A Smoking Happy New Year !

A Happy New Year to all the readers. Having managed two final cooks of the year during the Christmas and New Year period (check out the Hot Oak Smoked Salmon and Smoked Turkey Breast cooks for all the details) it was also unfortunately to give the Weber cooker a good scrubbing out before a careful drying and then putting it into covered storage for a while.

Last cook of the year getting going.

While the laughably described Southern California “winter” is not putting much of a crimp in things beyond the very short number of daylight hours, unfortunately it’s time to go back to work although in this case this means traveling off to a meeting on the other side of the country. This and other commitments will definitely cut down on the amount of bbq cooking that will get done in the next month or so. (On the other hand I may get a chance to start some restaurant reviews although I think Orlando, Florida may be considered a bit too far south to be considered the BBQ heartland).

Goals for 2016 include at least one whole packer brisket (I cooked both a brisket point and a full packer brisket during 2015 but they were before I started this blog and they are definitely a meat cut that always needs more practice) and St. Louis cut spare ribs (nothing super difficult or mysterious about why I’ve not done these before, it’s just that my usual meat supplier has always been out when I’ve turned up and I haven’t got organized in time to phone in an order mid-week before the weekend). I would also like to try a Memphis-style dry ribs to compare with the classic sauce-glazed versions I’ve tried before. I’d also like to give turkey another go; I definitely think things could be improved there based on the one cook of a few days ago.

Santa also brought me a copy of Aaron Franklin’s wonderful book Franklin Barbecue: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto (the photography is also most excellent which is something I can definitely appreciate as an enthusiastic amateur photographer) which I’ve already managed to read all of (I’m quite a quick reader when motivated…). While it’s not really a cookbook (there’s like 5 recipes really) and much more of the philosophy and approach of Central Texas barbecue, I’m still keen to try things (probably the brisket given the emphasis on that in those Texan parts) out the same way. Just need to resist the urge to “do it properly” and go out and buy a expensive stick burner and a load of wood…