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New England Boiled Dinner |
There are
many of variations on this, some with corned beef, turnips, cabbage
etc., but this is Dave’s method. Simple and wonderful.
It all depends on the size of the biggest stock pot you can
find. (I got my giant stock pot for this.) It is not too far off
of being a clam bake. Same routine, just dig a big pit in the sand,
fill with seething hot rocks, cover with seaweed, cover with the
food, more seaweed and sand.
Use enough of the following ingredients to completely fill the pot
to the top:
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Potatoes
Carrots
Sweet onions
Sausage - preferably Portuguese
Corn on the cob
A lot of fresh clams - only steamer clams with feet!
Whole Maine lobsters |
Also
needed:
Butcher paper
Salted water
Lots of melted Butter
Good french bread
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Rig some kind of rack on the bottom of the pan to keep the food
above the 2 - 4 inches or so of water. A first layer of seaweed
is nice, but maybe not so easy to acquire. Using the butcher paper,
wrap the vegetables, clams and sausage individually. Potatoes should
be sliced into quarters first. Peel carrots and cut into shorter
lengths then wrap a portion. Corn can be whole or broken in half,
then wrapped. If the onions are large, cut into quarters first.
Make portion size packets of sausage and wrap.
Put the ingredients
in the pot on top of the rack, about even with the water line. Load
the wrapped portions in the same sequence as listed above. The lobsters
go in last, with one package of potatoes on top. Or if you forgot,
get another potato. This is the “tester”. The pot should
go on a hot fire and cook for about 20 - 25 minutes after reaching
the boiling point. The steam should cook everything through and
you can check the “tester” to see. If the potato is
done, it should all be done.
Serve everyone packets of everything, lots of french bread, little
pots of melted butter, and cups of broth from the stock pot. They
can add the juice from the clams and lobster to the cup of broth
and dip bread and slurp down to the sandy bottom.
-Dave
Real New Englanders from New Bedford carefully dip the clams
into their personal broth cup as they eat each one. Some lobster
roe and lobster butter makes its way into the cup. The very last
thing is drinking the most powerfully flavored broth in this hemisphere–a
heavenly taste that lingers on the tip of your tongue for 20 - 30
years.
–Phi |
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