Winning Guest Post!

Thanks so much to Ishmael for this awesome post! He is the Winner! BOOOM Kapow! Welcome to the WinnerDome! Thanks to everyone who entered. We will be contacting others with guest post requests soon! Thanks for reading!

So without further adieu....

Cedar Plank Rockfish

Call me Ishmael. (I’ve been called worse … today even.) In the land of El Smokeador y Smokehopper, everyone needs an alias. What follow’s is Ishmael’s tale of fish conquered, grilled and eaten. Let’s do this.


I like to do things in reverse. This story ends – and begins – with fresh rockfish, having been grilled on cedar planks. And with that mouth-watering teaser, I realize you already desperately want to know how to copy my magic. Read on. There is no shame if you are overcome with awe – I’ve most certainly had that effect on better men than you. (Right, Smokehopper?)






Take a look at those pictures. Study them. Second, you better believe that’s real charcoal. No briquets or propane or other girly-man cooking methods; Ishmael throws down old school. First, you’ll want to soak the planks for a few hours in advance, and get a good, hot fire going. Finally, once that’s complete, it takes no time at all until your fish is perfectly done – white, moist, flaky and no risk of burning from the charcoal below. Stay with me here, we’re moving fast and not always in a straight line. You’ll be okay.

And you know Ishmael (that’s me, remember, aka ODB, aka Dirt McGirt, aka “The Fishmonger” … okay, I just made that last one up, but I think it sounds cool anyway) keep’s the cuisine fresh and simple. Bring on the fish. (Where did you get the fish, you ask? Patience, grasshopper, and all will be revealed in time as we skip backwards towards many revelations.) Rinse the filets, and pat them dry. A sprinkle of Old Bay – you’re cooking on the Eastern Shore of Maryland now, folks, so get used to it and embrace our customs – and just a touch of fresh-ground Himalayan salt. (Frankly, if you’re still using regular table salt for your cooking, you are excused to go visit Red Lobster or Long John Silver’s. Go ahead. Good riddance, really.)

Now buckle your seatbelts, ‘cause I’m about to pump another 1.21 gigawatts through the flux capacitor as we go back a bit further in time to the very genesis of this grand experiment …


That’s right: It’s morning, and I'm on a boat (sing along, if you know the tune). Even better: it’s not my boat. Ishmael might be a charming wordsmith capable of challenging Smokehopper’s culinary commentary, but he’s also a cheap ol’ dirty bastard who’s always up for a free fishing trip and not ashamed to say it.

As stated before (or later? this time travel storytelling is confusing even to a man of Mensa intellect) it’s okay to be jealous of me and my wily charm; you’ll get used to it. You see, grilling up some nice, fresh rockfish fillets for dinner is the reward for life on the Chesapeake Bay. All told, it was another tough day at the office, as you can see. (Tomorrow I’m off to film another Dos Equis commercial – it is a blessing and a curse to be the most interesting man in the world.)

Sadly, our journey into the past has served its purpose and we must now transition Back to the Future. So, how’d the cedar plank rockfish taste? Let me assure you that planks almost always provide a reliable, easy and tasty alternative to shake up your backyard barbeque routine. Stock up on grilling planks in advance at the local hardware store, or at specialty stores for a better selection … they are excellent for cooking a righteous pork tenderloin, among other uses. In fact many fish – salmon being a great example – are really excellent off of a plank, which imparts a subtle smoke and guarantees a moist, indirect heat.

Unfortunately, today revealed that rockfish may be the exception to this rule, it’s flavor being just a bit too mild. My masterpiece looked excellent and cooked up perfectly done (no, I’m not showing the picture again – time travel your ass back to the top of this post and refresh your memory if necessary). But, just as I used my manly musculature to bully that fish from the sea, the planks and charcoal similarly overpowered the filets with a bit too much smoky flavor. It wasn’t bad – I ate it anyway (there was no plan B for dinner). But it could have been better. It should have been better. Dammit.

We now return to your regularly scheduled broadcast with El Smokeador y Smokehopper.

Ishmael out.

Contest Is Over

Winner has been selected and the post will be up soon. Thanks to everyone for contributing. We will be doing this again soon.

Look for a huge update/post in the coming weeks.

Contest Update

We have already received several entries from qualified contestants. All it takes to qualify is sending an email with your submission to elsmokeador at gmail dot com. The deadline for submitting your entry is going to be this coming Sunday at midnight. That is June 6th at 11:59. Monday will work as well. Maybe even tuesday if you have something but havent had time to write it up yet. Let us know.

- El Smokeador

Guest Posting Contest!

SmokeHeads,

As was mentioned a few posts ago, we are now holding our first Guest Posting Extravaganza Contest for Winners and Losers Alike!!!! Get ready for HUGE CASH PRIZES and NO CASH PRIZES! (there are no cash prizes)

Here are the rules:

1) Take a picture of some food you have cooked.

2) Write a little paragraph about how you made it.

3) Email it to elsmokeador(at)gmail(dot)com

Thats it.

We will pick the one (or two) most creative and/or most delicious and/or most smoketastic entries and contact you regarding the guest post. What we are looking for, is food that emulates the style and charisma of http://elsmokeadorysmokehopper.blogspot.com/ (whatever that is). Foods can range from BBQ to Kimchi. (From BBQ to Kimchi is the name of our first cook book.)

Here is a picture of a dolphin:

Lets Get Crackin People!

-El Smokeador y SmokeHopper

p.s. There may be a hat in it for someone. Also, no one has gone out and found the BBQ rub yet. Uhhh....there is only one hat left so...somebody needs to do something quick! Dolphin Quick! (the name of our band)

Picnic One Trillion

Its Spring time People! Lets get outside and do some stuff. You...you on the Couch! Get out there and be somebody. Punch nature in the face and take exactly zero prisoners while doing so. You may be wondering how to do this on a limited budget. The Answer is picnicking...TOO THE EXTRME. But really just going on a picnic will qualify.

For my picnic meal I chose to make BLT's. But after I went to the store to shop for the B the L and the T, I saw some other good stuff and decided to make BATAMO's. Which of course is a Bacon-Arugula-Tomato-Avocado-Mayo-Onion sandwich.

For my picnic destination I chose the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens because it is (1) awesome and (2) within walking distance. Anyway, we cooked some stuff prior to departure, and we assembled the rest on the garden grounds. Keep reading if you want to know more about this. I assume this is why you are reading a blog. This is what blog reading is.

Step 1: Buy some quality food gold (aka bacon). This is Cherrywood smoked bacon. I didn't buy Applewood smoked bacon because when I looked at it in the butcher's case, it reminded me of an Applebee's ad. Way too much talk about applewood smoked bacon these days. I mean, I bet its good but...you know. I'm just sayin.

I cooked it in the oven for a while and took it out and let it cool. There are no ovens in the wild, so you have to cook it before hand.

Step 2: Make Mayo. If you don't know how to make mayo, its time to get with the picture. Its roughly twelve parsecs better than store bought mayo. But truthfully, store bought isn't bad, but if you have the ingredients sitting around, oil, lemon, vinegar...then I just make it. Thats what I say. (Note that raw egg is dangerous . They have special pasteurized eggs you can use to avoid this danger.)

Chop up some tarragon.

Mix it up in the Mayo.

Now you have tarragon Mayo. POW.

Next, you have to toast the bread. These rolls that I bought were like little bowling balls. I took out 88% of the bread and toasted it. I show you the empty bacon grease pan next to the untoasted bread, because the bread surface may have taken a trip through the cherrywood smoked bacon grease prior to going under the boiler. (it did) Toast until thoroughly toasted.

Next, make homemade cream of mushroom soup. Definitely don't get it from central market. Its just way too delicious and easy to do that.

(I bought this at Central Market.)

Next, put these things in a bag, grab a knife a cutting board etc.

Heres the full load we packed up. Note the arugula, strawberries, rose sparling wine, orange juice, and the thermos with the soup. Note them because they are there.

Get a Picnic blanket.

Start Hiking.

We chose a spot not far from these trees. Pretty secluded. Not too crowded. Not too much sun, not too much shade. We pretty much found the goldilocks zone of picnic spots. I'm actually starting another blog solely dedicated to the picking of picnic spots. It'll be ready next never.

The Picnic:

Have some soup because you're hungry and you deserve it.

Make a Mimosa because you're thirsty and you deserve it. By the way, I got rose' sparkling wine at the store instead of champagne because they were all out of the little champagnes. I was a little worried about how this would mix with the orange juice and I must tell you that it turned out wicked awesome. I may never go back to standard mimosas ever again.

(its cool to drink mimiosas...right?)

Assemble Sandwich as follows. I assembled them upside down for some reason. Anyway at the top goes the tarragon mayo, then the arugula, then the tomato, then the red onion. I put more red onions on there than is shown.

Then the food gold.

Then the avocado on the base.

Press hard, and split.

POW POW POW POW.

Eat it all up and lay back and snooze in the sun.

This is the last thing I saw before I fell asleep.

Thanks for reading everyone! Yeeehawwww!!!!

Also much more to come very soon. A guest blog contest is in the works, and we may have tracked down some minotaur meat. Stay Tuned!

Also I don't want to hear any bullpoot about how I made a sandwich and put it on the blog. It was a great sandwich!

-SmokeHopper

Beercan Chicken With Guinness As the Beer

First post in a while, sorry. We have a lot of ideas tabled and frankly rose the bar a little too high with what we did in 2009. Butterfinger Brisket, come on. Chicken Fried Brisket, right. So, this is going to be relatively short and sweet. Really sweet.....because the chicken turned out really sweet. Zing.

But really, this has been on the to do list for a while. We still plan on producing several other variations on this classic but its been hard to find time lately. Smokehopper turned 30. Pretty Wild is on E!. New albums from Band of Horses, LCD Soundsystem, The Delta Spirit, Sharon Jones, The National and Gorillaz. Etc. Etc.

Onto the chicken.

Started with a whole fryer washed off and patted dry.

Threw on some paprika, salt and pepper. Also, you should crack open a Guinness at this point. The cans are sold in 4 packs, so you can have a couple yourself. In fact, when you're dealing with a smoker that is not cooperating and maintaining a pretty constant level of heat it is suggested.

Chopin is a good addition to the Guinness when dealing with a smoker induced headache. Particularly this :

That is The Clientele - Strange Geometry and Dave Matthews Band - Crash on the table. Both really solid albums if you can get over the fact that its not cool to like Dave anymore.

Dave sucks.

Not really, just kidding. Zing x2.

This is the smoker we used at SmokeNor's house. The original plan was to cook the chicken for about 4 or 5 hours at about 225. Things we didn't have that would have been great:

1) Meat thermometer (we ended up getting one later, so disregard this).

2) An oven thermometer that told gave us an accurate reading on the temp inside the chamber.

We didn't end up needing a thermometer but instead a better understanding of how the smoker worked. We didn't use nearly enough wood starting out and the heat only got up to 175 for the first 3 or 4 hours. Ended up cooking the chicken for a solid 6 hours after we figured out that we had to get a good sized fire going in the firebox. Took about 3 logs at a time. Sorry for the rant. It's under control.

We did some ribs too, but only LSmoke's turned out good. Next time I needed to make mine a little more tender. I also tried out a Guinness inspired bourbon, coffee, heath bar rub that will not be posted. Good idea on paper but executed poorly.

Anyway, here are the results. Check out how the Guinness came out through the top and drizzled down the skin. Don't think that had any effect on the final product but the chicken was easily the sweetest chicken I had ever tasted. So, I have to think that the Guinness penetrated the skin and got into the meat. It was fantastic. Like two guys playing horse.

Not much meat, but like I said above it was really tasty. Consumed pretty quickly.

So we played ship captain crew. It was a fun night.

Also, there is this:

The end.

Where in the World is Carmen BBQiego?*

*(worst possible title)

It was the year 1672 when Dutch-Spanish pirates marauded the waters of the Trinity River, near the modern day DFW metroplex. Gold was the businesss, and blood was her pay. Back then, there was no rule of law, there was only rule of cannon fire. Lives were lost at the speed of the horse.

From this time of intrigue and danger arises one of the greatest treasure stories that has ever been told. Of course, I refer to the tale of “The Texas Jewel Cat, and the Secret of Archimedes’ Treasure ”.

I’m not real sure where that was going but needles to say, we hid some BBQ rub in the wilderness, and we now challenge you, the reader, to venture into the wild, and retrieve this treasure.

The TREASURE:

My standard BBQ rub in a jar.

Piuquin, Pendrey's Chili Mix, Cinnamon, Onion Powder, Garlic Powder, Paprika.

The Test!:

Anyway, If you're daring enough to go and find this BBQ rub, and return it to either me or Smokeador, you will receive the last El Smokeador y SmokeHopper Hat! All that we ask is that you take pictures of the rescue operation and email them to us so that we can put these pics up on the blog, along with pictures of the hat giving ceremony (which will be quite dramatic).

Also, please don’t eat or use the BBQ rub because there’s no telling who reads this blog, and would go find it and do weird stuff to it. So just return it to us. In exhange, well give you more rub as well.

Hints and More Hints:

There is only one clue which will lead you to the treasure and I’m afraid that you must use your brains. Remember now, this is the only clue:

“When chiming the doorbell in France,
One judges a man by his pants
Look into the sky, and squeeze your left thigh,
You have arrived at the party to dance.

There you go. That’s it. That should be enough to lead you to it.

Final Hint:

(it has to do with the number of fractal relationships between the odd numbered words!!)

Other small hints:

Here are the exact GPS Coordinates with a link to Google Maps:

+32° 51' 22.02", -97° 29' 9.96"

Also here are pictures of the area and final treasure hiding spot.

The Path of Destiny:

BroSmoke Tears a path:

You are very close at this point. (take a left)

Final hiding Spot:

Good Luck Treasure Seekers! Hopefully udaptes will follow at some point!

More to come soon!

-SmokeHopper