so far, my morning has been marked by me being covered in one sort of grease or another.
Recently in grill Category
after giving my weber gas grill ample and generous opportunity to prove itself barbecue worthy, i admitted, regretfully, that it wasn't going to happen.
now, the website that jolted me back into outdoor cooking bliss contends that it is possible to get smoked meats in a gas grill that will rival any purpose-built smoker. i believed him, and tried my best. i tried this, and that, and the other. and then i mixed it all up and tried it again. i filled my apartment with smoke and burned through tons of wood chips. for my effort, i got really tasty barbecued ribs (yes, barbecued. indirect heat, low temperature, slow cooking). but i could not get any noticeable smoke flavor on my meat. guests with better palettes than i said they could taste hints of smoke -- but i was going for loads! if i wanted loads of smoke, i was SOL.
my dad and my hetero life partner, spu, both got cheap-o (in comparison to the WSM) bullet smokers, and both produce great smoked pork shoulder, with lots of effort . but i'm the sort of guy who will pay more for convenience and quality -- my time is worth it to me. so i shelled out for the new-for-2009 weber smokey mountain cooker. it has several advantages over the cheap bullet smokers:
1) it's made by weber. i called weber before i bought my weber grill and was impressed with their customer service. heck, i wasn't even a customer at the time! they're also produced with supposedly quality parts. after owning a weber grill for some months, i am pleased with its quality.
2) the WSM has bottom vents which can be used to control the smoker temperature. controlling the temp on the cheap bullet smokers is a real pain, involving adding charcoal or propping the door open. the WSM has an enclosed bottom. the cheap ones spill ash and charcoal all over the floor.
3) the WSM has a fan website to help me get up to speed. many of the tips/hints/recipes are equally applicable to the cheap bullet smokers.
anyhow, the smoker arrived on friday. i cooked up a batch of baby back ribs last night (sunday). i followed operating procedures on the virtual weber bullet site, though i used a different rub/sauce recipe. i used 2 half-racks of baby backs, one with mustard and one without, same rub on both. unfortunately, the half-racks were substantially different (from different parts of the full rack, i think, or maybe a slightly different cut of the rack to begin with, before they got sliced in half. it's all part of my butcher frustration) so the science of "does mustard make a difference?" is inconclusive.
i used 4 large chunks of hickory. the internets say 4 chunks of hickory is probably too smokey for most people. good. my gripe with the grill was that i could only achieve "hints of smoke" even if i wanted to produce "too smokey for most people". i wanted to test the WSM for its ability to make "too smokey for most people", since the opposite is already well within my grasp.
i used one 9lb bag of charcoal, plus the 4 chunks of hickory. i lit the charcoal all at once using The Minion Method and put the hickory on top of the pile. i assembled the cooker and Did Other Things for 4 and a half hours, occasionally adjusting the vents to keep the temperature in line. that was it. no opening of the door, no adding charcoal, no making a big mess all over my deck. the smoker was not entirely temperature stable, but it's my understanding that this is expected the first couple sessions, until i get a nice interior coating of smoke/grease.
around 7:30 (having started at 3:15) the meat still did not seem Done (using meathead's bend test, or using the virtual weber bullet's "tear test", or using the "pulled back 1/4 inch from the bone" test). but it was dinner time and i'd be okay with substandard results on my first cook. so i pulled them off and ate them.
oddly, they were acceptably finished. tender, but not overly tender. some of them seemed a little over-done and dry, and i've cooked much more juicy ribs on my grill (not necessarily better! also, those were spareribs). but these were perfectly good, in fact, quite good. but best of all: they were heavily smokey. so smokey, in fact, that the smoke drowned out the brown sugar flavor of the rub. on the grill, the same rub on baby backs last week was plenty sweet, and quite tasty. but i think in this case there was just so much smoke flavor that the rub could not assert itself.
i savored the smoke flavor but could see how it could be perceived as "too much". fortunately, my sauce (my own recipe! hooray!) complemented the oversmokiness quite well, and balanced the ribs out.
overall, i am extremely pleased. i still don't like cooking with charcoal -- i'm really a big fan of the convenience of gas cooking. but sometimes Ya Gotta Do What Ya Gotta Do. realistically, if i want smoked meat, i'm going to have to combust some wood. and as far as charcoal cooking goes, the WSM makes it as painless as it could possibly be.
i need to find a new source for meat in san mateo. there are two grocery stores that i frequent. both are excellent for produce, rare stuff, imported stuff, fancy beers, and good yogurt.
but neither one of them seems to stand alone as a good butcher shop. one of them sells whole slabs of spareribs, and about these ribs i have only compliments. i can't get a full slab of baby backs there (at least, not without asking, which i haven't tried yet). i can get a full rack at the other place, but they cost 2 times per pound what they cost at place #1. that "2 times" figure probably tells you who place #2 is, if you know anything about san mateo grocery stores.
place #2 only rarely has spare ribs, and they're usually packaged half slabs. neither one regularly has a boston butt, nor do they seem to have staff that know what it is.
there used to be a really great butcher shop on 25th, but it closed years ago (and the owner went to work at store #2!). i need to find a real butcher shop around here.
somehow, pink floyd came to be discussed at work last week between a friend and me.
(i tried, but could not formulate that sentence any more awkwardly without breaking some serious grammatical rules.)
anyhow, i've been listening to their CDs. yep, i own PF's entire catalog on CD, bought them all up back in the college days. that's one thing i did right in college. anyhow, the floyd has aged poorly in some senses (hey, "the final cut" is a total ripoff of "the wall"!) as i've become a more attentive, discerning person. it's also aged extremely well in some cases (atom heart mother still rocks). some of the lyrics are laughably bad, and some of the themes seem silly and dated -- perhaps because they have now become cliche instead of fresh and original -- but many of the lyrics rock on: now it's too late to lose the weight you used to need to throw around. and by the way, which one's pink?
i grilled/barbecued some baby back ribs last night. also, i made version 2.0 of my greens recipe. first: the greens. in 1.0, i used two dried chipotles and my notes said that the greens came out not spicy enough. this time i chopped those two chipotles into bits, and the greens came out inedible. one of our dinner guests was from mexico and likes really spicy food (she's made salsa that i couldn't eat) and even she said the greens were way too spicy. oops.
i've never prepared baby back ribs by any method. last night, i had 3 half-racks, two of which i prepared using one recipe, the last of which i prepared using a different recipe. the two got a sauce glaze during the last 10 minutes, the lonely one had only a rub, in which it had marinated for about an hour.
i took them all off at the same time, which was my second mistake. my first mistake occurred during selection of the racks: one of the racks (one of the sauced ones) was from a different section of the rack than the others, it had a ton of collagen-y meat on it and was much thicker than the other two. i should have gone for uniform racks. even properly cooked, i dont think i would have cared for that part of the rack: too difficult to eat.
the second mistake was to take them off all at once, instead of testing individually for doneness. now, i can't be too harsh on meself since i've only ever cooked these buggers once, i can't be expected to be a doneness expert yet. but i still shoulda known.
the sauced, non-thick rack came out okay. the too-thick rack wasn't that great. the rub-marinated rack was supoib. the endpieces of the rub-marinated dry-ribs was extra-duper-supoib. in fact, that rack of ribs may be my best ribs so far. a curious but unanimously verified fact: the endpieces of that rack were even more extra-duper-supoib than the rest of the rack. this produces a goal: to make the entire rack as tasty as the endpieces. difficult? i dunno.
a curiousity: i have two grilling books published by weber. they're also by the same author (he collaborates on one of them). in one of them, he cooks all his ribs on "indirect low", in the other book, all his rib recipes call for "indirect medium". i've had better success with spareribs on IM, but last night's kickass baby backs were cooked IL.
one last bit of who-cares trivia: apparently i prefer my ribs dry. my favorite sparerib recipe is dry, and my now-favorite baby back recipe is dry. there are them's that say that sauce is only good for covering up the mistakes you've made cooking your meat. for ribs, with thems i so far agree.
"echoes" is 23 minutes and 29 seconds of masterpiece. AIR GUITAR!
okay, air guitar doesn't really work on this album.
hm, now that i've typed that title, i realize i should have had a porter with dinner last night. as it was, i had a tripel instead. oh well, coulda been worse ;)
i showed up at the grocery past 6pm, starving outta my mind. hops went to gather the veggies while i went to the meat counter. gadzooks: it was crowded. and worse than that, i couldn't see any porterhouses. i'd been planning this meal for a week, and i was seriously underfed, and i really didn't want to try another grocery, which also might not have had my steak.
but you see, i go to a good grocery. they had a whole tray of porterhouse steaks in the back, and were all too happy to fetch me one. dinner: saved.
when we got home, hops prepped the baby artichokes and i made some guacamole. like the last time i made guacamole, it seemed that the green stuff is a salt black hole. no matter how much salt i added, we both agreed it needed more. eventually i just gave up and we ate slightly undersalted guacamole. still delicious.
the steak came out perfectly, and deliciously. i dunno if i've ever had a porterhouse before, but it really is two different steaks. the texture of the two parts is very different.
i created and used version 2.0 of my steak rub. i made a 1.0 back-a-yard-style jamaican jerk sauce the other day, and it was an abject failure. which, i suppose, is acceptable for a 1.0. my steak rub 2.0, on the other hand, was an abject success. well, there was one oddity: it seemed too salty for the first half of the steak, but not so bad for the second half. three explanations for this: poor mixing of the rub, absorption by the steak while i was eating it, or acclimitization. in any case, i've got a tasty steak rub and i made it up myself. pride!
tonight is porterhouse night. i've got fancy tortillas and everything. i even swapped out my empty propane tank. whoopie.
didnt i already admit to not being able to properly employ baseball analogies? whelp, anyhow, i had a barbecue disappointment last night. i adapted a babyback rib recipe to use short ribs. i don't think i care much for the rub (too much celery seed) and i cooked at too low a temp for not enough time. additionally, i mopped, which i think is not really what i want for dry ribs.
the ribs came out edible but mediocre, which is frustrating after so much anticipation, prep, and work. but from frustration comes learning. and i hope i learned something: i have promised to make the same ribs for a whole lot of people in just a couple more days. yikes!
the memphis-style dry ribs: WIN. sauce was provided but untouched. the ribs were tender, juicy, bacony, and chewy. burnt in some areas where they were not over a water pan. easy fix for that: bigger water pan.
the cornbread: the canned trader joe's corns were not so great. i thought the recipe needed honey. room for improvement but still very, very good.
the greens: meh. my own improvised recipe was better. these needed more hot sauce. i have a leftover portion of ham hock which i can use for next attempt, but i also have a ton of leftovers to defer me.
fried pickles: sliced too thick as per recipe. needed to be thinner slices and maybe a milder pickle.
anyhow, next time i make ribs we'll have a simpler menu. even with two hungry large guys we didn't finish a single slab of spareribs.
still batting... uh... a thousand? or something. i don't know baseball. i know how to follow a grill recipe.
anyhow, made mojo marinated chicken and acorn squash. hops made sweet potato biscuits and though they didn't rise, they were still quite tasty. the chicken and squash recipes were from weber's book and they both came out excellent. i dont think i've ever cooked chicken so nicely on my own.
i played around and figured out some more things about smoking. that's good, because i'll be grill-smoking some ribs this weekend and i need to get the routine down. it turns out i dont need to put the smoker box/packet under the grates, they'll smoke just fine from above. which is good, since i'll need changes of wood when i'm smoking for a really long time.
anyhow: it occurred to me that i didn't get such great results on my previous gas grill, so maybe the difference is in the grill or the recipe. nothing to brag about then, but at least i get tasty dinners. yum!
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