Stuffed Pork Tenderloins

This week I have a great pork tenderloin recipe to share with you, roasted on my Yoder pellet grill.  The tenderloins are stuffed with a mouth watering mixture of sausage, onion, mushrooms, and seasoned bread crumbs.  Here's how it all went together.

The foundation of the stuffing...browned sausage with onion.  Off to a good start!

Pile on some sauteed mushrooms.

Add a few handfuls of seasoned dry bread crumbs

Two beautiful tenderloins just waiting to be stuffed

Stuffed and tied up...with the help of my lovely wife!

Roasting at 425 degrees.

The finished product

Beautiful slices of pork, stuffed with more pork.  Can't go wrong there!

Stuffed Pork Tenderloins


1/2 lb of bulk sausage
1 medium onion, diced
1 container of white button mushrooms, diced
4 handfuls of dry seasoned bread crumbs (start with a cup if you are one those who require measuring utensils)

1 package of pork tenderloins (typically two in a package)
Tastefully Simple Garlic-Garlic Seasoning (or Butchers Garlic Lovers Seasoning would work well)

Cook the sausage and onion in a skillet over medium heat until the sausage is brown and the onion is translucent. Transfer to a mixing bowl.  Add diced mushrooms to the pan and saute with a little olive oil until browned.  Add the mushrooms to the sausage/onion mixture.  Add four (4) handfuls of seasoned bread crumbs; just enough to bind it, but leaving it moist.  You don't want dry stuffing.

Butterfly the tenderloins and flatten with a meat mallet until about 1/2 to 1/4 inch thick.  Divide the stuffing between the tenderloins and cinch with butchers twine.  Season generously with the Garlic-Garlic seasoning.

Roast on the pellet grill at 425 degrees, until done to your liking.  We pulled ours at 160 degrees internal which took about 40 minutes.  Let it rest five minutes or so to let the juices redistribute before slicing.

Lamb Popsicles Courtesy of Aaron Miller

Folks, it's been a while and I apologize for that, but after a nice winter hibernation, some career upheaval, and a pending move to Oklahoma, I'm back in the saddle.  Spring has sprung and I've got some great cooks planned for the blog.

In the mean time, I've got a very special recipe, courtesy of my dear friend Aaron Miller.  Aaron can smoke up some mean grub on his Yoder pellet grill.  He's been kind enough to share his recipe for lamb popsicles with an amazing marinade.  Take it away, Aaron...

"I decided I wanted to try something new on the smoker. I have eaten lamb several times, but have never cooked it myself. I am excited to share the results with you."

All the Marinade Ingredients

Fresh Racks of Lamb

The blended marinating sauce. The lemon grass added a hint of ginger flavor, and the thyme added an earthy/peppery taste.

Ready for Smoking with all that flavor!

The finished product

These are sometimes called "Lamb Popsicles" because of their sweet flavor

Here's the recipe:

Marinating sauce:
1/4 Cup - Olive oil
2 cloves crushed garlic
1Tbsp - Dijon mustard
1tsp - Paprika
1Tbsp - Honey
2 tsp - Lemon zest
2 Tbsp - Fresh chopped parsley
2 Tbsp - Lemon verbena leaves (can substitute crushed lemon grass)
2 tsp - Fresh thyme leaves

Fresh ground black pepper
Coarse sea salt

Blend all the ingredients in a blender except for the salt and pepper. You will want this nice and blended. Use a brush and spread the marinating sauce all over your racks of lamb. Put them in the fridge for about 2-3 hours. Before placing the lamb on the grill, season lightly with the pepper and sea salt.

Smoking:
I smoked the lamb at 220-225 degrees. You will want the internal temperature of the lamb to be between 165-170 degrees - for well done. After you pull it off the grill, let it set about an hour for the juices to redistribute before slicing.

Aaron, that lamb looks amazing!  A special thanks to you for sharing that amazing recipe with all of us!  Keep up the good work on that smoker!

Pellet Grill Baked Apple Crisp

Nothing warms me up better on cold day than a piping hot helping of apple crisp.  I recently whipped up a batch, this time baking it on my Yoder Smokers pellet grill.  Here's how it looked coming together.

Granny Smith apples with cinnamon, sugar, and flour

All mixed up, ready for topping

The topping mixture

Baking on the Yoder.  Looking good!

Apple crisp, hot off the grill!

Plated up with some vanilla bean ice cream.  That's some good eats!

This is one of my favorite desserts.  The Granny Smith apples were a little too mushy for my tastes.  I typically use a Jonathon or Honeycrisp for my baked apple recipes.  Here's the recipe I like to use:

Fill 9x9 buttered dish with chopped, fresh apples (jonathan, honey crisp, etc.), 6-8 apples,

Mix the following into the apples:

1 c. sugar

1 T. flour

1 t. cinnamon

In a separate bowl, mix together the following ingredients for the topping until crumbly

½ t baking soda

¾ t baking powder

1 c brown sugar

1 c flour

¾ c oats

¾ c butter melted

Spread the topping mixture over the apples. Bake for one hour at 350 or until brown.  Serve hot with a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Chicken Marsala

I love a good Chicken Marsala.  There is nothing like that wood-fired chicken, seasoned to perfection, all topped off with a rich Marsala wine sauce.  It's making me hungry just talking about it, so enough!  On with the food!

Chicken Breasts rubbed in olive oil, seasoned and grilled over direct heat on the Yoder Pellet Grill

Grilled to perfection!  Check out those grill marks, courtesy of the Grill Grates product

All plated up with Marsala sauce, garlic mashed potatoes, and peas.  We like a few extra mushrooms in ours ;-)

And here's the recipe:

Marsala Sauce:

1/3 cup butter
2 slices prosciutto, diced
2 teaspoons minced shallots
2 teaspoons minced garlic
8 oz. fresh mushrooms, sliced
1/4 cup marsala wine
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 cup chicken stock
2 teaspoons corn starch
1 teaspoon minced fresh parsley
2 tablespoons heavy cream

Chicken Spice:
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried parsley
1/4 teaspoon marjoram
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
4 chicken breasts
olive oil

Melt butter over low heat in a medium saucepan.  Turn heat up to medium/high to saute the prosciutto in the melted butter for about 2 - 3 minutes (be careful not to burn butter), add shallots and garlic and saute for about 30 seconds. Add marsala wine, simmer for another 30 seconds or so, then add mushrooms and black pepper. Simmer over medium/high heat for 5 minutes or until the mushrooms are cooked down. Dissolve corn starch in chicken stock. Add stock to the saucepan and simmer for an additional 5 minutes. Add parsley and cream to the sauce and simmer for 3 - 4 minutes or until thick. Remove from heat, cover until needed. 

Set up your pellet grill for direct heat or preheat your gas/charcoal grill if that is your weapon of choice. Combine ingredients for the chicken spice in a small bowl. Use your thumb and fingers to crush the spices in the bowl to make a finer blend. Brush each chicken breast generously with olive oil. Rub on spices and grill until chicken is done. Top off the chicken with some Marsala sauce and you are in food heaven!

Oktoberfest Burgers

Wow, it's been a long time since I've been able to share some good BBQ recipes with you all! Not to worry.  I'm still alive, and still smokin' and grillin' up a storm!  With the hustle and bustle of fall winding down and the Thanksgiving and Christmas Seasonings fast approaching, I've been able to sneak in a few cooks.

We finished off the month of October in true Oktoberfest fashion, Dark Side BBQ style with my version of an Oktoberfest Burger!

My version of the Oktoberfest Burger uses a homemade pretzel bun (recipe below), a half pound patty of ground chuck, melted smoked Gouda cheese, all topped off with onions sauteed in Free State Brewery's Octoberfest, and finished off with some Inglehoffer  Stone Ground Mustard.

Stay tuned as I have a laundry list of good food for the grill to share for the holiday season.  Next, I've got a great Chicken Marsala recipe to share for the grill using the Grill Grates product for direct cooking on your pellet grill.  Until then, keep on smokin'!

Here's the recipe for the homemade pretzel buns (definitely a labor of love, but worth the effort!):

1 1/3 cups warm water (105 degrees or so; just warm enough to activate the yeast
2 T warm milk
2 1/2 t active dry yeast
1/3 c brown sugar
2 T butter, melted
4 cups of all purpose flour

In a small bowl or measuring cup, combine 1/3 cup of the water with the the yeast.  Let that stand until foamy so we know the yeast is activated.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a dough hook, add the yeast mixture, additional cup of water, milk, sugar, and butter.  Stir until sugar is dissolved.

Add the flour, a little at time, and mix until it forms a pliable dough ball.

Turn the dough out on to  a lightly floured surface and need for about two minutes or so.  Roll this out into a log, approximately two feet in length and cut into twelve pieces.  Place the rolls on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.  Cover the dough with a towel and let it rest for 10 minutes.

Form the dough into rolls, and cover them again with a towel and let them rest for 30 more minutes.

At this point, preheat the oven to 425 degrees.  In a large stock pot, bring 2 quarts of water to boil, and add half a cup of baking soda.  Make sure your stock pot is big enough, so when you add the baking soda to the water, it doesn't foam over the pot and all over your stove.

Drop one or two rolls into the boiling water for 30 seconds, turning once.  Return to your cookie sheet.  Sprinkle the rolls with a healthy amount of kosher salt.  Bake them for 8 minutes or more, until they are nice an brown, like a pretzel.

Let them cool, slice and pile on your burger toppings.  These are very versatile rolls, so you could come up an endless number of possibilities of burgers or sandwiches.

Smoked Shrimp

Jeff Phillips over at Smoking-meat.com recently published a great technique for smoking shrimp.  I'm a big shrimp fan so I had to try this out.  I experimented with a pound of large raw shrimp, peeled and deveined.  Those were tossed with a little olive oil and some rub.  I used John Henry's Texas Pig Rub, which gave a great flavor to the shrimp.

The shrimp marinated for about an hour, placed in a foil pan with a half stick of melted butter, and thrown on the Yoder to smoke at 225 until they are pink.  This a tell-tale sign the shrimp are done.  This shouldn't take more than 10-15 minutes so keep an eye on them.  I love how these tasted with just a nice hint of smoke.  Here's a few pictures of the process.

The shrimp marinating in olive oil and rub

Panned up with butter and ready for smoke

The finish product (notice the pink color)

Plated up with some fried okra and fresh Colorado peaches...Mmm!

The Yoder Smokers Manufacturing Facility

I recently had the privilege of making a road trip to tour the Yoder Smokers manufacturing facility up in Yoder, KS.  It was really fun to see where some of the finest grills and smokers are designed, tested, and produced.  I got the spend the day with Don Cary and Joe Phillips of Yoder Smokers, Andy Groneman from Smoke on Wheels BBQ, and Rob Green from Smokingpit.com.

We started off our tour watching some testing of the YS640 and YS480 pellet grills, alongside some of the competition from Green Mountain Grills and Traeger.  After watching the logging of data for about two hours, I am reaffirmed that the folks at Yoder build a superior product.  Here's some shots from the test area.

The Yoders (in the background) stacked up next to the Traeger and GMG (foreground)

Here's Joe and Andy watching the test data coming in

It was a real treat to see the attention to detail that goes into the development of the software for the Yoder pellet grills.  Joe has worked incredibly hard over the last year to fine tune all aspects of the grill.  His passion for great BBQ really shows in how the Yoder pellet grill performs.

After the watching the testing, we had the chance to see how it all comes together in their manufacturing area.  It was a great pleasure to see true American craftsmanship still exists.  Here's some shots of these pits getting assembled.

Made in the USA by American hands

Some cooking chambers ready for final assembly

Assembled grills ready for the finishing touches

Control boards...the brains of the pellet grill

All their pits are modeled in software to ensure everything goes together seamlessly

I was also able to catch a glimpse of the new Yoder Smokers charcoal grill.  The same attention to detail and craftsmanship went into this grill as with their offset wood smokers and pellet grills.  Folks that like to grill over hot coals will want to check this out when it is made available.

The Yoder Smokers charcoal grill with adjustable charcoal tray and all the cooking  surface you will ever need

Overall it was a very fun day, shared with friends with a real passion for great BBQ.  I finished off the day taking a cooking class from Andy Groneman on how to get the most out of your pellet grill at All Things BBQ.  I received some great tips and recipes for pellet grill cooking.  If you are ever in the Wichita area when he is offering a cooking class at All Things BBQ, be sure to sign up for one.  Andy has a wealth of knowledge from the BBQ circuit that will really help you step up your game when it comes to the grill or smoker.

Next time, I'll let you all know how my attempt at smoking shrimp turns out.  You definitely don't want to miss that.