The Food Thread

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Sly Boots
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Re: The Food Thread

Post by Sly Boots » Sun Aug 26, 2018 5:40 pm

Tempting indeed!

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Jez
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Re: The Food Thread

Post by Jez » Sun Aug 26, 2018 6:32 pm

BBQ pls :)
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Re: The Food Thread

Post by Gibby » Sun Aug 26, 2018 8:23 pm

Party at Snowy's! ¬_¬

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Re: The Food Thread

Post by Sly Boots » Sun Aug 26, 2018 8:23 pm

\:D/

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Re: The Food Thread

Post by Snowy » Mon Aug 27, 2018 10:56 am

Jez wrote:
Sun Aug 26, 2018 6:32 pm
BBQ pls :)
OK, can't remember where I picked this one up from, but it is a good one for lamb. I tend to use the leg, but I expect shoulder would work too.

What you will need:
A BBQ and a temperature probe :)
1 large disposable foil drip pan
1 leg of lamb
Garlic, probably a whole bulb
Rosemary
Vegetable oil (I use olive oil)
2 carrots
1 onion
1 large glass of red wine
1200ml of lamb stock, beef stock is also fine if you can't get lamb

Take the lamb and using a sharp knife, make incisions about 1" deep. Peel the garlic and slice each clove into quarters and push about 4 cloves-worth into the incisions. Then take a small sprig of rosemary and stuff that in with the garlic into each incision. Using about 1tbsp of olive oil, rub the whole of the joint and then season with pepper and salt and the lamb is prepped. Next take your carrots, peel and chop into large chunks. Quarter your onions

Set your BBQ up for 50/50 direct/indirect cooking, basically you have all your charcoal over on one half of the grate (your BBQ does have a lid, right?).

Put the carrot, onion, the rest of the garlic and any leftover rosemary into the drip pan, and pour in the wine and the stock. Add a twist of salt and pepper.

Sear your lamb to a nicely browned state over direct heat, right over those coals. This won't take too long. Then pop it into the foil pan with everything else, and cook it indirectly (not over the coals) - ideally you want your BBQ to be somewhere between 180C and 200C - if you have a thermometer built in and can manage the amount of air getting to the coals this is pretty easy to achieve. The leg will have a meatier 'outside' edge and the thinner inside (inside and outside equating to the position when it was still attached to the rest of the lamb) - start your cook with the outside meatier side up.

So - get the lamb in and roasting, lid on your BBQ - it should take between 90 mins and 2 hours so make sure you have enough coals*. If you are not sure, use the minion method - pop down some unlit coals that your lit coals are poured on top of - this will extend the life of your cook significantly.

If you have one, and I can't recommend them highly enough, get a temperature probe. While for smoking I use the all-in-one fan and temperature monitor in my Flame Boss, for BBQ and a lot of non-bbq cooking I use one of these. It won't break the bank and it will make all the difference whether you are cooking burgers, steak, chicken or any roasting joint.

Half way through the cook, turn the lamb over. Cook it until you have an internal temperature of 65C at the centre of the meat. Remember, the centre of the meat is not the centre of the joint - if you measure the temperature at the bone it will heat up much faster than the meat and you will end up with an under-cooked mess. you want the probe in the centre of the thickest part of the meat. Once it hits 65C (65C will give you a medium cook on the meat), wrap the lamb in foil and pop it somewhere warm to rest for around 15-20 minutes.

Take your foil tray and pour the contents into a saucepan through a sieve. What you should have should be a rich and slightly thick stock with a fantastic flavour. If you want to thicken in, put the pan over the coals and cook on direct heat to let it reduce. Skim off any fat that rises to the top.

Serve it however you like :)

---------------

So that's my preferred means, although I have done a nice honey-glazed leg too. Smoking lamb you have to be so careful as if you overdo the smoke-wood it can nuke all the flavour of the lamb.

*Charcoal - worth a separate post. See below.
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Re: The Food Thread

Post by Snowy » Mon Aug 27, 2018 11:19 am

Charcoal.

Piece of piss right? Grab some from the supermarket or petrol station and away you go?

Well, no. At least, not always. So I thought I would write up some thoughts on charcoal.

The first rule, the golden rule, the rule that must always be followed. Ready? The first law of caveman cookery is that thou shalt never, NEVER use quick-lighting charcoal. This stuff is basically soaked in paraffin and will make your food taste of it. How this stuff still sells is a mystery to me.

The second rule of caveman cookery is that while the coals are cooking off (see that black/grey smoke? Then they are still cooking off) you don't start cooking on them.

Now that that is out of the way, you have two choices - lumpwood or briquette. Lumpwood burns fast and hot and is often the better choice for a straight BBQ while briquettes are man-made and glued together. Purists will avoid briquettes that are glued using chemical binding and go for natural instead - I tend to prefer natural bindings but to be honest by the time the coals are good and hot any binding has long since burned off.

Lumpwood has different grades, with restaurant grade being the best. Even with restaurant grade though, lumpwood is quite brittle and needs to have been handled right. If not, you end up with a bag full of shards and dust which is no use to man or beast. That is why I can often be found at garden centres feeling up bags of lumpwood to make sure that I have a bag that was not thrown around, stuck at the bottom of the pallet, or any of the other ways that you end up with a useless bag of coal.

I do like briquettes, you remove the risk of buying a bag of dust plus they are ideal for low and slow cooking as they burn at a lower heat. You get what you pay for though - petrol station ones will burn out fast, and will often struggle to get to any great temperature (some smoked cooks call for a surge of heat towards the end to finish the bark, get those burnt ends done just so etc, and some call for a high temp throughout e.g. dry-smoking a turkey, very difficult with supermarket coals).

Supermarket briquettes I will use at a pinch when cooking 6 hours or less in the smoker or for a quick cook on the BBQ where I don't want to go past 225C. My preferred briquettes though are Aussie Heat Beads - they are the absolute best you can buy, they burn good and hot if you need it and reasonably priced too. Weber's own brand are also very good, but like anything with the Weber name are irritatingly expensive.

For lumpwood - avoid anything that is carted in and out of a shop daily (petrol stations and supermarkets are very bad for this) and go for restaurant grade if you can stretch to it.
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Re: The Food Thread

Post by Jez » Mon Aug 27, 2018 9:31 pm

Didn't realise this was so very detailed this BBQ thing :)

Thanks Ian I'll try a lamb roast if we get some nice weather soon mate.
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Re: The Food Thread

Post by The Jackal » Mon Aug 27, 2018 11:00 pm

Not to be funny, but I know about lumpwood-vs-briquettes (for starters) and I neither have a garden nor have grilled since last summer. If good honest BBQ owners are only just picking this up, then a public service is being done in this thread.
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Re: The Food Thread

Post by Snowy » Wed Aug 29, 2018 2:01 pm

The Jackal wrote:
Mon Aug 27, 2018 11:00 pm
Not to be funny, but I know about lumpwood-vs-briquettes (for starters) and I neither have a garden nor have grilled since last summer. If good honest BBQ owners are only just picking this up, then a public service is being done in this thread.
I have only been BBQing 'seriously' for about 3 years now, prior to that we had a shitty Robert Dyas kettle that cost about £20 and would have mates over a couple of times a year to get drunk and burn meat. It was eating at Franklin BBQ then watching and reading about BBQ cookery that made me make the leap to actually doing it but the food you can make with a little effort and investment is just so damned good, there is no turning back :)
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Re: The Food Thread

Post by Snowy » Fri Aug 31, 2018 7:01 pm

So - beer can chicken on the smoker tomorrow.

Chicken prepped already - I have lifted the skin away from the breast and got the rub underneath, directly onto the breast meat. I have also given the whole bird a liberal coating of the rub including inside, which will infuse nicely as it cooks.

Pics to follow :)
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Re: The Food Thread

Post by Snowy » Sat Sep 01, 2018 3:19 pm

OK so here we go:

Chicken post-rub. Rub is hot paprika, cayenne pepper, onion and garlic granules, ground cumin, chilli powder and salt and pepper. You can see at the right hand side where I have worked my fingers under the skin to enable me to get the rub right across the breast.

Image

Next is getting the water pan and beer ready. Water pan I foil the inside of to make cleaning easy, then decant half a can of bitter to a squirty bottle for spritzing and make some openings in the can with an old church-key can opener.

Image

Set the can up in my chicken roaster - you don't have to do this, you can just shove the can up the chicken's arse if you prefer and sit it up Withnail style in the smoker, but if you have one of these, so much the better :)

Image

Set the water pan up in the smoker barrel. I will be using the lower grate only initially, with the chicken on that. Later in the cook I will be smoking some corn on the top rack.

Image

Next I get the coals fired and set up my Flame Boss temp controller. Great piece of kit but pretty pricey (~£300 is the best I have seen it for).

Image

Using briquettes for this cook as I want the temperature to stay low. The Flame Boss will take care of this, but briquettes are easy so that's what I am using. Aussie heat beads for today. I am using the minion method, with a small layer of unlit coals in the grate, which I have poured the lit coals over. It is probably overkill, heat beads burn for ages and chicken even done low and slow isn't a long cook. I reckon about 4 hours should do it.

Image

The chicken is now sat on it's throne (which will vent beery goodness into the cavity) and in place on the smoker. In the pic you can see the temperature probe which connects direct to the Flame Boss, as well as the pit temperature probe crocodile clipped to the cooking grate (and above the water pan, so that none of the direct heat that leaches up the side causes an erroneously high reading).

Image

Pop the lid on and that is that. I will track the progress of the cook on the Flame Boss app on my phone. The lid will only be opened at hourly intervals for me to spritz the bird with the beer I took out of the can earlier.

Image

OK so here is the Flame Boss now everything is up and running. You can see (left to right) that I have set it up for a 225F cook, and that at the point I took the picture the pit temperature was at 212F. The fan was running at 19% capacity pumping in air to bring the temperature up, and the meat temperature is 44F. I am cooking at a lower temperature than usual (250F is more common on my cooks) and have taken the chicken direct from the fridge and not let it come up to temperature. Chicken stops absorbing smoke at around 90F, so the combination of a lower cook temp and colder meat means that more smoke flavour will be absorbed by the meat (chicken can take it).

Image

The wood I have used for today's cook is two fist sized pieces of sweet chestnut as well as a smaller piece for good measure.

It is cooking now, so will give you some more piccies of progress and of the finished article later.
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Re: The Food Thread

Post by The Jackal » Sat Sep 01, 2018 5:38 pm

6/10 wasn't bacon in a Jamaican accent.
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Re: The Food Thread

Post by Gibby » Sat Sep 01, 2018 6:25 pm

I thought I was a food/cooking enthusiast until this thread! I'm a phony!

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Re: The Food Thread

Post by The Jackal » Sat Sep 01, 2018 8:37 pm

"You do that one more time and you're gonna end up dismembered, over hot coals, with a beer can up your arse."

Doesn't quite work as a threat.
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Re: The Food Thread

Post by Jez » Sat Sep 01, 2018 10:35 pm

Gibby wrote:
Sat Sep 01, 2018 6:25 pm
I thought I was a food/cooking enthusiast until this thread! I'm a phony!
Yes I too feel very small. He needs some kids to compress and complicate him a bit :lol:

Edit for beer clarity: "compress his time"
Last edited by Jez on Sun Sep 02, 2018 12:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
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