***Official 2016 BBQ, Smoking, Grilling, Cooking, Baking thread***

[bakerboy]

I've started threads like this on other forums with great success, we can use this one thread to post up pictures, how-to's or for forum members to come in and ask questions about BBQ'ing, Smoking, Grilling or Cooking anything from an appetizer, main dish or desserts!!!

I already have 2 other threads, one was for a Smoked Pork Loin with a Cherry Maple glaze:

Smoked Pork Loin with a Cherry Maple Glaze


Also, Smoked Baby Back ribs w/ Grilled Corn:


Smoked Baby back ribs with grilled corn



So, now we can start this new thread off right!!!

- - - Updated - - -

"Beer Can Chicken"



I knew we would be taking the kids to Sea World (San Diego) on Sunday morning and returning on Monday afternoon, I was kind of hoping we would be back early because on Saturday night I started brining a whole chicken to smoke on Monday:

I 1st find a big enough pot that would hold a whole chicken (5lbs) and add some water, 1/4 cup of salt and sugar, ground garlic, fresh garlic and ground thyme, bring it up to a boil:




Then, add ice cubes to quickly bring down the temperature of the water because if you were to place the chicken in the water at this point, it would start cooking, not good:










So, as I mentioned I was hoping to get back early enough because I wanted the chicken in the smoker by atleast 1pm......well, to make a long story short, we made a pit stop to one of my most favorite places on earth (LoL) and ended up staying for a bit and having a few testers and a pretzel because my daughter wanted one, I did bring home a present for wifee and I so, it was well worth the stop:





By the time we got home, unpacked, settled in and got the smoker up to temp, I pulled the chicken out of the brine and let it sit out for about an hour:




I know this dish calls for a "beer can" but my kids (9 y/o & 5 y/o) eat this stuff so I sub a beer can for a can of chicken broth:





I then pat dry the chicken, brush the outside with E.V.O.O. and add garlic powder and pepper, I also peel the skin back on top of the breast slightly so that I can add spices to the breast directly:





Then, I basically shove the chicken broth can up into the cavity and "stand it up":








Now, off into the smoker:




By this time it was already closed to 5pm and I knew my family were going to be hungry soon, so unfortunately I had to xfer the chicken to the propane grill for a while:










Now, by this time I'm getting evil stares because everyone is hungry, so I had to "chop" up the chicken and grill the pieces:





Also, what I failed to secure was some decent accompanies for the chicken, so the only side dish in the house was chicken flavored Rice-a-roni and sone steamed veggie mix.....






So there you have it!!!!


What did you cook this weekend????

 

[JoyfulNoise]

FOLLOWING!!

I just did a 10lbs brisket for the Memorial Day holiday (9.5 hour smoke) and it was FABULOUS! Sooooper simple recipe, nothing fancy at all - dry rub with 1/4cup salt, 1/3 cup black pepper and 4 tablespoons of ground coriander. Trim the brisket (I had both point and flat together) and apply rub 24 hours before hand, let it sit in the fridge, uncovered. Place in the smoker (~250F) with fat-cap down and strips of bacon (~ 1 lb) across the top. After 2 hours in the smoke, do a Texas-crutch - pull the brisket off the smoker and wrap it in 2 sheets of heavy duty (the kind you get at Costco or Sam's club) aluminum foil...wrap it TIGHT! Then put it back into the smoker until the internal temperature reaches 205F (some folks like 195F...all up to the individual). Pull the foil wrapped brisket out of the smoker and let it sit in an ice cooler wrapped in towels (to reduce heat transfer) for at least 30mins to one hour.

Remove the brisket from the foil and slice thin.....it was soooooo tender!! Still have some left overs for tonight.

 

[JoyfulNoise]

Here's the science behind the Texas crutch -

Texas crutch

 

[bakerboy]

Thanks for the info Matt!!!! That's very interesting!

 

[woodyp]

We did a mudbug boil of 60 lbs. of the rascals. Taters, Portobello mushrooms, corn and such. Crab boil-boxed and liquid, garlic and some stuff I'm under oath not to reveal!

Already been asked once today what "mudbugs" are......but I don't wanna embarrass ...CASEY!

 

[Casey]

We did a mudbug boil of 60 lbs. of the rascals. Taters, Portobello mushrooms, corn and such. Crab boil-boxed and liquid, garlic and some stuff I'm under oath not to reveal!

Already been asked once today what "mudbugs" are......but I don't wanna embarrass ...CASEY!

LOL I don't eat critters that crawl in muddy water! Yuck!!!!

 

[JoyfulNoise]

***** Grilled Jalapeno Poppers *****

So one thing I love about the summer BBQ season and living in the Southwest is that we get great jalapeño peppers here! And there's nothing I love more than to take those tasty, spicy little peppers and make POPPERS!! I go real simple with the recipe -

jalapeños (as many as you like)

any kind of milk cheese (like Mozzarella or queso fresco) or cream cheese

Finely Shredded Four Cheese blend (often called Mexican Mix)

Crumbled bacon bits

Mix equal parts of the milk cheese or cream cheese with the finely shredded Four Cheese blend and add as much bacon as you like. I typically cook with bacon on lots of things that I make when I want that flavor and save the cooked bacon for bits. You can also just take bacon out of the fridge chop up four slices and cook it in a pan until brown & crisp. Remove form the grease, pat dry and crumble it when it's cool.

For the jalapeños, we grow 'em big here but I like to try to find the freshest looking peppers (if the stems are dry and wilted, they are not fresh) and I like to try to find them with a little red blush on the flesh. Here's a little kitchen tool for any pepper-heads out there that makes cleaning the jalapeños a cinch -

Just cut off the stem end, insert the coring knife, give it a couple good clockwise turns then one counter-clockwise turn and pull out. Most of the seeds and ribs will come right out and you can get any stragglers with a good rinse under cold water. If you don't have the coring knife, a nice sharp paring knife will do as well. Then all you do is stuff the peppers with your cheese mix (and stuff them good, no air pockets!), load them on your pepper-popper-holder (say that ten times fast!) and grill them on the cooler side of the BBQ with indirect heat.

Ready to Launch!!

You can smell them cooking....

...now serve them with your favorite meal...

LOOK MOM.....I'm eating my broccoli!!!!

 

[bakerboy]

Those look awesome!!!

And how cool is that coring knife and pepper-popper-holder!!!

pepper-popper-holder
pepper-popper-holder
pepper-popper-holder
pepper-popper-holder
pepper-popper-holder
pepper-popper-holder
pepper-popper-holder



HAHAHA!!!!


I've done some jalapeno poppers with chicken salad.......cook shredded chicken meat, cream cheese, salt, pepper, cranberries, chopped onion and bell peppers.....sliced the jalapeno's in half, clean them out and then fill with chicken salad mixture and sprinkle with paprika

I did these for xmas last year and right after that my phone died, so I lost the pics

 

[JoyfulNoise]

Yeah, anytime I see split jalapeño appetizers like that, I usually refer to the as jalapeño canoes. Still very much pop'able, I just like the variation in the name.

If you have not had them before, look up "armadillo egg appetizer" on Google. They are soooooo good and definitely NOT healthy

 

[bakerboy]

"armadillo egg appetizer" WOW, is all I gotta say about those!!!!


Was kind of a busy weekend for me, so yesterday I was running around a bit catching up on my weekend chores and activities, so for dinner kept it simple with some carne asada (Mexican meat market marinaded flap meat), home made Mexican rice, beans, home made guacamole, grilled green onions and grilled chile gueros!!!!!

1st we start with the guac......take a couple of avocado's, some chopped up tomato, some purple onion, some lime juice, salt and pepper, garlic and onion powder and mix everything up!!! You can add chopped jalapeno's, I didn't because my daughter would not eat it plus I bought salsa from the Mexican market!!!













Now I can start grilling my green onions and chile guero's!!! While grilling I squeeze lemon juice on them and add garlic salt:






After a few minutes I start grilling the chicken 1st because it takes longer than anything else, then I set the green onion and chili's to the side and add the carne asada!!!!









After a few minutes, this is how we're looking!!!!



I 1st set up a plate for the wifey:



I like to make a huge taco with a flour tortilla, add some carne asada, beans, rice, onion, cilantro, guacamole, shredded cheese and some salsa!!! Dont forget to squeeze some lime juice!!!! Also, enjoy one of my favorite beers!!!!

 

[JoyfulNoise]

I think we were on the same wavelength - you were making carne asada and I just made a dinner of -

Super Simple Flank Steak!

So now that I'm a total bum and have plenty of time to grille outdoors, I just love buying flank steak and cooking it up on the BBQ. Flank is just one of those cuts of meats that are easy to do on the grille but is also easy to screw up. I try to buy a big cut of flank (around 2lbs or so) to feed all the hungry animals in my house. Some say you have to marinate it for 24 hours to get it to tenderize, but I can do it in 2 hours....here's the little kitchen apparatus you need to do the job -

Amazon.com: OXO Good Grips Easy-Clean Bladed Meat Tenderizer: Kitchen Dining

Pin tenderizers are a great way to tenderize those tougher cuts of meat (flank, london broil, etc) and make them grille-worthy. Just simply trim your flank (if it's a bit fatty) and then start whacking it with the pin tenderizer on both sides. The nice part of the pin tenderizer over a mallet tenderizer is that the pins poke into the meat creating deep channels for your marinade to get into and, for flank, it cuts up the natural stringiness of the meat which keeps the flank from curling on the grille. So here's the meat, post tenderizing with a little marinade ready to go into a Zip-Loc bag -



The marinade is super easy - balsamic vinegar (3 tbsp), molasses (2 tbsp), soy sauce (2 tbsp) and, optional, 1 cap full of Kitchen Bouquet browning sauce. Mix it all up and dump it in the bag with the pin-tenderized flank. Marinate for a minimum of 2 hours or all the way up to 24hrs (beyond 24 hours, the meat might start to get mushy from the acidity breaking down the proteins). This is how it looked after I took it out of the bag and patted it dry -



I don't rinse off marinade but simply pat it dry with paper towel to absorb the liquid from the surface. This is necessary for flank because, in order to cook it right, you need to cook it HOT and you need to cook it FAST. If your meat is too wet, it will never get hot enough on the grill to leave good marks and you'll just wind up boiling the meat instead of searing it shut. As for my grille settings, I set my grille to "NUCLEAR FUSION" level - 500 F minimum grille temp. My grille can get to 650F and the temperature probe is up on the grille face so the surface temperature of the grating is probably a lot closer to 700F. Once the grille is about the temperature of the surface of the Sun, you throw the flank on and slam the lid shut (no peaking!!!). Depending on the thickness, you should only need approximately 4 to 6 minutes per side. Here's my grille going full-blown Chernobyl -



And the finished product is here sliced real thin -



For last week or so, day time temps in Tucson have been over 100F so that means ABSOLUTELY NO INDOOR OVEN USE! So I decided to do the rest of the dinner on the BBQ as well - french fires and Grandma Bianci's (my nonna!) stuffed zucchini -



Unfortunately I can not give out Nonna's recipe for the zucchini or else my mother will put one of her Sicilian curses on me

BUON APPETITO!!


PS - Sorry for all the large format, sideways pictures. Photo bucket was down for me so I had to use the forum's native picture upload feature. I did not scale & rotate the pictures from my Mac so you're getting them in their raw format.

 

[bakerboy]

Nice!!!

My brutha from anotha mutha!!!

Im actually 1/4 Italian!!

Carne looks good my friend.

 

[bakerboy]

I know Matt and I cant be the only ones grilling up around here, let's see some pics!!!!


Over the weekend, I Q'ed up a few different things....

On Friday night, I did some grilled veggies, when I was at the market they had these bacon wrapped jalepenos stuffed with pork sausage.....I said why not!!!! So I bought like 4 or 5 of them and grilled them up!!!!










Also grilled up a nice little top sirloin and 1 chicken breast:







And here ya go!!!!!






Yesterday I made some teriyaki chicken kabobs:


Chopped up some bell peppers, onion, bought a can of pineapple chunks and boneless thigh meat, you could use breast meat, BUT it will dry out quicker:




I've always let my skewers sit in water before I thread them up so they don't burn up so quickly, I learned about this trick not too long ago, place the skewers in a bottle tall enough, I also add ice cubes and let sit for at least 10 minutes (don't worry, the water was not wasted):









Next, start removing some of the fat off the chicken meat and cut up the pieces a little bit more:




Now, I start adding some ingredients to let the chicken marinade for at least 30 minutes........Yoshida sauce (it's kind of like teriyaki sauce, but a little sweeter), pineapple juice, soy sauce, garlic powder, black pepper, onion powder and ginger:











After it sits for a little while, I start threading the skewers, there is no wrong or right way to do this, you just add whatever you feel!!!! I will say that I always start with a bigger piece of bell pepper so it kind of "anchors" everything:




Now we start grilling them up!!!!



As I'm grilling I add more garlic powder, pepper and ginger:




Then we have the finished product:






Just keeping simple with white rice and my favorite beer!!!!!

 

[woodyp]

Soak ya' some steaks in pineapple juice for 24 hours and flame those puppies up.

Sent from my XT1030 using Tapatalk

 

[JoyfulNoise]

No recipe details, just pics.

Sunday : NY shell steak with salad and broccoli

Monday : Sizzling Chicken Fajitas (grille only, no serving pictures)

Come on Woody, shows us what you got!!

 

[Glock]

Wow, I can't believe I missed this thread! Y'alls pics are making me hungry! I smoked a 12lb pork shoulder a couple weeks ago and made pulled pork sammiches for the fam. I will have to dig up the pics.

 

[JoyfulNoise]

Wow, I can't believe I missed this thread! Y'alls pics are making me hungry! I smoked a 12lb pork shoulder a couple weeks ago and made pulled pork sammiches for the fam. I will have to dig up the pics.

Please do!! The more people contributing to this thread the better.

 

[bakerboy]

Get 'er done!!!!!

 

[Glock]

Ok, pork shoulder going on the smoker. Its injected, marinated in the refrigerator for 24 hours, then rubbed with yellow mustard and rubbed with Mike's Magic Dust. I pair it with a homemade apple cider vinegar and mayo coleslaw on a Kings Hawaiian bun toasted on a hot griddle with a light coating of butter. This stuff would make the Pope cry.


All done and pulled

 

[Glock]

These are pecan grilled rib-eyes. Hot coals. Soak a handful of pecan chips or 1-2 good size pecan chunks a few hours before starting the coals. When the bed of colas is at its hottest, close the lid and open the vents. Once the inside temp is about 5-600 open her up, toss on the soaked chunks, wait about 60 seconds then toss on the steaks. 2-3 mins a side, flipped twice (for steaks 1.5-2" thick), then roll the edges to render the fat and take'em off. Place a pad of butter on them (about 1/4" thick) and let them rest for 2-3 minutes. Enjoy!