I recently was in the market for a new grill. I went back and forth on deciding if I was going to get a Green Egg or not. I have heard nothing but awesome things about them but the price tag of around $1200 dollars is steep. Really the biggest thing about grilling is getting that charcoal and smoke flavor that you cant get from an oven and from what I can tell most of what your paying for when you get an egg is the fact that it is basically an outdoor oven on top of being a bad ass grill and smoker. On their website they advertise that you can bake a fucking cake in a Green Egg. But I dont need the oven type capabilities that an Egg has......thats why I am married. Dont get me wrong, it would be nice to have.......but when you talking about a price difference of about 10x thats where they lose me.
Ultimately I decided I would get a cheap smoker/grill first and see how it went. If it didnt pan out I would go get an egg and if it did pan out I would keep the smoker and maybe consider upgrading to a nicer model. Well I'm hear to tell you it has panned out...and to also drop some serious Carolina bbq knowledge all over your face. I did some research on the type of smoker I wanted to get and ultimately sided with the "bullet grill" type. I bought this one on Amazon for 70 bucks: "Brinkmann 810-5301-6 Smoke'N Grill Charcoal Smoker and Grill" and it is the shit. The big difference between a bullet type grill and other charcoal grills and smokers is that it has a door at the bottom of the grill that allows you to replace charcoal and wood chips while grilling without taking the top off the grill and having to remove the food and grate. Which is crucial if like me you enjoy doing all day grill fests where you are cooking large pieces of meat. It also has a drip pan spot above the charcoal pan that creates good indirect heat to grill on and also by filling it up with water and juice during grilling it keeps the food moist. Heres what I grilled today. Best Carolina BBQ recipe there is.
Get a 7 or 8 pound pork shoulder or butt with bone in as pictured. Then make the injection in a bowl by mixing up the juice from one can of peaches, salt, sugar and worstechere. After injecting, rub down the shoulder with your favorite rub. The one I made is a bunch of brown sugar, salt, celery salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, paprika, and some other shit. Now in a seperate bowl or pitcher start making your vinegar sauce. All it is is a bunch of apple cider vinegar mixed with tons of cayenne pepper and lemon. Ur gonna want to let that sit overnight. Then fire up the grill to 250 and fill your water pan up with half apple juice half water. Smoke that shit with a bunch of hickory chips for about 8 or 9 hours........or when the internal temp is 195. Actually, best way to tell its done is when you can pull out the exposed shoulder blade bone with a firm tug. During the last 3 hours or so open up the grill and baste the shouder with the vinegar sauce every hour. For your red sauce mix up diced peaches in the sauce and ur set for some fire ass bbq sammies. Youll have tons of food left over no matter how many people eat. Best way to mix it up with the left overs is to make some cuban beans and cole slaw and have pork tacos.
Had you bought The Egg I could understand the Chinet paper plates but given that you only spent $70 on this albeit superb acquisition I am aghast at such a classless presentation of a fine culinary feat.
ReplyDeleteI like your style.
ReplyDeleteBut my green egg would have cooked it better.
ReplyDeleteI think I have the same smoker, or at least one that is really similar. I got it towards the end of grilling season last year and love it. I've smoked a couple turkeys, a couple butts, and a couple slabs of ribs so far. I think for the money, you can't go wrong with the cheap $40-$75 R2-D2 type smokers.
ReplyDeleteIf anyone ever watches the show "Good Eats" on the food network, they did a show where he smoked a butt and essentially Macguyver-ed a smoker out of two clay flower pots and an electric heating element. He said he was all in about $45 and the extent of work involved was basically stacking the flower pots on top of each other. I think the clay pots have similar characteristics to the green egg. If you can tolerate the host for the duration of the episode, you can gain a lot of information about the science behind everything. I assume you can either youtube it or find it on their website.
Your recipe looks good. I plan on doing a fair amount of smoking this year and will try yours let you know how it turned out. At this point, I don't have any real recipes to share aside from trying some random stuff and getting lucky, but so far, I've found that it's hard to mess up.