Got back from down under yesterday and I was itchin to fire up the MAK. Wife said, "take it easy, let's do something simple". So we decided on Kabobs, and nothing is easier than chicken kabobs.
Here we go:
Soaked some cubed boneless, skinless chicken breasts in Soy Vay Veri Veri Teriyaki for about an hour.
Ready to build kabobs with the Chicken, Fresh Pineapple, Baby Portabellas, Onion and Red and Yellow Peppers.
Skewered up, I like to keep the meat, fruit and veggies separate as all have different cook times and it allows for better control of how thing come out.
Onto the MAK, put the chicken and pineapple on the sear grate first and set the veggies off to the side, basted everything but the meat with Teriyaki.
Pineapple and chicken looking good, veggies ready for the sear grate
Ready to go, mix it all up in a bowl and serve
Plated up with some homemade pilaf and we are happy campers
Came out great as always, this is one of the quickest and easiest meals you can do on your cooker and it tastes like a lot of work. Can't wait for round 2, gonna do some ribs tomorrow!
well, put in my 8 hours and got off work at noon. so, i went to the butcher. came home sitting in the backyard with the dogs having a FT. brainstorming about this weekends cook. well, no one was home and i found a bottle of jack daniels. um....boiler makers. light bulb went off!!! my old friend Mr TentH gave me the idea. sparky's bbq ribs with a twist. well, i step the meph to smoke and began.
you got it. i smoked some peaches for 1 hour. then,
after 2 1/2 hrs at 275º i add some stuff (you know the drill) and foiled.
well, i then make some more secret stuff and honey.
Old Sparks Brisket with a little twist.
well, started a brisket like this,
let sit in this mixture for 8 hours. then,
it was a nice cool, quiet morning the next day. the espresso was great.
once it reached 185º i added some stuff then foiled in pan and covered it up. cooked until it reached 195º and let rest for 2 hours.
and now the twist....
i made some wagon wheels and used the juice from the brisket with olive oil and butter. added some brisket to the wagon wheels and topped with cheese and green onions. my wife and daughter had never had anything like it before. it was fantastic. my wife asked what made you put all those ingredients together. i told here a wise man once said "got to do something different to make it your own". i made it my own with a little twist.
To get back into the swing of things I decided to go all out this weekend. It actually started a few weeks ago when I found a great deal on a rib roast. I have also been wanting to try the Dry Bags to dry age a roast. For those unfamiliar with the Dry Bags they work a bit like a vacuum sealer bag but they have something special about them that allow the meat to dry age. Usually you have to use a snorkle type vacuum sealer with them but there are some tricks to getting a regular FoodSaver type to work. I can go into what I did to get it to work if people are interested.
I went with 15 days of dry aging. During this time I had the roast in my fridge on a wire rack and making sure that nothing was touching the meat. The roast went from a normal meat color to an almost black, unfortunately I lost my before pictures but here is a pic as it came out of the fridge after 15 days.
Then once the bag is peeled off, you can see the exterior of the meat takes on a shine, almost a seal of it's own and it looks like it still has a bag on it.
I then trimmed off the fat and the dry exterior. As this was my first dry aged Prime rib I did trim pretty closely. Some say you can leave a bit more of the darker meat but I wanted to get off as much as possible. I did leave a little fat where I could for some extra flavor.
After this was done it got a liberal coating of freshly cracked pepper, sea salt and a touch of garlic powder. I then wrapped it in plastic wrap for about 12 hours before cooking. It then went on the MAK at 225* and took a little over 3 hours to get to 130* IT. At that point I tented it in foil and let it rest for nearly an hour. During it's rest it actually gained almost 6* depending on where you would test it. Finally I set our kitchen oven to the hottest possible, 500* and placed the roast in for about 5-10 minutes to get a bit of a crust on the outside.
All in all I was very happy for my first attempt. I need to work on the crust just a bit but as you can see it was nice and red, juicy and didn't have a lot of brown meat around the exterior. It may have gotten a bit more towards medium than some would prefer but it was still very delicious. I will work on the timings a bit more the next time, which will be soon.
Finally we finished the meal off with some garlic mashed potatoes and Keri's Hog Apple Baked beans made with my homemade bacon, some left-over pulled pork from a previous cook and then the whole pan was done on the MAK as well. The meal was a huge hit and we are going to do it again in a few weeks for my Mother's B-day.
Last call for entries! The entries so far are awesome, but we are two cooks short of pushing BP to bigger prizes...I will judge the entries in about an hour...still time to post your cooks.
Great job by all the cooks! Time to get to the judging.
Mostly in the order they were entered:
CarterQ – Round 1 Chicken Kabobs Kabobs are a favorite around our house. These looked awesome. To paraphrase Big Poppa, wonderfully simple, simply wonderful!
CarterQ – Round 2 Basic Ribs Great looking ribs! Your team wins, you have great food, what’s not to like!
FLBentRider – Pulled Beef The beef and onion looked great! I would have loved to have seen more of that meal!
Sparky – Sparky >>>Un-supervised We need to call the missus and request you be unsupervised more often. Sparky, those ribs were off the hook!
Sparky – Brisket Looks like there was no supervision on this one either…great cook! You just moved brisket up my list of things to smoke.
TTNuge – Aged Rib Roast Wow did that turn out great! Not sure I’m brave enough yet to try ageing my own beef, but I surely would have no problem trying yours! Great to have you back!
Deb – Just a little onion soup I doubt I will ever cease to be amazed at the craft and care you put into every thing you cook! Fantastic!
Squirtthecat – Smoked kick-line for the kiddies Talk about looking forward to going to school, those are some lucky kids!
--------------------------------------------------- Everyone did a great job!! All great cooks!
Without further ado:
3rd place – CarterQ – Round 1 Kabobs Sometimes it’s the simple things in life, makes me happy just looking at this festival of colors and tastes.
2nd place – TTNuge – Aged Rib Roast I really wanted to reach through the screen and take that plate!
1st place – (say it with me ppl) Sparky Un-supervised! I wasn’t planning on smoking ribs again so soon, but you’re making it hard not to want ribs every week!
Congrats to Sparky and all who entered, great cooks again by all this week! I'm starting to feel like Rip with my to do list, lots of good ideas here week in and week out!