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Bacon and eggs seem to be the order of my day today! Spaghetti alla carbonara with guanciale and duck eggs. And I topped it with a dollop of the Fava bean pesto. I’m kinda proud of myself 🥰😎🥳🤩
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hoovarmin do it! But I gotta tell ya, I like pancetta better than the guanciale. Assuming you may go to a nice Italian deli, ask them to slice the pancetta about 1/4” for dicing. Don’t get that pre-crumbled stuff from the grocery store. This dish is a treat, so treat yo self!
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Well, for us, this weekend's cook and get together occurred on Saturday. Our youngest daughter was having an outdoor gender reveal party for her 3rd child - result: It's girl #3 for them!
I tell my son-in-law that if they intentionally try again for a boy, it will most definitely be girl #4.... Nothing wrong with granddaughters though! They are amazing, and I love them all! Anyway, back to the cooking. We had planned for our kids + spouses (6) + grandkids (3) to come back and hang out here afterwards - that serving as our Easter get together, since they all have other families to attend to as well. And as you may know from elsewhere, the entire weekend went way better than expected for Yvonne.
Anyway, I woke up at 6:30, and lit some coals and got the kamado going, setup for HOT AND FAST on two 8-9 pound boston butts that dry brined overnight.
Ready to go!
Staging the butts... you can see the now antique partyQ chugging away down there at the bottom to maintain 300F at the cooking grate. I monitored the two butts using the two channels of the Smoke.
I now do the "butt rub" outside. In this case, it was MMD out of a mason jar with a shaker lid on it. After an open air dry brine in the fridge, they tend to be dry on the surface, so a little French's mustard as a binder held the heavy handed application of MMD in place...
Here they are 3 to 4 hours in, before leaving them unattended to go to the gender reveal.
And after the gender reveal, before pulling off the grate. They were done in right at at 8 hours at 300F.
Glamour shot!
During the final hour on the grill, I had a "gluten free" mac-n-cheese baking indirect on the Genesis around the corner... I used gluten free elbow pasta, and bacon bits in place of panko. It came out pretty decent. The gluten free stuff has a bit different texture than normal pasta though, but I had kiddos to feed with a wheat allergy...
And everything came together inside, with some sides Yvonne made in the oven and crock pot!
My son and son in law (the one who smokes on a kamado, not the son in law who is a picky chicken eater) both felt the hot and fast pulled pork was somehow juicier than the usual butts I do at 225. For getting the cook done during a busy day, I'll take hot and fast for the win! 7 to 8 hours versus 14+ hours for my last two smokes.
I pulled the second butt after it sat in cambro for 4 hours, after the kids all went home. This morning its all getting portioned into bags and into the freezer...Comment
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I've been on this kick for breakfast lately. My omelettes are too big and loaded, so it's hard to fold without falling apart. By first laying down a bed of arugula with some sliced green onion, it holds things together perfectly. This one has pancetta and cheese filling.
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Celebrated the end of Passover with some boneless lamb legs. Smoked on my trusty Napoleon Appollo, and then reverse seared to finish.
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hoovarmin, I put some other photos up here: https://pitmaster.amazingribs.com/fo...gs-from-ottawa
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I've been away from here for a little bit and haven't had as much time to post, but I'm still cooking. Here is a what I made for Easter dinner: boneless rib roast. I bought a 4-bone roast, carved, rubbed with my own beef rub, wrapped in cheesecloth, and waited.
Here we are, after 5 days of dry brining. I forgot to tie it beforehand, so I did it right before roasting:
This was a big chunk of meat, 3.6 kilos after dry brining.
Fired a small amount of lump charcoal in the Kamander, indirect heat and drip pan for convenience. Used my Inkbird for temp control, set to 230F.
I used two probes for temp: first one to 120F wins!
Pit temps ranged from about 225-250F. Here we are just after we hit 120F internal on one of the probes:
I cranked the Inkbird up to 450F (highest setting) and ran it as hot as I could until I hit 130F internal temp. I pulled it, let it rest while the rest of the food was being prepped. It took about 30 minutes to go from 120F to 130F.
Here you go:
Carved:
Served:
Rib roast, blistered green beans, and roasted red potatoes. A+ The meat was juicy, perfectly seasoned, had a nice crust, and was just what our family needed. Served with a 2005 Chateau Pavie Macquin (Bordeaux), a most excellent choice.
This is similar to the rib roast I made on Christmas, but this one was over charcoal (no additional smoke), and I used my own rub (Christmas was Mrs. O'Leary's cow rub). I like the way this turned out better. I hadn't decided whether to roast indoors or out, but I made the right choice and did it outside. Being able to crank the heat up in the Kamander for the finish made for a very nice crust.Last edited by HotSun; April 22, 2025, 06:19 AM.Comment
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Easter Feast: Rack of Lamb, roasted radicchio, asparagus, beet salad and THE best potatoes gratin I’ve ever made.
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Good evening and Happy Patriots Day to all Massachusetts. I was going to run the Boston Marathon but it started before I got out of bed. 😁
Instead, I had a busy day cooking. 1st, I hung 2 racks of St Louis cut ribs on the Pit Barrel Cooker. About 5 hours total. Seasoned with Meatheads Pork Brine/ Rub. These are for future eating. I might need to make another couple of racks, we'll see. This evening I did one of my favorite burgers, feta cheese stuffed. Seasoned with Killer Hogs Rub. Cooked in a cast iron skillet with a dome over it. This keeps the moisture in. Result a super juicy burger.
Ready to hang
Last edited by RichieB; April 23, 2025, 07:27 PM.Comment
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Let's taco.
I marinated some skirt and flank in my usual soy sauce, lime juice, and oil for about seven hours. I was intending to do these in the cast iron skillet, but the awful weather we had this morning abated and the skies cleared, so I decided to grill them in the Kettle. (I am really using my Kettle more and more now that I can easily reuse briquets by switching Cowboy Briquets.)
Here we are about to go on....(it was easy to tell them apart: the skirt had more fat).
I threw in two chunks of post oak, because why not? (Plus, I am trying to learn this wood. This is only my second cook with post oak.)
Flippity-flip-flip....
After a few minutes rest, I selected the flank steak for the tacos tonight. Absolutely nailed the doneness of the flank. (The skirt will be used for breakfast tacos.) Yes, that is microwave bacon there. Do not panic!
My wife doesn't like raw onions nor cilantro, so I had to put something in her tacos, so she got the microwave bacon and some cheese. I used those really cute street-taco-sized corn tortillas from HEB. (Unlike the flour ones that we rave about, these are not made in store, but I seem to be made locally within a day or so and are quite fresh.)
Mine was traditional.....onions and cilantro. Lots of cilantro. Because cilantro. (The limes are coated with Tajín.)
I was trying to mimic the serving style of La Cocina Roberto, which was the place we ate the first night at the recent Texas Meat-Up. They serve their street tacos flat like this along with the Tajín-limes. I, of course, totally forgot to plate the jalapeños, which LCR also does, but here they are.
This was all very good....it's steak tacos, after all. I'm still trying to get a handle on post oak. Supposedly it is a mild wood, but it certainly isn't a fruitwood....it doesn't have that "sweet" aspect to its smell.
For me, it seems closer to hickory...in the sense that you can go from just perfect to oversmoked really fast. I may cut my cooks back to one chunk of post oak rather than the two I have been using.Comment
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Next cook of spring…. A big mess of Nathan’s bun length for the college Bible study. I way overcooked, and will be eating hot dogs for days….
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My wife just got back from visiting her parents in Tennessee. She brought back some flour from a local farm - all local and organic, none of the garbage that’s in most commercial flour.
The Farmers Storehouse - Artisan Bread Flour
I made a loaf of rustic Italian bread - best one I’ve made yet!
Tried something I’ve been wanting to try forever…home made pizza. Made a sauce that everyone loved.
First thing I realized…you need a pizza peel to make Neapolitan pizza! A couple pies came out respectful enough, though not my intended shape due to not having said pizza peel. Still tasted great.
The others…well, let’s just call them “calzones” (quotes used due to loose interpretation of Calzone).
Overall, it was a fun night getting the family involved in a cook, and even after the frustrations of shape and leakage from too thin crust we all enjoyed the meal and our night together.
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Looks GREAT!
Hmmm. Good catch Michael_in_TX - that means they have sprouted and then dried the grains, just like what I use for making beer. Malted grains have more digestible sugars for the yeasts so I would think would result in a higher rise for your bread. -
Blend is Hard Red Wheat, Scotch Fife Wheat, and Malted Barley.
I’d say I got a little more rise than with the Italian 00 flour I’ve used for other bread bakes. But I don’t have enough bakes under my belt to definitively say it was the flour blend and not some other variable.
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Pretty much only pork left in the chestie now as we draw down the inventory in prep for our upcoming relocation. Won't be cooking at home again until next week at the earliest - we had the home fully staged by our realtor yesterday, pro photo shoot today, and then we are not going to touch anything before it hits the market Thursday, when we head back over to Delaware for house-hunting through Sunday. If we are lucky and get a buyer promptly, we can stand down from all of that next week and mess up the house again
Another pair of Wild Fork 2-bone pork chops. Damn these things are great and up to now anyway have been at a very reasonable price. Standard, idiot-proof approach of sous vide at 140/60 for about four hours, then pat dry, hit with a bit of Uncle Chris's Extra Fancy, and then seared on the flat side of the GrillGrates on the Weber Spirit.
I had to hold one of them with the tongs to sear the sides, but the other one could stand on its own.
Plated with zucchini and some egg noodles tossed in butter and parsely. Simple but very delicious.
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Breakfast.....
Lightly sautéd onions, scrambled eggs seasoned with Flat Iron Four Pepper, leftover skirt steak, a generous dose of 58limited's hot sauce, some cheese, and cilantro.
(lol....the camera angle makes it look like there is next to nothing in there.....it's two eggs and about 4 oz of skirt!)Comment
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Ribs. Cause when I went to the meat counter yesterday, they just stared at me until I bought them.
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