Sweetwater Spice Company's Brisket Bath

I had a great opportunity to try a Sweetwater Spice Company's Brisket Bath instead of using a traditional dry rub.  The Brisket Bath is a brine using ancho and chipotle chilies, apple juice, black pepper, brown sugar, onion, garlic, tamarind paste and a hint of cinnamon.  This mixture is ultra concentrated, requiring a 3:1 ratio of water to Brisket Bath per every 5 lbs of meat.  For this smoke, I used a 5lb brisket flat.  Here's a look at the process.

Brisket Bath!

The brisket bathed for five hours

Here it is after coming off the Yoder.

All sliced and ready for consumption!

The Brisket Bath made a very moist and flavorful brisket.  This was a great change of pace from the traditional dry rub technique that I usually use.  I would recommend giving this a try if you get the chance.  You can pick some at All Things BBQ or directly from Sweetwater Spice.

Review of the Home Tech Flavor Injector

I recently had the privilege of testing out the Home Tech Flavor Injector.  The device is certainly a unique design compared to the standard injector that most folks are accustomed to seeing.  Here's a few pics.

Cupcakes!  Gotta try that!

Three injection needles instead of one.  Each exit has screen to prevent clogging.

For my review I started off by injecting a chuck roast with some of my brisket mop.  The Flavor Injector did an admirable job injecting the chuck roast.  There was a bit of a learning curve with knowing when to release the press pressure in the reservoir so not to spray your injection everywhere.  After smoking it up on the Yoder, I was left with a very moist and flavorful helping of pulled beef.  I was very pleased with the results.

Getting ready to inject.

Adding injection is a lot neater than a traditional injector

Injecting away!

A fine batch of smoked, pulled chuck roast!

The the next round of testing I had to give the injected cupcakes a try.  I baked up some traditional yellow cupcakes and tried injecting them with hot fudge.  Here's some pictures of that process.

The fudge was a bit of challenge as it was still very thick, even when heated up.  This made the injecting process a bit cumbersome.  In my opinion the injection needs to be thinned down to allow it to flow better through the injector.  Overall, I think the injector faired very well with watery-consistency injections, but struggled with thicker injections, so those should be thinned out before attempting.

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...

Sweet and Garlicky Pork Chops

I had a chance to grill some amazing pork chops using this great recipe out of Steve Raichlen's BBQ Bible.  The pork chops were marinated in an Asian style sauce with garlic, soy sauce, honey and some other ingredients.  I definitely recommend trying this if you can get a copy of his book.  There are a lot of great recipes in it.  Here's how the pork chops looked.

Grillin' away on the Yoder.  I removed the drip tray for a real wood fire grill experience.

The finished chops.  Loads of flavor with this recipe.  We'll be making these again!

March Madness

We smoked up a ton of meat for March Madness over the last two weeks.  That's just how we roll in this house!  The Yoder pellet grill got a great workout smokin' up some brisket, burnt ends, ribs, a fatty, and some hotlinks.  Check out this spread of meat, all cooked on Yoder YS640 pellet grill.

Brisket and burnt ends smoked up for the round of 64.  We had a boat load sweets too that my wife baked up.

Ribs and fatty slices for the next night.  My wife whipped up a batch of her scalloped potatoes to go with it.

The next week for the Sweet 16, I had the pleasure of having the film crew from All Things BBQ follow me around and log the entire process for an upcoming video about their Yoder Smokers pellet grills.  We had a great time doing some cooking on the YS640 and got some great video clips.  I even got to do an interview about the product and how my cooking has been able to evolve because of it.  Here's pics of the smoke from that event.

Some baby backs smoking away.  I also got to check out a custom cut set of Grill Grates for the YS640

Slicing up the brisket flat smoked on the YS640

Here's the spread of meat.  Brisket, ribs, hotlinks, and a flat iron steak grilled up on the Yoder

It's been a fun two weeks of smoking up some great food for my family and friends.  As soon as the video is ready to roll, I'll post that as well some great pics we got from the filming process.  Stay tuned for that!