Chuck Roast -- Pulled Beef Barbecue

Like I said in an earlier post, I did more than smoke Spam last weekend. I picked up a couple of nice chuck roasts for pulled beef barbecue. Sometimes I'll use the point of a brisket for pulled beef, but I like the taste and texture of chuck roasts a little better.

I picked up two nice chuck roasts at Sam's over the weekend....one obviously a little nicer than the other. Go ahead and trim the fat off the outside edges. There is more than enough internal fat to keep the roasts moist.


I like to use my brisket rub for pulled beef barbecue. I rub the roast very generously making sure to get the sides as well. I use yellow mustard before I rub them to help make the rub stick.

Pulled Beef Barbecue Rub:

• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 3 Tbsp paprika
• 1 Tbsp garlic salt
• 1/4 cup onion powder
• 1 Tbsp ground cumin
• 1 Tbsp oregano
• 1 Tbsp cayenne pepper
• 1 Tbsp cracked black pepper
  
• 1 tsp kosher salt

I cooked the chuck roasts at about 225 (up to 250 at times) to an internal temperature of about 140 degrees. They'll look something like this at 140 degrees and it should take 3 to 5 hours depending on your cooking temp.

At 140 degrees I double wrap the chuck roasts and continue on the smoker at 225-250 to an internal temperature of 200 degrees. On a side note, I don't cook in foil very much. I don't necessarily have an aversion to it, I just seem to like my results without it. I do like to use it on the chuck roasts to collect the juices, though.

The chuck roasts are good and tender at this point. I immediately pour the juice off into a bowl and put it in the fridge. Make sure you let the meat rest like normal. I like to allow at least 20 minutes before I start pulling. If it's tender enough after resting you can just use two forks to shred it. It is kind of a pain and you can tell by the picture that I got tired of pulling and ended up cutting some of it with a knife. It was tender enough that I could cut it with the grain. It'll kinda fall apart when you reheat it. Once you have it pulled, take the juiced out of the fridge and scoop the congealed fat off the top. Add back enough of the juice to moisten up the meat good. You won't need all of it...you don't want it swimming in it. Here is the barbecue sauce that I like on pulled beef. This sauce is similar to a store bought sauce, but it's a lot less sweet with just enough kick to let you know you're eating it. I keep it around all the time for various things. I put just a light coating on the beef and have the sauce on the table to add more if needed.

Pulled Beef Barbecue Sauce:

• 2 cups ketchup
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1/4 cup yellow mustard
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 1/4 cup light brown sugar
  
• 1 Tbsp onion powder
• 1 Tbsp garlic powder
• 1 Tbsp cayenne pepper (more or less to taste)

This stuff is fantastic on cheap white buns for sammies. I had one for lunch today. It freezes well, too. Just vacuum seal in single or double serving and it'll keep for several months.

Brisket, Sausage, and ABTs

I did some atomic buffalo turds (ABTs) for appetizers this weekend. These are super-easy and they are fantastic. Just cut some jalepenos in half and scoop out the seeds. Add some cayenne pepper (to taste) to some pre-softened cream cheese and pipe it into the pepper. Top it with a lil' smokie and wrap in bacon. You can cook it at about any temp on the smoker. Once the bacon is done, they are ready to go. Make about twice as many as you think you'll need.


The in-laws are in town for a visit so I decided on an extended smoke session on Friday night/Saturday. I put the brisket on at about 12:30 AM on Saturday morning. I'm glad I did because it took longer than usual to get done....right at 17 hours. This was a strange brisket. It weighed in at 12.5 lbs, which is a little heavier than I like, but there was about twice as much external fat on it than I normally see. I trim the fat down to 1/8 to 1/4 inch, so what I put on the smoker was close to what I like. The brisket reached a plateau of 168 degrees sometime in the morning and then actually dropped in temp to 164 degrees. I'm chalking this up to some fat or connective tissue at the tip of the probe, 'cause that ain't supposed to happen. After 3 or 4 hours she started rising again. When it reached 190 deg internal I took the temp with a different thermometer. There was quite a bit of resistance in the meat so I kept on cooking. I did this a couple more times and finally pulled the brisket off at 205 degrees...by far the hottest I've ever had to cook one to get it tender.

Here is my brisket rub:

• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 3Tbsp paprika
• 1 Tbsp garlic salt
• 1/4 cup onion powder
• 1 Tbsp ground cumin
• 1 Tbsp oregano
• 1 Tbsp cayenne pepper
• 1 Tbsp black pepper
• 1 tsp kosher salt

The Final Product!!!

BBQ Linkage

Sorry about the lack of posts in the last week. Things have gotten busy in real life. I went a week without looking at my blog feeds in google reader and there were several posts I thought I would share. Enjoy.

• The BBQ Guy links to this article about aging beef. I've often thought about purchasing a small fridge for the garage and wet aging my briskets. I may have to pull the trigger.

• Get Your Grill On talks about skinning ribs. I, too, have heard of restaurants leaving the membrane on ribs to hold everything together. I take it off every time. One thing the folks at Get Your Grill On left out was to use a dull knife (an oyster shucker works great, too) and work it under the membrane on the 2nd or 3rd rib. Then, like they said, grab it with a paper towel and pull. The membrane will come off very easily on baby backs, but the spares will take a little work sometimes.

• Jason's BBQ Blog links to the gadget of the day. Some folks just have too much time on their hands.

• Plowboy's BBQ talks about bamboo cutting boards. I've been using a variety of synthetic cutting boards for a long time, now. I've been thinking of buying a wooden one just for veggies to save the edge on my knives a bit. Frankly, I haven't wanted to spend the money on a quality end grain board, though. I may have to give one of these bamboo boards a try.

• Speaking of cutting boards, Men in Aprons tells us how to take care of them.

• I agree with WhiteTrashBBQ, calculating the time to cook a steak would just ruin it for me.

I haven't forgotten about getting some recipes up from my cook last weekend. I'll post up my butt rub, etc. in the next couple of days, but I wanted to get these links up today. My In-Laws are in town this weekend, so I'll be firing up the smoker again. I'll let you know how it goes.

Meat Run!!

I made my first real meat run tonight since we move to Nebraska from Houston.


The Sam's was on my way home from work in TX, but now I have to go 25 miles out of the way, so I'll be doing fewer, bigger trips from here on. I picked up ground beef, hot italian sausages, two pork butts, 3 racks of BBs, a pork loin and a brisket. I also picked up some disposable aluminum trays and we were out of peppercorns and ketchup.

A lot of people prefer to get their meat from an old-fashioned butcher. If I could find a good one, maybe I would too, but I'll let you in on a little secret....a lot of regular butchers get old animals, especially cows. Sam's for the most part gets younger ones because they buy in bulk from larger slaughterhouses. This, of course, doesn't mean that some (probably most) butchers don't have quality products, but you should know what you're looking at and pick cuts that look good. I'm just saying that I've had good luck at Sam's.

Personally I've never gotten a bad brisket or a bad pork butt from Sam's. Their ribs, for some reason I can't figure out, are more variable than the other cuts, so I carefully pick through them until I find a satisfactory one (I do this for all cuts, actually). That's why I ended up with baby backs today...their spares didn't look great. Sam's sausage is not my favorite either...but they are decent, and relatively inexpensive. I rarely fire up the smoker without putting some sausages on, so I use these. If I have a hankering for some primo sausage, I get it elsewhere.

I'm firin' up the smoker on Saturday...stay tuned!!

What is BBQ?

Growing up in rural North Carolina, BBQ to me was one thing: pork. It may have been from slow roasted shoulders or from a whole hog, but it was pork. It may have been pulled or chopped, but it was pork. It also had a vinegar-based sauce on it, but that's a whole other discussion. Now, BBQ to me is anything that is slow-cooked with real smoke. It could be a pork butt, a whole pork shoulder, a whole hog, a brisket, chickens of any persuasion...hell, even a fatty and atomic buffalo turds (ABTs) qualify...sorta. As long as it is slow-cooked using real smoke, it counts as BBQ to me. On a side note, if you don't know what a fatty or ABTs are, stick around, I'll post on them eventually.

Lots of folks will disagree with me on this, but that is the way I see it. Shoot, we can't even agree as to how to spell BBQ....barbeque, barbecue, Bar-B-Que, BBQ, etc. You know, some folks say they are cooking insert any meat here on the barbecue (barbie for our down-under friends) this weekend....or, let's have a barbecue this weekend. You won't here me using the term "BBQ" in that way, but to each his own. I don't let the semantics bother me much. I will spend an equal amount of time on this blog talking about grilling recipes, techniques, etc. that don't qualify as BBQ in my book. I've been trying some new (new to me anyway) things on the ol' Weber Kettle lately that I'll be posting up in the weeks to come.

So, in short, if it's cooked slowly with real smoke I call it BBQ. But if it is cooked outside using charcoal and/or wood, I'm all for it, whether I call it BBQ or not.