Lets talk of BBQ...grilling and what not.

;_;

I overcooked a rack of ribs on my grill earlier this year and realized I need to get a smoker or leave it to the pros. Problem is, there aren't any pros around here.

Anybody here with smoker advice/recommendations re: charcoal vs. electric?

covid-related ennui finally got me to do the right thing and retire my gas grill in favor of a humble weber kettle and a bag of lump charcoal. two cooks in and my life is immeasurably better.

Nice! I've been using mine a lot lately. Recently bought a baby Weber for camping. Highly recommended.

Bought a bag of lump mesquite and some of the pieces are so small the fall through the bottom of the chimney starter when I lift it up to dump the lit charcoal. Not cool.

i'm totally new to this and both the small and huge pieces in the bag are very disruptive to filling up a nice even chimney!

Totally. I may go back to briquettes. All natural ones obv, not Kingsford and its ilk. AFAIK there's not any questionable stuff in something like Royal Oak briquettes?? They also burn longer and it's easier to create zones with them. The lump was flaring up a lot too.

Royal Oak website says just wood and vegetable starch in their briquettes

What have you grilled?

As you work your way through the bag the pieces get smaller, so I recommend buying a second bag so you get more big pieces to work with.

first cook was a nice dry-aged ny strip and some local baby carrots, pretty straightforward. tonight i cooked a pork tenderloin where i did a wet brine for an hour and then a spice rub, seared it over direct heat and finished indirect. had some hardwood chunks in there too. it came out really tender and smoky, so much fun to cook.

Briquettes are really needed for smoking ribs or other long, slow items. Lump charcoal burns hotter (but shorter) so is better for steaks and other high heat applications.

Brave to do a dry aged steak for 1st attempt! I'd be so worried I'd ruin a pricey piece of meat. Do you have a meat thermometer or just rely on poke test?

i have a thermapen and a decent feel for cooking protein. the beautiful thing about the two-zone fire is you can always pull the steak to the cool side if in doubt.

xp re: briquettes, i'll pick up a bag of natural briquettes soon. have you smoked ribs on a kettle? it seems great except that it sounds like it may take a double-digit amount of hours.

One of my go-tos has always been flank steak tacos (marinated in mojo criollo) but this past weekend I used skirt steak and pretty sure that was superior. May just be recency bias tho. Also grilled all the veggies for a salsa verde before throwing in food processor, was delicious.

i like skirt better than flank, skirt is so tasty when cooked well

I haven't ventured into smoking territory. My buddy who is my bbq mentor has done them on a weber and they've turned out amazing. Learning curve tho: I remember his 1st attempt was unbearably smoky, the next was too dry.

Yeah I thought I was "elevating" steak tacos by using flank

tbc i'm a long way from trying to smoke on this thing, need to get the basics of temp control down and focus on simple stuff that uses high heat or two-zone cooking

I've never grilled fish so that's my next move. Got some cedar planks.

Yeah, smoking ribs is at least six hours if not more. I've not done it but friends have. And you have to stay nearby when doing it on a kettle grill instead of an egg because you have to monitor it more for temperature changes.

If you want to dip your toe into smoking, one of my favorite things to do is use soaked wood chips in combination with lump charcoal/briquettes for a quick smoke. Weber sells small branded bags of different kinds of wood chips for smoking (apple, mesquite, cherry, etc). I get double berkshire pork rib chops and brine them for a few hours with flavorings. Set up a two zone fire and when the hot side is ready you add a handful of wood chips that have been smoked in water for an hour. Add your grate, put the cops on the cool side, then put the lid on with the air holes open and positioned over the meat, which draws the smoke down over the meat. You smoke the chops for about twenty minutes, then grill them over the hot side to crisp it up until finished. Even 20-30 minutes of smoke makes an amazing difference compared to plain charcoal.

I got the above from Steve Raichlen's How to Grill, which has some good recipes and (more importantly) just straight-forward technique. I've also done the quick smoke with salmon and it is awesome.

*oops* wood chips that have been *soaked* in water for an hour, not smoked.

I've never grilled fish so that's my next move. Got some cedar planks.

Elote restaurant nearby in Sedona does elote as a dip and I think I prefer it that way. Less corn sticking in your teeth at least. Of course it's even more unhealthy than traditional on-the-cob elote.

https://www.food.com/recipe/elote-appetizer-from-the-elote-cafe-478964
I omit the sugar grrrr why does everyone wanna throw sugar in everything savory

did cedar plank salmon tonight. i try to be hypercritical of my own food but man that was some good salmon.

I made turkey burgers last night that were pretty decent. Ground turkey, held together with a bit of cous cous (bc I was out of bread crumbs) a spoon of olive oil mayo for moisture, Sage, onion powder, ground black pepper, seasoned salt, crumbled feta, and a pile of chopped garden herbs (lemon thyme, parsley and verbena mostly.) on a bun with tomato, lettuce and I put hot sauce on mine, which was good!

how'd you prepare the salmon, cad? I'd like to find a good marinade that uses no sugar.

grilled wings yesterday. I always do a "battle" 1/2 one marinade/sauce 1/2 another. Had 2 of my favs from prev battles: huy fong chile garlic vs a generic thai curry one from walmart. Thai curry edged out a win. There's wings place in Ouray CO that does thai curry ones, including sprinkling of toasted coconut, that are my favorite wings ever.

honestly i did nothing, just salt and pepper and a little olive oil. wanted to see how much cedar wood flavor i could get (answer: a really nice amount). i made a yogurt dill sauce to accompany.

nice!

minimalism or laziness? who knows!

as long as deliciousness is the result, I'm all for it. I have some good olive oil always on hand and would like to experience the "pure" taste of cedar-grilled the 1st time I do it so think I'll try that.

I've done ribs on a charcoal grill recently - my heat was too high but they were great anyway. On one side the charcoal, on the other a pan of water. Dry rub only. The vents on the bottom are wide open and the vent on the top is open according to the heat (barely open, as I learned).

Tomorrow is a pork shoulder, going to do it like the ribs but lower heat.

Also, for ribs on the grill I prefer the St Louis style (or Hotel cut) more so than the baby back.

You all are making me hungry. I'm going to have to figure out something to grill for tomorrow.

local corn season is upon us so i tried a cooks illustrated method for grilled corn that i think i like--husk the corn down to the last layer that covers the kernels, snip off the silks, and grill for ~10 minutes while turning frequently. let cool, finish husking, and butter/salt to taste. i am not a huge corn on the cob guy but it seemed to work well. i had a few wood chunks in the fire so the corn got a little smoke which is nice.

Don't really like grilled corn that much in the end. My father was a fresh corn person, a horticulturalist who grew it in our garden in separate varieties to reap the results in multiple waves. He would pick the corn and drop it into our pot boiling on the stove for a few minutes. My mother served it up with butter.

I tried roasting St Louis style ribs in the oven at a low temperature for a few hours, then basting them with barbecue sauce and broiling them. They were fantastic

cad that sounds good. I usually only do corn on the cob 1-2 times per summer, but when it's good, it's good.

good

CAD I peel the husk down to the last level and rub the uncooked corn w butter n olive oil then re cover w husk and grill

corn is the only vegetable i boil apart from potatoes and it's incredible how good it tastes

i love the classic mexican grilled corn too though, with, what is it, mayonnaise and cheese or something?? it can't be 'authentic' i guess but i have vivid memories of being just out of college and eating vast plates of them at veracruz in williamsburg

pretty authentic, tho the OG version uses crema instead of mayo

it's called elote, and there's a restaurant called Elote near me that serves it as a dip:

https://www.azfamily.com/shows/your_life_arizona/recipes/elote-recipe-from-elote-cafe/article_c4156eda-9c46-11e9-9403-1fd2ac5458be.html

Obv not healthy but pretty tasty. Fresh, farm-stand corn is key.

I make a "Japanese" variation with kewpie mayo and shichimi togarashi that I think I got from Momofuku.

If i make any sort of salad or elote or the corn isn't totally optimal I grill it - I just peel the whole thing and cook it til it chars a with no oil or salt. Grilled corn scraped off the cob with halved, seeded cherry tomatoes and chopped basil (and acid / oil / salt) is something I make a lot in August farmers market season.

When I just want peak season midwestern corn on the cob it gets boiled.

We grilled corn last night--probably overcooked a little, the kernels got kinda shrunken--this is where boiling is good because the kernels are so plump and juicy--but the char and smokiness on it was nice in its own way.

Feeling you, jg, on the corn & tom & herb salad. Plus feta maybe?

Corn is tough to get just right on the grill, the best ones I've done are when I pull the husks back, pull out as much silk as possible and bend the husks back into place - really helps the kernels keep from getting overdone.

I like grilled corn with peaches, tomato, feta or goat cheese, basil or mint.

I would eat all of these corn variations