Show us what you're cooking - 3/13/2015 through 9/9/2015

[DWCowles]

And got a Pork Loin and cut a bunch of 1"+ chops out of it. They marinade in Moore's Marinade for about 4 hrs. then put them in the Rec-Tec until a the IT reach 130-135 then applied some clarified butter and pepper. Then they were sear on the gasser to 145-150 IT.

[mhalbrook]

Currently there. Earlier tossed some sausage on the hot side for breakfast, and did a pizza before putting the chicken on their pit.

[billg71]

Burgers and little red 'taters tonite, my second cook on the new Genesis(photo came out upside-down, not sure why).

Got the reverse sear nailed on the burgers, wife said they were perfect and she loves her some rare meat. 'Taters had some Bone Suckin' rub on the skins and salt-and pepper on the tops, coated with herb butter both sides. Worked out great!

[Breadhead]

Today... I had a steak for Dunch. Dunch is where old guys dine at a time of day that is to late for lunch and to early for dinner. If you have enough wine with Dunch you will be in bed by 8:30.

[smarkley]

OK... I could get on board with that old guy Dunch thing in a big way... cocktails at 4:30pm then?

[Breadhead]

@smarkley... I thought 4:30pm was beer 30 for all of us. Sometimes us old guys confused 2:30 and 4:30 but who's keeping track?

[Ernest]

OH YEEEEEAAH!





BBBR spiked with cumin has officially replaced Memphis dust for ribs.

[David Parrish]

Gotcha. It looked like bacon was involved but thought I'd be sure. At what point did you wrap the bacon around the ribs?

[Ernest]

From the get go David Parrish. I had to cook these at high temperature, just needed moisture insurance. I removed alternate bones from the rack, hit em with BBBR, wrap with bacon, cook at 275 - 315.

[David Parrish]

Very nice. Those look like a hit!

[Ernest]

Working from home,

[Huskee]

Last night's SnSed pineapple. Brown sugar glaze caramelized over direct heat, then a light shake of sugar cinnamon. Grilled until they 'looked right'. About 10 min.

[Huskee]

You bet DWCowles! It was soooo good. The kids were upset there were only 4 slices so two of them had to split one. I actually wanted another myself. Mental note: when making these, make 8.

[JeffJ]

Ah, grilled pineapple! It's always been a big hit every time I've done it and it pairs particularly well with shrimp tacos.

[richinlbrg]

Huskee, I guess this is not how you prepare your pineapple. But what knife skills! I'd be getting stitches if I tried this.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/maycie/youve-been-cutting-pineapples-the-wrong-way-your-whole-life#.rsqEEBWdjj

[Ernest]

My summer goal in full effect..... NY Strip. I'm not a big fan of NY strip, I'm a ribeye guy but this one was on sale at whole foods market.





And it was GUUD! I kept saying that I'll take a picture of the internal but I kept eating and eating and eating....

[The Burn]

I used to also be a bigger fan of ribeye, but when I started grilling my own steaks the MH way, I found that the NY strips I got from Costco were pretty damn good.

[Ernest]

Yeah but I still think ribeye is King

[Huskee]

I wish there was a hybrid between the two. I LOVE steak, maybe as much as David Parrish. But there are things I dislike about ribeyes and about NYS. Ribeyes are just too fatty. I don't mean marbling, I mean wads of fat. Sure they're arguably the most flavorful, but I don't care for 1/4lb of fat chunks on my plate after eating. NYStrips, if they're good, they're great, and they tend to be my favorite since there's more meat on one. But they can wishy-washy and gristly, even a higher grade one.

[Ernest]

[JeffJ]

Shorties in the WSM. It doesn't get much better than that. It looks like you are using the 14.5" in this pic. That little thing can really cook!

[Ernest]

I tell you what, that little thing gets more Action than any of my cookers. And when I remove the water bowl for Chicken, it can blow the PBC out of the competition.

[JeffJ]

Wow on the chicken! Yes, it's a great little cooker and it's capacity is deceptive. Setting aside ribs, I have yet to find myself in a situation where this little gem was lacking in capacity.

[troymeister]

Reverse seared pork chops with Asian flare.

[JeffJ]

That looks really good, troymeister.

[JeffJ]

It took about 2 and 1/2 hours to hit 165 in the breast using the Smokenator. I used Kingsford blue, lit 12 coals and had the vents wide open. I used a golf ball sized apple chunk and put water in the pan but did not replenish it when it ran dry. It was an 85 degree day and I was running about 340 degrees with the Smokenator.



Spaghetti sauce.

Ok, while I was cooking the chicken and making the spaghetti sauce I was also smoking a chuck roast that was destined to go into a pot of vegetable beef soup that I had put together the night before (all of this cooking occurred last Wednesday).

For the chuck roast I was trying out a new cooking technique and also testing a couple of theories. I have yet to do a true low-slow where the meat is cooked for 16+ hours at 225 and is never wrapped. Most of us live busy lives and I've yet to find the time for that and/or have been unwilling to forego some sleep to do it - charcoal cookers require at least a modicum of baby-sitting. I also prefer not to wrap as going unwrapped for the entire cook develops better bark. I have a 14.5 WSM and given the results it's produced I am going to have to add it's biggest brother to my lineup at some point; perhaps as a Christmas present. With the 14.5 I like how water in the bowl affects the cook. However, when I did shorties in a while back it I filled the bowl all of the way and it steamed the entire cook and I discovered that with this much humidity it didn't develop any bark at all - when I touched it with my finger rub would come off. Harry Soo advocates leaving the bowl empty and once the bark has set spritzing every half hour. I won't argue that this technique produces great results (he wins contests doing it this way) but it involves a LOT of baby-sitting, a lot of lid-lifting and can be a pain if both grates are in use. So, I was thinking what if I reversed the process? What if I filled the water bowl only half-way? Well, my thought was that the steam would facilitate smoke adhesion to the meat at the crucial beginning phase of the cook also the water would act as a heat sink which would enable me to have the vents open most of the way thus allowing plenty of oxygen to flow to the wood thus minimizing the possibility of creating bad smoke. Of course, with steam pumping out of the top vent the blue smoke can't be seen but a quick sniff test reveals that it's pumping good smoke - it smelled very sweet. I call this technique 'The Reverse Soo' and it's similar in principle to 'the reverse sear'. Over Memorial Day weekend I tried out 'the Reverse Soo' for the first time. My plan was to let the water bowl run dry and then let the meat sit in the stall for a couple of hours to develop bark and then wrap and finish the cook. Well, when the water bowl ran dry the temperature spiked up to 271. I closed the top vent most of the way but the temp only dropped to 264 and it stayed there for over 2 hours. At that time the cooker was in a courtyard so that temperature was achieved in very still air - it just wasn't drafting much so closing the top vent didn't affect the airflow very much. However, a funny thing happened. At this higher cooking chamber temp the meat powered through the stall and I was able to finish the cook without wrapping. One thing PBC fans rave about is how quickly it cooks. Well when I learned that the PBC runs in the 270-280 range it really got me thinking....what if I employ the reverse Soo and when the bowl runs dry just leave the temperature spike alone and once the meat powers through the stall THEN bring the temperature down and slow-walk the cook from the 180-200 range as that is the temperature range where the magic is purported to happen (fat renders and collagen breaks down) and the longer the meat is kept in that range the better.

So, my plan was in place. This is how it was executed.

Note: The outside temperature was 85 degrees. All of my prior WSM cooks were done in cold weather. Even the Memorial Day cook was cold - it was 38 degrees at 6 AM when I started that cook and the temperature only climbed to 54 degrees throughout the day. On prior cooks with the 14.5 WSM I was able to get 6, maybe 7 hours of heat with a full charcoal ring.

Also note: In addition to smoking the chucker I was also working from home and then in the afternoon/evening I was juggling this cook with the chicken and the pasta sauce pictured above. In short, I wasn't able to take copious notes. In fact, I wasn't able to take any notes so my summary is coming straight from the noggin.

This meat was destined to go into a pot of soup. What I didn't want was for the smoke to bleed into the soup and make the entire thing taste smokey. I wanted the meat to taste like smoked meat within a bowl of soup. So, I kept the wood to a minimum. I used a golf-ball sized chunk of pecan and a couple of cherry chips. Also, in order to minimize any smoke bleed I added the meat to the pot after it had already been cooked through and had been refrigerated. The only marrying of the meat occurred when the pot was reheated and as soon as it got hot I took it off the burner. Lastly, I was testing a theory I had developed: With the Reverse Soo the smoke is being applied before the bark sets. Once the bark sets the rub doesn't bleed off, so maybe it would seal in the smoke as well? Let's find out...

The beginning of the cook went exactly as planned. On a previous cook I discovered that the meat could be added before the cooker came to temp with no ill effects....I lit 10 coals and created a cavity in the charcoal ring. I poured the lit coals into this cavity and tossed some additional unlit coals on top. I filled the water bowl 1/3 full of water, put the meat on the grate, set the probes and put on the lid. The first 4 hours it ran in the 235-240 range. All good. Then the water ran dry and the temperature began to climb and climb and climb. Once it went past 280 I closed the top vent almost all of the way. It kept climbing. When it hit 295 I closed the bottom vents almost all of the way. It still climbed to 304 and then began dropping. Once it got down to 270 I opened the top vent 3/4 and with some additional fiddling and baby-sitting I was able to keep it in the 270-280 PBC temp range. It took about 3 hours to power through the stall. Once the meat temperature started climbing I closed the top vent almost all of the way. The meat quickly climbed to 178 and then stopped. I brought the cooker down to 230 and the meat sat at 178. After an hour the meat temperature began to drop. This is not what I wanted so I opened the top vent and brought the cooker back up to 270. The meat began climbing again and I left the cooker alone until the meat hit 195. At this point I closed the top vent almost all of the way. The meat hit 196 and stuck there. I brought the cooker down to 235 and left it there. The meat hit 196 about 9 hours into the cook and it only took about an hour to go from 174 to 196. A little before the 10 hour mark the cooker temperature began to drop (the coals were dying). At the 10 hour mark it was at 225 and I figure it would have taken about a half hour for it to drop to 210. So, if I were to jam in a few more coals I can probably get about 11 hours out of the 14.5 on a hot day which is pretty darn impressive given its small size and how little charcoal it uses. I didn't go to cambro as I didn't want the meat to fall apart into a stringy mess in the soup so I didn't want it any more tender than it already was. The meat turned out great. The smoke did NOT bleed into the soup and every time I got a bite of meat it tasted exactly as it should - it's integrity remained intact within the soup.

For the soup I took 4 tomatoes and an onion, hit them with a little olive oil, salt and pepper and seared them 5 minutes on direct high heat on the gasser. I tossed them into a blender and pureed. In the pot I softened an onion, red bell pepper, carrots and celery. Once softened I added the pureed tomatoes, homemade beef stock (1 pint), homemade chicken stock (1 pint) and a pint of tomato juice along with a few dashes of: lemon juice, homemade hot sauce and worcestershire. A little salt, cracked pepper, oregano and a bay leaf rounded things out. To the broth I added fresh green beans and yukon potatoes. I brought it to a boil and then reduced to a simmer. When the potatoes and green beans had softened I added some portabella mushrooms, grilled corn that I cut from the cob for yesterday's cook and a can of lima beans. The chucker was added the following day. The soup turned out great!

Here are the pics:

[fzxdoc]

Nice chuckle cook, JeffJ , I bet that soup was great, despite the limas in it. . The chicken looks delicious. With the marinara sauce ready for a future meal, I'd say you've had some good eating. Your day in the kitchen and at the smoker sounds like a fun one indeed.

Kathryn

[Breadhead]

I've never smoked short ribs before. I thought I would add them to today's chuckie smoke. I put them on at 9:00am. It's now 11:20am and the meat is at 172° and in the stall. 2:04pm Out of the stall. The chuckie is at 196° and the shorties are almost done. 3:20pm I pulled the short ribs at 206°. Wrapping them and putting them in the cambro. Chuckie is at 205°. I'm going to pull it at 209°. Dinner was served at 6:00pm just as I planned when I started the cook at 9:00am.

[troymeister]

Ribs on the smoker. Steak on the new Sous Vide

[Ernest]

Can't get any better!

[Ernest]

Spent almost the whole day at the zoo with my boy.
He wants French toast for dinner.

[JeffJ]

That pic epitomizes "golden brown".

[Brian/S]

My photos are going to be in the wrong direction... oh well. I haven't done ribs in... oh... I don't know how long, 2 weeks or so? Anyway... I wanted to try out a few different rubs. Both slabs are 3.5 lbs. The one on the left is a new rub that I want to try... called "Meatheads Memphis Dust". The one on the right is my 'ol standby... an expresso grind that I've used for years.