Pulled Pork and Corn Puddin'

Yeah, I know, "pulled pork, again?"

I won't bore you with the whole process since I've done many smoked pork shoulder posts on here (click for my basic process) but I will post up the log at the bottom.   I did try a new injection and served it with a southern classic, so I'll tell you about that.  

But first, this weekend Kathleen and AJ of Smoky Mountain Cafe had Larry and Beverly of Big Dude's Eclectic Ramblings and me over for dinner.   It was great to get together but we also had business to tend to.  It was time to start planning the 3rd annual East Tennessee blogger get together at Almost Heaven South.  

After fun events the two previous years, Katherine Aucoin, Chris Grove, and Larry Doolittle are pleased that we will be able to host a blogger party again this year. The date we’ve selected is May 27 – we realize this is Memorial Day weekend and thought the extra day for travel might make it easier for some to be here.

The event will once again be held at Bev and Larry’s home near Greenback, Tn. and the menu will be a crawfish and shrimp boil – if you’re not a shellfish eater, come anyway and we’ll grill you something. Unlike previous times, we’ll be asking for a donation to help with the meat costs.

We’ll send out more details in early April but wanted to get on your calendar now. We’ll be asking for an RSVP later, but so we can start our planning, please let Larry know now if you think you might join us – email grandpop1@yahoo.com. Also please feel free to publicize this on your blog to reach more potential attendees. We hope you can join us.

Back to pork.  Usually I use Chris Lilly's famous pork injection recipe but it was 5 in the morning and I didn't have any apple juice.  I wanted something a little sweet and salty.  Here is what I came up with and it worked very well.  

Sweet Beer Pork Shoulder Injection

source:  Nibble Me This

yields:  1 1/2 cups, enough for one 7-9 lb pork butt

Ingredients

• 1 cup beer
• 1/4 cup Yoshida's Gourmet sauce (or teriyaki sauce)
• 3 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 2 Tbsp Tabanero Hot Sauce
• 1 tsp Kosher salt
• 1/2 tsp black pepper, finely ground

Instructions

1. Mix all ingredients thoroughly together.
2. Inject into 12-15 places on the top and bottom of the pork butt

A classic Southern barbecue side dish is corn pudding.   This night I chose to use the corn pudding I saw at Steph's Plain Chicken.   Funny story about that.  When Alexis was first eating it, I asked what she thought, before I had tried it.

"It has an interesting texture," she replied.

Uh oh...."interesting".  Everything I have ever made from Plain Chicken has been good so what was the problem?  It wasn't horrible but the texture was "off".  I had cut the original recipe in half and double checked my conversions.  Then I saw it.  In my hand written notes, I left off BAKING POWDER from the original recipe.  Yeah, that KIND OF makes of difference, doesn't it?  I remade it tonight WITH BAKING POWDER and it was as fantastic as I expected.

Corn Pudding

source:  slightly adapted from Plain Chicken

Ingredients

• 2 Tbsp sugar
• 1.5 Tbsp all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 3 large eggs
• 1 cup cream
• 1/4 cup butter melted
• 1 1/2 tsp Tabanero Hot Sauce
• 3 cups corn kernels, drained
• 1/4 cup roasted red peppers, diced

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350f.
2. Mix the first four ingredients together.
3. Whisk the eggs, cream, hot sauce, and butter together.  Whisk in the dry mix from step 2.
4. Stir in the corn and peppers.
5. Pour into a 2 liter greased casserole dish and bake for 60 minutes.

Two big boneless pork butts.  I cut one in half to use for pork roasts later.

Getting the Egg fired up with coal, cherry wood, and hickory wood.  At this point the smoke has gone from white to "sweet blue".  It's hard to get a picture of this during daylight, it looks invisible.     

I didn't realize the butts were boneless, a first for me.  Tied and seasoned.

Fine tuning my Egg before I put my butt on it.  

Courtesy of Brian and Marilyn Meagher of Hot Sauce Daily.

I used an oven thermometer because my gut told me my thermometer might be off.  Actually it was spot on.

Once a pork butt hits 195-200f, it will pull or shred easily.

Graph of data from this cook.  Yellow line is meat internal temp.  

BBQ pork, corn pudding, and Bush's Sweet Mesquite Grilling Beans.

Product notes - 

• Yoshida's Gourmet Sauce - It's kind of like teriyaki sauce, only better.  I buy ours at Sam's Wholesale Club.
• Tabanero Hot Sauce - I got a bottle from our friends at the website Hot Sauce Daily, Brian and Marilyn Meagher in a care package they sent us. It pairs my favorite sweet flavor agave nectar in a hot sauce.  I like the result, a lot of flavor.
• Bush Beans Sweet Mesquite Grillin' Beans - The newest flavor of Grillin' Beans, sweet and slightly smoky.  I am lucky to be in Knoxville, the home of Bush Beans, where I can already buy this flavor from my local Food City.

[Standard Disclaimer]  I received no compensation for this post.  I got the Tabanero sauce for free from personal friends.  I have a business relationship with Bush's Beans but this is NOT a sponsored post.  I have used Bush Beans for over 15 years when my mom told me to use their Baked Beans to make her barbecue bean recipe.  

Grilled Turkey Breast

I know.  You just got over your turkey overdose.  Why in the world would I be making turkey now?  Because I didn't get to at Thanksgiving. 

Normally I like to brine my poultry but this breast was one of those "packaged with up to X% with a solution" so it was already pre-brined so brining it was not an option.  Instead I came up with an injection to build flavor. 

This turned out to be my favorite injection I have come up with for turkey and the family readily agreed.  The clarified butter has a cleaner texture, the infused herbs bring the flavor, and the sweet agave comes through in the final product. 

Turkey Injection
servings:  1 cup, enough for 1 turkey breast


Ingredients

• 3/4 cup clarified butter
• 2 cloves garlic
• 3 sage leaves
• 3 sprigs thyme
• 6 black peppercorns
• 1/4 tsp kosher salt
• 1/4 cup white wine
• 1/4 cup Agave Amber Nectar

Instructions

1. Heat clarified butter to simmering.
2. Add the garlic cloves, sage leaves, thyme, and peppercorns and poach for 5 minutes.
3. Remove and reserve the sage and thyme.  Discard the garlic and pepper corns.
4. Add the wine, Agave nectar, and salt.  Stir to mix.  Remove from heat and allow to cool before using.

Note:  Our local grocery store carries Agave Nectar.  If you can't find it, you could substitute honey and a little brown sugar.  But agave has much better flavor, in my opinion.

Grilled Turkey Breast
Servings:  6-8

Ingredients

• bone in, skin on turkey breast
• 1 cup turkey injection
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• Sage and thyme reserved from cooking the injection.

Instructions

1. Preheat your grill to 325 - 350f set up for indirect heat.  I was using a Smoke Hollow combo grill with 40 lit briquettes divided to each side with drip pans in the middle.  See pictures below for example.
2. Inject the turkey in several areas with the injection from inside the rib cage (the back side of the breast).  [For tips on injecting, see Five Tips:  Injecting Meat]
3. Make a rub with the salt, paprika, pepper, thyme and sage.  The thyme and sage should crumble easily.
4. Rub the breasts over and under the skin.
5. Place the breast on the grill over the drip pan, skin side facing up.  Grill for 2 to 2 1/2 hours or until the breast reaches an internal temperature of 155 to 160f.  Add a half dozen or so briquettes to each side occasionally as needed to maintain the grill temperature at 325 to 350f.  
6. Allow to rest 15 minutes before slicing.

Notes

• I used Kingsford Briquettes with Hickory (green bag) to get a little smoke flavor.
• Here's my time/temps chart.  [Update]  The grill temps listed were actual temps, not my target temperatures.  I was trying to hold a temp of 325f, which is much easier in my Eggs.

Time	Internal Temp	Grill Temp	Notes
0	46f	325f	Started with 20 lit coals on each side of a dripping pan
15 min	48f	300f	Added 8 unlit coals per side
30 min	61f	340f
45 min	84f	320f	Added 8 coals left side, 4 coals right side
1 hr	97f	320f
1 hr 15 m	120f	300f	Added 12 coals left side, 8 coals right side
1 hr 30 m	134f	325f
1 hr 45 m	145f	350f
2 hr	156f	315f	Removed turkey from grill

Poaching the garlic and herbs in butter draws out their flavor.

Kingsford with Hickory adds a kiss of smoke.

Injecting from the rib side (inside) avoids tearing and poking holes in the skin.

Indirect set up, coals pushed to the side to create a void, above which rests the meat.

Look how juicy!  I carve off half the breast and then slice that on a cutting board.

This disappeared quickly but I did manage to save some scraps for KY Hot Browns today.

Don't forget to entry the Drapers BBQ Gift Pack giveaway HERE.

[Standard Disclaimer]  I receive no compensation for this post from any of the brand names listed.

Creole Roast Beef Wraps

Whether you are at the pool, on the run, or just trying to hide from the heat at home, wraps are a quintessential summer lunch. You can almost feel yourself cooling off as you bite into the chilled crisp veggies and meat. Wraps are convenient for a busy summer lifestyle because they are portable, can be made ahead of time, and can pack a variety of summer time flavors.

Alexis bought a 6 lb beef eye of round roast on sale this week and I slow roasted it on her Big Green Egg. Eye of round can be a little less flavorful than other cuts of beef so I added flavor. I injected it with Cajun Injector'sCreole Butter and gave it a heavy coat of Tony Chachere's CreoleSeasoning.  (For tips on injecting see the previous post.)

The cooking set up was indirect on a roast rack over a dripping pan filled with 2 cups of beef broth. The drippings of rendered fat and seasonings are captured in the broth making an excellent au jus.

There are two things to think about when using a set up like this.

1. The roasting rack will raise the roast several inches off of the grate. But you always want a roast to cook in the center of your oven or grill for even cooking. So I skipped the grate altogether and had the rack sitting directly on the “plate setter” of the Big Green Egg. For a standard grill if you can't adjust the height of the grates, you will need to flip the roast half way through the cooking time.
2. For Big Green Egg Users: If the dripping pan sits directly on the hot plate setter, it can get too hot from conductive heat and evaporate a lot of your broth. That will make it too concentrated and salty. I raise the drip pan off the plate setter with some spacers.

I cooked it indirect at 250f until it hit an internal temperature of 135f (about 2 ½ hours) and then pulled it to rest lightly covered for 15 minutes. We could have eaten it then but we wrapped it in foil and put it in the fridge for a few hours before slicing thin. Here's how the time/temps worked out.  I would have liked the roast a bit more on the rare side of medium rare so next time I will pull it earlier, maybe around 130f.  This was twice the size of the normal eye roasts I do so maybe it carried temp longer after it came off the grill.  I normally allow 10 degrees for carry over cooking. 

Time	Grill Temperature (f)	Internal Temperature (f)
	250	40
30 min	275	56
1 hour	250	91
1 hour 30 minutes	250	115
2 hours	250	127
2 hours 20ish minutes	260	135

This creole roast beef and a spicy creole sauce add pizazz to these wraps and the spicy au jus finishes it off like a summer dip in the pool. 

Creole Roast Beef Wraps

4 servings or 8 snack portions

4 ten inch wraps (We used MissionSundried Tomato Basil wraps)

½ cup creole sauce (see recipe)

4 leaves green leaf lettuce

1 lb creole roast beef, thin sliced

½ cup roasted red pepper

8 slices French Emmental cheese (or whatever floats your boat)

1 cup au jus

Creole Sauce

2 Tbsp sour cream

3 Tbsp coarse ground creole mustard

2 Tbsp mayonnaise

½ tsp prepared horseradish

¼ tsp garlic powder

¼ tsp sugar

¼ tsp white pepper

¼ tsp kosher salt

1/8 tsp cayenne pepper

1/8 tsp black pepper

Whisk together ingredients for Creole sauce and refrigerate for at least 1 hour to let the flavors combine.

Spread 2 Tbsp of Creole sauce on ½ side of a wrap. Top with lettuce leaf, ¼ lb of roast beef, 2 slices cheese, and 2 Tbsp of roasted red pepper.

Fold in top and bottom of the wrap and roll up burrito style. Slice in half with a bias cut (at an angle) and serve with ¼ cup of hot au jus.

This has been our lunch for the past two days and I am already looking forward to having them for lunch at work tomorrow too! 

[Standard Disclaimer]  I have no affiliation with the mentioned companies or products and paid full retail costs.

Smoked Pastrami & The Blue Max

It's St. Patrick's Day so we are supposed to be eating corned beef, drinking green beer, and pretending to be Irish even if we don't have an ounce of Celtic heritage in our DNA, right?  

When I think of corned beef I can't help but remember European Street Cafe in Jacksonville, FL and their huge deli sandwiches.  Stacked with piles of meat and accompaniments, their double and triple decker sandwiches were as delicious as they were tall.  One of my favorites was the Blue Max, a variation of the Rueben.  It was piled high on rye bread with smoked pastrami, hot mustard, corned beef, melted swiss, sauerkraut, and blue cheese dressing. 

"Only" a double decker...

To make my own smoked pastrami, I used one of those standard corned beef brisket flats that you get at the supermarket.  You know the ones -

To cut the salt content, I soaked it in a bin of water for half a day.  I kept it refrigerated and swapped out the water every 4 hours.

Next I dried it off and heavily applied the dry rub:

1 Tbsp kosher salt
1 Tbsp espresso salt
2 Tbsp paprika
1 Tbsp corriander, ground
1 1/2 Tbsp turbinado sugar
1 1/2 Tbsp tri color peppercorns, crushed
1 Tbsp mustard, ground
1 tsp dried minced garlic

I smoked it in the Big Green Egg using cherry wood and coal.  I went a little higher temp of 275f until it reached an internal temp of 165f.  You could do the same thing on your grill if you set it up for indirect cooking and add wood chips, chunks or "smoke bombs" (wood chips in foil packs). 

Lining your drip pan with foil makes for easy clean up.

Then I switched to direct heat, opened up the vents to increase the temperature and did a reverse sear to get a darker color.  It only took a few minutes per side to accomplish that.

I put it in the fridge until I was ready to use it and then steamed it to warm back up.  This is a trick I picked up over at the BBQ Addicts.  They say it makes a more moist and tender pastrami like the NY delicatessens do.  I ended up steaming mine about 1 hour and 15 minutes to get it up to an internal temp of 190f. 

Sliced nice and thin, it is hard not to eat it all right then and there.

The Blue Max

adapted from European Street Cafe

3 slices rye bread

4 oz smoked pastrami

1 Tbsp sweet hot mustard

2 oz corned beef

2 slice swiss cheese

1/4 cup sauerkraut

1 Tbsp blue cheese dressing

Top one slice of bread with the pastrami, one piece of cheese, and another piece of bread.  Heat with the cheese side down on a hot griddle for 2 minutes. You are trying to crisp what will be the center piece of bread and melt the cheese here.  Remove from griddle.

Put back on a plate with the toasted piece of bread facing up.  Slather it with the sweet hot mustard.  Top with the corned beef, sauerkraut, blue cheese dressing, the other piece of cheese and the last piece of bread.

Place on a hot griddle for two minutes.  Flip and toast the other side for 2 minutes.  You could use a flat top griddle inside, but tonight I used my griddle insert for my Craycort cast iron grill grate system.  I figured that the pastrami was cooked with live fire so the sandwich might as well be grilled that way!

Quarter the sandwich and serve with chips.  Unhinge your jaw and eat it like a snake.

One quarter was missing for uh....quality control, yeah, that's it.

Now if only I had one of European Street Cafe's two hundred beer brands to wash it down!

Speaking of brisket, here are a few tips for smoking brisket that I learned from Chris Lilly at Kingsford University this month.

• He cooks competition briskets to a higher temp (200f) because he is only concerned about getting one part of the brisket to the right temp.  But when cooking for friends and family, he pulls 185-190f because it gets the whole brisket done better.
• Chris doesn't separate the point for burnt ends until after the whole brisket rests for an hour after the initial cook.
• Chris doesn't inject his brisket.
• Three words:  Worchestershire sauce powder.  I have to find this stuff.  
• Robyn of Grill Grrrl carries a thermapen in her purse.  A pink one.  

And here is one of his recipes for barbecue beef brisket courtesy of Kingsford Charcoal and Chris Lilly.  

Turkey Injection

I have often heard people say that Benjamin Franklin had supported the turkey over the bald eagle as the national bird of the United States of America. His actual quote was,

“I am on this account not displeased that the Figure is not known as a Bald Eagle, but looks more like a Turkey. For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America . . . He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on."

A lesser known fact is that shortly after making this comment, Thomas Jefferson said,

"Hey Benji! Come taste this delicious blend of eleven herbs and spices I came up with. It would taste exceptional on poultry."

Seriously though, it is a shame that we don't eat more turkey outside of the holiday season. It is lean, flavorful, and is flexible for a variety of preparations.

Usually, I like to brine my turkeys and chickens to infuse flavors and enhance juiciness. But sometimes I don't have 8-12 hours to do that. When I don't have the time to brine, I turn to injections because they are direct and fast.

Here is my favorite turkey injection, one that we have used for years with very good results. I used it tonight with a 7 lb Honeysuckle White turkey breast on the rotisserie.

Turkey Injection
source: Nibble Me This

Ingredients
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup wine
1/2 cup honey
Your choice of fresh herbs -- tonight I used 1 sprig fresh rosemary, 2 whole sage leaves
1 Tbsp parsley
1 Tbsp garlic pepper
1 Tbsp salt

Melt the butter in a medium sauce pan and then add the wine, honey, and herbs. Let simmer for 5 minutes to allow the herb oils to blend in. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

Remove the herbs and reserve. You will have about 1 cup of injection/baste. Divide this into 1/2 cup for injection and 1/2 cup for baste. Chop up the herbs & parsley and add to the baste portion.

Use a meat syringe and inject the injection in spots all over the turkey breast. Don't forget to inject from inside the cavity as well as the outside to get good coverage throughout the meat.

Roast the turkey at 325f until it hits an internal temp of 160f degrees. You can do this in your oven, indirect on a grill, or tonight, I did it direct with a rotisserie on the grill. The advantage is that it cooks quicker with a rotisserie because of the direct heat. It only took about an hour and 30 minutes.

Make sure that you divide the baste portion of the wine/butter/honey/herb mixture into two portions during the basting process because....

The buttery herb baste helps the skin roast to a golden brown and provides flavor that you can see.

This is the easiest way that I know how to make turkey breasts that you'll be proud to serve, not hide under gravy! It's easy and comes out perfect every time.

(Sorry for the lack of pictures, I was short handed and short on time!)


Seasoned Turkey