakland dust rub. These come out perfect every time - juicy, not too fatty, saucy but not too saucy, and they feed a small army without much scaling up. Kurobuta ribs have beautiful marbling and are insanely tender. Regular ribs are great too but these are the wagyu of pork. Love it.

Recipe is simple:

Ingredients

• 2 racks of pork spare ribs (works on baby backs too)
• Rib rub of your choice
• Foil - get good strong reynolds wrap - you want the longer/wider foil
• BBQ sauce of your choice
• Honey (maybe a cup)
• brown sugar (a cup)
• Apple juice

1. Set your smoker to 225.
2. Rub the ribs with rib rub
3. Put the ribs in the smoker when it’s reached temperature for 3 hours, spritzing with apple juice in a little spray bottle (or a brush is fine) once every hour. You can leave the ribs in there for a little bit as you do the next part if you’re lazy like me but no longer than 10 minutes.
4. Lay out two layers of foil per rack of ribs.
5. Put a layer of BBQ sauce, honey and brown sugar, and then lay the rack of ribs down on top of it. Cover the top of the ribs with another layer.
6. Crimp the edges of the first layer of foil, then pour some of the apple juice into the mix. Wrap it tight with the first layer, then the second layer on top.
7. Put the ribs back in the smoker for another 2 hours.
8. Pull the ribs out, leave them wrapped, then bump the temperature up to 500.
9. Unwrap the ribs, throw them back in there at the high heat for maybe 5-10 minutes or until the sauce has cooked in.
10. Cut the ribs and eat the ribs.

Thank you for reading!

I will try and do this more regularly. It may not be very good, but it’s here.