Thanks Gents. Everything was cooked on a grill. The steak was reverse seared on the Hasty Bake and the Potatoes and Brussel Sprouts were cooked in the Akorn Kamado.
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You all are killing me with all those great cooks. I can't wait till I get home (one more week) so I can fire the "little monster" up.Comment
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Tomorrow I will have pics of 4 chuck roasts (Pit Barrel) and 2 racks of ribs going China style (Oven, just the way they do it in the restaurants
). Ribs, not the chuck roasts.
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Good God! The pics on this thread are amazing and kind of humbling.
Tomorrow I am smoking 3 racks of back ribs. I just dry-brined them and they went into the fridge uncovered. i just put together my rub which I will apply just before going in and just after I've lightly oiled the slabs. My wife made scratch mac and cheese which will get baked tomorrow. Our dinner guests are bringing an appetizer and a salad. Beer and wine will be flowing rather freely.
I just don't know which device to cook them in. The Performer/Smokenator is on the patio and I am not going to mess with digging it out of the snow. I am not going to use my Weber gasser either. So that leaves my mini 14.5" WSM or my Bradley electric. My dilemma is that I 'should' use the Bradley but I 'want' to use the WSM, which I just got for Christmas. The Bradley has capacity. I can do 3 slabs, a loaf pan of canned tomatoes (to be smoked and pureed for a BBQ sauce base) and the 9 pound butt I just bought (which I will pull and freeze for later - wife's idea). With the WSM I am going to have to cut the slabs in half and stand them up in order to get them to fit into the mini WSM. This likely means that if I want to sauce them in the cooker a couple of halves are going to have to finish in my gasser and I definitely want to sauce them in the cooker.
I have gone back and forth so many times and I still don't know which cooker I will use. I know, I know...given my choices this is a good problem to have.
We will have 5 adults and 4 children (2 boys and 2 girls ages 14 and 11)
Also, I am almost out of scratch made BBQ sauce. If I use the Bradley I can smoke the tomatoes and make more. If I use the WSM I am going to have to take what little sauce I have left and mix it with a bottle of Stubbs. It will still be very good but I'd rather exclusively use my own sauce and I won't be able to if I use the WSM and I refuse to fire up both devices when I can do everything I 'should' do solely in the Bradley.Last edited by JeffJ; February 27, 2015, 09:18 PM.Comment
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Jeff why not fire up both? I use more grills than I need to ALL the time.
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You, sir, are a genius. I am now going to do 4 slabs - 2 in the WSM and 2 in the Bradley. Now I can also make more BBQ sauce and my son is on the phone right now informing his Grandma that she will now be getting ribs so I will not be punched in a sensitive area.Comment
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State of Dallas, Texas. Nasty
Tried to go meat shopping yesterday. Spent 3 hours on the road only to make a U turn.
Boudin
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that is some BEAUTIFUL chicken. and I'm generally not a chicken person. might have something to do with several years working at BoJ's in college and stretching a dollar so tight, most of my meals were BoJ's leftovers. sometimes for weeks on end! Those biscuits are back breaking! but this, well, this is some kind of Gorgeous!! thank you for sharing.
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Since I'm stuck indoors might as well experiment. Trying to duplicate Hawaiian sweet rolls. I know I could get a recipe on the interwebs but where's the fun in that?
Yes I know I'm weird. LOLComment
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Marauderer that's my next experiment. And change yeast to instant. -
Ernest. If you are using Active Dry Yeast you just need to add a bit of water to it and let it get active. I use ADY in all of my baking. IDY has 25% more yeast in it than ADY so it activates easier. Also if your yeast gets old it doesn't always activate and needs some help. So, since I use ADY I always mix with water and possibly a little sugar or honey if the recipe calls for it and let it activate. Salt will kill the yeast if you mix together so I make sure I keep them separated as much as possible. I lost a couple of batches of dough learning that the hard way.
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Did chili today (Cooks' Illustrated version), but while waiting for my chuck roast, I found a little nest of beef spare ribs, so those are salted and will go on the grill tomorrow.Comment
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Here are the ribs with my rub just before going into the smokers.
The Bradley is as piece of cake, I set my temperature (230) and my smoke time (2 hours) and my cook time (6 hours) and off it went. I used hickory bisquettes in the Bradley. For the WSM I used 2 hickory chunks and I used Soo's Donut. After I lit 10 coals and they developed ash I dumped them into the donut hole, piled some additional coals on top, filled the water pan and let it come up to temperature. When it hit 240 at the bottom grate I placed 4 halved slabs into the cooker with the smaller slabs on the bottom grate. The temperature plummeted to 187 but quickly claimed back up. With a little fiddling with the top vent I was able to maintain 220-230 throughout the cook (it was mostly pegged at 225) although the temperature spiked to 257 while I was in the shower which I was able to undo by closing the top vent about half way.
I put a large can of tomatoes into a loaf pan and smoked it in the Bradley for a couple of hours. I pureed them up and used them as a base for my BBQ sauce. I added molasses, brown sugar, a little maple syrup, salt, pepper, ketchup, worcestershire and a few dashes of my homemade hot sauce for a little tang and a little heat. at the 4 hour mark I sauced the ribs. This is what they looked like as they were about to be sauced:
At the 4:30 mark a good glaze had developed and I sauced them a second time. At the 5 hour mark I pulled the ribs out of the smokers and cut and served them alongside a salad and my wife's scratch-made mac and cheese.
And finally, here is one rib from each cooker on my plate. You'll notice the smoke ring on the rib that came out of the WSM:
Now, my observations. I used both cookers at the suggestion from Pit Boss - a side-by-side comparison of the 2. I first sampled a rib from the Bradley electric. Mmmmmm - very good. It was juicy, tender, had good bark, good glaze and good smoke. At that moment I was thinking there is no way the WSM ribs will match, much less surpass this rib. I thought wrong. The differences were subtle, but added together it was a noticeably better rib. It was slightly more tender. It was slightly juicier. It picked up slightly more smoke and the smoke, glaze and bark were all more complex. All in all an extremely good rib.
I forgot to add, when I sauced the ribs I turned the smoke back on in the Bradley and I threw a small handful of chips into the WSM. I wanted to give the sauce an extra kiss of smoke. The food went over really well. The kids loved it and the adults loved it even more. After dinner the kids went into the basement to watch a movie and the adults (5 of us) played euchre and drank a lot of beer. Something about having 'cue on a cold February day made it even more fun. Nothing like eating summer food in the middle of winter.Comment
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Outstanding cook, Jeff!...well documented with pics and detailed description. I'm sure that it tasted even better. By the way, my experience with the electric smoker versus the pellet smoker have been very similar; so now I've been using the electric one only for smoking salmon, everything else on the GMG. -
Yeah, Ray. After the cook my wife, being cynical, asked me if I was going to throw my electric in the garbage. Obviously not. For starters, it still produces really good food. Secondly, it has significantly more capacity than my mini WSM. Third, I can cold smoke in it (cheese, etc). And lastly, it truly is a set it and forget it in a way that a charcoal cooker can never duplicate. Need to smoke a butt for 14 hours? No problem with the electric.
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alrightalrightalright! I'm excited. FINALLY started my first corned beef.
Two briskets with an aggregate weight of 6.26# (8.99/# from Costco! YEOUCH)
Followed the corned beef recipe precisely, including the home made pickling spice, dark brown sugar,etc which was recommended. trimmed about 11oz of fat off mostly one of the briskets. Left a bit on the other so I can do pastrami if I choose.
Placed the briskets (cut in half) into a Hefty 2.5 gallon ziplock food storage bag, and squeezed ALL the air out before completing the ziplock. Mixed it all about and put it into a blue enamel turkey pan. The briskets were covered by the brining solution. Pan in the fridge.
Will turn it over a couple times a day.
Gonna be a long couple of weeks waiting to see how it turns out. Will update, but no time soon. If anyone experienced with the recipe spots anything I should know, PLEASE speak up. I'm a little worried that I had less brisket than called for (8#).Comment
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Great lineup, Stanley.Comment
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Kids wanted pizza, I wanted ribs..... I still want RIBS!
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Ernest What technique did you use with that cast iron skillet??
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