Archive for December, 2006
Christmas Eve Dinner
Dec 24th
Just waiting on the Egg to hit 500 so I can sear our Christmas dinner. A 5lb boneless prime rib roast. Annual tradition here at the Anderson household. The prime rib has a layer of mustard to hold on a coating of Dizzy Pig Cow Lick rub and then an outer coating of sea salt which will form a hard hard crust to seal in the flavor. I am going to sear all sides then drop the temp to 325 until the internal temp gets to 125 degrees. Then I will pull and let sit for 15-20 minutes.
After the prime rib comes off I have three fatties getting ready to go on then some ABT’s after that. If he is not careful the last item to be grilled will be Buster. Click here to see the after cook pic and here to see a sliced piece. I will say that next time I will probably make a thicker paste with the salt as the outside edges were pretty salty. Also I think I would do the sear at the end as it took a little longer than expected for the temp to come down. Very good though.
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12/16 Cook wrap up
Dec 17th
Finished the two Boston Butts and the brisket. Pulled them off the egg at 10:30. A 12 hour 30 min cook. For some reason the egg temp fluxuated a little more than normal during the night. I am going to attribute this to the free lump charcoal I got from True Value and having some smaller pieces in bottom.
Here is a photo of the butts. You can see the bark that developed on the outside and where it started pulling apart. If you click the photo and look carefully you will see how much the butt shrunk and the bone sticks out about 1/4″.Â
The brisket looked to have turned out well too. Take a look here. If you look in the upper left of the brisket you will see the smoke ring. Turned out very nice. A piece of the brisket tore a little when taking off the egg and so I pulled it off. The combo of the Dizzy Pig rubs were a little spicy but the brisket seemed very tender.
I wrapped Andrew’s in foil and towels and put in a cooler to stay warm. My butt is wrapped in foil and will have for lunch today along with some of dawn’s cheesy scalloped corn and grilled pineapple for desert. I will also be trying the blues hog bbq sauce that I heard so much about.
Cooking Butts – 12/16
Dec 16th
Ok. All is set and the food is on the grill. Let’s take a look at the stats
Temp outside 43 degrees. NW wind at 7.
What am I drinking- Staying on the sober side overnight and turning to Mountain Dew. Had some Johnny Walker Red earlier. Dawn is sipping raspberry vodka. Might have to have a bloody mary in the morning when I check on the meat.
The butts went on at about 10 tonight. My guess is 12 hours on the cook. The egg has stabelized at a dome temp of 275 which means the grate temp is probably 250. Got some large lump in the fire pit I got for free tonight. I thought I had enough lump but it was too small of pieces. Only place I thought of was Wal-Mart from reading the BGE board. I had not been to Wal-Mart in probably 5 years or more. All they had was Kingsford. Out of deparation I had Dawn call True Value and they closed at 8. It was 7:50. The guy had two opened bags he was throwing out so I got there at 8:01 and got them.Â
Back to the egging. I had about 20 or so pounds of meat.
 
I rubbed the meat with mustard then used Bad Byrons Butt Rub for the Boston Butts. For the brisket I again rubbed with mustard and used Dizzy Pig Coarse Dust and Cow Lick. I have the video of the meat rubbed here and the meat unrubbed here. If you can’t see video, click here, here and here.
Then finally I put it on the Big Green Egg and plugged in the thermometer probes. The butts are on top and the juice will drop down onto the brisket keeping it moist and adding a little flavor. Extra juice will just run off. You can almost smell the food here in this vido.
Check back Sunday afternoon for the final pics. Not going to open the lid on the egg until the termometer reaches 200. Remember….If you’re lookin’ you ain’t cookin’!
One note on pork. I will not go to bed until it hits 140 degrees internally. That is where the safe zone is for pork to be cooked. With meats like the Boston Butt and the brisket they are full of connective tissue like small muscle. These meats will hit what is called a plateau where the temp will actuall stall or drop for maybe up to 3 hours. During this time the energy from the heat breaks down that tissue and turns it to a gelatin type substance that adds to the flavor and makes it so tender.
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I like Big Butts and Cannot Lie
Dec 16th
Just getting ready for an overnight cook. Cooking 14 pounds of Boston Butts and a 7 pound brisket.  One of the butts and the brisket will go to my buddy Andrew and the other is for the Chiefs-Chargers came tomorrow night. I am expecting the cook to be 12-14 hours.   I am cooking with some nice big pieces of lump, two chunks of hickory and two chunks of apple wood. The hickory is on the left and the apple is on the right.
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Torched!!
Dec 14th
Just reading a post on the Big Green Egg site about a guy who uses a torch to light the lump charcoal. I was thinking one of these little blow torch things like you would use to weld copper pipe. Not quite. This is more like military grade. If I lit that thing up it would probably be like a cartoon where there is a big woof of smoke and me standing there with a stupid look on my face.  I will get a photo up this weekend. In the meantime checkout the site.Â
No Egging Today
Dec 10th
I’m by passing egging today despite the nice weather outside. The last two weeks I have been working on some hotter quicker cooks like chicken and steaks in an effort to reduce the amount of left over lump charcoal I had. I had heard rumors that next weekend the Chiefs-Chargers game would be moved to a night game so I was thinking ahead to a low and slow smoke. That rumor became true. So now I have a minimal amount of lump that I would recycle or toss.Â
Check back next weekend. The plan is two 8 pound butts and a brisket. Big cook.
Prime Rib for Christmas Dinner
Dec 10th
I am going to make my first prime rib on December 23rd for Christmas dinner. Found this post that looked pretty good. Dawn always says she does not like her meet mooing but the Egg is a little different. You can have more of a medium rare-rare looking cut of meet without the blood oozing out of it.
The Stoker
Dec 9th
Many of the more experienced Eggers have a product called the BBQ Guru. It is used to monitor the meat and pit temperature. It has a fan built in and attaches to the Egg. What is nice is on long cooks like butt’s and brisket you typically start these at night and go to bed. The guru will hold the temp.Â
Well, now there is the Stoker which goes one step further. It has and ethernet port. What does that mean? It means you can hook it up to your computer and get the data. Can you imagine? Starting your egg before going to work, setting up the Stoker and web cam and watching your cook over the Internet? Yeah, pretty cool. Read the Naked Whiz’s review of the Stoker.
New Thermometer on the Market
Dec 9th
I came across the new Maverick ET7 on Amazon today. I have a Maverick very similar to this but it only records one temperataure. The cool thing about this one is it will do two temps. That is good for doing something like a butt and brisket or a turkey. I have been thinking for a while about getting one with two probes for overnight cooking. I would set the temp for a low number before going to bed so if my fire went out the meat would drop and I would be notified. The second temp would be the temp to pull from the egg.
Cool Egg Gadgets
Dec 9th
Came across this site tonight for some custom made gadgets for the Egg. Big Green Egg stuff is kind of hard to find when you want something like an ash scoop. Many stores stock for gassers and don’t have much of a selection for smokers. That is what is cool about these eggers is they are very creative in making their own contraptions.