Saturday, November 21, 2009

NYC

I love everything about NY except for their baseball team. Actually about all we did was eat on this trip. It went something like this:

Martinis at smith and wollensky
3 dozen oysters and gruner veltliner at grand central station
Momofuku: hamachi, pork buns, apple Kim chee with jowl bacon, pig head
Bagels with belly lox
Double shack burgers
Moist brisket and jalepeno sausage at hill country
Meatball sliders, mushroom risotto, lamb shank, panna cotta at little owl

Good eats!





-- Post From My iPhone

Saturday, November 7, 2009

My Jack Daniels BBQ Poster Collection

2000: Did not compete




2001: Before my time





2002: 4th Ribs, 5th Chicken, 10th Pork, 10th Overall



2003: Shut out



2004: 3rd Chicken




2005: 2nd Place Pork, 3rd Place Chefs Choice






2006: 1st Place Chefs Choice, 1st Jack Grilling





2007: Shut Out





2008: 1st Chefs Choice, 10th Dessert




2009: 2nd Pork, 8th Chicken, 2nd Dessert, Grand Champ



Monday, November 2, 2009

BBQ Guru

Spent some time this past weekend cooking some briskets on my Large Big Green Egg. And had a chance to try out a new toy, the BBQ Guru Nano Q. An electronic air draft controller that monitors the internal temp of your BBQ pit and and puts just the right amount of air on your fire so the pit stays at the set temp.

I'm a big fan of products that do one thing really well. Its a rare product - the iPhone comes to mind - that does many things well. I've had cell phones that had tons of features and functions but didn't do their main job very well - i.e. making phone calls. More is not necessarily better and obviously the BBQ Guru product designers followed the K.I.S.S. principle with this edition of draft controllers.

I filled my BGE up with Wicked Good Lump Charcoal. Plugged in the Nano-Q, lit the fire and let it go. The Nano-Q defaults to 225* but the user can bump it up or down by 5 degrees with the two buttons on the front of the device. The optional operating method is to get the pit just how you like it using the pit thermometer, and then press both buttons which captures the pit temp and the Guru will keep it there nice and steady as long as your fuel holds up.

I cooked a couple of briskets which took about 12 hours. I decided to just let the pit go and see how long the Guru could keep the Egg going on one load of charcoal. The Egg was fired up at 3pm on Saturday. I finally unplugged the Guru at 9pm on Sunday - about 30 hours later. In addition to rock solid 225* the entire way, the Guru also seemed to do a great job at conserving fuel. There is still some lump charcoal left in the Egg.