Mini Apple and Pork Festival

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Apple Glazed Pork Plated

For Sunday Dinner this week, we had our own mini Apple and Pork Festival. I used another recipe from our go-to source, Dad Cooks Dinner. This time it was boneless pork chops with apple cider brine and apple butter glaze. For sides, I cooked potatoes in a foil pan on the grill and made some wilted greens with balsamic vinegar on the stovetop. Then for dessert, I layered some thin Granny Smith Apple slices in a pan with brown sugar and cinnamon and baked it on the grill, topped with Cheddar Cheese and served with vanilla ice cream.

This is how the chops looked on the grill. They had some of the best quadrillage I’ve ever gotten.

Apple Glazed Pork Chops on the Grill

In the upper right corner of this shot, you can see my technique for getting some smoke flavor into the food on a gas grill. I simply put a chunk of wood on the grate above one of the burners. If it starts to actually flame, I move it down into the smoker box after snuffing. This seems to work better than soaking chips and putting them into the box, which is the recommended method from Weber.

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Grilling Jack Daniels Pork Chops

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Grilling Jack Daniels Pork Chops

For Sunday dinner yesterday, I grilled pork chops, marinated in Jack Daniels brine and finished with Jack Daniels glaze.

It’s another one of Mike Vrobel’s creations. I substituted Jack for the Jim Beam in his original recipe.

We served this with Wulff Salad, mustard potato salad and a wonderful cauliflower with mustard and cheese sauce that my wife makes.

We also had a growler of Lumpy Dog Brown ale from Rock Bottom to add to the fun.

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Rotisserie Chicken

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Rotisserie Chicken

When my wife gave me a rotisserie attachment for our Weber Kettle at Christmas 2012, the first thing I cooked on it was a whole chicken. After a year of experience, I think I’ve finally mastered the process.

I cooked a five pound chicken for Sunday dinner this week, and it turned out better than any I’ve ever made or tasted. I dry brined with salt and pepper on Saturday evening, then sprinkled on some Herbs de Provence and garlic powder before it went on the grill. It took a little over an hour to cook. We served it with drip pan potatoes, salad and green beans.

Learning this recipe changed my entire approach to cooking on the Weber. If you’re interested in the rotisserie, take a look at Mike Vrobel’s blog. His book is the bible on rotisserie cooking outdoors.

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Boston Butt on the Rotisserie

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Pork RoastMy wife brought home a six pound pork roast on Saturday, and we hadn’t planned Sunday Dinner yet, so I decided to roast it on the rotisserie. I adapted the recipe from the Weber iPad App for Rotisserie Pork Roast with Bourbon Mop. As it turns out, I ended up using some leftover apple juice and vinegar for the mopping, but I did use something akin to the rub from the recipe, and it made a beautiful crust.

  • 2 t Black Pepper
  • 2 t Mustard
  • 2 T Turbinado Sugar
  • 1 t Onion Powder
  • 1 t Garlic Powder
  • 1 t Paprika
  • 1 T Kosher Salt

I trussed the roast and then spread the rub on generously, covered with plastic and put it in the fridge overnight. Here’s a shot of the roast, trussed and rubbed.

boston-butt-rubbed

Sunday around Noon, I lit an entire chimney of Kingsford and divided it into two piles on either side of the charcoal grate with an aluminum drip pan in between them. The water from soaking apple chips went in to the pan, along with some apple juice and a bottle of Schlitz. After the grill preheated, I added the chips to the coals, placed the rotisserie spit with the roast in place and started the motor.

After the first hour, I started basting the roast with my apple juice and vinegar solution, giving it a good dousing every twenty minutes or so.

After about two and a half hours, the internal temperature of the meat was around 140 F, and my charcoal was nearly gone, so I moved the roast over to a pan in the middle of the gas grill, with side burners on medium and the center burner off. I kept the temperature of the grill around 370, and once the meat was up to 180 (measured by a dual probe thermometer) I took it off to rest under a foil tent until it was time to serve.

My wife had prepared some red potatoes and some Brussels sprouts for roasting, so once the meat was off I turned up the grill a bit and roasted them with a little olive oil, salt and cracked pepper. A nice fresh salad with Wulff family vinaigrette was the finishing touch to a wonderful meal.

roasted-brussels-sprouts garden-salad-wulff-dressing

It was nice to have my sons joining us for the weekend, and for the meal. I’m hoping that one day if they decide to try their hand at outdoor cooking, I’ll be able to pass along some recipes and techniques. If nothing else, the memories of their dad standing out by a Weber Kettle ought to be fairly vivid.

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Chorizo and Pork Burgers

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Chorizo Pork Burgers

Here’s another recipe from Chef Purviance that I’ve grilled twice in the past few months, most recently for Sunday Dinner. I don’t make the Jalepeno slaw, but the Chorizo/Pork burgers are a delightful departure from typical burger fare. I also make some of the patties without Chorizo for my daughter and others who don’t like as much spice.

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Smoked Beef Brisket

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Smoked Beef Brisket

There are several cuts of meat that are almost synonymous with “barbecue” depending on region. In Texas, they’re known for brisket. Considered by some to be “The Mount Everest of Barbecue,” this was the last of the large cuts that I was determined to cook this Summer. As it turned out, we sat down to Sunday Dinner just as Autumn rolled in for 2013.

I prepared the 7.5 pound flat-cut brisket on Saturday evening, salting it, slathering yellow mustard and Worcestershire Sauce on it and then applying a homemade rub of 2 t paprika, 1 t black pepper, 1 T turbinado sugar, 1 t cumin, 1 t garlic powder, 1 t onion powder, 1 t nutmeg and 1t Herbs de Provence. Come Sunday morning I removed it from the refrigerator and set up the Weber Kettle, putting a foil drip pan full of water on one side of the charcoal rack and spreading a chimney full of unlit charcoal on the other side. I then lit about a third of a chimney of additional coals, and poured them on top of the unlit ones, adding some Hickory and Cherry chunks for smoke.

Once the grill was up to temperature, I put the brisket on over the drip pan, fat side up. Using a dual probe thermometer I received for my birthday, I did my best to keep the temperature in the grill to around 250 F, adjusting the vents as needed during four hours of cooking. Every hour or so, I sprayed the brisket with equal parts brewed coffee, dark beer, apple juice and cider vinegar. I also rotated and turned the meat to ensure even cooking. After four hours the meat was measuring 160 degrees, so I pulled it off, wrapped it in foil and put it in the gas grill on indirect heat (again, at 250) to finish. After another hour-and-a-half, the meat had risen to 195 degrees and was ready to come off. We let it rest inside the foil for another hour prior to serving.

It turned out moist and flavorful, though at this point I made a rookie mistake, cutting it with the grain to serve it. My wife noticed this later as she removed the fat cap to store the rest of the brisket. The part that she carved against the grain was much more tender to chew. She poured the juices that we had reserved from the foil packet over the leftovers. The beef was still delicious today for lunch.

We served the beef with grilled asparagus, and a wonderful green bean & red potato salad with Dijon dressing that she made.

Other than proper carving, next time I would use more smoke, more pepper and more salt. Also, I think I might be tempted to cook it just a bit longer in the foil to get it “melt in your mouth” tender. This was good for a first attempt though, and I wouldn’t be intimidated to cook this cut again.

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Pork Loin Char Siu

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Pork Loin Char Siu

My Mother-In-Law had brought me a nice pork loin awhile back for cooking on the rotisserie, and this past week we decided to get it out of the deep freeze and cook it for Sunday dinner. I began researching recipes and ran across several for Char Siu, which is a Chinese pork barbecue. The literal translation is “fork roast” meaning roasted on a skewer. This sounded like just what I was after.

After a little refined searching, I found Trader Vic’s recipe for the dish. Although obviously Americanized (the marinade includes ketchup), it seemed easy enough to prepare with ingredients that were readily available to me, and recipes from Vic’s have always pleased my palate in the past.

The loin was about 5 3/4 pounds, so the first problem that presented itself was that I didn’t have anything large enough to marinate it in. I had seen in one of my reference books (Weber’s Way To Grill) that you can tie two pieces of loin together with butcher’s twine to make a properly sized roast for the rotisserie, so I cut the pork in half, removed much of the fat cap, and placed it in a gallon ziplock bag with equal parts ketchup, sugar, Soy Sauce and Hoisin (about half a cup of each). It marinated in the refrigerator overnight.

About an hour before cooking, I removed it from the fridge, trussed it together with the fat toward the outside and put it on the skewer, taking care to get the tines into both pieces of the roast. I cooked it over indirect high heat on the Weber Kettle with some Hickory chips on the charcoal.

Char Siu on Rotisserie

After about 50 minutes, it was getting close to 140 degrees (my target temperature was 140-150). At this point I removed it from the rotisserie, cut off the twine, and placed it fat side down in a 9×13 pan on the gas grill over indirect medium-high heat (about 450). I kept a close eye on the probe thermometer, and when the internal temperature of the meat topped 140, I removed it and brought it in to rest at room temperature. I toasted some sesame seeds and sprinkled them over the top of the roasts as a finishing touch.

We served this with mustard and sweet/sour sauce as condiments, with awesome garlic mashed potatoes and sweet corn that my wife had prepared as side dishes. She said later that it was the best pork she’d ever tasted in her life.

The flavor was quite a bit more subdued than I had anticipated. It was just sweet enough and just savory enough, with none of the strong flavors in the marinade overpowering the dish. The meat was perfectly done, juicy and tender. This is definitely a recipe that I’ll make time and again.

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Bratwurst and Italian Sausage

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brats-and-italian-sausages-on-the-grill

For Sunday Dinner this week it was an old standby, grilled sausages. The cooking method was simple. I grilled the sausages over direct medium heat for about eight minutes, and then put them over indirect with an appropriate bed of vegetables (grilled onions and peppers for the Italians, and sauerkraut for the brats) to finish cooking. I also put some Apple wood chips in the smoker pan.

We served this with a nice artichoke and pasta salad that my wife made, and some wilted spinach and black beans, a recipe that I found over on Another Pint Please.

The sausages were from a local market that is renowned for the quality of their products, Southside Meats in Momence, Illinois. The difference between these and typical supermarket fare makes the thirty-minute drive worthwhile. I didn’t sample the bratwurst, but the flavor and texture of the Italian Sausage was incredible.

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Turkey on the Rotisserie

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turkey-on-rotisserie

In preparation for this year’s Thanksgiving Dinner, I roasted a whole turkey on the rotisserie over the weekend. In some ways, this is one of the most challenging things to cook, since it’s difficult to get the dark meat done enough without overcooking the breast.

Overall, it turned out just “alright.” Having done a marvelous job with a turkey breast awhile back, and a series of awesome whole chickens, I expected this to be over-the-top delicious. It certainly wasn’t bad, especially for a first attempt, but there are several things I would do differently next time.

1) Use a fresh turkey. The frozen turkey I cooked was “pre-basted.” This sounds like it would be a good thing, but it’s actually not. The addition of a brine solution prior to freezing actually changes the texture and taste of the bird in a way that is inferior to proper dry brining. For Thanksgiving, I’ll look for a locally raised fresh turkey.

2) Take more care with the seasoning and brining. Because the turkey was pre-basted, I didn’t want to overdo my own seasoning, particularly the salt. I limited my efforts to a little kosher salt, black pepper and herbs de provence rubbed on the skin a couple hours prior to roasting. I also didn’t stuff the cavity, thinking that this was a “dry run” anyway, and the additional aromatics wouldn’t add much. Next time, I’ll take care to properly dry brine a fresh turkey the day before, and to add plenty of citrus, onions, garlic, etc. to the cavity before cooking. My wife usually works some olive oil under the skin just prior to putting the bird in the oven as well. Although the rotisserie helps to keep food moist through self-basting, we may try her trick as well.

3) Choose your smoke wisely. I’ve been on a Cherry wood kick lately, loving the subtly sweet flavor it added to pork ribs and beef roast. In the case of turkey, I think a bolder smoke flavor would have been nice. I’ll likely use Apple, Hickory, or a mixture of the two next time.

4) I need an ice pack. One of the tricks Mike Vrobel suggests when roasting turkey on the rotisserie is to put an ice pack on the breast while it comes to room temperature before going on the grill. This has the effect of increasing the cooking time for the white meat, and allowing the legs and thighs to get up to well done without overcooking the breast. It’s listed as an “optional” step in his instructions, but I’ll definitely use it next time. The breast turned out alright, but the dark meat could have cooked just a bit longer to achieve “fall off the bone” tenderness.

A friend of mine sensed my disappointment in describing the meal as “alright” and commented that every meal doesn’t have to be a masterpiece. I suppose that’s right, although as much time and effort as goes into this particular dish, I’ll want to get it perfect next time. I think the adjustments mentioned above will make it worthy of our Thanksgiving table.

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Cherry Smoked Prime Rib

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Rib Roast was on my short list to prepare on the Weber, and I finally got around to cooking one for dinner last Sunday. The approach was simple: rub the roast with salt, pepper and Herbs de Provence; cook in a pan over indirect heat on the kettle with some cherry wood chunks; and, make some us jus gravy from the drippings.

I had my butcher cut a three-rib USDA Choice roast (about 7 1/2 pounds). Yes, there was some measure of sticker shock involved.

I’d watched several videos and studied dozens of recipes and blog posts on how to cook the cut, briefly considering the rotisserie. In the end, though, I decided to stick to the basics, setting up the grill for indirect cooking with half a chimney of charcoal split between two baskets, a pan of water in the middle to help moderate the heat, and a few chunks of wood for flavor. Once I got the grill stable at around 350 F, I put the roast in the center of the grill, on top of some soup bones spread out in a foil pan. I took it out of the pan when the internal temp measured 125, and covered with a foil tent to rest and finish coming up to rare.

Now it was time to make the gravy. Again, it was about as basic as you’ll find. I removed the soup bones, cut some shallot into thin slices and added it to the pan (still on the grill), stirring up the drippings until the shallot got melty. Then I added some additional salt, pepper and herbs, a dash or two of Worcestershire Sauce, 2/3 cup of Cabernet Sauvignon and 1 1/3 cups of beef broth. I took this over to the gas grill and let it reduce over medium direct heat for awhile. I wouldn’t change anything about it.

The roast, on the other hand, was a little too rare for my taste. It had a wonderful flavor, and a nice crust, but the inside was just a bit chewy and red. If I ever cook this cut again, I’ll be tempted to take it up to 130. Although since I’m using an ancient analog meat thermometer, it’s possible that it was off a bit as well. I also think I would carve the roast a bit thinner next time, despite most recipes calling for half inch slices.

This wasn’t bad for a first attempt, and I wouldn’t change the overall approach next time. Maybe a little searing directly over the coals before placing the roast over indirect heat might have added something. In any case, it’ll be awhile before I feel like shelling out almost sixty bucks for a roast like this again – though it did serve five nicely, and there were leftovers for roast beef on our salads last night, plus a delicious soup made with the bones and unused broth.

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