2012 BBQ, Grilling, and Smoking Thread

You're a Scout guy. Treat it like a camp fire. I start with kindling and build from there. Takes longer than charcoal, but it lasts longer and you can drink more while you're "waiting on the fire".

Yeah, now that I've got an iPhone, I'm one of those douchebags who use Instagram.

I guess I should contribute to this thread. Been BBQing a lot this summer. The food comes out good enough that my parents want me to BBQ for them whenever they have a big party (they actually force me to now. :flow2: )and even some of their friends have asked if they can hire me out to BBQ for their special events. However, I say no because I don't want to turn it into a job.


Alberta Beef, Tenderloin, Triple A rating. I poke holes in these with a fork, sprinkle with salt and course black pepper then grill them until they are brown on both sides. Depending on how people like them, I will then put them to the side and let them sit BBQing. For rare, I remove it right away, but for others, I leave it until it is done. Still can't figure out why my dad and his friends like them well done. I prefer medium well. I find putting on BBQ sauce before grilling causes the meat to burn more easily, so I avoid it until the end, if I can. Even without BBQ sauce, it tastes fantastic, but I think it has more to do with the quality of the meat than the skill of the cook.

I heard someone once say "BBQ sauce is suppose to make bad BBQ taste good and good BBQ taste gooder."



Atlantic Salmon smoked for about 4 or 5 hours and then BBQed. I poked little holes in it with a fork, spread Smucker's Strawberry Jam on both sides, lightly salted it, lightly peppered it, then poured Canadian Maple Syrup all over it and let it sit in the fridge for however long you want. (I left it for a few hours.) It then goes in the smoker for a couple of hours, and then into the BBQ. I added thinly sliced lemon wedges during BBQ. I still haven't perfected having the jam becoming candied, but it's a recipe that I am trying to experiment with a little here and there until it is perfect. Still, it turned out fantastic.


This was inspired by this one dish I tasted at Calgary's Taste of Calgary Food Festival this year. Some black people were serving African Meat Sticks, and they were covered in this hot powder. I took some home and as far as I can tell, it smells like chili powder and the powder you get in instant noodle soup mix. For this recipe, I first cut the chicken breasts in half so they wouldn't be so thick and take so long to cook. Then you rub sesame oil all over them. You can probably use corn oil or olive oil if you want,- just make sure it's an oil you like the flavor to. Corn, peanut, sesame oils are tasty. I try and avoid using canola or stock vegetable oil because it is tasteless. I then liberally sprinkled a Cayenne Pepper and chili powder blend along with light salt and pepper. Grill until both sides are golden brown and then put it aside and BBQ it until the insides are cooked thoroughly. At the end, they were juicy and full of flavor.


These are a different version, using boneless chicken breasts. I find that the chicken breasts with the bone still attached gives it a bit more flavor. I dunno why this is, but my mom tells me in rice porridge, it is the same way, which is why she always uses the chicken with bone to cook instead of the boneless ones. Plus, the ones with the bone are generally cheaper, which is also good.


These, as you can see, are corns. Taber Corns to be exact. Taber Corn is grown in Taber, Alberta, and is distinct in that it tastes really sweet. You get a lot of farmers haulin' these into town during the late summer and selling 'em on the side of the roads and in parking lots. Still sort of surreal that the city still allows this, but I hope it never stops. There have been problems in the last few years of farmers labeling their corn as "Taber Corn" when it really isn't. They are trying to crack down on that, but I'm not sure how they can put a stop to it.

For this recipe, I keep the corn in open tin foil and then spread butter on it and add salt. Then I pour corn oil into the foil. This makes it so the heat from the fire heats up the oil and makes the corn sorta fry within the foil. But you hafta be extra careful with this as a small tear in the foil will have the oil leakin' all over the grill and you could potentially end up with a fire which can become a minor inconvenience if you're lucky or a raging inferno that'll consume your grill if you're not. Not the healthiest way to cook yer corns, but I can't deny that it's good eatin's.


It is my dream to travel to New Orleans one day and take a Southern BBQing class there, but I don't even know if they offer such a thing.

Oh. My. God. Shrimp.

Some leftover dove from my hunt this past weekend.



Dove breast (really the only part of the bird worth eating) wrapped in bacon with a slice of poblano pepper. The traditional recipe calls for jalapeno, but last weekend my buddy made the birds at camp and didn't de-seed the peppers.

Lit. Us. Up.

Twice.

I went with poblanos for the flavor and not the heat.



Cooked some boneless beef ribs as a backup in case the family didn't like the doves.







It's nice being on vacation.



Made sides, too.



Including, yes, grilled broccoli.






It was pretty good. I saw it on the menu of a restaurant and thought I'd try it at home. It was a little dry. Next time I'll put a little more olive oil on it before grilling it.

"Barbeque University" on PBS made me think of this thread. Lots of awesome hunger inducing pix in this thread. Food BEGGING for nICE COLD ale to go along with it.

Last day of vacation.



It was raining.

What recipe do you use for your patties?

Half ground chuck, half lean beef. Some garlic powder mixed with the two. Ground pepper and kosher salt. Cook until done.

I prefer a more rare burger, but my wife and daughters like theirs cooked through.

You don't like adding other crap, like fennel seeds and what not?

No.

Yeah, I prefer a rarer burger. I have recently been spicing mine up with dijion mustard, coriander seeds, cumin seeds and parmesan, but I fancy a good quality plainer burger so I reckon I'll give yours a shot next and report back.

I'm having to buy good quality chuck from the butchers though. The stuff in the supermarkets over here is crap.

Zel uses garlic powder, onion powder, worc sauce, salt and pepper.

So good that you throw on a slice of american cheese and you don't even need other condiments for a nummy cheeseburger.

How Muslim of you.

(Inside joke. You white devils wouldn't appreciate the humor)

^ It all depends on the quality of the meat.

I smoked some cornish hens in the new combo gas/charcoal/smoker monstrosity I got. I thought they were pretty good, but The Warden complained that they looked "burnt". I tried to explain that they're supposed to look burnt...they'd been smoked.

BTW, I've used that smoker twice now, and I've been having trouble keeping the heat up. Am I mistaken in that air intake vent all the way open + chimney vent all the way open = maximum heat?

The first thing I tried smoking was a pork shoulder. about the first 4 1/2 hours, I wasn't having much of a problem regulating the heat. If it got above 250, I'd close some vents off some. If it got below 225, I'd open the vents some. After that, I couldn't keep the heat much above 200 no matter what I did. The only thing I can think of is that the rack that holds the charcoal in the firebox got too full of ashes, and it was starving the fire. I've got enough room in there to fashion a larger rack, so I was thinking of trying that. Any thoughts?

I ended up finishing up the shoulder in the oven. The flavor was great (I read somewhere that you should only actually smoke the meat for the first 4 hours...after that, the meat's absorbed all it's going to and you're just wasting wood), but it wasn't as tender as I would have liked.

So much work just to smoke some meat...

Yeah, but it's on my old school cell phone and I don't know how to get it off.

I'll get some pics on an actual camera tomorrow.

The location of our local grocery chain that's closest to my house has an offset smoker on sale (the last of their spring/summer patio stuff). Unlike most that you see, it's actually made from fairly thick metal (though not as thick as I'd like). The price is so low that it's...tempting...me.

Hopefully I can resist so I can buy the big Mother of All Smokers that's at an outdoor supply store in a neighboring town.

In the mean time, it's this one here. They've got them on serious clearance.

Has anyone here ever grilled/bbq'd outdoors in the cold? I mean with ice & snow outside.

When I started the fire to grill those burgers seen above, it started raining and it even hailed a little.

I've barbecued in bitter cold (I set up a chair next to the pit so I could stay warm and even put my feet up against it), but not in the ice or snow. Where I live, an ice or snow event happens so rarely that it's considered newsworthy and I have to go to work. So no barbecuing for me on those (thankfully rare and unusual) days.

Hopefully, soon, I'll have a new job where I'll get to stay home on any future "snow days". :ohplease:

Oh, man. My work took me to the neighboring town where they've got a mom and pop outdoors store and they sell a shitload of nice grills and smokers.

This is the one I really want. The Mother of All Smokers.





This is the one I might talk myself into buying instead (I'm not sure how often I'd use the upright portion of the big mama).



The big one is only about a hundred bucks less (maybe not even that much), but both cost more than a grand. They're well worth it IMHO because they're made from much thicker metal than the $300 models you can get at Academy and such.

Gotta start saving...

Lamb chop.







Pork shoulder "fingers" (kind of like boneless pork ribs).







Smaller cuts of pork (and occasionally chicken) are the only things that I put sauce on while they're on the grill, and then only right at the end.

Got wood?



I do.

Had to restock my oak today. I've been so busy for the last few weeks that I haven't had time to cook, plus I was running very low on firewood. During Thanksgiving weekend I'll go to my dad's and cut some more mesquite but today was a good start. The last truckload I got lasted a little more than a year.

I'm going to cook a brisket next weekend and a leg of lamb on Thanksgiving.