Tag Archive for ‘cooking’

The Key to Smoking a Great Brisket

If you held a gun to my head and delivered the ultimatum to me in the guise of a question of, “If you could only cook one food in the realm of barbecue for the rest of your life, what would it be?”, the subjective answer of mine is brisket.

The first time I ever tasted a smoked beef brisket cooked by someone at their home, and not at a restaurant, was in 2016. It was sitting in a foil pan, and it was chopped brisket, almost shredded. It sat in a mix of beef broth and juices from the meat itself. It was served for breakfast with biscuits. I ate mine on one of those said biscuits with a little bit of mayonnaise. Unconventional, but it was delicious. At that point in 2016, I had little to no knowledge about barbecue. If you have read my past posts, you will know that before 2016 my idea of barbecue was, well, barbecue sauce. I cannot emphasize how ignorant I was.

When I received my first smoker in December 2016, which was a used vertical Brinkmann Trailmaster stick burner smoker, I had brisket on my brain in terms of ideas of what I wanted to try smoking in the future, and so I hopped on Google and devoured all the information I could on how to smoke a brisket.

In that research, I learned that ‘chopped’ brisket was a variation of cooking it to the point of it being overcooked by traditional barbecue standards. I discovered that it was supposed to be sliced, and for the brisket to be considered true smoked beef brisket, that it would have to ‘pass the bend test’ as the slices would have to ‘fold’ over your finger when you hold it up, and furthermore, it would need to pass the ‘pull test’ where you take a slice of brisket and slightly pull it apart as it breaks into two pieces while still maintaining its sliced form, proving tenderness.

The brisket ‘pull test.’

Nonetheless, I did not smoke my first brisket until September 2017, and by that time I had been using my 22.5” Weber Smokey Mountain cooker since June of that year. A whole packer, which is what one calls a full brisket featuring its two parts – the point and the flat – in the barbecue world, was on my radar, but I was cautious. Before I continue, I want to mention that the point is the ‘fatty’ part of the brisket, often used to make burnt ends, and the flat is the learner part of the brisket.

I was daunted. When I was researching how to properly smoke a brisket, I discovered that it was allegedly the toughest food to properly cook in the barbecue world, and it served as some sort of litmus test for all true pitmasers.

With that said, when I smoked my first brisket, it was a four or five pound flat from Sam’s Club. On that day in September 2017, I was smoking a host of items in my WSM, from a head of cabbage with butter and Tony Chachere’s Creole seasoning (so good, by the way!) to potatoes and a pork butt for a family dinner.

Somehow, I managed to cook it just right, and my family loved it.

My confidence skyrocketed, and just a few weeks later in October 2017, I bought a 12-lb. whole packer brisket from Wal-Mart. This time, instead of starting early in the morning like I did with the first brisket flat, I wanted to cook this one overnight. I started it at around 9 p.m. in my WSM with a mix of Kingsford charcoal briquettes, hickory and applewood.

When I woke up at 8 a.m. the following day, my WSM was still running at around 220-225 degrees, and the brisket was reading 180 degrees on my meat thermometer. Here is where I made a mistake: I wrapped it in foil and placed it back into the WSM. Now, the foiling of the brisket was not the mistake, but what I subsequently chose to do surely was. After another two hours in the pit, the brisket had not reached the internal temp of 200-202 like I was hoping for, so I removed it and placed it in my oven on 375 degrees. Yes, I really did that, and now I’m cringing.

Placing the brisket at that temperature in the oven wouldn’t have been the downfall if I had left it in there for a short amount of time, but it was in the oven for over an hour and a half, and when I removed it, I immediately opened the foil and sliced it up. Guess what? It was stringy. I made pulled brisket. I was so upset. After doing so well with the brisket flat, with this whole packer I failed. Now, was it still delicious? Absolutely. It was smokey, rich with flavor and tender, but that isn’t how I wanted to cook it. I made pulled brisket sandwiches that day, and the next day I made brisket chili with the leftovers. Not all was lost, but I learned a lesson on that day.

Here is the beautiful beef brisket that I subsequently ruined. I don’t have any post-shred photos because I was too upset with myself to take any.

You can’t truly hurry barbecue. Sure, you can wrap meats in foil – the ‘Texas Crutch’ method – and speed up the cooking process, but speaking of a process, that is exactly what barbecue is. I rushed this brisket and threw it in the oven at a high temperature to hurry it along, and I overcooked it.

Nowadays, I smoke my briskets in one of my Barrel House Cookers, hot’n’fast style. I will hang them in the BHCs until they reach an internal temperature of 160-165 degrees, wrap them in foil, re-hang them in the cooker and let it roll until I hit 198-202 degrees and remove it afterwards for a lengthy (one to four hours) rest in a cooler, wrapped in a towel.

Rest Your Brisket

That is the biggest key to smoking a great brisket. Resting it. Perhaps you thought my long-windedness was going to arrive to the conclusion of, ‘not hurrying it along,’ which is also important, but notice when I was describing my failure above, I immediately opened the foil and began to cut the brisket up. When you rest a brisket, you allow the juices – that would otherwise rapidly leak on out of the meat, along with the steam from the heat, causing the meat to dry up – to thicken and release more slowly, resulting in a juicy brisket.

Furthermore, resting a brisket allows the collagen within the meat to soften and become gelatin. The fat further renders. The product itself is simply better.

I have smoked at least thirty briskets since that fateful day in October 2017, and it still haunts me. Luckily, that has never happened again.

While I do smoke 99% of my briskets in one of my Barrel House Cookers these days, last May I did complete another overnight smoked brisket in my Weber Smokey Mountain, and this time it was a success. When I smoke up the morning after I began the cook, I wrapped the brisket in foil, added some more charcoal to my WSM, and allowed it to ride for a few hours until it hit 199 degrees internally. Afterwards, it rested in a cooler for over two hours. The results were much better than they were from that day in October 2017.

The key to smoking a great brisket: be patient, allow it to ride out for the full cook and yield it the proper time it needs to rest before you slice it up.

2 days ago 0

Launching the Grizzly BBQ YouTube Channel

I have spent over three years toiling around with the prospect of putting together a YouTube channel for Grizzly BBQ.

Over the last year, I have posted a few videos that I had posted on Instagram, but they were hardly YouTube worthy. Being that the videos were from Instagram, they were short clips with nary any interaction involved. I suppose I just wanted to kick the channel off. I would have stopped procrastinating and started this YouTube adventure much sooner, but with 2019 being such a chaotic year, I had my priorities placed elsewhere. With more time available in my days in 2020, I am able to commit my energy into growing this cooking channel.

A few days ago, I cooked up a birthday dinner for my cousin Rachel’s 11-year-old son, and I decided to film bits and pieces of that day’s cook (which you can see above in my unofficial Grizzly BBQ channel introduction). I smoked a 10-lb. pork butt in my Barrel House Cooker 14D, and in my Barrel House Cooker 18C I smoked a 3-pound chub of bologna along with over 60 bacon-wrapped jalapeno poppers (some with cheddar cheese; others with cream cheese). Indoors, I deep-fried over 60 chicken wings and around 20 chicken legs/drumsticks.

Yesterday, I lightly documented my cook of a double smoked ham. It was a precooked ham that was smoked with hickory wood, so I fired up my offset stick burner smoker and smoked it in order to get it up to temperature (130 degrees) with a few split logs of hickory that I had on hand.

Somehow, prior to the cook from the other day, I had 49 subscribers to my channel. I believe I know the culprit behind that. Back in February, I posted a short clip to my @grizzly.bbq Instagram page where I was hot’n’fast smoking some burgers and bacon. I live on a rural piece of farmland, and my smoker is just in front of a fence that features a vast field behind it. Cows, being the curious animals that they are, lined up behind the fence where my offset smoker sits, and I shot a quick video cracking a couple of jokes. I said, “Welcome to my barbecue class. Grizzly BBQ. I guess these (alluding to the cows watching) are my students… and the product.” Somehow, this video has over 8,000 views at the time of writing this post. I reckon that is where the bulk of my subscribers have come from.

There are going to be some growing pains along the way. I am not used to filming my cooks in this manner. I’m used to posting short clips to Instagram. I’m new to video editing, and I have simply been doing so using an app on my phone, but in the near future I’m going to look into other forms of video editing software. I’m such an amateur right now. I’m filming with my phone and winging it.

I would like to invite you to come aboard and join me in this YouTubing adventure. Hit me up with some likes and a subscription. I would greatly appreciate it. I promise the videos will be better as time ensues. I won’t only feature barbecue, but I plan on doing other forms of grub slinging from grilling to griddling on my Blackstone griddles to documenting some indoor cooks.

2 months ago 0

Chipotle Chicken Fajitas on the Blackstone Griddle

Believe it or not, this was my first time making chicken fajitas on the Blackstone griddle. I do have an excuse for that, which is one of my family members not being a fan of chicken, but still! After nearly three years of use, this was my first go-’round with them on the flat top.

One of the many great things about having an outdoor griddle, whether it is a Blackstone or a Camp Chef or a Blue Rhino or Royal Gourmet, is the versatility of it, and when it comes to versatility in cooking, fajitas — much like stir-fry — are something you can do anything with.

Traditionally, when you go to a Tex-Mex restaurant and order fajitas, what you are likely to receive is your choice of meat mixed together in a blend with cooked sliced bell peppers and onions, served with warmed flour tortillas, refried beans, rice and a little bit of greenery in the form of a tiny salad with tomatoes and a dollop of guacamole. However, at home, you can use whatever the heck you want. You can even make vegetarian fajitas with sliced portobello mushrooms if you would like. (A vegetarian dish being suggested on Grizzly BBQ? You don’t see that too often.)

At the same typical Tex-Mex restaurant, the fajitas comes out while sizzling on an oval cast iron skillet that is sitting on a wooden trivet. Truthfully, that is just for show, but you can’t deny the hunger augmenting effects it has on you and the others around when the dish is brought to the table, especially if your appetite is voracious and you are waiting to satiate it. At home, you could do the same for your guests by sitting a cast iron on the flat top until it heats up, adding your cooked meat and vegetables afterwards, and ensuingly walk into your home like a boss, but maybe I’m just boring, because I added these fajitas to a large bowl.

There are no rules when it comes to fajitas. Do what you want. If a culinary elitist tries to jump down your throat over the technicalities of fajitas, pay them no mind while you stuff your face with incomparable deliciousness. Let’s roll onto the recipe.

How to Make Chipotle Chicken Fajitas on the Blackstone Griddle

Do keep in mind that you can make these in a grilling basket (or cast iron skillet) on a gas or charcoal grill, or you can make them indoors in a cast iron skillet (I recommend cast iron for a proper sear of the meat). I enjoyed cooking them on my 36″ Blackstone griddle due to the overall cooking space.

As stated above, you can change up any ingredients you would like. One thing I would recommend, that I did not do, is cooking a combination of both chicken tenderloins (or butterflied chicken breasts) and boneless, skinless chicken thighs. The reason for this is that you will feature the best of both worlds: the lean white meat chicken from the breast along with the juicy flavor from the fat content in the dark meat from the boneless, skinless thighs. I had chicken tenderloins on hand. Keep in mind that if you cook with chicken breasts, you should butterfly them so that they are thin enough to cook so that the internal temperature of the breasts reach 165 degrees without burning the outside of them, which can happen if the breasts are too thick.

Furthermore, if you want to, you can slice and dice up the chicken prior to cooking, but in the past when I have cooked meals similar to this, what happens is that the meat does not brown as well. I cooked the chicken tenderloins first, and then I sliced/shredded them up before mixing them together with the sauce.

I used raw flour tortillas that I bought from Kroger and cooked on the griddle. I believe they taste better, with a higher quality texture, than precooked tortillas, but you can use whichever you would like. Whatever you have at your disposal is a solid general rule if I had to make one for these.

Ingredients Used

A couple lbs. of chicken tenderloins
1 stick of salted butter (cut in half)
1 diced yellow onion
3 cloves of minced garlic
1 habanero pepper, chopped and de-seeded (optional)
1 red bell pepper sliced
1 yellow bell pepper sliced
1 can of Embasa chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
Sazon (I used La Preferida)

Step-by-Step Instructions

1.) After slicing and dicing up the vegetables, fire up two of the burners on the griddle to medium-high heat
2.) Once thoroughly heated (about seven or eight minutes), add one of the halves from the stick of butter and spread it around around before placing each piece of chicken onto the flat top cooking surface
3.) Cook the chicken for around five or six minutes on each side, or until the internal temperature of the respective chicken pieces reach 165 degrees, and place it on a cutting board.
4.) Lower heat to low, add the other half of the stick of butter (spread around, again) and the peppers and diced onions to the cooking surface, occasionally stirring.
5.) Slice up the chicken during this sequence
6.) Turn the heat back up to medium high and add the minced garlic, stirring frequently for about a minute
7.) Re-add the chicken to the mix and liberally season with Sazon
8.) Add the can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
9.) Mix together for about two or three minutes
10.) Add to a serving plate for a bowl. Cover with foil or whatever you have on hand to keep warm
11.) Scrape the griddle surface from anything that was potentially stuck to it
12.) Cook the raw tortillas for about a minute or so on each side
13.) You are ready to eat. Enjoy! Serve with sour cream, guacamole, refried beans and rice, or whatever you would like.

If you decide to give this recipe a shot, and I highly recommend it, let me know what you think in the comments.

2 months ago 0

Is It Still Worth it to Buy a Barrel House Cooker?

You have been in the market under the notion of buying a new smoker for a while. After much deliberation, you decide that you are most interested in a drum/barrel-like smoker for hot’n’fast style cooking and the ability to hang meats. In your barbecue-fueled research, you come across the BHC (Barrel House Cooker) and the PBC (Pit Barrel Cooker). The PBC is arguably the most popular, highly heralded pre-built drum cooker in the world. However, your interest is piqued by the features of the BHC, as it appears it can do a bit more in the cooking and user accessibility side of things than the PBC.

However, in the same vain of research, you might discover that Barrel House Cooker was recently acquired by Pit Barrel Cooker. That could be why you are here right now, as you consider your upcoming prospective purcase of a new drum smoker. Yes, that is true. Barrel House is now owned by the Noah Glanville (creator of the PBC). In short, a legal battle broke out after PBC sued BHC. The results of the lawsuit found that BHC would have to pay royalties to Noah and PBC with some of the proceeds from each sale of a BHC. It wasn’t long before PBC acquired BHC in an act of debt forgiveness.

You might be wondering, with the advent of this news being uncovered, if it is still worth purchasing a Barrel House Cooker. My answer to that curiosity is a resounding yes. You can take my word however you want it, but I have two Barrel House Cookers, and I have cooked with them at least one hundred times since my original purchase in April 2018. You can read my extensive review of the Barrel House Cooker 18C here.

The Glanville family announced that Barrel House Cookers are going to continue to be produced alongside Pit Barrel Cookers. It has been noted that they will still be operating under the two separate names. This should dispel any concerns over the cookers being removed from the market.

My Barrel House Cooker 18C smoking away. Photo is from July 2018.

I bought my BHC 18C cooker for $249 (plus tax) in 2018. Nowadays, the BHC is sold on Amazon for $299. While the price increase is unfortunate, the BHC is more than worth purchasing, especially over the PBC. I absolutely know and understand that the PBC is a fine, exceptional cooker — which is why it is so popular and receives as much love as it does — but I simply prefer the BHC’s plethora of extra features, which is objectively cool to use when possible.

These are a couple of the advantages the Barrel House Cooker offers over the Pit Barrel Cooker (it is actually nice to be able to write this now, without fear of debates arising over BHC vs. PBC, now knowing that Noah Glanville and Co. are benefiting from both entities now).

Advantages (Features) of the BHC That Are Better Than the PBC

Easier access to modify your coal/wood positioning or remove ash. On the Pit Barrel Cooker, access to your charcoal basket is rather limited, since you have to sit the basket inside the cooker, at the bottom, and being able to access the basket of coals while in the middle of a cook is next to impossible barring some unnecessary, aggravating inconveniences. With the Barrel House Cooker, you can remove the middle base of the cooker from the bottom, remove the charcoal basket and empty ashes (using some heat resistant gloves) and resume cooking once placing the base back onto the cooker.
Perhaps it is the bigger competitive advantage of the two, but the Barrel House Cooker has made the bottom part of its cookers to where you can place the cooking grate over top of where you have your charcoal and use it as a hibachi! As far as I know, this cannot be done on the Pit Barrel Cooker. There is nothing like smoking a tri-tip until you hit about 120-125 degrees on the internal temperature before removing the base, adding the cooking grate to the bottom, over top of the coals, and searing that delicious tri-tip to perfection. The options are virtually unlimited as far as what you’d like to reverse sear by par-smoking a particular piece of meat(s) and finishing on the hibachi insert.
The Barrel House Cooker features a thermometer on the lid while the Pit Barrel Cooker does not. I know plenty of (myself included) barbecue fanatics who like to use thermometers made by Thermoworks or Maverick (and others) to gauge the grate temperatures, but I find this to be a point worth mentioning.

If you are on the fence, I can’t help but recommend that you go ahead and give Barrel House Cooker a shot. The features are nice, it is durable (I can speak for myself, and for many others from a Barrel House Cooker hangout group on social media, when I write that) and easy to use. It pumps out excellent barbecue, which I can also vouch for, and you will find that in a myriad of my posts on here where I have been consistently using my Barrel House Cookers for the last two years. My only complaint is that I did not purchase one sooner.

3 months ago 0

Barrel House Cooker Has Been Acquired By Pit Barrel Cooker

It is official, and I’m late to the party of announcing this, but about three weeks ago it was announced that Barrel House Cooker Company has been acquired by Noah Glanville, creator of the Pit Barrel Cooker Company. I like to keep the readers of Grizzly BBQ in the ‘know’ of this type of news, especially since I’m an avid user of both the Barrel House Cooker 14D — which has unfortunately been discontinued — and the Barrel House Cooker 18C.

This was the announcement posted by Noah Glanville of PBC:

This is Noah Glanville, some of you may know my family for our popular Pit Barrel Cooker, and I’m excited to announce today that we have recently expanded our barbecue family with the acquisition of The Barrel House Cooker Company, LLC. As pioneers in the vertical cooker market, we’ve always strived to bring the best products to the consumer. Part of that winning formula is making our customers a big part of our decision-making process, especially when it comes to product and innovation. So, we’re excited to bring our industry knowledge together with your passion for the Barrel House Cooker to chart the future course for the company and the brand.

Welcome to our barbecue family, and expect to hear more from us in the coming weeks. In the meantime, stay safe in these uncertain times, and join us in sharing a great meal with family.

Thank you,

Noah Glanville

Owner of The Barrel House Cooker Company, LLC

Cofounder, President and CEO of Pit Barrel Cooker Co.

If you are interested in reading the press release which concerns the announcement of the acquisition, click here.

If you aren’t in the knowing of the swing of things, a legal battle was formed between Pit Barrel Cooker and Barrel House Cooker when the two were separate entities. PBC alleged that its design was duplicated as part of a contract dispute, with possible claims that BHC reneged on the contract in order to create its drum smoker. The result of the lawsuit featured PBC being paid payments (by BHC) and receiving royalties from future sales of the BHC, which was effective beginning around sometime in May 2018 (the time the lawsuit was resolved). From what I have heard, the original owner of Barrel House Cooker Co. chose to ‘hand over’ the company as a whole to Noah and Pit Barrel Cooker Co. as part of debt forgiveness.

As for what the future of Barrel House Cooker entails? This is a post by BHC on social media:

The Barrel House Cooker Company, LLC and Pit Barrel Cooker Co. are two separate companies and brands. We are always innovating and listening to our customer’s feedback. At this time there are no plans to consolidate nor combine the two cookers.

I am ecstatic to hear that Noah and PBC are going to continue to create Barrel House Cookers going forward. This is exceptional news. I have said it in multiple posts on Grizzly BBQ, but I can’t help but feel like the Barrel House is a superior cooker in comparison to the Pit Barrel. Sure, the PBC is more popular and was the first commercially successful pre-built drum smoker to practically take over the market in the realm of drum cookers, but the features of the BHC — thermometer on the lid, removable charcoal base, ability to use the aforementioned charcoal base as a hibachi by sitting the grates directly on top of it to sear things like tri-tip or thick cuts of steak — puts it over the top.

I have also stated time and time again that, if BHC were to quit producing cookers altogether and my two cookers were to wear out, I would have no problem purchasing a PBC because I am fully aware of how excellent they are. At the same rate, I would have been underwhelmed because the PBC simply has less features and is not as user accessible in comparison to the BHC, and that is an objective fact.

Ever since the beginning of 2019, I have been wary about the future of Barrel House.

I feel that I am safe to say this now, but in November 2018, a former employee of Barrel House — someone who I am friends with to this day — sent me a message telling me that he and a multitude of his colleagues had been laid off by BHC Co. He then told me that he had been told that the company was planning on selling the remainder of its cookers and was going to subsequently shut down. He had no information beyond that, as that was all the information he was told. He asked me for the conversation to remain between the two of us during that time. Now that Pit Barrel has acquired Barrel House, with granted permission I feel that such older news like that is now worth being mentioned, since the end of Barrel House did not reach fruition, thankfully.

Going forward, it is going to be interesting to see what Pit Barrel decides to do with Barrel House. I have my reservations and concerns. The two Barrel House Cooker models that I own, which I purchased in early 2018, are sturdy and have survived hundreds of cooks in the last two years, have proven to be sturdy and durable. However, I can’t help but wonder if Noah and PBC will begin using cheaper parts to produce them as time ensues. This is not me throwing any shade of Noah or PBC, but simply curiosity out of the prospect of wondering if that will happen in order to save money and overhead overall.

Furthermore, it was announced a while back that Barrel House has discontinued its original 14D model, and that is a crying shame. Speaking subjectively on behalf of my own opinion, the 14D model is superior to the 18C. While it holds less food given that it is a smaller cooker, I liked three of its features much better than the 18C: the 14D’s midsection can latch to the charcoal base which makes it more secure and airtight, the 14D has a lid hinge unlike the 18C and, finally, the 14D has intake vents on the lower side of the charcoal base which is different than the 18C as the 18C features the overall intake vent placed on the bottom of the cooker and is controlled by a ‘pull-in’/’pull-out’ handle. Asides from that, the tallness of the 14D is an advantage. With the 18C, it is shorter and things like ribs and big briskets can hang too close to the fire*.

* – A stainless steel extension kit for the Barrel House Cooker 18C was created in 2018. I received one and use it to this day. It works fantastically well in order to keep food further away from the fuel/heat source. However, for the time being, the extension kit has been discontinued and it is not being made, much to the chagrin of new users who are having to cut their ribs in half in order to hang them in the 18C cookers. Hopefully Noah and PBC will listen to all the collective requests being mentioned by users who do not have possession of the original extension kit, because it is a necessity to use one from where I stand.

I appreciate that Barrel House Cookers are still going to be produced going forward. They are exceptional cookers and I recommend them to everyone who is looking into buying a drum smoker. Perhaps now, PBC and BHC users can come together and enjoy the discussion of great barbecue rather than engaging in any types of pseudo-rivalries that could come about in a heated discussion over ‘which cooker is better’. It is all about sharing the love and creation of good grub, no matter how you see it.

You can currently purchase a Barrel House Cooker on Amazon.

3 months ago 3

Reverse Seared Tomahawk Ribeye on the Grill

Ribeyes are my favorite cut of steak, by far and away. I love the marbling, the tenderness of the finished meat and the overload of flavor that comes from this cut, so it stands to reason that I also love tomahawk ribeyes

A tomahawk ribeye is a cut of steak that has at least five or more inches of extra rib bone. I suppose this is for presentation purposes, because when you see one, it is going to command your attention and seduce your steak-loving heart, and it has ‘tomahawk’ in the name because the long bone resembles an axe, but to me it reminds me of how one could eat it ‘caveman’ style by holding the bone while eating the meat, just like a caveman. This cut of beef virtually speaks to your inner primal instincts.

I have heard of tomahawk ribeyes being preferred to as simply ‘bone-in ribeyes’ (you will see these classified as such as a menu item at LongHorn Steakhouse chain restaurants) or ‘cowboy steaks.’ In order to call these a tomahawk, bone-in or cowboy ribeye, the butcher preparing the meat will trim off the meat around the bone, exposing it. It is all about the total presentation, so when you see these steaks in the meat department at a grocery store, they stand out among the rest. I cannot forget to mention how incredible they taste when reverse-seared, as well, so presentation aside, tomahawk ribeyes make for delicious steaks.

Living in rural southwest Virginia, with farmland everywhere around me, the only time I ever saw a tomahawk ribeye in person before a couple of years ago was at a Sam’s Club, which is an hour away from where I live. I’m not sure why, but it isn’t popular around here, and it could be due to the smaller population, but that’s a shame. In 2017, a local meat shop opened up, called Appalachian Meats, ran by a husband-and-wife tandem, and they started advertising for tomahawk ribeyes. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to cook one for the first time, to finally have the experience of tasting one.

A perfect amount of fat and marbling in this beautiful tomahawk ribeye from Appalachian Meats.

The tomahawk ribeye I purchased from Appalachian Meats was just shy of three pounds, unless you want to round it up.

This cut of steak isn’t one where you can flash-sear in a pan for two minutes on each side. Nope. Pending on how you like your steaks cooked (medium rare, right?), you have to figure out a way to make sure that you cook the inside of the meat adequately while still achieving the seared crust that you will ultimately desire. Enter the reverse sear method.

Reverse Searing a Tomahawk Ribeye

‘Reverse sear’ and ‘slow-cooking’ go hand in hand. It simply means to cook the meat at a temperature that is low enough where the outside layer of the meat isn’t overcooked, while high enough in temperature to cook the inside of the meat enough to reach your preferred doneness.

You can certainly reverse sear by using an oven and a cast iron pan on the stovetop, but this is Grizzly BBQ, and I wanted to grill it.

I loaded up my faithful, trusty Weber kettle grill with a charcoal chimney full of scorching hot lump charcoal and closed the lid to allow the grill to heat up. I left the exhaust vent on the lid halfway open and only had a quarter of the intake vents open for a lower temperature, in which the temperature gauge on the lid was reading 300 degrees by the time I brought the tomahawk ribeye out to place on the grate. Keep in mind that I shuffled the charcoal to one side of the grill so that I could use the other side to cook the steak on indirect heat. I placed a chunk of pecan wood over the coals for an extra smoky flavor that embedded itself into the steak.

You can use whatever type of seasoning you prefer. With most steaks, kosher salt and coarse ground black pepper is sufficient, but I like to play around with flavors, and one of my favorite steak rubs/seasonings is Hardcore Carnivore Black, which not only has a delicious flavor that it imparts on beef, but it featured activated charcoal in it, which is purely superficial because it gives the meat a near blackened look, which is beautiful to look at when the meat is finished cooking.

As the grill was hitting 290 to 300 degrees, I placed the tomahawk ribeye on the side of the grill as to where it would cook indirectly and closed the lid. I didn’t use any ‘fancy’ equipment to monitor this cook. I do own a Thermoworks Smoke thermometer, which is amazing for monitoring long barbecue cooks like smoking a brisket or a pork butt, but I stuck with my trusty meat thermometer for this one.

After 35 minutes, I opened the lid of the grill and checked the temperature of the ribeye, and it was reading 115 degrees. I was overly eager to finally take it inside to cut into and eat, so I saw this as the perfect opportunity to finish it.

I removed the lid of the grill, opened the intake vents wide open for maximum airflow in order to increase the temperatures of the hot lump charcoal, waited around three to five minutes and ensuingly placed the steak directly over the coals and seared it on each side for three meats a piece.

Everybody has a different method for how long they will sear a steak, but with a thick steak like this, this amount of time to sear it ensured a phenomenal crust that wasn’t ‘burnt’ in the least.

I usually prefer medium rare steaks, but I wound up cooking this tomahawk ribeye rare, about as rare as finding one around this part of the country if Appalachian Meats did not exist.

The flavor was on point. Hardcore Carnivore Black naturally lends itself to beef with notes of garlic, onion and chili that don’t overpower the meat to detract from the beefy flavor we seek from a flavorful cut of steak, not to mention it produces a beautiful color on the crust.

The look of satisfaction after devouring this tomahawk ribeye.

March 6, 2020 0

Can You Smoke Burgers?

When I first began my barbecue journey, I never considered the prospect of smoking burgers. Usually, in a low and slow cooking environment, you will find yourself smoking big cuts of meat like brisket, pork shoulders and racks of ribs low and slow, because these are generally tougher cuts of meat that need time for the collagen within these types of meat to break down, which results in juicy, tender bites of flavor in the guise of edible goodness that all but melts in your mouth.

When I purchased a Barrel House Cooker in the spring of 2018, this was my first tried and true experience with hot-and-fast style barbecue, a veritable art form in the realm of cooking that I took to and fell in love with quickly. Drum smokers, like the Barrel House Cooker, naturally lend themselves to hot-and-fast barbecuing, as usually you aren’t using a water pan in most cases and the meat is closer to the fire source than in traditional low-and-slow barbecue. In hot-and-fast smoking, rather than cooking meats at a temperature range of 225 to 275 degrees, you are rolling along with temperatures along the lines of 300 to 325 degrees. In my Barrel House Cooker, if the thermometer on the lid is reading between 250 to 275, I know that the meat inside the smoker is likely being cooked between 300 to 325 degrees since it is closer to the heat source.

But that is based on smoking in a drum cooker. What about in an offset stick burning smoker? Can you smoke hot-and-fast barbecue in one of those contraptions? The answer is an emphatic yes.

A few days ago, a local grocery store around these parts ran a monthly sale, and one of the things on sale was a 5-lb. family pack of ground chuck (73% lean/27% fat*) for $1.79/lb. Regardless of your feelings on ground beef with a rich amount of fat, that is an undeniable great price.

* – If you are wondering whether or not 73/27 ground beef is optimal for burgers, allow your reservations to relax and take a look here, where I break down my opinion on the fatty, delicious burgers.

However, another item that was marked down was not only chicken leg quarters for $.55 cents/lb, but chicken thighs for $.50 cents/lb. I picked up a pack of the ground chuck, the chicken leg quarters and chicken thighs. Upon making it back home, with time to spare for the day, I fired up my vertical offset smoker with intentions of only smoking the chicken leg quarters and thighs.

In order to cook hot-and-fast in an offset smoker, you want both your intake and exhaust vents wide open. When I began this particular cook, I filled up a big charcoal chimney with original Kingsford charcoal briquettes, using two lighter cubes, and waited about 20-25 minutes for the coals to completely ash over before dumping them into my firebox. Directly afterwards, I added a log of hickory wood, a log of cherry wood and an extra chunk — chunks that I typically only use in my Weber Smokey Mountain and both Barrel House Cookers — of cherry wood.

It didn’t take long for the smoker to fire up to 350 degrees as the wood caught fire pretty quickly, and this is when I added the chicken leg quarters and thighs. After around 35 to 40 minutes, I probed each piece of the chicken with a meat thermometer and they were all in the 170-180 range (perfect for dark meat chicken) and removed them from the pit. By this time, my smoker’s temperature gauge was still reading 325 degrees, and I didn’t want to close it up and choke the fire just yet, and as I was considering what I wanted to do next, a voice inside my head emitted, “Burgers, Troy! Burgers!”

Some may consider it a sin straight out of the grilling and barbecue Bible to cook burgers in any other way than on a scorching hot cast iron pan, a flat top griddle surface or directly over a fire in a grill, so forgive me for this sin, but if it is a sin, I recommend you try committing this sin as well, because it is a delicious act of barbecue blasphemy if I have ever tasted one. Now, I love grilled burgers and smash burgers cooked on my griddle as much as the next pseudo-pitmaster and burger fanatic, but smoked burgers should have a place in the hierarchy of barbecue directories.

I have heard detractors of smoked burgers speak of their firm thoughts and feelings about how burgers should be cooked directly on a hot pan or over a fire, as they will defend this traditional method of cooking by stating that smoking will dry out a burger. My retort to this would be to say that their point of view is only valid if you are smoking burgers that feature a fat content of more than 80%. Remember: I had just purchased a fresh pack of 27% fat ground beef.

With a high fat content, unless you allow a burger to sit in your smoker for longer than an hour, it is next to impossible to dry it out. You would have to blatantly try your best to dry it out.

When I form my patties in order to shape ground beef into a burger, I form a ball and rarely measure it out. I usually make bigger burger patties than most people, because not only will a great deal of fat render from such a high percentage of it embedded in the ground beef, I am biased in favor of bigger burgers, especially one that will fit on a nice sized bun, like a brioche bun, which is what I ate this smoked burger on. Anyhow, after I form a ball, using both hands I smash it flat into a circle to the best my abilities (arguably questionable ones at that) and form multiple dimples underneath and on top of the burger to account for the shrinking that is inevitable when the meat is cooked. I seasoned the burgers on both sides of the surface with Caribeque Big & Bold Beef Rub.

Before I added the burgers to the smoker, I added a smaller log of hickory wood, which bumped my smoker’s temperatures back up to 350 degrees. As for when I ultimately placed the burgers onto the pit, I placed them as close to the fire source as possible. Again, I wanted to smoke these burgers quickly. Another thing that a smoked burger detractor might say is that this is tantamount to cooking a burger in an oven. Well, sure, I will accept that claim, as instead of an oven, the burger is being ‘baked’ in a smoker and infused with delicious smoky notes of heaven. That is not something that should deter anyone from giving this a try.

You could move the burgers further away from the heat source and smoke them longer, but closer to the heat source in my smoker? They cooked to 155 degrees in 20 minutes. They developed a beautiful, red-like color (from the cherry wood, I assume, as it is one of my favorite smoking wood sources for most grub, and it imparts a color I am all too familiar with, with other barbecued food) with a formidable crisp along the edges from being close to the fire.

I topped both burgers with a 4-cheese blend of cheese slices that I picked up from Kroger (their brand), which featured a mix of cheddar, Monterey Jack, Colby and mozzarella cheese. On one burger patty, I forgot to top it with cheese while it was still in the smoker, so I added it afterwards, but with the other burger I topped it with cheese while it was still in the pit and closed the lid for 30-45 seconds until it adequately melted.

I must not fail to mention that I had some apple wood smoked bacon sitting in the fridge that I also added to the smoker, so you can consider it ‘double smoked bacon.’ This is something that bacon pundits might holler at me over, saying that bacon should be cooked in its own rendered fat in a pan, but I will ignore them after it is cooked when I devour the salty, smoky piggy sticks of glory.

Consider the above to be a smoked double bacon cheeseburger, held together with a brioche bun.

Don’t write off smoked burgers just because it is an unorthodox cooking style. It is a tasty treat, and not only will your taste buds wind up being pleased with the result, but your family will undoubtedly thank you after they bite into one.

February 29, 2020 0