A few weeks ago a local grocery store had pork picnic shoulder for $0.77 per pound so I picked up eight: seven in the freezer and one for the barbeque.  Nice fatty pork shoulder is perfect for low and slow cooking so I applied my and left it in the fridge for a day.  After that I started a fire in my Big Green Egg and once it was steady at 200F I put in the , a drip pan and the shoulder.  Twelve hours later I had this …

First off let me say this isn’t pulled pork.  I don’t like the mushy texture and sauce of pulled pork: I like slices of succulent smoked pork shoulder on a bun with a hit of mustard barbeque sauce.

I had a de-boned whole pork shoulder in the freezer that was in two pieces.  After a good defrosting I applied a basic dry rub: equal parts brown sugar, kosher salt, black pepper and paprika.  Left the pork in the refrigerator for a day and then smoked it on my Big Green Egg.  …

I love pastrami, corned beef and smoked meat.  I’ve tracked them down in New York and Montreal to savor at every deli.  I’ve made corned beef and pastrami based on Michael Ruhlman’s recipes in Charcuterie and enjoyed them thoroughly but continue to be troubled by the cost of raw ingredients.  Brisket was used because it’s a very tough cut and nobody wanted it so it was cheap; cured, cooked and steamed it became tender when sliced thin.  Unfortunately I can’t find it for less than $6 a pound which puts …

I’ve been buying whole pork loins lately: they come with a lovely pork loin for about two thirds and sirloin for the last third.  The loin is very nice but the sirloin on these pieces is jagged and just isn’t pretty, so I cut it off.  I find this cut works wonderfully for two applications: my and a slow roast smoked on my big green egg.

The front roast is my smoked slow roasted sirloin and in the rear is the cured and smoked sirloin.  The sirloin is a …

After a few sausage smoking sessions with my Big Green Egg and the I was happy with the results but found I was only fitting about fifteen sausages on the grill at one time.  Since it was a three to four hour time investment I wanted to fit as many on as I could, which let me back to the Big Green Egg web site and to my local barbeque shop Chadwick & Hacks.  There is a new three tier rack but it doesn’t hold a lot, which left …

A few weeks back I discussed smoking on my Big Green Egg and using indirect heat: I was able to accomplish this by using the Plate Setter.  For indirect cooking you remove the grate, insert the plate setter with a drip pan and put the grate on top.

Or you can flip it the other way and use it as a baking stone for bread or pizza.

It’s made a big difference in the smoking I’ve done.  Well worth the additional investment.  Since I’ve only used it for indirect cooking the bottom …

Our freezer was getting overcrowded with pork so I decided to take out sixteen pounds and make some sausage over the weekend.  My family seems to like smoked sausage the best so I made Hunters sausage (forgot the German name, sorry).  It’s a pork sausage with coriander and mustard seeds, dry milk powder and a little garlic.  I followed the recipe in Charcuterie and everything worked well.  The batch was too large to mix in my stand mixer so I did it manually and it was tough going.
The sausages above have grill …

I took advantage of the freezing weather to cold smoke my latest batch of bacon.  Until now I’ve been hot smoking it: working with a temperature of 200 degrees Fahrenheit in my Big Green Egg I smoked the bacon for about four hours until it’s internal temperature reached 150 degrees.
With the Weber Smokey Mountain I can maintain smoke indefinitely and keep the bacon’s internal temperature to around 100 degrees.  I smoked this batch with sugar maple charcoal and maple chunks for six hours.

The texture of the finished product was a …

Successfully came through my Thanksgiving dinner. The last few years I’ve been winging it with my stuffing and the results have been mixed to put it kindly. This year I turned to a great basic stuffing recipe from Saveur that was full of fresh herbs, celery, onions, dried bread cubes, stock and eggs. I added mushrooms and homemade sausage and baked for fourty five minutes: the end product was excellent. I also made Parker House rolls from a Cooks Illustrated recipe but let the buns do their final rise in …

For any burger fan it comes down to grill or fry.  I enjoy both and like to change it up now and again.  For either technique you want the same thing: a nice crust on the outside and a juicy center: pretty much the same thing as steak.
Which leads to patty formation and what actually works.  I’ve tried leaving the meat loose and barely forming the patty but that leads to the burger being so loose when you eat it there’s no cohesive mouth feel.  That doesn’t mean go the …

Since getting my Big Green Egg my way of thinking about grilling and barbeque has completely changed. For one thing it meant using charcoal: something I haven’t done since the old hibachi in the back yard when I was nine. When I bought the Egg it came with a bag of Big Green Egg lump charcoal: wood that had been made into charcoal by lighting it and removing the oxygen, such as burying it in sand. Nothing added, just a good burn that gives to my nostrils a heady smoke …