quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:

It came out great. Smokey, tender, juicy. If there was any complaint, which he noted himself, was that it could have been trimmed a little closer. Even the flat was a little fatty.

It may not have been as good as the very top notch barbeque brisket I have ever had (and I'd limit that to about three or four places), but it was better than most brisket I have paid good money to eat. He wrapped it for the last three hours to bring it up to final temperature, but in butcher paper, not in foil. In the great debate of whether to wrap a brisket or not, wrapping it in paper is sort of a middle ground. You can get a temperature stall if you don't wrap, and if you let an unwrapped one get away from you, they can dry out. Foil helps you though the stall, but you end up steaming the meat for a few hours, so you don't get great bark. Butcher paper is in between. It worked great, and the bark was nice.

Even his sixteen month old daughter chowed down on brisket. That child is a chow hound - she likes everything she is given.

Having a Brisket Stall is par for the course.

Butcher Paper is the way to go, I've had to wrap a stalled brisket with foil and you are correct you get a moist steamed brisket with less bark.

Sounds like a good time.

Xantom, like the horseshoe handles on your smoker!

Everything you guys post looks phenomenal! I need some pork belly in my life.

This was the last meal with the brisket I made.

You know what time it is.

^^^^ Rock On, SIG4EVA ^^^^

Was in Wally World this AM and picked up a cheap pack of baby backs. $8 bucks. Seasoned them up, let them rest, and then threw them on the grill. About an hour/15 uncovered, then I wrap for another hour/15. Rest a bit and enjoy. Came out pretty good. I usually use pecan wood but I had some apple wood chips today. Different, but not bad. I think I prefer the pecan.

And of course I had to set up a julep to enjoy the derby with

quote:

smschulz

Thank you sir! For some reason this pork butt is taking forever.

mbinky, well done!

Ribs look perfect and excellent drink choice mbinky.

The egg has been amazing. So much smoke!

I will be having some hickory smoked baby back ribs for supper. Add in a bit of mashed tater and gravy with chopped spinach bake and white pita bread. Lemon meringue pie for dessert.

Well, they sure look great.

I finally got the grease drain added, and put solid rubber wheels on my offset. I smoked 2 pork bellys today. Will slice and package up tomorrow.

Got it all sliced and packaged, but left enough for a couple excellent BLT's. Wow this bacon turned out excellent! Planning to use that pile of ends and misfits for home made beans.

What's your recipe on the bacon? I've got a 3# belly in the freezer I've been looking to do.

I did 1 cup of each for 1 ~10lb pork belly.
Coarse Salt
Coarse Pepper
Sugar Cane

If you like it a little salty this mix is fine, if not you can dial it back a little bit. I cut each belly into 3rd's and then put them in Ziploc bags for about 8 or 9 days, flipping daily. I rinsed off and soaked them in a cold water bath for 1.5 hours, dried, then placed in the fridge on wire racks to dry over night. 1 day to smoke and rest and then back in the fridge overnight. I put them in the freezer about 2 hours before slicing.

Many ways to do them and I'm interested to hear others methods.

I HIGHLY recommend an equilibrium dry cure. It leaves nothing to chance (i.e. ALL too common oversalting woes) the way a wet cure does, plus saves a lot of frig space. It's impossible to oversalt or under cure this way, plus in my opinion it just tastes better than a wet cured bacon. You'll need a digital meat scale (preferably that goes over 5#) and a digital jewelers scale that will read in increments of a gram for measuring the cure in the necessarily exacting amounts. You can get both on amazon for about $12-$15 each. The jewelers scale I got goes down to 0.01 grams which is more ideal with the small amounts of cure #1 than a .1g increment scale. Speaking of cure, make sure to keep it out of reach of kids and pets. It looks inviting like kool-aid/sugar mix in a bag (we called it "cocaine" and took it everywhere in our pockets as kids for our sugar fix lol, ghetto I know, it's where I grew up), but the cure is toxic when ingested in significant amounts straight from the bag.

Next, simply convert your meat weight to grams (1# = ~455g), then weigh out your salt (+/- 2.5% of your meat weight = meat grams x 0.025), your brown sugar (+/- 1% of your meat weight = meat grams x 0.01), and your cure (EXACTLY 1/4th of 1% of your meat weight = meat grams x 0.0025).

Example with a theoretical 4.4# slab:
4.4# x 455g = 2002 grams meat weight (let's round to 2000g for easy math).

2000g x .025 = 50 grams salt (any brand plain kosher or plain non-iodized).
2000g x .01 = 20 grams brown sugar.
2000g x .0025 = 5 grams pink cure #1.

You'll weigh each slab and calculate/mix/cure separately, so it's an opportunity to play with adjusting your salt and sugar levels to find your preferred taste. Try and stay between 2%-3% salt, and .75%-1.25% brown sugar. Don't mess with the cure level, it will give you exactly 156ppm nitrite per USDA FSIS guidelines. You can also play around with adding other spices in each batch, but honestly I find that not much of the additional flavors actually penetrate the meat at the curing stage. If I want pepper bacon, I'll usually lightly oil or maple syrup paint the slabs right towards the END of the smoke (an hour or so remaining) and pepper crust it then. Some folks will oil or syrup coat it and stick spices on before smoking, BUT in my opinion, this greatly inhibits smoke absorption into the actual meat. In my experience, when this is done the smoke all sticks to the oil/syrup/spices barrier on the outside, making the exterior bitter and the interior boring.

Anywhoo, mix the 3 dry cure ingredients thoroughly in a bowl and apply it evenly to all sides of your meat inside of a 2.5 gallon ziploc (available at Walmart). Be sure all of the cure gets on the meat and into the bag. If your meat has been previously frozen or for whatever other reason doesn't look like it's wet enough to release enough liquid to dissolve all of the dry ingredients during the curing stage, you can add a LITTLE water to help get things moving along. Just make sure you add the water weight into the meat weight in grams for the purpose of calculating your cure ingredients. 1/4 cup should be more than enough, so just add 59 grams (1c H20 = 236g, 1/4c = 59g) to your meat weight when calculating. Squeeze the air out of the bag, seal it up, massage everything to spread it around equally, and place in frig for 7 days minimum, up to 12 days if your schedule is tight. I usually cure Friday night and remove from the cure the following Friday to prepare for a Saturday smoke. You'd go shorter or longer for thinner or super thick pieces, but 7-10 days is perfect for a 2"-3" thick piece of meat. An equilibrium cure can't over/under cure in this time period as it's exactly the correct amount of salt/sugar/cure that your meat can absorb based on meat weight and absorbency potential. Make SURE to gently massage the package and flip it over once a day to redistribute the fluids and cure for even curing. When it's cured, remove from the bag (the night before you'll smoke it), give a quick cold water rinse, thoroughly pat dry, and put it unwrapped on a wire rack in your frig overnight to dry the surface and form the shiny/tacky pellicle layer. This will help it absorb smoke evenly.


The next day, prep your smoker to run at very low temp (100-125 max at grate/meat level, if you can) with plenty of smoke wood chunks to provide clean, even, consistent smoke throughout a long "warm smoke". Make sure to keep your meat away from direct rising heat, so as to not cook it, you'll cook it later after you slice and pan-fry it. I've heard of some people taking their bacon to 150IT at the end of the smoke to make it edible without further cooking, but I've never tried that, it just doesn't appeal to me! I have a homemade version of a Cajun Bandit 22" kettle insert, but taller with 2 racks, that works perfect for bacon. I use an A-Maze-N Products AMNPS pellet maze resting on my sweeper fins all the way at the bottom of my kettle to generate the smoke, and a single row briquette snake method on the perimeter of the charcoal grate to generate JUST enough heat to achieve a low temp warm smoke and create a good draft. Then i hang my meat slabs from the top rack with a deflector on the bottom rack to shield the meat from rising and radiant heat. Plenty of folks successfully warm smoke bacon with just wood chunks over charcoal though, so whatever you do will work as long as you're providing consistent clean "thin blue" smoke and minimal heat to create draft. Good airflow is critical when cold/warm smoking, as a cooler smoker doesn't draft as well and can let the smoke stagnate and make your food bitter like an ashtray if you're not careful. The balancing act is having a little heat to create draft, but not so much that your food cooks before it takes on an ideal amount of smoke. Make sure to keep your smoker in the shade to help keep temps down this time of year. For bacon at cool/warm smoke temps, 8-12 hours is ideal. You'll also start to get a feel for how much smoke flavor the bacon will end up with based on the nice rich color on the meat during the middle/end of the smoking session. The nitrite in the cure will keep your meat safe for extended periods in this otherwise "danger zone". Another tip; I buy cheap bamboo skewers to put on my cooking grate to put meat on when cold smoking food that I can't hang. Just in case there's some bacteria lurking on my cooking grate and I won't be making it hot enough to kill the bacteria. Here's some good reading on cold vs hot smoking.
http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/t/1...-and-hot-smoke

When you're all done, let the meat rest at room temp to cool, then pat dry and seal it up tight in 2.5 gallon ziplocs (or vacuum sealer bags work great if you have a foodsaver) for 1-3 days in the frig to let the smoke and moisture equalize throughout the whole slabs. Then, just before slicing, pop the bags/slabs in your freezer for 30-60 minutes to firm up nice to make slicing easier. A meat slicer is ideal, but a sharp, long knife and a steady hand will do. Make sure to slice against/across the grain of the meat or it'll be chewy.

If you vacseal your portions, they'll keep good for +/- 6 months in the freezer. Otherwise, I'm thinking maybe a month or two in tight freezer wrap, but am not sure as I vacseal.

Thanks for the info guys. I'll have to give it a go.

Not BBQ per se, but an excellent use of the BGE.

Looks amazing!