Unlike simply squirting BBQ Sauce out of a bottle this sauce took some work.  It started its journey on the stove in the house, but only long enough to thoroughly mix all the ingredients.  From there it was onto the grill with a huge chunk of hickory to further cook down and get that great smokey flavor that really sets this sauce apart.

One note about the picture above, even though the chunk of hickory is engulfed in flames in the picture, it did not remain that way once the lid was in place, the rush of oxygen upon removing the lid allowed it to burst into flames.  A chunk of wood in flames like that above will not produce nearly enough adequate smoke to flavor the BBQ sauce properly.

Ingredients
1 15oz can of tomato sauce
2 c apple cider
4 cloves of garlic pressed
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar (white vinegar would work as well)
1/4 c brown sugar
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1 tbsp honey
1/2 tbsp worcestershire sauce
1 tsp chile powder
1 tbsp thickener (cornstarch, flour, etc)

Instructions
Start by combining liquid ingredients in a sauce pan (one safe for the grill) on the stove over medium heat and bringing to a boil.  Stir frequently.  Once the liquid is boiling add in everything else except the thickener, stir and boil until the sauce begins to reduce slightly.  It should smell amazing at this point.  Slowly stir in thickener.  At this point prep the grill (fire up the chimney and get the smoking wood ready) and move the pan to the grill when it is ready and place it on the opposite side of the grill from the heat, add smoking wood and leave to cook uncovered.  Stir the sauce every 15-20 minutes, it should be simmering nicely.  Remove the sauce from the grill when it is thickened to the desired consistency.

It is a tangy sweet BBQ sauce and it is so tasty it has boldness and depth that I have no found in a bottled BBQ sauce and it is pretty simple to make, this is going on the list of favorites.  Before cooking the sauce I did wipe the inside of the pan down with a thin film of canola oil to make cleanup simpler, and it helped, the baked on sauce just came off under the faucet and the scrubbing was minimal.  Just be sure to use a pan you can live with being a slightly different color when you are done on the outside.

In the end I ended up with an excellent stand in using some ready made rubs and and brown sugar.  And a spritz with some molasses, cranberry juice, bbq sauce and seasoning, again we didn’t have any apple juice.  The day was full of improvising. You will find the recipes for the rub and spritz below.

I threw the meat on the smoker about 7:30 AM and it smoked at 225ºF with apple and hickory wood until it reached 165ºF, at which point I wrapped it in foil and threw it back into the heat until it reached an internal temperate of 205ºF.  Then it was, while still wrapped in foil, wrapped in old towels and thrown into the cooler for 2 hours to rest.  I then pulled it, put it on a sandwich and enjoyed.  It was most tasty not quite as tasty as the Brown Sugar and Rosemary Rub but it is certainly still edible, and will likely be the source of lunch room envy tomorrow.

Mix and Match Pork Rub
Ingredients
brown sugar
bbq3000
bad byron’s butt rub
mustard

Instructions
Mix together 2 parts brown sugar to 1 part each bbq3000 and butt rub.  When thoroughly mixed, spread mustard on meat in evenly.  Then rub meat liberally with bbq rub created above.  Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate over night or cook immediately.

Spritz Recipe
Ingredients
1 tbsp molasses
2 tbsp bbq sauce
1 c cranberry juice
1/4 c white sugar
1 tbsp bbq3000

Instructions
Combine all ingredients until mixed well.  Mop onto meat every hour until meat reaches 165°F.

Way back in my cupboard was a pizza stone that we had not used in a couple months, so out it came and into the 500°F oven until it was hot.  I did everything like before, plopped the dough on the stone; added sauce, cheese and toppings as quickly as possible and popped it back in the oven.  It did its thing, somehow cooking pizza on a stone is magical the crust was ‘fluffier‘ than before, it was awesome.  It did take me a while to realize how awesome it was, it wasn’t tell I was sitting back craving more pizza that I realized it was that good and it only had mushrooms and pepperoni on it.

I learn a couple of lessons this time that I will be applying to the next pizza we make.  First I will be sure to bake the crust alone in the oven for a few minutes prior to topping with sauce, cheese and toppings.  And second if I am going to be using alot of moist toppings I will be sure to pre-cook them a bit to get some of the moisture out.  With those two things, I dare say it will be pizza baking perfection.

Tomorrow we try pizza on the grill, wood-fire style.

There was a slight bit of kneading required in spite of the name but the dough was awesome, but it needs to be planned for and made well in advance.

Ingredients
3 c + extra flour
1 1/2 c warm water
1/4 c + extra olive oil
1 1/4 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp yeast

Instructions
Mix together dry ingredients thoroughly, then mix in water and olive oil until it is mixed evenly, it will be very wet, like sticky and not dough like wet.  Drizzle olive oil over the surface of the dough, cover bowl with plastic wrap and let set for 12-24 hours.  Once dough has raised.  Turn oven on the highest temperature possible (500°F in my case) and put cast iron skillet in the oven until it is heated well.  Punch down dough flip out onto a floured surface and divide into small balls and make individual rounds of dough, for pizza.  I made three.  Roll or stretch out the dough into thin crusts.

Have your toppings, sauce and cheese ready.  Lightly oil the skillet and then place the crust in the skillet.  Quickly put sauce, toppings and cheese on the crust.  Bake in skillet in oven until pizza is done.  Mine took about 5 minutes.

Even though you have a little more planning to do than with normal this crust is well worth the effort and advanced preparation.  I am glad I have two crusts left, I can’t wait to make it again.  This time it was just pepperoni, next time it will be much more elaborate.

The rub however, was the important part and it was a pretty traditional style paprika based rub, all but once I forgot it was on there it married with the meat so well, but I must have had an abnormally heavy section of rub under the skin that gave me a faint paprika taste in my mouth. So here is the recipe for the rub.

Ingredients
1/4 c paprika
2 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp kosher salt
1 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp cayenne
1 tsp dry mustard
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder

Instructions
Blend all ingredients thoroughly and rub generously onto chicken both under and over skin.

Once the chicken was rubbed I plopped it on the smoker at 250°F for about 2 hours over hickory and apple wood until it was cook through.  I basted the meat once which I think was unnecessary.   Usually I brine my poultry but I did not this time mostly due to oversight on my part, in spite of this it still turned out juicy and fell apart.

I started out by cutting my steaks up into about quarter inch this pieces of meat at a 30° angle across the grain of the meat.  This was fairly easy to do and using a larger than necessary knife made it even simpler.

Once the meat was cut I mixed together a rub as follows.

Ingredients
1/4 c brown sugar
1/4 c kosher salt
2 tsp paprika
2 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp ground ginger

Instructions
Blend together all ingredients in a small bowl being sure to get any clumps out of the brown sugar.

Once the rub was mixed together I then rubbed the rub into the meat, this amount of rub is good for about 1 1/2 pounds of meat.

I then placed it on the smoker with NO water in the water pan at 155°F for 5 hours over a blend of hickory and mesquite using my PID controlled electric smoker.  Using the propane would have probably been too moist to get good jerky and the charcoal might have been a little tricky to maintain that temperature for such a long period of time.  The electric with the PID controller is just easy.   At this point it was still a little moist in the middle but chewy and very jerky like, it was really good.

Even as mystery meat the reviews have been good, people have liked it, most importantly I liked it so I will be making more jerky and posting about it as I learn new things.

The library was a gold mine, new knowledge, old knowledge and stuff I had seen before all available for free I picked up some great books and am looking forward to trying out some recipes from them soon.

The food finder works by taking your tastes and their understanding of food and pulling together recipes from some of the biggest recipes sources on the web to recommend recipes that accurately reflect what you searched for that it thinks you will like.  And from playing with it for a short while, it works, it works really well.  I am hungry just looking at the recommendations it made for me.

Yummly brings new meaning to the term discovery cooking, it can help you discover new tastes you have by making recommendations based on what you already like.

Not only is Yummly pioneering new ground with the the way it finds recipes for you to enjoy it is a great new use of social media and the long tail of cooking knowledge.  The community can make modifications to a recipe or create a new version of a recipe.  The most common modifications are then presented with the original recipe.  The knowledge of the masses now can apply to cooking and recipes in an easier to use way than ever before.

Now that they have all of this, I can’t want to see what happens when it makes it to the iPad as an app, talk about a great cookbook.

Check it all out at http://www.yummly.com/

I mixed up a batch of my legendary poultry brine I discovered last fall when I smoked my turkey breast, however, this time I did not include the celery seed and cajun spice rather I added 3/4 tsp per quart onion powder and 1 tsp per quart Bad Byron’s Butt Rub and of course a little cayenne and sage.  I let that sit by itself in the fridge over night.

How much brine should I make?  If you are struggling with how much brine to make, put your meat in the container you will be brining it, add enough water to cover the meat completely and then remove the meat.  Once the meat is removed measure the amount of water that is left in the container.  Be sure to discard this water and start with fresh water when making any brine.

Back to the bbq chicken, this morning I trimmed the excess fat from and brined my chicken for about 3 hours, you will notice in the picture some of the chicken is not covered in water, I had to use a plate to hold the chicken below the water line, it was a tight fit.

One the chicken was done brining I pulled it from the brine and brushed it with olive oil and then rub it liberally with BBQ 3000 from Penzey’s, at this point I let the chicken sit and got the smoker ready to cook at a temperature of 225°F.

Once the smoker was up to temperature, I added a handful of apple chips and a hickory chunk to the chip can and then put the chicken on and let the apple and hickory do its magic.  I was using my Brinkmann Gourmet with the Afterburner Propane burner today, so once the temperature stabilized all I had to do was check the meat temperature and the smoke.  It was a pretty easy smoke.  I arranged the chicken so the smoke could easily flow between all of the pieces.  Be sure to lube your rack with oil or cooking spray for easy meat removal and clean up, but make sure you do it before it is over the fire.

In a rare stoke of brilliance today I took a picture of the meat right before I sauced it, the water pan is gross I know, but ignore it look at the shrink.  Look how much the meat has shrunk throughout this cook, this is at about 175°F, right before I smothered it in some bbq sauce.

At an internal temperature of 180°F I pulled the chicken and let it rest for about 15 minutes.  On the bounds of bragging you know you have done well cooking your chicken when as you pick up the quarters with a tongs the drumstick bone just falls out of the meat.  I was excited!

At this point it was all I could to do keep from eating it, we ate it with some corn and a chunk of stone ground wheat bread (thanks Lohn this stuff is great).  The chicken was awesome, better than even the cajun whole smoked chicken, which was really really good.  What was really surprising is I have never used apple as a dominant wood in my smoking and it imparts well an apple like taste to the meat, which just blew my mind.

I again used my Slap Chop to chop up the fresh rosemary and speed up that job of making the rub, which like most rubs is not labor intensive. I then mixed the rub thoroughly as I could with a fork, crushing up clumps as they formed.

Once the rub was ready I slathered my bone-in pork loin with dijon mustard and then rubbed evenly, making sure to get all the surfaces with the rub.

After that is was onto my charcoal Brinkmann Gourmet for a long days cook at anywhere from 225°F to 250°F.  Usually I aim for a more precise temperature but with the wind (15-25 MPH all day) and the Gourmet‘s lack of control this was difficult to do.  Even with the wind and temperature my 5.25 lb loin hit 205°F after about 11 hours, none to soon by our clock, we were hungry.  We let the meat rest for about an hour and then pulled it using a pair of forks.

And then we ate it on a bun with some coleslaw and bbq sauce, the meat on its own was really good especially when you got a good chunk of the bark where you could really taste the rub.  Rosemary and pork go together better than cake and ice cream.  That was yesterday.  Today it made it to its pinnacle, I some pork and Famous Dave’s bbq sauce in the crock pot this morning and came back a couple of hours later to find, an incredible pot of pulled pork bbq, so again I piled it high on a hoagie bun with some coleslaw and it was awesome.

After all of that I kinda find myself excited about pulled pork bbq and can’t wait to make it again.  If you want the recipe for the rub I used, a brown sugar and rosemary rub, I have included it below.  In the future I will probably use this rub on some regular smoked or grilled pork as it compliments the pork so well.

Brown Sugar and Rosemary Rub
Ingredients
2 tbsp finely chopped fresh rosemary
1/4 c dark brown sugar
1 tbsp garlic powder
1 tbsp onion powder
1 tsp cumin
2 tsp kosher sale
1/2 tsp cayenne
1/2 tsp ground black pepper

Instructions
Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix well.  Prepare meat by washing, drying and evenly coating in dijon mustard.  Rub meat evenly covering every inch with rub.  Grill or smoke low and slow until desired doneness.