A BBQ Trip to North Carolina


 

Robert McGee

TVWBB Gold Member
This past week saw my wife and I on our way to Southern Pines, N.C. to visit with our son, Shannon, and his family. Shannon is an accomplished griller and smoker. When he saw the pictures of my Mini-Joe Gold, he immediately built one for himself. We certainly gave it a workout while we were there.

When we arrived he was smoking a grate full of boneless, skinless chicken thighs on his Mini-Joe Gold. We had them for supper. He did a fine job on those, of course. He was beaming at the ease with which he was able to hold temps (even tho' the temps were high for the chicken).

The next night, after a trip to the grocery, we did nearly four pounds of Wild Atlantic Salmon. We shopped for quality and price and ended up at Harris Teeters (a VERY nice HT Supermarket in nearby Aberdeen, N.C.). The salmon was planked on three Cedar Planks and was done on his Performer. Here is a picture of a couple of the finished filets:



I applied a light coat of EVOO and then sprinkled a modest covering of Old Bay Seasoning. The salmon was excellent and I believe all six who partook had extras. This is one of my favorite dishes.

We also smoked/baked some apples, cored and stuffed with butter, brown sugar, and crushed almonds. It took between 1-1.5 hours for the apples to reach the desired degree of doneness. They were also a hit. In fact, we did another run (double in size for a dinner party later in the week). Here are the apples and the Mini-Joe in action:





Then, we did eight half racks of spare ribs. We couldn't find any St. Louis cut ribs, so I trimmed four full racks of spares to St. Louis specs, then cut the racks in half to fit on the rib racks in the mini. We used two grates and two rib racks. We opened the Mini wide open and it slowly ran the temperature up until they were nearly at the foil mark (three hours or so when the bark was set). We let them go another half hour and pulled them. We had them for supper than night and held the rest for a dinner party Saturday night. Shannon also grilled a bunch of chicken breasts to absolute perfection to accompany the ribs. Here are the ribs foiled:



Here is a rib and a plate of Southern Succulence:D:




We even had a real life chef at the party to pass judgement. I noticed that everyone in attendance had seconds on the ribs. They were down right excellent.

Everyone agreed that the Mini-Joe Gold was an unqualified success. I told you Shannon was a serious griller - here is his Weber chimney that will have to be retired soon:



Thanks for watching! As you can tell, we are REALLY enamored of the Mini-Joe.

Keep on smokin';
Dale53:wsm:
 
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, Dale! He learned at his father's side, I'm sure. That charcoal grate could use a replacement, too!
 
I love the Father Son connection here, beautiful cook my friend. And congrats on the family connection, most important thing in life. You did well.
 
Thanks for the kind words, folks. Shannon is extremely busy with his church work and his practice. He DOES check in from time to time and has learned a great deal from this site. In fact, he is the one who "sicked" me onto the site. So, I have a lot to thank him for, too!

Hopefully, he will chime in from time to time with some of his practices on the grill and smoker. One thing sure, when we get together, we ALL eat well!:D

By the way, my neighbor has his new Mini-Joe Gold finished and will do his first cook sometime this week. Hopefully, I can get him to check in from time to time. He has some Webers in regular use, too...

Dale53:wsm:
 
Dennis;
We ran the apples at 300+ for about an hour. They could have handled another thirty minutes. Use the Charmin test (squeeze for doneness). They are certainly good. We used apple chips (soaked in water) for smoke. The apples DID pick up a bit of smoke flavor. We WILL be doing them again. A small dip of vanilla ice cream was a perfect accompaniment to the baked apples.

Dale53:wsm:
 

 

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