December BBQ Day At Almost Heaven South

After my November BBQ day, which required a whole day of prep and 24 hours of cooking on two smokers, I decided it was not fun – which is why I BBQ for others. So I sent an email to those who get BBQ from me and advised I was limiting my offerings (the more different items I cook, the more attention and effort required) and advising I would just fill up the one smoker and then close the order book. I don’t know if it was that, the holiday season, some of my big customers spending the winter in Florida, or some of all, but I had a lot less orders.

The good news is this gave me the opportunity to cook for my freezer and experiment with some things. The fare this time was two briskets, with one and a third made into burnt ends, a pork butt, 2 slabs of pork ribs, a pastrami (from a store bought corned beef) several chicken items, a chub of breakfast sausage, a stuffed fatty, and a pork tenderloin.

The experiments are as follows: chicken breasts marinated overnight in some jerk marinade that my son made for us, a chicken thigh and pork tenderloin marinated overnight in Wickers Marinade and Baste (of which I have a gallon and need to find a good use for), and a stuffed fatty, wrapped in the apple smoked maple bacon that we thought was too flavorful for the brussel sprouts at Thanksgiving.

I fired up the smoker at 6pm in 43* temperatures, which I’d traded for the rain and warmer temps of the day before. Fortunately, my Stumps Smoker is well insulated and fuel-efficient, so I put the big pieces of meat on at 8pm and headed for bed not too long thereafter.

Next morning it was a balmy 29* when I went to check things at 5:30am – I’d mis-set the clock by an hour after the recent power outage and thought I was getting up at 6:15. Anyway I had everything wrapped up by 2pm and the only shot I took at the smoker was of the fatty – everything else looked like my normal fare – you can click on BBQ under the Labels for lots of pictures. I considered making the fancy bacon weave, but it was the last thing I prepped and I was tired when I got to it. I wish the bacon had gotten crispier but not surprised it didn’t, as it was pretty thick cut.

Bev baked bread this day and made her first attempt at creating a crust similar to Italian and it turned out really well. Another time or two, and I think she’ll have both the bread texture and crust down pat. For dinner, the brisket was still pretty warm, so I sliced it thin, topped with a couple slices of pepper jack cheese and nuked for 30 seconds to melt the cheese. It was delicious.

Bev put some BBQ sauce on hers, but in BBQese - I don’t put no sauce on good brisket (but I put cheese on almost everything).

This post is getting pretty long, so tune in tomorrow for the results of the expeiments.
 
Have a good one and thanks for stopping by.
 
Larry