Pellet Fired Crab Cakes

Whenever my business travels take me to Baltimore, MD, I am always on the lookout for a great crab cake.  I haven't been in over a year, so I've been having a craving for some good crab cakes.  This time around I'm baking them up on the Yoder pellet grill.  Here's the recipe that I use:

16 oz. Jumbo Lump Crab Meat
1 tsp. Old Bay Seasoning
2 eggs
2 tsp. Worcestershire Sauce
1/4 tsp. Dry Mustard
2 Tbsp. Mayo
1 tsp. Lemon Juice
1 Tbsp. Mustard
1 Tbsp. Melted Butter
1 tsp. Parsley Flakes
1/2 c Ritz Crackers, finely crushed.

Combine all the ingredients except the crab meat.  Fold in the crab meat, gently, so not to break up the lumps of crab meat.  Shape into cakes.  I baked these on the pellet grill at a grate temp of 375 until the internal temp was 165 degrees, maybe 15 minutes or so.  You can certainly pan fry them or broil them in the oven.  The pellet grill gave them a nice kiss of wood-fired flavor.  Here's a few pics of the process.

The crab cake mixture ready for forming into cakes

Baking away on the Yoder.  I used a Weber grill pan to make it easy getting the cakes off the grill.

The finished crab cakes.  They had a great wood-fired flavor!

Be sure to stay tuned for my review of the Home Tech Flavor Injector.  In the mean time, keep on smokin'!

Smoked Gyros

I was feeling a little creative this past weekend so I tried my hand at smoking up some gyros.  The recipe I used was courtesy of Alton Brown at Food Network.  Check the recipe here:

Alton Brown's Gyro Recipe

The only variations I made to the recipe was that I used one pound ground lamb and one pound ground chuck instead of going all lamb.  I smoked the gyro loaf fatty style at 250 until it reached an internal temp of 165.  Here's some shots of the process.

Gyro meat smokin' away on the Yoder

Slicing some gyro meat! Check out that smoke ring!

Gyro with tzatziki sauce, lettuce and tomato, wrapped in pita 

This was a great recipe and one that I will definitely make again.  I would recommend trying this one if you are looking to smoke up something besides the usual BBQ fare.

Yoder YS640 Testimonial for ATBBQ

As I have mentioned before, I recently had a great opportunity to share my experiences cooking on the Yoder YS640, with the folks at All Things BBQ for a testimonial video.  There was a lot of effort that went into this and I really appreciate the opportunity to help my friends out.  They were recording the entire BBQ experience from almost sun up to sun down.  I smoked a brisket, some ribs, and some hot links for the event.  Here's some shots of the day.

Lights, camera, the whole works for capturing the BBQ experience on the YS640

Trying to do an interview outside, but the audio just wasn't quite right

Capturing the moment of the saucing of the ribs.  Truly epic!

The indoor interview.  This is the one that was used in the video.

Don, Neil, Justin, Myself, and my apprentice Aaron, in it for the long haul

It was certainly a long day, but definitely a blast.  Justin and Neil did an outstanding job with the video and were a joy to work with.  Without further ado, here's my video debut...