• The Manhattan [food] Project: Meditations on smoked pork.
• Color Me Pink: Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato Salad with Sriracha Dressing
• Southern Bite: Loaded Bacon Popcorn
• Chewing The Fat: Milky Way Tart
• Home Sweet and Savory: Grilled Fish with Smoked Paprika
• Grilling 24 X 7: Homemade Spicy Cornbread Muffins
• Teczape – an escape to food: Noodles with Jalapeno, Fried Shallots, Green Onions
• Amateur Gourmet:  Chicken Fat Fried Potatoes
• Adora’s Box: Chargrilled Pork On Rice Noodle Soup
• Kitchen Confidante:  Filipino Beef Nilaga

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• Delishhh: Rustic Peach Tart
• The Heritage Cook:  Grilled Chipotle Fish Tacos
• The Steaming Pot: How To Make Roasted Cumin Powder
• Manu’s Menu: Salmon With Pomegranate Molasses Glaze
• Cookin’ For My Captain:  Grilled Stuffed Pork Loin
• The Saucy Gourmet: Herb-Brine Orange Roast Chicken
• Feast On The Cheap: Creme Brulee with Candied Peaches
• Diva Q: Oh My Flip What A Night
• Ulika BBQ:  Shrimp Creole
• BBQ.About.Com: Best Odds Pulled Pork

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• Brown Eyed Baker: Bread and Butter Pickles
• Savor The Senses: Grilled Eggplant & Bok Chou with Korean BBQ Sauce
• Taste With The Eyes: Miso Yaki Onigiri
• Frugal Antics of a Harried Homemaker: Thai Shrimp With Noodles
• Cuts: Recipes for Every Day: Garlic Parm Pull-Apart Bread
• Scott Roberts: St. Louis Wing Ding
• Jane Deere: Sriracha Thai Chili Powder
• Grilling 24 x 7: Garlic Basil Pork Burgers
• Cinnamon Spice & Everything Nice: Pork Tenderloin with Maple Mustard Sauce
• Jason’s BBQ Adventures: Tequila-Lime Shrimp Tacos

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If you’ve read this blog for very long you know that good reviews of BBQ restaurants are few and far between.  As an official “BBQ Snob” I just don’t come across restaurants that warrant praise very often.  This weekend I’m in Des Moines, Iowa for the 14th Annual Niman Ranch Hog Farmer Appreciation Dinner and tonight I had the good fortune to eat at a wonderful BBQ restaurant.  Smokey D’s…

Smokey D’s has everything a good BBQ restaurant should have.  You can smell the wonderful sweet aroma of good BBQ from a block away and you can smell the wood smoke in the parking lot AND the restaurant smells like BBQ.  Everyone that knows good BBQ knows you can tell you’re going to have at least a decent dining experience before you’ve left the parking lot.

Smokey D’s has everything a good BBQ establishment should have.  Great food, a good vibe and fantastic  customer service.  It’s Thursday night and the restaurant was very, very busy.  Darren Warth, one of the owners, said it was a little slow.  This is a good sign…a packed restaurant and it’s a slow night.

I ordered the two meat dinner combo with brisket, chopped pork, mac & cheese and beans.  By the time I filled my drink cup and sat down our food was making its way to the table.  Super fast service is not always a plus in my book.  This often times means the food is sitting under heat lamps or drowning in sauce in warming pans.  It was obvious when the food arrived this was not the case.  Sauce on the side and everything freshly cut and plated.  BBQ perfection so far…

 The Food…

First and most importantly the meat was served with sauce on the side.  This is always a good sign.  When a restaurant serves it’s meats without sauce I’m always happier.  In my mind this means they aren’t trying to hide something.

The chopped pork was flavorful with little pieces of bark mixed in.  It wasn’t soggy or over cooked.  It was very good.  The brisket was good.  Nice beautiful smoke ring with just a hint of smoke (more on that later).  I prefer my brisket a little “juicier” than it’s served at Smokey D’s.  I don’t mean the brisket was dry, it wasn’t, I just like to get some of the fat cap on my brisket.  Smokey D’s serves it with almost all the fat trimmed off.  It’s not bad this way, in fact, most people probably prefer it without the fat, I just like the fat.

You can tell a lot about a BBQ restaurant by the sides they serve.  I ordered the beans and mac & cheese.  Both were excellent.  The beans weren’t cooked to mush and had great flavor.  The mac & cheese was awesome.  I loved it.  There was a little spice to it.  Not really a “heat” spice, but it did tickle the tongue on the way down.  Darren shared with me the pepper that’s in it and I can’t wait to give it a try at home.  (Since I didn’t ask if it was a “secret” I won’t share it just in case it is)

Now for some BBQ Restaurant Review hyperbole!

The cornbread is like crack.  I could sit down at Smokey D’s and eat just this stuff.  It is without a doubt the best cornbread I have ever eaten.  It’s just cornbread.  No peppers, no pieces of corn…just cornbread.   The cornbread does have a little sweet crunch on the top, but that’s just sugar sprinkled on the batter before baking.  Darren said they have their own pastry chef in-house.  Whoever this person is  should win the Nobel Cornbread Award!

And I ate a whole peach pie!  Well not really.  They don’t have peach pie at Smokey D’s, but they do have these amazing Peach Sliders.  And they tasted great too.

The restaurant is full of BBQ Championship trophys.  The gang at Smokey D’s don’t just run a first class BBQ restaurant they are amazing competition BBQ cooks.  And winning the Grand Prize on the 2nd Season of BBQ Pitmasters is proof enough these folks know their BBQ.

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• Ezra Pound Cake:  Squash Puppies with Roasted Jalapeno Mayonnaise
• Bo’s Bowl: Monte Cubano
• Cooking By Seat Of My Pants:  Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Bacon
• Ang Sarap:  Grilled Pork ala Pobre
• Culinary Cory:  Grilled Steak House Pizza with Chunky Blue Cheese Dressing
• Pork, Knife & Spoon:  Italian Sausage with Pepper Sandwiches
• Sunshine & Smile: Zucchini: Zucchini & Avocado Cold Soup with Crispy Sticks
• Burnin’ Love BBQ:  National Chicken Wing Day
• AlbuKirky BBQ: Pizza on the Big Green Egg
• I Hope You Are Hungry:  Carolina Style Pulled Pork n’ Slaw

*If you visit in any of these great blogs would you leave a comment you read about them on The BBQ Grail?

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The “Hog Heaven”is labeled as competition rub.  Don’t let that designation scare you off.  If you get a chance to try them I think you’ll be happy…even if you’re just cooking in your backyard.  Just an added note to all rub makers:  Drop the “competition” label off your packaging if you want to sell to the wider backyarder market.  It’s just a guess, but I think you’re losing market share with the competition designation.  Lot’s of people win with “non competition” rubs.

The first thing you’ll notice, about “Hog Heaven”, is that for a rub it’s loaded with much more herbs than I normally expect to see in this type of rub.  I love the herbal flavors mixed with the more tradition rub ingredients.  One thing to remember when using this rub!  It comes packaged in a mylar bag type of package (which I prefer) but you’ve got to mix the rub up.  The herbs have a tendency to settle at the top of the package and if you don’t mix them up you’ll get a load of herbs without the other ingredients.  This shouldn’t be much a problem because you should always shake and/or mix your rubs before applying anyway.

I try to test most of the rubs I receive on pork ribs, this gives me a good basis for comparison between the various rubs.  So first up was “Hog Heaven” and since it’s called a rib rub I figured there wasn’t much sense in changing my normal pattern.  I gave a couple racks of pork ribs, trimmed to St. Louis cut a good dose of the rub.

You’ll notice in the picture the nice layer of herbs mixed with the other rub ingredients.  In the end this will give you a nice flavor to your ribs.  Although I did lightly sauce the ribs I think they would be perfectly good with no sauce at all.  I’d give them a try naked to see how you like them before saucing.  And I think a sauce less on the sweet side would match this rub very well.

I also tried “Hog Heaven” on some grilled chicken.  And I let me tell you!  This is an outstanding rub for chicken.  I didn’t smoke the chicken, which would be the more traditional way with a rub.  I grilled it instead.  No sauce…just rub and some heat.  It was fantastic.  I think I actually prefer this on chicken.  And I can already tell, even though I didn’t try it, that it would compliment fish too.

If you are using this rub on any meat and planning to use a direct heat cooking method make sure you monitor your heat.  Different ingredients in different rubs and seasonings burn at different temperatures.  The herbs in this rub will burn quicker than most rub ingredients (because they’re herbs) so just watch you food and keep the temperature in a moderate range and you’ll be just fine.

The “Raging Bull” beef rub is closer to a traditional rub than the “Hog Heaven,” but it has some different flavor profiles than most beef rubs out there.  One main ingredient, which I’m not going to share, is used in some great steak recipes in some of the best steak houses, so you aren’t going to go wrong.  But be warned it isn’t want you might expect.  If you look at the rub to the right you might be able to pick out some of the ingredients that are a little different.

I don’t know for sure what Steve had in mind for this rub, probably brisket, but I used a chuck roast for my test run.  And it worked fantastic.  Nice bark and more importantly a very nice flavor that just made the beef flavor in the roast jump.  I really like this rub.  It will go on my list of rubs I purchase.

Above you can see the rub when it was first applied to the chuck roast (Left) and then after a couple hours in the smoke(right).  The bark started to form almost immediately.  What was fantastic about this was the flavor of the bark really added to the overall flavor of the meat after I pulled it.

We used the pulled beef in some very nice tacos. (which I forgot to take pictures of).

You can purchase both these rubs from Great Lakes BBQ Supply and I suggest you do.

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Pig Candy is very simply made by smoking bacon after it’s been coated in a mixture of brown sugar.  Sometimes the brown sugar contains a little chili powder for an added kick at the end.

Normally I like to use thick cut bacon for Pig Candy.  It makes for a much chewier and tasty treat.  This time though I got used Burger’s Bacon Steaks.  The slices of bacon from Burger’s Smokehouse are just thick cut they are thickerer cut.  The slices are 1/4 inch.

To give you some idea of how thick this bacon is there are only 8 slices per pound.  Regular slices bacon is usually about 15 slices per pound and thick cut bacon is about 10 slices per pound.

I had the bright idea of using wooden skewers  so the Pig Candy could be eaten like “state fair” food.  I mean what’s more “state fair” food like than bacon on a stick?  However, brown sugar melts real nice and coats the bacon real nice but it also glued the bacon to the stick so it didn’t come off the stick like I hoped.  Not going to try that technique again.

As I was pulling the Pig Candy off the smoker I noticed Mrs. Grail was melting dark chocolate for some dessert she was making so I borrowed a little and drizzled the Pig Candy with the chocolate.  Chocolate and salt goes together and the dark chocolate added a nice touch to the Pig Candy.

The next time you’ve got some spare space on your smoker lay some bacon on the grate and cover it with brown sugar.  Smoke the bacon until the sugar is melted and turn the bacon over, cover with brown sugar and smoke until it just starts to get crisp.  Remove from smoker and let it cool.  You’ll have some the tastiest pork you’ve ever cooked.

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Rolled and ready for the grill

I remember the first time I ever laid my eyes on a porchetta.  I had stopped at the Fatted Calf in Napa for some sausages and there in the case of this beautiful piece of meat art.  What exactly is porchetta?

According to Wikipedia a Porchetta is a savory, fatty, and moist boneless pork roast of Italian culinary tradition. The body of the pig is gutted, de-boned, arranged carefully with layers of stuffing, meat, fat, and skin, then rolled, spitted, and roasted, traditionally over wood. Porchetta is usually heavily salted in addition to being stuffed with garlic, rosemary, fennel, or other herbs, often wild.

You aren’t likely to see a traditional porchetta very often in your local meat market.  What you’ll normally find is a butterflied pork loin rolled with the veggies and then wrapped in a pork belly with the skin side out.  Cooking it this way will give you a fatty and tasteful piece of pork with a crispy skin covering.  It’s just heaven on a plate.  Anyway, I digress…

After about an hour on the kettle

Ever since that day in Napa I knew that one day I would have to try cooking a porchetta at home.  My goal, as I’ve mentioned before, for the BBQ Grail Blog in 2011 is to try and incorporate Asian flavors into traditional American BBQ/Grilling.  So I decided a month or so ago to to combine my goal with my desire to cook porchetta.  I’ve spent a lot of time researching flavors and ingredients.  This is my first take on an Asian Porchetta.

(DISCLAIMER: This is the first take on an original BBQ Grail recipe.  Although the flavors were good but there is plenty of room for improvement.  Try these at your own risk.  I would very much appreciate any feedback or positive suggestions would be greatly appreciated.)

I started with some some grass fed pork bellies from the local farmer’s market that I had ordered a week ago or so.  When they arrived they were labeled as “side meat,” which is another name for belly.  The cuts I got were very slim and lean and the skin had been removed.  It wasn’t exactly what I wanted but I gave them a go any way.

About 90 minutes in with the first basting of glaze.

I brined the bellies overnight in the Asian Ginger Brine.  In tasting the brine, before the bellies went in, I had the impression that I probably should only brine for four hours.  But it was late so I put them in.  In hindsight because of how thin the meat was the eight hours in the brine was too much.  I probably would have been dead on with a brine of four hours.  The brine has multiple flavors going on and it was just to strong for this cut of meat.  With a traditional pork belly or pork loin overnight would have been fine.  Next time, and there will be a next time, I’ll butterfly a pork loin and use that.

My plan was to use carrots, jicama, bok choy, asparagus and leeks. Due to the thin cuts of belly I didn’t have enough meat surface to use more than the asparagus, bok choy leaves, and leeks.    Next time I’ll make sure I have enough area to get more vegetables in the roll.  The asparagus was par-cooked a couple of minutes to make sure it would be done completely when the porchetta was done.  Leaving the asparagus out in order to get more of the other vegetables in the roll would also be a good idea.

My first thought was to use a smoker to cook the porchetta, but after some pondering I decided the smoke would be too much.  I wasn’t sure how the smoke flavor would fuse with all the combinations of flavors in the brine and glaze.  Instead I decided to use my 26″ Weber kettle set up for indirect heat.  No wood, just charcoal.  It worked great.  This is probably the only step I know I’ll keep.  The glaze has lots of sugar in it, so wait until the last 30 minutes or so to start basting so the sugars don’t burn.

One of the challenges is making sure the porchetta is cooked to the proper temperature.  I like to cook pork loins to 145 degrees, wrap in foil and then rest for 20 minutes.  Because of the rolling of the thin cuts of meat taking an internal temp is difficult.  Make sure you use a good instant read thermometer and check the temp in a couple of locations.  Making sure the juices run clear is another good way to tell if your meat is done.

After resting, slice the meat and plate.  I used baby red potatoes roasted in the oven.  Ladle the brother around the potatoes and serve immediately.

Asian Ginger Brine

A great deal of detail was paid to the brine recipe.  A proper brine ratio of water to salt is important.  I listed the ingredient brands for the brine because I calculated the amount of sodium in each so that I kept the proper ratio of salt to water.  If you use different ingredients you will want to pay close attention to the amount of sodium in each to maintain the correct ration.

Ingredients:

• 2 quarts water
• 1/4  cup turbinado
• 1/4 cup mirin
• ¼ cup Ohsawa Tamari Soy Sauce
• 3 tablespoons, Morton Kosher Salt
• 1/2 cup Red Boat Fish Sauce
• 1/8  cup szechuan peppercorns
• ¼ cup fresh ginger, peeled and minced
• 2 star anise pod, whole
• 2 tablespoons Shichimi Togarashi

Directions:

Heat water, sugar, tamari, mirin and salt to a boil in a saucepan over medium high heat to a boil.  Stir occasionally to dissolve.  When dissolved add peppercorns, ginger, star anise and togarashi.

Decrease heat and simmer for 20 minutes to blend all ingredients.  Remove from heat.  Cool to room temperature, then refrigerate before using.

Asian Pork Miso Broth

Ingredients:

• 2 pounds pork bones (I used a couple pounds of pork rib trimmings)
• 1 medium white onion, sliced
• 4 cloves garlic, whole
• 2 inch section of ginger, cut into slices
• 1 inch section of ginger, skinned and large diced
• 1 stalk of leek, sliced
• 1/4 cup miso
• Oil for frying
• water

Directions:

Place the pork bones in a large pot and cover with water.  Bring pot to a boil and cook for five minutes.   While the water comes to a boil saute the onion, leeks and garlic in oil.  Make sure you cook the veggies and get a nice dark caramelization on them.  This is important for a deep rich flavor.  When the pork has boil for five minutes, drain the water, rinse the meat and clean the pot.  Return pork bones to the pot and cover with water.  Add the cooked veggies and the sliced ginger.  Bring the whole mixture to a boil, reduce heat and cover.  Simmer for 5 or 6 hours.  Remove any foam that appears and add water to keep everything covered.

After cooking, strain off all the bones, fat and veggies using a fine mesh strainer and cheese cloth.  Chill overnight.  The next day remove any fat that forms on the top.  Return to the stove and gently reheat the broth adding whole piece of ginger and 1/3 cup miso.  Once you add the miso do not allow the broth to boil.  Let the broth simmer for an hour.  Remove the ginger and strain once more.  It’s ready to serve.

BBQ Grail Miso Glaze

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup Mirin
• 1/2 cup Blood Orange juice
• 1/2 cup Soy Sauce ( I used Oshawa)
• 1/2 cup Hoisin sauce
• 1/2 cup Asian Pork Broth
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/4 cup Rice Wine Vinegar
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Combine all ingredients in a sauce pan.  Heat gently and reduce to a thicker syrup like consistency.

(NOTE: Thanks to Dining Details for some of the inspiration for Miso Glaze.)

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I watch a lot of cooking shows on television.  Whenever you watch a cooking show the on air personality will always taste their creations and exclaim to the tv audience how wonderful it is.  Do you ever wonder if they cook anything that just doesn’t taste good?  I’m not talking about something that isn’t perfect.  I’m talking about spit it out, unable to swallow bad.  It’s hard to imagine Giada, Rachel, Paula or Bobby Flay taking a bite, looking into the camera and saying.  “Dang, this really stinks.”  Just doesn’t happen.

One of my favorite shows is “The Best Thing I Ever Ate.”  I’ve gotten a lot of great cooking inspirations from this show.  Today I write about the opposite of “The Best Thing I Ever Ate.”  Tonight I write about “The Worst Thing I Ever Cooked.”  Scan the internet, not to many “foodies” will admit that they screwed up when cooking.  I know my buddies at “No Excuses BBQ” and “Brew and Que” have written about cooking disasters.  And my hat is off to them.  But for the most part only successes make into print.  This is not one of those cases.  This is a blog post about some pretty bad food.

This weeks throwdown on the BBQ Brethren is about Scovilles, that crazy heat measurement for telling how hot a pepper is.  I like heat, but I’m not a chili head.  I don’t like heat for heat sake.  I want flavor first and foremost.  I got the brilliant idea to to combine habaneros and a smoked pork mousse with sharp Irish cheddar cheese. 

On the surface it’s not all that crazy of an idea.  There are lots and lots of Pork Mousse recipes on the internet.  It’s actually something that appears to be popular in some circles of cooking.   Most often when I think of mousse I think of chocolate and it’s a desert.  But it can be an entree if done correctly.  So I set out to come up with what I figured would be a nice tasty pork mouse.

I bought a couple of thin pork loin chops and seasoned them with a little bit of “Simply Marvelous” Cherry rub.  I figured this would give me a little sweet with a nice mild cherry flavor.  I used maybe a tablespoon between all four chops.

The chops then went on the smoker at 225 degrees with cherry wood.  The goal here was to have a common flavor from start to finish.  I’ve been thinking about how I was going to do this for several days.  So I was fairly confident I was going to have some good flavor combinations here.   I learned a long time ago that just pulling stuff out of the pantry and tossing them together was a recipe for disaster.  So I did some thinking…

After smoking the chops I cooled them and put them in the refrigerator overnight.  The next day I chopped up the chops and put them into the food processor with a teaspoon of rub and some heavy cream.  Because the pork loins were so thin they were done before they had a chance to absorb much smoke flavor so I used a tablespoon of “Show Me” BBQ sauce.  This sauce has a good dose of liquid smoke in it and I knew it would give me the smoke flavor I was looking for.

Once I had the consistency I needed I put the mousse into a zip lock bag, cut the corner off.  This allowed me to pipe the mousse into the habanero halves that I had removed the seeds and veins from.  The color of the mousse wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but it wasn’t too bad.  I wasn’t all that thrilled with the flavor of the mousse.  Normally thought I have found that some rubs and sauces don’t taste all that great when you just taste them without cooking so I figured I’d just wait and see.

I’ve fallen in love with Irish Cheddar cheese.  It’s got a great sharp, nutty flavor that I just knew would go with the cherry in the rub and the wood smoke.   It also looks nice when it’s melted.

After topping the mousse with the cheese I popped them into the oven and baked them at 325 degrees for about 15 minutes.  This cooked the mousse and melted the cheese to give me a nice looking appetizer. 

After allowing them to cool a couple of minutes I grabbed one and tossed it into my mouth.  I got about three chews before I realized that this was just horrible.  It may have actually been The Worst Thing I Ever cooked.    The flavor was just so bad.  Individually the flavors seemed to be a good match, but when you put them together with the habanero it just made for a concoction that was just so bad I had to spit it out.

This made the whole Shankopotomus fiasco seem like a walk in the park.  So Giada, Rachel, Alton and Bobby, what’s The Worst Thing You Ever Cooked?”