Food Smokers and Smoking Tips/Tricks/Techniques

$2.96 here today!

 

http://www.socksloverub.com/2013/08/15/banh-mi-with-hickory-smoked-pork-belly/

 

I heart your dog!

 

Any great grilled salmon recipes?? Not dealing with any wild salmon unfortunately, just the get it at Costco farmed salmon....

 

If the skin is still on it pork belly porchetta or a pork belly roast. My next one will likely be porchetta on the rotisserie. Roll it up along the length cutting off the skin on the inside but leaving the skin on the exposed surface and tying it off making it round. Cooking it until done and high enough heat that the skin is crispy on the outside. You can stuff it as simple as you want or get fancy with it. Or just throw it on the smoker hard to screw up pork belly IMO, it always comes out good. You can do a lot with a pork belly and a smoker. Or grill, or even oven if you have to.

 

This sounds really really good.

Are you smoking to an IT target or just putting bark on it?

I have been just smoking mine to 155 IT and skipping the steam bath after. Kinda tough. I _think_ mine are tough because the meat never sees 180dF, so the collagen never gets converted to glycerin.

After all that bath time at 135 are you getting fork tender product? I was gonna smoke the next one up to the stall and then steam it to hold the IT at 180 for 30 minutes or so.

I wonder if the NO3 effects collagen chemistry.

 

Ahh I have never heard of al pastor. Great thanks now I want to try that too, damn it! LOL. Most of my favorite ingredients are in it.

So that is basically a Turkish Doner Kebab. You cook it until the outside gets a crust then trim it and then put it back until you have more to trim. Not sure how you can improve on how he does it but if you find a way I am interested!!

Here is another one using the PBC. He uses the turkey hanger the one you posted used one of the skewers.



Not sure what you have available there but here is the turkey hanger, short skewer and long skewer



I used the long skewer when I did my stack of thin cut ribeye to do the same thing



And next time I do it will do it exactly like a Doner Kabab and how they make the meat for the al pastor on the PBC. Not sure there is any other way to do it any faster. Cook, trim, cook, trim, etc. It does work, I can testify to that. I will be watching you... My fingers are crossed for you also.

 

In the link I posted earlier on Michael Ruhlman short rib pastrami he wraps and adds a little water to it and cooks at 200* for 2 hours to make the short ribs tender.

I considered using top round it is very lean though, I normally make jerky with it. Earlier someone asked @PerazziMx14 why he cut it so thin after SV and he replied that he didn't know that is what the instructions call for. The reason why is cutting thin slices against the grain makes it a lot less chewy. There is not a lot of collagen in top round. That is why it is cut thin against the grain. But I think it would make pretty darn good pastrami.

What I'm looking for is both corned beef and pastrami and don't believe top round will work well for corned beef no matter how it is cooked. As Ruhlman pointed out even brisket can be too lean sometimes. That is where paying for prime brisket may be worth it but I don't need to make that much. I can get prime sirloin for a somewhat decent price and am considering using that. No matter what I use will more than likely do the 2 hour at 200* wrapped with a little water in it. I will not use any nitrate though it will be pure nitrite when I do mine. Nitrate should have no adverse reaction to the chemistry of collagen breaking down though.

 

Got this recipe from coworker . Love it . Took a pic of it .Too lazy to type out lol

 

The SV machine is or should be the secret weapon here. Loooong cooking at low (as in under 140*) controlled temperatures makes tender meat. The TR I did last time after 14 hours in the SV and sliced thin was very tender and would slice but not fall apart. My thin sliced Top Round answer was tongue in cheek. Beef sandwiches typically don't have a 3/4" thick chunk of meat on it them it is normally sliced thin, chipped or chopped. So in the Italian beef receipt thin slicing was what was called for.

I do understand cutting across the grain takes long strands of protein and basically makes a bunch of little pieces of them. So really the meat is no more tender it just the knife did some of the work for your teeth by breaking down some of the strands for to chewing.


Here is a link with a good explanation talking about Sous Vide and why it works so well. I think it will be perfect for aiding in the outcome of the faux Pastrami.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...ain-friends/&usg=AOvVaw2GBcGKluogSe4-1nEs6XsO

 

I will only be smoking to impart flavor and color all the cooking will be done in the Sous Vide bath.

The Top Round I made Italian beef with was amazingly tender after SV'ing for 14 hours. Sliceable but not falling part. It was a perfect medium rare and exactly medium rare throughout the entire piece of meat.

 

30 lbs all seasoned and mixed up. 3 types of high temp cheese: cheddar, moz, and lava jack (jack with habanero). Waiting on casings to soak

 

I think there is a misconception that SV will make meat more tender than any other method of cooking. I know that I thought that from what I had read and believed that it made cheaper less marbled steaks better than they normally would. But turned out to not be the case when I tested it. I'm not the only one several of us posted the same results in the SV thread on here. And further research on it shows that is the case.

SV is just one method of cooking to achieve the same results. And is missing the Maillard reaction which contributes to the most part of flavor. Just doing a sear or torch after SV leaves out a lot of the complexity that a full smoke or grill does, so the finished product is lacking if your used to it. Taste is a huge part of why we cook the way we do.

For tenderness and what @Poindexter is looking for there are 2 primary components.

1) How the meat is cut. That can be tested and measured using either a Warner-Bratzler shear machine or CT3 Texture Analyzer. Cutting thin slices across the grain can have one of the greatest effects on presenting a tender piece of meat. It leaves out cutting on the bias which is often debated but it is still a good explanation with metrics in this explanation. And they do use SV but there still is a large difference:



2) Connective tissue. Connective tissue (or insoluble proteins) holds the muscle fibers, bones, and fat in place. Collagen fibers start shrinking around 140 °F but contract more intensely over 150 °F. Shrinking mostly destroys the structure, transforming it so that it is soluble in water and is called gelatin. There is not one temperature above which the collagen is denatured but the rate of denaturing increases exponentially with higher temperatures. For safety reasons usually 130 °F is used as the lowest practical temperature for denaturing collagen.

You can overcook meat in both SV and traditional low and slow methods. If you do it with SV you will get the often heard complaint that it is "mushy". Either method of cooking will turn it into baby food if you go too long. Or get you to the same point of tenderness. One will not get you more tenderness than the other however.

 

Those look amazing...

 

Man I really want to smoke some food now, But it is STUPID cold out. Shows -3 with the wind chill right now and 15 without it. Oh and it is SUPER windy.

 

Looks good . I like to marinanate for good amount of time also . More flavor.

 

Got some beef ribs on the WSM while I try to get a lot of shit done on my truck.

Made a coffee based rub using basic ingredients.






They both fit nicely on one grate. It is a bit windy, but the temp seems to be holding steady at 240*. Using only pecan instead of the typical mix with about 25% hickory I use.

 

Amounts for the rub mix?

 

1/3 cup ground coffee

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup ground sea salt

1/8 cup garlic powder

1/8 cup onion powder

1/8 cup black pepper

For the wrap I will melt some margarin and mix with about equal amount beef broth, and add Worcestershire sauce until I think I have enough. Pour that in the foil before wrapping.