Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Now summer is approaching what is everyone smoking

Damn!!
What a buzz kill.

Yeah, I'll be enjoying my stir-fried tofu and organic vegetables all sum....HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Not in this lifetime:

1 beef brisket, untrimmed, 7-10Lbs
Quarter cup or so of kosher salt
Half cup or so of home-made chili powder (it's easy, buy some dried chilies of various "heat," cut the stem end, shake out the seeds, snip the chilies into 1/4" strips, run them through a coffee grinder or like device until powdery. Wear gloves while doing this).
1Tbl freshly toasted and ground cumin
Say a couple of teaspoons each fresh ground white and black pepper
2 Tbl dark smoked Hungarian paprika
1/4 cup light or dark brown sugar.

Plus you can add garlic powder, onion powder, Chinese 5-spice powder (be careful! This will overpower everything else! 1 or 2 tsp. at most should do it) lemon zest, etc. Play around.

Mix with a fork and rub very liberally on the entire hunk o' meat. Really rub it in. Put the brisket in a plastic garbage bag and place in the fridge over night or at least 8 hours.

Next day, take the brisket out of the fridge and hour ahead then smoke it FAT SIDE UP at 225F with apple, oak, or hickory chips for 8 hours-ish or until tender enough to cut with a dull spoon. If you really want to do it up and can control the temp accurately (put an oven thermometer in the rack where the meat sits, that is the the air you want to measure; the built-in thermometer up top will not tell you what you want to know) start it 18 hours before you want it done and raise the temp thusly:

1st 6 hours: 160F
Next 3 hours: 175F
Next 3 hours 190F
Next 3 hours: 210F
Last 3 hours: 220F

Remove from rack and lightly tent in tinfoil for 15 minutes. Slice and serve.

A note on smoking: When using an electric, charcoal, or gas smoker or BBQ and adding the chips or chunks of wood, you only need to do this for the first couple of hours. If you keep throwing chips on the entire time you can get a very unpleasant buildup of chemicals on the meat that will ruin it (essentially creosote). Plus, the smoke will only penetrate so far in the first place. When using a purpose-built hardwood "smoker" you don't actually want a lot of smoke, since visible smoke has a lot of moisture and deposits the crud on the meat. That's why we burn the wood to coal in a fire pit then toss it into the fire box. I do burn a log or 2 in the firebox at the beginning though.

Framer-

Great recipe! Have you tried raising the temp and covering the butt in honey for the last hour or so?

Also I love my butt on a bun with coleslaw (I know, it's just too easy. I also love telling my friends how much I enjoyed rubbing my butt or rubbing my meat the night before). Try traditional coleslaw or Carolina style which might be a little piquant for some (yellow mustard, hot pepper flakes, and vinegar).

Yes, with setup lines like those, you could easily get a job as a straight man.

The two most popular "smokees" (you have the smoker and the smokee, right ?) are turkey and your run of the mill "pull it out of the lake" fish, typically whitefish or similar.

Has anyone played with those newfangled "digital smokers" which have a little power auger to drop coals in at a predictable rate so you can sleep at night ?

>>pork butt roast..often labeled as a pork shoulder blade roast

This is a useful piece of information which may reduce the number of funny looks I get at supermarkets. Thank you !!

All,

Here is a recipe that I scavanged one time (I did not write it) that would probably work well in a smoker / grill (to add to the flavor of the recipe)...takes a bit of time but well worth it!

Begin Recipe

Robert Rodriguez' Puerco Pibil (or Cochinita Pibil) from Once Upon a Time in Mexico

"Are you a MexiCAN, or are you a MexiCAN'T?" If you're a MexiCAN, follow these instructions closely:

I've taken the liberty of transcribing Robert Rodriguez' recipe from his "10 Minute Cooking School" Featurette from the Once Upon a Time in Mexico DVD. It looks mouthwatering, and I can't wait to make it. As soon as I saw it, I thought about this forum.

Clean up the kitchen, fellow SpoTTies.

You'll need:

3-5 lbs. of pork butt
1/2 cup of orange juice
1/2 cup of white vinegar
Banana leaves (usually found at mexican and asian markets)
5 tablespoons of annatto seeds
2 teaspoons cumin seed
5 lemons
1 tablespoon black pepper
8 allspice nuggets
2 habanero peppers
1/2 teaspoon of cloves
2 tablespoons of salt
8 cloves of garlic
Tequila. Lots of Tequila. Mmmm.
Casserole pan
Aluminum Foil
1 Big-[censored] ziploc bag
a coffee grinder
a blender

Now, Rodriguez suggests you buy a separate coffee grinder to mix the raw seasonings, so not to cross-pollinate your spices with your coffee.

So...throw the annatto seeds, the cumin, the pepper, the cloves and the allspice into the coffee grinder and grind it into a super-fine, powdery dust. You'll combine it with some other stuff later to create Achiote Paste. Don't ask; keep reading.

Anyway, so you grind all that up until it's like drywall dust. Then dump it in the blender.

Chop up the habaneros, and be careful to remove the seeds and veins--unless you are SERIOUSLY down with super-spicy HEAT.

Then add the OJ, the vinegar, the juice from the five lemons, the salt, the garlic, and the chopped up habaneros into the blender as well, and add a "splash of the finest tequila you can find." Blend. Blend some more. Check it closely. This is your achiote paste. Blend some more, just in case. You don't want any chunks of this stuff lingering in your mouth.

Grab your pork butt (hehehe...that was completely accidental) and HACK it into 2" cubes--preferably with a machete, for that authentic Yucatan atmosphere. Dump the cubes into the "big-[censored] ziploc bag."

Dump in your achiote paste, and do the shake n' bake, without the baking part...yet. Just make sure the meat is completely marinating. Rodriguez doesn't say for how long, so I'm guessing 2-4 hours minimum. Correct me if you know better. I haven't made this yet.

Now, grab your banana leaves (hopefully they're fresh--more moisture), and line your casserole pan about three layers deep.

Dump your achiote paste-saturated pig butt into the pan. put more banana leaves on top, and wrap that spicy meat all up in those big 'ol leaves. Then SEAL the entire casserole pan up with aluminum foil to lock in all the moisture. That's what cooks the pork.

Get a friend to help you lug all that dead meat on over to an oven you've pre-heated to 325 degrees, and heft it in. Close that door and go watch dvds for four hours. If there's any tequila left, take that with you.

Rodriguez pulled this stuff out, and it looked just melt-in-your-mouth kinda good. Serve it over a bed of rice, and hey--anything else you want to serve with it."

End Recipe

I have made this before and it is exquisite...the achiote paste has a unique flavor but it very, very good. You can probably substitute a different cut of pork...may try it on a tenderloin.

Give it a shot and let us all know how it comes out...

Disclaimer: Kids will probably definately NOT like this...

Enjoy.

WhatFurrer

It is also known as a "Boston Butt." Some people smoke the whole shoulder which is made up of the butt and the picnic roast. A whole shoulder can be pretty massive. I usually stick to the butt (again, it's just too easy).

Whatfurrer- that looks like a fantastic recipe. I'll have to try it. Later this summer a couple of the fellas and I are going to try a whole pig. Apparently a rental place in town here has a rig with a motorized spit and a charcoal tray below. I wanted to dig a pit and roast the porker under ground but WAF insinuates itself everywhere.

A lot of great ideas which I printed out and put it in her recipe folder. My wife likes the smoker which means less cooking she has to do, which I dont get since we eat out most of the time.

So... my cheapo gas bbq finally disintegrated and I'm in the market for something new. The smoking happens at by brother-in-law Rob's (the far away one, not the close one ) and Rob does all the smoking, I just do the eating.

I figure it's time to start pulling my weight. I've pretty much narrowed the selection down to a Weber bullet smoker or a Weber charcoal kettle (either the "Gold" or the "Performer" with propane lighter thingy).

The only argument for the Performer vs. a regular kettle + chimney is that in theory the Weber kettles are sufficiently airtight that you can close all the vents and have the charcoal stop burning, leaving it ready for use next time. If the charcoal is *already* in the kettle then having a built-in lighter seems like a good idea and a real convenience -- but if I had to start from scratch with new charcoal every time then a chimney would really be just as convenient and all I'm getting for the extra $$ is a cart, table and charcoal bin.

Note that in the US a Performer costs almost 3x a regular kettle, while in Canada the prices are closer, more like 2x -- presumably there is a relatively fixed transportation cost applicable to both.

The bigger question, though, is "smoker or kettle ?". I figure maybe 2/3 of my usage will be "low + slow" but it would be nice to be able to grill the occasional burger, sausage or steak.

It sounds like at least a few of you are running charcoal smokers. Is anyone running a Weber bullet (WSM) and if so do you ever use it for occasional grilling ? There is a brief blurb on grilling with a WSM at the virtualweberbullet site but it involves rebuilding the pieces in a different order and I'm not sure how stable their recommended arrangement is.