With temperatures warming in a lot of areas I thought this might be a fun idea. Kind of like "what did you have for dinner" but specifically for us to banter about our epic weekend warrior pursuits, equipment, favorite rubs and techniques, purveyors, stories from the competition circuit, etc. and of course share some images to give each other some ideas or inspiration.
I recently did a picanha (sirloin cap steak) more in the style that it is cooked in Argentina where it's a really popular cut. I think the idea is to shave the outer meat as it cooks letting the fat cap baste the meat for delicious steak that resembles bacon in some ways!
I have some USDA prime beef short plate ribs and a prime brisket that I am hoping to do in the coming weeks. I can't get those locally but found an outfit that ships overnight to your door in dry ice packages and considering, the prices are not bad.
My setup is a weber gas grill, camp chef pellet smoker/grill combo, blackstone griddle and an oklahoma joe stick burner offset smoker. Hopefully I can share my "pizza oven" setup I've kind of tweaked over the last couple of years. I've got it dialed in pretty well. I need to work on my "release" to avoid the strangely shaped pies though but I'm able to get pretty good top heat without completely burning the bottom when I'm running around 800-900F
So if you enjoy taming the fires and cooking outside post up what you've been up to! Or if you're just getting into it and have any questions I'm sure there's a handful of us on here that could offer our own experiences.
I can do that
Did a slow cooked hunk of leg pork on my weber smokey mountain the other day.
So easy, and nice.
Still eating the left overs.
I got a variety of grills, from baby size to half drum, from bought to homemade....
All charcoal though.
Does my gas pizza oven count (uuni 3)? It could also go on pellets, but I can't get them here
Heck yeah it counts! I use my gas grill plenty. Some people mock pellet smokers, but whether it's a beer keg that's been cut in half or a $5000 smoker, the food is going to reflect the experience of the cook. I'm kind of surprised you have a weber and an ooni and yet you seem to have some an exotic life where you've spoken about some ingredients I take for granted not being in supply. I am constantly intrigued
Speaking of pellet vs. charcoal/stick burners. I've been cooking BBQ for close to 20 years. Although I should say learning to cook bbq for 10 years.. and cooking for close to another 10. The best pork butt I have personally cooked has been on the pellet smoker I purchased about a year ago. I know, no one shoe fits all and maybe the best possible pork butt on a coal smoker will be better than the best possible on a pellet smoker, but then we're splitting hairs I think and there are a lot of times when sitting out tending to a fire isn't what I want to be doing. Each has a time and place. here's a couple pics of the pulled pork from that cook.
It is a soft maple. I did save a couple chunks of it, they are out in the garage drying. Soft maple can be used, but it is not very popular as a smoking wood, since hard woods and fruit trees are better.
I've got a huge tangerine tree that is on my childhood property.. it's been dead now for years. I've never cut and seasoned my own wood so I don't know if it being dead for 5 years might have ruined it? But I've been meaning for a long time to go cut it all down into chunks or logs. It was a seedling my dad found and transplanted, so it wasn't grafted. It took it almost 20 years to produce fruit but my god was it a specimen. It produced 4 times the yield of the commercial tangerine trees.
Grilling "tip" here..?
Trying to grill any tiny objects usually resulted in the product dropping between the grills.
Bought some surplus expanded steel from the metal shop - was cheap ( no, not $tainle$$..too pricey).
Seasoned the steel & sewed some Tyvek storage bags (they are greasy after).
Work great for asparagus & the tinier shrimp, etc.
Yes, the {homemade] Tyvek bags are just to keep the greasy burned crap off of other stacked grates without the water/moisture stored & rusting.
A roll of Tyvek is actually pretty useful for a ton of things..air permeable & yet waterproof
Yep, I use expanded metal steel on my homemade grills
On my smoker, I use 2 grids at the bottom, perpendicular to each other, to prevent too many coals falling through.
I use lump charcoal, by the way.
It burns hot and long, it's the easiest available charcoal here.
I hardly use wood when smoking, as this charcoal quite often still contains bit of wood (not fully burned)
Smoked Salmon. This is a 3 lb farmed fillet from Costco. I'm not a huge salmon eater except when smoked. This is basically a Steve Raichlen recipe, I just skip the rum soak because I don't drink and so never have it around. His recipe is written for a 2 lb fillet. I doubled the cure because my favorite parts are from the thinner tail end. So I sort of fillet it a second time to have long flat thin pieces. Because of the added surface area, I need the extra cure. This is 2 cups of brown sugar (with extra lumps) and 1 cup diamond kosher salt, 2 tablespoons ground black pepper. Cure on the bottom, fish, cure, fish, cure fish cure. Wrap, refrigerat for 4 hours.
This is the second "fillet" from the fatter end.
More cure.
Repeat until you have a low pyramid of curing salmon.
In about 3 hours I'll fire up the smoker, and then in 4 I'll rinse the salmon and smoke it for 2 hours at 225. It's done after the first hour by most standards, but I like a smokier result.
Barbecue is my primary use of brown sugar, and smoked salmon particularly. This is why I end up with lumpy brown sugar as I just don't use it fast enough.
I've got a backlog of it from when Harmons carried it a few years ago. Sometimes it crops up among the Jewish foods as well. Costco has had it a few times. When I see it, I buy it. Next time I see some I'll let you know. This did empty out my current box.
I'm using a Traeger Pellet Smoker. These are electric operated, but pellet fueled. They have a pellet hopper, a feed auger and a glow plug for lighting the pellets up. There is a fan to encourage complete combustion and between the regulated feed and a thermometer probe it will do a fair job of hitting a desired temp in the barbecue range. I've not beem impressed for grilling performance. Because the combustion is fanned, I wasn't very happy with the smoke intensity, nor the filler hardwood pellet flavor common to most brands of pellets.
MaryB pointed me to a pure pellet maker and with an A-Maze-N smoke tube I can get pretty good results now. Additionally, I can use cheaper blends for fuel, and the better pellet in the smoke tube. Pit Boss is the Walmart brand pellet and burns pretty well in the Traeger. At least I've had no problems. I emptied the last bit of this bag into the hopper.
These are Great Lakes Renewable Energy Pellets. They are pure hickory for good smoke. I got this on Amazon, I go through it pretty slowly as I'm only using it for smoke generation.
This is the smaller of the smoke tubes. A full tube will burn 3-4 hours. I filled this about 2/3 full. To light them, you can use a blow torch or a heat gun. I'm using a heat gun. Pretty quickly it starts to smoke.
Then it gets really smoky.
Then it pops and makes a sustained mini roar as it bursts into fan driven flame.
It will burn about a foot of flame out of the top at first. You want it burn like a candle for about 10 minutes to establish a good burn for the smoking period. It will often snuff out before fhe full 10 minutes and I give it another light. It needed a few lights as the wind kept killing it today. Still a bit of snow around.
On to the Salmon. I'm always surprised at the liquid drawn out of the salmon and how it dissolves the molasses from the brown sugar.
Rinse that off, touch up pepper coverage as needed.
Smoker is firing up pretty well. It calms down once the burn is established. Hmm, it seems my upper shelf rack has slid out of storage below. Have to remedy that.
Blow out the smoke tube if still lit. It will usually go out while I'm carrying it with tongs. Lay it on its side and it should smolder through the pellets. This is set on the left, the vent is on the right to draw smoke across the food. If I'm smoking cheese, I don't light the smoker at all, just the smoke tube.
Yes, my drip liner is gross but not causing problems yet.
Set up the salmon.
This was at about 90 minutes and looked like it was ready.
My wife made a mini bagel for a snack while the salmon was still hot.
Nice.. I have so far not had any problems with the flavors I've gotten from my pellets. I did buy a better brand of pellets on amazon that had good reviews but I've also used pellets from Lowes. I forget the exact brand now but they were a "competition blend" and I've also managed to find apple at Lowes. I've only grilled on my camp chef once but it got up over 550F so it works well. Something somewhat unique for it is a sliding heat diffusing plate. When you want to grill direct you can slide the diffuser out and cook right over the fire.
Off and on I have been thinking that maybe instead of putting time and money into my old beat up offset, which has served me well for many years, I just get something like this.
Seems quite pricey for what it is. For $700 I could buy a huge box of beef
from the local butcher and a nice used smoker off of craigslist. 2 cases of beer and a nice bottle of tequila. probably have a hundred left over an oz of pot.
To each thier own...
Pizza tonite.
Sourdoug base. From my own sourdough mother.
Some of the ingredients (garlic and onion are missing in the pic)
My uuni 3 (name is changed to ooni).
I run it on gas, but it can run on pellets with a different burner
3 pizza's in the waiting room
1 on my plate
Very enjoyable.
I really like this little oven. It takes about 90 seconds per pizza. You have to turn it often, and you really have to pay attention, but it works!
Pre-heating takes about 10-15 minutes
Sate
I used my weber smokey mountain.
I was going to only use the bottom part and put the sticks straight over the edges, but I made the fire too hot.
And I was hungry!
So, I put on the middle section and cooked the satay on the top grid
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