Food Do you grill, bbq, smoke?

Ugh, I'm so hungry, but I can't eat any of this food right now. @Borla I'm probably going to have to make some of your wife's potato pancakes.

 

I actually had a request for that this weekend, but decided to try the maple, bourbon pork belly in its place. The pork belly is Kurobuta from Snake River Farms, so it should be good.

That will be the appetizer, and I'm doing a brisket Friday as well.

 

Some swear by the Primo as well. But, as you said, most with Akorns or Kamados end up doing some mods to make them more conducive to the long smoke times something like a 15lb brisket needs.

I'm comfortable sleeping 6-8 hours through the night while my BGE smokes away. You'd need a controller or some mods to do the same with the other units. Some will argue the cheaper purchase price and the time investment are worth it to upgrade them. For some people it may be.

 

Yeah, most of the mods I've seen done involve improving the air control.



Here is tonight's grilling.

Flat iron steak from SRV.

 

I have heavy cast iron grates.

I occasionally use a wire brush on them when they are hot. Usually if I've smoked something with a rub on it that has transferred to the grates and I am now going to grill something that I don't want to get the rub on when grilling. But I never wash them, and never do anything beyond a wire brush to clean them.

 

Hey @Chris Noyb, I posted the pics last night from my phone, and just now looked at them full sized on a PC.

You can pretty much answer your "do you clean your grates" question by looking at the grates in that second pic. Not too much cleaning action going on there. Just lots and lots of grilling awesomeness burned into them. I call that "just broke in".

 

I started on a cheap Chargriller off-set that was like $160 brand new. I made some great meat on it. It is completely do-able.

The advantage of some of the high dollar smokers is repeatability, flexibility, and less baby sitting. If I wanted that Chargriller to stay within a 10-15 degree range, I had to check on it every 15 minutes or less, fiddle with vents, put wet wood on the fire, add fuel, etc. It was a lot of work. I personally like it to be real fire and real smoke (as opposed to gas or electric smokers), but I don't want to have to go to THAT much effort.

 

Based on what I've seen with Traegers, very much this. I can certainly smoke something on my Weber One-Touch, but it requires a lot of effort and finagling on my part. My FIL pretty much sets the Traeger and leaves it be.

 

Brisket went on before sunrise.

Pork belly and baked beans will go on late morning or very early afternoon.

 

Baked beans just went on.

Soaked beans overnight.

Chopped up an onion, a jalapeno pepper, and a pound of bacon. Fried the bacon and drained part of the grease. Stirred in the pepper and onion. Added some dark brown sugar, molasses, and tomato paste. Got that nice, hot, and gooey, then stirred in the drained beans, added some salt, pepper, and cayenne. Then mixed some vegetable stock in with some of the bean water and dumped that in there too. Brought it all up to a boil, stirred it a bit, then threw it in the smoker.

Pork belly will be put on in maybe two hours.

 

Brisket, Dutch oven with baked beans, and just threw the pork belly on.

 

And the wood guy just dropped off two face cords of wood. Hickory and cherry. And he says he is bidding on a pecan tree that I can have if he gets it. Pecan is very rare around here.

 

I got tied up with our guests and finishing the food and never updated this thread.


The pork belly was a massive hit. I personally thought it had too much mustard seed on it for my tastes, but everyone said I was crazy for thinking that. Yesterday we took some of the leftovers and fried them in the cast iron skillet. I will say that was pretty epic.

Brisket was really good.

The baked beans were insane. This is the first time I've done them, and they will definitely be a staple on smoker days. Absolutely awesome.