Show Us Your Meat, and We'll Show You Ours

[Sully]

Also, do you think I'd really be dissatisfied with propane? I mean, I'm currently smoking on a 4 burner propane grill and I get some pretty good reviews on my smoked chicken thighs

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

[Sully]

So pulled the trigger on that pellet grill. For $20 less than the propane smoker I was guna buy, figured I'd give it a shot. I'm sure it's not as fancy as the top tier ones but it looks like it's built pretty decent. I'm a little confused by the smoke setting though. Manual says(can be adjusted) that the smoke setting is around 160-180 degrees. So is it not really giving a good dose of smoke at 225 were you cook most things? I mean when I smoke on the grill, it smokes at the 225. I've read that the meat doesn't really get anymore of the smoke once it's gets to a certain temp but I always cook at 220-240. When I go to cook on this, do I use the smoke setting first? Do I just get it warmed up on that and then just run at 225 and it'll cook and smoke like normal? The manual doesn't have much depth so I guess I'll try Google of no one can help here. Idk if anyone else has a pellet grill besides evan

[Sully]

Also, do you not use a water tray in a pellet grill? Reading seems to point towards mopping or spraying the meat.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

[SlimKlim]

Beef+Pork sounds kinda weird to me. :dunno:

I had a 1/2 Pork 1/2 Beef Bacon Cheeseburger last night. I was wrong. That is all.

[JPolen01]

What do you mean by pork? Half ground bacon half ground beef burgers are phenomenal.

[SlimKlim]

I mean it was a burger that was 1/2 ground pork and 1/2 ground beef with bacon on top.

[davej]

You should hit up Cuban burger next time you're in town.

[Evan]

Manual says(can be adjusted) that the smoke setting is around 160-180 degrees. So is it not really giving a good dose of smoke at 225 were you cook most things? I mean when I smoke on the grill, it smokes at the 225. I've read that the meat doesn't really get anymore of the smoke once it's gets to a certain temp but I always cook at 220-240. When I go to cook on this, do I use the smoke setting first? Do I just get it warmed up on that and then just run at 225 and it'll cook and smoke like normal? The manual doesn't have much depth so I guess I'll try Google of no one can help here. Idk if anyone else has a pellet grill besides evan

lower the temp, the more the smoke. the smoke settings on the grill use a timer to maximize pellet smoldering/smoke instead of the temp probe feedback loop. so its a little tougher to get the temps to stabilize, I cover the grill with a welding blanket to keep the heat in and shoot for about 200 degrees.
I smoke for 4-8 hours (usually overnight) then finish it off indoors in the oven (makes the house smell great!) since like you said the meats not taking any more smoke.

you can go straight temp controlled 225 and there will still be good smoke. maybe not quite as much on smoke setting but it will still be good.

Also, do you not use a water tray in a pellet grill? Reading seems to point towards mopping or spraying the meat.

the legacy of the water pan came from using it for buffering temperature spikes in an offset stick burner. it doesnt moisten the meat any more than you get hydrated by taking a shower and too much steam means youre boiling the meat. i leave it out but others swear by it so :dunno:
i mist lightly with cold water a couple times in the first hour or two just because wet meat takes more smoke.

[Sully]

Yea the smoke setting on this is pretty much useless. It gives a ton of smoke ad it's warming up but Temps will climb into the 300s if left on the smoke setting. There's an adjustment but I haven't felt like messing with it. Maybe it's the pellets I'm using but I've kind of gotten used to it just not be very good and using it just to start the grill. It also isn't that accurate. Temps will fluctuate 30-50 degrees and it'll "run away" real quick after starting it if you're not careful. Takes forever for it to go back down. I keep my maverick probe on the cooking grate to keep a better eye plus it let's me see what's going on while I'm in the house. For what I paid, I can't really complain. I'm still learning and haven't quite mastered ribs yet or crispy chicken skin like I used to get on the grill but feel like I'm getting decent flavor out of it for now

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

[Evan]

do you have P values on your smoke setting? its what tweaks the temp on the smoke setting. Im usually at P0 or P1. Any higher and like you describe the temp gets too high. (depending on ambient temp)

either way even if you stick to teh temp controlled you will still get a good smoke.

[Sully]

Yea. I think it's at p4 or something. I messed with it once but decided to just set it at the temperature the manual said the smoke setting was supposed to be at. It warned about going lower with the p value to but judging by the temp it gets, I don't think I'd have to worry about going lower

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

[SlimKlim]

PSA for you Meat Lovers. Some restaurant supply outlets are open to the general public and you get pro-quality stuff for ridiculous prices. I just checked one out in Sterling and I got one 8" chef's knife and a 3.5" pairing knife for $22. I'm definitely going to be doing all of my kitchen hardware shopping there from now on.

[.RJ]

Whats it called?

[SlimKlim]

Officially it's "Sterling Restaurant Supply (SRS) Outlet Store" lol, has a little bit of a 'Department of Redundancy Department" ring to it.

If you get off Rt 28 onto Sterling Blvd heading east, then turn right on Davis Dr, its the second building on the right, on the corner of Davis Dr and Carpenter Dr. Really generic looking warehouse with just a blue "Fortessa" sign on one side, and the customer entrance is around to the right. It's only open 10-5 M-F and from 10-3 the first Saturday of the month.

The girl working there said they do sales once a month and put me on the email list. They've got a nice looking 20-pc knife set including the block for $125, if I like the ones I just bought I'm going back for that when they have a sale. And maybe a dutch oven. And a big stock pot. And some new skillets. And a good set of tongs...

[WRXtranceformed]

And maybe a dutch oven.

[CaptainHenreh]

So wife sends me a text. Grocery store has a 10 pound brisket half off. I tell her to buy it. Never done a brisket before, and the cost has always given me pause. I mean 60 dollars for a bigass piece of meat and fat is a lot of change to drop on an experiment.

But half that? Ok fine let's do this.

First I started here:



10 pounds of beef. Decided to kick it all off with a week's brining. 8L of water, 500g of salt, 500g of brown sugar. I trimmed some of the fat, gave the meat a cross hatch score, and shoved it all into my polycarbonate container. It was almost too much meat to fit (twss) but I jammed it in there good (twss). This hung out in the fridge looking like a prop out of a budget sci-fi flick. I think of everything, this worried me the most. A week is a long time, and I was afraid that some kind of bacteria or something would spoil my meat (even though that high-saline environment shouldn't permit such critters to live.)

Removed from the brine, it looked like this:


But it smelled really good actually. Like, you know, raw meat. I patted it dry and slathered it in some BBQ rub. Normally I make my own, easier to keep the sneaky gluten proteins out that way, but I hadn't really prepared for this, so I used an off the shelf rub. Judge me later. Properly rubbed down, I slung it in a vaccum bag and went to go cook it.

Goal was a minimum of 24 hours at 155 degrees F. That should give me a tender, fork-cuttable, but still coherent piece of meat. My normal sous vide vessel simply wasn't big enough for the brisket, so I had to use a cooler. That, however, forced me to leave the lid open and over the next 30 hours I lost a LOT of water to evaporation, about 4 liters over the total cooking time. I checked it and topped off the cooler about every 4 hours. Once cooking was finished (and I'd come back from being sunburnt and jumping off waterfalls) I pulled it out of the cooler. There was a large amount of rendered fat and fluid in the bag, so I nicked a corner of the bag and drained all that off, filling almost a gallon size freezer bag. I reserved about 1/4 of that for the glaze, and froze the rest. Might be good for thinning chili this winter. Then I pulled my slab of meat from the bag:


It was probably good enough to consume here, and if you were doing like, a pastrami or something I suspect this is where you'd want it. But I was doing BBQ. So using that 1/4 of reserved "juice" from the bag, I added a bunch of molasses, gave it a quick cook, and spread it over both sides of the brisket, following up with more rub. I did this twice, then put it in the oven for 2 hours at 275 degrees. Then I pulled it:


Yeah man. Looks perfect. You wouldn't know it hadn't come out of a smoker, tbh.

At least, not until you cut it open:


No smoke ring. You can get the same effect with curing salts, but it's (IMHO) purely cosmetic, and nitrates do increase your risk of intestinal cancer, so my wife tries to stay away from them if possible. Still, it was tender and very juicy, but I was still able to cut discrete slices, it didn't fall apart on me.



"Rex who gives a shit how good it looks, how's it TASTE?"

It tastes :thumbup: . Biggest "down" is that there's no smoke flavor. Smoke is a prereq for smoke flavor and I didn't have any. I could probably have used liquid smoke but wtf is that shit, and what I likely could have done is instead of finishing it in the oven for the "bark", was finished it on a charcoal grill with some wood chips. That would have likely imparted enough smokiness to be pleasant, but not overpower the flavor of the beef.

But the beef flavor is there, and how. The fat is delicious, maybe my favorite part of the whole gd thing, but the meat has a great texture and flavor also. It will stretch but not break held vertical, but basically melts into beefcandy when it hits your mouth (twss).

Anyway. 10/10, would do almost no work to have this again.

[ScottyB]

beefcandy

all the cliffs you need to know. and i'm stealing this for use in my cooking vernacular from now on :thumbup:

[Sully]

Whole brisket? Point? Flat? I pellet grilled a flat recently and severely over cooked it. Super disappointing but like you, I was always afraid to buy it cause of price and risk that I'd fuck it up. But I hear the point is where it's at.

Some aluminum foil over the top does a good bit to stop evaporation for next time. Or just adding water works too.

I use liquid smoke when I sous vide sometimes. After all its just the collected and condensed vapor from smoke and evaporating water. Same as what gets on your meat when you smoke as far as I understand. It works ok to give you a little smoke flavor.

Bravo on the cook though. I did a rack of ribs for 32 hours once (wasn't too impressed) and a chuck roast at maybe 36 and that was better but kinda weird (I kinda cooked it in a bag filled with water trying to emulate one of the gf family recipes where you essentially boil the shit out of the roast rendering it super try and I for one could not stand for such blasphemy)

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

[Apoc]

That doesn't look like it had much of the fat cap in tact. I don't know why butchers cut so much of it off these days... well, I do, but it's a damn shame. I had to special order a brisket last year with as much of the fat cap on it as possible. It was like $75, but I was lucky enough to have a friend with a Big Green Egg that grew up in Texas to cook it for us. I'm pretty sure I don't have the patience for this sort of thing.

Why don't we have video of it being cut??

[CaptainHenreh]

That doesn't look like it had much of the fat cap in tact. I don't know why butchers cut so much of it off these days... well, I do, but it's a damn shame. I had to special order a brisket last year with as much of the fat cap on it as possible. It was like $75, but I was lucky enough to have a friend with a Big Green Egg that grew up in Texas to cook it for us. I'm pretty sure I don't have the patience for this sort of thing.

Why don't we have video of it being cut??

I dunno, there was a decent amount, but yeah, it wasn't a huge amount. I trimmed a little just for consistency, but left it mostly alone.

And I didn't get a video because :dunno: