Barbecue
-
Straight from Wikipedia:
Barbecue or barbeque (informally BBQ or the Australian term barbie) is a cooking method, a style of food, and a name for a meal or gathering at which this style of food is cooked and served.A barbecue can refer to the cooking method itself, the meat cooked this way, or to a type of social event featuring this type of cooking. Barbecuing is usually done outdoors by smoking meat over wood or charcoal. Restaurant barbecue may be cooked in large, specially-designed brick or metal ovens. Barbecue is practiced in many areas of the world and there are numerous regional variations.
I have been barbecuing ever since I was a little kid. We had old fifty five gallon drums for pits and pieces of pipe and a lot of times just a hole in the ground with a fire going and a piece of expanded metal set on blocks for a grill. I don't call gas grilling barbecuing because it doesn't involve wood but some people think otherwise. About seven years ago I built a big pit out of some oilfield pipe. I had dreams of piles of brisket and multiple racks of ribs and chickens slowly smoking on this thing while I drink beer. What I didn't see was the pile of firewood I would need to cook with. I used the large end of the smoker maybe twice and ended up using the smaller end to cook on. First I don't like charcoal and to use hardwood every time I cooked was a royal pain. I had a big fire pot I would burn the wood down to coals then shovel them into the pit and cook. So I ended up using lump charcoal which is expensive but better than briquet. As I am typing this I am waiting on a freight truck to deliver my new modern barbecue pit. I have gone from a stick burner to a pellet grill. Anybody that reads this please chime in and tell me I didn't make a huge mistake selling my big old pit.
-
Pellet grills are so convenient, they won’t have as much smoke flavor as a wood burning smoker. But it’s a lot easier to deal with. Set it and forget it.
You might miss it if you like a really smoky flavor, but the convenience of it may overcome it.
There are ways to get more Smokey flavors out of pellet grills, I haven’t tried any.
-
I'm without a grill for now, but a good quality liquid smoke and smoked salt in a pressure cooking, slow cooker or well covered, low temp, lots of moisture oven environment yields some pretty good tasting stuff. Also significantly cheaper.
I do completely understand the art of bbq though!
San Francisco Salt Company makes some amazing smoked salts. They also have some fun flavored salts for other purposes: https://amzn.to/2yUR6LX
Living Nutritionals makes a pretty amazing liquid salt: https://amzn.to/2MSMi1S
I use both of these for my 'indoor bbq'.
-
@gash I use some fajita seasoning that has mesquite smoke flavored salt in it. I usually use it even if it is going on the gas grill. I also have some smoke flavored liquid marinade I have used but it can be overpowering . I don't think I will have this thing put together today to give it a try they just dropped it off a minute ago. Like rhyno stated what I have tried from my friends pellet grill is there isn't as much charred smoky flavor but still some smoke. Believe me I have overdone it with mesquite before and it gets bitter.
-
@bigfoot lol, yeah I've overdone it too with the smoke flavors.
Let us know how the pellet grill ends up working for good flavor and any tips you learn along the way.
-
It wasn't too traumatic of an experience to put this thing together. The edges are sharp enough to bite you and the hardest part was figuring out how to get the drip pan out. You have to turn it just right and that's when I almost got a couple of cuts. I sold my big pit for six hundred bucks. I had way more in it than that not counting my labor which is free. All built right here in my shop and took most of a week fitting and welding then painting it. I even made ash side boards from some stock I had for a cabinet job. Before I sold it I did another clean up and paint job. The turkey I sold it too got a heck of a deal I think. With the new one I am about four hundred bucks upside down and I can lift this thing by myself. I had to borrow a cherry picker to load my old one on a trailer when the guy picked it up. I don't know how he unloaded it. Old one and the new one.
The horns for handles is a bit korny.
Nice and shiny.
-
I forgot, I threw this into the deal also. It's the end of a big propane tank I had cut and made two of these. One I gave to a friend of mine and I used this one to burn wood down to feed the pipe pit. Lately I was using it to burn scrap wood from cabinets I built. He was more excited about getting this thing than the pit I believe.
-
Rec tecs are a nice middle of the line grill, I have the trailblazer. Perfect for me.
-
@rhyno This is the Stampede, my friend has a Bull. The only difference in his and mine is six inches on length and he has a better warranty in the terms of years. I really could have used the smaller one. We don't do any entertaining and I was trying to stay around six hundred bucks but I blew that. First cook was some pork ribs and all I can say is I have had worse. I got in a time crunch and cooked at 275 for a while and realized I wasn't getting any smoke hardly at all. By then my meat had already tempered and I cooled it down to 225 and that's where the smoke is. Kind of like an old car engine you got to run it rich to make it smoke. You crank the heat up and the computer turns the fan up to get the btu's and you end up lean on pellets. They have some tubes you can add pellets to for extra smoke so I guess I will look into a pair of those things. I don't think they're too pricey. This thing is a plug it in and go and the temperature stays right on the money maybe up or down a few degrees when the wind gusts but I never could keep a stick burner right on temperature. Took a lot of work with the firebox. Anyway four hours total cook time and I let them rest for about thirty minutes wrapped in foil and a towel. Just plain seasoning with salt and pepper and some garlic/onion powder. Sprayed them with apple juice a few times. I do sprinkle brown sugar on top of the spices as well.
-
If you have trouble with the lower temps in the app you can adjust the low feed rate.
I had to do this in mine since it’s small and holds the heat pretty well, and sits in the sun most of the day.
I haven’t tried the extreme smoke setting, or a smoke tube, but my brother has used smoke tubes to smoke cheese that turns out really nice.
Even when I get a good smoke ring I don’t taste lots of smoke, but I’ve only just got one as well.
-
@rhyno Thanks, I didn't know the app did more than just monitor temps. I haven't messed with it yet I hope my router will connect going from a metal building that is where we live to the shop. Not too far away and my wife's phone can connect so mine should. Mine is a six I believe. Mess with it tomorrow. I'm trying a chicken now low and slow so we'll see how that turns out. I am going to have to purge and eat some fish, all this smoked stuff is getting to me.
-
I made 27 links of pork sausage yesterday and smoked them on this pellet smoker. I call them teaser links because they are less than a pound and kind of short. They have to be to hang in this shallow pit. This smoker has a low setting they call extreme smoke that stays at 180 F and it took about two hours to get the sausages to 155 degrees internal where I pulled them off. I did them in two stages but next time I will have another bar to hang more in the smoking area. For some stupid reason I only took a couple of phone pictures so I will have to deal with that and show the brackets for the rods in which to hang sausage in one of these things. They got a good color but I haven't tried any yet, they went straight to the freezer. Sorry. I have eaten smoked salmon off of one of these smokers before. Pretty good but lots of prep to smoke salmon.
-
I'm thinking I'll do a dove if I get one tomorrow.
I also want to try and make jerky on mine.
-
@rhyno If you do some dove wrap them up in bacon. Some people shove a sliver of jalapeno in there and some cream cheese also. I never can cook them worth a dang but I always eat them up when somebody else does.
-
Tomorrow is the big test. I'm doing a brisket for the first time on this thing. It's about ten pounds and I hope to have it ready in less than ten hours. It's not too thick so I believe it will happen. The sausage turned out great. I'm kind of peeved because I have a big wood fired smoker too but it's for large amounts so there is a compromise. The digital control on the Rec Tec sure controls the temperature good and when I am using my big smoker I have to adjust the exhaust fan quite a bit to hold my temperature. I could put a Digi Q control on it but heck I'm usually sitting there drinking a beer watching the thermometer so I do the adjusting. Gives me something to do.
-
Finally got the phone pictures downloaded. To hang sausage in the smoker I had two super strong magnets from another project that I attached a block of wood to each one then screwed a hook into it to hang the rod the sausage is on. The magnets attach to the top of the smoker and believe me they are hard to get off. I replaced the wooden dowel with a steel bar for the second bunch of sausages I smoked. The wooden dowel was sagging a bit too much. It smokes the sausage just right and doesn't seem to toughen the casings as bad as my conventional wood fired smoker. Two hours at 180 and they were done. The brisket turned out good. I went three hours at 260 then three more at 230 and when the thick end hit 177 degrees internal I foiled it up and that was around hour seven. This wasn't a very big brisket keep that in mind. Once it got hot the internal temperature started going up pretty fast. Before wrapping it up in foil I moistened it pretty good with apple juice and peach bourbon. After a dip in the pool I guess two hours later it was up to 205 internal and I pulled it off and wrapped it in a towel still in the foil and put it in an ice chest for a couple more hours. Wasn't too bad for the first try maybe a tiny bit over cooked. The fatty end was almost falling apart but was really moist. An overcooked dried out brisket is the worst. The more you chew the bigger the bite gets. Might be tender but sure hard to swallow.
-
Got to have a little seafood around Xmas. I broke out two dozen shrimp and wrapped them in bacon then gave them a ride in the new smoker. I should have pre cooked the bacon a little but they were plenty good just a little over cooked. I dusted them with black pepper and garlic salt before wrapping and cooked twenty minutes at 350. I tossed a link of the boudin I just made on earlier and gave it a little smoke. It wasn't too bad and wasn't as spicy as the fresh link I tried when I made it. Maybe freezing and time will tone it down some. Merry Christmas.
-
Been a while since I did a brisket and they have been really scarce in the stores. I am guessing the heavy beef processors might be back up and running lots of cuts of beef have showed back up on the shelves including brisket. They had lots of small ones like this little one I grabbed and I also bought a whole sirloin for $2.99 a pound. It weighed about 18 pounds so lots of steaks and stew meat off of it. I have to watch out on my intake of red meat but include it a couple of meals a week. Most of this brisket will be sliced and frozen into two servings in vacuum bags. Just me and my wife and we try to stretch a dollar. This small brisket should be done around six this evening.
