Gobble

For at least two meanings of the word. I picked up a 14 lb. free range turkey from Kaufmann Farms (AKA Hoka turkey) and will cook it on the smoker. Time may be a little tight so I don't plan to slow smoke it, but I'm sure we'll get the benefit of the oak, mesquite and cherry that I added to the charcoal.

Weather conditions: 32° with a bit of morning fog. Wind is light at about 6 mph. It should be clear with temperatures going into the 40s today. There is heavy frost and frozen rain on stuff on the patio.

Preparation: I brined the bird since yesterday afternoon in a brine of:

• 2 qt water
• 2 qt apple juice
• 1 1/4 C sea salt
• 1 1/4 C brown sugar
• 1 cinnamon stick
• tsp cloves
• tsp allspice
• medium sliced onion
• tbsp pepper corns
• several bay leaves (well, the recipe called for them but I forgot.)

I brined in a roasting bag in a cooler packed with ice. That's the easiest way to do this and ensure that there is good contact with all parts of the bird. This morning I removed the bird from the brine, rinsed it and seasoned it for cooking.

Seasonings consisted of fresh rosemary, fresh thyme, an apple cut up into wedges and a couple small onions sliced. These were all stuffed into the body and neck cavity to provide flavor during the cook. In addition, I also mixed some fresh thyme and rosemary with a little peanut oil and pushed it between skin and breast meat.

The stuffing was made with cubed whole grain bread that I had put in the oven to dry a bit a couple days ago. To that I added sautéed onions and celery with garlic, pepper and fresh thyme, rosemary and parsley. I also mixed in some walnut chunks and an apple sliced to about the size of the bread pieces. I moistened with a mix of turkey stock and beaten eggs. And bacon. Don't forget the fried bacon.

Smoker setup us modified minion using mesquite lump charcoal and adding oak, cherry and a little mesquite for smoking woods. I loosely foiled the water pan and placed a drip pan in the lower grate. Once the coals were starting (and the smoke smelled divine at this point!) I put the turkey on. The desire is to serve at 1:00 PM. I'm starting out with one bottom vent fully open but I'll probably open more after an hour or two to bring the temperature up.

Before you use the time/temperature notes below to estimate how long your turkey might take to cook, please be aware that when I switched meat thermometers at 10:50 I started using one that read 187° in boiling water. The original thermometer was reading correctly after all. Needless to say, I highly recommend that you check calibration of your meat thermometer before starting your Thanksgiving turkey,

Cooking log:

time	temp	comment
6:40 AM		Lit coals on the smoker.
6:55		Bird on!
7:33	190°/x/212° (dome/meat/cooker)	This is just about where I want to be right now. <checking vents on smoker> Whoops! I had only one bottom vent barely open. I opened it fully so that fire can get going.
8:31	x/x/236°	Temp progressing nicely. In a half hour or so I'll open another bottom vent to bring the temp up a bit more. The meat probe is sitting out on the table for one of my gas grills and now reads 38°.
9:18	250°/x/248°	Opened one more bottom vent for more temp. Threw a little more oak and cherry onto the coals.
10:16	317°/x/305°	Wonderful!
10:29		Put the meat probe in the turkey by the thigh and observed.
10:33	x/158°/x	Put the stuffing in a large pan under the turkey where it can catch some of the drippings. Looks like the turkey has come along well! It might wind up with an extended rest time. I want to take the thigh to about 160° and the breast to about 150° before taking off.
10:50	x/176°/x	:( I was alarmed because the reading at the thigh was up to 165° so I used another thermometer to read the breast. I got 144° with that. I moved the remote probe to that and it now reads 176°. I think my remote probe is not reading correctly. I would not expect the bird to be done buy now.
11:30	x/188°/x	153° breast 148° thigh These are using an instant read thermometer. Maverick meat probe is way high. :(
11:46	x/x/281°	Will be checking meat at intervals using the instant read going forward.
12:20	x/x/300	165° breast and thigh so the turkey is coming off. It's in a warm gas grill to rest.

(dome/meat/cooker) - Temperature is measured using the built in thermometer (dome) and a Maverick ET-73 remote reading thermometer. an 'x' means that I have not inserted the probe or have not bothered to walk outside to read the dome. ;) )

The 14 lb bird is an easy fit on an 18" Weber Smoky Mountain:

While I have the turkey on the smoker, I 'm simmering the giblets and some vegetables inside in a stock pot.

I'm using an Alton Brown recipe for this mostly because he claims that the addition of potato starch interferes with the propensity of flour based gravies to set up solid as they cool. Maybe I should try that other suggestion to puree the vegetables used to make the stock for thickening rather than add flour. I have time to think about these.

I've started my third contribution for dinner - the stuffing. I put that under the turkey on the smoker to catch drippings as it cooks. I also put the meat probe in to see where the turkey is at. I also snapped some pictures.

The setuffing came out when the bird came off. It was clearly done.

Apologies for not getting a picture of the bird when it was finished. I guess I had other priorities at that point. It looked pretty much like the picture at 10:30 (two hours before it came off) except it was a couple shades darker yet. I rested it in a gas grill (because other stuff was in the oven) which I held at 150°-200° for over an hour. There were still some other things to  prepare and then we had soup first. It was nice to know that I had hit the ready to serve point at 1:00 and the additional hold time caused no problems.

Everything came out great! The bird was flavorful and juicy though the skin was more tough than crispy. I knew that would happen as a result of smoking. The stuffing had some liquid in it when it came off, but it seemed to absorb that as it rested. It was really good as well. The gravy had a more translucent quality to it due to the starch and it did not harden as it sat. It tasted vary good as well. Overall I'm entirely pleased with the results. I had been a little concerned that this would not be enough for 7 adults but it was plenty.

Post Scriptum:

1. Before an important cook like this, be sure to check thermometers using boiling water as a standard.
2. Do not be so quick to condemn the Maverick. It turned out that the other quick reading thermometer was reading 20° low and caused me to overcook the bird by 20°. <growl>

---

As an aside, I have not been blogging all of my cooks. I have been doing some grilling and that's usually pretty quick, leaving me little time to wax eloquent... But I have a moment now so I can go back and hit some highlights.

A couple days ago I decided to grill some lamb chops that we had gotten from our kids. (They bought a couple lambs at a 4H or county fair.) I decided to do them on my new toy - a Lodge Sportsman's Grill. This is really a hibachi and has a nice cast iron grate. It also has a means to control air which works surprisingly well. Unlike the Weber grills, this one has no lid to control combustion air. I fired it up with a full load of mesquite lump and seasoned the chops with EVOO, fresh pressed garlic, fresh cracked black pepper and (not so fresh) rubbed rosemary. I grilled them at a relatively high temperature along with some thawed frozen broccoli florets which were also coated with EVOO.

The lamb came out astonishingly good! I gave it only a few minutes on eacyh side and these 1" thick chops were still very rare inside.

A little grilling

On a little grill.
My new toy is a cast iron hibachi made by Lodge. This is my second cook on it. I made some Chicken Sate yesterday. Today I roasted some peppers.

And grilled a couple burgers (beef and boca.)

I roasted a potato and toasted my buns.

 

It's a neat little grill. It takes about half a chimney of charcoal to load. It has a draft control that does a surprisingly good job of controlling temperature. And it gets hot.

This weekend's big smoke

(Note - this is a work in progress. I'm going to publish as I go so at present it is not polished and certainly not finished!)

I get carried away. I was looking for something to smoke and yesterday morning I saw a corned beef brisket at a decent price at Caputos. I've been wanting to try it so I bought a small one - about 2 1/2 lb. I was really looking for some pork, but I didn't see anything there that appealed to me. (No spare ribs, no butts.)

Later in the day we went to Sam's Club. There I saw huge slabs of cryovac pork spare ribs. So I grabbed two. Later I saw big double packages of butts so I grabbed one of them and returned one of the spares to the case. (A man's got to know his limitations - along with that of his smoker.) Today my limitations are 18 lbs of butts and 14 1/2 lb spare ribs.

Weather - at 10:10 AM it is a pleasant 70° F with a south wind at about 10 mph. It will probably remain sunny with an expected high of 79°.

Beef on the mini. (Smokey Joe converted to a mini Weber Smoky Mountain.)

For the corned beef brisket I followed the the recipe I found on the Virtual Weber. The run consists of:

• 2 tablespoon(s) Peppercorns
• 1/2 tablespoon Coriander seeds
• 1/2 tablespoon Onion powder
• 1 teaspoon Thyme, dried
• 1 teaspoon Paprika (Hot Hungarian)
• 1 teaspoon Garlic powder

I had planned to make it yesterday until I saw that it first had to soak to leach out excess salt and then had to sit overnight with the rub. I put it in a large pot and filled with cold water which I changed several times. It probably spent several hours soaking. Then I applied the rub as described and put it in the ice chest to hold overnight. In the morning I started a fire with some remaining charcoal and some new Mesquite lump and added some Mesquite chunks for smoking wood. Ths went in the mini-WSM with some water in the water bowl. The meat went on shortly afterward on the top grate.

time	temp	comment
9:15		Meat on! Bottom vent set to about 1/2 open.
9:37	175°/? (grate/lid)(*)
9:50		More meat on! I added the flap trimmings from the spares since there is more room in the mini at the moment. I also repositioned the cooker temp probe as it looked like it was against the side of the middle section.
10:05	161°/?	Still seems to be reading low. I might need to open the bottom vent more. I peeked in on the fire and it looked a bit listless so I opened the bottom vents to almost full open.
10:33	204°/?
12:11	232°/150°
1:01	311°/200	Cut the bottom vent down to about half and put a different meat probe in the beef.
1:15	299°/200°/193°	Could the brisket really be done? I need to check more with an instant read thermometer. No. The instant read thermometer read 144°. Did I get my probes swapped?
x	274°/190°/199°	Meat temp still looks bogus.
3:03	246°/185°/165°	meat temp measured with instant read hand held.
3:55	?/?/165°	The probe meets with little resistance - I'm calling this done! It's off and resting.

(grate/lid) => Grate temperature using a Maverick remote reading thermometer and dome using a probe mounted in the lid.)

Pork on the big smoker (18 1/2" Weber Smoky Mountain)

For the  pork I went with a slight modification of a previous recipe:

• 2 Tbsp black Pepper
• 2 Tbsp Rosemary
• 1 Tbsp Coriander
• 1 Tbsp Ground dried Ancho chili.
• 2 Tbsp ground Sage
• 1/2 Tbsp Cayenne pepper
• 1 Tbsp Cumin
• Almost a full garlic bulb (crushed.)

(Note the use of Ancho instead of paprika.) To this I added sufficient peanut oil to make a pourable slurry. I then heated the rub in a microwave to get it hot and release the flavors before I rubbed it on the butts. It turned out that this quantity was just enough for the butts. I made a second batch, cutting the cayenne and cumin in half for the ribs. I applied the rubs and went about making the fire for the beef and pork. This meant that the pork had about an hour to marinate with the rub before it went on the fire.

I built the fire in the WSM using some left over charcoal and smoking wood along with fresh Mesquite lump. I added hickory, maple (Box Elder) and oak for smoking woods. The water bowl started with about 1/2 gallon of hot water.

time	temp	comment
9:35		Lit coals on the fire.
9:42	?/220°	Closed two of three bottom vent. Time to put the meat on.
9:50		Meat on! And it was quite a job. Ideally the spares fit one slab/level on 18 1/2" grates. I needed to fit 1 1/2 slab on each level so I cut a little off the end of each of two and the third was split in half. I arranged as best as I could and still allow some space around the edge for smoke passage. There is some overlap so I will need to open the smoker to rearrange at about 2 hours. Spares went on the bottom two grates and butts on the top. This is one full smoker!
12:11	?/225°	With the south wind, the aroma from the meat is wafting inside and smells great!
12:22		Meat has been rearranged. Ribs still have a long way to go. Butts even longer. The cook seems to be getting off to a bit of a slow start, but that's the way I like it. :D That's a big load of meat.
1:01	?/210°
2:10	?/200°/122°
2:20	?/200°	Flipped the ribs back. They are just starting to pull back on the bones. I would guess at least another hour before they're done. As the fire is starting to want, I also stirred the coals a bit too.
3:04	220°/209°
6:22	289°/?/153°	I thought I'd be taking the ribs off already but they looked still not done. The skinny tips that I had trimmed off earlier were ready, but not the rest and so they remain. I also added some more charcoal as what was there seemed to be burning down a bit much. (Meat probe now in the Maverick.)
7:28	260°/?/154°	x
8:24	256°/?/156°	Ribs off. They never pulled much back but I'm pretty sure they're done. One rack almost broke in half when picked up.
9:35	208°/?/159°	Need to stir the coals some more. Add some too.
10:30	275°/?/159°	...
11:37	257°/?/170°
12:27	251°/?/176°
12:40	261°/?/178°	Took the smaller butt off to rest.
1:13	251°/?/182°
1:30	238°/?/185°	Bringing bigger butt in to rest.

(Update December 16.)

I must have gotten tired and never finished this write up. Overall, there was too much meat in the smoker. I think it made for less than even cooking. Some parts of the ribs were a bit uneven. I think that three slabs of spares would fit well on three racks. And I cold do either four smaller butts or two larger ones. Too bad that the ones in the Sam's package are not size matched. But overall we enjoyed the ribs. I think the spares are meatier than back or baby back ribs. I can have one rib for lunch and that's plenty. Two is good but really too much, though that doesn't always stop me.

The butts pulled well. They were falling apart as I lifted them off the grate. I truly love the flavor of pulled pork when I'm pulling it. Right now I have a 20 lb package of butts on the weber and they've been on nearly 13 hours. We're at 165° and I'll probably pull them to rest at 185°.

Some like it HOT!

Not all cooking is about BBQ or even a gas or charcoal fired grill. I'm fooling around with some Habañero recipes. Mostly I'm posting just to show off their incredible colors.

The red peppers in particular look great but the orange Habañeros are no slouch either when it comes to intensity of color.

The first recipe I tried was a simple recipe from Rick Bayless which included carrots, onions and some garlic in addition to the Habañeros. It really packs a punch. I had some on reheated beef and chicken Fajitas for lunch and it was pretty good. (One change - I used shallots instead of onion as that's what I had on hand.

For the next recipe I wanted to try something that would be good with chips. For that I went with a fruity concoction called Aunt Lindy's Habsolutely Mango. It uses a lot less Habañero for the volume of salsa. It has a nice fruity flavor and the heat doesn't gob-smack you when you first taste it. Instead the heat builds as the fruit flavor fades. It eventually gets fairly hot but not unbearably so.

I've got some canned peaches so tomorrow I'll have a go at some Habanero Peach salsa. And with all of the tomatoes that are ripening I might make some of that. I might even add some Jalapeños to the mix. I have one Jalapeño plant that suddenly decided to set a couple dozen fruit. I guess the weather a couple weeks ago was conducive to Jalapeño fruit set.

The red peppers above? Those are for drying. They're Red Rockets and I've strung them on some string and they're hanging in a warm oven to dry.


Update:  I figured I better do something with the remaining Habañeros. I split them in half, seeded them, boiled them for about 15 minutes and pureed them. Wow! Just seeding them I had to open a window as the fumes were making me cough and sneeze and my nose was running!  The particular variety of capsaicin found in Habañeros is subtle but potent. When I boiled them I had to turn on the exhaust fan or I couldn't stay in the room. It makes me wonder what kind of protection they use in plants where they process these commercially.

I also made some peach salsa. I used:

• 1 15.5 oz can of peaches (drained)
• 2 medium tomatoes peeled and seeded. (*)
• about 1/4 C sautéed onion.
• 2 Tbsp frozen orange juice concentrate.
• 1 Tbsp white vinegar.
• a small amount of the following spices:
• cinnamon
• allspice
• cumin
• powdered ginger
• 1 Tbsp of the pureed Habañeros. That's probably between one and two Habañeros.

That was plenty of heat for something that I didn't want to be particularly hot. Again, it starts with the fruity flavor and the heat comes on slowly and builds to a nice hot crescendo.  (That's on the initial tasting. The flavors may change as the spices meld.) Now I wonder if I should have put some vinegar in the salsa. I'll have to try some with a little vinegar added. ... Yes! About 1 Tbsp white vinegar and 2 Tbsp frozen orange juice concentrate brighten this up nicely. I'd consider adding lime or lemon juice, but the peach flavor is subtle and I don't want to overpower it totally. I'm going to call this salsa done. Now I guess I need to run out and get some more chips.

I've got two cups of pureed  Habañeros on 4 oz. containers in addition to the hot sauce and two fruit salsas I've already prepared. I think think I have plenty of "hot stuff" to last me a while.

(*) I dropped the tomatoes into boiling water for a minute or so to loosen the skin. I also stroked them with the back of a knife to further loosen the skin and they peel easily.

ABTs for a party.

I decided to bring some ABTs (Atomic Buffalo Turds) to a party as a side dish. I started by going to a local Mexican grocery to buy a dozen jalapeños. I figured that if I went there, I'd be most likely to get some hot (picoso) ones. Some that I've gotten at regular groceries have been disappointingly mild.

I followed pretty much the recipe I used previously including the spicy sausage. this time I chopped the sausage and mixed it in rather than quartering them and pressing them into the cheese mix. I sprinkled with a little Ancho chile powder.

Outside conditions are 61°, sunny and wind at about 10 mph.

I'm cooking in the mini using briquettes left over from a previous smoke to which I added some lit lump I used to roast some red peppers for another recipe. I used some Mesquite chips and a couple chunks of Hickory for smoking wood. The ABTs are going on the top grate with no water pan. This is a kind of indirect cooking due to the distance from fire to grate. Temperature was measured with a Maverick probe just below the grate.

time	temp	comment
2:10		ABTs on. I closed the bottom vents to about 1/3 and left the top vent full open.
2:29	289°
3:01	321°	Should peek in soon.
3:14	325°	And they're done. Probably could have taken them off sooner, but I do like the bacon a bit crisp.

They seemed to be well received by the party goers. I put them in a large cast iron skillet and reheated them on a stove top. They weren't as good as when they came off the grill, but none were left and I did get compliments on them. They varied in heat from pretty mild to hot.

For the benefit of anyone not familiar with the mini-WSM, (Weber Smoky Mountain) this is a Smoky Joe to which a middle section has been added using a Tamale steaming pot with the bottom removed. It's a very convenient size for cooks like this.

Beef today

Today's primary project is to make some  Gaucho Beef ribs for family. Before I got those on however I started with some beef heart. I was going to braise it (w/out flour) in the small Dutch oven but once I started, I decided to put it on the smoker for a bit. This is a tough piece of beef that is going to take a lot of cooking before it is ready to eat. I'll smoke it for a while and then bring it inside and simmer it in the Dutch oven until tender. Prep was simple. I cut it into cubes approximately 1.5" across. Pieces vary in thickness up to about 1" thick. I added no seasoning as there will be plenty of time to do that during the simmer. Eventually I'll either make soup or chili with the meat.

Cooking is on the mini-WSM, top grate with water in the bowl. It's fired with Stubbs briquettes (and some Kingsford Blue left over from a previous smoke.) Smoking wood is a couple pieces of Mesquite.

Weather at present is a very pleasant 61° and sunny with winds at 7 knotts. Temperature is expected to get up to 70° this afternoon.

Beef heart is about 3-4 lb that was frozen and thawed in the refrigerator.

Temperature is measured with a probe inserted through the lid and a Maverick ET-73 probe at the grate. The Maverick provides a remote readout. I'm not sure there is any benefit to the lid temp. The probe is short and I don't think it reflects smoker temp in any meaningful way.

time	temp	comment
10:17 AM		Beef Heart on
10:34	238°/175° (grate/lid)
10:58	238°/?
11:19	272°/170°	Grate had been holding pretty steady at ~240° F and seems to have jumped. I put another thermometer in the lid vent to project about 4" into the cooker to see if I can get a better reading. I'm about ready to start the beef back ribs and want to use the Maverick to monitor temperature in the Platinum.
11:30	284°	Removed the Maverick probe to move to the Platinum for the ribs.
12:50	250°/275°	Meat off. Temp measured in the lid using two thermometers which read 250° and 275° (longer one.) The meat is in the Dutch oven and back on the stove to continue to cook.
9:16		The chunks of beef are still simmering in the small Dutch oven and are still pretty firm. They're going to take a bit longer to finish! Perhaps adding some tomato sauce will help things along. The acid in the tomatoes may help to soften the meat.
9:45		Added a 28 oz can of diced tomatoes to the meat in the Dutch oven.

After simmering for about half a day I gave up on the beef heart. It was still pretty firm and didn't even taste good. I pitched it.

Today's main event is going to be beef back ribs prepared Gaucho style. Those will be cooked using indirect method in my Platinum (which has the sort of standard 22 1/2" kettle.) I'll be fioring that with some lump (Steakhouse and Mesquiite) and using Mesquite and oak as smoking woods.

time	temp	comment
11:30		Lump in the basket and grate in place. Bottom vent about 1/2 open. Almost within seconds the temp shot up to 400°. I closed the vent to 1/4 while I prep the ribs.
11:45	395°	Ribs on! I also threw some oak and mesquite chips on the coals. Temp dropped to about 290° with the lid closed but looks like it's climbing back up.
12:09	306°
12:50	300°	Ribs look well along. They're just starting to pull back on the bone. I think I'll turn them now. I also closed the bottom vent to a bit less than 1/4.
1:30	268°	Turned the ribs back up. They're pretty much done and I'll just leave them on a bit longer to color up part of one that was covered due to overlap.
1:45	270°	Ribs off to rest. While they do, I'll spread out the coals and roast some spuds.

Note to self: Remember to use a drip pan with these ribs. Otherwise when the coals are spread for direct roasting, the grease ignites and must be left to burn off before anything else can be cooked.

The ribs were a bit of a disappointment meat wise. They had been trimmed a bit too diligently by the processor. In fact, there were complete gaps between some of the bones. Flavor was otherwise very good.

The ribs and roasted potatoes were served with a tossed salad which rounded them out very well.

Chicken Liver => Smoked Liver Pâté (plus ABTs)

I got several pounds of frozen chicken livers so I decided to try some smoked chicken liver pâté. I put some on the counter for a bit and then in the fridge overnight to thaw. Unfortunately in the morning I found that I had thawed some chicken hearts. :( I grabbed a bag (2 lb?) of frozen chicken livers and put them in warm water to quick thaw. By this time I had already started my fire so I was in a bit of a bind. Eventually I decided to put the partially frozen livers in a Corning Ware casserole in the smoker at as low a temperature as I could muster. After they were thawed and separated, I could raise the temperature.


Seasonings included a fairly large thinly sliced shallot. I forgot the garlic, but I think the shallot may be all I need. I also added three bay leaves and a sprinkle of dried thyme. Inspiration for this recipe came from Jacques Pépin. I modified it of course, using the chicken livers on hand, not so expensive brandy and not nearly so much butter.

Smoking will be done in the mini-WSM using briquettes and some hickory and a little mesquite. I figured the liver was strong flavored and should stand up to a strong smoke flavor.


Weather is a very pleasant 66° and sunny. Wind is light at 10 mph.


Fire started using the Minion method and left to burn about 10 minutes before putting the meat on. At that time I closed the bottom vent about 3/4. Temperature is monitored via a lid thermometer and the Maverick remote.

time	temp	comment
4:30	215°/155° (grate/lid)	meat on!
4:45	215°/155°	Tried to separate the meat. Still frozen so I put it in a larger casserole.
5:17	222°/155°	Separating again. All livers are thawed.
5:45	262°/155°	Stirred the livers up a bit to expose more to the smoke. There's a fair bit of liquid in there now which I'll leave there. It's bloody now but should look like cooked liver when the liver is done. Grate temp seems to be coming up nicely w/out any adjustment necessary.
6:09	302°/180°	Starting to look more done. Not cooking so evenly so I stirred them about a bit to even things out. I also note that the water in the bowl is gone but that's no big surprise since the temperature is climbing. (Water helps to keep the temperature down.)
6:25	331°/190°	Stirred again - almost done.
7:06	328°/190°	Looks done - I'm taking the liver off.
		Next food on...

I pureed the livers with some brandy and butter and a little water until smooth. I'm sure I didn't use nearly as much butter as Pepin recommends, but that's too much for me anyway. I got nearly 4 C of pâté out of the process and it tastes good!

While I've got the smoker fired up, I'm going to make another batch of ABTs. I picked up some Jalapeños at a Mexican grocery (Rosita's? La Rosati's? Across from Menards in Bloomingdale at North Avenue and Bloomingdale Road.) I hope that this way I'll get hot jalapeños and not really mild ones like at Meijer in Owosso, MI. I'll use the Neufchâtel cheese that's been in the refrigerator for months? Years? Still tastes OK or I'd use the no-fat cream cheese I bought today. Again I'll mix in some shredded sharp cheddar and honey. Instead of onion flakes, I'll use chopped shallot. (Yes, I have extra shallots left over from making Salsa Verde over the weekend.) This time I have some Chile Ancho powder that I'll use to dust on the ABTs before cooking. I also have some pulled pork to chop and mix in the cheese spread. I did come up 4 ABTs short of having enough bacon to wrap all so those got some bacon bits (TVP) instead. The ABTs will go on the smoker when the liver is done.

7:10	330°/190°	ABTs on!
7:59	302°/190°	ABTs coming along nicely. maybe another half hour or so.
8:35	310°/190°	ABTs off!

.
ABTs came out good again. They're a little on the sweet side but that's not really a bad thing. The jalopies are hot and a little sprinkle of ancho chili is nice. The ones with the bacon bits were good too.