Food – bengarvey.com

Buffalo Wing Rating Scale

I have an informal Buffalo Wings rating scale of 1-10.? This is not your normal scale where 1 is awful, 10 is perfect, and everything in between could be graphed linearly.

My scale is more of a logarithmic function like this:

As you can see, there is a difference between wings rated a 3 and a 6, but I would gladly eat a 3 which is a normal person’s 5 (ie. average). In fact, you could measure how much someone likes a particular type of food by the shape of their 1-10 rating curve.? A straight line would be an average liking, but an “over” curve like my wing graph shows something I like, whereas an “under” curve would be something you don’t really like and would be more picky about the quality.? There may even be cases where you have an S curve, like so, where your enjoyment plateaus in the middle and then starts rising again after a certain point.? These foods would probably be things that intentially have various quality levels such as beer and pizza that can be enjoyed at many levels depending on cost.

I have never awarded a score higher than 8 for any wings, but as my graph shows, an 8 is ridiculously good.? So where can you find wings that score that hight?? Buffalo Bills in Sickerlville, NJ. They don’t have a website, but they have one review from James on Yelp.

Some other good wings:
Oaklyn Manor (Oaklyn, NJ): 6
Moriarty’s (Philadelphia, PA): 7
The Brickskeller (Washington, DC): 6.5
Pic II (Ancora, NJ): 6.5

Chili post

Doh, I am making a batch of my chili today and clicked on the link on the right to make the shopping list. The link was broken! It has since been fixed.

I also noticed I had 6 Tbsp of garlic, which I think must be a typo.? That would mean 36 cloves of garlic!? There’s no way I put in that much, so I lowered it to 2 Tbsp which is about 12 cloves of garlic.? I’m guessing I thought 1 clove of garlic equaled 1/2 of a table spoon, but in fact it’s 1/2 of a teaspoon.

If you’re a chili fan, you’ll definitely want to try the recipe out some day.

Another Rib Try

I made baby back ribs again for the game today (argh!) and they turned out great. The main difference was that I smoked them with hickory chips and I cooked two racks at a time instead of just one. A neighborhood cat tried to eat them right off the grill.

I almost screwed up the smoke, because I forgot you have to get the chips smoking before you start cooking. I put them on at the same time and the proper procedure is to start out blazing hot until the chips smoke like crazy and then turn the heat down and load the meat. Unlike the Eagles today I was able to come back from my bad start and produce something worthwhile.

Also, I tried to buy the meat yesterday at Acme but all they had were the precooked Tony Siragusa ribs, so I drove all the way to Superfresh.

In my NFL Pick’Em league I’m 12/13 so far, but I have three upsets picked for the last three games. I doubt I’ll be that lucky.

Baby Back Rib Recipe

You can count me among the fans of baby back ribs, but they’re a little intimidating to make. Here’s why:

Long marinating times
Long cooking times
Tricky heat settings
Removing that damn membrane from the bottom

My first attempt at making ribs was about two years ago and I spent all day working on them, only to have them burn to a crisp in 10 minutes. I was so distraught I ended up eating at Red Hot and Blue. It took me a while, but I made my second attempt this weekend and it was a huge success.

Here is my recipe:

Ingredients:

1 package of baby back ribs
1 container of apple juice
Stubs BBQ seasoning
Sylvia’s herb seasoning
Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ Sauce

Directions:

Remove the membrane from the bottom of the ribs. This is the most annoying part of the process, but it’s not that difficult and don’t worry about getting every last bit off. A lot of crazy websites say to use a screwdriver to get under it and pull it off, but I just used a knife and wiggled it between the membrane and the bone.

Marinate the ribs in the apple juice for about two hours and flip them over half way through if they’re not fully submerged.

Set up your grill for indirect cooking, which is almost like baking. You heat up the side of the grill you aren’t going to use. Some gas grills are set up with burners on the left and right and some are front to back. Mine has three heat zones (front, middle, and back) and usually I turn the front off, set the middle to low, and the back to medium when cooking on indirect heat.

Take the ribs out of the apple juice and pat dry with paper towels. Apply the Stubs BBQ rub generously to both sides, but the bottom is really just for show. Sprinkle some of the Sylvia’s seasoning on both sides as well. Make sure the meaty top side looks evenly covered by the BBQ rub. DO NOT put on the BBQ sauce yet, because it will burn.

Now that the grill is hot, put the ribs on the cooler side and cook for at least 1.5 – 1.75 hours. Check it often to make sure it isn’t burning and that your hot side is hot enough. I like to flip it twice and that way it’s mostly cooked from the bottom up.

About 20 minutes before your time is up, apply the BBQ sauce with a basting brush to both sides. The final internal temperature should be at least 140 degrees. Enjoy!

Credit: Almost everything I’ve learned about grilling is from the amazing book, How To Grill by Steven Raichlen. My rib recipe is based on one from the book.

Doritos X-13D

Doritos has a promotion going on right now to name their new flavor. They’re selling it in a black bag with the code name X-13D and I’m here to tell you it’s gross. I bought a small bag at Wawa and my first thought was “relish” as in, “Doritos came up with relish flavored chips.” As I ate a few more I figured they must be going for a cheeseburger flavor, but nothing could overpower the relish or pickle flavor.

So thumbs down on the X-13D (or my name for it, Assburger with extra Relish), but thumbs up on the cool promotion. The power of user collaboration is spreading to the consumer culture.