It's a sign I think...

Just messing around today and came up with this.  It's a new pit sign.  

The piggy needs a little work, yet don't we all.  As we grow I hope to get better at our grilling and mastering the art of the "sport" & maybe come up with a new piggy mascot.  But for now he'll do and we will continue to Smoke on!!

Just a girl and her grill

Pitmaster Birthday

Soooo I know someone whom I'm pretty close with that has this Birthday coming up.  I'm looking for some ideas on something Bbq related, gadgets & gizmos.

He loves the Red Sox, his favorite food is bacon & favorite color is brown sugar.

I welcome any idea & thoughts, as this birthday is fast approaching.

Thanks in advance!!

Review: Stump Chunks fire starter

A few months ago , on a trip to my local hardware store I found a display at the register offering free samples of Stump Chunks firestarter.  Always looking for new stuff to try in the pit, I grabbed the small bag and read the label. It seems these brothers from my home state of New Hampshire discovered the ground up pieces of tree stumps ( They're loggers, I presume) make a great natural fire starter.

I took the free sample home and gave it a try. I grabbed a big handful out of the bag and piled it in my fire box. I dumped about a 1/2 a chimney of charcoal briquettes  on top and fired up the propane torch. The Stump Chunks lit quickly and spread fast. It burned hot and plenty long enough to get the coals rolling. 

Test two was a pile underneath a charcoal chimney. Again, the Stump Chunks worked famously at getting the charcoal glowing in short order.  The third and final test was starting split firewood directly. I used no kindling and built the fire with 3 sticks of Oak. Another rousing success! I had the oak fully afire in minutes!

Stump Chunks starts like paper and burns like kindling!  Since its just wood there is zero problem with taste to your food.

If you're starting a grill, a smoker, a fire pit or wood stove, check out Stump Chunks. I highly recommend it!

Stump Chunks online

Another home run!!

I love gadgets. I also love BBQ'ing/smoking/grilling.  What could be a better gift than gadgets I can use for BBQ?  Apparently the in-laws know the answer to that question, because once again they hit another home run (I also love baseball!).

For this year's birthday I was super excited to get an early birthday gift package from my wife's folks. They've been around for a few of our early culinary creations and they know how much we love to cook. Once again they ran with that idea and got me more great gifts and tools to help hone my skills in the pit.

Thanks again J&P for the silicone gloves, meat claws, basting brush and (best of all!) the infrared thermometer! They will all go to good use starting this weekend! Awesome gifts ( AGAIN!!)

Still licking my fingers over this one!

This weekends smoke...St Louis Style pork ribs.  The rub is a new experiment using  fresh ground coffee and reduced salt (my sister'request).  Total smoke time: 5.5 hours at 225-235. smoked on Oak and Hickory. Slathered with Sweet Baby Ricky's BBQ sauce ( my take on Sweet Baby Rays).

The good news...they tasted great, super tender and moist with a great bark. The bad news...overcooked them a touch. While most people would be stoked with tasty ribs that are "falling off the bone" tender, it will not fly in competition BBQ.  I'm not altogether disappointed...they really were good, but I'm not looking for "good". I'm looking for GREAT! I will find it on my smoker eventually. For now, more practice! 

Grilled pizza... The new game in town!

Out of the ashes...

OK maybe it wasn't a Phoenix, but there were some signicant discoveries this past weekend. 

I've been having problems generating and maintaining desired temps on my grill. After watching a couple of YouTube videos I made some modifications to hopefully improve consistency.  I added two thermometers at grill level; one on the left and one on the right. I added some flex pipe to bring the smokestack down to grill level, some expanded metal to the firebox as a grate and rails down both sides of the lid to reduce smoke and heat leakage. I also added firebricks and some baking pans to the grill chamber to create baffles and give me a place to set a water pan.

After the first run through I discovered that the briquettes would not generate the heat I wanted so I added more briquettes. I added such a pile of briquettes that the expanded metal actually collapsed! I know that firebox was cranking, yet my temps were only hovering around the 210-220 mark. I want more...I NEED more heat!

For round two I went with lump charcoal, as it burns hotter than briquettes.  I got hotter temps, but not as hot as I wanted. I know what you're thinking, " why, Rick? BBQ is low and slow,why do you want so much heat?"  My answer? PIZZA ( and a few other things).  I won't need high temp all the time. In fact, I only need them every once in a while. Sadly, the wife says I can't eat grilled pizza for every meal.  My pizza,though, requires temps around 500f. That's HOT! Roughly 2+ times higher than my normal cooking temps.

In northern New Hampshire, lots of people heat with firewood so there's plenty  of places to get it. I found myself a "wood guy" who would sort for a few dollars more.  I was able to get a 1/4 cord of Maple & Oak delivered Saturday night and planned for a third test Sunday. The goal was " wood fired pizza" by dinner time.

Frustrated with my two previous burns (briquettes & lump charcoal), I surmised maybe the some of the modifications I had done were actually hurting rather than helping.  I decided to pull the smokestack extension and the fire bricks/ baffles and fired her up with hardwood.

EUREKA!! An hour after I started my fire I had temps north of 450f!! Woo hoo! Now I just need to fine tune temp control, which was fairly easy once I had temps that actually needed regulating.

It looks like I'll have to save the briquettes for normal grilling and direct heat cooking and run with hardwood for smoking. Now I can really concentrate on cooking skills and techniques, rather than constantly fiddling with the firebox to get the heat I need.

In my last post I complained about a bad weekend at the pit, but the fact is I came out of the weekend with some pretty decent food and a solution to the heat issues. Looking back now, I'm actually rather pleased with how things turned out. The food was not our best effort ( taste was excellent, appearance was a bit lacking ), but the knowledge I gained with my trials and errors, I think, is going to be a game changer for me and my grill!

Back to the grill I go!

Another fine mess...

Hopefully I'm not the only one who has bad days at the grill. I keep telling myself even the best pitmasters must! Plus, I'm finding a bad day at the grill is still a pretty good way to waste a day!

Saturday was one of "those days".  I made some simple modifications to my grill recently in the hopes of increasing efficiency and better smoke & heat control. At first it seemed these mods were going to be great, but after the first run I'm not very impressed. Now, it may not only be the fault of the mods, but even with a firebox full of briquettes I couldn't hold temps above 200F for any significant length of time ( or so I thought!)

BBQ Chicken and smoked Mac & cheese were the order of the day, along with a pile of bacon to be used as a garnish on the Mac & cheese. Since I had trouble last time with heat and heat control, I opted to try lump charcoal instead of briquettes. I don't usually use lump, simple because briquettes burn longer and more consistently. My hope was that lump charcoal would get me up over 300F, so that I could regulate the heat better ( I was looking for a steady 250-275F ).

The lump charcoal worked fine getting me up to the high 200's and even broke 300 degrees for a short spell! Sadly though, it wouldn’t hold for long and began traveling down to the low 200’s.

Everyone knows (or quickly learns) the stock temperature gauge on most out- of- the-box grills and smokers are woefully inadequate. The gauge on my little Brinkmann doesn’t even display temperatures! It simply says something like “LOW” , “OK” and “HIGH”. I am not happy with three “settings”! I want to control the grill like a kitchen oven. To help me achieve that, I installed two thermometers at grill level; one on the left and one on the right.

After about an hour of pre-heating it appeared my mods may have worked, but shortly after I noticed my two thermometers were no longer working in tandem. The left side was climbing up over 25 degrees higher than than the right side. Now, I am not well versed in the area of thermodynamics - I don’t even know if that's the right word, but it sounds cool - so I am a bit stumped how the side farthest from the firebox would be hotter than the closer side. With no real baffles the thermometer on the right side is about a foot from the firebox. I realize heat rises, but I would think the intense heat from the firebox would at least bring the right side higher and not show an almost 40-50 degree difference in temperatures.

With constant supervision and a lot of fiddling I  was able to get the temps back within about 10 degrees on both sides, but now I’m down to a steady 200-210 degrees.

I cooked  the bacon at  our usual 225-250 (with the help of MORE lump charcoal), but lo and behold it comes out more crispy than I planned. Of course there is not one single thing in the world wrong with crispy, but that’s not  what I was going for!  Could both of my thermometers be out of whack? Tomorrow I'll throw the digital probe in there and see where we're at.

So, there is fail number one! Ok, so it wasn’t really a fail, per se. It was, however, disappointing because it tasted and looked just fine, but it wasn’t really the way I had intended it (maybe I’m a little hard on myself?)

Next up, chicken. Last week, I made some BBQ chicken and got some rave reviews from family and friends and I was quite proud of how it looked and tasted. So much in fact, that I needed to try again!  I put the chicken on, hoping for a roughly 2 hour smoke at around 225-240F. Finally my thermometers are back in sync- but only at 200F- and my firebox is full and rolling! I settle back in my chair and tell myself it’s ok and it’ll just take longer to cook than I planned.

One of the “rules” l learned early on was to avoid lifting the lid. I especially wanted to stick to that rule, just to keep the heat as constant as possible. Also, I did everything the same as last week (except the lump charcoal this time) so why shouldn’t I expect the same results?

I placed the meat the way I thought would be best; breasts closer to the left (away from the firebox, where the heat was higher?????) thighs in the middle and drummies on the right. About 1 hour in I decide it’s time to check the results. I open the lid and find the drummies are completely cooked and burning on the bottom. I spent the entire time glued to that smoker and the temps never went above 230 the entire time (on the left side!) - yet things were burning! GAAAH!

I saved the chicken and only had three drummies I wouldn’t include in a photo (they’ll still make a nice couple of chicken salad sandwiches), but the uneven temps and burned bottoms has me vexed! As I said during dinner, we went for taste, rather than appearance. That's my story and I’m sticking to it! 

The mac & cheese turned out pretty good too. Being a casserole that needed stirring every 10 minutes or so (we wanted smoke all the way through) I didn’t worry so much about burning.

So everything came out ok. Why are you complaining Rick? Because it’s MY blog, that’s why!!

No really, it’s purely frustration that things didn’t go the way I wanted. I guess this is my way of stomping my feet and pouting.

I did learn a few things; mostly things I shouldn’t do- like avoiding opening the lid! I also learned that lump charcoal, in my limited experience, will get very expensive if today was any indication! I went through an entire bag for some chicken, bacon and mac & cheese!

Tonight I got a load of oak & maple firewood. I am hopeful that hardwood will get me higher temps, burn longer and give me better heat control. It’s a learning process, .right? We’ll see what happens.

Now, back to the drawing board and practice, practice practice!

Bbq pit OR Mancave?

What a wonderful weekend it's been.  I have been able to hang with the coolest Pitmaster in the northeast.

We made some delicious food and our "pit" is coming together nicely.  We received & stacked 1/4 of a cord of wood.  That's stacked and ready for putting some heat to a fire.

We have designated a corner of the yard for our pit area.  Along with our happy little stack of wood there are some chairs, a fire pit and of course the smoker.  I love it... It's kinda like a Mancave, only girls are allowed in the pit. Lol

So Saturday my husband decided to try his hand at chicken again.....he does this to himself all the time.  You ever make something with no real pressure and it comes out phenomenal and when you want to recreate and improve you don't so so well??? This was one of those times....

So the chicken came out just as delicious this time he just didn't like the appearance of it.   A few pieces got a little charred but under the skin was some pretty tasty meat!!

I'm not sure but I'm pretty sure we will be  doing some more chicken. ;)

We also tried doing a smoked Mac and cheese on the grill.  Now we have done this before but we actually smoked the cheese before making the Mac & cheese.  This time we didn't presmoke the cheese we put the sauce together on the stove top and instead of putting it in The oven we smoked it in the grill.

Between those two methods I think smoking the cheese before and making it with that is a good and a quick way to do it, and I learned that you should have a little more sauce than not as it seemed to dry out on the smoker OR was it the lb of bread crumbs I put on it?? I don't know but it was good and I can't wait to try another one.  So that was Saturday.

Sunday we decided to pick up a pizza stone and peel and try our hand at pizza on the grill. They came out soooo good too.  If you don't have a pizza stone for your grill you should get one.  I was actually surprised the peel was more expensive than the stone, but both definitely worth the investments.

We had a lot of fun making our pizzas and putting them on the grill and seeing them come out melted and golden brown.  MmmmmMmmMmmmmmm.

So life is good in the pit!!  The "man" can have his "man cave"..we have our pit.. And Good things happen in the pit!!

Their is always something to learn or try next!! So much Bbq.... So little time!

So again I hope you've enjoyed reading our smoking diary.... And I hope you come back for more of what's to come in Big Ricky's Bbq pit!!

A few of our recent creations

                                         Practicing Competition BBQ Chicken -We're getting there!!

                                                         Nice smoke ring on the ribs!

Because, why not wrap a big meatball in bacon?

                                          Coke can burgers (shout out to BBQ Pit Boys) stuffed w/                                              jalapeno, sauteed onions, bacon and cheddar cheese.
                                     

Grilled Bacon pizza 

Smoked Mac & cheese

Cured egg yolks

Bacon curing 

A big ol' slab of pork belly just waiting to get turned into bacon

Snack time! Smoked cheese, smoked pepperoni and homemade summer sausage.

First try at summer sausasge

Becky look at that butt...it is sooo big!!

My version of the beginning

Hello everyone, 

I'd like to introduce myself & welcome you to our smoking diary.

My name is Leslie....aka "The REAL boss!".  Lol. Although I like to think that sometimes about a lot of things...THIS not one of these times.  Rick IS the  Pitmaster!!

My version of the beginning is similar to his, only I want to express how this can become in instant hobby/addiction.

  

For his birthday 3 years ago I was having coffee with my aunt and she had mentioned how she bought her boyfriend a smoker. Call it an epifaney if you will but I decided that it was something Rick would like and felt the need to go with it.

I bought him the Brinkman black bullet smoker because it was an inexpensive start and in case it wasn't "his thing".

Boyyyyyyy is it his thing!!  He was hooked instantly!  We started smoking the usual...ribs, pork butts and other various things. Rick started watching Youtube videos on upgrading and improving your Brinkman. Yet another reason he loves this hobby.  He loves to tinker and make things "better" lol

I also learned being married to Rick, patience is not his middle name!!

When you become a smoker... You learn to have patience.  Between brining, chilling, and the whole smoking process, you will learn that not only the actual smoked food looks and tastes so good, but the hanging out listening to Red Sox games or playing fetch with your dog or even just hanging out around the smoker and talking is just as enjoyable as the food!

I also have to say that the enthusiasm and enjoyment and smiles Rick gets from anything is what I like the best ( next to the food!!). I love to see him just as excited about the 15th pork butt as he was the first. I love to see him so happy and proud!!

So there is my introduction and if you take anything away from this...if you can't think of what to get your man for a gift, consider a smoker. You'll be glad you did.

There is soooo much more to come, we hope you like our lighthearted jokes and our smoking diary.

Come back soon!

Leslie

In the beginning (his side of the story)

In the beginning...

Hi I'm Rick, the Pit Boss. 

It started about 5 or 6 years ago when I met this vision I now call my wife, Leslie.. The way to her heart , i found, was cooking together and discovering new and delicious eats we had never tried making on our own. Our best dates, in my opinion, were ( and still are) spent in the kitchen cooking.

Fast forward to about 3 years ago in late July. My birthday was right around the corner and Leslie was, once again, vexed over what to get me. I can't possible fathom what popped into her pretty little head to come up with this idea, but on August 4, 2013  at 11:00 AM I became the proud owner of my very first BBQ smoker.  

It was a simple beast, the Brinkmann vertical water smoker. Knowing I might easily grow bored or frustrated, Leslie wisely chose an inexpensive, yet functional, unit. To her surprise, the opposite occurred! I became a BBQ/Smoking fiend!!

We started out with the usual ribs and pork butts and everything was coming out fantastic! We discovered a couple of things in the beginning. Namely, we liked to eat BBQ'd food a lot! Second, we found that with a little patience and some research smoking and drying meat was not that difficult.

We consider ourselves beginners, but we are finding the learning, creating,preparing and sharing is just as exciting and enjoyable as it is to eat our creations!

While the "old" Brinkmann is still alive and kicking, we've moved  up a bit to a larger offset smoker and are in the planning stages of building a smoke house. We use only charcoal (lump & briquettes) and hard wood (mostly hickory, apple, oak & maple) and have sworn off gas or electric smokers or grills forever!

We recently began visiting area BBQ competitions and sampling the wares. Once again the BBQ bug bit us square on the butt (see what I did there?) and now we're making plans to compete in our first BBQ competition next spring! For now, its just practice, practice, practice!

Thanks for stopping by. We'll be adding more and more photos of past and future creations, as well as stories of our journey through the smoke. We encourage your feedback and welcome advice and/or suggestions.

Smoke on!

Big Ricky