Beer Can Burgers

I've said it before, but I'll say it again. I am not the most creative person on  the planet. I have a hard time coming up with "good" ideas -food wise- on my own. Thank the BBQ Gods for Social Media! Between Facebook, Twitter & Instagram I now have an encyclopedia of different recipes to try! 

A while back, one of the big deals on the innerwebs was the "Beer Can Burger". Of course, we had to try it! 

We started out with some 80/20 ground beef. I like lower fat on these burgers because the bacon adds plenty. Make no mistake, these burgers are meant to be over the top! We used about 8 ozs of meat per burger. 

Don't let the name fool you. It's not mandatory to use a beer can. In fact, if you want to be completely correct, ours would be called Coke Can Burgers. 😉

Be sure you wash your can first (and your hands, but you should already know that!) . Then take your meat and form a big meatball. Once you have a nice round globe of meat, grab your can and press it down onto the meatball and begin forming the meat around the can. The idea is to create a vessel where you get to add piles of extra stuff (we'll get to the extra stuff in a minute!)

Once you have a nicely formed meat vessel, wrap each one with two slices of thin bacon. As usual, bacon is the Duct Tape of BBQ - bacon holds it all together. 

Once your burgers are formed, you can begin to think about the extras - the filling. We filled these Beer Can Burgers with sauteed mushrooms & onions, crumbled bacon and shredded cheddar cheese. The beauty of these monsters is you can fill them with anything! I've stuffed a cup of creamy Mac & Cheese in there, a pile of chili, pulled pork, shredded beef, just veggies (GAH!). You're only limited by your imagination. 

Once you've got the burgers filled with your favorite stuffing, add a nice pile of shredded cheese to the top and fire up the smoker!

We smoked these beauties at around 275 for an hour or so. We used Apple wood smoke. 

If you haven't tried a Beer Can Burger yet, be sure to add it to your summertime BBQ menu this year. Your guests will never forget!

The Chicken Cordon Bleu Fatty!

While strolling down the memory lane of my Google photos this morning, I came across a handful of photos from a cook we did last summer. A couple of years ago, my buddy Matt turned me on the the Bacon Explosion. This was our first foray into the world of the BBQ Fatty!

Once my wife mastered the art of the bacon weave, we decided we needed to figure out how many different Fatties we could come up with. One of our successes we called the “Chicken Cordon Bleu Fatty”. It goes something like this….

Ingredients

1 lb thin sliced bacon

8-10 boneless skinless chicken breasts

½ lb sliced ham

½ lb sliced Swiss cheese

Salt, pepper, garlic (to taste)

Step 1

First things first...flatten the chicken. Pound them out to about ½ in thick.

Step 2

The magnificent Bacon Weave. Check out our video on making a bacon weave.(coming soon!)

Step 3

Arrange the flattened chicken breasts out on the bacon weave. Make sure to arrange in such a way as to leave some bacon showing on all four sides. This will allow you to seal the roll with bacon when we roll it up. Throw on some SPG, to your taste.

Step 4

On top of the chicken arrange a layer of sliced ham

Step 5

Atop the ham goes a layer of Swiss cheese.

Step 6

The Wrap! This is the tricky part. We normally make our bacon weaves on a piece of parchment paper. It is much easier to roll the fatty when parchment paper is involved. Start with one side of the bacon weave and slowly & steadily start rolling. Like I said above, you’ll want to leave a good inch of bacon showing all the way around so you can seal up the fatty once it’s rolled up. Make sure to arrange the bacon so it covers up the entire roll.

Step 7

On our first one we added a basic rub to the bacon before cooking. Here’s a link to my basic rub recipe. This step is optional.

Step 8

Cook it! We smoked ours on the offset smoker using Oak and Hickory. I kept the temp up around 275-300F until the probe hit an internal temp of 160. My memory is a little fuzzy, but I want to say it took about an hour or so. (Full disclosure – BBQ has taught me to not pay attention to time as much as temp. “It’s done when it’s done” is my motto these days.)

Once you hit 160F internally, pull it from the heat and let it rest for 10 minutes of so. Then slice and enjoy the Chicken Cordon Bleu Fatty!

Cast Iron Cooking - The Dutch Baby

I’m sitting at my computer desk, looking out the window at my pit covered in snow and ice. It’s February 4^th and we’re smack dab in the middle of winters icy grip.Woo hoo! My favorite time of year! (/sarcasm off).

It’s been a rough winter so far. The cold, snow and ice combined with my ailing knees and back has basically shut down Big Ricky’s Smoke Shack until spring. It bums me out when days like today come around -Superbowl Sunday! I should be out there banging out Jalapeno Poppers and a rack of ribs for the big game. But instead, I’m sitting here looking out the window and longing for warm weather so I can get back outside and smoke some meat!

While I haven’t been in the pit for a few months, I have been able to play around with a couple of Cast Iron pans. My beautiful bride presented me with an awesome 10 inch Cast Iron pan for Christmas this past year. Thank you sweetie, I love it!

It’s not BBQ, but I’m really starting to enjoy cooking with CI in the oven and stove. I can’t wait to get some practice on the open fire this summer. 

Last weekend, I saw a photo on Facebook, in a CI group I belong to, for a “Dutch Baby”. If you’re not familiar, a Dutch Baby is basically a big airy pancake. While it can be made in a number of different pans, the CI pans seem to return the best results.

The Dutch Baby is a simple recipe made from eggs, flour, milk, butter,vanilla and sugar -I’ll provide the recipe we followed below.

There are a couple of keys to successful Dutch Baby I found. The first thing is the eggs and milk need to be at least room temperature. I float the eggs in some warm water for 10 minutes or so and microwave the milk for 20-25 seconds. The second key is the pan needs to be hot. A hot Cast Iron dutch oven or frying pan will give you a super nice crunchy and browned outside.

The Dutch Baby is cooked at a temp of 425 F for about 25 minutes. It will blow up like a pillow, but DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN DOOR! It’s going to collapse once you pull it from the oven – peeking early will collapse it early...DON’T DO THAT!

There’s a variety of ways to serve a Dutch Baby. Many people will add apples, berries or other fruits. Some, like me and the missus, prefer Maple Syrup, while some just like a sprinkle of powdered sugar or cinnamon sugar.

If you asked me to describe a Dutch Baby, i’d have to say it’s like a popover, a waffle and a piece of French Toast all rolled into a delicious, light and airy treat that’ll make a great addition to your weekend breakfast or brunch (or dinner, if you fancy breakfast for dinner!)

Here’s a simple recipie for Dutch Baby. We used a 10 inch CI pan.

Ingredients

3 Eggs

½ cup AP Flour

½ cup Milk (we used 2%)

1 TBSP Sugar

Pinch of Nutmeg

2 tsp Vanilla extract

4 TBSP Butter

Syrup, preserves, confectionery sugar, Nutella, your favorite topping

Step 1

Put your pan in the oven and preheat your oven to 425

Step 2

Combine eggs, flour, milk, sugar and nutmeg in a blender jar and blend until smooth. Batter may also be mixed by hand.

Step 3

Place butter in a heavy 10-inch skillet or baking dish and place in the oven. As soon as the butter has melted (watch it so it does not burn) add the batter to the pan, return pan to the oven and bake for 20 minutes, until the pancake is puffed and golden. Lower oven temperature to 300 degrees and bake five minutes longer.

Step 4

Remove pancake from oven, cut into wedges and serve at once topped with syrup, preserves, confectioners' sugar or cinnamon sugar.

Even the name is a mouthful! The Jalapeno Popper stuffed Bacon Cheeseburger Fatty!

In our quest to try every fatty combination on the planet, we recently came up with another winner. The Jalapeno Popper Bacon Cheeseburger Fatty!

This idea was actually suggested by a friend through one of those mesmerizing food videos that flood social media. A lot of our cooks come that way, through videos that look challenging or fun to try.

One of our favorite snacks has become smoked jalapeno poppers. I've been making a batch almost every weekend for months it seems! This fatty idea takes the popper to  a whole new level.

We started out with a couple of finely diced jalapenos (seeds & veins removed) and a small onion also finely diced. We sauteed them until the onions were translucent and the peppers slightly tender. After a quick chill in the freezer we added the diced onions and peppers to the softened cream cheese and a big handful of shredded cheese (we used Jack cheese, but whatever you like is fine).  

After a good mix of the veggies & cheeses we dumped it out on a piece of plastic wrap and formed it into a cheese log. We wrapped it up tight and tossed it in the freezer to firm up- about an hour.

Once the cheese log firmed up we rolled out a layer of hot italian sausage, about a ¼ inch thick and a rectangle maybe 4 inches by 8 inches - enough that we could completely wrap the cheese log. Be sure to pinch the seams together so there are no escape routes for the cheese to find when it melts -cheese blowouts are not pretty. Once the log was wrapped we tossed it back in the freezer to firm up again.

While the sausage/cheese log was chilling, we rolled out another sheet of hamburger. We left the burger plain, but you could certainly add your favorite seasonings if you want. The burger was rolled out to a aprox ½ inch thick rectangle about 5-6 inches by 9-10 inches- again, big enough to completely wrap the sausage/cheese log.

Once the burger was rolled out we added a layer of BBQ sauce followed by 9 slices of cheese (we used provalone. next time American). We then laid the sausage/cheese on the burger and wrapped it all up into a big log of love!

The final step, before smoking - the piece de resistance- is the bacon weave. It's like a snuggly bacon blanket that wraps the whole fatty up into a beautiful package. It took the wife a couple of practice runs, but she's become a bacon weave pro!

We fired up the UDS with some charcoal briquettes and hickory chunks. I smoked this fatty at about 230-250 F for about 3 hours, flipping it over about ½ way through.  I would suggest a higher temp though. Next time we’ll run in the 275 -300F range. The meat cooks pretty quickly; it's the bacon that takes time to brown, but you need to cook it fairly slowly or it will burn and curl. higher and not so slow next time.

This fatty was pretty easy to make, although it did take some time preparing. Definitely one we`ll do again soon!

Back in the saddle!!

After a winter of recovering from back surgery, I’m so happy to finally be able to get back to BBQ! I decided to jump right back in this weekend, so I called my sister and invited her and my niece down for a Red Sox game on the tube and some  lip smackin’ BBQ!

In northern New Hampshire, Mother Nature has little interest in cooperating with our outdoor plans and Saturday was no exception. I looked at the weather forecast Friday night, hoping to find some good news, but no. Cold and snowy was the forecast du jour.

We woke up to find another Winter Wonderland! An inch of snow had fallen overnight and it was still snowing and blowing. I was a little discouraged, but I’ve been inside for far too long! So, I kissed my bride goodbye and sent her off to work and moved the Ugly Drum Smoker out to the driveway and lit up a chimney of charcoal.

Normally, I will moan and groan through winter BBQing and smoking - I HATE IT! - but I love to cook so I suffer through. This time however was different. I have been out of the game so long, I was chomping at the bit to get outside and fire up the smoker!  

The menu for dinner was pulled pork sandwiches, cole slaw, baked beans and cornbread. I know, that's way too much starch. carbs, whatever...but so what? I`m not trying to make diet BBQ here!

Friday night we trimmed up a nice 8-9 lb boneless Boston Butt and injected some extra flavor. Here’s my “go-to” liquid recipe for pork butt:

3/4 cup apple juice
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup salt
2 tablespoons Worcestershire

Basic and mild, but I think it adds a hint of flavor and extra moisture for the long cook.

Normally, I will rub the meat the night before and refrigerate, but i was tired so I waited until Saturday AM. I got the butt on a little later than I had hoped, but by 10AM, the smoke was rolling and the butt was cooking. Here’s a basic pork butt rub I make that can be easily customized to your tastes:

Big Ricky’s Butt Rub

Ingredients:
1/4 cup Paprika
1/8 cup Fresh Ground Black Pepper
1-2 tablespoons Garlic Powder
1-2 tablespoons Onion Powder
1 tablespoon or more Cayenne Pepper
1/4 cup Coarse Salt
1/4 cup Brown or White Sugar (I use Turbinado sugar)

We smoked the butt for 8 hours, until it hit 205F. I maintain temps between 220F and 240F in the UDS and, this time, I used Hickory for my smoke (Kingsford briquettes for my heat). I still haven’t gotten my time management down to where I can let the butt rest for any length  of time. As it was, we didn’t eat until 8PM! I guess I need to get going even earlier next time.

One of my favorite things is seeing a well cooked pork butt. If it’s done right, it will  like  jello. We pulled the butt and watched it jiggle and dance all the way into the kitchen.

While the pork butt rested, me and Les put together the cornbread. A big kudos to Demetra Overton for this recipe! it is FANTASTIC! Click on the link  to check out the recipe and her other great looking dishes (her Vidalia onion cornbread is going to be made soon too!!)

Bacon Upside Down Jalapeno Corn Bread

Here’s our results. It was a huge hit!!

I'm super happy to be walking upright and BBqing again! It looks like winter is on the run and warmer weather is here. I`ve knocked off the rust and am ready to dive back into the pit! Stay tuned, lots more to come!

Let's try this again....

Stopped by the blog today and realized its been over a year since I posted anything. Grr...I need to carve out some time each week and just sit down and write something. I mean, I didn't stop smoking or BBQing during that time. In fact, I intended to try and smoke something(s) every weekend. I did pretty well for a good 5-6 month stretch, but then things started to slow down a bit.

For the last year or so I've had some physical problems that have really put a crimp in all my hobbies (I have a new hobby I'll show you later!). I can't pinpoint when ,but several months ago I developed numbness in my legs,feet,hands and torso, along with screaming pains in my legs. It was so bad I was hobbling around like an 80 year old man! Initial testing showed a herniated disc in my lower back causing severe sciatic irritation. Surgeon says drugs and PT won't help and surgery is imminent. So, there goes most of my summer.

I spent most of July and August laying in bed or in the recliner.  My recliner has a direct line of site out the window to my smoker, in the back yard. The good news is I’ve seen every movie that's been released in the last 2 year ( most of them were horrible, by the way!), the better news is  I still have not succumbed to the Walking Dead or Game of Thrones phenomenon! The bad news...and this is really bad….my “Smoke every weekend” campaign came to a screeching halt!.

September rolled around and I was back to work and back to rolling smoke. Another dose of good news/bad news came with September. The good news was my leg pain and sciatic problem was gone! The bad news was that all of the other numbness, burning and pain was still there. That didn't stop me though. Thanks to my awesome wife, who also loves to BBQ & smoke. She pushed me and jumped in with me and we started smoking again!

One of the main reasons I wanted to get back in the smoke was a local BBQ Rib competition I found out about. Les and I have both wanted to try and get into BBQ competition and this would be the perfect entrance!  We jumped in and, if I recall correctly, we proceeded to smoke 2 racks of ribs every weekend, for six weeks to prepare for the competition. I was in heaven!

Sadly, living in the “Grand Bois du Nord” of New Hampshire has some drawbacks. The fact that we’re hundreds of miles from BBQ Country is a big one for me. Unfortunately, there just arent enough people up here that BBQ and, after 6 weeks of practice,practice, practice, we got word that the competition was canceled for lack of competitors.. :(

Throughout all that practice, I was still experiencing pain and numbness all over. While the sciatica was gone, the rest of the problem still remained. In fact, I was still not able to walk without a cane and significant limp. Back to the doctor I go. My doc has no idea of course so he sends me to the neurologist upstairs. After another MRI, this time on my neck, they discover another herniated disc and,along with it, a contusion on  my spinal cord. The neurologist sees this and is confident this is the root the problem. Back under the knife I go!

This past November I went back in for the 2nd time this year and had the neck disc repaired. This one was much more painful than before and, AGAIN, I’m forced to stare out the window at my beloved smoker while she seems to be crying to me “why do you ignore me Big Ricky, why?”

It’ll be 4 weeks, Tuesday, since surgery and I’m definitely feeling better from the operation. My neck and shoulders still get sore, but I expect a little PT will fix that. The numbness and burning in my hand is still there, which makes me sad. The good news is my balance is better and walking seems to be improved as well. Again, I fully expect to see major improvements in my walking after I get a little muscle back.

The best news of all...there’s a chuck roast defrosting in the fridge and the Q will be fired up Saturday! I’ll be sure to document it here on the blog.

That's my story and I’m stickin’ to it!

                                           

Labor Day Weekend and a reason to celebrate

Labor Day weekend marks the end of summer  - and the end of BBQ season - for many people,but not us! I'm already working on plans on how to insulate my smoker so I can continue smoking right through the frigid New Hampshire winters. Last winter it was rough keeping temperatures up in the offset smoker and the vertical smoker so I need something I can easily insulate. 

The UDS-Ugly Drum Smoker - hit my radar about a year ago while flipping through Youtube. While my first thought wasn't winter smoking with the UDS, it oocurred to me along the build that I could easily wrap it in a welding blanket or maybe a hot water heater insulator sleeve to keep it insulated from the cold winds of the northeast . I'll update when the cold sets in and I've decided which way i'm going to go.

The main reason for building the UDS was actually twofold. First, it fueled my love of making gadgets. Granted, its a pretty big gadget but a gadget in my mind nonetheless. Reason two was the numerous claims of long long long and low smokes wih minimal intervention.

The plans I found were simple and easy to follow. I am by no means a craftsman and I really work better when I have step by step instructions. There are a bunch of guides on Youtube that make it a breeze for even a backyard hack like me.

I started out finding some barrels on Craigslist. They weren't food grade, but they held latex paint so I was ok with them. Unfortunately, I found out after I was done building that I have a family connection to an unlimited supply of food grade barrels.  I guess i'll just have to build a few more!

I picked up the barrels back in August, but had to put them aside for  a few weeks until I had a weekend to get started. Finally about 3 weeks ago I got going. 

I burned out the barrel using slats from some old wood fencing we had. I had it going like a blowtorch! It took maybe an hour to burn the bulk of the exterior paint off. At that point I had to lay it down and start to rotate it to burn off the bottom third. Another hour later and the outside of the barrel was completely burned off. 

After the burn I let the barrel cool and emptied the ash out. I grabbed a scrub brush and a bucket of soapy water and gave the exterior a good scrub and then blasted it with the power washer. The outside was right down to bare metal, it was beautiful!

The inside however, that was a whole other story. After scrubbing and blasting with the power washer I realized this barrel had the dreaded "red liner" I had heard about. No big deal, I thought..I'll just grab my drill & wire cup brush and zip that liner right off. Boy  I couldn't have been more wrong! This liner - epoxy, or some other hard as steel lining, was not coming off so easy - even after 2-3 hours of 900 degree fire! It took me hours to just get the top third of the barrel & the lid clean and even then it wasn't comletely clean of the red liner. Finally I gave up and followed the advice of the builders  before me. I made arrangements with a co-workers husband to have him sand blast the inside of the barrel.

Before-using a wire wheel & a flap wheel sander. It was going to take forever!

After- 20 minutes of sandblasting and it's down to bare metal and ready for seasoning!

Once I got the barrel and lid back from sandblasting, I gave it good scrub and pressurewash to remove any leftover residue. It was a nice hot summer day so the barrel dried in minutes. 

Since I didn't have the time or parts to finish the build, I gave the inside of the barrel a nice heavy coating of spray on cooking oil. This served two purposes. Namely it prevented the bare steel inside from rusting. The second purpose was to season the inside of the barrel, just like a cast iron pan.  To avoid rust on the outside, I gave the barrels exterior a coat of high temperature black paint. After it had time to dry, I put it back on the porch to wait for my next day off. 

During the week I made a few trips to the local hardware store & home improvement centers to pick up my supplies. For those who are interested, I'll post a link to a CAD drawing and parts list at the end of this post. 

I stopped by a local metal shop a few weeks ago and showed the guy the CAD rendition of the fire basket from the plans I found online. He figured building me a custom firebasket would run me about $80.00. That wasn't to bad in my opinion, i'd have a nice solid, professionally welded firebasket, but that's kind of against the spirit of the UDS build. So, I went with Plan B..I found some plans online and built my own for about $30.00.

Firebasket almost complete.

I found sheets of expanded metal at Home Depot that I could use as is and I scavanged an 18 inch grill from an old BBQ. I gently bent the expanded metal around a propane tank to make uniform curves and I joined the two pieces together with 1/4-20 stainless machine bolts & fender washers. I secured the basket to the grill using bailing wire every few inches. For an ash pan I attached three 4 inch carriage bolts to the bottom of the basket and a large (18 inch)pizza pan, again using fender washers to secure the bolts to the bottom of the basket. I allowed 3.5 inches of space between the basket bottom and the pizza pan to allow for good air flow under the coals. I later found a handle from an old bucket that fit perfectly and allows me to grab the basket with a hook and remove it or put it in the smoker while still hot. The basket turned out sturdy and will easily hold 10 plus pounds of charcoal, which should be more than enough for 8-9-10 hour smokes. 

With my firebasket complete, I moved back to the barrel. I had applied a couple more coats of black high temp paint to the outside so I started measuring and marking spots to drill holes. I punched three additional 1 inch holes aruound the bottom (2" up from the bottom edge) and dropped in 4 black pipe nipples. On the two side nipples I added two 3/4 inch ball valves and on the front and back nipples I simply added pipe caps. The front nand back caps are removed to get the smoker up to temperature. Once I've got the temp I want, I can close those two vents down with the pipe caps and regulate the air flow with the ball valves. 

Now that I had my air flow IN, I needed a way to get the smoke OUT. For that, I drilled two one inch holes in the lid and installed 2 3/4 inch black pipe elbows. Why elbows, you ask? Simple..to keep the rain out! I later found that two holes was not enough and had to punch two more holes in the lid after the first smoke. The results were much better!

I added two 22 inch weber grates; one at 7 inches below the lid and the other at 12 inches. The lower grill sits about 15 inches from the top of where 10lbs of charcoal will sit. I havent determined yet if I need a heat baffle to cook on that lower grill or not. For now, it's a great place for a drip pan and/or water pan. I also added a thermometer between the 1st and 2nd grills. 

After adding all the hardware I gave the UDS a test burn, mainly to cook that non-stick spray to the walls and season my smoker. I had to go to work , but Leslie sent me text message reports every hour or so, showing me the temperature was staying constant for hours and hours! I was very encouraged! I had filled the basket with about 10 lbs of charcoal and dropped it in around 11AM. I got reports until about 7PM and it stayed between 200 and 30 degrees that whole time . When I got home at 9:30 the fire had died down but was still warm and I could have gotten it fired back up if I wanted! Since it was late, I decided to let it just die out on its own. To my surprise, the next morning there was easily 2 lbs of charcoal left unburned! 

For our trial run we cooked a couple of racks of ribs, one for us and one for the guy (and his family) who saved me hours of tedious grinding. I added 9lbs of charcoal to the basket and shoveled out the center. In BBQ parlance it's referred to as the "minion method" - essentially allowing the coals to burn slowly and outwardly for a long, long period of time. I scattered about 6-7 chunks of hickory through the coals, put the ribs on and closed the lid.  I was able to maintain 250 degrees for then entire cook with only a littlle adjusting, as I get more familiar with how this smoker works.

It was a great Labor Day weekend and we had reason to celebrate! I'm super pleased with how my first UDS came out and I'm already thinking about how to build the next one - which, by the way, Leslie has claimed as her own. 

Summer may be over, but BBQ season will roll on!

Ready to smoke!

I may add some color to it and put it on wheels later, but for now it's done!

Great easy plans to build a UDS

(also an awesome site for all things BBQ!)