iPot - San Francisco "Hot Pot" Restaurant

This was my second visit to iPot in San Francisco.  It's an "all you can eat" Chinese Hot Pot restaurant which offers both hot pot and hot plates for diners to enjoy.

Both times I've been here, the quality was great and service was good as well.  You order the soup base you prefer and then check off all the various ingredients you'd like.  Beef, lamb, wagu, rib-eye... it's all here.  Straw mushrooms, various greens, shell-on shrimp, mussels, squid... you have lots of choices.  We seem to like the "grilling" part more than the hot pot part though!

I think the fun of these places is that you constantly have something to do besides just eating.  Just be aware you will likely get splattered with oil when grilling and that your clothes will smell like you've been grilling too.

Worth going to if you are ever in the San Francisco area!

Zante Pizza and Indian Cuisine - San Francisco

After watching a YouTube video about Zante Pizza and Indian Cuisine in San Francisco, I decided to go there with my sister.  I ordered online and got a phone call from the business to confirm I had placed my order.  I told them I did place it and also mentioned that we would be dining in the restaurant.

When we arrived, the owner handed me the pizza in a cardboard box.  When I told him we wanted to eat in the restaurant, he said, "It's closed."  Well the tables were all set up, but nobody was in there, so perhaps he didn't want to deal with us messing up the tables?  Who knows.  Disappointed, I took the pizza back the my sister's home to eat it.

Obviously, it was no longer hot by the time we got home and while the pizza wasn't bad, it wasn't spectacular either.  It just tasted like Indian food served up on a pizza crust.

We ordered the "The Best Indian Pizza" - Per the menu: "Topped with Spinach, Egg Plant, Cauliflower, Ginger, Garlic, Green Onions, Cilantro, Lamb, Tandoori Chicken & Prawns. Choice of small, medium, large, or x-large."

Shrimp was really small.  All I could really taste was the cauliflower and the Indian spices.  I really could not taste the lamb at all.  The tandoori chicken was dry (as I find most tandoori chicken.)

Will I go back?  Probably not.  I think for the $23 with tax, I'd rather just go to an Indian buffet.

5.5 lb Beef Brisket on the 22.5" Weber Smokey Mountain Smoker

BRISKET!!

I am smoking a 5.5 lb flat today.  I will add photos as the cook progresses.  The cook started by lighting the coals in the chimney starter at 6:30 AM.  The brisket was placed "fat side up" on the grate at 7:15 AM.

The seasoning this time is primarily salt and pepper with a very light touch of the modified Pork Barrel BBQ All American Seasoning & Rub that contained a little more salt and paprika.  The wood used for smoking was three pieces of pecan and one piece of cherry.

I decided to use my "real camera" this time instead of my iPhone which I usually use for cooks because its convenient and the fact that my DSLR usually stays at my photography school. The images were taken with a Nikon D4 and Nikon 50mm f1.4 lens.

"Creosote Smoke" - not good for smoking.  Wait until the smoke is like the photo below.

"Thin Blue Smoke" - ideal for smoking.

One hour into the cook.

3.5 hours into the cook. The internal temp is at 155 degrees. The temp at the grate level is at 250 degrees. I have been spritzing the brisket with Swanson's Beef Broth starting at around 10:30 AM.

It's 12:15 PM and it's been 5 hours into the cook and the meat has stalled at 147 degrees.  The brisket will now be placed it into an aluminum foil pan and covered the top with foil.

I also put in some Swanson's Beef Broth in the foil pan.  Now I'm just waiting until the internal temperature hits 201 degrees.

The finished product.  It took a total of 9.5 hours.  While it was tender, it was a bit dry.  Thinking more about it, I believe the fact that I poured the entire can of the beef broth into the aluminum pan was a huge mistake.  Essentially, there was so much liquid in there that I essentially boiled the meat for hours in the broth!  Others use the liquid very sparingly just to keep the meat damp. But with a whole can of liquid and the meat sitting in it for hours in the smoker, it just boiled the meat!!  This is a contributing factor as to why the meat was dry after resting.  I won't do that again!

My first brisket was a lot better and looking back, I didn't put a lot of liquid in there.  I had wrapped that brisket in aluminum foil and so there was no way to put a lot of liquid in there.  But having an aluminum foil pan, it was easy to just pour all of the can's contents in there without fear of it leaking out.  Big mistake!  I'll do better next time.

Even though the brisket was a bit dry, the slices did pull apart easily and doing the "bend test", the slices did bend over when held in the middle too... so tenderness was not an issue.

Edit note:  A bit of advice from Jim Minion from the "Fans of the Weber Smokey Mountain" Facebook group: "...pull the brisket off the pit at 185 to 190 internal, wrap in HD Foil and place in a small dry cooler, the intenal will continue to rise 10 to 15 degrees. If you pull at 201 internal you are going to get the same bump in internal temp but that will get you over 210 and the flat has started to dry out. You can add a little moisture in the foil before going into the cooler but you won't need much."  Very good suggestion!  I will do that next time as well as limiting my liquids.  Beef is not as forgiving as a pork butt on the smoker!

12.82 LBS Pork Butt On The Weber Smokey Mountain Smoker

12.82 lbs of Pork Butt going on the smoker first thing in the morning!  This is actually two pork shoulders (aka Butts) with the bone removed.  I injected Apple Cider Vinegar into the meat and let it sit in the refrigerator overnight.  I will update this cook as we go along.  Commentary will be below each photo.

Straight out of the package.

Just starting out.  Rub from a modified Pork Barrel BBQ All American Seasoning & Rub that contained more salt and paprika.  The water pan has water in it at 3/4 full.  The pan was lined with aluminum foil to make it easier to clean afterwards.

2 hours and 10 minutes into the cook.  Pit temp is hovering around 275 degrees with the internal temp at 135 degrees.

Another angle at 2 hours and 10 minutes into the cook.

The 18.5 inch Weber Smokey Mountain is getting a lot more usage lately.  I use this smoker only with charcoal and no wood.  The 22.5 in Weber is reserved when I want to smoke with some wood chunks.

3 hours into the cook.  The pit temp was at 265 degrees and the internal temp reached 145 degrees.

I checked the temperature on my Thermoworks Smoke receiver and it shows the pit temp to be 259.5 degrees and the internal temp at 158.9 degrees after four hours and 45 minutes.  I expect the stall to happen soon as most of my cooks for pork butt stall around this temperature.  Once the stall happens, I'll put the meat into an aluminum pan and add some apple juice in there and close it up with aluminum foil for the rest of the cook.  Stay tuned!

The stall has happened after 5 hours and 15 minutes!

Here's what the pork butt looks like before putting it in an aluminum pan, covering it with foil an adding some apple juice.

Another angle of the stalled meat.

Placed in an aluminum foil pan with apple juice and covered with aluminum foil.

Added another chimney full of charcoal. I didn't add as much charcoal as probably was needed initially. So after taking the midsection of the smoker off, I found most of the charcoal was all burned already! I usually only get about 6 hours it seems when I cook because I don't overload the charcoal ring, so this is typical for me. Once the chimney is ready, I'll pour it on the grate and add a few more briquettes to it and let it run to the end. Internal temp on the pork remains at 159.6 at this point even without it being heated by any coals. Keeping it in the smoker is probably the best way to keep that internal temp from falling while doing all of this.

Burning in the chimney...

The final temperatures... finished at 205 degrees.  9 hours total time.

Prior to pulling...

The pull - still in chunks!

After doing this, I think my family prefers not to use apple cider vinegar, especially injected. The vinegar seems to require us to use barbecue sauce to blend the taste to it. I guess it's just something we aren't accustomed to. Also, I think the cook this time was not as good as the last time. The smoke ring seemed to be a lot less this time. Not sure why. Maybe I needed it closer to room temp before putting it in the smoker? I had heard that the longer the time that is under 140 degrees, the smoke continues to work its magic. But maybe it still needs to start out a little less cold? Not sure. Could it be because of the injection?  Still, overall, the cook went well and it's not bad. 

6 lb Pork Butt - Pulled Pork

6 lb Pork Butt cut in half (more bark). Going for pulled pork today on the 18.5" Weber Smokey Mountain smoker. Will probably take 7-9 hours. Going for an internal temp of 203 to 206 degrees.  The smoker's temp is averaging around 265 degrees.

The internal temp of the meat reached 195 degrees after 5.5 hours, but the pit temp dropped to 214 degrees so I removed the midsection of the smoker so that I could stir up the coals. I moved the outer coals closer to the middle and knocked off the ashes from the other coals. I put on another wax lighter cube to get the outer coals going faster too and then put back on the mid section of the smoker. The temp then went up to 277 degrees and the internal temp of the butt stayed at 195. The meat was probably going through a second stall, so I opened one of the bottom vents fully. The other two were at about a pencil width.

The butt reached 205.1 degrees after a full 7 hours of cook time.  The pork was really tender this time!

__________________________________________

First photo: Just placed on the grate... rub only.
Second photo: Two hours in...
Third photo: Three hours in... stalling at around 158 degrees (will now wrap)
Fourth photo: Placed in aluminum pan with some apple juice and covered with aluminum foil after three hours of cook time.
Fifth photo: Pit temp is at 234.3 degrees when the internal temp of the meat hit 195 degrees after 5.5 hours. The meat stalled once again at 195 degrees but for a shorter time than when it was at 158 degrees.
Sixth photo: Pit temp is at 251.3 degrees when the internal temp of the meat hit 205.1 degrees after 7 hours
Seventh photo:  Finally done and the foil top removed
Eighth photo: Final product before pulling... just resting now
Ninth photo: Bone came out easily and cleanly
Tenth photo: The finished pulled product.  Decent smoke ring too!

Chicken Legs on the Weber Spirit E-310

I used my Weber Spirit E-310 gas grill to grill up some chicken legs.

I brined the chicken legs for several hours before grilling them.  After I put them on the grill I added more salt and pepper.  Adding more salt was a mistake!  So after I was done grilling the legs, I rinsed them all off with water.

One thing I noticed was how evenly the grill was cooking the chicken legs.  Not a single area of the grill could be found that either overcooked or undercooked the legs more than the other legs!  Again, it proved to me that the grill does not have any hotspots!

The photo above shows the legs after about 20 minutes of cooking time.  I flipped the legs over after 10 minutes and then flipped them again after another 10 minutes.  Both sides had even cooking no matter where it was laid out on the grill!  You can see that in the photo above.  It just instilled to me that the decision to buy this grill was correct.  My old gas grill had hotspots and coldspots!  Not here!

I cooked the chicken for a total of about 35 minutes.  The internal temperatures varied from 170 degrees to 180 degrees.  Properly cooked chicken needs to be at 165 degrees.

Chinese Cheong Fun Made With Rice Flour

I made some Chinese Cheong Fun with rice flour this time instead of "Swan's Down" cake flour.

The rice flour is definitely more "white" in color than the Swan's Down.  But perhaps I'm just too used to the taste of Swan's Down that I felt that perhaps it tasted better!  On the other hand, perhaps I didn't make this version with the rice flour correctly.  As a general rule, Cheong Fun is made with rice flour, so I'm not sure why to me, it didn't taste as good as the Swan's Down versions!

I guess I need both so that I can tell the difference next time.

I filled the Cheong Fun with homemade Char Siu.

SoupBelly Hotpot - Glenview, IL

My daughter took my wife, my wife's sister and me to SoupBelly Hotpot in Glenview Illinois for lunch today.  I ordered the #10 Spicy Korean Flower Crab with medium spicy soup and rice on the side.

While the soup was fine, the service was a bit off.  The Indian waiter seemed nice enough and would promise to get us water and get me another empty bowl to put my crab shells, but he never actually did it!  We found that he would take our requests for water or sauces (they were all pretty much empty), but he never followed through with doing what he said he would do!  We ended up getting our own water  from some water pitchers on a cart (twice) and I had to ask another waitress for the bowl.  And come on... cheap plastic cup for water?  Can't they invest in a little better cups for water for their customers?!  You can see the kind of cup I'm talking about in the photo above.

We were also surprised that they were out of sesame sauce that they had on the tables along with other sauces.  In fact, each sauce container hardly had any sauces left in them, but when we asked for some more sesame sauce, the waiter checked in the kitchen and came back to say that the manager told him that they had run out.  So he grabbed another container from another table and gave it to us.  That was empty too.  Sesame sauce is one of the "staples" for a hotpot restaurant, so to be "out of it" is really inexcusable.

One of the jobs that the waiter has to do is to light the fuel at the bottom of the "hot pot" but my daughter's hot pot flame went out.  She asked for him to re-light it and he said he would, but he didn't come back to do it.  So she got up to ask if he could just give her the lighter, but he said that he was just going to swap out the hotpot, which he did.

We all asked that there be no green onions or jalapeños in our soup, but when mine came out, I had both.  I asked that they take it out, be the others later told me to just do it myself since the service was so spotty and it would just take them longer to do it.

Not a good experience at this restaurant in terms of service, but the food wasn't too bad.  It was spicy, but there wasn't much substance to it for the price.  Only two shrimps in my bowl and while it came with two small blue crabs, I just could not eat them at the restaurant.  With so much soup base and really nowhere to "work on" taking the crab apart without splashing soup all over me or the table, I decided to just bring it all home and eat it later.  So all I ate while at the restaurant was one shrimp and the tofu and some vegetables that were in the soup.  The soup was really spicy and the medium spicy option was a bit too much for me especially since the soup was kept boiling by the hot pot.  I decided to turn off the hot pot's flame just to cool off the soup.

Will we be going back?  No.  None of us enjoyed the service although the waiter was nice enough, he just didn't do what he promised he'd do.  The food was ok, but nothing special and definitely lacking in quantity for the price.  While I'm sure it's fine for some people, it just didn't impress us.  At home, I ate the rest of the soup and the crabs, but the crabs really had no meat on them at all.

While the restaurant is called a "Hot Pot" restaurant, this really wasn't a true hot pot restaurant.  True hot pot means having a boiling soup base and then giving the customers raw meats and vegetables to cook themselves in the hot pot soup base.  It's usually an "all-you-can-eat" affair, but here, it's not.  Here, I'd say it's "spicy soup with ingredients inside a bowl" that is kept hot with a burner.  It's just a soup place.  Not a hotpot place.

I was really hoping that this restaurant would be good, but none of us was impressed enough to say we'd go back.  This is a really small restaurant with very few tables.  We just could not figure out why it was so hard for him to take care of just a few customers.

Pink Butcher Paper - For Use When Smoking Beef Briskets

Pink Butcher Paper... does it really work? (Photo courtesy of Burnt End Paper)

Legendary pit master, Aaron Franklin of Franklin Barbecue in Austin, Texas uses it to wrap his beef brisket to power through the stall.  Others just use aluminum foil.

I guess this is something I'll eventually have to try!

St Louis Ribs - 2-2-0.5 on the 18.5" Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker

I smoked one full rack of St. Louis ribs on the 18.5" Weber Smokey Mountain smoker.  I did not add any wood for the smoke, but rather just kept it as a Kingston Charcoal smoke instead.  The ribs were sprinkled with a modified Pork Barrel BBQ All American Seasoning & Rub that contained more salt and paprika.

I ran the smoker at 260 degrees for most of the cook.  I put water in the water pan.  The ribs stayed on the grate for 2 hours and then I transferred them to an aluminum pan and covered it with aluminum foil.  I put on Sweet Baby Rays Original barbecue sauce on them.  It stayed in the pan another 2 hours until the internal temperature of the ribs hit 190 degrees.  I them move the ribs back onto the grate for another 15 minutes.

The ribs were very tender but had a decent bite to them as well.  Very good St. Louis ribs this time!  My wife does not prefer St Louis ribs as it is a bit more fatty than baby back ribs.  To her, it's worth the extra $1 per pound for the baby backs.  But St. Louis ribs have more meat (along with fat) in my opinion, which means there is more meat than bone in comparison.  Still, she feels the baby backs are better.  Regardless, as far as cooking, these ribs were done very well.

The top photo was taken after the first hour of cooking.  The second photo was taken just as the ribs were returned to the grate after being in an aluminum pan for 2 hours.

Great Customer Service from Weber

I contacted Weber to inquire what kind of high temperature paint I needed to paint over the rust that was on the side handle of my 22.5" Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker smoker.  This was the used smoker I purchased on Craigslist.  While everything else on the smoker was in good condition, this was the one area that had a little bit of rust.

The customer service representative decided to send me a NEW lid to replace the old one!  I was surprised as all I wanted was a recommendation of the correct paint to use, but he said he wanted it to be right instead.  He decided to send a new lid, handle and thermometer and bezel.  That was a nice surprise!

Typically, the new parts are expected to arrive within five to seven days, but since Weber isn't all that far from my location, FedEx informed me that I will receive it the very next day!

Weber's customer service is known to be top-notch, and this really proves it.  Thanks Weber!

Here's the replacement lid.  They forgot that the 22.5" smoker has two handles.  They only sent the plastic handle for one.  Oh well, I can always take the old one off and put it on the new lid.