So yesterday we made a trip to Costco and I picked up some stuff. For myself, 2 packages of dual boneless butts, 1 package of 3 racks of baby back ribs, 1 package of 3 St. Louis ribs, and a double pack of beef plate ribs (Choice) at $7.99/lb, something over 12 lbs, about $90 for that last.* Oh, and a double pack of Kirkland bratwust - what is there, like 16 in these?
For a buddy, 3 packer briskets, 16#, 16# and 17# - he wanted the biggest they had - there was a 21#'er, but the vacuum packaging was a bit loose on it. Couldn't find where it was leaking, but I didn't want to risk it, so I left that one. Additionally, for him, 2 packages of dual pork butts, 16-17lbs per package.
*I put back a full pork belly I wanted, The Wife reminded me I have 2 seasoned packages of 1/3 pork belly each in the freezer. <sigh> I still wanted it, but when I got home and got all mine put in the chest freezer, there wouldn't have been room. Soooo, I guess it was a good thing - I won't let HER know that, though!
Overall, I spent about $600 on meat, and The Wife's eyerolls were pretty epic, altogether. We got SO many comments from people in the store who said they wanted to follow me home, or asking where I lived so they could come over, or whatever... it was pretty funny after the 6th or 8th one. I bet we had 20 people express the same sentiments. lol
Additionally, after shopping, Hahn Appliance Warehouse, Home Depot, Best Buy and Costco (the biggest disappointment, surprisingly), we ended up ordering a new fridge, as well, so I can have a full-width lower shelving for some better meat dry-brining opportunities. This also frees up the older side-by-side to go into the garage and become a 'meat fridge'.
Pretty sure this is the one we ended up with:
Whirlpool 36-inch Wide French Door Refrigerator - 27 cu. ft.
So anyways, on to this morning's cook.
We have family and friends visiting over the next couple of weeks, so I decided to cook up a couple of pork butts today and we can freeze plenty of it to use during the visits - I'll be doing plenty of fresh cooking, too, but this will be a great thing to pull out of the freezer and heat up for a quick meal.
With my new Camp Chef 24" vertical propane smoker, I'd only done a break-in with a 1 lb bologna, so I thought I'd do a comparison between my Yoder YS480 and my Camp Chef. Old reliable pellets vs. new propane-powered vertical with some maple wood chunks.
Got up about 0430 and got to work, had a few things to do, needed to clean up the smokers (I'm bad about that) and get 'em lit off, then salt & season my 2 pork butts. One was notably smaller than the other, I bet it is only 70-80% the size of the other, so that is gonna alter things a bit, but that's ok. I'm a techie, so I'm using all 6 probes on my original Fireboard today for the first time in a good while.
So I have an ambient probe in each cooker, and a short probe and a long probe in each butt. Here's the combined view:
Both butts salted with kosher salt and generously sprinkled with my Memphis Dust Plus.
At the moment, looks like my CC is running a bit hotter than I want, time to go tweak that down just a hair.
Once I got it all set up, it looks like a pretty wired-up Frankenstein's monster:
But I needed to come in, sit down and start my first 'refreshment' at 0530ish:
I'll go snap some pics of the butts in the cookers and tweak that CC down a bit, she's running 290ish at the moment.
Anyways, stay tuned, I'm interested to see how these butts come out. Of course, with one of them being so much smaller, it isn't exactly apples to apples, either, but it's just for the fun of doing two different cookers at once.
For a buddy, 3 packer briskets, 16#, 16# and 17# - he wanted the biggest they had - there was a 21#'er, but the vacuum packaging was a bit loose on it. Couldn't find where it was leaking, but I didn't want to risk it, so I left that one. Additionally, for him, 2 packages of dual pork butts, 16-17lbs per package.
*I put back a full pork belly I wanted, The Wife reminded me I have 2 seasoned packages of 1/3 pork belly each in the freezer. <sigh> I still wanted it, but when I got home and got all mine put in the chest freezer, there wouldn't have been room. Soooo, I guess it was a good thing - I won't let HER know that, though!
Overall, I spent about $600 on meat, and The Wife's eyerolls were pretty epic, altogether. We got SO many comments from people in the store who said they wanted to follow me home, or asking where I lived so they could come over, or whatever... it was pretty funny after the 6th or 8th one. I bet we had 20 people express the same sentiments. lol
Additionally, after shopping, Hahn Appliance Warehouse, Home Depot, Best Buy and Costco (the biggest disappointment, surprisingly), we ended up ordering a new fridge, as well, so I can have a full-width lower shelving for some better meat dry-brining opportunities. This also frees up the older side-by-side to go into the garage and become a 'meat fridge'.
Pretty sure this is the one we ended up with:
Whirlpool 36-inch Wide French Door Refrigerator - 27 cu. ft.
So anyways, on to this morning's cook.
We have family and friends visiting over the next couple of weeks, so I decided to cook up a couple of pork butts today and we can freeze plenty of it to use during the visits - I'll be doing plenty of fresh cooking, too, but this will be a great thing to pull out of the freezer and heat up for a quick meal.
With my new Camp Chef 24" vertical propane smoker, I'd only done a break-in with a 1 lb bologna, so I thought I'd do a comparison between my Yoder YS480 and my Camp Chef. Old reliable pellets vs. new propane-powered vertical with some maple wood chunks.
Got up about 0430 and got to work, had a few things to do, needed to clean up the smokers (I'm bad about that) and get 'em lit off, then salt & season my 2 pork butts. One was notably smaller than the other, I bet it is only 70-80% the size of the other, so that is gonna alter things a bit, but that's ok. I'm a techie, so I'm using all 6 probes on my original Fireboard today for the first time in a good while.
So I have an ambient probe in each cooker, and a short probe and a long probe in each butt. Here's the combined view:
Both butts salted with kosher salt and generously sprinkled with my Memphis Dust Plus.
At the moment, looks like my CC is running a bit hotter than I want, time to go tweak that down just a hair.
Once I got it all set up, it looks like a pretty wired-up Frankenstein's monster:
But I needed to come in, sit down and start my first 'refreshment' at 0530ish:
I'll go snap some pics of the butts in the cookers and tweak that CC down a bit, she's running 290ish at the moment.
Anyways, stay tuned, I'm interested to see how these butts come out. Of course, with one of them being so much smaller, it isn't exactly apples to apples, either, but it's just for the fun of doing two different cookers at once.
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