Smoked Tri-Tip Sandwiches

Welcome to Flavor Town!  This sandwich has a lot of ingredients that definitely wake up the taste buds.  The night before, I rubbed down a 2.5 lb tri-tip with some Plowboys Bovine Bold and some extra garlic powder, wrapped the meat in plastic wrap, and placed it in the fridge.  In the morning, I fired up my Yoder Smokers pellet grill to 225 degrees and started smoking.  Tri-tip is very lean so care has to be taken if you are smoking it to avoid drying out the meat.  I smoked mine with hickory pellets to 140 degrees internal before wrapping in foil with some apple juice and worcestershire sauce.  As usual the Yoder was rock solid with the temperature control.  The meat was pulled when the internal temperature reached 195 degrees and rested for about an hour before slicing.

Here's the smoked trip-tip.  Great smoke ring and still moist.

The sandwich consists of the shaved tri-tip, melted provolone cheese, pico de gallo, and a horseradish-mustard aioli, all on a butter toasted Bolillo roll .  My version of the aioli was some mayonnaise mixed with some prepared horseradish and Dijon mustard.

Here's the new mayor of Flavor Town piled high!

Look at all those layers of flavor!

And the meal wasn't complete without some fried onion petals!

Definitely recommend this recipe if your looking to break out of the rut of usual BBQ.  The host of flavors made this meal a winner in our house.

Smoked Meat Loaf

I was hungry for some good meat and potatoes this past weekend so I decided to smoke some meat loaf.  Here's the recipe I used.


1 1/2 lbs Ground Beef
1/2 cup Crushed Ritz Cracker Crumbs
1 pkg Dry Onion Soup Mix
2 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup Ketchup
2 T Steak Sauce


Mix all these ingredients together and form into a loaf.  Throw this on the smoker at 250 degrees till the internal temperature reaches 160.  Here's some pictures of the process.

The meat loaf mixture all stirred up

Here's the loaf cut into.  Check out that smoke ring.

Here the meat loaf plated up with some scalloped potatoes, peas, and garlic bread.   Now that's some good stick to your ribs comfort food!

Sugar Maple Baked French Toast

For breakfast this past weekend, I baked up a French Toast casserole on my Yoder Smokers pellet grill.  Here's how it all went together.

The night before, I sliced up a loaf of French bread into roughly 20 slices.  I lined a well buttered 9x13 Pyrex dish with the bread slices, over lapping slightly.  Next I mixed up the egg mixture which consisted of:

• 8 large eggs
• 2 cups half-and-half
• 1 cup milk
• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• Dash salt

Whisk all the ingredients together well and pour over the bread.  Cover and let that sit over night.

The next morning I fired up the Yoder to 350 degrees with some Sugar Maple pellets.  It was a pretty cold morning so I ended up setting the grill to 375 to keep the temperature around 350.

While the grill was preheating I topped the French bread with a brown sugar pecan topping consisting of:

• 1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter
• 1 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1 cup chopped pecans
• 2 tablespoons light corn syrup
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Here's what it looked like ready to throw on the grill.

This was baked at 350 until golden brown.  Here's the finished product.

A slice of that topped off with some hot syrup, made a great breakfast on a cold Kansas morning.

Pizza Night!

I wanted to try baking some pizza with my Charcoal Companion grill pizza pan tonight.  My wife and I mixed up a pizza crust recipe we found online.  The recipe made enough dough for two crusts so the other pizza was baked on a baking stone to compare.  The pizza sauce was a clone of Papa John's sauce that we found online as well.  Both pizzas were topped with half pepperoni and half sausage and mushroom.  The cheese was a blend of mozzarella and Provolone.

I fired up my Yoder YS-640 pellet grill to 425 degrees and threw the pies on.  Here they are on the grill...

The pizza pies baking away.

Here's the pizza stone variety.

And the Charcoal Companion variety.

The pizza on the stone had a drier crust than that of the pizza baked on the pan.  The pizza on the pan reminded us of more of what we would get from a pizza restaurant, which we preferred.  It was much easier taking pizza on and off the grill as well.  I think I'll be grabbing another Charcoal Companion pizza pan very soon.  The fresh, home made ingredients coupled with the wood-fired taste from the Yoder made pizza night a winner at our house!