Smoked Cheese

Here is another post I've been meaning to get up for awhile. We had a lot of company over thanksgiving and I wanted to have some snacks around for all the football we were going to watch. It had been awhile since I smoked some cheese and I thought that would be good to munch on. I couple days later I smoked a chub of bologna (sadly, no pics) and made the best bologna and cheese sammies.

You can smoke pretty much any cheese you want, as far as I know. I chose a block of extra sharp cheddar (my favorite), pepper jack (always a hit), and swiss. The cheddar and jack were from Sam's, so they were huge. I cut them in half to maximize the smoke flavor. I "borrowed" a cooling rack from Mrs. Hog (shhh, don't tell her) to get the cheese up off of the grate.


The most important thing when smoking cheese is to build a very, very small fire. Basically you don't want any heat, just the smoke. It was pretty easy this time because it was in the 20s outside. I burned down some charcoal, added 3 or 4 briquettes and one small piece of hickory to the firebox. The aluminum foil is just there to keep the stuff from falling through the basket as it burns down.


Simply add small pieces of wood when needed. I replaced the charcoal once as well. With a little practice you'll learn what works for you and how long you need to smoke the cheese to get the flavor you want. I like mine pretty smoky, so I went 2 hours or so on these. Mmmmmm, cheese.

Smoked Eggs

I mentioned way back in my very first Monthly Roundup how I wanted to try some smoked eggs. I was cooking some pork butts overnight sometime last fall (that's how far behind I am getting stuff on the blog) and decided to do a fatty and eggs for breakfast. Sometime in the wee hours of the morning I put a fatty and three eggs on the smoker.


I didn't really know how long to cook them, so i just let them go until the fatty was done (160 degrees; a little over an hour). It was as simple as that.


If anything, the eggs were just a touch overdone, but not too bad. I just peeled the shell off of them and had smoked sausage and eggs for breakfast. It was fantastic. You can see where the smoke penetrated the egg shells and colored the white of the egg. they had good smoke flavor, but it wasn't overbearing. If you like hard boiled eggs, you'll definitely like the smoked eggs. If not...well, you probably won't like them. I'll be doing these again when cooking overnight. I'll do them again sometime to make egg salad, too. Oh, and smoked deviled eggs would be awesome, too. Yep, I'll definitely be doing the eggs again.

Whatchagot Stew

So, a little before Christmas, Mrs. Hog and I were sitting around on a Saturday morning and wondered what we would have for supper. It had gotten bitterly cold here in Nebraska. In fact it got cold right after Thanksgiving and has been that way since. We've had snow on the ground since the week after Turkeyday. So we thought something inside would be good. Stews and soups always go over well when it's cold outside. We decided on a "whatchagot" stew. What is a whatchagot stew, you ask? Well it's called that, because whatever ya got...throw it in the pot. A few weeks earlier I smoked a couple pork butts. One of them I threw in the fridge after it cooled a little because I didn't feel like pulling it, already had some pulled pork in the freezer, and wanted some cubed stuff for an occasion such as this. Here's what I used in the stew:

• A couple pounds of pork butt, cubed; I had kept the shoulder blade with a good bit of meat on it (frozen, of course) and threw it in, too.
• Surprisingly, we didn't have any canned tomatoes (we almost always have some around), but we did have a big can of chunky spaghetti sauce....so we threw it in the pot. See what I mean by "whatchagot" stew?
• Ketchup
• Frozen green beans, corn, and carrots. Use any vegetable you like and have on hand, frozen or fresh. Kidney bean, pintos, black beans, etc. would go well it it, too.
  
• Fresh white onions, cut into good-sized chunks. That's a technical cooking term there, folks..."good-sized".
• Potatoes, cubed
• A big handful of my butt rub. Another technical term; "big-handful".
  
• Sriracha ("Rooster") Sauce, to add some heat to it.
  

I think that's everything. Like I said, though, put anything in it you like. Put everything in to a pot sufficient to hold it all (this freezes well, by the way). Bring it to a boil, then simmer for a long, long time.


We got this on the stove about lunch time and ate it for supper at sixish. If you simmer it very slowly it'll be hard to cook it too long. Just come back every hour or so and give it a good stir. Mrs. Hog made some drop biscuits in a mini-muffin pan to go with them.


My Mom gave me a 9-quart dutch oven for Christmas, so I'll probably do this in the oven using the dutch oven when I do it again. I did a pork roast a couple weeks ago that I'll get up on the blog sometime. Obviously, a pot on the stove top works just fine for this. I've got some of it still frozen, and after writing this up I think I'll have to thaw some of it out soon.

How NOT to Inject a Pork Butt

Not only do I tell you of my successes in my outdoor cooking, but I'll tell you about my failures as well. Failure may be a strong word in this case because the pork butt ended up very good, but the injection was surely a failure.

My buddy and I decided to "tailgate" at home before the NCSU/FSU football game last month. (Don't look now, but NCSU may get bowl eligible after a horrendous 1 and 5 start.) I had a couple pork butts in the freezer and moved them to the fridge on Wednesday night to be put on the smoker Friday night. The game was at 2:30 central time, so we want them done for lunch. If you remember from my last pork butt injection, I didn't really see a lot of difference with the injected butt. This time around I decided to use my Eastern NC vinegar sauce as a base, because I love the sauce. I strained the bits of pepper and stuff out of the sauce and mixed it 1:1 with apple juice. All is well at this point. I pull the butts out of the fridge and set one aside (uninjected, to compare). I start to inject the butt and realize to my dismay that the butt is still slightly frozen. It's not frozen hard. I can get the injection needle into it, but when I press on the syringe the liquid just runs out of the hole in the meat. I tried several different areas of the butt, but only got the injection to stay in the outer couple inches of meat. After messing with it a little while, I said "screw it" and just threw em' on the smoker. Slightly frozen meat does fine on the smoker, by the way. You'll actually get a bigger smoke ring.

So, the long and short of it is to never try to inject a semi-frozen pork butt. I should have checked it earlier in the evening. 30 minutes on the counter would have worked wonders. I was in a hurry the next day and didn't get pictures, but you can follow the links to beautiful pork butt pics.

Atomic Buffalo Turds (ABTs)

Here is another post I've been meaning to get up for a couple weeks. I posted about atomic buffalo turds one other time, but I didn't really give them their due. We had a pot-luck party a couple weeks ago and I offered to make the appetizer. ABTs were the obvious choice.

Start out by cutting the stem off and halving the peppers. Then I like to use a grapefruit spoon to scoop out the membranes and seeds. Just use the teeth of the spoon to cut through the pulp up near the stem. Then simply rake it down the length of the pepper to scoop everything out. If you want them to be hotter, take out the white pulp and seeds, but leave the thin membrane on the inside wall of the pepper. Give em a good rinse now to get extra seeds, pulp, etc. off of them.


Coring out the peppers is probably the biggest pain of doing ABTs. Once that is done I lay out the peppers and Mrs. Hog helps out with the rest of the process. An extra set of hands make it go a lot quicker.

Make sure your cream cheese is soft before you try to pipe it into the pepper. I let mine sit out for a while, but you can microwave it if you have to. Be careful, though....you want it soft, not melted. I like to add some cayenne pepper to the cream cheese. Just add the pepper to taste in a bowl and use the back of spoon or a spatula to mix it in. Mrs. Hog bakes cakes, so I use one of those fancy piping bags for the cream cheese. If you don't have any of those, just cut the corner out of a zip-lock bag.


Then simply add the lil' smokies on top of the cream cheese. Give them a little push and they'll kind of stick into the cream cheese.


Use a half of a strip of bacon to wrap around the pepper. When I just do a few of these I use toothpicks to secure the bacon, but when i do this many I use bamboo skewers. I put the skewers through the lil' smoky and not the pepper. It's enough to hold the whole thing together, but it's easier getting the ABT's on and off. It also makes it easier handling that many ABTs at once.


Unfortunately, we were running late for the party and I didn't get pics of the cooking or the finished product. Luckily I had old pictures from a Christmas party last year in TX. One hundred turds pretty much fills up the Chargriller. As you can see, this was before I figured out the skewer thing. You can cook these at whatever temp you want. If I do them by themselves I cook them at 275ish for about an hour and a half. They're done when the bacon is done to your liking, which is crispy for me.


These things are as beautiful as they are delicious!!


It's important to note that this recipe is really just a sample. Use your imagination and come up with other stuff to do with these. You can change the cheese, the spices, the kinds of peppers, etc. One of the best ones that I've done was to mince up some pork butt really fine and mix it in with the cream cheese. I believe I left out the smoky on that one. Anyway, you can do anything with these and they'll turn out great.

Grilled Pork Loin

Better later than never, I guess. I actually cooked this on labor day. It was a pretty busy week and I didn't get a chance to put it up. Anyway, here it is. Enjoy!!

We cook pork loin fairly often. Everytime I take a meat run I pick up a whole loin. I'll cut most of it into chops but I always leave a third to a half of it whole for a nice roast. I used to smoke these all the time (still do, occasionally), but I've found that I like to do them indirect on the kettle a little better. They're lean, so they cook better at a little bit higher heat, and they'll cook quicker on the kettle, too. I start by scoring the top of the loin and sprinkling with kosher salt and cracked pepper.

Like I said, loins are pretty lean, so I top them with bacon when I cook them. The bacon fat will render and kinda baste the loin as it cooks. Besides, smoked/grilled bacon is fantastic!!

We decided to cook some veggies in foil on the grill since it would take 45 minutes or so to cook the loin. In a bowl I added just enough Italian dressing, salt, and pepper to coat the veggies. Use whatever kind of veggies you like, but this time we used onions (red and white), mushrooms, squash, and zucchini. Make a boat out of foil and just wrap the veggies in there to cook.


You can see that I put the charcoal all on one side of the kettle this time (instead of on both sides; scroll down for example) I did this simply because I needed a little bit more room for the big pile of veggies. It will cook the same either way.


I cook my loins to 150 degrees, then pull them off the grill to rest. The temp will continue to rise a bit and will end up between 155 and 160 degrees. I let them rest at least 15 minutes before slicing. The bacon usually ends up a little better looking than this. It was pretty thin, so it curled up as it cooked. It was still mighty good, though.


In addition to veggies, we baked a couple potatoes. Instead of the usual butter, sour cream, etc. we went with cheese and salsa. It was some might fine eats, if I do say so myself.

Pork Steaks

I realized today that I've only posted about pork steaks once, when I posted about my maple bourbon pork chops. I never saw pork steaks for sale until I move from Nebraska. You just don't seen them in North Carolina or South Texas. I guess all the shoulders there are cooked for pulled pork or cut as country style ribs. I usually cook these over direct heat for a couple minutes per side and then finish them indirectly, especially if they're cut thick. I used my all purpose BBQ sauce (bottom of the post) on one of these so I added two coats of the sauce at the end of the cook and cooked it over direct heat just long enough not to burn the sauce.


As you can see, I ate some of the sauced and nonsauced steaks and they were equally good. The missus made the corn and broccoli salad again (we do it a lot in the summer), but she also made a new squash casserole that was very good.

Squash Casserole

• 2 pounds yellow squash, sliced
  
• 1 onion shopped
• 1 cup water
• 1 can cream of mushroom soup
• 8 ounces sour cream
• 1/4 melted butter
• 1 box of chicken flavored stuffing mix

Boil the squash and onion until tender. Stir the squash and onion (including liquid) in with the remaining ingredients. If the mixture isn't very liquid you may not need a whole box of stuffing mix. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes ore so until the casserole is browned over.

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.

Smoked Spam

Yes, I said Spam.....

I'll put just about anything on the smoker to see how it turns out, and when a coworker brought up the Spam website (Warning: lost of flash and audio) last week at work....well, I decided I had to give it a try. They're really playing up the, "Hey look at us, we're Spam, haha" kinda thing. We got a good chuckle looking at the website. I haven't had Spam since I was a kid, so I thought I would just throw it on the smoker to see what happens. One of them I smoked naked and the other I rubbed generously with butt rub.

They were both pretty good. Only a slight smokey flavor because the smoke didn't really penetrate the meat. There is a crapload of salt in these things, so the one with the rub was a way too salty. If I ever do these again I'll rub it with either a very sweet or very spicy rub to counteract the salt a little bit. I fried a couple leftover pieces this morning for a spam and cheese sammie for breakfast. I could really taste the smoke after it sat overnight.

No, I didn't fire up the smoker just for some Spam yesterday. I cooked some pulled beef barbecue, too.

Country Style Ribs with Weber's Sweet and Tangy Rub

Not to get on a Weber's rub kick or anything, but I followed up last weeks pork chops with some country style ribs using the same Weber's sweet and tangy rub. I wouldn't normally post this up, but the sweet and tangy rub went with the country style ribs much better than the pork chops. It took to the indirect grilling much better than the direct heat. In fact it was very, very good on the country style ribs. I'd try Lawry's or brining before I'd use the sweet and tangy rub again.

Of course I had to cook up some hot Italian sausages while I was at it.

Pork Chops with Weber's Sweet and Tangy Rub

I hardly ever buy commercial rubs or spice blends anymore, but as you've read, I do keep Lawry's around and use it mainly on pork. Mrs. Hog and I were walking through our local Wally World (Wal-Mart) last week and I noticed the Weber spices in the spice isle. I've been wanting to try some new stuff and decided on the Sweet and Tangy seasoning. I just did some pork chops directly on the grill. Be careful grilling over direct heat when you use a rub with a lot of sugar in it (like this one). What I do is sear both sides of the chop and then finish them up with indirect heat. The rub was pretty good, but seemed to be lacking something. I like the sweet/tangy mix alot, though. I have a very spicy rib rub that I use with a super sweet glaze that I really like. Anyway, I may try to make a rub similar to this one....I just have to figure out how I want to tweak it.

Mrs. Hog made a corn and broccoli salad that was delicious. I think she got this base recipe from one cookbook or another, but she doesn't remember which one. She makes this fairly regularly and no two are quite the same. Just use whatever you have in the fridge/pantry and it'll turn out great.

Corn and Broccoli Salad recipe:

• a head of broccoli
• small red onion
• a cup of corn (fresh or frozen)
• 1/3 cup of cheese
• 1/4 cup bacon bits
• dressing:
• 1/2 cup mayo
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
  

Remember that all those amounts are approximate...use whatever you have. We've done a balsamic vinegar based (no mayo) dressing with this, also.

Portabella Mushroom "Burgers"

Ok, this is as far from BBQ as you can get, but I thought I'd share anyway since it was pretty good. Mrs. Hog has had a portabella mushroom burger a couple times at a restaurant and when she saw the mushrooms on sale she just had to have one.

Alright, tangent time. How in the hell is one supposed to spell "portabella" anyway. I'm seeing portabella and portobello....anybody?

Anyway, we decided to grill them up with some zucchini and they were great. You might have noticed that I've cooked a lot of zucchini lately. They are coming into season in the the gardens of south central Nebraska right now and both my secretary and my boss are trying to unload them at work. I'll take all the free produce I can get.

We did a balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper marinade on the mushrooms. I'm using the term marinade loosely here. We only "marinated" them for about 10 minutes because you don't want them to get soggy.


We did the zucchini in Italian dressing like I've done before, except we cut them into wedges. That turned into a bad idea. They were hard to turn on the grill and the point of the wedge would get stuck down into the grill great. I'll be cutting them flat from now own. They were good, though.

Pork Chops: Lemon Soy Marinade

I tried out a new marinade on Saturday night. We pulled some chops out of the freezer on Saturday morning and I decided I needed to try something different. I had kinda gotten in a rut with my chops. The last several times I've cooked them I used some variation of these chops using Lowry's Seasoned Salt.

I scoured my cookbooks for something new and decided on a soy sauce/lemon juice marinade from Tarantino's book (link in sidebar).

Marinade:

• 1/3 cup soy sauce
• zest and juice from one lemon
• I added a little extra lemon juice (maybe a tbsp) because it didn't look like enough
  
• 2 teaspoons dijon mustard
• I probably added a bit more than 2 teaspoons. I was at the end of a bottle and just added it without measuring.
  
• 1 clove of garlic
  
• 1/4 cup canola oil
  

Run everything through a blender or food processor.

I marinated these for about 5 hours turning them once during that time. The chops came out fantastic.


I cooked corn and zucchini on the kettle as well. The zucchini will not take long to cook, so put it on right as the chops are finishing. Slice the zucchini lengthwise, coat with olive oil, and add salt and pepper to taste. It will only take a couple minutes per side on a hot fire.

Smoked Chicken Wings Update

I cooked the smoked chicken wings again last Sunday and wanted to update you on a little observation I made. I had too many wings to fit into two aluminum pans, so I put a half a dozen or so directly on the grate. Those half a dozen ended up even better than the original. Yes they made a little mess in the smoker, but it was totally worth it. I think the biggest difference was that it took up a bit more smoke and, more importantly, none of the rub came off the wings when the fat rendered out of them. I'm going to do these again soon and I'll give you another update with pics. I doubt I'll ever use the pans again.

Injecting a Pork Butt

I have cooked a lot of pork barbecue in the past, from whole hog to country style ribs, and have never seen the need to inject it with anything. I know a lot of folks swear by it, so I thought I'd give it a try. Everybody raves about Bib Bob Gibson's shoulder injection (their white sauce is good, too), so I thought I would give it a try. I did one butt with the injection and the other without. I used the same rub for both butts and they were both cooked at 250ish degrees to an internal temp of 190 degrees.

The injection recipe:

• 3/4 cup apple juice
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup kosher salt
• Note: I got this recipe from "Peace, Love, and BBQ" (Link in sidebar) and it says to finely grind the salt. I don't because it's going to dissolve anyway and once it's dissolved, well, it's as small as it's gonna get.
  
• 2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
  

As you would expect the injection didn't affect the outside appearance of the butts. I wrapped them in aluminum foil after they were done because it was going to be a couple hours before supper. I just left them on the counter and they were still piping hot for supper. Sometimes I'll cook overnight and get the butts done even earlier. If so, I'll put the butts in a cooler after wrapping them and stuff a couple of towels in with them. The butts will stay hot for several hours (I've kept them for 5 hours before). This works well for brisket as well.


Now for the comparison. When I busted open the butts, I didn't immediately notice a difference. I was primarily looking for a difference in the juiciness of the butt and I didn't immediately find it. After looking into it a little further, I did notice that the meat right next to the bone was a little more juicy in the injected butt. This cannot be seen in the picture below. What can be seen is the color of the injected but on the right. It's a little darker, which I assume is because of the Worcestershire sauce in the injection. I'm not sure if this is normal or not, but I like the whiter butt better. As for taste, I couldn't really tell a difference, but I knew which was which. I had my wife and a friend do a blind taste test and they both could tell which was injected but said it was very subtle. They thought they were equally good, but just a little different. So, I doubt I'll be injecting any more butts because I don't think I gain anything from it. Now, a whole shoulder might be a little different. Darn, I guess I'll have to get me a couple shoulders and do another little experiment.

In the end pulled both butts and just combined them. It was some good eats, if I do say so myself.

Chicken Halves With White BBQ Sauce

Well, I meant to have this and another post up late last week, but had some technical difficulties with my laptop where I had these pics stored. Better late than never, I guess.

I really like doing chicken indirectly on the kettle. Sometimes I like to do a white BBQ sauce with this chicken. A lot of folks haven't heard of white BBQ sauce, but it hails from Decatur, Alabama at Bib Bob Gibson's BBQ. I haven't had the pleasure of eating there, but it's on my to do list. Their family recipe is all over the internet, but I used a simple version that I actually like a little better. I need to make theirs again sometime and reduce the amount of lemon. Anyway here is my very simple white sauce recipe:

• mayonaisse
• apple cider vinegar
• Add enough vinegar to cut the mayo. The sauce should just coat the back of a spoon
• cracked black pepper (to taste)
• cayenne pepper (to taste)

As you can see, this is a very simple recipe, but the family really likes it. Here is a pic of the sauce and the bird.



I understand that at Bib Bob's they dunk the chicken in a 5 gallon bucket of sauce. I obviously don't make that much at one time. I just spoon it over the chicken as I eat it. This way your guests can control the amount of sauce they use as well.

Smoked Chicken Wings

I did quite a bit of cooking over the weekend so I'll have a few things to share this week. First up is the appetizer for Saturday's cook. I've been wanting to do some chicken wings for a while. I was trying to think up a recipe when I saw this post at Jason's BBQ Blog. His wings looked fantastic, so I thought I would give them a try. I had to deviate from his recipe some so I'll post what I did here.

The rub:

• 1 part kosher salt.
• 2 parts turbinado sugar
  
• Jason used yellow sugar...I'm going to show my ignorance and say that I don't know what that is.
• 1 part paprika
• 1 part garlic powder
• 1 part onion powder
• 1 part dry mustard
  
• Jason used ground black mustard...again, not sure what that is.
  
• ½ part coriander
  
• Jason used cardomom, but it was outragously expensive, so I substitued.
  

The sauce:

• 2 cups smoked tomato halves
• Two good sized tomatos, smoked on the Chargriller for about an hour at 250ish. I don't think I smoked them as long as Jason did.
  
• 1/2 to 3/4 cup dried dates.
  
• Jason used fresh dates (I think), but I could find any.
  
• 1 clove garlic smashed
• 1 large red onion, quartered.
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 juice from ½ of a lemon
• ½ tablespoon rosemary
• ½ tablespoon thyme
• 1 teaspoon coriander
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon cayenne

Put all of the sauce ingredients into a blender or food processor and liquify it.

I sprinkled the rub very liberally over the wings and let them sit for 15 or 20 minutes. Jason used a BBQ wok for his wings but I used a couple disposable aluminum pans. I put one layer of wings per pan and smoked for a total of about 2 hours or so. You can rip one open when you think it's close and take a look to make sure they are done. The fat really came out of the wings, so I drained the fat twice during the cook. Like Jason, I put the sauce on about a half an hour before the cook was over.

The sauce ended up kind of gooey, so I fired up the kettle and charred up the outside of about half the wings....you could see them on the left of the pic. The ones that I put on the kettle definitely had a slightly different taste, but they were equally good. These wings will definitely be made many more times. They were fantastic.


Update: make sure you check out my update on this recipe in a more recent post.

Saturday Night Grilling 4-28-07

I hadn't planned on posting about my supper on Saturday night, but I cooked the whole meal on the ol' kettle. That is always fun for me. On the menu was thick cut (one inch) boneless pork chops, corn on the cob, and asparagus. I went all minimalistic on the prep for the whole meal.

Corn: Rub with olive oil and salt and pepper to taste.

The corn will take the longest. Some people like to cook them in the husks or in foil, but I like to put them directly on the grill. I like to put them over the coals and turn every couple minutes to get a little char on it. Then I put them on the cooler side of the grill for 20-30 minutes depending on how big they are.

Chops: Lawry's Seasoned Salt, Garlic powder, and cracked black pepper; all to taste.

The chops will go on next and cook them like you always would. These were thick, so they took 4 or 5 minutes per side on the hot part of the grill. On a side note, I cook my boneless chops hot and fast to sear the outside. I don't measure the temps in mine, but I'm sure they end up at 150ish or so. The temp will rise a little when you take them off, so if you take them off at 160 they will be overdone by the time you eat them. Let them rest for 10 minutes or so before you cut into them. By the time you get inside, finish up with the drinks, set down and have the blessing, they'll be ready to go.

Asparagus: Coat with olive oil, salt, pepper, a little garlic powder, and some balsamic vinegar.

The asparagus won't take long and do burn easily, so I put them on last. Again, I like to put them over the coals to char them up a little, then put them on the cooler part of the grill. Cook them to whatever tenderness you like. We like ours a little crunchy, so 5 minutes is about right.


The finished product!!!

Maple Bourbon Brine, Part II

I promised awhile back to follow up on my maple bourbon brine post. I had some brine from the previous cook that I didn't use, so I stuck it in the freezer for future use. I pulled it out last weekend and brined 4 2-inch boneless pork chops for about 6 hours. I cooked them like I did in the first post; indirect for 30 minutes or so and a minute or two on each side over hot coals to finish them off. They were fantastic....better than the thin chops from before, but about equal to the pork steak. In my admittedly limited experience with brining, it seems to me that thicker cuts do better.

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!!!