The BBQ Grail

Favorite sandwich: Pastrami with jalapeno pepper jack cheese.

Favorite bbq appetizer: ABTs (Atomic Buffalo Turds)

I was sitting around last week trying to come up with a new appetizer for a church dinner next weekend when I had the thought of combining a pastrami and pepper jack cheese sammie with an ABT. This is what I came up with!

Started with some fresh jalapenos that I halfed, cored and removed membranes and seeds. I soaked the peppers in Sprite over night. I had heard that soaking them in Sprite would remove some of the heat and leave the flavor.

(The Sprite soak worked just as advertised. And the by product is a super spicy hot Sprite that can be used as a spritz on something else. Probably Super Bowl ribs)

Each half of pepper received a hunk of plain pepper jack cheese. I then took a partially froze, raw corned beef brisket flat and sliced it thin. Like bacon! The pastrami slices got a good hour long soak in cold water to remove excess salt. Each pepper and cheese combo was wrapped in a pastrami slice or two and sprinkled with a pepper blend.

They got a two hour smoke at 250 degrees with hickory wood. They came out amazing! It’s a winner for sure. I’ll be making these for all my bbq parties from now on.

One change for the future. Next time I’ll pre-smoke or roast the peppers a little. Because the pastrami is so lean it won’t take cooking long enough to get the peppers all the way done. If I’d cooked them until the peppers were soft the pastrami would have been jerky.

I’m not sure if my new PBTs helps me find that bbq grail but it sure makes the journey more enjoyable!

Just to give credit I originally saw this on the Serious Eats blog. But it’s to good, and true, to not post.

Lee Roy Selmon, defensive lineman for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, may have been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame but his restaurant in Tampa, Florida won’t ever be confused with hall of fame bbq. As far as bbq is concerned tonight’s dinner was strictly Pop Warner.

The BBQ was as ordinary as ordinary commercial bbq can get. The pork ribs were your normal fall of the bone mush one comes to expect from a chain restaurant. The pulled pork had a little bark but lacked any real rub or smoke flavor. The chicken was just dry old banquet quality chicken. The sauces was served already coating everything and lacked any originality. Might as well have been off the shelf, grocery story bottled sauce.

The wait staff lacked any personality that might have made the evening at least somewhat interesting. When one of the waitresses spilled a drink on our table they made some token effort to clean it up. When we tried to mop up the mess with our cloth napkins a bus boy was nice enough to drop off a stack of terry cloth towels with the advice that “these should work better for you.”

Since Lee Roy Selmon’s bills itself as a sort of sports bar it should have been a clue that it wasn’t going to be all that good when the place was half empty on the night of the BCS Championship game.

All and all this was not an All-American effort.