Cookshack & Fast Eddy Talk About Barbecue

What National Barbecue Month Means to Me

Donna — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:58:04 GMT

Sounds like a 7th grade essay ... what National Barbecue Month Means to Me. Since I am the sappy sentimental one around here, maybe it qualifies as that. You can always count on me to get all misty at inappropriate times!

Nevertheless, I shall have my say and I'll keep it short.

National Barbecue Month is the harbinger of summer for me. It's the transition from the renewal that spring brings to long, lazy days splashing in the pool, cooking out, and enjoying family and friends. I know that picking blackberries is just around the corner, and big juicy tomatoes will be appearing in the garden soon. It reminds me of the good that life brings us, despite the daily battering we take from the news anchors, grouchy bosses, and all those bad drivers out there.

So it's time to do some spring cleaning around the smoker, find the pool floats, and dig the hammock out of the storage shed. Gimme a rib and a beer and a nap in the shade!

I Love National Barbecue Month!

Cayley — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:40:51 GMT

May is National Barbecue Month, which means that this already great style of food/cooking gets the attention it deserves! May could not be a better month to have National Barbecue Month. Think about it: the weather is warming up, but it's not gross-sticky-hot yet (can you tell I live in the South?), so people enjoy spending a long afternoon-into-evening at a BBQ, the days are starting to get longer, mosquito's haven't infested the area, and people are itching to get out after a long winter parked inside! It really is the best time of year. If I weren't going to be at NRA this weekend, I would definitely be at a barbecue. I hope you have plans for the Month o' BBQ, you can indulge your wildest barbecue cravings ("Yes, I am smoking brisket, and sausage, and pork butt, and ribs, I have to, it's in celebration of National Barbecue Month" - see how that works? You're no longer certifiable, you're festive!)

If I were a little more organized, I would have had a "Happy National Barbecue Month" Barbecue - because I love a theme party. If you enjoy a theme party, feel free to borrow that idea. Your friends will love it. You could supply the smoked meat, and everyone could bring a side dish and their favorite (un-opened or homemade) sauce, and you could do a sauce swap at the end, kind of like dirty Santa. The person with the messiest fingers/face at the end could win some sort of prize (because let's be honest, if you're serving ribs or wings, that's the only way to make people (girls) not embarrassed about digging in)! This is also the easiest kind of party to throw, because if you've got a Cookshack, you can just toss everything in with some rub on it, and when the thermometer tells you it's ready, take the meat out, and you look like the hero. It's stress free entertaining, especially since you can keep everyone outside and won't have to clean up a ton afterwards.

However, since I'll be in Chicago this weekend, I'm going to start planning for the Memorial Day Weekend (which still falls within the National BBQ Month time frame), which is a prime time for me to smoke some fabulous meats on my Cookshack. I've been doing a lot of untraditional smoked foods lately, so I think I'm going to do something decidedly barbecue, and easily packable/transportable that will hold well. I think we'll be going to the lake, so a pork butt would be perfect. If I put it in the smoker in the early evening the night before, it should be ready that next morning. I can just wrap it is some cling wrap, then a few layers of heavy duty foil, then in a towel, and pop it in a warm cooler, and it will still be too hot to handle when it comes time for lunch. I can just bring a pan and some tongs with me, so people can pull it themselves as they serve. I think that's what I'll do.

I'm a little torn on the prep of the butt, though. I always do Eddy's "Pickle" on pork butts, which is amazing, but Stuart did a butt here the other day that was incredible. Now usually, if I come in to work at 8 in the morning and smell barbecue it makes me a little queasy (as much as I love it, it's not the best breakfast smell to me), but when I came in that morning, the smell was enough to make a person drool! I had to taste some, and it was some of the best pork I've ever had. Stuart is supposed to be writing a blog about it (who could imagine he might be busy, though?), I know he took 5 million pictures, but, *spoiler alert* he injected it with some of Butcher BBQ's pork marinade, which really enhanced the pork flavor without overwhelming it, which I think is important, and then he used brown sugar and our Spicy Barbecue Sauce Mix as the rub. Ingenious! I've never used the sauce mix as a rub before, but it's incredible (and I'm not just saying that because we make it, really). It's a good thing that it was so early, or I probably would have eaten half of the butt standing over it in the kitchen, that's how good it was. Which do you think I should do, the tried and true, or the new and exciting? Here's Eddy's "Pickle" to help you decide. I highly recommend it, you should try it for your National Barbecue Month Celebration! Leave a comment about which of the two you think I should prepare, and the one that has the most votes I'll make and post about!

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

Smoked Rice, Part 2

Cayley — Tue, 13 May 2008 09:11:31 GMT

When I smoked the rice for my Brown Rice Salad, I also smoked a dry pan of raw brown rice for later use, because I was curious how it would turn out. This Sunday, I had a chance to play with cooking it, to fantastic results! I didn't think it could pair with just anything, so I decided to experiment and try cold-smoking some teriyaki marinated chicken thighs before doing a chicken stir fry with them, so that the flavors would blend better. I wanted to cold-smoke the chicken, rather than cook it, is because I wanted the flavor of smoke-cooking, but texture of stir frying, so that was my solution.

I started by marinating boneless, skinless chicken thighs in a teriyaki marinade that I made (ginger, soy sauce, oil, garlic, water, brown sugar, sherry). I marinated them for 45 minutes in the refrigerator. I had boned out and remove the skin from thighs myself, but I forgot to pound them to flatten them out like I had intended to do before I started to marinate. I briefly considered doing it when I removed them from the marinade, but I had visions of cleaning marinade splatter from every surface of my kitchen, so I thought better of it. It's not like they were really thick anyway.

The thighs went in the smoker for cold-smoking, with a chunk of apple wood in the wood box, and the cold smoke baffle in the bottom slot. I have a pan of ice on top of that, and the chicken is on a rack in the next slot, almost sitting on the pan of ice. This is good, because I want it to stay as cold as possible. I had the chicken probed to make sure that the temperature didn't rise at all. In the entire time it was in there, the temp didn't change.

I turned the smoker on to 150ºF for 20 minutes to get the smoke going, and then shut it off. I let the chicken sit in the smoker for another 20 minutes to get some smoke flavor on it. Like I said before, it is pretty much sitting on the ice, so it's not getting warm. For more smoke flavor you could let it go for longer, but I started to get nervous about food safety, so I took it out.

While the chicken was smoking, I started the rice. Even dry, it smelled smoky. It took the normal (45 minutes-ish) time to cook. I was nervous that it would just taste like burnt rice, but it didn't. It was good and smoky, but a little much on it's own.

When the thighs were done cold-smoking, I removed them from the smoker, cut them up into bite sized pieces (remember, everything cold-smoked is still raw!) and stir-fried them with some extra (not reserved from the marinating process) teriyaki sauce and almonds. I removed those from the pan, added some fresh red onion, garlic, and green onion, along with some frozen bagged stir fry veggies and more teriyaki sauce, and stir-fried it all until ready. I added the chicken/almond mixture back in, heated it through, and was ready to eat!

To serve, I topped the rice with a little soy sauce, then the stir fry, and then some green onions. It was delicious. The smoked rice went great with the teriyaki sauce, and it was so amazingly yummy! Even Clayton, who does not have the most adventurous taste buds when it comes to foods involving grains or veggies, gobbled this up and was raving about how it was the best thing ever. I will most certainly be making this again, and smoked rice will be something in my pantry.

Smoked Salmon

HeatherC — Mon, 12 May 2008 10:22:53 GMT

As the person that gets all the calls about how to cook this or that, I decided it was time to smoke some salmon. I’m not a big fish person, so this was my first time to ever cook any. This was going to kill two birds with one stone, because I was being bugged by a co-worker whose birthday it was, that really wanted some smoked salmon for the big day. So off to the grocery store I went.

I used the recipe in our Still Smokin’ Cookbook, “Smoked Salmon”, from page 91. It called for 1 salmon filet (1 to 3 pounds), so I bought 2 filets and the seasonings to get it going. I washed it and then seasoned the filets with the kosher salt, brown sugar, white sugar, white pepper, black pepper and cayenne pepper, just like the recipe told me to, then wrapped it up in plastic wrap and foil for 24 hours and refrigerated it.

Then the next day I took them out of the wrapping and rinsed for 20 minutes. Since that seemed like a long time, we had the brilliant idea of using a rubber band to hold the sprayer on and pointed down on the fish, so that it would be evenly rinsed while we worked. That was great until I went to wash my hands later and ended up soaked from the sprayer I forgot to remove the rubber band from! When we were done rinsing, I patted the filets dry and then to the smoker we swam.

I put them on a seafood grill, but I would recommend spraying it with a non-stick spray first, as I learned that the scales will stick to the grill. And then set the temperature to 150ºF and let it cook for 5 hours, at least those were the instructions. But I decided that it was going to take forever, and I have very impatient people that work with me, so I went back out and cranked up the temperature to 200ºF so that it would cook faster, and let it go for a total of about 4 hours and then took it out.

It looked really pretty. It had a nice peachy pink color. Since I’m not the big fish connoisseur, I had Cayley the food critic try it first [Cayley’s note: I think she wanted to make sure it was safe to eat first!]. Nice, her first bite and she said that it was really salty [Cayley’s note: woo-wee, was it ever!]. So mental note: you need to rinse the salmon longer. As I walked in the kitchen, she was in there tasting it again, I think that she had at least 3 bites and said that it was not as salty the further you get into the meat. Good excuse! It seems like the salt was all sitting on the top, but the inside of the fish was not so bad. So once again a somewhat successful cook! Good Smokin’ to all.

Heather

Gearing Up for the National Restaurant Association Show

Cayley — Fri, 09 May 2008 16:48:13 GMT

I can't believe it, but it's almost time to go to the National Restaurant Association Restaurant, Hotel-Motel Show in Chicago. The show is from May 17th - 20th, so we leave bright and early on the 16th to set up. This is our biggest show of the year, and it's always a busy, exciting time of the year. Heather, our Tradeshow Coordinator, has been running around like a chicken with her head cut off trying to get everything ready to go and make sure that it's all perfect. Because once you're there, it's a little late to do anything!

The meat for the show is getting smoked as we speak (type?), except for the beef strip loin, which we'll make on-site. We'll have ribs, pork butt and brisket. We do it ahead of time, because the show people generally don't take very kindly to us creating a smoky atmosphere in the location. We cryo the meat and freeze it, and then re-heat it at the show site. I think it's a great testament to how awesome meat from a Cookshack turns out, if it's still great at a trade show, after already being through that whole process and coming out still tender and juicy!

At the show, it will be John Shiflet, our National Sales Manager, Ed "Fast Eddy" Maurin, Stuart Powell, our company President, and me. If you'll be at the show, you should stop by, say hi, and have a bite of barbecue. We'll be in booth #1585.

We always have a show special, and the one for NRA is great. It's 10% off the cost of the commercial smoker of your choice*, and this time, it's not just if you order at the show, which is unusual for us. Since May is National Barbecue Month, we're calling it our "NRA Show Blow Out Sale", and it runs until the last day of the show (the 20th of May), and any commercial customer can order, whether you go to the show or not. If you call at 1-800-423-0698 mention the special to John when ordering your commercial smoker, you will receive the special on your order, if placed before May 20th.

I hope to see you at NRA!

*Savings offer applies to models SM075, SM076, SM150, SM160, SM250, SM260, SM350, SM360, FEC100, FEC300, FEC500, and FEC750. This is a one time offer and may not be repeated.

Visit Fast Eddy at Memphis in May

Fast Eddy — Wed, 07 May 2008 12:18:28 GMT

Come by and say hi , if you are in Memphis during the World Championship of Swine May 15, 16, 17. I will be cooking with Terry Black from the team Super Smokers. Terry is a past Champion of the event. We will be cooking on a couple of FEC100's and an FEC300. We're in the shoulder division. We finished 14th last year, but things will be alot better this year we hope. The MIM World Championship is the only one of 4 major world championships of BBQ that the FEC cookers don't have. We have the team to beat this year I believe. Were the only commercial mfg that has 3 of the 4 crowns (American Royal open, Jack Daniels, Houston Livestock and rodeo).

Honey Mustard Pork Tenderloin

Cayley — Wed, 07 May 2008 11:54:36 GMT

I went to the grocery store to get the brown rice and the dill that I needed for my Brown Rice Salad, only to realize that I didn't really have a protein to eat with it for dinner. As great as I was hoping the salad was going to turn out, a giant tub of Rice Salad for dinner just isn't my thing.

So I wandered down the meat case aimlessly, wondering what to cook (with a bag of mangoes, my rice, and dill already in my hands, I didn't have a cart, mind you, since I only needed the 2 items and I was already impulse shopping, apparently). I came across the pork, where there were some prepackaged, pre-marinated pork loins. "What a time saver!" I thought. Most of the flavors didn't sound that great, but there was a Honey Mustard one that sounded good. So I picked it up, made it halfway up an aisle, and then thought, "what am I doing? This is pre-done, soaked in solution (I want to say it was 30% or something ridiculous), and you can't control the taste or ingredients! Take it back!" So I turned around, put it back, and grabbed a cryo'd pork tenderloin pack, which, although also in solution, is only up to 12%. I can make my own honey mustard. So Honey Mustard Pork Tenderloin My Way it shall be! No tub-o-Rice salad for me!

I removed the tenderloins from the package and trimmed them down, removing all the silverskin, excess fat, and tendon. It made a pretty big pile when I was finished, but they looked so nice and neat. I'd rather take the time to trim them well before they go in than deal with it when I'm trying to eat it.

Tenderloin packages come with two to a pack, so I decided to experiment. Since I was "boycotting" the pre-made one, why not see what the difference would really be? I had some Honey Mustard Salad dressing, so I decided to use that on one of the tenderloins and to make my own honey mustard for the other.

For the homemade honey mustard, I used about 1/4 cup Grey Poupon Mustard, 1/4 cup honey, 3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar, and 1 teaspoon pomegranate powder that I got from Vanns Spices. Technically, I don't think this qualifies as a marinade, since there is no oil, but that's a minor technicality. Those are really guesses on measurements though, because I'm more of an eyeball and pour type of person.

I put both tenderloins in their own individual zip top bags for marinating. I made sure to write on the bags which marinade was in each, but you could really tell by the color. I refrigerated them for 45 minutes.

I put them in the smoker on the bottom rack, since I was smoking the rice for the rice salad on the top 2 racks. I probed the homemade one and set the thermometer to beep at me when it reached 145ºF, and put a toothpick in the salad dressing one so that even once I had them out of the smoker I wouldn't forget which was which.

I'm cooking the tenderloins with 1 small chunk of apple wood, and look (!) I didn't forget the drip pan this time. Not that it really mattered, since it was ridiculously windy and it blew right out halfway through, since I forgot to weigh it down with something. Sigh.

The thermometer started beeping at me after about an hour and a half, I think, so I took the tenderloins out and let them rest for 10 minutes to allow the juices to redistribute. When I cut into them, they were perfect to my taste. Some people like pork cooked a little more, but I find 145ºF to 150ºF to be perfect, especially with this cut since it can dry out easily if overcooked. The one on the right is the homemade marinade, the one on the left is the bottled dressing.

I could taste the difference between the two. It was subtle, but there was definitely a difference. I think if they had been marinated longer, the difference would have been more pronounced. The one with the salad dressing was good. It did taste a little more commercial and a little less bright and fresh. The homemade one tasted great. It was lightly sweet, and there was the tang from the mustard and the vinegar. And the pomegranate powder did add something to it. I really liked it and will use it again. I would say it had a more pure flavor than the salad dressing marinade, and it would work great as an injection as well. Overall, they were both moist, and the apple wood smoke paired nicely with the pork. The honey mustard marinade also worked really nicely with the Brown Rice Salad, which had mustard in the dressing, as well as vinegar.

Honey Mustard Pork Tenderloin

1 package pork tenderloin
1/4 cup Grey Poupon Mustard
1/4 cup honey
3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon pomegranate powder (optional)

Trim tenderloin of all silverskin and fat. Place in zip top bag.

Mix together marinade ingredients. Pour marinade into bag over tendloin, massage into loin, and refrigerate for 45 minutes to 4 hours.

Remove from marinade and smoke-cook with 1 oz. of apple wood at 225ºF for 1.5 hours, or until an internal temperature of 145ºF is reached.

Let rest for ten minutes before slicing.

Smoking rice - will it work?

Cayley — Mon, 05 May 2008 10:42:21 GMT

I got the idea in my head to smoke some rice after reading a thread on Chow.com about baking off pie crusts with rice in them as the weight rather than beans, the logic behind that being that while the beans aren't edible afterwards (at least taste wise), the rice takes on a nice toasted nuttiness, so it's dual purpose. It made me wonder what smoking the rice would do to it. My train of thought can be pretty hard to follow at times, so that's a pretty straight shot for me.

But what to do with the rice after it was smoked? I'm a bit of a Food Network junkie, so I turned to their website, and searched for rice salad (I'm always looking for good side dishes) and found this Brown Rice Salad recipe of Alton Brown's. And guess what? It calls for baked rice. Which could just as easily be smoked! (It also calls for bacon and vinegar, and I think we all know how I feel about those. Awesome!) Just in case that didn't give me the smoky goodness I was looking for (it is covered in foil), I decided to also just smoke a pan of uncovered dry rice, with the use to be decided at a later date. And to be fair, I was planning on just smoking the rice on it's own to begin with, so I was still curious how that would turn out.

The recipe for the baked (now smoked) rice for the salad is incredibly simple. You put 1 1/2 cups of brown rice in a pan, bring 2 1/2 cups of water with 1 tablespoon of unsalted butter and 1 teaspoon of salt to a boil, and then pour it over the rice. You then cover it tightly with foil and bake for an hour at 375ºF.

I was going to be smoking some pork tenderloins along with the rice (this is going to be in another post), so I wanted to smoke-cook at my Smokette's max temp, until the pork loin was done, to get the rice cooking at as close to the recommended temperature as possible. So that's 250ºF for about an hour and a half. That's a considerably lower temperature than Alton recommends, but I thought that maybe the extra time would make up for it. It really didn't (I've been buying the "quick" brown rice lately, and this was definitely NOT that, and is the slowest cooking stuff ever! You think a pork butt takes forever! Try brown rice! It's, like, 2 and a half hours per cup!).

I put the Rice Salad rice on the top shelf, and it is in a glass baking dish covered in foil. Now, I know what you're thinking, "but how is that going to get any smoke flavoring if it's covered in foil?" Right? I don't know, that's why it's an experiment. If nothing else, I love being able to cook everything that I'm making in the smoker, rather than inside, especially in the summer. I am a fan of not having to turn the oven on when it gets above 80ºF. It's unnecessary to heat up the house any more than it already is, in my opinion, and I think that comes from growing up in Canada (which most people think is backwards, since it's hotter here in Oklahoma, but you have to remember that we don't have air conditioning there, so if you heat up the kitchen, you irreversibly heat up the kitchen, and it can still get uncomfortably hot in July). But I digress. Why heat up the kitchen if you don't have to? Even if if I didn't get smoke flavor on the rice, if the cooking at least worked, it would be a perfect side dish for summer! And the fact that it is a mayo free salad would mean that it's also a lot more picnic/BBQ friendly for the summer months if it would have to sit out for a bit.

Below the Rice Salad rice is my test rice/in-case-the-Rice-Salad-Rice-is-a-bust rice, and below that are my pork tenderloins. I used one small chunk of apple wood in the woodbox for this. If you've read my other blogs, you may have noticed a trend. It's my fave.

When I took the pork out of the smoker at around 145ºF internal temp (I want to say this took about an hour and a half) I went ahead and removed the rice, which was in fact not yet done (still crunchy, and most of the water was still sloshing around), and put it in the oven at 450ºF to finish it up, for about a half an hour.

While it was smoking, I had the time to make the dressing for it, which is super simple, and paired nicely with the honey mustard marinade I did for the pork loin. I must have had that in my subconscious when I decided to do the honey mustard marinade, I'm not that big of a dolt to not notice that pairing on some level. It has bacon, and you cook the red onions in the reserved rendered bacon fat, which smells amazing as soon as they hit the pan! I was shocked at first at the amount of vinegar that the recipe called for (1/2 cup, the same amount as the chicken stock) but once it was composed it was perfect. And especially with the dill, everything balanced out nicely.

It's a pretty liquid-y dressing, so when the rice was finally done, when I stirred it in I did have to let it cook in there for the recommended amount of time to let it set up and soak the dressing in. And viola, it was time to taste! Oh, but before I stirred the rice in, I was definitely able to smell the smoke on the rice, and it was subtly smoky tasting.

The salad was really good. Was it smoky? A little. It was a hint of smoke, but maybe only because I knew it was there, and because I was eating it with smoked meat. I think had I smoked it the entire time, rather than putting it in the oven, it would have been more smoky. My guess is that it would have taken about 3 hours to finish. I think the flavor combination of the salad would be really good with a slightly stronger smoke flavor. As it is, it's tangy and delicious, and the fresh dill is exactly what it needs. So you can be that this will be on my summer BBQ menu, once I figure out how to get that rice to cook right in my smoker!

And the extra rice? This is how it turned out. It's a little darker in color now, and it smells smoky. I think I know how I'm going to use it, and I'm really excited about it. I think I'm going to try it this weekend, and then I'll post about it.

And follow-up: I was watching Top Chef last night (another one of my addictions) that I DVR'd from Wed., and lo and behold, they were using rice in their Quick Fire Challenge! So now I have a whole new slew of ideas that I can play with!

Celebrate National Barbecue Month with Entire Meal from Smoker

Karen — Thu, 01 May 2008 13:30:10 GMT

May is National Barbecue Month and here is the meal to celebrate barbecue. My favorite variety meal from the AmeriQue is country style pork ribs, butterfly pork chops, chicken, and baked beans. This meal is done all at once. When you are having a get together and want to serve a variety of food this is the way to go.

The beans are prepared in an aluminum pan with our Spicy Barbecue Sauce, because our sauce has all the ingredients that you would use for baked beans. Season your ribs, pork chops, and chicken to the flavors you enjoy – you could even do a mixture of our Spicy Chicken Rub and RibRub on all of them and be done with seasoning in a few minutes.

Put the pan of beans on the top shelf of the AmeriQue, on next shelf the country style pork ribs, on the third shelf is butterfly pork chops, and the fourth shelf is the chicken breasts. Smoke-cook everything for 3-1/2 hours at 225 degrees and use about 3 to 4 ounces of hickory wood.

Here are some choices of sides to add or use them all: coleslaw, potato salad, or cucumber and onion salad. Enjoy National Barbecue Month!

It's Been A Long Time

BillVice — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 18:38:41 GMT

“I’m following these recipes exactly and my meat is not done in the cooking time that is called for – what is going on? Is something wrong with my Smoker?”

Maybe. Maybe not.

If it is taking an hour or two longer than the recipe calls for, don’t worry about it. A man once said,”It’s done when it’s done.” I think that is good advice because there are so many variables involved so use the cooking times as mainly guidelines. I would suggest that you take notes on each cook and if you deviate from the recipe, write it down so you know that ribs in your oven are going to take five hours to cook instead of four like the book says. But if it is taking a lot longer and it doesn’t seem as if your oven is reaching the temperature you set, then there are some questions I would like to ask first:

(1) Are you using an extension cord? If so, what size? This is usually the reason that an oven will take a long time to cook. I encourage you to not use any cord but if you must, use at least a 12 gauge heavy duty extension cord.

(2) How much meat did you have in the oven and did you ever open the door to check on it? Keep in mind a fully loaded oven will take a longer amount of time to reach set temperature than an oven with just one or two pieces. Also,every time the door is opened, a good rule of thumb is to add 30 minutes cooking time.

(3) Have you checked the vent holes? A blocked or partially plugged vent, whether it is the top one where the smoke comes out or the bottom one for the grease to drain will keep the air from circulating properly and increase cooking time.

And finally, if your smoker is still not behaving properly, give us a call here at Cookhack (800) 423-0698. We want to keep you cooking for a long time – just not the same piece of meat!

Balsamic Orange Backstrap

Cayley — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:30:18 GMT

My boyfriend is a hunter (mostly for deer, although he has some dove in the freezer I want to try smoking) and one of my favorite things to smoke-cook from the deer is the backstrap. He has all of his meat processed for him, and his butcher cuts the backstrap up into little steaks. I've also seen it whole, more like a tenderloin. Either way, this mode of preparation is my favorite.

Cayley's Balsamic Orange Backstrap

I love balsamic vinegar. I marinate things in it, make reduction sauces out of it ( for salmon, halibut, etc), use it in dressings, heck, I would probably drink it, if it were a high enough quality. I ran out of my "good" balsamic, so I'm using a cheaper one from the local grocery store, but it works in a pinch.

For this recipe you'll need:

2 pounds venison backstrap
1/4 cup Kosher salt
1/4 cup turbinado sugar (aka sugar in the raw) + extra for rub
1/4 cup orange juice
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 quart water
1 package bacon
Cookshack RibRub

This is the backstrap, I think it's from one of this year's doe (he got 2, one during black powder and one during rifle season. I act like I know what that means, but I mostly just know that it means he's up ridiculously early and I get a freezer full of meat, if I'm lucky). I'm pretty sure this is from the doe that knocked Clayton off of his bucket after he shot it (it charged him and head butted him right off it before it died!).

The other main ingredients are equal amounts of turbinado sugar (I went to Kauai recently for a vacation with my mom and grandparents, and picked up some raw cane sugar at a coffee plantation, so that's my sugar - Maui Gold), Kosher salt, which I am a huge believer in, balsamic vinegar, which I've already professed my love for, and orange juice, but wait ...

I had an "uh-oh, I don't have orange juice at home!" moment right before leaving work. I knew that Heather used Pineapple Orange juice for the Mai Tai Chicken at lunch. Was there any left? Score! There was! Since this was a work related project, I took one so that I could get my blog done. Pineapple is great in a marinade, and since it is mixed with orange, would keep the integrity of the original flavor.

Time to get started:
Blend together the Kosher salt, turbinado sugar, (pineapple) orange juice, and balsamic vinegar until there are no salt or sugar crystals remaining. From personal (messy) experience, I find that it's better to mix everything without the water, and then add the water once you're done. You can more vigorously whisk when you don't have a full bowl. Add the water and blend well.

Trim backstrap of all visible fat, gristle, and silverskin. I like to use a smaller knife, like a boning knife, and a paper towel to help pull the silverskin off, a lot like when you remove the membrane from a rack of ribs. This is important, no matter how lazy you're feeling, because a lot of the "gamey" taste that people don't care for is found in the silverskin, fat, and gristle, not in the actual meat of the deer. If you get it off, then you're home free. We've been really lucky with the deer we've had these past couple of years and they haven't been too wild tasting, but you can still taste it if you get a piece of that silverskin.

In addition to the normal trimming, one of the pieces also had a really deep red, almost veiny/bloody/clotty looking chunk it it, so I trimmed that as well, which is pictured. I'm not sure if I needed to trim it, but since I'm not an expert, I went ahead and did it. I've been told that the more adrenaline a deer has when shot, or the more it runs when shot before it falls, the more the game flavor, so I thought maybe this was related. I don't know. That clot thing was my whole rational in thinking it was the infamous head-butt doe.

Place trimmed backstrap in a large zip top bag and put bag into a bowl. Pour marinade into bag, seal, and refrigerate for 2 - 4 hours. Don't marinate it for too long, or the acids in the vinegar and orange juice will start to "cook" the meat (see the picture at right, and that's only after 2 hours and it's already "cooking" a little, you can tell by the change in color).

Remove from marinade and rub liberally with an equal mixture of RibRub and turbinado sugar. Some recipes tell you to do this after you wrap with bacon, but I think that's silly. How does it get into the meat, then?

Wrap the backstrap with bacon so that that it is completely covered (I like to think of it as wrapping it like a mummy). This helps keep the moisture in the extremely lean deer meat (I even trimmed all the fat, remember?). Even though I added moisture in by marinating, it's still very lean and has a tendency to dry out without the bacon. While the venison cooks, the bacon fat will render down a bit and baste the meat, keeping it moist. Besides, what doesn't improve with bacon? You can just use cheap bacon, the fattier the better, you pitch it at the end anyway.

Smoke-cook with 2 ounces of apple wood at 225ºF for 45 minutes if it's "steaks" like I have, or 1 1/2 hours, if it's more of a loin, or until the backstrap reaches an internal temperature of 150ºF. I smoke them on the middle rack. Bonus points if you don't get in a hurry and forget to put the drip pan underneath the smoker. That's right. Luckily it was just a little bacon fat, and not a ton of pork butt fat. But still. Gah! I know better!

This is the backstrap out of the smoker. It smells amazing. As you can see (in the unwrapped pic), it's not caramelized, which is the way that I like it, but it is nice and moist. Being wrapped in the bacon and smoked at a low temperature, it's not going to get caramelized, I know that, which is why I opt to quickly sear it in a hot pan.

This is the backstrap after searing it in the smoking hot pan with some Extra Virgin Olive Oil. I like the texture better after this is done. Without it, it reminds me a little bit of liver (not the taste, just the texture). But once it's seared, it's perfect! Served with some wild rice pilaf, this is a great meal to finish my day. If I had been feeling a little bit more ambitious, I'd have made a pan sauce with some balsamic for the rice and the backstrap, but I was tired, and it was good as is.

It must smell good, because the wolves (Elly and Nyla) start to circle looking for pieces. They think they deserve some venison too. I guess they believe that if they were vicious killers in the wild, they could have taken one down on their own. All 15 pounds of them.

Lunch Notice

HeatherC — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:10:50 GMT

I came to work yesterday morning the same as always, and out of nowhere Stuart informs that I am in charge of lunch for 12 people! What?! I thought, “Oh, my, what to cook?” Normally, I would have a great idea, but on 4 hours notice I had no great ideas, so I decided to cook chicken breasts and thighs. We had a Creative Q’ing contest in December, and I decided to use the first place winning Mai Tai Chicken recipe submitted Bad Bob's BBQ Restaurant. It is an awesome recipe and easy to do.

So off to the store I went. I decided that I would also cook a pork tenderloin for a little variety. I started at around 9 am, got the chicken all seasoned up and put in the Smokette that we keep in the run-off room for testing recipes, and proceeded to get ready to season the tenderloin - only to find out that it was bad! I opened the package up and one whiff of it told me it was past its prime – eww! Luckily I had bought enough chicken to cover the tenderloin loss.

The chicken recipe calls for a stuffing that is out of this world, but with not enough time and hands (I still had to do my real job, you know) I opted to leave it out and just use the marinade. At about 10:30 I removed the chicken from the smoker and covered it with the marinade after which I proceeded to the finish line. I put the chicken back in the smoker (now in a pan covered in the marinade) and went to the kitchen and clean up and get the sides all ready to go for the lunch goers.

At about 11:45, I took the chicken out of the marinade put our mild sauce on it, put the chicken right onto the grills, and let it go another 20 minutes and yee-haw! I felt like I had just won a huge award for the greatest food of all! Everyone commented on how great it was and what a wonderful flavor the chicken had, and it made my head swell to an enormous size that is still a little big today. Until a little while ago this morning, that is, when I was informed that some of the thighs were not totally done, and the person that discovered the semi-raw chicken is the one person that I really wanted to impress L. Not real good, but she never said a word about it so thank you to her for keeping my head filled with air and confidence! So that’s a warning to you, be sure to double check your thermometer readings and cut into more than one piece of chicken. The breasts were cooked to perfection, I’ve been told. But to make my blog even better I am going to include the link that is also on the Cookshack website to all the great Creative Q-ers recipes. So the best of luck to all my fellow smoking food friends!

Heather

Champ Larry Hill Demos FEC100 and FEC300 in California in May

Donna — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 10:06:56 GMT

Larry Hill, 2008 Wishland BBQ Competition Grand Champ, will be demonstrating the FEC100 and FEC300 at the following contests. Stop by and take a close-up look at the smokers, sample some food from them, and talk to Larry, who knows how to win on FECs!

May 2-3-4, 2008 (KCBS) 2nd Annual Stagecoach Music Festival
Indio, CA

May 9 - 10, 2008 (KCBS) 5th Annual Modesto Blues, Brews, & BBQ

Huntsville Whistle Stop BBQ Festival May2-3

Fast Eddy — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 09:32:36 GMT

Come by and see me in Huntsville AL on May 2-3. Brian Jett from Ber-Vel distributing will be with me. We will be next to the road on the north end of the park in a 40' green motor coach. I'm on my way to Indiana to pick up a new trailer today. Jackie Weight will be in town cooking also. We will be helping her celebrate 5 years of being in BBQ. Rick passed away last October and this is her first trip without him.

I Think My Oven Just Exploded

BillVice — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 09:35:17 GMT

There you are, cold drink in hand, sitting on the patio watching your brand new Cookshack Smoker cook its first slab of Baby Back Ribs. All of a sudden, BOOM! Smoke is pouring from around the door and the top smoke hole like nobody’s business. You notice the neighbors peering over the fence looking your direction as your wife is asking, “What did you do to our supper?”

Relax. This is not a serious problem or danger. You have just experienced what we call “burping”. There are several things that have to be just right for this to happen. It usually happens in newer ovens and is caused from a combination of low moisture, larger amounts of wood and rapid temperature gain. Sometimes the temperature climbs so fast that the vapors from the wood heating will not escape fast enough causing it to push smoke out the door, thus giving you a loud burping sound. This normally only occurs with a light load and several pieces of wood.

As I said, this is not a problem or danger and your food should be fine but you can reduce the occurrence by using less wood and starting with a lower cooking temperature. I would recommend using one or two chunks of wood and keep your temperature around 225 for the first two hours.

Learn How to Open a Successful Barbecue Business

John — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 09:36:03 GMT

Cookshack's National Sales Manager, John Shiflet, has helped many people achieve success in the barbecue business. Click below to listen to John talk about how to get started in your own successful barbecue business.

Oooh! My chicken tastes like creosote!

HeatherC — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 06:24:26 GMT

I talk to lots of people about smoke-cooking in my customer service job, and the Creosote Chicken problem comes up from time to time with people who have never smoked a chicken before. When you use too much wood the Bitter Beer Face kicks in and it can really ruin the pat on the back that you want with your smoked food. When this happens I ask my customer how much wood they are using, and most of the time that is the problem. Here is what I suggest:

On chickens (one - three birds in a Smokette) I usually only put a piece or a piece and a half of Cookshack smoking wood, at the most. I like to use apple or cherry wood on poultry.
For briskets I recommend one1 to 2 chunks, depending on the size of the brisket. I prefer to use hickory on my beef, but this is a matter of personal preference.
I use one piece of mild wood, like apple or cherry, on pork.
On any seafood I use one small chunk of wood because the fish can absorb more of the smoke flavor and I only use the apple and cherry. They have a mild flavor that enhances the seafood.

As you can tell I like smoke flavor but too much can make the Bitter Beer Face appear!

Stillwater Blazathon - Pork

Stuart — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 05:32:56 GMT

I had the opportunity to cook in the Stillwater Blazathon two weeks ago. It was a great contest with 40+ teams.

Over the past couple of seasons I just haven't been able to master the pork category. So, when I got to Stillwater I was ready to try something new. That when Dave (Butcher Boy BBQ) told me about his new pork injection. I gave it a try, of course I had to add a little something to it, so I added a cup of brown sugar and 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar. WOW! A nice 5 place in pork and I thnk I am onto something new.

Next contest I am going to just try it with the vinegar and see what happens.

Smokin' Cheese

Cayley — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:38:16 GMT

I'm having a girls night out type get together at my house on Friday, and I've decided to have some sort of cheese plate. To make it special, I've opted to smoke my cheese. It's ridiculously easy to do with the cold-smoke baffle, and the flavor is great (I like that you can control the smokiness/type of smoke you want).

I love cheese, in pretty much any variety. I'm not the biggest fan of the "smoked" cheeses that you can sometimes pick up at the grocery store, because I find that more often than not, they're not actually smoked but rather have had artificial smoke flavoring added to the cheese (I'm referring to your normal grocery, not your specialty cheese shop). I think that you can definitely taste the difference between real smoked cheese and liquid-smoke "smoked" cheese. You also pay for the difference, so why not do it yourself and just pay for normal cheese and control your output?

I decided to smoke some of my favorites. I have a Medium Cheddar (I would prefer Sharp, but I know not everyone likes their cheese that strong), a Mozzarella, and a Baby Muenster. I cannot resist buying anything that is mini-sized, and I thought it was just so adorable! You can really choose any cheese that you like, but these are my favorites.

I like to smoke my cheese on a seafood grill. It's not like it would fall through my normal racks, but that's just what I use. I think it has something to do with the pattern left on the cheese when it's done. What I actually am using (you can kind of see it in the picture) is a clear plastic jerky screen that is no longer offered (we found a few packages of these in the Tradeshow room, so we all got to take some home, yay!), but it has the same fine mesh of a Seafood Grill.

I only use one chunk of apple. It's my favorite wood, but if I had more time, I'd probably smoke the cheeses with different woods to have a diversity of smoky flavors, but I don't, so they're all going in with the apple wood. The first time I smoked cheese, I overdid it on the wood (I figured that since it would be in there for such a short period of time, and the wood probably wouldn't be smoldering to full capacity, it would need a couple of chunks). This was WRONG! I should know better, working here and telling people all the time to lay off on the wood, but I caved to my irrational thoughts, which was a mistake. It was really smoky, almost too much so, which I've noticed seems to bother women more than men. I thought it was a bit much, but all the guys that were there polished it off and thought it was great. Anyways, use one small chunk of apple.

I follow the instructions that come with the cold smoke baffle. There has been some discussion of this on the forum, but I've never had a problem using the exact instructions, especially with the pan of ice on top of the grill. Slide the Cold Smoke Baffle in where the bottom grill would normally go and put a pan of ice on top. Go ahead and put the cheese in, and set the smoker to 150ºF, for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, turn it off and leave the cheese in there for 45 minutes without opening the door.

I have my remote thermometer in there to tell me whether the smoker gets above 90ºF while the smoker is on. If it does, shut it off, or you'll have a goopy mess to clean up!

As you can see, it never got above 77ºF in the oven (and it was 65ºF before I turned it on, so that's pretty good).

The ice didn't even melt completely. In fact, it barely melted at all. The baffle is pretty well insulated. It must be, for the ice to stay this solid after sitting right on the baffle.

When the cheese is done, take it out, rinse it, pat dry, and wrap it in plastic wrap. It's always a good idea to smoke the cheese a day in advance, because the flavor really develops to the fullest the next day.

I did cut off a piece of each cheese to sample. Not because I wanted to, but because I had to report back, of course. Once again, the cheese is pretty smoky. I think next time I might use apple pellets. It's really good though, not as overwhelmingly smoky as before, and once you have it on a good buttery cracker, it is perfect. Delicious!

Like I said, I'm doing mine as a cheese plate, but with the leftovers (if there are any), I'm going to make some Mac and Cheese. There's a Rachel Ray recipe that both my boyfriend and I love when in the mood for comfort food (Mac and Cheese Dog Casserole - don't judge me before you try it), and I think that the smoked cheese would be great in there, especially if you smoked or grilled the hot dogs first. It would add some extra flavor to the dish. The mozzarella would also be great on a pizza. Or barbecue nachos would be yummy. There are a million things that you can do with the cheese once it's smoked, so be creative and have a good time with it!

Join the Cookshack Barbecue Forum

Donna — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:27:18 GMT

Click the link to join the Cookshack Barbecue Forum!

Moderated by the Smokin' Okie, and with over seven years of barbecue knowledge and 7,000 members, the forum is a huge source of barbecue and smoke-cooking recipes and techniques for home cooks, competition cooks, and commercial operators. Be sure to join and introduce yourself. It's a friendly place with forums for Cookshack customers, professional foodservice owners, managers, and chefs; competitors, recipes, and more.