Hello from The Hague in the Netherlands

[MorrisWesterik]

Hey everybody,

In the cold of winter, I start to get the itch: thoughts of fire and warm meat come to mind.

After a childhood of slow cooking in the big fireplace on oak wood deep in the woods, I lived in cities and used my trusty little Weber Kettle as a grill on the balcony of an apartment for many years. Last winter, my first winter with a backyard, my wife gave me a Weber Spirit Classic E-220 gas barbecue: wonderful grill and I was able to put some real nice and tasty things on the table with it last summer, but I missed the low and slow.

After a few good beef rib experiments with the small kettle and smokebox in the Spirit, I recently bought a Weber Smokey Mountain 22 inch and want to further develop this beautiful low & slow hobby: so looking for tips and other enthusiasts, I came across this forum!

First question: what shall I use to inaugurate my WSM after the first 3 hours of burning in? I was thinking of ribs, although beef is a bit more obvious, as my wife is not a fan of pork. Tips are welcome, also for briquettes, smoking wood and how to find a good butcher online (or build a good relationship with one).

Best regards from the lowlands of Holland!

Maurits

 

[Rich G]

Morris, welcome, and congrats on your new WSM! A lot of people start with chicken, just because it's usually relatively cheap. If you like chicken (not everyone does), that's a decent place to start with a short smoke while you get used to managing temps with the vents. If beef is more to your liking, you could do a chuck roast, brisket (of course), beef ribs (I prefer chuck or plate ribs, though back ribs are good too if you can find some that aren't trimmed down to the bone.) Lots of options, and you may need to translate US names for various cuts, as meat is likely cut a bit differently in Denmark.

Looks like some good short ribs at this place: Slagerij Dunglemann

Any way you go, you'll enjoy it.....and, as always, making your wife happy with what you cook is a great plan!

Please share with us what you end up doing with your WSM, and ask any questions you have along the way!

R

 

[Ruud Kok]

There are several online butchers where I usually order meat from:

Beef & Steak | #1 in Premium Vlees | BEEF&STEAK

Online vlees bestellen | BEEF&STEAK | ✅ Beste kwaliteit steaks, braadstuk, spareribs, picanha en ossenhaas| ✅ Bezorgd in Nederland en België

beefensteak.nl

Het lekkerste vlees online kopen, van brisket tot picanha en van bavette tot spareribs

Bestel bij ons de beste steaks, bavette, brisket, picanha en ander kwaliteitsvlees online. Specialist in het beste BBQ vlees.

www.aalvink.nl

Beimer Home - Beimer

Welkom bij de grootste online vleesverwerker / slager van Nederland! Beimer is opgericht in 1957, een echt familiebedrijf. Shop nu ook online.

www.beimerpremium.nl

Chuck is nice for low&slow. Too bad your wife does not like pork, since a good pulled pork might help seasoning your WSM.
Also be sure to check out Dutch BBQ forums for more information. BBQGenootschap.nl for example.

Meat in The Netherlands (not Denmark @Rich G ) it cut in a different way compared to the US, but you find that since low&slow is getting more popular more butchers are offering cuts like they do in the US. Otherwise Google is your friend in helping you translate the US name to the Dutch variant.

Welkom hier! ;-)

 

[Rich G]

Meat in The Netherlands (not Denmark @Rich G ) it cut in a different way compared to the US, but you find that since low&slow is getting more popular more butchers are offering cuts like they do in the US. Otherwise Google is your friend in helping you translate the US name to the Dutch variant.

Whoops! Not sure why I wrote Denmark, I knew Morris was in The Netherlands! I must need more

 

[MorrisWesterik]

Morris, welcome, and congrats on your new WSM! A lot of people start with chicken, just because it's usually relatively cheap. If you like chicken (not everyone does), that's a decent place to start with a short smoke while you get used to managing temps with the vents. If beef is more to your liking, you could do a chuck roast, brisket (of course), beef ribs (I prefer chuck or plate ribs, though back ribs are good too if you can find some that aren't trimmed down to the bone.) Lots of options, and you may need to translate US names for various cuts, as meat is likely cut a bit differently in Denmark.

Looks like some good short ribs at this place: Slagerij Dunglemann

Any way you go, you'll enjoy it.....and, as always, making your wife happy with what you cook is a great plan!

Please share with us what you end up doing with your WSM, and ask any questions you have along the way!

R

Wow, Rich: thanks for the kind words of welcome and taking the time and effort to check out some local Dutch butchers in my area!

Dungelmans is a well reputed butcher only ten minutes by bike from me and I already once got some of their ribs for the kettle: now definitely going over there for these and yes, I will post back with the results!

M

 

[MorrisWesterik]

There are several online butchers where I usually order meat from:

Beef & Steak | #1 in Premium Vlees | BEEF&STEAK

Online vlees bestellen | BEEF&STEAK | ✅ Beste kwaliteit steaks, braadstuk, spareribs, picanha en ossenhaas| ✅ Bezorgd in Nederland en België

beefensteak.nl

Het lekkerste vlees online kopen, van brisket tot picanha en van bavette tot spareribs

Bestel bij ons de beste steaks, bavette, brisket, picanha en ander kwaliteitsvlees online. Specialist in het beste BBQ vlees.

www.aalvink.nl

Beimer Home - Beimer

Welkom bij de grootste online vleesverwerker / slager van Nederland! Beimer is opgericht in 1957, een echt familiebedrijf. Shop nu ook online.

www.beimerpremium.nl

Chuck is nice for low&slow. Too bad your wife does not like pork, since a good pulled pork might help seasoning your WSM.
Also be sure to check out Dutch BBQ forums for more information. BBQGenootschap.nl for example.

Meat in The Netherlands (not Denmark @Rich G ) it cut in a different way compared to the US, but you find that since low&slow is getting more popular more butchers are offering cuts like they do in the US. Otherwise Google is your friend in helping you translate the US name to the Dutch variant.

Welkom hier! ;-)

Haha, thanks fellow Dutch BBQ! I did not know those online butchers: I will check them out!

An odd thing I noticed was that the prices that I see advertised for US style brisket cuts here seem much higher than the US prices. Odd: that part of the cow was seen as ‘stew meat’ when I was growing up and definitely did not command these sorts of prices. I suppose butchers would be the first to see an opportunity in US BBQ recipes making their way across to us here?

I heard that BBQgenootschap and BBQforum are merging, by the way: seems like a good idea!

 

[Rich G]

Dungelmans is a well reputed butcher only ten minutes by bike from me and I already once got some of their ribs for the kettle: now definitely going over there for these and yes, I will post back with the results!

M

I'm a butcher junkie, Morris......I look them up all the time, especially when I'm planning a trip (drives my wife nuts!)

If you pick up some of those short ribs, our host, Chris, did a nice write up of his process for them on TVWB: TVWB Chuck Short Ribs

 

[MorrisWesterik]

Thanks again, Rich, I will use that writ-up.

So, I ordered the short ribs for my coming Saturday try-out: 2 slabs of Irish grass-fed beef ribs.

These are the ribs I previously did on my small kettle, 8 hours and chips of soaked appled wood .... and they looked good:



Nice bark (some supermarket "American Beef Rub") and they turned out reasonably tasty, but still kind of chewy and with some unrendered fat. (I used a stick in thermometer, but no kettle thermometer, so I think I simply did not manage a good consistent temp):



Of course, this being a tiny kettle, I had to refill the coals every so often, lift out the grate and meat ... so that is how I decided I should get a WSM!

Onwards, to Saturday and testing out the WSM!

 

[Lynn Dollar]

Welcome to the forum, lots of good info here.