Year of the Pig

A few weeks ago, I got a new smoker because of the sorry inadequacy of my electric smoker. Do not buy one of those. They are lame. If you want a good and still affordable smoker for home use, get the one I got, the Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker, which you should be able to find for around 180 smackers. It comes recommended even by serious Pitmasters, and is capable of kicking out some top notch barbecue. Also, there is a great website obsessively dedicated to its use: The Virtual Weber Bullet which is quite helpful for getting you started and is loaded with clear instructions and lots of pictures. Here is a proud picture of my new Weber Smokey Mountain, happily cohabitating with Phil, the garden gnome:

Over the past two weeks I have fired off the Smokey Mountain a few times to test it out for shorter smoking sessions and have smoked trout and chicken a couple times, with good success. And so it was that yesterday was its maiden voyage for smoking ribs. The night before I had trimmed and generously coated 1 1/2 racks of spare ribs with Magic Dust, covered them with plastic wrap and put them in the fridge. Around 10 am or so I took them out and put them in the rib rack, ready for the smoke.

Then I got the smoker set up and lit a small chimney of charcoal, around 20 briquets. I decided to test out the Virtual Weber Bullet Page’s “Minion Method” which basically means that you start with a small amount of lit briquets on a pile of unlit ones, so that they gradually light the other ones at a slow, long pace, supposedly keeping a very steady, slow burning, low temperature fire.

I have to say compared to my other brief experiences with this smoker so far, this method really made it a breeze to operate at a steady temperature. After lighting a small chimney of charcoal, and loading the coals and meat in the smoker, it was off and running. I tossed 2 or 3 good wet chunks of hickory and a small handful of oak chips on the coals for smoke wood. At the beginning I babysat the smoker and adjusted the bottom vents some, but the temperature quickly stabilized right at what I would think is an ideal temperature of about 220-230 degrees (measured with a candy thermometer at the top vent). And that was that! The ribs were smoking away by around 11 am, and for the next few hours I went about my business. I checked on the smoker every 30 minutes or so, but it needed almost no adjustment, and just kept burning away at the right temperature. After a couple hours, around 1:30, I opened the smoker and turned the racks over in the rib rack and gave them a little spritz of apple juice:

After having the smoker open a while, I noticed that the charcoal did start to flare up from the oxygen, and I had to close the bottom vents all the way to try and keep the temperature down as it flared up, approaching 250. I was expecting to smoke the ribs for around 5-7 hours, so around 3 I opened up the smoker again, to turn them and spritz them again with apple juice. At this point they looked pretty close to done to me so I got my butt in gear making the sauce (see Apple City Barbecue Sauce Recipe from the last post) that I was planning to coat them with for the last 20 or 30 minutes of smoking. This sauce has ground up bacon and apples in it, so that is pretty cool. Everything is better with bacon right? So why not barbecue sauce!? I had cooked up the bacon earlier, and I whipped up the rest of the sauce as fast as I could, and gave the ribs a nice coating to let it set up for a little while. The sauce was quite tasty on its own, trust me, and at that point the ribs had a nice looking coating of Magic Dust that looked even better.

I let them smoke for another 20 or 30 minutes, and then opened up the smoker again. They looked wonderful!

I took them off. I had smoked 1 1/2 racks of trimmed spare ribs on the top grate, and the three large “tip” pieces that I had trimmed off on the bottom grate with some kidney beans.

I let the ribs rest on the cutting board for a little while. It was a lot of meat for me to contemplate since I was home alone with no one to share them with, but this was my first time trying ribs in my new smoker and it was nice to try it without feeling like I needed to feed anyone. I cut up some of the trimmings to put in the beans, and froze the others along with a half rack of ribs, to see how they hold up for freezing…

Of course, I didn’t hesitate to slice off a couple ribs for an early dinner, and sat in the back yard and tried them. My first impression was that they looked perfect to me with a nice solid but not charred outside. The inside showed a nice red smoke ring around the edge of the meat, the first time I have really gotten that in ribs that I have cooked. And how did they taste? Fine. Very, very fine. I was giddy about it really. The meat was juicy and succulent. The sauce and the magic dust rub gave it a nice spicy robust flavor that was delicious and went very well with the juicy, smoky pork flavor of the rib meat. The texture of the rib meat was firm and meaty, but moist and tender and full of flavor. I am sure there are lots of other ways I can learn to cook ribs equally well, but I really don’t know what I could do to make them much better. I just hope I can reproduce these!

These ribs were basically cooked following the “Apple City Barbecue Grand World Championship Ribs” recipe out of the book Peace, Love and Barbecue: Recipes, Secrets, Tall Tales, and Outright Lies from the Legends of Barbecue which I plugged in the last post. I used the rub and sauce from the recipe, but used different smoking methods and hickory and oak rather than apple wood, which I am sure would also be delicious. I think this rub and sauce are a winning combo, but if I had to give most of the credit to one over the other, I would say the Magic Dust is a real winner. Try it out!

As for the rib count for the Year of the Pig, counting what I had the day I cooked them and for leftovers over the next week plus the half rack that I froze, I had another 14 ribs, putting me well over the 3 pig mark at a 102 ribs. And thank you piggy!

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I made some ribs in my new smoker today, and they were fine. Very fine. Here are the recipes that I used, the full post will follow soon.

This Magic Dust is a very good rub. I recommend it highly.

Since I am most certainly violating copyright law, I should at least plug this book written by BBQ’er extraordinaire, Mike Mills (not from R.E.M.): Peace, Love and Barbecue: Recipes, Secrets, Tall Tales, and Outright Lies from the Legends of Barbecue, which is very good if you are at all interested in barbecue.

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I was down in Philadelphia for a gig last Saturday, and walked around for a while in Philly’s Chinatown. It had all of the standard Chinatown fare that you would have in New York, but a decidedly mellow flavor by comparison. You can actually stroll around at leisurely pace and not get trampled, and I like that. We walked into a Chinese Bakery because my friend Dave wanted to get one of those weirdo tapioca tea drinks with the super straw that my mom loved when I made her try one in Chinatown NYC a couple years ago:

Anyway, while I was waiting I perused the assortment of Chinese baked goods, you know, pork buns and bean doughnut thingies, etc, when what caught my eye? The PORKIN DOG! Certainly a great name and one damn fancy Chinese Hot Dog. Yowzers! Hmmm, most definitely a bargain at the low, low price of 60¢. Dave sported me the money, and we walked out with our very own Porkin Dog. When Dave had sucked down his last tapioca ball with an abrubt sloink, we tried our fancy dog. It had that unmistakable ultra-sweet Chinese dough with those nice little hotdoggers all arranged in that fun little clover, and topped with little soft onion bits and scallions. Hey, what can I say, it was a pretty good fancy hot dog.

We walked around a little more, enjoying the pleasant mild Summer Solstice weather. There was a dinky street carnival going on. While we looked around a bit I looked up to see a window with some (presumably clean) red, white and blue briefs hanging out to dry. I thought that
would make a nice image. And ain’t it nice to know that the residents of Chinatown, Philly are so patriotic!

PS–Can I just say from my limited times visiting Philadelphia, I think its a great city. Go Philly! Don’t forget to get a Philly Porkin Dog when you visit.

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M Shanghai had a gig at Cafe Lena in Saratoga Springs this past weekend and on my way into town I smelled the tell-tale smell of woodsmoke as I passed PJ’s BAR-B-Q. After the gig, I headed straight back to check out PJ’s. I may not be able to say it’s the best barbecue in the world, but that’s fine, this place is a real gem, and worth the stop anytime you are in Saratoga.

PJ’s is a seasonal restaurant open only during the summers in a former A&W Drive-in Restaurant. The Davis family (John PJ, Carolyn and their 2 Kids) opened PJ’s Bar-B-Q in 1984, and the restaurant is a sprawling group of buildings decked out with oddball signs and 1950’s memoribilia, and surrounded by picnic tables. The front area is the kitchen, where the menu board is posted over a window, and you place your order.

Out back, behind the kitchen, are two 20′ charcoal pits where PJ prepares all of the barbecue over charcoal. He says he used 40 tons of briquets in a season! To the right of the kitchen is a funky little dining room plastered with fifties music paraphernalia.

Then, behind the dining room is a spacious yard area with more picnic tables and even a dance floor which was in use by an in-love baby booming couple dancing to the fifties tunes broadcast on the WBBQ airwaves as we sat down to eat our “trifecta” combo platters. That’s right, and I love this part, PJ operates a low power (1-mile radius) AM radio station out of an outbuilding back behind the yard. Looking over the picnic tables we could see doors covered with 1940’s and 50’s radio charts swung open to reveal PJ standing in the small WBBQ studio looking like a king in his castle, queing up some records, and having a fine time of it.

That put me over the edge and all I could think say was, “Wow, this place is awesome!” Looking at the PJs website and his seasonal newsletter the Bar-B-Q Times reveals even more about PJ’s obsession with the 1950’s, check out his “fifties house” shown on HGTV. Also new in 2007, PJ’s is sponsoring Bar-B-Cruise-Ins. If you have a pre-1969 classic car (and as long as you aren’t a burnout) you can call in and reserve a parking space in the lot, and you even get a free BBQ dinner. That rules.

So enough of singing the praises of PJ, how was the Q? We split 2 of the Trifecta combo platters, which had PJ’s “award winning” spare ribs, some beef brisket, and bar-b-q chicken, (served with Cole slaw, curly-Q fries, and a cornbread muffin).

The ribs themselves were good and tasty, but not great and earth shattering. They had nice texture, a little spice, and a charred but flavorful exterior. And yes, I know it isn’t pig, but the chicken was good and respectable too, moist and tasty. Lastly was the brisket, which was not like any brisket I have ever had. It was dry thin slices more akin to jerky than to what I think of as brisket. It was ok, and would probably make a good sandwich, but isn’t really what I think of as barbecue brisket. I wouldn’t say that this was top notch barbecue, being somewhere between barbecue and grilled meat, but it was still good simple enjoyable fare in a very fun, friendly and pleasant atmosphere, that I would come back to visit many times.

Also, while I am not usually much of a soda person (except when I fall victim to a really good ginger ale) I would like to mention that PJ’s has their own loganberry flavored soda, called Crystal Beach which was pretty good, or at least very enjoyable while I was sitting at my picnic table taking PJ’s in.

PJ’s is a great place, make sure to visit if you are in Saratoga in the summer!

**Oh yeah, and I had 2 ribs at PJ’s bringing up the Ribulation for the Year of the Pig to 88 (2 pig, 28…so close to 3!!).

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Following up on the post about Porkslap, here are some highlights from a
forum discussion on brewing bacon beer:

…I tried to mix my two favorite things, bacon and beer. I started
out with a british bitter recipe and dumped in 1 lb of fried bacon
into the wort 30 min into the boil. I then added liquid smoke when
putting it into the 1st carboy. It doesn’t taste like bacon or smoke.
Any suggestions?

…I doubt you will get it to work. The very process of the boil and
rapid chilling caused proteins to drop out of suspension.

…I think it would be easier and much tastier if you just fried up a
batch of bacon when you drink your beer. Plus it will be crunchy. The
bacon, not your beer.

…You could try liquid smoke and pork bullion.

…Rauchbiers are like drinking a campfire while eating bacon strips.
Rauch malt or smoked peat is what you are looking for.

…I almost guarantee that if this WAS done, the salt in the bacon
would kill the yeast. Too much sodium=inhospitable environment.

…How about fry up about 2 lb. get it good and crispy (like bacon
bits) I imagine that will bring out more transferable flavor. Pat it
dry and treat it like an aroma addition, the last 2 min. leaving it
in until it is cool.

…did you fry the bacon and get it crispy BEFORE you added the
onions? You did add onions, right???

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This past weekend I made my first ever trip to Maine, to attend a wedding in Belfast. Alissa and I jumped at the excuse to get up to Maine, and we