Smoked Chuck Roast and Babyback Ribs!

Last weekend I fired up the big vertical smoker since the bride had requested some baby back ribs.  Since I have plenty of rack space on the smoker, I figured I’d add a couple of chuck roasts to the smoke as well.  Chuck roasts love to be slow smoked to the point where they shred perfectly for shredded beef sammichs!

I tuned the smoker to around 250 degrees, slathered and rubbed the ribs and chucks, put them in the smoker and left it alone for 2 hours.  I also slathered and rubbed a few cook snacks, but I’ll get to those later!

At the 2 hour point, I opened it up, spritzed all of the meats with my magic mop sauce, and then wrapped the ribs in some smokers duct tape (aluminum foil).

Just prior to mop and wrap

 

Magic mop spritz

Since I was following the 2-1-1 process for the ribs, I closed the door and waited an hour. Didn’t peek at all!  That’s hard to do when you have a wonderful smell emanating from the smoke stack!

After an hour, I opened the smoker up, un wrapped the ribs, put them back in the smoker, spritzed everything, and then removed the cook snacks from the smoker to see how my rub tasted!  Ok, I was just being greedy and wanted some good smoked pork early!

Cook snacks are nothing more than the trimmings from the ribs. With the baby backs, I didn’t get much to snack on, but with full spares, you can almost make a meal from the trimmings!  I slather and rub the trimmings, put them in the “hot spot” in the smoker, let them cook for about 3 hours, and then sample my work!  In the past, I would have shared them with my smoker cat, Buster, but sadly we lost him a few weeks ago.

Cook snacks!

After waiting one more hour, a long hour at that, it was time to pull the ribs off the smoker.  I opened the door and my mouth began to water!  The cook snacks were good, but I couldn’t wait to bite into some of that meat still on the bone!  A lot of people think that the meat should just fall from the bone, but I like to have the meat where it’ll release from the bone after a little tug with the teeth!  Well, I cooked a bit too long!  If you notice in the picture below, when I went to put the ribs on a tray, one end of them fell off and into the driveway!  Buster would have LOVED me had he been here!

Broken ribs?

We dined upon the ribs as the chuckies continued to cook and tenderize!

Ribs are ready!

The ribs were wonderful!  Smoke penetrated almost all the way through and the meat was very tender!  Even our new kitten loved them!  She wanted a bone, so I gave her one!

I failed to get a picture of the chuckies when they came out of the pit.  Since we weren’t eating them that night, I vacuum packed them while still hot, allowed them to cool and then refrigerated.   Last night, we decided to dine upon them!

I’ve told people how to do this before, but I’ll say it again, when warming meat that has been vac-packed, leave it in the vac-pack, under vacuum, and place it into a large pot of cool water.

Place the pot on the stove top, with the vac-packed meat in the pot, turn the heat to high, and allow the water to come to a boil.  Yes, the meat is straight from the refrigerator and cold when it goes into the pot of cool water.

Vacpack in the water at boil

After reaching a rolling boil, allow to boil for 5-minutes more, then remove the bag from the water.

CAREFULLY cut open the bag to dump out the meat. Now, this meat contains moisture, it’s been residing in an atmosphere that is less than  normal atmospheric pressure, there will be steam escaping from this bag when you cut it open!  Use caution, steam burns suck!

Once that bag was opened, it smelled like I had meat straight from the smoker!  Vacuum packing is the way to go for meat storage!  If you look at the picture above and below, you’ll see that the  “smoke ring” is still visible on this chuck roast.  Normally, when refrigerated or frozen, and not vacuum packed, the cooked meat loses this “ring”.

Shredded smoked chuck roast

I added a little of my homemade BBQ sauce to the meat, mixed well, and then piled it onto some bread for a sammich!

Yep!  Mayo and cheese on whole wheat bread!  Grew up with it like that and still love it to this day!  Oh yeah, the other stuff on the plate, some cook named Candis made homemade Mac and cheese, but we’ll talk about that some other time!

Hope you enjoyed this post, and until next time, Bone Appetite!

This blog entry is dedicated to the only BBQ partner I’ve ever had that didn’t tell me how to cook, he just ate it and loved it!

Buster the BBQ Cat

 

Corruption of family and friends

According to my father, our entire family descended from Tyrannosaurus Rex; we are carnivores for sure. We love all things meat, but unlike ol’ Rex, we tend to share our love for food! But lately I’ve learned that not all folks agree with you sharing too much of your enthusiasm for some things…

When I met Candis, my very understanding bride, she was almost a vegetarian from what she tells me. The first steak she ever had was at Ruth’s Chris when I took her there early in our relationship and she wanted it well done. She now prefers her bone in ribeye steak medium rare, so I think I’ve cured her of the veggie affliction. Heck, according to one of my cousin’s bridesmaids, I totally cured her of the veggie issue when she ate my ribs at the wedding reception I catered, but I digress…

Over the years I’ve given advice to a few friends and family members about how to go about making BBQ and sausage, but in the last 3 years or so, I’ve really taken a few folks “under my wing” so to speak.

In the old days (single life) I was looked upon as a bad influence to my married friends since I “went to all night gatherings and drank beer”. What the wives didn’t understand was that I was at a BBQ competition cooking all night. Well, a little beer was involved, but I was still frowned upon for pulling the all nighters. Trust me wives, no hotties are typically involved in the making of competition BBQ! I say typically because a few of my friend’s wives are a part of their cooking team… Trying to stay out of trouble folks!

Now days I have wives and significant others looking at me as a bad influence since I’ve “made” their spouse/partner begin to cook and talk BBQ or sausage! I’ve checked with a few of my friends, and none of them have had any marks or bruises where I forced them into this madness… They aren’t staying out all night either, but a few of them are tending the pit in the backyard or finishing the stuffing of some great sausage they made earlier in the day long after their family has gone to bed. Dunno about the beer, that hasn’t come up yet…

Now, why is this happening, not just to my friends, but all over the place it seems? To me it’s simple, people want quality products at a much better price. Not to mention the fact that you know exactly what you’re eating when you make it yourself. It’s amazing to me just how much “stuff” is inside of a store bought sausage, or what all is really in the BBQ sauce from the restaurants. We won’t even mention how some of the stuff is made! Just think about a ticked off high school kid cooking in a restaurant and wanting to get the boss in trouble… Hmm, not pretty is it?

However, back to my being a bad influence. A few friends have gone whole hog when it comes to BBQ and sausage making! Jumping in with both feet and buying or building a new BBQ pit, or obtaining all the equipment required to make and stuff 50 pounds of sausage in a day. I’ve heard mumbles about that as well when I’ve been over to help fine tune the operation a bit. Although, I seriously hope no one in their family is calculating the cost per pound of the BBQ or sausage for the first few runs of meat! It might be a bit pricey! I doubt there’ll be too much trouble though, it’s hard to beat homemade goodness, especially when it’s made for the family and the main ingredient is the love to please!

So, yes, I have corrupted a few, and I’m sure I’ll corrupt a few more before its over, but I won’t lose any sleep over it. The BBQ or sausage dinner now eaten by their family will be at home and not in a restaurant. The cooking of the meal will be shared by a couple of other members of the family since very few can resist the aroma of something cooking on the pit and they just have to go see how it’s going; yes, kids will leave Facebook and video games to see what’s cooking!

But finally, I won’t lose any sleep over corrupting a few folks since I know that they now have a skill that they too can pass along to another friend or family member, that should get me off the hook!

Got a question or want to just chew the fat a bit? Drop me a line; I can corrupt you as well, just don’t tell the spouse where your new found madness originated!

Laying out the control panel for the cold smoker

Wow, one can begin to over think things here in the 21st century.  Here I am laying out the electronic control panel for my cold smoker that’s made from wood!

Way back when, all one did was build a smoke chamber to concentrate the smoke around the meat, and said chamber was fed by a small smokey fire a few feet off that fed the smoke in through a tube!  Then one just tended the fire until all was smoked to a glorious finish…

Well, the wife has said for years that I’m a geek, so I guess I’ll live up to the name…  The control panel for this cold smoker will perform the following functions:

• Turn the heat on and off by way of a PID controller
• Turn the smoke generator air supply on and off by way of a switch
• Electronically “fire” the smoke generator to ignite the pellets/chips within the generator to begin the smoldering action.  This will be done with a glow plug controlled by a push button.
• Show the internal temperature of the meat(s) that are inside of the smoker by way of a thermocouple inserted into the meat and showing the temp on a panel mounted thermometer.
• Last but not least, there will be a switch to turn lights on and off so I can work the foods at night.

There are a couple of other things I haven’t mentioned, but wow!  How did mankind ever make it to the 21st century without all of this new fangled stuff?

Actually, I’m way over building this thing, but that’s because I love my sleep, and to be honest, I’m over tending a fire all day/night long…  Some of my old smoking buddies are gonna want to slap me upside of the head over this build, but I’ll have an advantage over them; I’ll be rested up and see it coming!

I’ll get a few pics of the control panel layout and build in the next day or so.

New blog, new projects, lots of thoughts… Where to begin?

I’ve been considering a blog for quite some time now.  I’ve thought it would be a great way to show what all I do, provide some information to others, rant about a few things, and of course, show pictures of food!

I’ve been smoking meats since I was in my teens and still learn something new each time I get back in front of the pit.  It is now, and will always be, a work in progress for me to master this hobby (madness?) that I seem to have.

There are a few items out on the web that I’ve created to assist others in this endeavor and I’ll share them here.  The first is my BBQ Workbook that is available in Excel format.  It’s free to all to use, share, or print out.  http://www.crankybuzzard.com/CrankyBuzzardBBQWorkbook.xls

This is my latest smoker project, but I’ll talk more about it later… http://i539.photobucket.com/albums/ff360/CrankyBuzzard/64e14f3e3f47643b7ab8cd0927ace00f.jpg