Episode XXI: Zuni Chicken and Grilled Watermelon Salad

I haven't been posting much lately in part because I've been doing a lot of "normal" stuff like steak and burgers. However, The Wife was out of town so it was time to be a little more adventuresome.

I'd been wanting to try a few things to get a crispier skin when smoking chicken. The natural process kind of works against crispiness, but I'd done a little research. There is a Zuni Cafe in SF somewhere that gets great reviews on its chicken. They salt and pepper the skin 24 hours ahead and then let the chicken air dry in the frig. I think this gives a much drier skin to start with.

Second, based on some advice from the Komodo Kamado forum about putting it on when the fire jsut starts so you get maximum smoke and set the target temperature higher than normal (about 400) and that way the high temp at the end helps crisp the skin.

Overall, I think it came out pretty good. Not quite as crispy, but much better than before. I think next time I will truly use a beer can to prop it up instead of the device so that more of the fat drips away.

Also, I was reading an article on Yahoo about healthy grilling. It describes a grilled watermelon salad that sounded kind of cool. No pictures and no measurements, but what the heck. How hard can this be?

Turns out, not too bad. I should left the melon on the grill a little longer I think to caramelize a little more, but it tasted pretty good in the salad. The article called for only arugula as the green, but I think it was a little overwhelming. Might use more mixed greens next time.

Anyway... overall two successful experiments and a nice warmup for the big party this weekend. Start cooking on Thursday :-)

Eppisode XX: Caramel Smoked Bacon

Ok, I am just massively, massively behind in making updates, so I am just going to skip some outstanding ribs, briskets a pork tenderloin, etc. and skip up to what I did today.

I've been having a craving for bacon, but had to wait for The Wife to go to Costco (about 34 days, but who's counting?) to pick me up some. I had a day rather light on chores for a change and I decided to go all out and try a bacon recipe from Serious Barbecue by Adam Perry Lang. He's had some great things in there including the best tri-tip steak you could possibly believe, but they are often complicated and labor intensive. However, today was a perfectly sunny, warm Texas day (water in the pool was 87 degrees at Noon) and so I just had to find excuses to cook outside.

Although this looked complicated, it actually wasn't too bad. On a normal day I wouldn't wait a couple hours for bacon, but I considered this a treat, not breakfast.

The idea was to coat the bacon in a mix of brown sugar, black pepper, red pepper flakes and crushed coriander seed.

The mix smelled great, as did the apple wood smoke, but argh! the Copper Coyote is not quite large enough to put a cookie sheet in. Bummer. So, I just spread out some foil and put them straight on the grill.

Results were outstanding. The mix slowly caramelizes over the bacon during the couple hours smoking. Although it wasn't crispy when I pulled it off, within a minute or two they kind of solidified when the sugar cooled and you got a nice firm piece of bacon. A little sweet, but also spicy from the red pepper and yet bacony. I think it is probably the first time The Wife actually seemed willing to physically push me out of the way to get more meat. I guess one could call that success ;-)

Next time I think I'll turn the temp down a little. I burned (i.e. turned to charcoal) the pieces around the edge. I think I needed to adjust the temp since I didn't have a pan in there even though I was using the deflector plate for indirect heat. Oh well, till next time....

P.S. The cocktail of the day from The Wife was a ginger Mojito. Very, very refreshing on a hot day.

Episode XIX: Another Cofee Brisket

I still haven't been satisfied with my briskets, so I've been studying a little. It seems other folks get a lot of success with what Iv'e tried, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't fiddle around with it a little. For one thing, I was watching BBQ Pit Masters on TV and watched them prep their meat. A few ideas have come to mind:

I'm going to trim the brisket very well. It seems like a lot of folks make the case that the fat helps keep it moist, but does it? Does the fat actually soak in? Can the rub seal it?

I am going to inject it. Most of the advice I see online implies it doesn't help. But can it hurt? It is easy, I've got the injector and most the recipes are just some combination of rub, apple juice, water and oil.

See, it still looks pretty good when I put it on the cooker. :-)

I will use the high temp method, but instead of wrapping in foil, I am going to put it in one of those big foil pans and cover it. That ought to help keep in a lot of the juices.

Final results? Pretty darn good. Very moist and quite flavorful. I didn't get the smoke ring I was expecting. I can maybe fix that by smoking a little longer next time, maybe a little lower heat to start with. But The Wife says this might've been the best brisket yet, so I am pretty happy. Now, if I just knew which one of the changes I made mattered.......

Episode XVIII: Baby Sheep

Its finally, finally time to get back to Big Bob and make some progress. Choice on this night was the Rack of Lamb with Mixed Herb Seasoning on page 202. Several folks were over including Riff Raff (again!) and the The Traveler with Ms Malaysia. I love lamb and don't get it often, so was really looking forward to it. Unfortunately I was drinking and chatting a lot and this was a little complicated for someone doing a lot of multi-tasking. Plus, it takes two grills to accomplish. Well maybe not for everyone, but this is one place where the Komodo was a little bit of a hindrance.

Anyway.... I digress. Rubbing down the lamb and wrapping the ends in foil so they didn't burn off went well enough. What you do is put the whole rack and a hot grill and kind of sear it up. Of course I got distracted (I'll blame it on the friends but it might have been, just maybe the alcohol) and caught them on fire. Gotta remember that these oil based pastes can light up fast when near an open flame. Fortunately, I caught it fairly quick.



Then... it was time to move it off the gas and onto the Komodo at a lower temperature where I smoked it for a while over apple wood.








Then.... it's time to slice the rack into chops, season a little then pop them back on the hot grill for 30 seconds per slide. Well, that was pretty complicated to manage three racks, not burn the chops and just generally keep things moving. Fortunately, I pleaded for help from The Traveler. I figured he used to work he used to own a restaurant so he could help, right? Well, not sure I trusted him working the knife while drinking so I put him in charge of the chop cooking. I think we ended up with some perfectly cooked medium-rare chops.

My thoughts?

• They came out excellent. I loved them. Lots of flavor and I would definitely do them again.
• The Traveler was just back from Japan and loved having "real" food again.
• I would advise limiting the drinking while handling all of these logistics.

Episode XVII: The Sausage Experiment

I've had this crazy idea for a year that I would make my own sausage. I love the stuff and this way I would get exactly what I wanted, right? Makes sense doesn't it? I think this all started when I realized that The Wife had a grinder attachment on the mixer and I just had to put it to good use.

So, when Boy Child gave me the sausage grinder attachment for my birthday I was set. I ordered a cook book off Amazon and quickly found out this was more complicated than I had imagened. Was I going to cure my own? Did I have to age it? Deciding "no" to that simplified some of my decisions.

Next task was to get the casings. Turns out nobody around here carries them. I had to special order from Hamm's, my butcher, and then they failed to come in their weekly shipment so I had to wait longer. And those things are expensive!! I've still got 40 or 40 feet of casing in my freezer.

Anyway, when they came in I got myself a pork shoulder and set to trimming it up. There were a lot of directions about fat to meat ratios, but this was hard work and it didn't take long to decide that the ratio was jsut going to be whatever it was. Cutting an entire shoulder into one inch cubes and separating fat from meat wasn't in the cards. I failed to take a picture of the mound of meat, but here's the shoulder bone I was left with at the end. I think it started out around 11 pounds.

While doing that I had the casings soaking and stuff like that. Again I forgot to take pictures and by this time everything was behind schedule. Ugh.

I finally started the grinding. Know what? this was HARD. First of all, I probably should've started wiht nearly frozen meat. this was turning to mush, sticking to the side and was a super pain. I also probably used too fine of a grinder.

The stuff was coming out like paste. Double ugh.

Did I tell you I was going to make two kinds of sausage at the same time? That's me, jsut add a little more complexity for the fun of it. I decided on two of my favorites, a Chorizo and an Andouille. I forget which is which in this picture. But the spices I mixed in seemed great.

Then we had to go back to the grinder this time to stuff the casings. No way I could manage the casing and feeding meat into the grinder at the same time. Time to get The Wife for help. I was on the way to failure and a burn out and I was only halfway done. Triple ugh.

However, she came through and after many hours of work, I finally had the sausages. They actually kind of looked like I know what I was doing. I twisted them into links and even though by now it was kind of late, I put them on the smoker.

As you might predict, that was taking forever. I should've stayed with the plan but it was getting too late and I was beat. By the way - the funny looking ones? I tried yet another idea of creating a caseless sausage by rolling the meat in egg and breadcrumbs. Stupid idea. Don't try it. And its ugly.

Finally, after they were about 2/3 smoked, I got impatient, pulled them off and finished them in a skillet with a little diluted wine. Kind of like beer brats,..... only not. In this case my idea was based on having some left over wine and both mixes had some wine in them already. I thought they would compliment.

So what's the final verdict? The lessons learned?

• I think next time I would just start with ground pork. That would sure save a lot of time.


• I am glad I tried a couple different kinds because the chorizo sucked! I don't know what I did wrong but they were very bland. It's supposed to be nice spicy meat and it certainly seemed like it based on the spices.


• The Anduille came out good though (even without smoking over sugar cane). Several folks tried it (including the dreaded in-laws from the Frozen Tundra) and they all liked it.


• The book said that after I mixed them, I should fry a little in a pan right then as a taste test. Should've done that. maybe I could've fixed it. But by that point I was tired and skipped the step.


• Dealing with the casings was also tough and kind of expensive. It is a whole lot cheaper to buy gourmet suasages than what I spent to make this mess. Frozen Tundra Sister-in-law suggested I just mix the mear wiht a little egg, shape them and put them straight on the smoker. They won't look as nice, but I bet they hold together (at least as well as a burger) would be much eaiser.

Am I going to do this again. Not in the near future, but maybe, just maybe......

Episode XVI: Addendum

Anybody notice I made a Thanksgiving post in March of the next year? Well........ I may be a little behind. You know, life, job, etc. Expect a few more shortly.

Episode XVI: Ham for Thanksgiving

Well.... it was going to be for Thanksgiving, but it turned out a few of the folks headed over to Riff Raffs for dinner were Muslim, so maybe ham wasn't such a good idea. Therefore, a couple days later I fired up the cooker and made a double smoked ham following a recipe off the the Weber virtual bullet site.

I was intrigued because I've sometimes felt that ham comes out too dry and I didn't want to make that worse by smoking it for a couple hours. This recipe had an injection that the author raved about. Quite complicated and lots of different flavors, from butter pecan, to rum, vanilla, amaretto and orange. When ever someone commented about making a substitution, they were quickly scolded on the forum and told that perfection came with precision. Let me say first that it was HARD to find all the stuff. Ugh, eventually had to order a couple things online. And then, boy, was it messy. I wrapped it up in saran wrap as suggested, but stuff still leaked out all over the place, squirted out of other holes and was just sticky, sticky.

I eventually got it done, then trimmed off a lot of the fat and scored the sides. The idea here was since the ham was already cured and cooked, then I was afraid that the flavor wouldn't seep in so I scored the whole outside and removed the fat so flavor would get right to the meat. Don't you hate it when you buy a honey baked ham and all that good flavor gets stuck to a giant piece of fat that would make you barf if you ate it? That wasn't going to happen to me. I scored it, glazed it and smoked it.

The glaze came from the same recipe. Not the usual brown sugar / pineapple sort of thing. Nothing wrong with that, but this one was a little different which also appealed to me. Not quite as sweet as some of them.


Check out the results!

Do you hate it when you get a piece of that white ham fat running through the center of our slice? I do. I've lost the link, but I found an alternative way to slice the ham. Instead of simply slicing from the top down to the bone, this has you coming in from the side and slicing out big chunks by following the lines of fat. A little messy, but you got some nice large chunks that you could then set on a cutting board and slice nicely. Much easier to eat.

My thoughts for next time:

• This was the moistest ham I'd ever had. But was it the smoker or the injection? Not sure.
• Sometimes I got a burst of vanilla or run flavor in the meat. Definitely not right. If I used the injection again (not sure that I would) then would cut back on both of those flavors.
• The glaze was excellent. Formed a nice crust and great flavor. Would definitely do that again.
  

Episode XV Postscript: Halloween

I didn't actually cook anything, but the The Wife and the Girl Child invested a lot of time setting up for a good party, so I thought I would show it off a little....






The family









The Wife aka The Evil Cocktail Doctor








Spare Eyeballs










The dinner table









Some blood punch for the little ones












Kitty litter cake for dessert









An unfortunate guest that won't be returning....








The end of the jello eating contest

Episode XV: Smoking a big fatty

So Girl Child wants to know what I'm doing this weekend and I say " helping with your Halloween party and then relaxing the next day by smoking a big fatty". She kind of gives me an "uh huhhhhh... What?" And I say "You know - a big fatty rolled in bacon and stuffed with cheese. It'll be perfect".

I think she left around then, but of course, can't let teenage girls distract you from legitimate fun.

Again, I am leaving the fold of Big Bob and going out on my own. Similar to the previous bacon explosion, I made a weave of bacon and a 2 pound layer of spicy Italian sausage, but then deviated with a layer of cream cheese, a layer of onions and pablano pepper I had grilled with bacon and garlic, and then a layer of sharp cheddar on top. Rolled her up and popped on the cooker. About 30 minutes from completion I slathered her in some sauce.

As predicted, came out Grrrreat! A few conclusions:

• 
  It was harder to spread the cream cheese than I predicted. Next time I want it at room temperature
  

• At first I was disappointed I didn't use jalapeno because the pepper didn't come through, but when we ate the left overs a couple days later, it was great. Kind of like the pepper had soaked into the cheese more. Makes me think this is a great dish to cook ahead.




• Also, I used a thinner bacon this time and I think it worked better. Still added good flavor and held it together, but the fat cooked up very well and I didn't see the kids trying to pick any off. And I just use everything left over from the weave in the veggies.

Episode XIV: Coffee Cardamon Brisket

I am sooooooo behind in posting. Ugh. And on top of that, I'm not even using a Big Bob recipe. Instead there has been a lot of conversation on the Komodo Kamado forum about this brisket rub that uses coffee and cardamon as the base. Add to that a lot of conversation about a high temp cooking method which includes a couple hours in foil and I was definitely starting to feel like wandering from the course a little. I think a long night at the House of Blues and sleeping late in the morning was a sign from the BBQ spirits that this was the perfect time to try this combo.

Prep was easy. I deviated just a little by not mixing the oil into the rub to make a paste, rather i put the oil straight on the brisket and added the rub. Seemed to work out well for me.

Cooking in foil is interesting because it is supposed to really shorten the cook time, however it accents one of my weaknesses - using my senses to determine completion rather than temp or time.

I also thought this would be a good time to try the baked potatoes again. Last time they weren't done, but using a higher temp I thought might give me more success.

How did it go? Here's my conclusions:

• I would say that I really liked the rub. Will definitely do this one again. Even though it had been foiled it still came out with an ok bark.
• Still haven't mastered the spuds. They came out very flavorful, but this time overdone. Argh!
• The high temp cooking seems to save time, but I might have pulled it off 30 minutes too early. Guidance is to stick a fork in it to check, and it seemed good, but afterwards I wasn't sure. See the problem is that the taste sample is fantastic, but when you slice and serve, it seems to dry up way to fast. Maybe I am not resting it long enough? And maybe I am rushing to cut off the point to make burnt ends? Needs more experimentation. Hmmmmm.

Episode XIV Prologue - Poop

Ok, this isn't really about poop, but I thight I'd title it that way to annoy both The Wife and the Girl Child. Always nice to get two birds with one stone.

Not many posts lately because I've been traveling and had a lot of interruptions with work. But the travel and the changes at the office have led me to the following list. It is remarkable how much toilet paper can vary from place to place and who puts a premium on it and who doesn't.

Anyway.... here's my ranking from best to worst:

1) The stuff The Wife buys (she's looking out for me)

2) Any civilized persons home and all nice hotels

3 - 50) Various other locations

51) Terminal 4 at the DFW airport (actually surprisingly nice given the location)

52) On an American Airlines plane (satisfactory)

53) Various train and bus stations through out Europe (not satisfactory, but livalble)

54 - 99) Big gap exists....

100) Hewlett Packard. Is the new stuff they just put in awful? Worse than sandpaper. Ugh. Yet another barrier to my productivity

Episode XIII - Beef Tri-Tip

The Wife talked me into fixing the flank steak last Sunday. Pitched the beef pretty hard. So, got all fired up, bought all the fresh herbs and went to the freezer to pull it out and...... it turns out it is the Beef Tri-Tip!?! What the heck? Can I not spell flank steak. Nah.... don't think it's me. Pretty sure it's the other half. But she shall remain nameless.

Anyway, on with this weekend's episode: Grilled Soy and Lime Beef Tri-Tip on page 96. This is a pretty easy recipe overall, just takes a little planing ahead for marination time. However, using the Komodo adds a complication. You're supposed to sear each side for 5 minutes then move it to the cooler side of the grill and cook another 30. As we all know.... once the Komodo heats up there's no going back. So, I tried the reverse sear that I've read others have used, but not sure it really helped here. Didn't really char the outside. Hmmmmm.

Nonetheless, the flavor came out great. The marinade added a lot of flavor and the medium rare came out wonderful. Definitely worth doing again.

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.....