Well, not really. We've only been home for 3 of the past 5 weeks, and prior to that it was 1 of the last 3 weekends. So it only feels like I've missed my Webers for most of the Spring and early Summer. Here's a collection of cooks over that time -- I don't think I've posted a cook since I made Buckboard Bacon in May!
This rather ungainly fellow is a "hotel style" turkey breast. It comes with bones and skin, and the wings are left on. In case you were wondering, this will not fit in an 18.5" kettle. So it was "semi-spatchcocked", meaning that I hacked it in half as best as I could with poultry sheers and then swung my heaviest chef's knife at the backbone until I split it in two. Then it was kind of rolled until it fit in and smoked. The red rub you see is Penzey's Northwoods Fire. This gave us about a week of lunches and 2 more weeks frozen. No idea what happened to the sliced pictures.
I call this one "bullet with a cap". I was attempting to cold smoke cheese when the sun came out and caused the dome temperature to spike over 100. All the ice was already melted in the water pan and the cheese wasn't done, so this was my solution: the 18.5 Kettle lid hanging by its hanger on the 18.5 WSM handle. Temps dropped back to around the ambient 80s and the cheese was saved.
After the cheese was done, an eye of round beef roast seasoned with Montreal Steak along with a butt with my standard rub went on.
Again I'm missing finished pictures, so none of the roast beef or smoked cheeses. The roast beef was absolutely fantastic, with a little bit of smoke flavor and was absolutely the best I've made. Letting it warm up for a few hours before cooking slowly made for very tender meat with uniform doneness throughout. The pork was packed up, doused with finishing sauce, then frozen to go on our last vacation.
After that cook, I cranked up the remaining coals in the WSM to make smoked wings.
Here's a quick fajita cook. Tenders marinated in Mojo and veggies on the pizza screen. I need to find a square screen to use on the gasser more often.
Corn tortillas toasting.
And plated. Erin insists on putting shredded cabbage on anything even vaguely Mexican (I haven't tested her with fried ice cream yet, but I have a bad feeling) and there's also some jalapeno sauce.
Here's a great gumbo I made a few weeks ago. The meats in this were leftover grilled BLSL breasts, the ends of the smoked turkey breast that wouldn't go through my slicer, and some homemade andouille. Served with an equally delicious bottle of Abita.
Last but not least is a pizza cook from right before we went away. This was a "use up all the veggies in the fridge" cook. Tray of pizza toppings in the front, hand-formed individual pies in the back on wax paper.
Raw dough on the back of the gasser. Front burner on high, middle and rear set all the way low.
Super high speed photography of me flipping the crusts.
Toppped with a white sauce (EVOO and garlic), poblano, red onion, turkey pepperoni, smoked mozz and smoked cheddar.
Heated through prior to being paper plated.
Note that the ball of dough was split 4 ways then shaped. In the spirit of Don and Josh's recent pizza failures, the second set of crusts evidently warmed up too much and would not release from oiled wax paper. I attempted to flip them over onto the grill and they never dropped! So the 4 individual pies ended up being roughly 3, although the last one ended up being borderline deep dish. What a mess!
On Thursday night I had the displeasure of cooking a huge salmon filet, 2 strip steaks and 3 brined chicken breasts on one of those $99 Char-Broil grills at the vacation house we rented. Everything came out much better than expected, but I think there's a good reason we're Weber fans. I can't wait to get cooking on my own again. Thanks for looking!
This rather ungainly fellow is a "hotel style" turkey breast. It comes with bones and skin, and the wings are left on. In case you were wondering, this will not fit in an 18.5" kettle. So it was "semi-spatchcocked", meaning that I hacked it in half as best as I could with poultry sheers and then swung my heaviest chef's knife at the backbone until I split it in two. Then it was kind of rolled until it fit in and smoked. The red rub you see is Penzey's Northwoods Fire. This gave us about a week of lunches and 2 more weeks frozen. No idea what happened to the sliced pictures.
I call this one "bullet with a cap". I was attempting to cold smoke cheese when the sun came out and caused the dome temperature to spike over 100. All the ice was already melted in the water pan and the cheese wasn't done, so this was my solution: the 18.5 Kettle lid hanging by its hanger on the 18.5 WSM handle. Temps dropped back to around the ambient 80s and the cheese was saved.
After the cheese was done, an eye of round beef roast seasoned with Montreal Steak along with a butt with my standard rub went on.
Again I'm missing finished pictures, so none of the roast beef or smoked cheeses. The roast beef was absolutely fantastic, with a little bit of smoke flavor and was absolutely the best I've made. Letting it warm up for a few hours before cooking slowly made for very tender meat with uniform doneness throughout. The pork was packed up, doused with finishing sauce, then frozen to go on our last vacation.
After that cook, I cranked up the remaining coals in the WSM to make smoked wings.
Here's a quick fajita cook. Tenders marinated in Mojo and veggies on the pizza screen. I need to find a square screen to use on the gasser more often.
Corn tortillas toasting.
And plated. Erin insists on putting shredded cabbage on anything even vaguely Mexican (I haven't tested her with fried ice cream yet, but I have a bad feeling) and there's also some jalapeno sauce.
Here's a great gumbo I made a few weeks ago. The meats in this were leftover grilled BLSL breasts, the ends of the smoked turkey breast that wouldn't go through my slicer, and some homemade andouille. Served with an equally delicious bottle of Abita.
Last but not least is a pizza cook from right before we went away. This was a "use up all the veggies in the fridge" cook. Tray of pizza toppings in the front, hand-formed individual pies in the back on wax paper.
Raw dough on the back of the gasser. Front burner on high, middle and rear set all the way low.
Super high speed photography of me flipping the crusts.
Toppped with a white sauce (EVOO and garlic), poblano, red onion, turkey pepperoni, smoked mozz and smoked cheddar.
Heated through prior to being paper plated.
Note that the ball of dough was split 4 ways then shaped. In the spirit of Don and Josh's recent pizza failures, the second set of crusts evidently warmed up too much and would not release from oiled wax paper. I attempted to flip them over onto the grill and they never dropped! So the 4 individual pies ended up being roughly 3, although the last one ended up being borderline deep dish. What a mess!
On Thursday night I had the displeasure of cooking a huge salmon filet, 2 strip steaks and 3 brined chicken breasts on one of those $99 Char-Broil grills at the vacation house we rented. Everything came out much better than expected, but I think there's a good reason we're Weber fans. I can't wait to get cooking on my own again. Thanks for looking!
