Welcome to 18th century cooking I'm your host Jon Townsend I have a special guest and friend
here at the homestead today Michael Dragoo he's going to be cooking what
are we cooking we're going to barbecue a shoat that is going to be great thanks for
joining us as we savor the flavors and the aromas of the 18th century.
Michael I am not familiar with this particular recipe what is a shoat oh I shoat in some of the
southern states and still called to this day is a young hog
and um this recipe calls for a front quarter of the hog we're just gonna do a pork loin
we're gonna use a pork loin just to make it something that everybody can do so we're doing a
a barbecue what's the time period this recipe is from uh it's Mary Randolph's 1824.
But by this time you know we've we've heard for 200 years people use the word barbecue
but not really give us a recipe they just they just describe what they've seen
this is a very sophisticated recipe we're going to insert a meat concoction into
the loin every so inches and then we're going to bake it. Very good can you read to us the original
recipe? Take a four quarter make several incisions between the ribs and stuff it with rich force meat
put it in a pan with a pint of water two cloves of garlic pepper salt two gills of red wine
and two of mushroom ketchup bake it thicken the gravy with butter and brown flour it must be
jointed and the ribs cut across before it's cooked or it cannot be carved well lay it in a dish with
the ribs uppermost if it be not sufficiently brown add a little burnt sugar to the gravy
garnish with meatballs this is an interesting recipe but it's not super easy for us to interpret
in a modern way so how do we get started on this one. Well I think you've already done a
you've produced a video on forced meat right of forced meat forcing in this time period
meant to take the meat and have an end result looking different than it originally started
so we we call them meatballs today forced meat balls is what they called it then
and a rich force meat could be anything it could be veal pork beef any combination of those things
i generally don't see fowl in those and in this case i had some sausage in the fridge I had some
beef I minced up carrot celery onion mushrooms mushroom ketchup a little butter bacon grease
and um that's pretty much what's in this and some red wine that's almost so ground meat maybe even
pulverized and spiced right so it's ready ready to cook it's a heavily spiced almost it's basically
what this is going to do is infuse its flavors into the pork loin and because there's so much
animal fat and we've got a nice um a nice sauce that we're gonna continue to baste it with it's
gonna turn out quite nice okay another thing they mention is brown flour they use that in the gravy
you can do that at home just by taking regular uh white flour putting it in a pan having it on
a low heat and just moving that flour around so it doesn't burn the darker it gets the more nutty and
rich the flavor and they're using that in in their browning sauce and they're gravy so all righty
we're going to make the marinade first and it's pretty simple we've got a couple of cups of water
and we've got a cup of wine now we're using some garlic
and some salt and pepper
so all that's left to do is just stir it a little bit to incorporate those ingredients get our salt
broken down oh I'm starting to smell it already yeah yeah you know already smell that the wine and
the garlic that's going to heat up and just that mixes with the pork fats it's a wonderful thing
so I think we're ready to start our pork all we're going to do is insize
I do it 90 degrees to each other three times across and then just go all the way down right
and then once you've done that I'm going to insert the force meat into the pork.
So we've finished uh inserting the uh the force meat into the pork and I've put it into the into
the basting sauce now and I'm just gonna lightly cover it. This is really interesting to watch
this with force meat a lot of times you'll see this same thing being done as larding where if
we have a real lean piece of meat and we want to put we want to you know get those fats in there
so we would cut slots like that and and put bacon in those slots to infuse that bacon fat in there
the flavor and make it a lot more tender this is doing the same thing. There's still time.
Yeah I think we have some bacon in there so all that's left to do is to get this on the coals
put a cover over it and check it and rebaste every 20 minutes um your pork loin if you were at home
using your oven um they recommend 20 to 25 minutes per pound this is approximately three pounds we're
gonna let this go an hour and see what happens you're striving for an internal temperature of 145
just to make sure it's safe so that's what's next yeah and on our campfire we're looking
for coals we don't want it to get too hot no no no no no no in the oven you've got the heat all
the way around it it's nice but in this we just gotta keep moving it around and checking so.
Here we have it a barbecue from 1824 and it's not exactly what we would consider a
barbecue as you know a barbecue today nope we're gonna find out what this is like yep
i'm ready okay going in here going in now he just slathered this thing in like gravy yeah it can't
pork by itself with a lot of fat added isn't good enough we've gotta add the
gravy and and you could see those those strips of the forced meat inside of that
oh that's an intense little punch you want you want the stuff with the force meat and I
really want to try this with the bacon in there too I mean that's just me right no
but super good yup you know sometimes pork cooked this rapidly can be a little tough this is not
tough that that forced meat or whatever you know if you put bacon in there it's really going to
help keep this tender yeah and the flavors are really wonderful you you used a um a good gravy
right here yeah you had a um I think you had a uh a video on making a good gravy um once again it's
like the force meat you kind of use what you have and it's a little over the top intense flavor-wise
because it's normally perking up a boring dish or even a cullis so Ryan did a cullis recipe
or a whole episode on cullises that would be another type of sauce that you would put on this
this one turned out really good it's cooked all the way through how long does this normally take
over the fire it was a little over an hour at home it's um 20 to 25 minutes a pound this is
a three pounder so it would take an hour what I do at home if it's in the oven is I take the lid off
the um roasting pan and let it go for another 10 or so minutes just to brown the top right
so and this looked looked beautiful well as tasting wonderful well when we were done here
we took it over to the earthen oven and let it brown been doing the same thing the same effect
it's really good it's really good. What a wonderful recipe it is from Michael's new
cookbook that he's working on out very soon you'll be able to find it on our website tell us a little
bit about the cookbook. Oh sure and digging up your ancestry is quite in vogue these days
I've coupled that with what foods they could have consumed no matter where they're from and and you
go back as far as you can with your ancestors and you find the foods that they could have consumed
the recipes get your family together make the recipes and pay honor to those relatives. Right
and you've concentrated on 18th century early 19th century. My my lineage is France to England to um
the colonies and North American colonies and so it's the late 1600s to very early 1800s yeah I'm
I'm really excited about how that that cookbook is gonna turn out we've been watching that process
helping Michael out with it lots of pictures lots of beautiful uh pictures and some amazing recipes
so that's gonna be great I'm excited about that one thank you can't wait to see it thank
you Michael for bringing this wonderful tasting excellent recipe thank you for coming along today
thanks for watching as we savor the flavors and the aromas of the 18th century.