Smoked chicken, butter beans, and roasted onions carrots and potatoes.
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So, my oldest daughter is pregnant with her second boy, and due on Mother's Day (May 10th you guys!). She actually asked me if I could smoke a butt for her and vacuum pack it for her to have easy meals after she has the baby. I was MORE than happy to go grab a couple of big Boston Butts at Publix and get them smoking for her.
Two 9.5 pound butts, a total of 19 pounds of porky goodness BARELY cleared the deflector and drip pan on the SNS Kamado!
I ran this smoke at 275 on the SNS Kamado, using the RFX system, and the Billows from sheer laziness. It was a rainy day, so I had to pull the kamado over under the edge of the pavilion. And YES - I need to do a LOT of Spring cleaning out there, and get the pool uncovered. Started mid morning, putting the meat on about 9:45 yesterday morning. One of the advantages of working from a home office!
Cook ran for right around 12 hours at 275, using B&B lump and chunks of hickory. I have no clue why there are downward spikes mid-cook on the cooker temp on this graph, as I did not open it until the butts reached 203F. I think those are a glitch from the wired grate sensor on the RFX or something. And towards the end of the cook, the temp started oscillating a little more.
And this is the last photo I took, before wrapping in foil. I let them rest for about an hour on the counter and pulled pork until about 11pm, then crashed for the night.
This morning I got up and pulled the big bowl of pork out, and vacuum sealed about half in 1 pound and half in 1/2 pound portions for the daughter's family. I kept 1 pound for myself as a "BBQ tax".
Get this. I always figured on a loss of 30% to 40% by weight on pork, and this was actually worse. Since I was using kitchen scales to measure and vacuum bag this for the freezer, I knew the final weight, which I doubt I have ever measured. I started with 19 pounds - two bone-in butts - and after discarding the bones and minimal gristle, I had 8 pounds 3 ounces of finished project that I vacuum sealed. That's MORE than 50% loss! 57% loss if you do the math. Kinda shocking, but I guess there is a LOT of fat in that drip pan on the kamado, which I need to discard today before covering the grill again.Comment
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“I get by with a little help from my TJ’s”
My locally world famous egg roll in a bowl (no ground pork this round) made with broccoli slaw, TJs Potstickers, and some veggie egg rolls. Chinese hot mustard and sweet chili dipping sauce not shown.
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Yum. I have a special fondness in my heart for Chinese hot mustard. -
Hulagn1971 so do my sinuses! I had an extra blast yesterday…. I thought I was gonna die!
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As yesterday was the birthday of actress Kathryn Mulgrew and singer Willie Nelson*, I decided to try something I've been wanting to do for a very long time: Greek-American Gyros! (Specifically, Chicago-style Greek-American Gyros.)
I combined recipes from three different YouTube channels:- Gyro from Dimitra's Dishes (who I recently learned lives in Houston): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKDafWBh7z4
- Tzatziki from Akis Petretzekis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVlIExa-xek
- Pitas from Adam Witt (his accompanying video has a good section on the history of gyros in America): https://www.adamwitt.co/allrecipes/z...2p-5msm9-367rn
This is a two day process. On the first day you make the gyro meat. Ground beef and lamb are combined in a food processor along with garlic, onion, cumin, Greek oregano, rosemary, salt, and pepper. Yes, you use the food processor. The idea is to make a paste that will approximate the texture of the sliced meat off of a vertical spinning spit.
Pack the paste into a shallow baking dish (I used an 8x8 that was perfect). You really want to pack it in. Don't worry about overworking it; we're purposefully making bad meatloaf here.
Cook at 325 F for about 45 minutes or until the meat is between 160 and 165 F. It will look like this:
Let it cool (and allow yourself a small sample lol) then cover and refrigerate overnight. While it is cooling, make the tzatziki sauce. The recipe from Akis (whose entire channel is a trip to watch; he is very Greek) is very authentic so this is where I slightly deviated from my Greek-American idea into full Greek.
At my HEB I managed to find some 8% milkfat Greek yogurt which is that absolute creamiest yogurt I have ever had. The tzatziki is a simple mix of grated English/Persian cucumber, yogurt, olive oil, a bit of garlic, salt, pepper, white wine vinegar (which gives it a wonderful tang), and a ridiculous amount of dill.
Place in the refrigerator for the flavors to meld.
The next day, make the pita bread. Adam's is a very easy bread recipe. It is interesting as it has a significant amount of Greek yogurt in the dough. I let mine rise a bit longer than I intended (three hours), but it turned out fine. You cut up the dough ball into eight roughly equal pieces, then roll each out into 8" rounds (I found this much easier to do with my hands than a rolling pin).
Then you just plop them one at a time into a hot skillet with a little olive oil and go a minute a side and keep flipping until they are golden brown, just like a tortilla.
For the meat, remove the cold meat slab from the baking dish, knocking off any large pieces of solidified fat. I cut mine in half and froze half of it for later. Then just slice thinly and place the pieces in the pan to brown them up.
Now, assemble!
Place a layer of thinly sliced onion dusted with Greek oregano, followed by the meat, then some tomato, then the tzatziki sauce, and finally a sprinkling of crumbled feta cheese.
Now, EAT!
Oh wow, this was fantastic! The combination of the cumin, rosemary, and oregano with the strong flavor of lamb is just delicious.
Moreover, the pitas are out of this world. They always say that homemade bread is a thousand times better than anything store-bought and this is the first bread that I have made that truly hits that. It's in a different universe. The pitas are so pillowy! That Greek yogurt in the dough is just magical. They are almost like savory pancakes.
The next time I make this, I think I'm going to do Adam's recipe. He goes a few steps further than Dimitra in that he really tries to mimic the look and feel of meat off of a spit (including using an upside down deli container as the mold).
Really, really good stuff.
(*and mine. Also how was 1976 fifty years ago??)Comment
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Chicken breast, yeast rolls, Italian green beans.
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I pulled out the Santa Maria attachment for my kettle tonight and cooked some fish for Nan, and a thick ribeye for me. Nan was happy with her fish, and the steak turned out great. It's hard to beat the flavor of a steak cooked over wood.
Steam rising off the steak makes this photo look a bit cloudy.
I'm gonna make a post on how I use my SM attachment later tonight, (hopefully).Comment
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Picked up this hickory smoked ham last week at HEB on sale for 50 cents a pound. Seasoned with Meat Church Hickory rub, put on the Traeger with pecan shell pellets at 225 degrees Super Smoke for 2 hours. After first two hour bumped temp to 250. Basted every half hour with a glaze made with brown sugar, honey, Meat Church Cola Bbq sauce and couple ounces of bourbon. Was very good. Lots of ham to vacuum seal and freeze.
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Not what I'm cooking - I gifted the SNS Kettle I won in the drawing to a friend up in Asheville, NC. This is the first meal she prepared with it. Grilled sausage with grilled corn. Not to shabby. I was pleased that it is being put to such good use!
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By myself last night. Wife went out with friends. So, I smoked a rack of spares, St. Louis style in my KBQ. Smoked with Pecan and temp range was between 240-270 degrees. Cook took 3 hours and the ribs were wrapped in butcher paper for 30 minutes. Flavor profile was kosher salt, 16 mesh pepper, granulated garlic and a little bit of SheilaAnn's Sassy rub. Not much Sassy rub since it also has salt in it. Garnished with lime zest.
Ribs came out perfect. Great flavor, great color and perfectly cooked (for me) which means not fall off the bone, but tender and tight enough that you get the "competition bite". The ribs look a bit dry in the pictures, but they were very moist. If this was a competition and I was judging, it would have received a 9-9-9.
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I finally got a chance to fire up the Gozney, it’s been since late October maybe?
72 hour ferment my sauce, Italian sausage and pepperoni, served with a drizzle of fresh garlic confit oil I had made and fresh grated parm.
That felt and tastes so good, my wife agreed, that oven can never be left around back again during a winter,
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hoovarmin for this pie, assuming my oven is warmed up and I have a hot stone too. I like to launch around 730 - 760 degrees, then shut off the fire and let it bake a bit slower for a minute or two. Once i see good lift off the stone, i will hit the fire again and finish baking while turning, by that time I'm generally coming back up in temp from 630. Shooting for an average of around a 700 bake.
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