I meant to post this way back when (March 5, 2011) but forgot to. Basically Mike came to town and at the last minute while drinking with Chris, I decide I was cooking some butts for Mike's visit. So about 9pm, Chris and I scour JI looking for butts. We ended up finding some really nice Smithfield ones (~8 lbs each) at the Hairy Teeter. Chris spotted me some of that wonderful rub, and I got to making it. The butts went on about 2am, and seemed to cook rather quick even though the temp was under 250: they were finished at the 12 hour mark temperature-wise.
This is right when I got up, so probably 6h. Notice the lack of bark since I hadn't started basting.
Butts around 8-10h, still before noon.
Mike had showed up and apparently hadn't seen anything this good in awhile.
I kept them on for a couple more hours with the vents essentially shut off, then threw them in a cooler. Turns out it was actually really good.
Moments before being pulled.
Also, Mike whipped up a vinegar sauce which I thought I wrote down, but I have no clue where that is.
There will actually be one more actual food post of Mike and me cooking on coal pots, but until I get around to that... Mike, this Irish car bomb's for you. (yes, we are also sharing an engagement toast with you)
There was so much more going on this evening than just two grills battling it out. First off, it was a cold windy night on January 30th. Earlier that day we went to the Pig and snagged two 10 lb butts from brother Frank (the younger of the two brothers who I have befriended) and an 8.5 lb brisket. Also, I finally thawed out a 5 lb butt I had in the freezer.
We did the smaller butt and one of the big butts as "Home-style", see this post. We also attempted to make the other large butt into what we called "Franken Butt". Initially, we created a newer spicy injection:
some beer baste stuff (that Mike made for Brisket)
apple juice; approx 1.5 cups
salt (>2 tbs)
pepper sauce; from my Dad is basically hotrnhell peppers in vinegar (~2 tbs)
mustard
which we complimented with extra cayenne and ancho in the rub for this butt.
Then the fun began, since it was cold, and we had some issues with the grills.
Mike had all sorts of craziness going on with his brisket which he will need to fill in accordingly, but this video shows some of the fun.
Temp log (which was horrible since I couldn't get the grill up to temp partly because of problems with overly large wood chunks on top of my coals as well as some serious wind)
10:50 Coals on
12:30 Butts on; temp at 250 all open, though change to 50% all promptly
1:10 215; 50% all
7:40 180; 100, 100, 50%; baste
9:00 160; change all to 100%; water, baste, coals
10:15 215; baste
11:30 190; baste; small at 170, large at 150
1:30 take small off; temp is now staying at 240 for rest
4:00 take off remaining, wrap and let rest for 1.5 h.
I managed to snag a pick of the butts after 7 h of cooking since I don't think pics on this blog really convey how the butts don't get that nice crisp burned goodness to them until after you start basting.
Also, just for records, here was Mike's Collard Recipe
2 bunches collards (cleaned and stems removed)
4 strips bacon
1/2 med yellow onion chopped
garlic
vinegar
chicken stock
salt and pepper
mustard
hot sauce
1/4 c brown sugar
squirt molasses
- In large dutch oven, sweat bacon
- add remaining ingredients
- bring to boil and add collards
- cover and cook for ever (~2 h)
When it was all finished, we went over and had a dinner that couldn't be beat at Chris and Tracy's house.
This was recorded on 11/13 and basically it was two 6-7 lb butts, injected normal (see prev post) with normal rub. Temp held around 230 ish and went 16 h total then wrapped for 3-4 more hours. The smaller butt probably could have come off sooner, but it was still excellent.
This is the full on making crazy pizza with Mike. This was the second pizza made that night. The first was just herbs, spinach and garlic, and was out of control good. This one had more toppings than Mike had ever attempted, but the dough still held up well, and it to was insanely good.
With the nice weather, the recent string of non-bbq related topics, and the Final Aporkalypse less than two months away it was time to get down to serious business and throw some meat on the smoker. This weekends project was a beef brisket and a side pork ribs just for the hell of it. I woke up Saturday morning and decided it was time to pick up a new Weber kettle grill just to be frivolous. The doinky grill that was already at my house just isn't going to cut it anymore. Brisket
I've tried several times to smoke brisket with little to no luck as it always turned out dry. However, I saw some nice looking cuts at Earth Fair that had a nice layer of fat and also decided I'd try placing it in a shallow foil pan in an attempt to keep in the juices. On Friday afternoon I rubbed the brisket with 1 T kosher salt, 1 T ancho chili powder, 2 t cane sugar, 1 t fresh black pepper, 1 t cumin, 1/2 t onion powder, and 1/2 t garlic powder and refrigerated it in a big Ziploc bag overnight. At the same time I rubbed the rack of ribs with a mixture I had made for the Superbowl ribs. Saturday around 11 I fired up the smoker loaded with mesquite and put the brisket on at 12:30 pm. The smoker maintained pretty much dead on 215 degrees and I took the brisket off around 7:30 pm. This picture was taken around 6pm. I should have noted what the internal temp was but I got lazy.
This turned out much much better than previous attempts and I credit the properly cut brisket and the foil pan to some extent. Also, I basted with a 50/50 mixture of apple juice and bourbon about every hour.
Ribs
These didn't turn out as good as I would have liked so I'm not going to go into much detail. I tried out the Stubb's brand of charcoal I found at Lowe's and I think it burned much hotter than I anticipated. They were a wee bit overcooked and a wee bit is more than you would think :). These were cooked on the new Weber and I never bothered to check the cooking temperature. The asparagus I threw on at the last minute turned out well though.
Yum!
I mixed a standard bottled BBQ sauce with some NC style vinegar sauce and served my brisket over a slice of crusty French bread. Thanks to Marion for the amazing potato salad. I went for a subtle yet elegant garnish...can you see it?
