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Christmas Dinner


Integrity28

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Tonight is our "fake" Christmas Eve, for our at home celebration before we travel later in the week. The traditional foods will be served on the proper holiday. Today, given that it's unseasonably warm, and my father loves my grilling, I decided to go all-out making a southern style bbq dinner.

Heeding the advice of our own @joebabyny, I've had a Weber Genesis for about 2 years. I've done short smokes while experimenting with wood chips and foil pouches and other nonsense like that, and indirect heat. This week, I bought the accessory that he originally told me to get: the amazn tube smoker.

I've doing a rack of ribs, 2 pork loins and a batch of wings. That smoker tube is ridiculous. I love it. I hope the taste matches with the cooking experience.

Pictures to come... 

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Tonight is our "fake" Christmas Eve, for our at home celebration before we travel later in the week. The traditional foods will be served on the proper holiday. Today, given that it's unseasonably warm, and my father loves my grilling, I decided to go all-out making a southern style bbq dinner.

Heeding the advice of our own @joebabyny, I've had a Weber Genesis for about 2 years. I've done short smokes while experimenting with wood chips and foil pouches and other nonsense like that, and indirect heat. This week, I bought the accessory that he originally told me to get: the amazn tube smoker.

I've doing a rack of ribs, 2 pork loins and a batch of wings. That smoker tube is ridiculous. I love it. I hope the taste matches with the cooking experience.

Pictures to come... 

Cool man, glad it worked out for ya!

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  • 3 weeks later...

Cool man, glad it worked out for ya!

So far, so great.

I never followed up in this thread with photos... but so far, since getting the tube, I've done 3-4 cooks.

The first being the Christmas dinner I mentioned above. The wings and pork loins came out perfect, and I learned that ribs can stay longer, and what I'll likely do in the future with ribs is wrap them after the first few hours. We'll see. I've got to try/learn some things there.

I've made wings with every cook I've done. I just love them. They are cheap, don't require a long cook, and give me a great vessel for trying out the rubs and sauces that I'm making up. For instance, I made a blackberry balsamic bbq sauce the other night. For some reason, despite having loved BBQ forever, and being able to cook from taste like a champ... I've never experimented with making my own BBQ sauce. It's like there was this barrier in my mind that there was some sort of mystical sage wisdom behind it, and I had not yet earned it. I also made a bourbon maple sauce that was insane. I kind of refuse to look at recipes for guidance, so I've experimented twice, and so far so good.

The other night I made a batch of chicken thighs, again, they don't require a long smoke, which is perfect for the tube as I'm getting comfortable doing this... also, it's been 20 degrees out. The things were marinated for 2 days in the maple bourbon sauce I made, then given a light dusting of a simple rub I made. 

I made drumsticks this week, again, short cook, cheap meat for experimentation. These I marinated in stub's sweet heat bbq sauce, then dusted with my own rub. I've got a lot of store bought stuff I'm trying to use up at this point. 

I've used apple pellets, and actually had some cherry chips that I used in the tube. That was hard, they don't smoke for as long, so I found I had to refill it several times. I've got a ton of hickory and cherry pellets coming this week. Will be doing ribs and maybe another pork loin for company this weekend. 

Really just so happy with this thing so far... it's a very inexpensive way to dabble, and still get great smoke flavor. I love that I'm getting double duty out of my Weber. I may eventually try and make my own offset, we'll see... I like the drum smokers too, but I'm sort of fascinated with the Franklin Barbecue book right now.

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So far, so great.

I never followed up in this thread with photos... but so far, since getting the tube, I've done 3-4 cooks.

The first being the Christmas dinner I mentioned above. The wings and pork loins came out perfect, and I learned that ribs can stay longer, and what I'll likely do in the future with ribs is wrap them after the first few hours. We'll see. I've got to try/learn some things there.

I've made wings with every cook I've done. I just love them. They are cheap, don't require a long cook, and give me a great vessel for trying out the rubs and sauces that I'm making up. For instance, I made a blackberry balsamic bbq sauce the other night. For some reason, despite having loved BBQ forever, and being able to cook from taste like a champ... I've never experimented with making my own BBQ sauce. It's like there was this barrier in my mind that there was some sort of mystical sage wisdom behind it, and I had not yet earned it. I also made a bourbon maple sauce that was insane. I kind of refuse to look at recipes for guidance, so I've experimented twice, and so far so good.

The other night I made a batch of chicken thighs, again, they don't require a long smoke, which is perfect for the tube as I'm getting comfortable doing this... also, it's been 20 degrees out. The things were marinated for 2 days in the maple bourbon sauce I made, then given a light dusting of a simple rub I made. 

I made drumsticks this week, again, short cook, cheap meat for experimentation. These I marinated in stub's sweet heat bbq sauce, then dusted with my own rub. I've got a lot of store bought stuff I'm trying to use up at this point. 

I've used apple pellets, and actually had some cherry chips that I used in the tube. That was hard, they don't smoke for as long, so I found I had to refill it several times. I've got a ton of hickory and cherry pellets coming this week. Will be doing ribs and maybe another pork loin for company this weekend. 

Really just so happy with this thing so far... it's a very inexpensive way to dabble, and still get great smoke flavor. I love that I'm getting double duty out of my Weber. I may eventually try and make my own offset, we'll see... I like the drum smokers too, but I'm sort of fascinated with the Franklin Barbecue book right now.

Sounds like you are having a lot of fun! A suggestion, you want to figure out the differences between marinades and sauces. I would say generally that marinating in store bought sauces is usually going to be a waste of time and money compared to just glazing the meat the last 15 or 20 minutes of cooking. A great book for learning about the basics of building sauces and marinades and how to expand on that is "Chef Paul Kirk's Championship Barbecue Sauces: 175 Make-Your-Own Sauces, Marinades, Dry Rubs, Wet Rubs, Mops, and Salsas."

As far as wood types and pellets, I have found that there isn't really much different within the fruit woods. Of course play with them all, but don't go crazy buying them all at once or sweating over not having one or another type. Hickory is going to be a stronger flavor, and mesquite I think is usually too strong.

Chicken thighs are the go to part for 95% of competition bbq teams for chicken categories so that is definitely a great part to play with. For catering gigs that call for chicken, drumsticks are my go to. I like to marinate in big ziplocs with olive oil and my rub blend for 24-48 hours, then dust with more rub right before going into the smoker. A lot of the spices are fat soluble and the oil helps in crisping the skin at the lower temps of the smoker.

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Sounds like you are having a lot of fun! A suggestion, you want to figure out the differences between marinades and sauces. I would say generally that marinating in store bought sauces is usually going to be a waste of time and money compared to just glazing the meat the last 15 or 20 minutes of cooking. A great book for learning about the basics of building sauces and marinades and how to expand on that is "Chef Paul Kirk's Championship Barbecue Sauces: 175 Make-Your-Own Sauces, Marinades, Dry Rubs, Wet Rubs, Mops, and Salsas."

As far as wood types and pellets, I have found that there isn't really much different within the fruit woods. Of course play with them all, but don't go crazy buying them all at once or sweating over not having one or another type. Hickory is going to be a stronger flavor, and mesquite I think is usually too strong.

Chicken thighs are the go to part for 95% of competition bbq teams for chicken categories so that is definitely a great part to play with. For catering gigs that call for chicken, drumsticks are my go to. I like to marinate in big ziplocs with olive oil and my rub blend for 24-48 hours, then dust with more rub right before going into the smoker. A lot of the spices are fat soluble and the oil helps in crisping the skin at the lower temps of the smoker.

Good stuff. Definitely having a lot of fun.

I'm definitely not going crazy with the wood types. The tube came pre-filled with apple, and the chips I've got floating around are leftover from past experiments with foil pouches and the like, the order I just made for hickory and cherry is pretty much all I've actually chosen to use with the tube. I want to do a 2:1 hickory to cherry blend, which I thought would work really well with all the white meat I'm cooking. 

Using wood chips in the tube is doable, but when you open the grill up, if a breeze hits that tube and all it's little holes it is like a blast of fuel and it will ignite. The pellets, I've found, aren't doing that. Once you blow out the initial flame to get them smoldering, that's it. It only invites if you put it on the heat source. So, that was a lesson learned... it resulted in a few wings just being grilled, rather than smoked LOL

The oil and rub blend for chicken is something I stumbled on a couple years ago when I started baking wings, but still wanted that crispy bite. I haven't tried it in the smoker yet, but will. I wasn't sure if oil would let the smoke permeate the meat the way you would want. In general, I've become big on controlling my ingredients, making my own rubs and sauces allows me to avoid high fructose corn syrup and crappy oils. I use olive oils, himalayan sea salt, good quality brown sugars, maple syrups, and sugar in the raw, as well as higher grade dried seasoning.

I'll check out the book. I rarely use anything direct from the store. For instance, the stubbs I mentioned using, I combined it with coarse ground mustard, a little extra chipotle tabasco for more heat and smoke flavor layers, and a bit of worcestershire... modifying the store bought helps it permeate the meat more, I think. Ultimately, I want to be able to make it all myself. I've got a pretty decent knack for this stuff, but you can't always trust your gut and luck... technique is important. I knew that my maple bourbon sauce would make a better marinade than sauce for instance, but i'd rather start out know "I'm making marinade right now", rather than figuring out that I ****ed up a sauce, but can still get away with using it as marinade. :)

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Sounds like you are having a lot of fun! A suggestion, you want to figure out the differences between marinades and sauces. I would say generally that marinating in store bought sauces is usually going to be a waste of time and money compared to just glazing the meat the last 15 or 20 minutes of cooking. A great book for learning about the basics of building sauces and marinades and how to expand on that is "Chef Paul Kirk's Championship Barbecue Sauces: 175 Make-Your-Own Sauces, Marinades, Dry Rubs, Wet Rubs, Mops, and Salsas."

As far as wood types and pellets, I have found that there isn't really much different within the fruit woods. Of course play with them all, but don't go crazy buying them all at once or sweating over not having one or another type. Hickory is going to be a stronger flavor, and mesquite I think is usually too strong.

Chicken thighs are the go to part for 95% of competition bbq teams for chicken categories so that is definitely a great part to play with. For catering gigs that call for chicken, drumsticks are my go to. I like to marinate in big ziplocs with olive oil and my rub blend for 24-48 hours, then dust with more rub right before going into the smoker. A lot of the spices are fat soluble and the oil helps in crisping the skin at the lower temps of the smoker.

Very cool of you sharing all the stuff you learned.  Makes for great reading.  Appreciate it

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Very cool of you sharing all the stuff you learned.  Makes for great reading.  Appreciate it

Oh I am just happy to find people willing to listen to my bloviating.

I am always learning myself. I am locking up details to spend a day or two down in MD and then FL cooking with some top teams, always looking to expand my knowledge.

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Oh I am just happy to find people willing to listen to my bloviating.

I am always learning myself. I am locking up details to spend a day or two down in MD and then FL cooking with some top teams, always looking to expand my knowledge.

This is what it boils down to... it's a craft, and like any good craftsman, the minute you think you've learned everything you need to learn... you've lost touch with your craft.

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Tonight is our "fake" Christmas Eve, for our at home celebration before we travel later in the week. The traditional foods will be served on the proper holiday. Today, given that it's unseasonably warm, and my father loves my grilling, I decided to go all-out making a southern style bbq dinner.

Heeding the advice of our own @joebabyny, I've had a Weber Genesis for about 2 years. I've done short smokes while experimenting with wood chips and foil pouches and other nonsense like that, and indirect heat. This week, I bought the accessory that he originally told me to get: the amazn tube smoker.

I've doing a rack of ribs, 2 pork loins and a batch of wings. That smoker tube is ridiculous. I love it. I hope the taste matches with the cooking experience.

Pictures to come... 

 

you fat ass, isn't it just you and your wife?

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No moron, unlike you, my friends and family want to spend time with me during the holidays.

By friends and family you mean the team of anthropologists, paleontologists, evolutionary biologists and psychotherapists that observe and study you?

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IMG_9456.jpg

This is the Christmas haul. Pork loin on left is bacon-wrapped. Pork loin in middle is rub. Ribs are rub. Wings across the top.

IMG_9458.jpg

Wingies.

IMG_9475.jpg

Bacon-wrapped, and still a bit of a smoke ring. The bacon limited the smoke saturation, or whatever you call it.

IMG_9487.jpg

Part of the spread. Big pile of meat, because carnivoring is yum.

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looks good ape! I have a nice grill and smoker but have never used the smoker.. too lazy to BBQ

Thanks man.

The grill I'm using is the Weber Genesis. It's great. You should get off your fat turd ass and use yours.

 

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So how long until you buy a real smoker?

I'm just not wired to dabble for very long... so, the way things are going, probably in the spring. :)

I'm really torn on what kind to get / build. I want to learn to weld and make myself an offset stick burner - pretty ambitious. The gap between how much food I need to cook and how much food a big smoker fits is huge though. I could easily be happy with an ugly drum smoker. I don't think I want an electric or gas smoker, the commitment to tending the fire suits me just fine. I need a reason to just stay home and unplug. I'm open to store-bought recommendations if you have any...

Cooking is the least stressful thing I do all week, and bbq takes it to the next level of chilling out. Come summer I want to put my stuff to the test with some larger groups of people. I've also got a co-worker whose father is plugged into the local bbq scene and I hope to volunteer the next time he does a charity event. 

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I'm just not wired to dabble for very long... so, the way things are going, probably in the spring. :)

I'm really torn on what kind to get / build. I want to learn to weld and make myself an offset stick burner - pretty ambitious. The gap between how much food I need to cook and how much food a big smoker fits is huge though. I could easily be happy with an ugly drum smoker. I don't think I want an electric or gas smoker, the commitment to tending the fire suits me just fine. I need a reason to just stay home and unplug. I'm open to store-bought recommendations if you have any...

Cooking is the least stressful thing I do all week, and bbq takes it to the next level of chilling out. Come summer I want to put my stuff to the test with some larger groups of people. I've also got a co-worker whose father is plugged into the local bbq scene and I hope to volunteer the next time he does a charity event. 

I would put off building my own until I have owned a few, to know what makes a good smoker, what performance should be. As far as recommendations, I can offer advice for sure. You have to figure out a budget and what type you want. A full on offset stick burner can theoretically give the best product, but it is a learning curve to squeeze out that best performance. Lang, Klose, and Yoder make great offsets in that traditional black pipe look. I love those yoder competition cart offsets. Shirley Fabrication is another small time manufacturer that has blown up. Thier web presence sucks but their pits are sweeping across the country and I hear raves about them, great quality and real value for the money. The Weber WSM is my standard recommendation to any starter, but I think you are like me in that you are going to quickly want something a little more substantial. Vertical charcoal cabinets are really popular, and the insulated ones are great, especially if you are up north in a colder climate. Backwoods is probably the most popular, because of price. Spicewine is also another popular one. I was just out visiting and filming in TX with the boys from Pitmaker, and got to tour their fabrication shop and see behind the curtain. Their stuff is literally art pieces, something that your friends and neighbors will be envious of. I love their vault. I hope to have them make me a trailer at some point, maybe I need to start a gofundme campaign to raise funds to upgrade my tailgatejoe jets tailgate rig. I love the Fast Eddys by Cookshack pellet smokers, they are true comercial grade machines. I have 2 FEC120's, but I don't think pellet smokers are right for you, and everyone should learn fire management first anyway.

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I would put off building my own until I have owned a few, to know what makes a good smoker, what performance should be. As far as recommendations, I can offer advice for sure. You have to figure out a budget and what type you want. A full on offset stick burner can theoretically give the best product, but it is a learning curve to squeeze out that best performance. Lang, Klose, and Yoder make great offsets in that traditional black pipe look. I love those yoder competition cart offsets. Shirley Fabrication is another small time manufacturer that has blown up. Thier web presence sucks but their pits are sweeping across the country and I hear raves about them, great quality and real value for the money. The Weber WSM is my standard recommendation to any starter, but I think you are like me in that you are going to quickly want something a little more substantial. Vertical charcoal cabinets are really popular, and the insulated ones are great, especially if you are up north in a colder climate. Backwoods is probably the most popular, because of price. Spicewine is also another popular one. I was just out visiting and filming in TX with the boys from Pitmaker, and got to tour their fabrication shop and see behind the curtain. Their stuff is literally art pieces, something that your friends and neighbors will be envious of. I love their vault. I hope to have them make me a trailer at some point, maybe I need to start a gofundme campaign to raise funds to upgrade my tailgatejoe jets tailgate rig. I love the Fast Eddys by Cookshack pellet smokers, they are true comercial grade machines. I have 2 FEC120's, but I don't think pellet smokers are right for you, and everyone should learn fire management first anyway.

I'll investigate.... There's just so much out there!

in the meantime, I'm smoking chicken thighs today to pull/chop for sandwiches!

Concocted new slather/marinade and rub! Hickory smoke. Mmmmm

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  • 11 months later...
On 1/8/2016 at 5:02 PM, Integrity28 said:

IMG_9456.jpg

This is the Christmas haul. Pork loin on left is bacon-wrapped. Pork loin in middle is rub. Ribs are rub. Wings across the top.

IMG_9458.jpg

Wingies.

IMG_9475.jpg

Bacon-wrapped, and still a bit of a smoke ring. The bacon limited the smoke saturation, or whatever you call it.

IMG_9487.jpg

Part of the spread. Big pile of meat, because carnivoring is yum.

I'm in !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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1 hour ago, OH THE PAIN said:

I'm in !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

lol, i certainly made enough... that's from last year, this year it was wings, drumsticks and a couple new rubs I concocted. 

I've got a handful of people urging me to brand, package and market my dry rubs at this point... I'll get @Maxman to sell some through JN for charity or something if I go through with it.

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