225 or the kitty gets it

t- 10 hours.  the longest blog post in the history of internet based bbq dfw related blog posts.  its coming.  someone should get smokehopper off his ass.  sorry parents and grandparents for saying ass. 

bought today :

11lb brisket

1 slab of rib

1 slab of rib

8 oz of Hawaiian sea salt

8 oz fresh peppercorn

8oz smoked paprika

1 candy cane (not used but in my stomach nonetheless)

8oz chili piquin

and some other stuff that we dont want to divulge.   it is arriving soon.  blog.

result? =>>???  greatness

editorial comment: didnt get around to the brisket today.  rib pics and not so longest post in the history of internet  based dfw bbq centric blogs coming tomorrow.

Winter Blast 2009

Be safe dear readers, tonight we will suffer through the worst storm since Winter Blast 2008. As of 7pm this evening the freezing rain has begun and without fail tomorrow work will be cancelled. All because of a thin sheet of ice that will no doubt melt by noon. Enjoy the time off. Tonight, for the sake of content, I made marinara sauce and angel hair pasta in honor of................ Chef Boyar G's.

That's from a throwaway sketch from this season of SNL. It has gotten progressively better as the weeks go on, eventually reaching this season's highlight, Gilley. But that is for another post. There will be several updates over the next couple of weeks as the Superbowl is this weekend and there will be much smoking of meats, especially ribs. I might do a brisket for good measure as well. We will have to see. Onto the marinara.

Ingredients:

(not pictured: Roma tomatoes and pasta)

Steps:

1) Halve 6 Roma tomatoes and cover them in olive oil, salt and pepper. Dont use too much olive oil unless you REALLY like olive oil, then do as you must. Roast tomatoes in oven for 1 hour at 375.

2) Chop 2 smallish white onions (I bought mine in a bag of 6 at the local grocer), 2 cloves of garlic and half a small container of portabella muhrooms.

3) With 15 minutes to go on the tomatoes, add chopped onions to 2 tablespoons of heated olive oil and cook (on medium high heat) until yellowish brown. Add sea salt as you go but not much. About a teaspoon will suffice.

4) After the onions are that yellowish brown stir in the garlic and cook for a few minutes.

5) Once you can smell the deliciousness of the onions and garlic, only a few minutes, stir in your chopped mushrooms, crushed red pepper (a bigger than small pinch) and cover on medium heat.

6) When the tomatoes have had a chance to cool down a bit, throw them in a blender and blend until you have a nice sauce. Six Roma's should give you about 2 cups of sauce. I like to use about 3 cups of sauce in my marinara, but this will be fine. Do the math yourself.

7) Once the tomatoes are sauced, add them to the onions, garlic and mushrooms. Cut up one small hand fulls of chopped fresh parsley and add to the sauce. I also added a couple turns of the pepper cracker, but only because I got some new peppercorns from Pendrey's and wanted to use it. Stir it up real good and cover on medium heat.

8) Add pasta to boiling water and wait. I used angel hair, but you can do what you want. This blog is not intended to tell you how to boil water or what boiled water looks like, so there will be no picture for this step.

9) Continue to stir sauce until it has reduced a little and has more of a red tint to it. Repeat.

10) After about 45 minutes your sauce should be good and ready. Strain your pasta and add to sauce for 5 or 10 more minutes on the medium heat.

Put it on your plate and eat. Let it cool a bit or you will burn your mouth. That is it.

Ribs are coming.

PRE-CHRISTMAS SALMON AND RIBTACULAR!!

Let me say this, ribs are good. There are varying methods on preparation, cooktime, etc. I have found time and again that there is only one proper way to do ribs. Hornian's 3-2-1 method. Here is the process in a nutshell:

1) Make rub (see below for the rub Smokehopper and I used)

2) Apply rub

3) Apply coarse sea salt and fresh cracked pepper

4) Rub in mustard (Yellow, not Grey Pupon)

5)Place ribs in chamber for three hours at 225 degrees

6) To quote the great Hornian: "Dont peek at the ribs, they're still in there"

7) Remove ribs from chamber, wrap in foil and place in oven for 2 hours at 225

8) Remove ribs from oven, unwrap and put back in chamber for 1 final hour. This step firms up the meat and makes it easier to slice ribs.

I really wish we had done two racks of ribs and only one filet of salmon, but now we know. And knowing is half the battle.

Other notes and observations:

Shiner Helles/Black makes and excellent smoking beer, but Coors Original Yellowbelly's are a fantastic substitute when you are in a jam. A jam can be defined as "the fridge is all the way inside."

Smokehopper has a vortex in his backyard that was not discovered when digging the Duke's temporary home. Said vortex is now known to attract washers.

Digging a hole is much easier the second time.

Gin is the only real smoking man's game. Straight gin with no laying down for points and only suited straights.

Playlist for the afternoon/evening consisted of the following:

the Avett Brothers - Emotionalism (album)

Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago (album)

Fleet Foxes - Self Titled (album)

and others

Victory.

lolsmoke?

I thought this up in a dream. -smokehopper

immediate commentary from El Smokeador:

The Canterbury Mischief

Oink! Double Up, Oink! Oink! (gun in mouth)

So this last weekend myself, Smokeador and J. Smokeknee attempted to, and eventually succeeded at, cooking a stuffed whole pig in my backyard…in the ground. It was quite a bit of work. *Note. When I say “quite a bit” I mean it in the classical dictionary sense of the term. Quite a bit of work equaling roughly one metric shitload. It was so much work I can't even begin to explain. That is a lie because IT BEGINS NOW!

*note: This is going to be a long post so just get over it already. This thing took up 3 straight days of my life so just sit back and get ready for mild amusement at its finest.

Friday:

Bear Grylls one said (last week) that a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. For me, the step of my pig journey began by buying a mustache. (?)

At 5:30 or so Smokeador came over from Dallas and shortly thereafter J. Smokeknee arrived as well. We had a 30 minute board meeting, and various directives and policys were both, passed by a majority of the Board, and implemented. (none of this happened)

Friday was a lot of work for the trio. We started with what we knew was going to be the real shit job of digging the hole. I do not recommend digging holes in a very serious way. Very serious. Its slightly akward on the back, and its terrible for your mustache. I got dirt in my hair. And in my pants.

But it really wasn’t all that bad and it felt good to have accomplished something. Even if that something drastically lowered property values. It took a little over an hour but we eventually did it.

Shopping:

Thereafter, J. Smokeknee and I went provision hunting for like 3 hours. 3 HOURS! I haven't been on a shopping trip like that since 9/11 hiyo! (BLAM)

Home Depot:

Grill grate for pig to rest on
Shovel
Mesquite: 5 bags (we should have bought 20)
Cotton thread
Lighter fluid
Propane accessories

Sam’s:

Mixed Salad
Italian dressing
Cucumbers
Green peppers
Tomatoes
Yellow and red peppers
1000 feet of aluminum foil
Black pepper
Spice mix
Carrots
Velveeta

Tom Thumb:

Sweet Potatoes
Carrots
Wine
Beer

J. Smokeknee’s house:

Paper plates
Plastic Forks and such
Napkins
Chicken wire and pliers

Albertsons:

Propane tank
Gum

Finally we finished and we made it home safe with a lot of provisions and a hunger for meat. Back at the house we pretty much put all of the refrigerated items up and went to eat at the Silver Fox. It was way past ten when we got there. Our waitress hated us. There was mention of a “4 forks salad”. Hilarious. Good times had by all except for the waitress. Moving right along

Saturday:

Saturday starts at 9:00 am with Smokeador waking everyone up claiming he has doughnuts and coffee, which he did in fact have. Smokeador manned the fire and J. Smokeknee and myself cut vegetables. See below.

Next we had to awaken the Duke.

(The duke is kind of an A hole)

Anyway, we prepped him by rubbing his body with Italian dressing, pepper, and a store bought spice blend. (the exact blend is a secret) We then stuffed him full of vegetables, and J. Smokeknee sewed him up. We used a nail as the needle and tied the cotton thread directly to the flesh. This was AWESOME.

We then wrapped him in about 500 feet of foil. Over and over and under and over and under and over and under and under and around and over and under.

Next we placed him on his grill rack, and tied the grill rack to the chicken wire which served as handles for the pig contraption. This was ingenious, (thanks PSmoke). We lowered him in the ground, covered him with coals, and waited.

A TCU game, and a few lies later, we pulled him out. He was not ready to be eaten however. Smokeador sums it up pretty good below, but we bought charcoal and repeated the process until Sunday at 11:30, when as can be seen below, He came out crazy delicious.

Commentary:

This weekend was a long weekend, but it was very much worth the effort. Was there a fail? Yes. Very much there was an extreme fail on Saturday night. Some might say that it was not a fail because we eventually succeeded in doing what we set out to do, which was to cook the pig. But that’s wasn’t really the goal. It occurred to me Sunday night while eating a pulled pork bbq sandwich that the meat and vegetables, whilst crazy delicious, did not really gain any sort of flavor by being cooked in the ground. I have had seasoned braised pork before which tasted the exact same, which I made in my crock pot. This being said, why would you cook a pig in the ground at all and not just his shoulder in the crock pot or in the oven? The only real reason you’d cook at pig in the ground is for show, and so that a lot of people can eat him all at once. This was what we set out to do and failed at. I’m not upset about the fail but chalk it up to a learning experience. If we do this again, which we will, out of spite for the Duke, we will win.

Things we did wrong:

The hole was too big. I think the point here is too create a perfect box in the ground which can hold just the pig and enough coals to cook him. If you could just barely fit your pig in a ice chest and then poor coals all over him, then your hole should be about the size of that ice chest.



Not enough coals. We bought 5 bags. We should have realistically had about 10. That would have done it probably. We also bought wet wood from Home Depot, which really was a big problem in getting the wood to cook down.

We ran out of time. We should have been up at around 7:00 that morning getting the fire going and checking stuff out. If we had been up that early we probably would have had more time to get more wood. As it happened however we got up at around 9:45 and by the time we knew that we probably didn’t have enough wood, the party was already 7 hours away so there was no time to fix it and we had to just hope. Hope couldn’t get it done and thus fail.

What we did right:

We ended up doing a lot of things correctly. We gave ourselves enough time to dig the hole, we all drank wine, I ran across the coals WITH my boots on, we didn't give up etc etc. However, in the end we did do one thing VERY right. Attempting it. Why the hell not? As Coach Gary Patterson once said when asked why he chose to play a team the size and caliber of the University of Texas, he stated that if we didn’t play them, somewhere down the line in the future we’d all look back and say “Why the hell didn’t we?”. Hardcore. I’m glad that we tried. Really excellent weekend. Lot of work. I’ll probably never forget it.

Thanks to everyone who came and everyone who helped. - SmokeHopper