Spring is springing! Contest Baby! Enter for free money!

Scooter is the judge....

Lets keep the momentum running of spectacular cooks going!

First Place $25 store credit to Big Poppa Smokers
2nd Place $15 store credit to Big Poppa Smokers
third place $10 store credit to Big Poppa Smokers

Everybody else gets $5 store credit just for entering!

Ladies and gents Start your smokers!

Birthday Rib eyes - reverse seared

I asked the Mrs to pick up some Rib eyes for me, put some BPS Double secret steak rub on them, and put them on the MAK before I get home from work. She did great but didn't get any "before" pictures

We left them on "smoke" with BD Wine-soaked Oak pellets about an hour and a half.

IT was ~95F when I moved them to the warming area, installed grill grates and set the MAK on HIGH

About 3 minutes per side, and the IT is 127F, right were we want it.
Resting


Add onions,mushrooms and a salad.




My daughter is home from College, and suprised me with a brownie waffle cake!

Brats & Tots

Chicken/Apple brats and plain old Tater Tots. Onto the MAK on 'smoke' while we head over to the next town for Church.




90 minutes later. Looking good..




Kick the MAK up a notch.




Who says Pellet Grills don't smoke??




30 minutes later, time to bring them in.




Add some Tabasco mustard and relish and a snort of ketchup - Soup's On!

two of my most favorite foods. i love a good hot dog.

St. Louis Spare Ribs w/Baked Beans with Homemade Cole Slaw

First attempt at St. Louie's. Had a lot of fun on a beautiful, warm day here in the Bluegrass! Couldnt think of a better way than to try a new recipe while I had the house to myself all afternoon. Prepared ribs to be smoked and asked some good 'ol friends from Big Poppa to help me.

The Players: Used Left to Right In Order


Placed on MAK and smoked for 2 1/2 Hrs at 230: Here's a pic after 45 mins



Meanwhile...More Goodies to Make!!! My Take on Baked Beans.
In short...Bacon is Fried then Crumbled
JT New Orleans Sausage is Pan Seared Hot and Quick in oil...10 mins tops
In a large mixing bowl add Beans, Sausage, Bacon,Chopped Onions,Corn Syrup,Brown Sugar Mustard (wet and dry), and Worcestershire Sauce. Mix Well
Pour into large baking dish or foil pan. Set aside. Here's the players and Everything mixed together....





Place Beans on Upper Rack of Mak

End of Part 1

Part 2

After Ribs have smoked for 2 to 2 1/2 hrs I wrapped them in foil with apple juice and butter. Placed ribs back on Mak meat side down and smoked for 1 to 1/2 hours.
Unwrapped ribs and Glazed them with Blues Hog. Raised temp on Mak to 260 and smoked for 1 Hour or until glaze set and carmelized. Here's a pic immediately after removing from Mak.



Close Up:



After that I pulled Beans:



Enough of this....plate me already!!!!

My Plate garnished with Famous Dave's Spicy Pickles and the Homemade Cole Slaw:



and some finishing sauce:



Had a lot of fun and some good good food...hope you enjoyed it....i sure did

High marks on photography STC! Natural sunset lighting on tots and dogs! Love it!

Belated Birthday Dinner

Like many on the site, I had a birthday this week. Unfortunately, I do not get home from work early enough to cook, so I made my B-day dinner today. Although I would like to have cooked the same as CarterQ did for his birthday (rack of lamb is one of my favorites, cooked exactly the same way), I had to cook something my family liked as well. So here we go.

Started with some baked potatoes, rubbed with EVOO and sea salt. Put on the MAK at 325°F for 1 hour:



While the potatoes were cooking, I split a couple of lobster tails and drizzled EVOO, Desert Gold. chives, and lemon juice and let sit for a while:



I also wrapped some Costco Choice filets with some bacon and seasoned with BPS Double Secret and let come up to room temp:



When potatoes were done, I pulled them. Removed the flame zone cover, put the grill grates on, and cranked up the MAK to high. When up to temp, I put the filets on:



Pulled the filets and let them rest when they reached 135-140°F:



Then I brushed the lobster tails with a mixture of butter, garlic and chives and put them on the grill. I also put the potatoes back on:



Flipped the lobster over:



All plated up with a nice glass of wine:



For dessert, my daughter made me a birthday cake. For those of you that can't tell, it is a steak with grill marks!!!



The picture does not do it justice, but she even made the cake pinkish red, because I like my steaks medium rare!!



As good as the meal was, you can't beat a cake that looks like a steak inside and out that is made by your daughter! What a great day!!!

French Toast

Finally got to try out the MAK griddle.

oh my. be still my heart. that last pic. i'll take those you get your own plate. i would like a glass of milk plz. those look good. 1st class french toast partner.

Beef with spinach and parmesan

The players


I fired up the MAK with some hickory and preheated it to 275 while I prepared the beef.

After pounding out the beef I drizzled it with some EVOO with garlic and layered some spinach and freshly parmesan cheese.





And tied up..



I did another with pepper EVOO and pepper plant garlic hot sauce.







I also made some roasted tomatoes with parmesan. A little salt and pepper then the parmesan.





Continued..

Onto the MAK for a little smoke then I'll bump the temp to 400 to finish them off and put the tomatoes on.





Alrighty now the logs are done and I let them rest in foil before I sliced them.



Ding ding ding ding time to eat!

Sliced and plated with the tomatoes. At the last second I toasted some pita bread to have with it. Delicious!





I gotta tell ya.. This turned out so good! It was filling without being real heavy. The pepper plant garlic hot sauce was perfect with this. I'm really loving that stuff! Not bad for a healthy dinner.

Scooter – this entry is for you he,he,he



Here ya go Scooter, bypassing the starter and entree and going straight to dessert!

Chocolate stuffed banana smoked on a pellet cooker.

Ingredients: Banana, chocolate



Cut a slit down the banana without cutting all the way through, stuff with chocolate



Put them in the pit around 300 degrees for an hour The peels will be black



The meat will be soft and the chocolate melted (the mexican chocolate held it's shape but was melted)



Plate it up with some vanilla ice cream and chocolate shavings



And the close up! It was fantastic!






LOL, I love this recipe and I needed something to use this really good chocolate that I got this week so ....... I stole this entry from Scooter (including most of the words, the pictures are mine). The first time that I was judge of this contest it was at a time when judging was much easier – we only had to choose first place and there were only 3 or 4 or 5 of us entering (the contest has come a long way since then). I picked Scooter's entry as the winner. I’m resurrecting Scooter’s first ever entry in the pelletsmoking weekly contest and making it my own, LOL ………………………………..


oh, and this is how we really ate it, a few bites of each chocolate



Thanks Scooter, these bananas will always be known as Scooter's bananas to me.

Italian sub sandwich with green onion sausage and homemade marinara sauce

Start with some fresh green onion and pork sausage to make up your meatballs. A friend of ours sent us some seasoning to try a batch – I just had to add some fresh ground pork and some diced up green onions.





Rolled them out and added them to the Yoder and smoked with Oak.





Meanwhile I start with the sauce – decide to use a homemade marinara sauce that I canned last year. Somehow I didn’t actually get a pic of the sauce in the pan with the meatballs….





Smoked at 150° for 1 hr and then continued on the grill at 225° until the internal temp was 130°. Here they are just about ready to be pulled off the smoker and into the hot tub of sauce. They finished cooking in the sauce while I was making the bread.





Baked up a nice hearty loaf of French bread. Split it in ½ once cooked and cooled a few mins. Added some meatballs out of the sauce (don’t want my bread to get too soggy





Topped with some baby swiss cheese and back onto the Yoder to melt the cheese.





Cut the pieces in half and plated them up with a little more sauce on the top!! This meal will be on the menu again!!

Stuffed Pork Tenderloin Medallions
When I start to cook I usually have a destination and pretty good idea where I’m going but sometimes things take a very interesting detour. Today I laid out some ingredients but wasn’t quite sure who was going to make the team for today’s cook.

I cut the pork tenderloin in one inch thick medallions and seasoned them with some BP’s Double Secret Steak rub and put them in a bath of some garlic EVVO and fresh rosemary to soak up some happiness.
Next I cooked up some pancetta, added some fresh chopped garlic, sun dried tomatoes and a handful of fresh baby spinach. Photos got a little scarce at this point. Between shooing away the cat and trying not to step on the dog, I just wasn’t reaching for the camera.

Once the spinach was wilted I chopped everything and set it aside to cool.
At this point I decided to try something different and peeled and shredded a couple Yukon Gold potatoes. I mixed them with an egg, cream, a little flour, salt and pepper and made some potato pancakes.

Now it was time to head outside to get the Weber set up. I ran downstairs and stopped at my computer and here is where things start to get really interesting. Deb and I had had some communication earlier in the morning about taking the dogs for walk but time-wise it just wasn’t going to work for me since I wanted to cook and had to get to “work” at 5PM. I knew what she was going to cook today and I really, really wanted a sample. The solution was really very simple. The dogs could play together and I could get a sample of Deb’s cook, if she was willing to share her MAK2 so that I could cook my pork medallions at her house. Deb agreed so I packed up all my food preparations, loaded up the dog, the camera and off we went.
Once at Deb’s, with the dogs happily playing, I cut pockets into the medallions and spooned in the spicy spinach stuffing.

They went on the MAK for some smoke and then Deb set the temp for 350. Oak and cherry pellets were in the hopper.

And here is the plated shot:

The dogs are tired, the pork was delicious and Deb’s/Scooters bananas, fabulous. Oh, and cooking on the MAK, priceless. Thank you, Deb.

Reverse seared strip loin, mushrooms and double stuffed taters. Started like this.. went to the supermarket an asked the butcher for the thickest strip loin he had... and he came through..

Cut up the shrooms and hit them with some desert gold and a can of v8..

Gutted the half cooked spuds and mixed with cream, garlic cream cheese and some garlic butter spread...

Sutuffed them back up

Everyone into the smoke bath!!!!!
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When I got to hight temp I threw some mozzarella on the spuds, got the meat up yo temp and walla!
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Damn good dinner.. thanks for looking!!!

Some mighty fine cooks going on. I was going to make Smoker Pete proud with some Smoked Salisbury Steak but came down with the flu.

Birthday continued - Baby back ribs

3 Racks of baby back ribs rubbed with the Salt lick clone


Onto Mak 2 Star #106 @275F


After one hour, "Foil Love" with Brown sugar, honey, butter and a splash or two of red wine

After an hour longer @275F, poured off the drippings from the foil, defatted and reduced by 1/2 into a sauce.
Baste with the sauce.



Plated


Yeah, there were GOOD!

Pulled beef, boneless chicken breast with scalloped potatoes, and all of the fixing'.

View attachment 1353View attachment 1351View attachment 1350View attachment 1352
My daughter had a baby shower for my 2nd granddaughter (coming soon).
My wife said no ribs or pulled pork this time. We decideded to prepare pulled beef and boneless chicken breast as the main course. I also made scalloped potatoes on the smoker. For sides we had beans, slaw, and potato salad. I started with two eye of round roast, rubbed with garlic evo, dusted with BP Double secret. I then injected with beef broth, Worcestershire sauce and brown sugar. I let them rest overnight. In the morning I gave them one hour of smoke then to 225 until an IT of 150.
I then put them in a roasting bag with onions and some of the injection liquid. I pulled at 208. They rested in foil, towel, cooler until time to pull.
Continued