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Any Time is Grillin Time

Friends and I are gathering at the river for a post Thanksgiving dinner.
Smoked beef / venison meatloaf, fresh green beans, and scalloped potatoes is the plan. It will be a good time in spite of the weather being a big question mark.
 
Smoked chuck roast is on the agenda today. I have the roast oiled and rubbed just waiting for the smoker to get to temp. The roast was on sale and yet more expensive than I normally pay for the cut. I talked to my butcher buddy. He was restocking the counter with morning updated price increases. Corporate dictates his prices so it's not his fault. He's taking a lot of flak from customers that think he's responsible. Sad times and desperate times for some. He showed me a package of stew meat that had just increased to $8.99 a pound. He said it's ridiculous. I agree. When I was a child we shopped at our local butcher shop. If you asked, he would gladly give you some soup or stew bones. Albeit they weren't covered with meat but had plenty enough to boil into something... FREE
 
I made a Costco run today. I was in need of some staples and I always look forward to shopping their meat counter. I didn't find many bargains today. I did find their 88% lean ground beef at $3.99 a pound.
85% lean ground beef at my local market was $6.49 a pound yesterday. I was running low on hamburger so I bought a six and a half pound package. I planned to buy a couple of packages of fresh caught cod but they didn't have any.. or farm raised for that matter. I did buy a nice looking fillet of salmon that was fresh caught. All of the beef prices were high though good looking. I passed them by for I'm not in dire need of anything.
 
I bit off topic, but since we talk so much smoking in here, I'll give it a go. I'm going to attempt to do Smoked Old Fashions this weekend. I've had them in restaurants, and they are amazing, so now I'm going to try it at home. I have a cocktail smoker coming today, and I ordered 2 bottles of bourbon from a local place where I had my first Smoked Old Fashioned. It's a restaurant run by ex-pharmacists that brew and distill all of their one liquor on site. They have only been open a few years, so this is their initial release of ages bourbon. I'm sure I can stomach one with an appetizer when I pick up my order today. :D
 
Fascinating! I've never heard of it. How can you mess up a good drink? :) Anxious to hear of the results.

This is definitely not a smoking / grilling topic but I went down a YT rat hole last night and watched more than an hour of curing meats. I will have to try something. Most likely I'll will remove the coppa muscle group from my next pork shoulder and smoke the remains. I will try to cure the coppa into capicola which I love.

Saw some chicken stands we need :)
chicken-jpg.493144
 
My son and I are seeing a lot of difference in our smoker temps. We both use the larger Green Mountain smoker with the difference being that mine is a lot newer than his. He has been smoking chuck roast at 250° and I at 225°. Both cooks take the same time and yield the same results. I've tried cooking at 250° and way over cooked one at the cabin (smaller GM smoker) and had to drop the temp at home after three hours for it was cooking way too fast. My thought is his smoker temp is off vs my two smokers. The only other variable would be the girth of our roasts. He brought me home a heat gun from work and we are going to compare internal smoker temps this weekend.

As long as you know your smoker and cooks the actual temperature doesn't really matter. It's trading cooks with others is where the difference in temp makes for misleading information. One of our smokers is not accurate.
 
My son and I played with the heat guns Sunday. I was cooking at 225° and he at 250° His hood temp 14°, grate 17°, and grease ramp 23° higher than mine. Somewhere he is losing heat. I would have thought that the 23° difference would be seen all the way up to the hood.

I smoked a pork butt Sunday. I did not remove the coppa muscle group for I didn't have the supplies to try my hand at charcuterie. Instead we ate it two meals and I vac sealed and froze more than half for future meals. Making some cured meats out of that coppa will be a great use of meat vs freezing. It's a must do project.
 
Another Sunday and another smoke day. I was going to smoke out a chuck roast before I saw the price and quality. Nothing caught my eye so I decided I would smoke a half venison half ground beef meatloaf. I was so impressed with the last loaf that I plan to duplicate the cook. The two meats, diced bell pepper, onion, diced jalapeno, egg, breading, and tomato sauce. Spices will be salt, pepper, and a bit of garlic.
 
My meatloaf was wonderful. I can't begin to thank @Unforgiven for the inspiration. The loaf is just a wonderful blend of flavors with a kiss of smoke.

I'm finally going to cook my Thanksgiving turkey for Christmas dinner. I had planned to spatchcock the bird and smoke it. The weather is supposed to be crummy and the wife wants turkey broth so it will be a traditional oven roasted bird. Oh well. At least I will finally get the turkey out of my freezer.
 
I baked and carved my turkey yesterday. I put it all in a disposable tin, sealed it with foil, and put it in the fridge for the night. Today, while all of the rest of the Christmas goodies were baking, I put the turkey in the smoker with some of the drippings and butter and warmed it up. I basted the turkey while it warmed for an hour and forty five minutes at 300°. Not only did that allow everything to be ready and hot at the same time, eliminated the mess of carving the turkey with company, it added a nice smoke flavor to the bird. This will be my go to turkey cook the next time I host the dinner.
 
Have any of you tried Sous Vide cooking? The technique is becoming popular and affordable. If you aren't familiar with Sous Vide cooking, basically it's a matter of cooking vac sealed meats slowly in a controlled temp water bath. For a typical 1.5 inch medium rare ribeye
you would set the water batch temp at 130° and let your vac sealed steak reach that temp. That should take a couple of hours. Once that has been accomplished, a quick sear to give the steak the desired look and texture. The flavors are all captured in the vac sealed bags and the meat will not over cook because of the bath and meat with time will reach the same temp. I'm intrigued.
 
I tried something new to me at the cabin this weekend. Instead of grilling burgers and brats, I smoked them. I have smoked burgers in the past with good results but never brats. I normally boil them in beer then brown them on the grill and if pushed for time they are simply grilled. I had rather large German brats and lots of them to cook. We were all partying hearty so the less required attention to cooking with the smoker was appealing. :) I smoked burgers and brats at 225° and pulled when the meats reached 165°... I'm guessing a hour and a half cook. The burgers were half pounders and reached temp the same time as the brats. Both were good but I thought the brats were a bit greasy. They were well received but it won't be my new go-to cook.
 
I'm taking advantage of some mild weather and smoking out some baby backs. I'm 4 hours into them and my yard smells great.
 
I smoked some bb ribs today. They were expensive but I had my mind made up that it was baby back day. I smoked some beans as well. Baked beans with hot spicy bbq sauce, onions, bell peppers, and garlic. Between the two, I had a grand meal.
 
Beef ribs baby! Yesterday, I found an excellent looking rack of beef ribs at Walmart of all places. The rack was over six dollars a pound so there was nothing cheap about it. I asked myself, can you say no to such a good looking rack? The answer was no and now it's on the smoker. I'm a beef purist so the rack is only seasoned with coarse salt and pepper. I'm smoking at 235° and I'll wrap the rack after 3.5 hours and continue smoking / baking for another 2 hours. I'll unwrap it at that point and continue to smoke for another 1.5 hours. Then it will be feast time. :) The finish time I'll flex to achieve my desired finished product.
 
My bargain whole packer has been in my freezer since the first of Oct. Unless I change my mind, I'm putting some smoke on it this Sunday.
My plans are to let it partially thaw and butcher the point from the flat.
There is no way the wife and I can eat 17 pounds of brisket. :) I'll smoke the point and will divide up the flat and vac seal for another couple of future cooks.
 
After a couple of hours yesterday, I realized that my whole packer is going to take more than a day to thaw out enough to butcher. I put it back in the freezer with lesson learned and pulled out a couple of ribeye steaks. They are on the smoker now and I'll put a reverse sear on them when they reach 107°.
 
Tonight I'm grilling out some chicken thighs. I plan to make half with a garlic based rub and the other with a hot rub finished with a bbq glaze.
Superbowl Sunday I had a desire to smoke something special. My local market was completely out of anything that looked special to me.
I settled for a flatiron steak that was over priced. I'll probably bake potatoes to go with it. We don't need a lot to eat because of the snacks I'm making for the big game.
 
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