Fishing Food

Our annual trip to Redwing Minnesota to stalk the wily walleye on the Mississippi river is only days away. I'm responsible for food and I need to smoke! We'll have pulled pork and beef brisket as a portion of our menu. In addition I bought a bunch-O-chicken thighs to grill. One of the things I also plan to make is buffalo chicken mac & cheese. I can make that with either the grilled chicken or pulled pork. Both came out pretty good. maybe I'll do a split recipe and make some of each. I also bought a ham that I'll smoke to enhance the flavor. I plan to use both the ham and chicken for lunch as well.

That's 14 lb of beef and 14 lb of pork. I didn't pick them that way. I just chose packages that looked like what I wanted.

Temperature is 41° at 10:30 and wind is very light at under 5 mph. the sky is cloudy. (Good weather conditions for a smoke!) By evening the temperature dropped to freezing.

For the I'm using Raichlen's coffee rub which you can see at Raichlen's Primal Grill web site. For the pork, I went with:

• 1 Tbsp black Pepper
• 1 Tbsp Rosemary
• 1/2 Tbsp Coriander
• 1 Tbsp Hungarian Paprika.
• 1 Tbsp Ancho powder
• 1 Tsp Cayenne pepper
• 1/2 Tbsp Cumin
• 2 Tbsp Garlic powder
• 1 Tbsp Onion powder
• 1 Tbsp Mustard powder

This is going on the WSM where I'm using Grove lump (from Woodmans') and for smoking wood: mesquite, hickory, apple, black walnut, oak and box elder. During the cook I threw a couple pieces of cherry in that I had sitting around. I started with about a gallon of hot tap water in the bowl. The meat probe of the ET-72 is in the thickest part of the brisket on the lower grate.

Using the Maverick ET-73 for temperature measurement with the meat probe in the thickest portion of the brisket. The brisket itself had to be cut into two pieces to fit on the lower rack. I can monitor the butts using a instant reading thermometer but I expect the brisket to be done first.

10:10 AM		Lit coals on smoker and closed up. All bottom vents wide open.
10:20		Meat on! (grate and lid temp about 220°) Closed two vents fully and one vent to about 1/2.
11:00	52°/197°/190° (meat,grate,lid)	Looking good. Cold meat is dragging the temps down but that's OK. I'm not in a hurry.
11:42	87°/180°/185°	Open the 1/2 open bottom vent a little bit - to about 3/4.
1:09 PM	133°/175°/175°	Stirred the coals a bit.87°/180°/185°
1:30	134°/170°/170°	Temp still falling off so I threw a bit more coal in and blew some air in the bed to fire it up and opened another bottom vent.
2:30	156°/218°/?	Better.
3:45	171°/216°/?
4:40	172°/207°/220°
5:00	170°/207°/210°	Stirred the coals a bit and threw some cherry and box elder in.
5:47	166°/222°/?	Meat temp is a puzzlement.
6:34	164°/189°/190°	Threw in a couple more hands full of lump and pumped some air to get it fired up.
8:05	174°/314°/250°	Closed down to one bottom vent full open. Water bowl empty? Peeked in and pork looks like it's coming along.
8:59	190°/253°/210°	Peeked in and checked pork - butts are at 167°, 168°
9:40	192°/?/?	Beef off and meat probe switched to a butt. (now at 169°)
9:55	168°/206°/175°	More lump, more air.
11:00	169°/295°/230°
12:29 AM	180°/272°/230°
1:10	182°/242°/?	Pork taken out, wrapped in foil and put in a cooler to rest overnight.

Beef - seems a bit firm but tastes terrific! Pork is mouth watering and pulls apart easily.

I don't understand why the fire required so much tending. Maybe I should switch back to briquettes rather than lump. Or mix the two. Other than that, I don't think I would do anything differently.