Sorry to interrupt, but - Jewel? I have been waiting for their 10 for 10 sale - I need to stock up on pig.
Yup, Jewel. I don’t know if that’s an everywhere thing though, ours is being remodeled and they’ve been undertaking massive sell offs of all sorts of stuff lately. I know that they do it once a month or so (we eat lots of pig too) so I hope it’s an everywhere thing.
Thanks - I’ll check it out tonight. They’ve been remodeling all of them - you’re gonna HATE it when it’s done, trust me. 
I already hate it. My Jewel was an old one, and I knew where things were. Now they’ve gone and made it one of the modern ones, which all suck. It would be an entire seperate pit thread about how they’ve ruined the store.
Unless, according to a friend of mine, you’re trying to cook Carp, in which case you throw the fish away and eat the plank.
I’m planning to buy a grill this weekend and was thinking about one of the grill/smokers. I don’t want to spend a lot since this won’t be used every night, or even every week, but I do want a good one in the under $200 range. Any suggestions? Charcoal, not gas.
For an extra $30 and a trip to Hoffman Estates you can have a combonation, well everything.
If not, take a look at some of their other stuff. Cabela’s has an awesome warranty (basically forever) on any of their branded products.
Weber. There are none better. I still use a Kettle that is over 25 years old.
My father used to say that when the good lord got done making all the fish, he had a bunch of skin and bones left over, so he threw it all together and called it a carp.
For charcoal $200 and under You can’t go wrong with a Weber. The weber kettle is a great grill and can be a passable smoker. You can do up to a 20 lb turkey in one. Note: if you go for a Weber kettle, get the gold model, not the silver. Having the bucket to catch the ash is worth the extra money, trust me on this. Amazon has the one touch gold for about $140.
If you think you will do more smoking than grilling, look at a Smokey Mountain these are right on about $180-$200 depending on where you shop. Guys that own Smokey Mountains (AKA a Weber bullet) swear by them.
If you just want one all around unit, go with the kettle. It’s not a great smoker, but it is one hell of a grill.
Smoking report:
I picked up 2 chickens Friday night (then another 2 Saturday morning… when I went to plunk the chickens in the freshly-prepared brine, I discovered they’d been left in the car when we brought in the groceries 4 hours earlier, sigh…). Brined them for about 2.5 hours. Rubbed them with a seasoning mixture involving sugar, orange peel, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, salt, pepper. At 3 PM, put the chicken on one half of the grill (with a shallow disposable aluminum pan underneath, on the “flavorizer bars”). Put 1 packet of applewood chips on the other side.
45 minutes later, no visible smoke. Tore the foil open a bit more and got a bit of visible smoke (I assumed there’d be visible smoke pouring out of the grill but nope - we could smell it though. Added a second packet.
Some instructions said the packets had to be replaced every half hour or so. So I checked it roughly every half hour. At 6 PM, I figured the bird was probably getting close to done, as several recipes implied 3ish hours to cook. Nope - 140 degrees. Added more wood chip packets and removed the others which were nearly spent. Checked again every 30ish minutes and at 8 PM one area of each bird read 160 or more degrees with the traditional thermometer (the leave-in type), while the instant- read showed 10 less. I increased the heat to high on the one bar (the grill had read 250-260 degrees throughout, but at that point I figured we needed more oomph), and turned on the middle burner, though only to low.
At 8:30 one chicken seemed to consistently read 165 so we took it inside. Found meat practically bleeding around one leg joint (and no, not “young chicken” pink or “smoke ring” pink, it was oozing pink fluid. Put that bird back on the grill. At 8:45, pulled the other bird inside. Upon dismemberment, all looked well. We dined… and 24 hours later have not shown signs of food poisoning. At 9:15 I took the other bird off and it looked thoroughly dried out, oh well.
So lessons learned:
[ul]
[li]Don’t check the damn thing so often. I think the large heat loss from opening to check the smoke chip packets really slowed things down[/li][li]Start the cooking earlier[/li][li]Use less strong flavors in the rub. The ginger really dominated it. Made the meat tasty, but I couldn’t tell it had been smoked until I got to gnawing on a wing (which was deelish)[/li][li]DO NOT set the old chip packets on anything flammable. I didn’t do this - I set them on the metal side-tray attached to the grill - and an hour or more after removing one, it was still warm and when I tore it open, saw a red ember. I know someone whose house nearly burned down from improperly disposing of ashes (from a charcoal grill, I think). I actually put them back on the grill, as a protected fireproof place, overnight - then tore open and doused the contents with water this morning.[/li][/ul]
Any other suggestions?
Tonight we did “country cut” shoulder pork, rubbed with Magic Dust and basted with heavily modified Neely Sauce. Very, very nice. The pork was on special at Stater’s, so we bought quite a bit for the freezer. Nice to know that it grills so well. Served with roasted corn and grilled sliced potatoes.
Go back to post #12.
Great recipe! I have also used blackberry and strawberry preserves in grill marinades/ and mops, usually in place of sugar. They are very complex flavors and give sauces a bit of personality and work for a great char.
Oh yes, planking is definitely on the agenda for some time soon. Perhaps a jaunt to Home Depot for some cedar. Mmmmm… arsenic chicken (yeah, I know - look for the untreated stuff!!!). I actually glanced briefly around Barbecues Galore when I went in for the wood chips and didn’t see the 20-dollar-a-bundle planks anywhere so perhaps they don’t carry them.
But if anyone has any specific suggestions for things to do better with smoking, that’d be cool too. I’m fortunate that our dinner guest is a very very good friend, the sort you can experiment with, culinarily, and not have them hate you!
I just came across this, so this is what I’m having for dinner tonight.
4 ham steaks
1/3 cup water
2 tablespoons oil
2 tablespoons whiskey
2 teaspoons onion, minced
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
Combine marinade ingredients. Place ham steaks in a resealable plastic bag and pour in marinade. Seal bag, and allow to sit in refrigerator for 20-30 minutes. Preheat grill for medium heat. Remove ham steaks from bag, discard marinade, and place on the grill. Cook for 10 minutes on each side. Remove for heat and serve.
Yay for whiskey flavored pig meat!
DH lightly seasons skinless chicken pieces with a mix of about 75% cumin and 25% salt. Very good!