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.....

Episode X - Big Bob Gibson BBQ with White Sauce

Another weekend, kids are over and time to get cooking. This time it is page 119 and what is supposedly a true classic of the restaurant - chicken with white BBQ sauce. I don't really get that, coming from KC if it isn't red it isn't BBQ sauce, but what the heck, we'll give it a try.

But first I had to learn how to butterfly a chicken. A little quick Googling and I found a very handy video from Weber. Good thing I saw it, I wouldn't have guessed that you started with the backbone.

Anyway... check them out. Not too hard to do. Recipe is quite simple - salt, then pepper & oil when you flip. Sauce is easy to make too.

Here's the finished result. The chicken itself was fantastic. I give a lot of the credit to the Komodo. This stuff was really tender and moist. Heck when I flipped them halfway through I had a leg & thigh just fall off. I'm still not sold that BBQ should be white and would give it only a medium rating, but Boy Child declared it excellent with his first bite and Girl Child declared it great and even got more sauce twice. Gads... am I not mainstream? Can't judge food? Oh well, to each their own. We'll just move on to the next.

Episode IX - Turkey Beast & Fruit Skewers

It was a new weekend and time to get serious again about my goal. Plus, The Wife is putting the pressure on by inviting some Good Folks (not my usual riff-raff friends) over. Turkey sounded like nice variety so we're going for Smoked Turkey Breast with Honey-Maple Glaze on page 137 and for good measure, the Grilled Fruit Skewers with Spicy Maple Cumin Glaze on page 140. Oddly enough, my first obstacle was finding just a plain turkey breast. Went to a couple stores and finally the butcher at Market Street pointed me to a partial turkey. No legs, but all the ribs, etc. Slicing that sucker up was pretty slimy, but you can see it there on the left.

The rub was pretty straight forward and if you can believe it, I got the fire going real easy, hit the target 250 pretty much right off the bat and the darned thing cooked right on schedule too. Of all days to have planned ahead and factored in extra time! It was ready a solid 45 minutes before Good Folk showed up. Check it out. Smelled great and looked gorgeous with the glaze.






Here it is plated. The sweet crunchy crust and the mild smokey flavor really complimented each other. Female Good Folk made the excellent lettuce salad. The chilled corn dish I made was quite interesting. Just out of the paper, but the chipotle mayo, lime, Cotija cheese and Parmesan really made a great combo on a hot day. Spicy, but cold going down.







For dessert I made the skewers. Quite tasty and pretty fast to make. Used apple, peach, banana and pineapple. The sweet & spicy combo was quite tasty. It was hard to get the apple on the skewer without breaking it, but was really good cooked. I guess the Cinnamon in it reminded me of apple pie. I'm not always a peach fan, they changed flavor when cooked with the glaze and were great.

So.... overall, quite a success. I would definitely recommend these recipes in the future. Both Male & Female Good Folk seemed happy though Male seems oddly determined to make my buy a boat. But where would I put the Komodo?

Episode VIII - Steak

OK, I cheated. Nothing out of the book this weekend. The Wife requested steak and I complied. Popped the Copper Coyote up to about 800 in the dome and then dropped two seasoned New York strips (Worcestershire & Montreal steak seasoning) down low on top of the fire. About 5 min per side and got a real nice sear but medium rare inside. Just perfect.

Since it wasn't an "official" cook, I'll use small pictures. Don't want Big Bob getting upset.

Episode VII - Pork Chops

Question: If it says to cook for 8 minutes per side and baste during the last 3 minutes, what does that mean? Cook one side for 8 minutes then the 2nd side for 5, then flip and baste the bottom, then flip again and baste the top then allow the bottom to cook for 3 more minutes? Have I wasted 3 minutes with all that flipping? Maybe its cook 5, flip and cook 5, flip, baste and cook 3, flip baste the other side and cook the final 3? Argh. Grilling is not supposed knot my brain.



Anyway.... back to that later.


I didn't get to cook this weekend. Birthday dinner with my son, dinner out with friends, etc. Life can be so cruel! So I needed something a little quicker to prepare for Tuesday. Hence the Grilled Chops with Apple-Cranberry Maple Glaze on page 63. On Monday night I whipped up the brine and popped them in the fridge. Not much to look at so far.

Tuesday it was time to get rolling after dropping my girl child off at at her YAG meeting (don't ask). As usual, when I'm in a rush it takes a while to get the fire going and this was no exception. However, an hour and a half later we're at 450 and ready to go. Or am I? Turns out it is time to go and retrieve aforementioned girl child. Fortunately, using my finely honed negotiating skills learned from years of dealing with territorial control in corporate America I convinced The Wife we were all better off if she would go get girl child and I would have some perfectly prepared chops ready upon her return. Whew. And that left enough time for just a little more run punch left over from the party too. So.... on go the chops and check them out after 8 minutes and the first flip!


Then 5 minutes on the 2nd side, flip, baste, flip baste and then 3 more minutes. Hey, they look just like the picture! These things came out perfect. Incredibly moist and the glaze was really, really good. Family loved them. :-)

Answer: I think correct procedure should be 5 min, flip, 5 min, baste, flip, 3 min, baste, flip, 3 min. Why? The glaze is better when it has caramelized a little and that only happened when on the bottom.