Archive | May, 2015

Man vs Brisket

27 May

On Monday I decided to go for it.  I had been smoking. Things on my smoker for awhile and figured I had it all figured out and to prove it I decided to smoke a brisket. I had read about it and the fact that if done right it’s the most amazing piece of smoked meat you can eat. I had wanted to do this for awhile, but I wanted to wait until I decided that I had it all figured out. Monday was the day. So over the weekend I picked up a 10 lb brisket ( a firm believer in go big or go home) and an extra box of red oak.  I had the spices in my cabinet, so I figured I was all set. Plan was to start the day at 6:00 am to get the fire going so that I could have the meat on by 7:30. Figuring roughly 10 hours to cook that would let me pull it off at around 5:00 pm. With it sitting for an hour we would be dining at 6:00 pm after which I would be able to accept the accolades of my children on the amazing job that I did.

So Monday morning I hopped out of bed at precisely 7:15 am (uh-oh) and went to the kitchen, I pulled the brisket from the refrigerator took it out of the package and began to trim it down. As my guide I followed the recommendations I found in my Franklin Barbeque book and started to even out the brisket. Lots of good tips in the book and I think for the most part the trim came out pretty decent.

I then used a rub of just white pepper, kosher salt, granulated garlic, and granulated onion. I was stupid though, in that I typically mix them together and then spread the rub on the meat. This time since it was so simple I thought I could just get away with putting them on one at a time. Bad idea as when done the seasoning was uneven as I found out later.

While the meat rested in the kitchen I went and fired up my smoker. I have the Char-Grillers Smoking-Pro which I have been using for several years and loved it.

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So I took some kindling that I had and used my charcoal chimney to get that lit and then threw on some red oak to get the flames going. This went fairly easy and before I knew it I had a great fire going and the smoker was heating up nicely. My goal was to heat the grill to around 300 and then throw the brisket in along with a large pan of water.  With my temperature gauge set high in the smoker, I figured I would guess that the temperature at meat level would be around 275, which is just where I wanted it.

So when it got to temperature I threw the meat on fat cap up, made sure my water container was full and closed the lid for the next 3 hours. After 3 hours I spritzed it with water a couple times an hour until I hit the 5 hour mark at which point I wrapped the brisket in Aluminum Foil. I left it in the smoker figuring I had 5 hours to go, so I settled in to wait.

After 7.5 hours I wanted to check the temperature of the meats just to see how I was doing. So I pulled out my meat thermometer and stuck it in through the foil. The thermometer went in so easily I was sure that I had missed the meat there was zero resistance!!! That was great, what was not so great was that the meat temperature was well past 210 degrees and I supposedly had 3 hours of cooking to go!. So I had no choice and pulled the brisket and took it into to the house where I let it rest.

45 minutes later (too soon) I cut it.

The results:

The bark was inconsistent – due to how I applied the rub

The fat was still loose- probably not enough cook time and cutting it too early.

The meat was really juicy and tender – from the wrap and keeping the water pan in..

So what did I learn?

1) Pre-mix the rub and be sure it is applied evenly

2) Add a temperature gauge at meat level (like recommended) to better control the cooking temperature

3) Don’t let the bark get too dark – it turned into a rock hard coating in some places.

4) Need a bigger fire box – after 5 hours of throwing wood into the fire box on my smoker I was running out of room for new wood and had to shovel out some of the ash to make room.

5) wood should be of a consistent size – Until today I would just burn it the way I got it, but today once piece of wood was more like a 4×6 plank with bark and was tough to burn and almost killed my fire.

6) Use wood that is more seasoned. This stuff burned unevenly.

7) be sure to have lots of cold drinks around Smoking meats is hard work.

Overall this was a blast on I am looking forward to the next attempt. I also plan on adding pictures as I go from now on just because it tells a better story,

 

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We’re off to Europe to celebrate our 35th Anniversary!! – The Beginning

21 May

Following the Christmas holiday Helen and I decided we needed to do something different to celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary. So we decided we would take a cruise and never wanting to do the simple thing. We chose a cruise of the Eastern Mediterranean on the Norwegian Jade (http://www.ncl.com/cruise-ship/jade).

The only issues being that the cruise left out of Rome and ended 2 days before our Anniversary. So I would solve the easy issue by convincing Helen to stay in Rome for 4 additional days after the cruise at the Marriott Gran Flora Hotel.  Because of the cost of the hotel I knew I would have to have a good argument for why we should stay at this hotel for such an expensive rate. I spent hours preparing my argument, doing lots of research on Tripadvisor and other sites until I was ready. So I turned to Helen on the couch and began to introduce the idea of staying in Rome at this particular hotel and said

“Sweetheart, I think we should extend our stay by 4 days in Rome so we can be celebrate our anniversary. Also I found us a real nice hotel, it’s expensive but it is a Marriott and I think we would like it.”

She Said “okay” and went back to her IPad.

Now the second issue was getting to Rome. I admit I am a bit spoiled when it comes to air travel, and vowed never again to fly coach to Europe. Naturally tickets in to Rome were over $3,000 per person. So I needed to find a cheaper way to get to Rome. Thank god for my Skyscanner app, it makes the hunting that much easier. Well for some unknown reason one day Madrid pops into my mind, so I look and I can save over $1,000 per person if we fly in an out of Madrid. And checking into RyanAir, lo and behold it’s less the $200 to fly Roundtrip from Madrid to Rome. So I looked at Helen and said we are going to Madrid!! So I book our flights on KLM and we are ready to go.

We drove down the night before and stayed at the LAX Marriott where we woke up the next morning to catch our flight to Madrid. Since we were flying on an international carrier I made sure to allow us extra time to get through ticketing and security. Unfortunately as we prepared to leave the airport I get a notice from KLM that our flight is being delayed by a couple of hours. So now we have LOTS of time to get through screening. About an hour later we get an e-mail from Air France that tells us that our flight will be leaving at 3:00 pm. Which is strange since we are flying there on KLM. That is until the note from KLM arrives 10 minutes later and tells us our flight has been cancelled.

Going through security in the Bradley Terminal we entered shop area and I have to admit it was pretty cool. There was a tower that displayed videos and pictures.

WP_20150108_007 WP_20150108_009 WP_20150108_008 Waiting to start our trip

We eventually boarded our flight and prepared for the journey.

Being the smart, thoughtful, and cautious man that I am; I decided that on the trip over I was not going to be gluten free, as a test on my sensitivity.  After all I am on a French airline, can you imagine how good the food and the bread is going to be?! So I started with a good scotch and then had a roll with my appetizer and then a roll with my dinner and then I became violently nauseous. And like Rosanne Rosanna Danna I thought I was going to die!! Needless to say I freaked Helen out and she got zero sleep as she kept checking on me.  Fortunately after a couple of hours it began to pass and by the time we landed I was fine. I guess I at leased proved that I need to stay away from Gluten.

When we landed in Paris, we had to change flights so we  tramped off the plane with everyone else and began to follow the herd. They made a few announcements that we couldn’t understand. But what’s it matter, after all they will have signs we can follow, We thought…

After getting lost once, we finally managed to make it to our terminal where we fortunately had an uneventful flight to Madrid. We landed in Madrid where our driver picked us up and took us into the city, straight to our Hotel.

Next up – I know why they call it Madrid.