Knoxville Style Dry Rubbed Wings

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What food is your city or town known for?

• Memphis has Memphis style dry ribs (dry-rubbed, not dry meat)
• St Louis has pork steaks
• New Orleans has beignets

If Knoxville has a food style like this, I think it might be the naked or dry-rubbed wing. When I think of wings in town, the first ones that come to mind are Big Kahuna Wings. They have been doing dry-rubbed wings since the early 90s. There is also Dead End BBQ with their Naked Wings, KTown Tavern's Jumbo Ole Smokey Naked Wings, and Sweet P's Downtown Dive's has wings tossed in Soul Rub. These all have a few things in common.

• Jumbo-sized wings
• Heavily seasoned, almost coated, with a bold dry rub
• Smoky flavor (Note: BKW's aren't smoked at the restaurant, but the Fire has a smokiness to it)
• Extra crispy skin

Here's my version of the Knoxville-style Dry Rubbed Wings. 

I served these with a potato salad that I'm working on for this weekend's brisket. The base is a fire-roasted jalapeno and garlic mayo.

Cowboy Ribeye Steak with Crispy Potatoes and Black Beans

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This weekend, we bought a 20-ounce, black Angus, cowboy ribeye steak from Butler and Bailey Market. We grilled it on the Big Green Egg and served it with some crispy skillet potatoes and black beans for a delicious meal.

Well, it was labeled as a cowboy steak but semantically, there is room for debate about that. What exactly is a cowboy steak?

Bone-in Ribeye, Cowboy Ribeye, and Tomahawk Ribeye

This was definitely a bone-in ribeye steak but it depends who you ask as to whether it is a cowboy steak. All three of these steak names come from the beef rib primal. The cowboy and tomahawk are both derivatives of the bone-in ribeye. 

• Bone-in Ribeye Steak - Any ribeye steak with a bone is a bone-in ribeye, duh. Typically when I see that term used, it is referring to a ribeye steak with a small piece of the rib bone still attached.
• Cowboy Ribeye Steak - The Field Guide To Meat declares that a cowboy steak is simply a bone-in ribeye steak (38). Other sources, such as this Certified Angus Beef page state that a cowboy ribeye has a short frenched bone. In other words, the wedge of meat called the lip is removed to show barebone at the end.
• Tomahawk ribeye steak - The tomahawk is a ribeye steak with the full rib bone exposed. It makes the most dramatic presentation but it adds nothing to the flavor compared to cowboy or bone-in ribeye steaks.

Event Coverage: University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture's Smoking School

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What a fun weekend! Alexis and I attended the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture's (UTIA) Smoking School. The class agenda was focused on brisket and ribs. We learned a good bit, saw old friends, made new friends, and ate well. 

If you've never taken a grilling or BBQ class, I highly recommend doing so. Even if you are a proficient griller, this is the best way to add skills, expand your repertoire, and challenge your existing notions. I can't share recipes or all of the details but here's a recap of this event.

About The Event

The 2021 Smoking School is the first such program offered by the UTIA and I would say it was a smoking success. The UTIA is about research, academics, and outreach, so Smoking School fits nicely into its mission. The content UTIA brought as a learning institution was a nice addition to the usual BBQ class agendas. 

Potato, Beef, and Egg Breakfast Burrito on the Big Green Egg

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We have a busy weekend day ahead of us and needed sustenance to last us until dinner. I fired up one of our large Big Green Eggs, did a quick survey of what we had on hand in the kitchen and came up with these grilled stuffed breakfast burritos.

Grilled burrito stuffed with potato hash, scrambled eggs, and taco-style ground beef.

This isn't a full recipe post, rather a quick review of what we came up with.  Here's what we used.

• beef tallow for oil (you could use any high-temperature cooking oil)
• about 2 cups of diced honey gold potatoes
• NMT Beef Rub recipe
• 1/3 cup diced onion
• 1/4 cup diced portobello mushroom
• 2 sliced mini sweet red bell pepper
• about 6 ounces of ground beef that was leftover from making smash burgers
• NMT Fajita Seasoning recipe
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup Oaxaca cheese, shredded

Grill Set-Up

Maple Plank Bacon-Wrapped Meatloaf

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We recently made the plank smoked Bacon-Wrapped Meatloaf recipe from The Four Fundamentals of Smoking by Chris Sussman. We made crispy tallow fried potatoes and skillet green beans and had a wonderful meal. The meatloaf was smoky, sweet, spicy, well seasoned, and delicious.

You might have noticed that my meatloaves and breakfast fatties (smoked stuffed breakfast sausage) are usually naked. Alexis even asked why I don't often do bacon-wrapping or the infamous bacon-weave. Am I anti-bacon? Heck no! 

It is simply a matter of preference. Like anything, bacon-wraps have their benefits and drawbacks, so it comes down to your personal inclinations. 

Pros of the Bacon-Wrap

• Appearance - Bacon-wrapped food looks delicious. At first glance, it gets the mouth watering.
• Flavor booster - A bacon wrap turns the flavor up to 11. 
• Juiciness - Wrapping food in bacon, especially ground meats, minimizes moisture loss.
• Self-basting - As the bacon fat renders, it bastes the food. 

Cons of the Bacon-Wrap

• Smoke Penetration - A bacon-wrap is a barrier between the smoke and the food inside of the wrap. 
• Crust bust - The bacon-wrap keeps the meat's exterior from forming a crust that it would otherwise. This means no Maillard reaction, a key flavor. Granted, the bacon gets it instead, but the interior meat will not.
• Food costs - With the cost of groceries shooting up and a pound of bacon getting in the $10 range, a bacon-wrap will bump up your food budget.

For everything, there is a season, right? A time to wrap and a time to go naked. So let's get back to this cook.