I’m going to smoke some meat this weekend. I’m thinking a large chunk of beef or pork, anyone have any recommendations? I know that’s really wide open, I just can’t decide. I might just go with whatever is cheapest at costco.
I mostly smoke on my grill, I can keep it around 240-250 pretty consistently but no lower. I might be getting a new grill before the weekend though, the old one is a bit small for when we have a lot of company. Has anyone tried one of those infrared grills? Have a favorite gas grill for less than $500? I know all of the arguments in favor of charcoal grills and I don’t disagree with them, I just love the convenience of a gas grill.
Whole pork tenderloin is probably gonna win out based on cost. I like to take a frozed italian sausage an ram it into the center of the loin. Do that by making an X in the loin, simply by shoving a knife in as far as it will go to create your path for the sausage. Stab the snot out of it with a fork to pierce through the loin and the sausage - so it can baste inside out. There’s millions of rubs - put something on the outside. It just looks cool when you’re slicing it to serve - everyone gets a little bit of italian sausage with their slice of pork.
I’ll second the pork butt. I’m going to be putting one on either Sunday or Monday. I have some work to do on my smoker to try and seal up some gaps where I think I’m losing some smoke and heat.
As far as prep, I put a nice coating of spicy brown mustard on the whole thing before smoking to really add some flavor.
Pork shoulder…? Toying with the idea of doing one this weekend. Bone in with an apple-juice injection and a fierce dry-rub. Then pull and shred. Serve on buns with coleslaw. Eat on it for a week
Hmmm . . . I might do both beef and pork, that’s what happens when you can’t decide. :) I probably won’t get around to shopping until tomorrow, then see what they have. I’ll likely do a dry rub.
Brisket sounds good - I think I’ll get a whole brisket, smoke half this weekend and corn the rest so we can have it in a couple of weeks.
If there’s room on the grill I’ll do pork shoulder/butt too. Or maybe I’ll do them on consecutive days. Thanks for the ideas.
Alright …another Pork Shoulder vote here. Boston Butt is the best cut…about 6-8lbs would be good. A healthy dose of your favorite rub and a blend of Hickory, Apple and Oak for smoking.
Bring the meat to room temp prior to smoking and slow smoke until the internal temp reaches about 165-170 as Tubercle had indicated.
Here’s a great recipe for a dry rub compliments of Steven Raichlen
2 tablespoons paprika
1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 teaspoons celery salt
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
i’m going to go against the grain here and say that if you do a pork butt, you should cook it to 195-200 internal and then double foil it and wrap it in a beach towel and put it in an ice chest for a couple hours and then pull it and season it to taste with additional rub and then let people sauce their portion if they wish.
liberally coat butt with mustard and apply your favorite rub. on the meat side, rub it in good and then recoat it and wrap it in saran and put it back in the refrigerator for a few hours. i put my butts on cold.
This will only reaffirm to SWMBO that I’m a little crazy. I got:
8 lbs brisket
12 lbs pork shoulder
10 lbs chicken
It’s going to be a smoking weekend. I’ve got enough hickory and alder to do all of it, but I’m thinking of trying some of the other woods I’ve collected. I’ve got some plum and apple branches I can use.
I use Picasa or Flickr but they do not really want you to share pics it this way.
On the other side if you have yahoo or gmail account you are half way there.
I think Picasa has a better upload utility.
There are other services like shuterfly
or you could use file share/backup/sync service like dropbox.
