Labor Day Brisket and Bourbon

It's been a while since I have posted anything about BBQ. Part of the reason is that I have not done much cooking as all of my go to stuff is packed away in a locker and its just been plain hard to get the time anymore to do it. When you are living out of Moving boxes its easy to think about things other than BBQ. I have found a few things that have tried that are now in the regular rotation on the grill and I will try to give a summary of these things in a future post.

Today I tried something that I have never done...a whole packer brisket that has the point and the flat portions un trimmed. In the past I have only used the "Flats" and they tend to dry out over a long cook. Brisket by nature is a really shitty cut of meat. Its a tough muscle that has a lot of connective tissue contained inside. This cut lends itself very well to a low and slow approach with the long cook times necessary to break down and covert the fats out of the meat and render out.

The plan was to wake up early and fire up the Smoker....little did I know Sam came down wide awake at 3:15 am and Max woke up at 5am. I ended up falling back asleep and finally woke up around 8:30. At 1.5 hours per pound of brisket in the conventional way...no way it would be done in time for dinner.

If you have ever read anything cooking brisket every once and awile you run across a topic of high heat. This goes against evey rule in BBQ. You know what? Worked pretty darn good. I don't think it had as strong of a flavor if it had gone the traditional route of 15-20 hours in the smoker at 225F...but it was not dried out and for the most part very tender. Part of the process is wrapping it in a foil pan for 3 hours or so at 300 or better. I put the whole trimmed brisket on at about 9am at 230F until it hit 150 internal...then jumped the temp to 315F until the meat hit 170F. Then in the pan and foiled for about three hours until the avg. temp was between 195 and 200F at around 5:30am. Really you are looking for a tender product that either a temp probe or fork has little resistance in. I made up a brine of sorts....beef bullion cubes in about 2 cups of water and some Worstishire sauce. I let it rest in the fridge for a day prior. Rubbed the Meat with almost a entire bottle of HEB brisket rib only found in TEXAS.

I normally don't care for Beef as BBQ...but this was great. Having a little confidence in cooking a brisket at higher temps and shorter times will allow you to do bit more experimenting with spices and techniques because you don't wrap two full days into cooking it and when it comes out like a space rock....no big deal. 

Its worth mentioning that the BBQ Guru Temp controller did a great job of holding the selected temp at the higher elevations than I thought. The Duty cycle of the fan was at about 80% at anything over 300F.  

Lastly....Picked up a bottle of Costco brand Bourbon. I am pretty sure I have had this before at some point and for some reason but wanted to try it again. If you know anything about Bourbon you can tell by the info on the label what distillary it came from. It's a Jim Beam product and they produce a wide variety from the White classic Jim to Booker's and Knob Creek. This Costco Bourbon is somewhere just below a Knob in my best guess. Found this to be one of the few that I like on the rocks with a splash of water just like Knober. You can pick up a bottle for less than $20.00

Memorial Day Cook

Short week this week as expected with the holiday and all.  I am starting to get frustrated with the home building process. Honestly I don’t know why I didn't expect this to happen…I guess I was just being dumb in thinking that it would get moving the day after we closed. I think realistically it will not be finished until mid to late September. Whatever. Still need to pick out flooring and talk about a few other things with the design but right now any forward progress is what we are looking for.

Memorial Day BBQ- I purchased a little gizmo called “The BBQ Guru” that is intended to help control the temps a bit more effectively in most wood/charcoal fired cookers. Basically what it is a watertight programmable device that is connected to a 10 CFM fan that will pulse off/on to stoke the fire for an indefinite amount of time.  You set the temp to whatever you desire; close all the bottom vents on the cooker and let the fan do the work. It’s really a great idea and seemed to work very well under the right conditions.

Here is a photo of the set up. It looks a little robotic with the whole contraption but well worth the results.

I was able to figure out a few things that I was previously un aware of. First off, the temperature that I had  been cooking at prior to using the controller were considerably higher than my targeted 225 while manually setting vents and adjusting the temps. This was evidenced by the much longer cooking period…the shoulders never got to the target of 195F internal and I decided to pull them anyway as we were all getting hungry. Important note: The target temp of 195 is not the temp that the pork is safe to consume…realistically is in the 160 range. For smoking a shoulder the magic happens at around 195F. It’s at this point the shoulders have broken down to the point all the fat renders out of the meat making for a juicy and tender product once you start shredding. In my experience anything south of the 195 mark makes the shoulders a little tougher and not quite as juicy.

The other thing that I noted is that I stink at cooking ribs. My technique is not consistent enough to produce the same quality every time. It also might be that I was still operating the cooker at the 225F mark and realistically the temps should be a bit higher than that. The other thing I did was instead of foil wrapping the ribs I instead put them all in an aluminum pan and covered them in foil. Bad idea. I was using spares trimmed to STL style and truthfully I have not had good luck with them and I think I am not using high enough heat and long enough cook times. I want to give it another try in the near future at a higher temp and see what the outcome is. They looked good just didn’t have that fall off the bone texture I like. I need to try to get a little more consistent to attempt a competition cook that I am thinking about next May.

Lots of experimenting with this weekend and for the most part it turned out OK…Pork shoulders were the stand out. I fired the smoker up around 2 pm on Saturday to try some chicken thighs and didn't shut it off till Sunday at about 5:30pm adding charcoal only once.

I didn't get a ton of pictures with this cook as I drank my way through most of it!

Start of Summer....

Memorial Day! The official beginning of summer is almost here. For my family this summer will be a bit different as we are staying with my parents while we wait for our house to be built. We are slowly settling in and it’s becoming more normal. Lots of things are planned for this summer and some unplanned. First off…didn’t think we would have sold our house as fast as we did. I thought it was the unsellable object that would haunt us forever (Hence the living with the parent’s thing). June is birthday month for the boys and Sam starts school in August. We also have a short vacation planed in August for just Ali and I. Max should hit a few milestones this summer as well. Assume he might be walking and at least talking abit. He currently has his own language now but I think will really come into his own in the next few months. His 1 year birthday also means NO MORE FORUMLA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I would like to at least take the kids camping a few times this summer…we have a few trips scheduled for next weekend and for the 4^th of July. I also re booked the lake site for late in October. That should be a good trip for sure.

Doing a big cook this weekend hopefully….Have a few gadgets that will be delivered that hopefully will gain some more consistent results. I purchased a temp controller for the weber that helps maintain the fire at a consistent heat level and also helps to conserve fuel.  More detailed review will follow on this once I have time to mess with it.

 On the Menu this weekend:  

1.       Pork shoulders

 If you are going to go through the trouble of firing up a cooker you might as well cook a few butts.  Once you shred em’ and cover em’ in sauce they freeze very well for consumption within 6 months. Doing this actually is great for camping meals and quick last minute weeknight meals. 

2.       Chicken Thighs

Going to try something a little different…want to brine them overnight and see how they turn out with a little light smoking in the cooker. Update to follow.

3.       Ribs cut to St. Louis Style

With the temp controller these should turn out  a little better than usual. I don’t think I am going to do anything special….but we will see.

I will post the results next week!

 

Start of Summer

The end of May has arrived much quicker than I would have ever imagined. This means a lot of things around our house. Its the beginning of Gibson's swim season, Vacations, Birthday's and most importantly BBQ starts to go full swing. I never really shut down in the winter but I will admit I don't enjoy it nearly as much as being ableget some yard work done and enjoy a cold beer while Q'n some random cut of meat. Today...was one of the days I long for after coming out of the subfreezing St. Louis winter.

On the menu today was something I have never done....Spare ribs trimmed to the St. Louis Style. When you talk ribs around here I typically go for Baby Backs.  The last few cooks I have been getting weird results with BB's. This is for a couple of reasons I think. First, the crio packs that I usually buy at Costco never really contain uniform slabs. They come in packs of three and are very decent quality but they seem to always vary greatly in weight from slab to slab. This results in at least one of them being over done and dry no matter what I do. Spare ribs are the section below the baby backs and tend to be more uniform and have a little bit more fat on them to render off during the cooking process. They do take a bit more prep than baby backs but I think now they might be worht the trouble.

I had Ali pick up two packs from Diebergs as opposed to Costco out of connivence. They looked  pretty darn good. They came pre trimmed with the bits and pieces neatly arranged in the pack. The one thing I do like about the Costco Baby Backs is the membrane is already removed. If you are cooking for a lot of people this is a real time saver. I can t speak of their Spares but would assume they also have the membrane pre removed. 

For this cook I wanted to try separate rubs for each slab to figure out what might be the "ringer" for the season. I do like Charlie Virgo's rub and use a variation of my own but did not have any on hand so went with the jar I picked up at Figuero's. The other was "Blues Hog" rub that I received from my Brother In-Law for Christmas. Also I decided to only sauce one slab and chose the Blues Hog to hold the honors.  Arthur Bryant's (mostly salt) was chosen to season the trimmings. I pre rubbed the ribs about 24 hours prior to the cook.

As far as cooking....I planed to go with the "Texas Crutch" or 3-2-1 method for both slabs. This involves cooking the ribs low and slow at around 225-250F for 3 hours, Wrapping the slabs in HD foil and adding liquid (in my case 1/2 can of beer to each slab). This allows the liquid to flash to steam and really break down the connective tissues and a. Then the next step is to un-wrap and cook for an additional 1 hour to help firm up the outer skin and create some bark. That was at least the plan. 

I started the cook as usual following the Minion Method to bring the cooker up to temp. Foiled the water pan and added cold water and assembled the cooker. Added the ribs using the handy rack I picked up at Cabbala's and set the remote thermometer to keep an eye on the cooker temp. As far as smoking woods...I used a handful of Mesquite and one good chunk of Pecan wood. Notice the word "Chunk"....avoid the chipped woods in the smoker...they just burn up rather than slowly burn. Also no real need to presoak the chunks, just throw them in.

 A bit on the thermometer....I found this gem on Amazon and it allows you do do a couple of things....one is monitor the cooker temp and the meat at the same time wordlessly with the included module. Second, you can set it up to alarm when the cooker drops below a given temp or when the meat is nearing a determined temp. This comes in handy for over night cooks.  I recommend it for anyone running a smoker. For this cook, I only used the cooker probe to monitor the temp at the upper grid. Yea, I am that good.  One thing I noticed during this cook that I had not experienced prior...the temps were much, much harder to control. The cooker wanted to run hotter than the target temp. It got to the point I shut down two vents entirely to maintain the 225-250 target temp at the upper cooking grids. The Weber Smoky Mountain Cooker has two cooking grids...one in the middle and one at the top. These two grids do have different temps while in operation...the lower grid runs cooler than the upper. This is due the water pan sits right below it acting as both a heat sink and indirect barrier as well as the convective action of the smoker itself. The upper grid runs at least 10-15 degrees warmer and the very top of the cooker dome is hotter still. I usually see another 10-15 degree increase from the upper grid to the dome.   See the cutaway view Below.

Every new WSM manufactured now  includes a factory installed thermometer in the dome lid. While its a great tool to indicate temp you need to do a little math if you are going to rely on it to determine what the cooking grids really are seeing. Back to the temp trouble today.....One thing that was different today than in the past was that the wind was really whipping around and for the first time we had temps over 90.  In fact when I pulled the cover off to get this whole thing started, the temp gauge on the lid was already reading 130 just from sitting in the sun. 

Back to the cook....at the three hour mark I pulled the slabs and foiled them. Added the Beer and put them back on. It was at this point I found the drawback of the 18.5" Dia. Weber....In order to make them fit on the cooking grid they needed to be turned on their sides. With the ribs out of the foil this is not a problem (See Photo to left) but once they are wrapped and the liquid is added, there was the possibility of the foil ripping and spilling the liquid down the sides of the cooker and hitting the hot coals. When this happens, the coals release tons of ash into the cooker and that is never good on the food.  The HD Foil really is a necessity in this case....not one pin hole or rip while manipulating them into place. Mostly luck I think. Weber also offers a 22.5" Dia. Smoker FYI. 

I sprung a little early to unwrap the goods due to the cooker running hotter than usual and during the process to my surprise the first slab I grabbed literally pulled apart with the tongs. Hmm.  I ended up pulling at least two bones right out of the slab. They were done at this point for sure. They had been on the cooker for 4.5 hours at this point. Rather than running the cooker wide open to boost the temps for the finial portion of the cook I decided to fire up the kettle and put a little direct heat on them to help firm them up. Smeared some Tennessee Red Sauce on and gave it some heat to help the sugars caramelize give a little bark.  This process literally took 3-4 minutes. So the 3-2-1 method really turned in to the 3-1.5-.5. If I could have stabilised the cooker at the target temp, I think the ribs would have not been so loose and would have held their shape through the whole process. Regardless, this was not competition quality it was taste I was going for.

What came off the grill can only be described as heaven. The Ribs rubbed with Blues hog and slathered with Tennessee Red Sauce were un believable. The sauce really did change flavor once the heat got to it. It melds fantastically with the rub and the pork. Literally every rib fell off the bone and so juicy words don't due it justice. Minus a few little problems, this one was a great start to summer and most definably will be repeated again! 

FIrst Long Cook With WSM

So I have had this odd shaped steel vessel in my back yard for a month or so and have used it once to cook some ribs back in February but really wanted to give it a test run on a long cook. I have been looking at a lot of info on how to run the cooker, methods and techniques to get good results. The site is where I got my main source of info is virturalbullet.com and is dedicated specifically to the Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker. It is so in depth you can even toss the manual that comes with your cooker. This site alone is one of the main reasons I decided to go with the Weber and not an Egg (other than price). Everything is there and in easy to read formats. Its organized into a few diffrent sections.....operation, maintenance, start up and a forum section. If you have seen the show Pitmasters on TLC....Harry from Slap Yo Daddy BBQ is a regular in the forum area as are others on the BBQ circut....so lots of good info here.

On Saturday it was cold and crappy in St. Louis and we decided to pack Sam up and go to the store for a few things. I recently bought a new cookbook on line and its loaded with items all focused around grilling. last weekend we grilled some shrimp and small fillets and it turned out excellent... so shrimp was on the menu this weekend as well. We picked up some things for Cajun Po Boys and I on a whim decided that I wanted to try a pork shoulder and give it a try...The rule of thumb for cooking at low temps is roughly 2 hours per pound so I would need do an overnight to make this happen. The cut of meat I bought was roughly 7 lbs and after trimming the fat cap and it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 6.5 or so. This means i had no option but to start it late on Saturday Night in order to have it ready for Sunday lunch or dinner. If you have ever smoked anything in a kettle for a long period of time you will know that it seems that you need to monitor and adjust air into the cooker on a constant basis to keep the temp low. This is where things get normally sketchy.....you need to plan your day out around the approximate time of it takes to fully cook the product and with anything but a dedicated smoker. This means either getting up extra early or staying up late. Or you can get up every few hours though the night to "feed" the fire. Its almost like a newborn.....I didn't care for the 2 hour feedings with Sam early on so this option was clearly off the table.

Around 8 pm we started prepping the meat....trimming and applying the rub. The standard rub I have been using I found on a website called amazingribs.com and is a take on Charlie Virgo's famous blend.  Its probably not the best for pulled pork and really is better suited for ribs but its all I had at the time. Here is the recipe:
http://www.amazingribs.com/recipes/rubs_pastes_marinades_and_brines/rendezvous_rub_and_BBQ_ribs.html
Ingredients8 tablespoons paprika
4 tablespoons powdered garlic
4 tablespoons mild chili powder
3 tablespoons ground black pepper
3 tablespoons kosher salt
4 teaspoons whole yellow mustard seed
1 tablespoon crushed celery seed
1 tablespoon whole celery seed
1 tablespoon dried crushed oregano
1 tablespoon dried crushed thyme
1 tablespoon whole allspice seeds
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1 tablespoon whole coriander seed
1 teaspoon ground coriander

It also calls for Accent but if you read the ingredient list on the package it is just MSG. Leave it out...you wont notice.
I fired up the WSM using the Minion Method....A good write up on it is found here:
http://virtualweberbullet.com/fireup2.html#minion
This is a good way to ensure there is enough fuel for at least a 12+ hour cook and  is contrary to the Weber guide. The Minion brings the temp up and then you begin dampening air to maintain rather than fight it down from 350F to get to the correct temp as in the Weber guide.

A bit of a tangent about charcoal.....I primarily use Kinsford for both the kettle and smoker. Costco has been where I historically buy but they have recently began to only carry the Competition briquettes. If you pay close attention to the packaging you will notice that you get less in terms of volume with the Comp. vs the standard blue bag. Also, it does burn hotter...and faster. This is not desirable in a smoker. Most write ups for running a WSM you find out there base most if not all the info on the standard blue bag. I have been using lump hardwood Charcoal lately in the kettle  for things that require lots of heat such as steaks....anything you need to get a good sear on really. I won't go into that as it is two different animals.

Anyway....I loaded the chamber up with about 13lbs of Kingsord Blue and started roughly 30 coals and threw them on. Then Assemble the cooker, water pan and added the meat. I also Foil the water pan FYI...this allows for easier clean up. Let the unit run up to 250 or so and then damper the bottom vents to about 25%  I even went as far as drawing a simple spreadsheet on our Ipad to track vent locations...cooker temp and meat temp.  (Again with the Engineering Background)


I monitored the temp for about 2 hours and finally felt it was to the point that could go to bed. At that time it was a constant 220-235. This was about midnight and I really didn't know what to expect in the morning. For some reason I woke up around 5:30 and went out to check. I was certain that I would find that the fire went out and all would be lost but to my surprise a rock steady 225 was indicated on the dial. Checked the fire box and plenty left so I went back to bed! Fast forward until 10am or so and the meat finally reached 190 (perfect temp for pulling..well beyond the recommended 160 for pork)

It was stupendous.....if I may say so myself. Just a note....I only used the rub above....no brine or baste. Nor did I touch the meat until at least 8 am. Keep the lid on....every time you open the lid you add about 15min to the cook time. I cant say enough about the WSM and look forward to whats to come in the next few months.