Spices and the Inflammation Factor

Spicy Fish and Baked Potato

I decided this week when I went on my occasional detox for 2 weeks and 2 days to not only drop all wine but to completely modify my diet to see if I could reduce my aches and pains. I know I like what I eat and I have settled on a fairly healthy diet of whole grains, potatoes with the skins on, vegetables, fruits and fish and chicken. I also like spicy food. There is a cute tool over at Nutrition Data, which allows you to track, carbs protein, calories and the total Inflammation Factor for the days consumption.

Pretty much like most people, I eat what’s available and what I crave. I found my consumption of fruits and vegetables is fairly constant so my carbohydrate loading is 150 to 230 grams and I am not likely to change until next winter when fruit is less abundant. I intentionally eat a high protein diet as it is necessary to feed by brain and body for my manic lifestyle so that is not gonna change. The range is 73 to 127 because I like vegan foods once in awhile and that might actually be a little low. Hence, the only number I can focus on is the Inflammation Factor and I am doing pretty good at maximizing but prior to my detox, I was not consistent as I varied from about -300 which is bad to plus 2000.

The concept is that by avoiding foods that rise your Inflammation Factor level, your joints and body will ache less. This diet has not been well received because meats, dairy, fruits vegetables, whole grains and beans vary all over the place, sometimes in a counter intuitive fashion. The huge variation in my diet came not from what I ate but from the spices I used and this I found comforting.

In my heart I know that poor people will eat whatever is available on the prior list without being cave men or vegans and the biggest difference is that people in the poorer nations will use more spices. I tend too look at the foods we chose to eat  as those that heal us, those that are habits and those that are available. I believe that the use of spices and cooking evolved at about the same time and that spices were included in meals to solve some problem know by the Village Shaman.

I do suffer back pains and have suffered chronic pain in the past and the naturally chosen spices on my list seem to top the scale for positive Inflammation Factor and are allegedly helping me. So I did a search of Top Ten Spices for many nutritionists  and compiled a list of the 30 because there was little consensus in the area. After researching those spices and searching for the highest anti-inflammatory properties The following ones were the only ones that could counteract a day of bad eating with enough positive value to turn the whole day positive while using reasonable quantities.

Spice                             Quantity                          Inflammation Factor.

Fresh Ground Ginger    1 Tablespoon                             903
Hot Pepper                       1/2 tsp                                 740
Turmeric                       1 Teaspoon                              508
Crushed Garlic             1 Tablespoon                             500
Onion                             1 medium                               257

It amazed me that their was only one person, Dr. Jeremy Webster, had the most agreement with all the other experts and also got all five spices and herbs with the greatest anti-inflammatory properties correct. He had the best records of anyone for compiling a Top Ten List as most agreed with him in general more than they agreed with each other. Unfortunately, I already had these five items on my list of good stuff so got nothing else for my efforts except that Cinnamon with is almost neutral on the negative side for IF factor made everybody’s top ten list except mine. I rarely use it but I guess I’ll start.

Duck Rack and Fish placed on Grill with Baked Potatoes

The picture above is the setup for me grilling spicy fish on my duck rack because I forgot to show it last time and it is a easy way to grill fish fillets. The anti-inflammatory properties of the two Grilled Spicy Tilapia fillets is an incredible 1944 because I eat all the spices and always have. The first time I tried it because my daughter told me about a similar meal with fewer spices and I just liked the idea after adding a few more of my favorite spices.

I never knew that tasting good could be good for me, but I’m learning.

Grilled Spicy Fish and Grilled Bok Choy

Grilled Spicy Fish and Bok Choy

Seems my daughter called a few weeks ago with a recipe for Tandoori Salmon which she got from a magazine called Cooking Light which promised a whole bunch of recipes involving 5 ingredients and 15 minutes. This is one of those slick magazines by the checkout counter in grocery stores published by the people at Coastal Living and Southern Living. The spice list was basic involving Ginger, Turmeric and Cumin.

I laughed and told my daughter I was starting to like and become a fairly decent Indian cook and was sure I had never cooked Tandoori because I didn’t have all the spices and this was so basic that it probably bore no resemblance to real Tandoori. She said she was OK with that because there were limits to what her daughters would eat. I checked Tandoori and I was correct, I didn’t have the spices on hand to cook that style but I could bring this basic recipe up a notch with spices traditionally used in Tandoori cooking. As a matter of fact, these spices are fairly traditional in all Asian Cooking. I used the rub with tilapia which is a fairly bland fish but could see it working with much stronger fishes like tuna.

My Spicy Fish Rub

Ingredients

1 oz ginger grated about 2 Tablespoons
1 T crushed garlic
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp garam masala
2 T Lemon Juice

Method:

1. The Ginger was grated and the spices and lemon juice mixed in a bowl.

Coated Bottom of Fish and Spice Mix

2. The spice mix was coated on one side of the fish.

Fish on Duck Rack with Both Sides Coated

3. The fish was placed on a duck rack for Grilling with the spicy side down. I use the duck rack because I don’t have to flip the fish or move it until it is over a platter. This prevents fish in the coals.

4. The spice mix was coated on the other side.

The Grill is set up for Bok Choy (top) and the Fish (bottom)

5. The grill is set up with areas to grill the Bok Choy and grill the fish.

Grilled Bok Choy

Grilling Bok Choy is simple and another nice and easy way to eat it. The Bok Choy is cut in half in the long direction, placed in a bowl and drizzled and tossed with Olive Oil.

The fish is placed on the grill and cooked for about 10 minutes. The Bok Choy is tossed on the vegetable area (top of grill picture) and cooked covered. Every couple of minutes toss it like stir frying. When done remove from grill and serve.

Grilled Pesto Stuffed Chicken Thighs

In St. Croix, the growing season is in the winter. It is cool for growing and there is usually ample rain. Not everything grows everywhere with all of the different soils and rain fall ranges on the islands. Still, you can get bumper crops of some vegetables. I have an abundance of Arugula, Bok Choy and Collard Greens. Like most gardeners, I have been giving excesses away, cooking new recipes for friends and just trying my best not to let anything go to waste.

On a calorie per calorie basis, arugula is not quite as healthy as spinach or even bok choy. However, it is a spicy green that adds a lot of flavor to a salad and is still fairly healthy for you with lots of vitamins and minerals. The biggest reason I cook it other than I like the taste, is with my combination of soil, water and sun it is growing like a weed in my yard. I was therefor fortunate to find a recipe for a small batch of arugula (also called rocket) pesto at Frugal Feeding

I have made and cooked with pesto before so I didn’t need a recipe. What I found useful was the suggestion to use arugula instead of basil and one of his commenters suggested almonds instead of pine nuts. Since arugula is abundant and I like almonds better than pine nuts, I jumped at the idea.

Arugula (Rocket) Pesto

Ingredients:

2 cups fresh arugula leaves, packed
1/2 cup Parmesan or Romano cheese
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
2.6 ounce package of shredded almonds
1 T minced garlic (3 cloves)
1 T lemon juice
¼ tsp ground black pepper to taste
salt as desired

Method:

1. Put everything except the oil and cheese into the blender or food processor and pulse it a few times.
2. Slowly add the olive oil a little at a time while contuing to pulse the blender. When stopped, scrape down the walls and force the arugula into the blend.
3. When uniform, add the grated cheese and pulse again until blended.
4. Taste and add salt as needed.

This batch was quite good and I gave some to a friend who gave me some pine nuts that she had intended to use to make her own pesto. Since I also have an abundance of Basil, I will probably make a batch of that in the near future to see if I have a strong preference either way.

Grilled Stuffed Chicken Thighs

When I grill, I usually prepare a baked sweet or Irish potato so I don’t have a mess to clean in the kitchen. The chicken is prepared and in this case, I skinned, deboned and defatted the meat. Since I didn’t add any salt to the pesto I washed the chicken in lime an sprinkled it with Adobo which is a Puerto Rican Seasoned Salt. Sometimes when you stuff the thighs, they will cooked closed and sometimes they open up. They are all good and if I really cared, I would hold them in place with a toothpick.

You Have To Be Sick To Eat Spam!

Spam and Sweet Potato

I never can remember whether I am supposed to feed a fever and starve a cold or the opposite. As I write this, I did my little fact checking thing and was happy to find it’s the opposite, because I tend to eat when I get hungry and even though I have a miserable cold, I was hungry last night. Now the question arises as to what to eat and frankly this miserable cold has broken my desire to be creative in my kitchen.

Before the cold hit I had planned a few meals that I wanted to do but they all took some planning and focus which seemed to be lacking right now because of my cold. All of the ingredients on hand were for meals that should have been started much earlier in the day with a little planning and foresight. I had a sweet potato but no charcoal to cook out and nothing as the main dish until I remembered my Hurricane Supplies which are canned meats held for use during a disaster when food supplies are rapidly depleted because of damage to the infrastructure.

For no particular reason, I chose a can of spam and cut off two slices and froze the rest. I am not particularly a fan of Spam, but in an emergency, I will eat whatever was at hand and I am not sure why my sick body was craving spam. I am sure it wasn’t because my four ounce portion only had 360 calories with 83 percent of those calories coming from the fat content. Unbelievably, the four ounce portion had two thirds of my salt need for the day and one quarter of my cholesterol need if there is such a thing.

Well, I set about cooking it in the healthiest way I could think of which was putting it on a duck rack and cooking out the fat at 350 Fahrenheit while baking the potato. Of course, after rendering out the fat, the remaining protein was light as a feather and sort of tasteless, so I put some barbecue sauce on and it tasted jut like a limp potato chip with barbecue sauce. Oh well it was food and it filled me up.

Thought for the day:

The concept of “Healthy Spam” has to be the supreme example of an oxymoron.

Barbecue – We Don’t Care How You Do It Up North

We Don't Care How You Do It Up North!

Technically speaking Barbecue refers to the method used in the cooking of the meat and has nothing to do with the rub or the sauce. Of course the method was developed in the Caribbean and comes from the Taino word baracoa which refers to the “sacred fire pit”. The Indians taught the Spanish and English how to do it and the art was carried back to the old world. The Carib Indians were so sophisticated in cooking that they cultivated hot peppers to spice up their foods 6000 years ago when Europeans were still hunter gatherers and not farming at all.

The barbecue process has spread all over the world, but the Caribbean people have a 6000 year head start so you have to accept that they have refined the art form. Now as funny as this may seem there is no fixed set of equipment and I have seen people barbecue conch in their own shell, drop live crabs into a hot bed of coals and remove them with a stick and use old stainless steel racks from refrigerators for cooking grills at beach camping.

Professionally the barbecue pit is a block structure or a movable galvanized enclosure. In a professional setup, the shaft is turned with a washing machine motor geared down to less then 10 revolutions per minute. The common factor except for the crabs is the indirect heat and the absence of flair-ups from fat dripping in the fire and burning the meat above it. But then crabs in the shell don’t have much fat to drip.

If you want to cook like a West Indian you must be frugal and use as little Charcoal as possible, all banked to one side of the barbecue pit or grill. Some cooks can cook a whole pig on a stick for 4 hours until done using only ½ bag of charcoal.

Banking the Charcoal

The frugality continues in the selection of equipment. In my case I am using an old Weber grill that would have been thrown out in New Jersey years ago. However, it seems that every time I go to a store to buy the replacement parts, they are still out, the order has not arrived or they store is so crowded that I would have to invest a day of my time to buy a new grill. I am very proud of the handle piece made from long bolts and nuts, fender washers, a piece of wood and a couple of short pieces of copper tubing. It actually works better than the original as it is far enough away from the lid not to burn your hand.

Fire Up the Well Seasoned Grill

However to insure that the meat does not fall into the fire, I need to add another old grill on top and a stone to balance the grill because of the missing rack holder on the opposite side which has rotted away.

Additional Grill and Balancing Stone

Of course the chicken has been washed with Lime Juice and seasoned with Goya Adobo and the chicken is located on the grill on the opposite side of the fire and the potato in a hotter area of the grill.

Strategically Placed Chicken and Potato

At this point the grill was covered and I went to the Palms resort for a couple of glasses of wine and did nothing but enjoy myself for an hour.

Cover and Walk Away

Take note that when I returned, everything was perfectly cooked and if you compare the cooked and uncooked pictures, you will note that nothing has been moved.

One Hour Later - Note, Nothing Has Been Moved

The second best part about barbecuing in my mind other than the fantastic food is the ease of cleaning up. In this case, I skipped the barbecue sauce and just added hot sauce at the table.

Dinner is Served

In general, Islanders don’t really care how things are done up north which is to say everything north of Cuba as they had hundreds and even thousands of years of isolation to figure out how to handle their own unique situations in life. And when it comes to barbecue, I tend to agree.

Puerto Rican or Caribbean Barbecued Chicken

Grilled Chicken with Honey Mustard Sauce and Grilled Potato

In cooking any barbecue meats, there are three elements which make it special,

1. Preparation of the meat
2. The Cooking Process
3. The Barbecue Sauce

In St. Croix, regardless if from Hispanic Heritage or not the focus is on the first two steps and only rarely will anybody get totally competitive about the Barbecue Sauce because many don’t use it except as a dip on the side. Don’t get me wrong, Barbecued Chicken is extremely popular but the preparation of the meat and the slow cooking over a banked fire produce a chicken that has a very crisp skin and is extremely moist. Because everyone loves the crisp skin, we sprinkle hot sauce on it and eat it as is. Once we get to the meat, we either put more pepper sauce on it or dip it in a small 2 ounce cup of barbecue sauce for extra favoring on the very tender and moist chicken.

While my wife loved the locally prepared chicken she also loved her barbecue sauce and had a tendency to favor a honey, mustard, vinegar blend whereas I admit to having gone native. I simply love the slow cooking of the crisp skin and the juicy meat with a generous sprinkle of Caribbean Hot sauce, the hottest in the world.

Preparation of the meat is a simple process. The secrete ingredient is the soak in Lime Juice (or Lemon if necessary). This trick also works to make crispy skin on a pork roast but the topic today is Chicken and a 10-30 minute wash or soak is sufficient.

Wash the Chicken with Lime

Real purists would insist on making their own spice blends but look out salt is cheap so many blends contain too much. Other spices have variable flavor depending on freshness so should be prepared by taste and not by quantity. However, the most commonly used seasoned salt is Goya Adobo a Puerto Rican style seasoned salt made with garlic, oregano, black pepper and turmeric. Of course depending on the cook, many will sprinkle additional pepper, sage and thyme on the meat and trust me Adobo is a better starting point than a poorly made spice blend.

Season Generously

There is some debate about the best charcoal, but locally made charcoal is getting rare and expensive as a smokey charcoal kiln in the back yard is the fastest way to brink out the Fire Marshal, and local EPA. Still there are a few experts who are able to comply with modern standards and do a pretty good job of making smoke free charcoal and other vendors simply import it from countries with lower standards. This is the same as America’s save the nation hybrid cars being made with imported steal from countries with low standards of occupational safety and environmental protection. Oh well, when local charcoal is not available from vendors I know, I buy American to do my little bit to save the world.

After the meat has been picked clean of excess fat, washed with lime and seasoned the job is mostly done. A banked fire is made with the minimum amount of Charcoal and the chicken placed about 8-12 inches away from it on a grill or homemade rotisserie. Then you walk away and join your own party. The easiest way to understand this is to go to a local Barbecue shack in the Caribbean and closely observe the art form.

The Le Reine Chicken Shack in St. Croix

The picture is of a barbecue rack at The Le Reine Chicken Shack in St. Croix run by my friend Millin. On a busy day he can cook hundreds at a time and repeat the process almost continuously with the chicken remaining on the grill for an hour. Take note that no chicken is above the coals so there are no grease fire flare-ups on the chicken to scorch and blacken the chicken as it cooks.

For those who still want to try a mustard honey sauce this is the one we use at home. We cook all the chicken the same way and at the end use a paint brush to paint both sides of the piece with barbecue sauce and then let it dry out on the almost cold coals. Those who want honey mustard get this, those that want red sauce can have it and those who want it crisp for hot sauce can have it their way. To each their own!

Honey Mustard Barbecue Sauce

Ingredients:

1 T Dijon Mustard

1 Tablespoon Honey (just poor an equal amount to the mustard into the mixing bowl)

2 T Balsamic Vinegar

1 T Brown Sugar

Mix the ingredients until uniform,. This should not be a thick paste but a rich liquid to paint on the finished leg and let dry so as not to destroy the crispness of the skin.

A slight tasty glaze on the leg pictured above shows the finished effect.

Sous Vide Short Ribs

Short Ribs in BBQ Sauce and Cut from the Bone

I cant recall ever eating beef short ribs in my life. When people talked of ribs it was always pork and when Dolores talked of ribs, she meant baby back pork ribs. This was all fine with me as I don’t have a cultural aversion to pork and steak once a week was more that enough beef. I decided to try sous vide short ribs in my continued experiments with higher temperature longer cooking time sous vide.

I decided to give it my best shot by doing a similar method to the pork ribs previously described.

Brine Bath for Short Ribs

The brine was simple and consisted of the following ingredients.

Beef Brine Recipe

16 oz water

2 Tablespoons salt

1 heaping Tablespoon Brown Sugar

½ tsp thyme

½ tsp rosemary leaves

1 full teaspoon crushed garlic

1 bay leaf

I only had time to brine the ribs for 2 ½ hours and think that was enough.

Ribs Rubbed with Spice Blend

The ribs were patted dry and then rubbed with the spice blend I had made for the pork ribs.

Vacuum Packed and in the Pot

After the short ribs were vacuum sealed, they were placed in the coffeepot and held down with a spoon handle. Water was run through the coffeemaker to bring it up to 170 Fahrenheit right away and the ribs were held at this temperature for 6 ½ hours.

Finished Cooking Without BBQ Sauce

You can see from the picture of the ribs as they were removed from the bag that there was the typical shrinkage from the bone and the meat was tender and moist. When cut from the bone as above (top), you can see that the meat had a pleasant pink color. They were smothered in my homemade BBQ sauce and served with potato salad.

These were good for a change of pace but I still prefer my swine.

Sous Vide Ribs – Nothing Better

Ribs for Dinner

I have been saying all along, that I would never use sous vide as a tool until I found something it does a lot better than the tools I already know how to use and the meals I know how to cook.  I already know how to cook chicken, beef, lamb, turkey, duck, and offal to perfection and also do a pretty good job on most cuts of pork and venison.

I have cooked ribs professionally for a hotel Ribs Night and roasted a whole pig for a hotel wedding that everybody loved.  I still cook an occasional pork roast or a tenderloin of pork and skip ribs because the results are inconsistent and it is too much of a culinary effort for inconsistent results.

My daughter has had the same mixed feelings about ribs and asked (told?) me before I quit on sous – vide, could I find her a decent way to make ribs and consistent London broil. Well when I started my search for a rib recipe, the highly technical article on sous vide cooking by Douglas Baldwin showed up and now that I had a working sous vide controller, I made an investment in time to skim the technical manual on sous vide.

As the author points out, sous vide means under vacuum it does not necessarily mean low temperature and he has published detailed charts of the interaction of time and temperature and meat thickness.

HOWEVER when it came to the recipe for ribs it was simplicity itself – He recommended 8-12 hours at 175.  Now that is my kind of cooking. It happens to be exactly the temperature range of a Crockpot on the low setting or my coffeepot. This is something my daughter will definitely try if it’s worthwhile as she already has a Crockpot and all she needs to purchase is a Handi-Vac for under $20. For those who care, the Reynolds Handi-Vac uses polyethylene bags which do not have Bisphenol A.

The first problem with the original recipe was the brine/marinade which called for 7-10% salt and 0-3% sugar. After a little calculation and adapting for the fact that I like the taste of Brown Sugar, my simpler brine/marinade recipe  was

Brine Recipe:

• 16 oz. Water (2 cups)
• 2 level Tablespoons salt
• 1 Heaping Tablespoon Brown Sugar

Ribs in Brine

Mix the salt and sugar into the water, trim the excess fat off the ribs add the ribs and let soak overnight in the refrigerator. It is important to keep the marinade simple as there is no place to burn off volatile materials like alcohol or vinegar.

Wipe the Ribs Dry

The next morning, drain the ribs and wipe dry with a paper towel. At these temperatures, any excess moisture will vaporize, the bags will float and it will be difficult to guarantee uniform heating which is critical in very low temperature cooking. After the ribs are dry, use the Rub to add additional flavor to the meat.

Rub Recipe

• 2 Tablespoon paprika
• 1 Tablespoon celery salt
• 1.5Tablespoon crushed garlic
• 1Tablespoon black pepper
• 1Tablespoon chili powder
• 1Tablespoon ground cumin
• 1.5 Tablespoon brown sugar
• 1Tablespoon table salt,
• 1 Teaspoon dried oregano,
• 1 Teaspoon ground ginger

Ribs with Rub Mix

The only changes to the Rub Mixture were to delete white sugar and cayenne and add the ginger which I doubt changed the flavor at all. Mix together and rub into the meat. Store the excess in the refrigerator until the next time.

Vacuum Packed Ribs

The rest is straight forward, carefully place the ribs in the vacuum bag so that no rub or moisture gets into the zip lock area, pull vacuum and place into the coffeepot and gently wedge against the walls. In a crock pot, you could use a wire baking rack to hold the ribs in place so they don’t float.

Ribs in the pot

You can pour water on top of the ribs or get a head start by passing 10 cups of water through the coffee maker to heat it up.  My $100 sous vide controller is totally unnecessary because 175 is pretty much the natural temperature in either coffeepot cooking or Crockpot cooking and is only being used to monitor the temperature.

Coffeepot Sous Vide

At the end of 12 hours the ribs are dumped into a colander and the excess juice went down the drain. If you are a fanatic, the ribs can be darkened with a blow torch, but I find that effete touch unnecessary – especially when the ribs are smothered in BBQ sauce.

Cooked and Drained

I served the ribs with my homemade BBQ sauce, corn and potato salad which were also made in my coffeepot. This was a fantastic meal of non-greasy, tender ribs that were very flavorful without being over powered by either the brine, the rub or the sauce which all worked together to produce the end result.

My son-in-law who is a perpetual Doubting Thomas wanted to know if it was really the sous vide or was it the care and ingredients used. I told him I din’t care as I did not stand over a hot pot or a smoky grill for hours to get an end result that was as good as any ribs I had eaten in my 65 years on earth. This recipe is the first step in proving that Mathematician  Douglas Baldwin is one heck of a good cook.  I will probably stick with his higher temperature suggestions and try a few more because of previous disappointments with beef.

Sloppy Joe with Homemade BBQ Sauce

Delicious Sloppy Joe

I am trying desperately hard not to become a food fanatic as I continue to diet but some processed foods that we take for granted really approach the foolish to eat. I mean how bad can you expect Barbecue Sauce to be and my answer is read the label. I happen to have a unfinished bottle of Cattleman Classic in my refrigerator and take note that it has corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, molasses and sugar. When combined there is more sugar in the product then there is tomato paste. And if that doesn’t stress you out, one serving of the sauce provides about 17% of your daily salt requirement even if there was no salt used to prepare the meat.

After reading the label, I threw the bottle out and decided to make my own. A good place to start is the Classic BBQ Sauce recipe from About.com

Of course I am a make-do type of cook, so when I don’t have an ingredient I substitute the nearest equivalent and “make do” with what I have on hand instead of making a special trip to the grocery store.

Classic BBQ Sauce recipe from About.com

Ingredients:

* 2 tablespoons olive oil

* 3 cloves garlic crushed

* 1/4 cup minced onion (I used the whole medium onion)

* 1 8-ounce can tomato sauce

* 1 6-ounce can tomato paste

* 2 tablespoons brown sugar

* 2 tablespoons vinegar

* 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

* 1 teaspoon dry mustard (I used a Tablespoon of Golden spicy mustard)

* 1 teaspoon cayenne (I used a splash or two of American Style Hot Sauce)

* fresh ground pepper to taste (I skipped the black pepper)

The olive oil, garlic and onion were placed in a coffeepot and heated until the onions were opaque. The rest of the ingredients were added and the pot brought up to temperature (about 2 more hours) I ended up with about 2 cups of delicious sauce with minimal sugar and no added salt. I stored it in a plastic container in the refrigerator and its available when I need it.

Now the meat for the Sloppy Joe was really make-do. I had a left over uncooked piece of that really tough eye of the round steak that failed to tenderize in a preliminary sous-vide experiment. Now I knew from my pirate stew recipe that Cruzan Rum would tenderize stew beef so I decided to give it a try.

I put one tablespoon olive oil and ½ rough cut onion in the coffee pot and cooked it until the onions were opaque. I then added the steak and two ounces of rum and left it in the coffeepot for five hours. I took out the meat and separated it with a fork like pulled pork or pulled chicken. At this point I would not claim that the meat was perfectly tender but it separated rather well.

After draining the olive oil from the pot, I then added sufficient barbecue sauce to the meat and onions to give it the proper consistency and let the coffee pot come to full heat (about 2 hours).

It was delicious and perfectly tender. I served it on a whole wheat roll – not for health purposes but because I like the taste.