Weekend Barbecue Bonanza!
Since I missed out on getting to have a barbecue during National Barbecue Month, and I ended up having a weird cough/cold over the Memorial Day Weekend, so didn't cook then (I know, it's a travesty!), I was finally able to have my first barbecue of the season this past weekend, and it was a blast. Of course, I'm using the term "barbecue" as the event type, as I prepare "barbecue" (cook low and slow) all the time in my Cookshack. That distinction is especially confusing to my Canadian parents, who consider grilling to be the same as barbecuing, despite many a frustrating lecture (ie: me - "I had a barbecue this weekend", parents- "what did you cook the food on? You have both your smoker and your barbecue", me - "No, that's a grill, you don't barbecue on the grill", parents - "But we call it barbecue", me - "Well, it's not, barbecue is low and slow, and grilling is over high heat. You're talking about grilling", parents - "I don't think so, I'm talking about barbecue", etc. But that's a whole 'nother story).
Since this was my first outdoor entertaining foray of the season, I was pretty excited. By which I mean, I couldn't narrow down my choices of what to cook, so I just made everything that sounded good. I was cooking for 9 (8 adults, including myself, and 1 child), but easily prepared enough food for double the amount of people. This was partially intentional, since I wanted leftovers for myself and knew my out-of-town friends would take stuff home, and partially just bad math on my part. Portioning genius I am not.
I decided to have all of my favorite barbecue sides: broccoli salad (Paula Deen's recipe from Food Network site, minus the tomatoes, and about which my friend Chelsea said "This is the perfect salad. It takes everything healthy about broccoli and combines it with the deliciousness of bacon, cheese, and mayo." In my opinion, that also makes it balanced - veggie, protein, dairy, and fat. And fruit, since it has raisins in it too. Yum! Baked beans (I used canned baked beans, and added some chopped red onions, some rub, and smoked rib tips), potato salad (which I made using the Fried Potato Salad recipe from the Williams-Sonoma website. It was a-ma-zing! To quote Chelsea again "I hate potato salad, and I could eat this entire [serving sized] bowl". You can try to make yourself feel better about it based on the fact that it's not mayo-based, but let's be honest, it's potatoes fried in bacon grease, with a bacon fat dressing, so in fact, this is not diet-friendly salad), and I bought coleslaw.
For the meat, I had to do a pork butt (both because it's a universal favorite, and because I blogged about doing it for Memorial Day and then didn't) and ribs, because who doesn't like ribs? I ended up with a 9+ lbs. butt, which probably would have been enough to feed everyone on it's own, and then 3 racks of spare ribs, which I cut down to St. Louis cut.
My plan was to cook the butt overnight, and then take it out and wrap it before we left to go to the lake for a few hours, putting the ribs and beans in the smoker when the butt came out. I was hoping the butt would be ready by noon, since that was when I had promised my out-of-towners Chelsea and John we would go to the lake.
Since I wasn't on the ball enough to order the pork marinade that I wanted to use from Butcher Barbecue (that I still plan on getting), I decided to merge the two techniques I was considering: I'd inject it with Fast Eddy's "pickle" (recipe down the page), and then rub it with Cookshack's Spicy Barbecue Sauce Mix and sugar.
On Friday, on my Google alerts, I had received a link to a site with a recipe for BBQ Chocolate Flavored homemade popsicles, which sound intriguing and I'll probably make at some point, but the part that really caught my eye was the smoked sugar used in the recipe. I decided that I would make it and use it both in the injection and for the rub, my logic being that it would be interesting to see a) if I could get the sugar to take on a good smoke flavor and b) if it would add an even smokier flavor throughout the butt. So I cold-smoked some sugar for an hour and fifteen minutes. I did both white and brown turbinado sugar, to compare. It came out with a whiff of smoke that intensified as it sat.
Once the sugar was smoked, I started to make my injection for the butt. The butt hadn't needed much trimming once I took it out of the packaging (as you can see from the photo), the fat cap had already been mostly removed, so all I had to do was remove the gland and get injecting.
So I mixed up the salt, smoked white sugar, apple cider vinegar, and water and was
ready to get going. If you're going to inject, always inject in a pan, and I recommend placing that pan on a cookie sheet for easy transport to the fridge. Don't try this on just a cookie sheet, because as it sits the butt is going to leak the injection out, which will leave you with a big mess. It has over 2 quarts of liquid that could potentially leak out,So I mixed up the salt, smoked white sugar, apple cider vinegar, and water and was so keep that in mind.
I inject like a crazy person, every half inch all over the butt. I do both sides of the butt, and all the "side" sides. I always wear an apron (and my glasses as protective eye wear, since I don't want to risk getting vinegar in the eye), since as you inject it will sometimes squirt out of another hole and spray all over you. You don't have to have a fancy injector, I just bought mine at Wal-Mart, and it works fine. I've had to buy a few, because they wear out fast, but they're cheap and I never remember that I need one until I'm getting ready to cook, so they're also convenient. The parts come apart, so they're also very easy to clean.
I finished injecting around 5:00 pm and put the butt in the fridge. At 10:00 pm I took the butt out (this was a mistake, I should have been done injecting sooner so that I could put it in earlier), rubbed the butt down with the remainder of the smoked sugar and more brown sugar (globbed would be a better word than rub, actually. I layed it on thick) and then sprinkled on a thick layer of Spicy Barbecue Sauce Mix. Into the smoker it went at 250ºF with a large chunk of apple wood. The butt was probed with a digital thermometer, of course.
In the morning I woke up expecting the butt to be on the way out of the plateau stage. It was not. It was definitely sitting at around 160ºF, not budging. I didn't freak out, since I knew to expect this, but it worried me a little about timing. While waiting for Chelsea and John to arrive for our lake outing, I got the ribs trimmed down from spares to St. Louis cut and rubbed everything (ribs and tips) with a mixture of Obie-Cue's Sweet 'N Heat and Texas Rib Rangers Barbecue Seasoning, leftovers from the Fast Eddy's Cooking Class that I was lucky enough to take home.
Since I wanted to put the rib tips into the beans, I opened the smoker up and put them in around 10:30. I also got the beans in a pan ready to go into the smoker (except for the rib tips add-in), prepared the broccoli salad, and boiled, cooled, and sliced the potatoes for the potato salad. And yet, the butt was still not ready.
Around noon, it was finally getting ready to come out of the plateau it had been sitting in (it was around 170ºF at that point), so it was definitely not ready to come out. Since I had promised lake-time to Chelsea and John, at around 12:30 I decided to go ahead and just try to stuff everything into the smoker and go. With Chelsea's help, we removed the rib tips, carefully moved the pork butt from the middle rack to the top rack, with the meat scooted all the way to the side, and managed to get one rack of ribs (bended a little bit on the end) on the same rack. On the middle rack I placed 2 racks of ribs, and on the bottom rack went the uncovered tray of beans, to which I had added the chopped up rib tips. The beans were uncovered so that the drippings from the meat would go into them, adding some extra spice and tastiness. I added one more piece of wood, to give the ribs some fresh smoke, closed the door and we were off to the lake.
We came back from the at 4:30, and the butt still wasn't done, so I left everything in there. While I do barbecue by the Smokin' Okie mantra "it's done when it's done", I was starting to worry that it wouldn't be ready in time. We prepared the potato salad, got everything put out, and then finally, at 5:30, the butt was done. Perfect timing, since I wanted to open up the smoker to sauce the ribs anyway. Everything started coming together at that point. I foiled the butt and let it rest for 20 minutes, and then it pulled to perfection. Chelsea tasted for "poison control", and deemed it fit to eat. The ribs came out, were cut, and everyone showed up on time at 6:00 pm ready to eat.
Everything was fantastic. The flavor of the butt was great. I think that the smoked sugar added extra flavor, and I love the Sauce Mix as a rub. It was probably the best butt I've ever done. We were all stuffed, but Teri had brought a delicious ice cream pie, so we had to eat that, of course. I think that pushed everyone from the full to uncomfortably full category. Let me just say that I'm going on vacation in two weeks, and partially because of this meal, I'm only packing one-piece swimming suits.
As I expected, I had a ton of food leftover (about a rack and a two-thirds of ribs, half of the butt, a lot of coleslaw, 1/3 of the broccoli salad [I had doubled the recipe, since it's my fave], 1/4 of the potato salad, and over a half pan of beans). After sending Chelsea and John home with the cut up ribs (the 2/3 rack), half of the remaining pork butt, the rest of the potato salad, and half of the remaining broccoli salad, we still had to re-arrange the fridge to get the leftovers in. And let me tell you, they're fantastic leftovers!
Fast Eddy's Pork Butt (Pickle Portion)
From the Fast Eddy's Championship Cooking Class
1/2 cup kosher salt
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup apple cider vinegar
2 quarts water
Remove the fat cap and make sure the gland is not left in the butt
Trim fat from the outside muscle of the butt
Mix together salt, sugar, vinegar, and water. Blend until clear.
4-8 hours before cooking, place pork in a large pan and shoot with an injector until butt is leaking injection everywhere
Let sit refrigerated in the pan until ready to season
Season pork butt immediately before cooking with the rub of your choice
Since this was my first outdoor entertaining foray of the season, I was pretty excited. By which I mean, I couldn't narrow down my choices of what to cook, so I just made everything that sounded good. I was cooking for 9 (8 adults, including myself, and 1 child), but easily prepared enough food for double the amount of people. This was partially intentional, since I wanted leftovers for myself and knew my out-of-town friends would take stuff home, and partially just bad math on my part. Portioning genius I am not.
I decided to have all of my favorite barbecue sides: broccoli salad (Paula Deen's recipe from Food Network site, minus the tomatoes, and about which my friend Chelsea said "This is the perfect salad. It takes everything healthy about broccoli and combines it with the deliciousness of bacon, cheese, and mayo." In my opinion, that also makes it balanced - veggie, protein, dairy, and fat. And fruit, since it has raisins in it too. Yum! Baked beans (I used canned baked beans, and added some chopped red onions, some rub, and smoked rib tips), potato salad (which I made using the Fried Potato Salad recipe from the Williams-Sonoma website. It was a-ma-zing! To quote Chelsea again "I hate potato salad, and I could eat this entire [serving sized] bowl". You can try to make yourself feel better about it based on the fact that it's not mayo-based, but let's be honest, it's potatoes fried in bacon grease, with a bacon fat dressing, so in fact, this is not diet-friendly salad), and I bought coleslaw.
For the meat, I had to do a pork butt (both because it's a universal favorite, and because I blogged about doing it for Memorial Day and then didn't) and ribs, because who doesn't like ribs? I ended up with a 9+ lbs. butt, which probably would have been enough to feed everyone on it's own, and then 3 racks of spare ribs, which I cut down to St. Louis cut. My plan was to cook the butt overnight, and then take it out and wrap it before we left to go to the lake for a few hours, putting the ribs and beans in the smoker when the butt came out. I was hoping the butt would be ready by noon, since that was when I had promised my out-of-towners Chelsea and John we would go to the lake.
Since I wasn't on the ball enough to order the pork marinade that I wanted to use from Butcher Barbecue (that I still plan on getting), I decided to merge the two techniques I was considering: I'd inject it with Fast Eddy's "pickle" (recipe down the page), and then rub it with Cookshack's Spicy Barbecue Sauce Mix and sugar.
On Friday, on my Google alerts, I had received a link to a site with a recipe for BBQ Chocolate Flavored homemade popsicles, which sound intriguing and I'll probably make at some point, but the part that really caught my eye was the smoked sugar used in the recipe. I decided that I would make it and use it both in the injection and for the rub, my logic being that it would be interesting to see a) if I could get the sugar to take on a good smoke flavor and b) if it would add an even smokier flavor throughout the butt. So I cold-smoked some sugar for an hour and fifteen minutes. I did both white and brown turbinado sugar, to compare. It came out with a whiff of smoke that intensified as it sat. Once the sugar was smoked, I started to make my injection for the butt. The butt hadn't needed much trimming once I took it out of the packaging (as you can see from the photo), the fat cap had already been mostly removed, so all I had to do was remove the gland and get injecting.
So I mixed up the salt, smoked white sugar, apple cider vinegar, and water and was
ready to get going. If you're going to inject, always inject in a pan, and I recommend placing that pan on a cookie sheet for easy transport to the fridge. Don't try this on just a cookie sheet, because as it sits the butt is going to leak the injection out, which will leave you with a big mess. It has over 2 quarts of liquid that could potentially leak out,So I mixed up the salt, smoked white sugar, apple cider vinegar, and water and was so keep that in mind.
I inject like a crazy person, every half inch all over the butt. I do both sides of the butt, and all the "side" sides. I always wear an apron (and my glasses as protective eye wear, since I don't want to risk getting vinegar in the eye), since as you inject it will sometimes squirt out of another hole and spray all over you. You don't have to have a fancy injector, I just bought mine at Wal-Mart, and it works fine. I've had to buy a few, because they wear out fast, but they're cheap and I never remember that I need one until I'm getting ready to cook, so they're also convenient. The parts come apart, so they're also very easy to clean.
I finished injecting around 5:00 pm and put the butt in the fridge. At 10:00 pm I took the butt out (this was a mistake, I should have been done injecting sooner so that I could put it in earlier), rubbed the butt down with the remainder of the smoked sugar and more brown sugar (globbed would be a better word than rub, actually. I layed it on thick) and then sprinkled on a thick layer of Spicy Barbecue Sauce Mix. Into the smoker it went at 250ºF with a large chunk of apple wood. The butt was probed with a digital thermometer, of course.
In the morning I woke up expecting the butt to be on the way out of the plateau stage. It was not. It was definitely sitting at around 160ºF, not budging. I didn't freak out, since I knew to expect this, but it worried me a little about timing. While waiting for Chelsea and John to arrive for our lake outing, I got the ribs trimmed down from spares to St. Louis cut and rubbed everything (ribs and tips) with a mixture of Obie-Cue's Sweet 'N Heat and Texas Rib Rangers Barbecue Seasoning, leftovers from the Fast Eddy's Cooking Class that I was lucky enough to take home.
Since I wanted to put the rib tips into the beans, I opened the smoker up and put them in around 10:30. I also got the beans in a pan ready to go into the smoker (except for the rib tips add-in), prepared the broccoli salad, and boiled, cooled, and sliced the potatoes for the potato salad. And yet, the butt was still not ready.
Around noon, it was finally getting ready to come out of the plateau it had been sitting in (it was around 170ºF at that point), so it was definitely not ready to come out. Since I had promised lake-time to Chelsea and John, at around 12:30 I decided to go ahead and just try to stuff everything into the smoker and go. With Chelsea's help, we removed the rib tips, carefully moved the pork butt from the middle rack to the top rack, with the meat scooted all the way to the side, and managed to get one rack of ribs (bended a little bit on the end) on the same rack. On the middle rack I placed 2 racks of ribs, and on the bottom rack went the uncovered tray of beans, to which I had added the chopped up rib tips. The beans were uncovered so that the drippings from the meat would go into them, adding some extra spice and tastiness. I added one more piece of wood, to give the ribs some fresh smoke, closed the door and we were off to the lake.
We came back from the at 4:30, and the butt still wasn't done, so I left everything in there. While I do barbecue by the Smokin' Okie mantra "it's done when it's done", I was starting to worry that it wouldn't be ready in time. We prepared the potato salad, got everything put out, and then finally, at 5:30, the butt was done. Perfect timing, since I wanted to open up the smoker to sauce the ribs anyway. Everything started coming together at that point. I foiled the butt and let it rest for 20 minutes, and then it pulled to perfection. Chelsea tasted for "poison control", and deemed it fit to eat. The ribs came out, were cut, and everyone showed up on time at 6:00 pm ready to eat.
Everything was fantastic. The flavor of the butt was great. I think that the smoked sugar added extra flavor, and I love the Sauce Mix as a rub. It was probably the best butt I've ever done. We were all stuffed, but Teri had brought a delicious ice cream pie, so we had to eat that, of course. I think that pushed everyone from the full to uncomfortably full category. Let me just say that I'm going on vacation in two weeks, and partially because of this meal, I'm only packing one-piece swimming suits.
As I expected, I had a ton of food leftover (about a rack and a two-thirds of ribs, half of the butt, a lot of coleslaw, 1/3 of the broccoli salad [I had doubled the recipe, since it's my fave], 1/4 of the potato salad, and over a half pan of beans). After sending Chelsea and John home with the cut up ribs (the 2/3 rack), half of the remaining pork butt, the rest of the potato salad, and half of the remaining broccoli salad, we still had to re-arrange the fridge to get the leftovers in. And let me tell you, they're fantastic leftovers!
Fast Eddy's Pork Butt (Pickle Portion)
From the Fast Eddy's Championship Cooking Class
1/2 cup kosher salt
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup apple cider vinegar
2 quarts water
Remove the fat cap and make sure the gland is not left in the butt
Trim fat from the outside muscle of the butt
Mix together salt, sugar, vinegar, and water. Blend until clear.
4-8 hours before cooking, place pork in a large pan and shoot with an injector until butt is leaking injection everywhere
Let sit refrigerated in the pan until ready to season
Season pork butt immediately before cooking with the rub of your choice
How about some commentary about what is a pork butt? To Canadians and Europeans I agree that we have to differ about barbecuing, grilling and smoking but in Europe, we don't use the term pork butt. Exactly what cut of meat is this?
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That's a great point/question. The pork butt (AKA "Boston Butt"), actually comes from the front leg of the pig. The front leg(s) can be broken down into two cuts: the "butt" and the "picnic shoulder". The top portion of the leg is what is considered the butt, and it often contains the blade bone, if it hasn't been removed. The bottom portion will be the picnic shoulder. If you visit the Pork Board website, it has a diagram with more details.
A little history: the Boston Butt is named not from it's location on the pig, but from the way it was packed. In the pre-revolutionary war/Revolutionary war era, cheaper pork cuts were often stored and shipped in casks called "butts", and this type of cut was known for being done in Boston, and therefore, "Boston Butt". So when you go to the butcher, you may try asking for a blade roast. Look for one with good marbling, with the fat cap still on it (this is a very fatty piece of meat, and it will have a thick layer of fat on one side, which I prefer to trim down myself), with the bone still in, and I try to get ones in the 6 - 10 lbs. range, although you may find them quite a bit smaller in the 2 -3 lbs. range.
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