BUTTERFINGER BRISKET

This Brisket is REEEAAAALLLL!

I'm chewin on a brisket, doin flips and Sh$%.

Kidding of course, we were not doing flips and Sh$%. All attemps failed. Other than that, this weekend was a huge, gigantically awesome success. Ingredients for a successful 30th birthday afternoon /2 days, are as follows:

(This is Smokeador's post, but I, SmokeHopper, will be commenting as well. As an ardent communist, I will be posting in Red.)

2 kegs of American beer (Shiner Bock and High Life)

24 pounds of American brisket (2 12lb'ers)

50 American people (or visitors or what have you)

2 bags of fun sized Butterfingers (American Butterfingers ONLY)

Butterfingers? And only 2 bags? Butterfinger brisket, holla actha boy. **

Enough with the dialogue. Alright, we runnin this.

Start:

Remove individual delicious candies from bag and wrapper. It should be noted we found out pretty early on it will not work if you try to crush them up in the bag and dump it into the bowl.

Put about 20 of them in a big bowl and start mashing that S up with a can of Bush's Best Baked Beans. DO NOT USE ANY OTHER CAN OF BEANS. You don't have to use beans.

It should look something like this or even a little finer grained if you like. We were in a hurry and didn't really care that much. It's a Butterfinger brisket after all.

Remove trusty spice grinder from storage and start grinding. These are chile piquins. You might remember them from previous posts like "We make awesome ribs" or "How to cook a delicious brisket," featuring Troy McClure.

Add piquins and other spices to the Butterfinger base. We added garlic powder and onion powder much to my chagrin. But it worked in the end.

Mix it up with your hands. Smell it with your mind.

Briskets should look like this. Got these at Costco. Costco, if you want to give us some of that Costco money, we are listening. Get Sexy Costco.

Rub is applied like any other rub, but with a lot more patting to get the bigger chunks of Butterfinger to stick. Thats what she said. oh my god, POW POW!

Hands will get caked in a buttery, spicy, fingery mess; so make sure you wash up before prepping the other brisket. Two Butterfinger briskets in one smoking is really too much.

Rubbed down and ready to sit for an hour before she meets El Smokelito.

Sealed with a handshake, Steph's voice and some radiohead. This handshake finalized our blog profit sharing agreement. (There are no profits.)

We will keep the second brisket post easy since there are better pics to come.

Cinnamon, piquins, paprika.

Rubbed, salted, peppered and ready to go.

It's really important to let the meats sit out at room temp to bring the internal temp down before you introduce them to heat. This is probably common knowledge to most, but if you don't know this and put them on cold the juices will expand quicker and leave the meat. You don't want that. You will get a dry byproduct that would only be good served at any number of Dallas BBQ joints. If this offends any Dallas BBQ joint owners, please contact us. We would be happy to provide some ad space for your fine establishment.

This was going to be a long undertaking and we thought it was necessary to say a little pledge to the greatness of the smoke and to these two fine beasts who gave their upper chest/shoulder areas for our consumption. Sorry we cooked you guys. I'm not sorry.

In El Smokelito, and individual shots.

Please note that at this time in the evening I left and Smokeador did all of the rest of the work.

After 3 hours

(this is what I see when I close my eyes....always)

Gotta wrap them up when they hit 140 degrees.

After they were wrapped.

I had a few of these and waited until about 3 to go to sleep. Sometimes El Smokelito is an ornery SOB and puts the fire out. This time he didn't, and I got a full 3 hours sleep. It was great.

Left out some pics here because they stayed wrapped and in the smoke until around noon. All said they had about 16 hours in the smoke. After we peeked and collected some of the BSB (Brisket Substance Butterfinger) I wrapped them both in seperate beach towels and put them in the cooler until 5. This lets the juices continue to cook the inside slow, and helps the meat harden up a little I have found. This is not my trick, but its our blog so we will take credit for it.

Brisket Substance Butterfinger

I swear to God I drank some of this. For real. I had to know...I just had to. Not bad.

At 5 we pulled them out of the cooler and started slicing. The bark was as black as I wanted it to be and surprisingly darker and crustier than in an oven. Not really surprising to me, but some on the blog still contend that keeping the brisket in the smoke has nothing to do with the bark on the brisket. I would like to think that I proved my point. I didn't.

I f#$cking dare someone to prove to me that the cooking environement for a post smoke-ringed brisket wrapped tightly in foil and placed in a an oven at 225, is different than a post smoke-ringed brisket wrapped tightly in foil and placed in a smoker at 225. THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE. The debate rages on. There might be some confusion on the debate. That post will soon come with photographic proof that I am right. Something about keeping the brisket wrapped in foil gives it a better bark than wrapping it and putting it in the oven. That is the debate. I know that technically its the same cooking environment.

I only got to sample this time around. I sampled the ends of the Butterfinger brisket and it was tasty as S. The spices went really well with the understated sweetness of the Butterfinger rub. All of these look a little dry but its the camera and lighting, and not the meat. Many can attest to the juiciness of the flat and the moistness of the cap. After doing several briskets in my day, I can humbly admit that these are the first two that I was able to actually slice all the way through the cap and not just make chopped out of it. It was GD delicious.

It really was a fantastic f'ing brisket. I am convinced now that you could really put anything on a brisket and it would turn out delicious. Well, not everything. But I bet a Peanut Butter and jelly Brisket would be just fine. I'm not sure about a pizza brisket though...that is still under debate. Anyway there was a choclatey spicey toffey sweetness in the bark that was really great.

I ate this piece with my mouth. I put it in my mouth and I ate it. This is eating.

These are pics of the non Butterfinger brisket. To attest to the greatness of both of them, I didn't get to make a sandwich. I finished slicing, got another Shiner, had a brief conversation about nonsense and the un-Americanness of the DH and it was gone. Last I saw of the brisket it was being formed into a taco that I wanted a bite of.

Ummmm, I ate the S out of a sandwhich and it was great.

Brisket is our game. Hoo!


Long story short, Smokehopper and I had a great time cooking everything for everyone and I thank everyone that stopped by. We made ribs and turkey legs for the record, but there is starting to be a shortness of space in the cache for pics and we need to save. There are great things coming up that might involve chickens. Lots and lots of chickens. And grape drink. And Guinness.

Again, thanks everyone for coming by. We had fun.
(Click the pics for higher res)
**Do not "holla atcha boy" - We don't know where that came from or how to get rid of it.

Sorry there was no mention of gay wizards in this post. We'll get back to the formula asap. PS Smokeador did all of the work.


- El Smokeador

Kanye West Burgers!*

*this post has nothing to do with Kanye West

I believe it was Burgers O'Shannasey who once pondered, "what makes a burger delicious?" Centuries later, men die daily trying to answer this hunger oriented puzzle. I too have attempted the feat, and after narrowly escaping with my mind intact, I have come up with a few theories:

1) The meat should be made of beef, and the buns of bread.
2) There should be plenty of extravagant TOPPINGS!

Yes ladies and gentlemen, the delicious secret to well eaten burgers is toppings. All sorts of them.

Anyway I had ample opportunity to test my theory a few weeks a go at the Dirk's road land, where we all had a pre-dove season fire roasted test run.

Thanks to the Pates, as always, for their generous hospitality.



Anyway, the drill here, which we do every weekend during dove season, is to cook one hot appetizer, and burgers with plenty of sides and stuff. People hunt and we listen to the football games. In all honesty, I love that place very much. It has become special deep in my heart, and in my burger belly.



I must say, the few fellas who cook at these functions, myself being one of them, have made remote outdoor burger entertaining into a SCIENCE. If anyone is wondering, I'm going to teach you the secret to our outdoor kitchen burger success. Here we go.

The List:

Before you wander off into a field with some charcoal and a hammer, you really need to take a lot of items with you. This list has evolved over the course of two years, and is quite valuable to me indeed. For the sake of science, and science only, I requisition (real word?) it to the internet.

Appetizer:

Cheese, Crackers

Canned peppers

BBQ Sauce

Two large link sausages

Main Course:

Buns

Meat

Bacon

Cheese (deli)

Lettuce

Tomato

Red onion

Pickles

Anaheim Peppers

Red Beer:

Tomato Juice

Limes

Beer

Plastic Cup

Misc:

Oil

Salt

Pepper

Worcestershire

Zip locks

Charcoal

Lighter fluid

Hand wash

Cutting board

Knife for cutting veg

Extra Cheese knife

Spatula

Trash bags

Water

Paper towels

Mustard

Mayo (ground chipotles)

Ketchup

Cheap Plastic Table

Paper plates

Plastic silverware

To be completely honest, there is a lot that goes on with the above list, and the food preparation, including charcoal maintenance (we use charcoal in a burnt out old gas grill), food prep, wine parings, shotgun safety, beer math, wizard lore, andrew bird, etc etc...and i simply dont have time to go over it. Red wine also needs to be on that list. Anyway suffice it to say that the list is excellent, and that this blog is evener more excellenter than the list, which as i said before was "quite excellent".

Here's where I cook:

Here is where I keep items which need to remain cold (a cooler), and a card table which has become my workspace, (thanks, masonicsmoke):



Here is me, with absolutely no distractions:



Anyway, we start the cooking with link sausage which is warmed over the coals, and sliced, served with cheddar cheese, Premium Saltine crackers, canned jalapeños, bbq sauce, and mustard. This is what happens when you put those things on one plate:



Next we move to the burgers, which begins with, as i said so long ago, extravagant toppings. This time i decided to go with roasted Anaheim peppers. i start by cutting off the tops and trying to get some seeds out, cover in vegetable oil, salt and pepper, and slow roast:







Video!!!!!

Anyway, you grill em up nice and try to get as much of the skin off as possible. Grilled peppers have a great flavor on burgers and its just crazy awesome. I love em! Ugh! what what what what what what what what what what!?!? ya.



Next, we cooked up some bacon:



By the way, if you are going to do this, with the foil and such, you need lots and lots of heat. I didnt realize and it took quite some time to get the bacon to crisp up. You know, just fyi.

Then we did some lettuce, tomatoes, onions, sliced avacado, etc ETC ETC! aka toppings!



The whole shebang:



(oh and yes......that is homemade ketchup, thanks for noticing, more to come on that later).

You then pretty much, grill up the burgers, with salt pepper and wortscehtcisircserre sauce. Add the deli cheese, (Lsmoke has demanded deli cut cheese his entire adult life for burgers so thats how it goes down, always some sort of pepper jack or some "non kraft single" cheese)

Rock and roll Nation!:



Psmoke Jams a DirksBurger

I'd like to thank everyone who was invited for coming, especially Kanye West, who unfortunately could not attend, and was not invited.

In other news, Epic Monster Post headed this way soon. I can feel its mamothicity from here. Its going to Be EPIC.

Sorry for the long delay...more posts soon

-Smokehopper

Neat song to listen to:
Osaka Loop Line by Discovey