Welcome to the World of the Smoker, Charychs!!!

I'm giddy with anticipation. I just ordered a gift for my favorite cousins, Erik and Melissa Charych. It's a smoker and two different kinds of wood chunks. Thinking about it is making my mouth water.

Although I attempted to get the most complete smoker set for my darling Charychs, there are some things missing. Here's what gives:

1. Go buy a bag of charcoal.
1. We use Kingsford "The Original" Charcoal Briquets. You can use store brand, or get into the fancier types, but I would suggest starting with good old Kingsford.
2. Do not get the stuff that is quick lighting. Your food will taste like lighter fluid.
2. Buy some lighter fluid if you don't have any.
3. Buy a meat of some sort.
1. They're all relatively easy.
2. If you want instant gratification, make wings. Buy a bag of frozen buffalo wings, dump your favorite wing seasoning in the bag, shake it, dump the bag contents on the smoker once it's ready, and then wait 2 hours. Done.
3. A chuck roast or a pork loin is also easy, I have recipes and instructions (I think) for each.
4. Make sure you have the rub ingredients on hand, or a rub from the store.
5. Assemble the smoker
6. Choose one of the wood chunks that came with the smoker (we included the two we use the most, hickory and mesquite), fill a big bowl (I use my biggest cake batter bowl) with water, and put 4-6 big chunks and some bits in the bowl. Do this before you start the fire.
7. Build a fire in the bottom, following the instructions on the bag of charcoal.
8. Once the fire is nice and hot, consider adding beer or juice or something to the bowl above the fire bowl.
9. Put the meat on the rack (or racks, if you're going big)
10. Use tongs to add a wood chunk to the top of the charcoal through the little door.
11. Put the lid on, wait.
12. When smoke stops billowing or wisping or licking the smoker, add another wood chunk.
13. Add another charcoal briquet or two if you have concerns that the temperature is not hot enough, but I think it should be fine.
14. Remove meat from smoker, let it rest, and then chow down!!!

See?!? It's sooooo easy. If you're not sure still, call the Levins for a consult. If you're still not sure, ask around. I guarantee you will find out that you know lots of people that are smoker pros, and you will never have a shortage of random tips, vague suggestions, and better ways to do it.

Happy birthday, happy Chanukah, happy cousin!!!

Boston Butt #1

Another thin post.

I heard a lot about Boston Butt from Shane. Jeremy made one that Shane got to sample, and at a camp out, Dave made one. I didn't want to be left out.

We bought a Boston Butt that was very big, so at Jeremy's recommendation we cut it in half and smoked one half and cooked the other half in a crock pot. Both were amazing.

The rub. Jeremy brought it to us from his Kroger. I have yet to see it in our grocery stores.

Half of the Boston Butt on the smoker, ready to begin!

We wrapped it in foil after it was done, and left it in the oven for a little while (you can leave it in a cooler too).

The final product. This is the stuff you get when you order a pulled pork barbeque sandwich at a BBQ joint!

Pork Tenderloin #1

I don't have much detail on this one, but I wanted to post the photos.

I bought a half pork loin that was 5.39 lbs. I used the same rub from the pork ribs.

We smoked it.

It was delicious!

Chicken #1

For our first smoked chicken I'm combining and tweaking methods I found on my favorite smoking website.

• Get some whole chicken. We bought 2 Perdue whole fryers, each one weighed about 4.5 lbs.
• Wash them and cut them in half, removing the giblets and cutting out the backbone.
• For each chicken, mix 2 quarts of water (also 64 oz or 1/2 gallon, whichever measure is most convenient to you) with 1/3 C non iodized salt and 1/4 C white sugar.
• Stir until everything is dissolved.
• Put two chicken halves in each batch of brining solution. Cover.

Kind of gross looking. Each container has one batch of the brining solution, and 2 chicken halves.

• Put them in the fridge and let them soak for 4-6 hours.
• Right before it's time to take the chicken out of the brine, start the wood chips to soaking in water, if you're using them. Apple wood is recommended.

We soak the chips in my biggest mixing bowl. This will be our first use of apple wood, which we got from Home Depot.

• Start the smoker.
• Rinse and dry the chicken halves, discarding the brining solution that remains.
• Mix together the dry rub. For each chicken, mix 2T onion powder, 1T white sugar, 1T paprika, 2t dried parsley, 1t garlic powder, 1t crushed oregano, 1t black pepper, 1/2t powdered cayenne pepper 

The rub, doubled since we're smoking two chickens.

• Coat the chicken lightly with vegetable oil.
• Put the rub on the outside and inside of the chicken.

The chicken is now ready for the smoker.

• When the smoker is ready, put the chicken on the rack, skin up.
• Smoke the chicken 2-4 hours. You'll know it's done when the breast reaches 165 and the thigh is 175.
• Remove the chicken from the smoker, let it rest for 20 minutes.

• Shred. Eat as is or on a bun with yummy sauce and fixins'. Enjoy!

The breakdown from our first time

1. This was delicious. The rub was good, the technique was good. Our guests, Anand & Swathi, though it was yummy.
2. Shane thought that the 3.5 hours was a little too long, he would do 3 hours next time. He thought the breast meat wasn't moist enough, but I didn't notice.
3. We put all four halves of the chicken on the top rack, weaving them together so the drippings would land in the bowl.
4. I think putting beer in the bowl would have been good too.

Chuck Roast #1

I bought a couple of chuck roasts on sale, and I used one in the crock pot. The other I was about to cook, then decided we should smoke it.

Another rub from the internet that I tweaked:
1 t salt
1 t ground black pepper
1 t garlic powder
1/2 t dried basil
1 t paprika

The salt was pretty noticeable on my first taste, and the basil played a fabulous quiet background role. My second bite, from an inside piece, was heaven.

Picture forthcoming.

What I did wrong:

• Failed to research how long a thick roast takes. One site suggests three phases of cooking that ranged from 2-5 hours. I guess starting at 5 pm is a bad idea. It ended up taking just under 5 hours the way we did it.

What I did right:

• We used wood chips in with the charcoal. This tip was from Shane's colleague.
• We used the charcoal that lights easy to start the heat, then added on regular charcoal
• The rub was good!
• Ordered pizza when it started to take too long

When we first got the smoker I was looking at rubs to purchase, but at this moment I have strong faith in the recipes I'm finding online that use ingredients that I generally have in my pantry. I'm extremely pleased with this.

Smoking Ribs #1

The Publix butcher helped me pick out pork spare ribs that I covered with a pork rub recipe that I tweaked.













The recipe I ended up with:

1/4 C light brown sugar
3 T paprika
2 T ground black pepper
1 T onion powder
1/2 T celery seed
1/2 T sea salt
2 t garlic powder
2 t mustard powder
1 t cumin
1 t ground red pepper

I used about half of it on the ribs I picked up.

What I did right:

• The rub was awesome
• The ribs were delicious!

What I did wrong:

• Didn't use enough charcoal
• Used charcoal with the lighter fluid on them
• Didn't add charcoal throughout

I didn't take a final picture, you'll have to trust me on how good they looked and tasted.

11/6 Baked Potato Bread YAY!!

Results
Delicious! The potato flavor is good, although it likely needs more bacon bits. Shane liked it.

The whole loaf, the perfect size.

The slices before they were devoured.

Recipe
from Electric Bread, Baked Potato (Extra Large)
3 t active dry yeast
1/4 C chives (I left them out, Shane doesn't like onions)
1/4 C instant potato flakes
2 t salt
2 T sugar
4 C white bread flour
1/4 C bacon bits
1/2 sour cream
1 C milk

Rambling
This is an incredibly dense dough. The bread machine was working really really hard to knead the first time around. Because of this, I ended up stopping it right before the loaf started baking, and ran it through the cycle again. This is not a loaf that I would make casually, I would need a compelling reason to make it again.