With predicted temperatures into the high 70’s F today in our bit of Southern California, winter seems to be over so why not get the BBQ out of the shed and fire it up ? If even more of excuse were needed, this weekend is the Superbowl and all across the country people will be firing up grills and smokers and cooking barbecue. Today we will be doing a somewhat less common meat for this country (it is far more popular in my original home country of Britain) and cooking lamb shoulder.

Lamb shoulder after the application of the rub paste

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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…

Smoked Turkey Breast

For the last day of the year in this first year (well eight months really so far) of starting these adventures in BBQ, we will be finishing the old year and ushering in the new with a Smoked Turkey Breast. Since there is only one of the household eating it, we went with a smaller turkey breast rather than trying to cook a whole bird. The smoked turkey breast will be done Central Texas-style with a simple salt and black pepper rub – the so called Dalmation rub (because its just black and white see…). Read on to see how it turned out.

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Hot Oak Smoked Salmon

Being a half-pescatarian (or as a friend of mine once put it: “Occasionally I’m a bit naughty with fish”…), half-meatarian household, fish, especially salmon, is a fairly common feature and that is especially the case around the Christmas holidays. Today we are venturing into the brave new worlds of fish cooking and wet brining by brining and then cooking some oak smoked salmon. (Note that this is hot smoking not the cold smoking process that produces the smoked salmon you see in packets in stores and (if you are smart) you put on bagels with cream cheese. Cold smoking is a much more difficult process which needs very careful control over lots of things to avoid ending up with dodgy microbes in your food – the FDA has lots of scary information on this but if Meathead at Amazing Ribs says it’s not a good idea to try, that’s more than good enough for me to steer well clear…).  Read on to see how our (hot-) smoked salmon turned out.

Smoked salmon cooking on the grill

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With temperatures into the mid 70’s, December in California can still be grilling and smoking time as we prove today by doing Rubbed Pork Loin with Apple Bourbon BBQ Sauce. This will be another new cut of pork for me try try (pigs seem to have plenty of different parts available for the BBQ cook to try out…). The pork loin will be seared off over medium-high heat before being moved to complete the cook on indirect heat.

Pork loin searing on the grill (Apologies for the less than great photo, this was about an 1 hour after sunset and it was almost totally dark)

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National Harbor, MD

Sorry it’s been so quiet apart from the sound of crickets around here lately. First off, my actual day job took me to the other side of the country for the Division of Planetary Sciences meeting near Washington DC which mostly involved being trapped in the conference hotel for a week (I did manage to try one place that offered good bbq chicken and ribs though…). As it was a Saturday->Saturday trip, this wiped out two weekends which could have been used for barbecue.

After getting back from that trip, we had visitors staying with us who were not likely to be up for trying bbq. During the time our visitors were here, I got sick with a cold just before Thanksgiving, which put paid to a plan to attempt a smoked turkey…. Anyway I have finally had a chance to cook a new recipe so there is a new cook report coming soon. I also hope to have the first restaurant/dining out “review” article up (assuming the photos turn out OK) from a rib place we visited near LAX while waiting to return our visitors to their waiting aircraft.

It may be the end of Daylight Saving/Summer Time in the US and it may also be the start of November, but here in our part of California we’re still getting temperatures over 80 F (nearly 27 Celsius in those more sensible units) so summer grilling season continues on ! Today we are trying a new cut for me, pork tenderloin, which I’m going to be smoking over peach wood and then it will be getting a cherry preserve glaze.

Pork tenderloin on the grill.

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So today I was constructing the marinade for the Pork Tenderloin with Cherry Preserves recipe (full article coming later) and the recipe called for 1/4 cup (approx. 60ml) of cherry cola to go in the marinade. I was at least able to buy a single small bottle in the grocery store/supermarket but now I am left with 532ml of a 591ml bottle (it’s really a 20 fluid ounce bottle being an American size, hence the somewhat odd amount of milliliters)  of coke which I don’t drink… (The 70 grams of sugar per bottle kinda puts me off too).

The somewhat disturbing volume and “nutritional” ingredients on my cherry coke bottle leftover from the marinade.

This seems to be a somewhat common problem in barbecue, in that rub or marinade recipes need quite small amounts of ingredients that only come in much large quantities (This recipe also called for 1/2 teaspoon of minced garlic from a 4.5 oz jar, but at least I can put that in pasta sauce or whatever). Some can be reused for other things or kept for later uses but that isn’t really the case with my cherry coke…

Any thoughts of what to do with unwanted and part-used leftovers from barbecue preps?

In a timely overlap with the Formula 1 Grand Prix happening in Austin, TX, today we are trying barbecue beef short ribs for the first time. These will be cooked low and slow Texas-style for 6+ hours.

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Welcome to the site ! I started this site after losing a carefully-crafted-over-many-hours post on Google+ describing my latest adventure into the world of BBQ cooking. So I decided to start this site to give a much better home to chronicling one man’s attempts to learn as much as I can about BBQ grilling and smoking. The posts will be mostly a kind of journal & diary of my various attempts to cook and smoke a variety of different BBQ staples and will give details of how I did it and a timeline of what went on through the cook. I’m hoping the posts will prove useful to other people who are interested or curious about BBQ.