Episode XII - Beef Tenderloin and a shocking rejection

Having eight people for dinner so it's time for another decent sized piece of meat, in this case a 6 pound beef tenderloin, and a few sides. We'll do the Mushroom Crusted Beef Tenderloin on page 100, the Stuffed Red Bell Peppers with Brown Sugar and Maple Baked Beans on 109, the Grilled Marinated Mushrooms on 110 and finally the Mustard Horseradish Sauce on 229.

Overall it was pretty simple and not a long cook time (a few hours all together) so that was cool. Plus Dave & Nic were just finishing Ramadan so I want to stuff my old buddy with some good American beef now that he was back from Japan. The couple formerly known as Mr & Mrs Riff Raff were over as were my kids.

Check out the beans. Very colorful! These things looked sharp on the plate too. I completely failed to take a picture of the mushrooms, but also really easy. Nice to have veggies that they kids will eat up and ask for more :-)

Here's the meat going on the Komodo. You really have to press the shrooms on it so they don't fall off, but once you do, it works pretty well.

It cooked up perfectly and check it out when I cut it. That was a perfect medium rare all the way through. Super nice. Extremely tender, though of course this is a good piece of meat to start with.

But.... hold on to your tighty whitey's for a moment, here's the shocker: One of my guests microwaved their meat! Argh! Double argh! Some issue with meat not being brown the whole way through. Sigh... from now on she'll be known as Vegan Egan because that wasn't real meat after being radiated like that. (still makes me shudder)

Anyway, here's my conclusions:

• The tenderloin is almost too tender to cook this way. I do like my meat with a little more texture. however, the flavor was wonderful and everyone ate it up


• As The Wife said on her first bite "Honey, these mushrooms ROCK". They were great


• I was originally a little disappointed with the horseradish thinking it wasn't quite spicy enough, but I was in the minority. Again, The Wife's comment was "Any stronger and it would've interfered with the meat". Probably true. Chris Lilly might be smarter than me


• Beans were first rate. One of the kids said I should've doubled the bacon (we all love bacon). Might try that next time

PS - The Wife continues to pair a new cocktail with each of my dishes. This time it was a Beer Margarita. Not sure how she did it. Looked and tasted like a very good 'Rita, but had a little carbonation to tickle the tongue. Very cool.

Episode XI.b

Soooooo, I am sorry to say that this blog was discussed at happy hour last night and it wasn't pretty. Turns out I've classified my friends into Good Folk and Riff Raff and Mrs Riff wasn't happy that she wasn't mentioned this weekend (Mr Raff had no opinion. According to the rumor, he just gave her his money and went home while she went drinking with us). Anyway, Mrs Riff pointed out (accurately) that she made a very good potato salad and wouldn't be doing it again if I didn't give her some attention.

Alrighty then.... I'm officially saying that all of her sides have been excellent and that Mr & Mrs Riff Raff are invited over at any point :-)

PS Happy birthday Angie.

Episode XI - Ribs, Ribs, Ribs Ribs

It's Labor day weekend, thank goodness, and time to cook out. I think there's 5 different rib recipes in the book so I better start making a dent. It will be us 4, plus 4 guests and so I'm estimating a half rack a person. that's really going to push the size of my Komodo (since I have the small one) and to try to make them fit I am going to use a trick that Munger1 mentioned his brother. Munger2 uses.


But first, time to select the specifics rubs and sauces. Since I need 4 racks of ribs I figure I can try 4 different styles. Girl Child of mine made the first selections. Pineapple Sweet Ribs on 193 with the Big Bob's Competition Sweet Glaze on 225 for choice 1, and then Country Style Ribs with Apple Bourbon Barbecue Sauce on 198 and the sauce on 227. To balance these I will do some similar to my previous style, coating one with John Henry's Mojave Garlic Pepper on one and John Henry's Pecan Rub on the other (and a layer of honey on both).

The sweet glaze turns out to be a little bit of a trick. It relies on two store bought sauces with no directions in the book, so I ended up substituting some KC Masterpiece that I had in the frig.


Time to get them on the grill. The idea to save space is to roll them and stand them on end. This seems to work fairly good at getting them to fit and cook. I know that I will have to wrap them in foil later and can stack them flatter then.

Dealing with 4 different styles is a bit of a hassle. Kind of fun to compare, but definitely tests the logistics as they are all coming off at different times, getting glazed, soaked, etc. Sheesh. Need a spread sheet :-)






Check out the results. They're quite tasty, but pretty different. From the left we have the pineapple sweet ribs, the Mojave Garlic, the Pecan Rub and finally the Apple Bourbon.







My conclusions:

• Most advice has you wrapping them in foil towards the end of cooking. Perhaps this is because I've also heard that the meat absorbs the smoke better at lower temps. But I am inclined to go back to my original style of wrapping first. I did this in part because my previous smoker wasn't very precise and this got them cooking more evenly. Then I would coat them with a layer of rub, some honey, then more rub. After a couple hours bare to the smoke then that formed a real nice crust and seemed to absorb a fair amount of smoke flavor.
• Pineapple came out pretty good though the pineapple flavor was quite minimal. (probably a good thing). The glaze was pretty average, but that can probably be fixed easily.
• I actually like the apple bourbon pretty well. They came out real tender too and were the only ones not wrapped at all. However, I'm not a real fan of that cut of meat a whole lot and would've preferred the sauce on the baby back ribs I think
• A couple people like the Mojave Garlic the best which was interesting. Much easier than the other styles. Complexity does necessarily lead to best flavor!
• I think that if you're going to roll them, then they need a some time stretched out and open to the heat and smoke or they won't crust up properly

One other big, big note. The Wife has often made cocktails to match what I'm cooking and it's sometimes channeled by which ever ingredients I happen to have left over. In this case, lots of pineapple juice. She says she's going to start a blog to chart the cocktails, so look forward to that.....