fifi

Thanks for posting that link, fifi. I am curious if you've ever used the sand-in-the-water-pan method mentioned under "Variations". From what I read of the Minion Method regarding overnight cooking, you have to check the water pan every 2-3 hours to see if more needs to be added. Which would suck, if true. So much for a good night's sleep. The sand method make more sense if you want a solid night of sleep while doing overnight grilling/smoking. But I wonder if it really works. No, I have never tried it. I just check the water pan before I tuck in. I normally don't sleep more than 6 or 7 hours anyway and it does just fine. I don't find that I have to add water every 2 - 3 hours anyway. Maybe once for a 12 hour pork butt.

It is described on this site. Basically it is a method of loading up the basket in the WSM with a lot of charcoal and wood chunks and lighting a few coals to get it started. The fire will go for about 12 hours or more without any fiddling. The technique can be tweaked for other smokers I am told.

The Weber Bullet site keeps yammering on about using Kingsford plain briquets. I think they have a minimum of binders to affect the flavor. I don't find that they add any off flavors. Using the Minion Method for the fire, the wood chunks add the smoke flavor. I have used the same combination in my offset smoker. I haven't really tried wood only. Col klink is the expert on that.

I love breakfast... Preferably prepared for me by someone else. Eggs Sardou at Brennan's listening to a good jazz quartet. Any breakfast buffet at an upscale hotel in Mexico with chilequiles, stand up refried beans, really hot salsa, jalepenos en escabeche, eggs over easy, fresh white cheese. Eggs benedict with a side of crispy grated potato hash browns. Don't hold the onions. And the hollandaise has to be tart with fresh lemon. You can add a crispy round of corned beef hash to anything. OH... Let us not forget a big fluffy biscuit drowning in white gravy with a crisp patty of sausage, that has sacrificed itself to make the gravy, on the side. I am not usually into sweet breakfast but occasionally a big fat slice of pain perdue is really good. First you have to have the New Orleans french bread. Don't forget the nutmeg.

I would think that on a kettle it may not make a lot of difference since you are already running hot. I haven't tried it but I would be curious to see if any others out there think that there is a flavor difference. Do you mean that you have mesquite and hickory charcoal? I am wondering if it really adds any flavor since fully finished charcoal should be pure carbon.

Now I am curious. Why would anyone want to do that to a brisket? Just to save time? What would that do for beer consumption? Oh... The horror! Now I am getting curious as to the interior temperature profile and how that works for collagen => gelatin conversion. I am a very curious person.

Yeah... What he said. I haven't tried the chunk charcoal in the WSM yet but I intend to. I have read the warnings that it is not consistent as far as heat and that you might have to fiddle with it. I want to try it just out of curiosity to see if it makes any difference. Less ash would be nice but no biggy. I am interested in the taste profile versus the plain Kingsford that I have been using since I got the thing. The Virtual Weber Bullet site warns that the ash is light and may be prone to flying up onto the meat if you mess with it. I am still going to try it.

As is mine since klink has the great good sense to use my recipe.

Yes it does. I do that all the time. You just have to stir it a bit. I don't notice much if any difference in solubility rates between types of salt. Physics says so. I didn't mention pickling salt. I think it is close to the same density as table salt.

Wowser! Paula... That is truly an inspired idea. I am currently scrambling to see if my collection includes this book. I have bought so many books lately, including several of yours, that I am behind in my reading, and testing. If I can add any value, you will hear from me. Thank you for the opportunity.

Sounds like Saint Alice doesn't "get" BBQ. Go to any of the numerous threads here, not the least of which is Smoking Meat at Home in the eGCI. Anything above about 225F is NOT low slow roasting.

Boy, does that sound suspicious. Those boys may have been foolin' you. I am not sure how the typical "pit" could even get to 500.

The eGCI course on brining is here. Note that Dave the Cook addresses the quantities for different brands of salt. I use Dave's proportions for Morton's kosher salt because, for some inexplicable reason, Diamond Crystal is hard to find here in Houston. That is a sorry situation because I prefer Diamond's texture for other uses. (We can now get paltry little round canisters at Randall's.)

Check out your local Wal-Mart or whatever for the cheap ones. They are tyically larger but, of course, won't have the range of flavors and colors of Jelly Bellys. Years ago, my dad and I would go on a hunt for the really large jelly beans (black ones for me). They were almost an inch long and were more of a bean shape than the cheaper ones you get now. I haven't seen those in years. I seem to remember that the jelly insides had a different texture (more gelatinous?) than the typical beans. Does anyone remember these?

The collagen breakdown starts at about 170F. That is why you get that internal temperature "stall" as it breaks down. When the temperature starts to rise again, that is when you are getting there. I tend to just leave it on the smoker at 225F at the grate since I have a WSM and maintaining the temerature at 225F is a no brainer. Why crank up the oven? If you are having trouble with the smoker, the oven is a viable alternative but, when I have done that, I set the oven at the same 225 to maintain the rate of breakdown so that it is more even. Yes, wrap in foil if you are moving to the oven. I often separate a whole brisket into two parts since the flat will cook at a faster rate. I will have no truck with a trimmed brisket. Fat is your friend. You have to pay in terms of time for great brisket. The BBQ gods are NOT forgiving.

Note: fresco lives in Nirvana. If supposedly untreated chicken breasts or thighs are 69 cents a pound as a loss leader special at the grocery store, it is darned tempting to smoke up a bunch for the freezer pantry. I brine.

Ok... I can't stand it anymore. Some of the examples I have read here tells me that a lot of folks out there just don't "get" brining. I recognize all of the symptoms because I have done all of them myself. In the misguided sense that when you have a good thing, "brining", then more of a good thing is a good thing and trying to make that thing do more than was intended is really fun. All of the mistakes below have been committed by me so I can attest to the results... not good. The first fundamental mistake is that all of the brining recipes are written in volume of salt (cups) per volume of water. That works if you have the right volume for the type of salt used. Table salt, Morton's kosher, Diamond kosher, etc. all yield a different final salt concentration for a given volume. That is because of differing densities for the different salts. To be really correct, recipes should be written by weight. But that is a whole 'nother argument that will probably not be settled in my lifetime so there you are. The second mistake is taking a simple process and trying to add more to it. When you add "all that other stuff" to the brine, you are essentially changing the process. Tests have been done, some reported here, that even water soluble flavor compounds do not really penetrate into the meat as you might expect. I have done many of these recipes on chicken and turkey and have been universally dissappointed in the results. I gave it up. I quit trying to make the brining process more than it is supposed to be and I quit using up expensive ingredients with no gain. If you start adding "other stuff" to the brine, you change the chemistry of the situation with god-knows-what results. The most extreme example is adding citrus. Bad idea. You have just added acid and are on your way to salty chicken ceviche. And ceviche is mushy when cooked. Bleh. Other ingredients may do unexpected things. Busboy's pink chicken may be a case in point. Either nitrates were added to the brine intentionally (why?) or some other ingredients in the brine acted like nitrates. Who knows what those compounds leaching out of the seasonings will do supposedly trying to season at the same time as brining. The complexity could get staggering. The other problem is the syndrome of if a little is good a lot is better. This is normally the time factor or maybe the concentration factor. Longer is not better and higher concentration does not help you out. I have seen this phenomenon before. You take a simple idea, start trying to get really cute with it, and f*** it up. (Though most of my experience in this area has been with computer systems. ) Back to basics... The purpose of brining is to subtley change the character of the protein so that it can retain more moisture. Nothing more, nothing less. I have come back around to plain, simple brining, water and salt. I have chosen to standardize on the concentration and vary the time. (chicken breast 1 to 2 hours, a really big roasting hen overnight about 10 hours, a turkey 18 to 24 hours, a pork butt 12 to 18 hours, etc.) I keep my seasoning strategies totally separate from the brining process. My chicken still tastes and feels like chicken, it is just much moister. It is not rubbery or mushy. It is not too salty. It has just enough salt in there to enhance the chicken flavor but not enough so you could say that it has been salted. In fact, the sign of success is when I have carved that chicken and my eaters exclaim... "This is really juicy and delicious. Did you brine it?" The point being that a properly brined piece of meat should be enhanced, not changed. And it surely shouldn't taste like ham. And, no, koshering is not the same thing as brining nor is it intended to be. Koshering involves exposing the surface of the meat to a very high concentration of salt for a short period of time. That purifies the surface and infuses some salt into the very outer portion of the meat but you really don't get the same osmotic process going on. The result is good but not the same as brining. As you might expect, I am pretty suspicious of adding sugar to the mix. And... Busboy... Next time you want to dump a "supermarket" pork butt in the trash, I will be right over. My smoker gets hungry.

I think you are on the right track ExtraMSG. Here is my theory... The "rest" in the oven overnight formed some kind of film on the chunks of meat that were there. The liquid was just about gone at that point. That may or may not have anything to do with it. Then as it heated up later, some of the chunks made little "steam bombs" with the moisture inside of the chunks becoming superheated. Remember, I didn't touch the pot or otherwise disturb the contents. All I did was turn the oven back on. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

OK folks. Carnita horror story to follow. It all started when I got two packages of pork fat to make lard. I needed some lard for my pantry and wanted to add pictures to the method in RecipeGullet and that seemed like a good project since I was telecommuting this past week. Well, when I opened up the packages, that had looked perfectly acceptable on the surface, underneath is all of this meat. I didn't want meat! I wanted nice dense white pork fat so that I could do the stovetop method and get some pastry lard with the first dipping! I started the arduous task of trimming. What was supposed to be enough pork fat for one of my larger dutch ovens ended up being enough for a smallish saucepan. Now I have this heap of meat with a lot of fat still attached. I whacked that up into pieces and threw it into the big dutch oven originally planned for the lard. I didn't have all of the ingredients I would have liked but I didn't want to waste a lot on this ill defined mess so I just dumped in a can of chicken stock and coconut milk, juice from what limes and lemons I had, and bunged it into the oven at 250. That went along nicely last night and was starting to get to the frying stage when I decided that I couldn't stay up any later so I turned the oven off and let it be. Early this morning when I got up, I switched the oven back on. I check it and it is frying along nicely. I go to stir it around. I touch the wooden spoon to the stuff... BOOM! A chunk of pork comes flying out with its attendant fat, lands on the oven door, the fat barely missing my arm. I think that this is a fascinating phenomenon so I decide to poke it again. BOOM! Ok. Hm. Now I have a nice splatter of pork fat on my nightshirt and a couple of pieces of pork on the floor. The trajectory is improving. But... why oh why is this happening? Any self respecting SSB has to get to the bottom of these things. So... I poke it again. BOOM! (No one ever said that SSBs have any common sense. Well, actually, we do. It is just that intense curiosity often devours common sense.) With about five pieces of pork and its attendent fat on the floor and a rather painful patch on my forearm, I decide to pack it in and close the (now a mess) oven and let it cool down. Hey, it was only set to 250. What is going on here? Anyway, I now have this big pot full of crispy pieces of pork (I wouldn't really call them carnitas) and a lot of pork fat to figure out what to do with. Maybe nothing. Anyway, I tried to salvage a waste product and it was a fun experience. I now have a scientific mystery to noodle on. (WTF could make chunks of pork launch themselves?) And I am going to find a better place to buy pork fat.

Oh... I wouldn't duck, Dave. You are right. The jus could be tasty. Though I doubt if the pork would shine through the beef. The thing that hits me is that this idea is just so... what is the word... um... STUPID. Especially given the cost of baby back ribs.

WTF? What show was this? Who is this person? Did you ever hear why one would do such a thing? Oh... the horror.

JAZ... DAMN YOU! I don't really need another knife! Uh... Do you think the Sur La table here in Houston will have them?

Now I am wondering if the old Mrs. Baird's bakery here in Houston is still operating. Gee... I can't remember where it was just now. It was somewhere close in to town because that was all there was is what we now call "close in" back when I was a kid. I used to go with my mother to the day-old shop.

You are correct. There is a way to do it in brisket as the guy described. The trick is that you don't try to put a lot of the stuff in one place. With a well flavored marinade you don't need to. The other secret to doing this to brisket is to carefully follow the grain of the meat. By that I mean that you insert the needle parallel to the muscle grain. This is a lot easier in the flat rather than the tip. The second injector shown in the link above makes this much easier. If you look closely, one of the "needles" (canula) has holes on the side. That really helps with distribution. I don't really have any recipes. I start with drawn butter or oil and whiz whatever seasonings in a blender if you are using herbs and garlic, maybe onion. You really need to puree it and maybe strain it if the blender doesn't do a perfect job. That second injector is a lot more forgiving as well. And the plunger is calibrated. Some combinations I have used: Herbs and garlic in butter A typical Cajun seasoning mix in butter or oil A citrus "vinagrette" with a little mustard for emulsification and sometimes garlic(Don't put this in a fryer.) I don't add salt if I have brined the victim. I also keep the seasoning to oil or butter ratio pretty high since I am putting very little at each injection site.

Definitely an oversight, Suzanne. Thank you for correcting the record. Ooooo... I wish I had a big bunch of chard. And I would saute the stems in the fat. (Am I gonna have to smoke some chicken to make some smokey stock? ) One question... What else do you put in the pot to make the stock? I have normally just used some onion and maybe a garlic head or two and a couple of bay leaves. I leave the carrots and celery out of it.