mguerra

ok Gotcha. Found it on the web.

Yes CS, you got me stoked to go out and do a bonus bird this afternoon, in addition to tomorrow's main Apple Brined/ Pecan Smoked beauty. Life IS good. And KK is a big part of that. Say, what is that Media Com you reference?

yum! That is one awesome looking soup recipe! I'm going to get the ingredients and be ready to throw in the carcass ASAP. Good one.

rant My post had nothing to do with Homer's Bucket. I just thought the Igloo was a cool idea. I don't care about food safe plastics, I have brined in an old swimming pool chlorine bucket. Homer's Bucket would suit me! Life's too short to be scared shitless of every little thing. I spray the hell out of my house with Dursban and Diazinon. When they were banned, I hoarded gallons of the stuff! Doing the same now with incandescent bulbs. Swine Flu, Global Warming, blah, blah, blah...it's all a crock of shit. Especially global warming, the biggest scientific fraud since Piltdown Man. http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs200 ... ltdown.asp And would you believe it, it's the sorry English science establishment, East Anglia University this time, perpetrating a shameless prostitution of science once again. As a scientist, I find it reprehensible and disgusting.

brining vessel Here's a brining vessel, guaranteed food safe! http://primogrillforum.com/gallery/data/500/igloo.jpg

addendum I brined the bird in a Reynolds turkey roasting bag, inside a mop bucket that I washed out real good prior to use. (In case the bag broke.) I squeezed out all the air and tied it off, to get good coverage.

Wow!! The apple brine/ pecan smoke turkey is a winner! I used a fresh breast, not enhanced or juiced up, and the brine made it excellent. The recipe makes 5 quarts, which was just enough to cover the breast, double the recipe for a whole bird. I don't know how moist or juicy you can get a turkey breast, I'll just say this was juicy enough to not be typically dry. So that's moist enough. The flavor is a mouth popping blend of all the ingredients and the smoke. My wife raved, and that is saying something because she is a turkey expert. Here's the link: http://www.virtualweberbullet.com/turkey5.html I did not air dry the bird, since we don't eat the skin. And of course the Weber specific instructions won't apply to your ceramic grill, other than the temperature. It went straight from the brine onto the KK. Off the grill, I foiled it up tight and wrapped in towels, let it rest for about 2-1/2 hours. It was still very hot at serving time. All in all a great cook, and one we won't be saving for once a year! I only hope I get the whole turkey as lip licking good as this breast came out. Give it a try!

quick Test breast is done, resting. It cooked pretty quick, maybe 2 hours plus or minus for this approx. 6 lber. Brined with weber forum apple brine recipe for about 14 hours, cooked at 340 til 165 internal. Lump was 50/50 mix of Royal Oak and Cowboy, and a fair bit of pecan smoking chunks, indirect fire on main grill. Taste test in a while!

Test bird on Wow, you guys are on it! Sitting out back, got an apple-ginger brined turkey smoking on a pecan fire. Drinking ginger ale and smoking an Acid Kuba Kuba! Listening to David Grisman and Stephane Grapelli. Bluebird sky, 65 degrees It's a test bird. Starting early on T day to make sure bird is ready, then 1 hr drive down to San Antonio. I'll do the towel/cooler hold.

Let's put all our Thanksgiving cooking posts here in this thread, sort of a "Turkey Central"! Remember, the recipe section should just be recipes, not long threads. LarryR kindly posted a link to Brining, here: http://www.virtualweberbullet.com/brining.html I have just finished preparing two portions of the Apple Brine. Once they chill, I'll do a test bird tomorrow. Then the main family bird goes on the KK about 6AM Thursday. The whole family is depending on my bird, so it better come out right! So, what do you all have planned for KK Thanksgiving?

tips Soaking the smoking wood is unnecessary, it serves no function. The moisture is simply driven off as steam, and then the wood burns. A number of folks here have made an excellent case for using a smoker box, however. It alters the nature of the smoke by causing the volatile, flammable gasses to be burned in the fire. Search the forums to find the threads. Heat soaking the KK prior to putting on the meat is optional, but not necessary. I like to have the meat in there from the get go to spend more time in the smoke. Other folks don't like the "early" white, billowy smoke and wait for the thin blue smoke. Your taste buds will guide you in this, if you try it both ways. Spend some time reading through the old posts and you will find all the answers! And here is a nice primer: http://www.nakedwhiz.com/infocentral.htm

on the KK now I've got the Italian Pork Stew going right now, from the Primo forums. And this time I am actually using pork!

??? What?!

Huh? I use a spoon and a glass when cleaning when cleaning the fat from a yes, yes yes... What?!

The fast butt method works very well. The flavor and texture of the meat is almost identical to a slow cook. The party guests raved as usual, yawn. The one difference is that it is fractionally harder to pull apart. Other than that, if you are pressed for time, I give it a solid thumbs up. Interestingly, the butt I bought had cooking directions on the package that said to "Slow Roast" at 350 for four hours! As it happens, this 10 pounder took 4 hours at 350 to reach 190 internal! The lesson I learned from this is that you can cook a pork butt at any temp between 220 to 350 and get great results. My suggestion is to pick a cooking temp that fits your time needs. If you want to go do something for awhile, cook at a little lower temp til you get back, then increase the temp when you get back. It's the same hybrid method I suggested for the brisket. There is extreme time flexibility available for these cooks. If there is the emotional appeal of a 14 hour cook, do that. But, it's good to know you can start a butt at 8 AM and have it ready for lunch! My next experiment will be to foil one at the 160 to 170 temp, like the brisket trick, and see what that does in regards to cooking time, texture and flavor.

Lump Lump. They make briquettes, and the bags look nearly identical to the lump. Check the bag carefully when you buy. Of course, the briquette bag weighs a ton compared to the lump, so you can tell just by heft, if you are not looking.

pull it right I might have posted this before. When pulling a pork butt, I want to remove all the fat possible. So I don't just grab two forks and start shredding the whole butt. All the fat and connective tissue will then be incorporated into your pile of shred. It's almost impossible to pick out all these little shredded bits. The butt is composed of a number of muscles. These muscles are separated from each other by a layer of fat and connective tissue. I try to pull apart the individual muscles from each other, whole. Then clean each muscle by scraping off the fat and connective tissue with the side of a knife or a fork. Scrape along the length of the muscle fibers, parallel to them. This is best done with the meat still hot from cooking. Now you will have a pile of muscles, nearly fat free, you can shred, cut, chop or whatever. Is this how most of you are doing this? Or are there a lot of you just shredding from the get go?

set up and progress Fire in the basket, fully loaded with Royal Oak, heat deflector on basket handles, butt up on main grill. CyberQ II set at 325, blower port open 1/2, top vent just cracked enough to allow a little smoke egress when blower is off. The butt has been on for one hour, and its' temp has gone from 36 degrees at start to 104 now.

not poultry! To be clear, I would never be so cavalier with poultry! That stuff scares me, even "properly" cooked and handled. Beef and pork don't worry me at all to use the methods I described. There are no reported cases of botulism related to barbecued meats.

hot fast butt I have a hot fast pork butt going. Temp is running 330ish. I will cook it to full finish this time, and give a report. This one I'm just cooking indirect til done at 190. Next time, I might experiment with foiling it at 160 or so, just like the fast brisket method, just to see what happens. This better be good because it is the main course at a late afternoon lunch party! Probably it will be fine, because the last ones I did were pulled off the fire too soon, sat on the counter for a couple hours, cooled off some , and then went back on the fire; they were excellent.

cuban http://www.weareneverfull.com/low-and-s ... -the-time/

sterile? I don't worry about this. The inside of the meat should have no contamination, only the outside surface. (This applies to whole cuts, not ground!) Cooking to an accepted finish temp should kill any bacteria. Another thing I never worry about is holding meat after cooking. When I pull cooked meat off the grill, I know the surface is sterile. I use clean implements and /or clean gloves, and foil the meat immediately. From that point, I don't care if it lays on the kitchen counter for 24 hours, and comes down to room temp. I will unfoil it and serve it. I've never gotten sick from this, nor have any of my guests. Unless the foil, implements or gloves were thick with pathogens, there should be no problem. This is my opinion and practice. And I am trained in Microbiology.

Nice garden You have a beautiful garden! And I love those garden doors; do you know who the manufacturer is? Welcome to the KK club, get cooking.

Creative Fantastic! Good job.

reinforcement To amplify on my post from page one of this thread: I roasted up a batch of nice Yemen beans, as well as some Sumatra, to make the classic Mokka Java. As the coffee was brewing, I was standing across the kitchen. Suddenly I noticed a pronounced aroma of chocolate. I looked around on the countertops to see if something chocolate was laying out. Then I realized it was the Mokka in the Mokka Java! Those Yemeni coffees absolutely have flavor and aroma profiles of chocolate!!