Food Smokers and Smoking Tips/Tricks/Techniques

Now ive messed up a brisket....tried an oven cook on a flat...totally inedible...burned..threw it in trash. This was many years ago now...

 

If you look at the third picture, the white stuff between the meat fibers didn’t break down, that’s why it’s dry. Reheat the slices in a pan with some broth until that white disappears. It'll be more juicy.

Flats are more difficult than a whole packer for some reason. I normally pan them at the stall with beef broth.

 

this is why I usually test things with chicken wings or pork loin. Cheap and small cuts for testing.

 

Like I said. Flavor was good. Just didn’t have the tenderness I wanted because of it being a tad dry...

I went with my normal bear mountain pellets.

 

thank you for this info

 

I have a belly cut in thirds curing now. 1/3 black pepper. 1/3 maple and 1/3 using a fermented garlic pepper honey I made awhile back where I took a quart of honey and fermented a bunch of garlic and habaneros in it for about 6 or 7 months.

 

No problem. My first flat was a huge flop.

 

That last bit sounds amazing!
Whatcha using for the maple?

 

Gasser. I was afraid the slider sized burgers would render to nothing. So I pulled out the skillet.

Don’t mind those other ones... wife likes the impossible burgers so I cooked them in bacon and beef fat

this worked out A-OK

 

Just regular maple syrup along with the dry cure mix.

 

I've made my own bacon twice now. No excuse for not doing it more. Store bought bacon doesn't even compare. After smoking it's so firm it's real easy to slice uniformly. Yours looks great.

 

I gotta make bacon.

I suppose a good old fashioned butcher will have pork belly, no?

 

A hefty, like "real deal" deli slicer is only 100 bucks, they're ridiculously cheaper than you'd think. We don't have one for lack of storage space, otherwise I'd have homemade cold cuts all the time.

Have used my food processor for pepperoni and other types of things but probably too small for pork belly, and a mandolin is nice but after one belly...Arms get tired.

Depends how often you need to slice things.

 

We have a cheaper cabelas slicer, some friends gave us a small boneless ham, i sliced about half for sammich meat, the other for thicker slices to cube for eggs/hash etc. Its not high volume but works great for what we need

 

I need to get one at some point. Was given one for a present years ago but had no where to put it and no real need at that point so gave it to my inlaws.

 

Most smaller slicers will only handle so much length so unless you want short bacon it's a PITA ... a large slicer is several hundred dollars. Homemade bacon is worth the extra effort and the potential cost of a good slicer. I'd like to find an old school hand crank slicer that you know is going to last forever!

 

forgot to post the ribs from Sunday.

 

Something like this but not at this price

 

I am looking for a grinder of the same variety - old school stainless hand crank.

 

Seen some videos of the originals...those were a marvel of engineeering even by todays standards.