I'll also add fish, sausage and ox tail for ideas for the smoker. Just go very light on the smoke if you're doing fish.
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I'll also add fish, sausage and ox tail for ideas for the smoker. Just go very light on the smoke if you're doing fish.
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I have been doing more fish on the grill. Salmon marinated with brown sugar, garlic, olive oil, low sodium soy sauce and a little dill smoked with cherry or apple wood is quite tasty. Also have done haddock or cod marinated in olive oil and house seasonings then topped with roasted lemon and a compound butter made with miso, balsamic vinegar and parsley, basically a grilled version of this recipe.
Last edited by NEPAKevin; 05-26-2018 at 01:03 PM.
"You can't win a war with choirboys. " Mad Mike Hoare
I don't know if this has been brought up in 10 pages, but hickory smoking turkey breast around 250 produces the best turkey I've ever had. All thanksgivings I host have this now, and it's always amazing. Way better than elaborate basted or stuffed or bagged attempts in the oven.
Try Swordfish steaks and season exactly how you prefer your steaks with oak. You can thank me later.Originally Posted by NEPAKevin
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AKA: SkyLine1
I have been meaning to jump into this thread for over a year now. This is going to be a long one, so crack a beverage.
I too, have always been one that like gas for convenience and charcoal when effort is required. I built a smoker using Alton Brown's flower pot example, and was very happy until the 100 pound GSD barreled past it, breaking it.
I have been living without a smoker for a few years now, and Costco has one seasonally that has my interest piqued. $999 is more than I have to spend now, but I really like the looks of it in passing. The wife is ready to buy me a smoker, but so few of them are set up for proper cold smoking. I appreciate effort put in by the foodies who brine a pork belly and then grill it, or hot smoke it, but damn it, that is not bacon! Bacon and Lox need to be cold smoked to be done correctly, and I want a rig that will do it all. My next house will have a smoker/grill combo for wood based effort cooks, but it will also have gas and an island with a sink on the deck/porch.
A year ago my wife asked me what I wanted for my birthday and I told her this: https://www.disc-it.com/ This is my new gas phenomenon. I cook on this at least once a week, and sometimes daily for weeks at a time. I can take it camping, fishing and to work. My super picky eating kids and wife prefer hamburgers on the disk-it to ones grilled on gas or charcoal. They love them. Care is simple. And before anyone says it, it is not a wok. It is a discada, carbon steel, and HEAVY. You can use it like a wok, and most do, but I like it better than any of the woks I have owned. The shop is local, literally a block away from where my kids go to school, and this thing is awesome. The disk is shallow enough that I can fry six or so hamburgers at a time, as long as I move them in so the ones on the hot spot don't burn while the ones away from the hot spot cook more slowly. For my Medium well wife and kids, and my super rare me, It works well. The Disk-it website in the blog section has Nevin's Cooking Show, a ton of how to recipes cooked on you tube.
Disk-it is a small local company that I have no connection to other than being a satisfied customer and being invited on to the cooking show. I became aware of him because he is at all the local food shows showing off his Disk-it, and giving one away at each show. I got tired of trying to win...Nevin also put on up until recently (he is hoping to bring it back) the annual Disk-it round up, where Disk-it owners make their favorite recipes and an adoring public walks around sampling it all and eventually voting on winners. The last one I went to had homemade green chili and cheddar tater tots, and Ruben Sandwich egg rolls (egg rolls filled with pastrami, kraut, 1000 island, cheese) were the top ones. The entry fee for the eating public is ridiculously small for amount of quality, tasty food you sample, and all proceeds went to a local children's cancer hospital.
The disk temp gets to over 770 degrees at the center, and hotter, but my Harbor Freight infra red thermometer crapped out at that point, only being rated to 750. I have made all kinds of stuff, from stir fries (my pepper steak, borrowed from https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/...e-recipe.html] has been called restaurant quality), to burgers, dogs, grilled cheese sandwiches, to Carlos Condit's Fight Fuel (stir fried veg and quinoa cooked in vanilla almond milk; delicious no matter how odd you would think it is). Shrimp Fajitas, dozens of breakfast burritos at time. A college favorite of stir fried kielbasa, O'Brien potatoes, and cubed day old bread is a staple here (little barbecue sauce on it all). A five pound pork belly turned into Chicharrones, and then bean, green chili and chicharron chimichangas cooked on the disk. Stuffed french toast, steaks, quesadillas and chicken are regulars, too. Really nice to be able to cook something at that heat, outside, in the summer so the house doesn't heat up. When I am done cooking I literally scrub it a little with a pad, hose it off, heat it and oil it.
I got the accessory package which includes a broad, flat skillet that looks like it will hold a dozen or so burgers at once, easily. I haven't even tried use it yet, and the wife has challenged me to use that cooking vessel for the year, instead of the disk. Maybe June 1. The accessory package also has a pot stand which means I can boil wort for home brew on it, have a crawfish boil (planned for the fall), and deep fry a turkey. It also came with a wind tamer, which means my disk goes from "off" to over 500 degrees in about five minutes. Very little wasted fuel. Since I just got a sous vide, this will be a sear that is quicker than cast iron on the stove, or just about any other setup I can envision.
The cover that came in the accessory package is nice, and made of leather, so I am afraid to use it outside with two dogs that chew. A nylon kettle grill cover is being used in its stead.
It is not perfect, I had a problem with it this winter when it refused to fire up like it should. Took it back to the shop, and was told that spiders love the smell of propane, and that a spider had set some webbing in the gas line of the burner, because this thing is outside 24/7. 10 minutes, a screw driver and an air compressor and they showed me how to fix it in the event the problem recurs. If I get it too hot and ruin the seasoning, I chuck a wire brush into my cordless drill, strip the disk, flax seed oil it to about 550 or so and am done. This year for father's day I am going to get a set of folding side tables that attach to the frame of the Disk-it because given my back yard setup, one thing I desperately want is someplace to set my beverage, spatula, and plate near the cooking surface, where I cook.
Pics to follow of some of these dishes.
pat
Last edited by UNM1136; 05-28-2018 at 01:33 AM.
I use a Blackstone griddle and a Weber kettle for my outdoor cooking at home. I find the griddle ideal for burgers, hotdogs, sausages, peppers & onions, etc. It'll do a steak, but it's not ideal. For steaks, I use the Weber with a mix of charcoal and seasoned hardwood. Last night, I cooked a couple steaks on the Weber. I started it with charcoal, added hardwood chunks after the coals were ready and spread out. Once the hardwood had burned down enough that there were no flames, I put the steaks on (rubbed with our choice of seasoning and allowed to come up to room temp). I put them on for about 2min per side, then put the lid on. At 650deg, they cooked for a few minutes before I removed them to rest. They were the perfect level of medium-rare and had a wonderful flavor. It took longer to get the grill ready than it did to cook, which is why we have the griddle as well.
I also do some smoking on the Weber. It's not ideal, but I mainly do it for myself (wife and kids don't like smoked meats), so I use smaller cuts of meat or fish. It requires a lot of babysitting to keep the temp right, but since you're smoking smaller cuts, it doesn't take all that long. I've smoked pork (chops and tenderloin), fish (mainly salmon, but I have some rockfish to try), venison (with a mix butter and olive oil injected), hot dogs (Sahlens smoked over hardwood are to die for), and sausages. I need to try a full shoulder to see if it's doable.
I also like doing breakfast on the griddle. I can pour out an entire batch of pancakes at once. By the time I've poured them all, I start back at the beginning and flip them in sequence. It takes me less than 5min to cook 8-10 pancakes. I've also cooked bacon, eggs, sausage, and hasbrowns in the griddle. There's something about being on the deck with your coffee on a cool morning while cooking breakfast.
It's funny, the griddle seemed like such a specialized device, but we've found numerous uses for the griddle. I'll even put a pot of beans on it while I cook other items at the opposite end. And it really does cook the BEST hamburgers.
I don't have room for it at my house, but my family has a hog cooker and we've made whole hog bbq numerous times. When my grandfather was alive, it was nearly a yearly or sometimes twice-yearly occasion.
Chris
Those look cool, and I want one. But those prices are hard to take for what's essentially a propane burner and a circle of steel.
Although admittedly that's still cheap if you're competing in the same market as the Green Egg or high end smokers.
Yeah, and for several less fortunate friends I told them when(if) they move I will get them a commercial wok and a turkey frier base as a house warming present. Nevin's smoker accessory is $1k. Not something I am even willing to consider, unless it can cold smoke. You can certainly build your own bastard rig. Other considerations for me were local small business, philanthopy, and versitility. Google your area + discada and you will likely find something similar. I have even seen local guys selling the propane burners and woks for dirt cheap, on the side of the road, along with 5lb bags of oranges, flowers, and paintings of la Virgin de Guadalupe.
Lunch today, for Decoration Day is venison burgers, cooked in a sous vide, seared for 30 seconds a side in the Disk-It, then wrapped with the traditional burger fixins and a large totilla and crisped with butter on the disk. Kinda like a Taco Bell Crunch Wrap, only good. Yeasterday the kids praised my "Texas Stir Fry" of beef kielbasa, O'Brien potatoes, and day old sourdough bread cubed, cooked on the Disk-It with a little oil. Seasoned with salt, garlic powder, onion powder, fresh cracked black pepper and topped with home made BBQ sauce. Then kids universally loved it.
You are right. It is probably expensive for what it is. But watch the cooking show videos on the website, and check the Book of Faces for their custom designs (last I checked at no extra cost. Military unit emblems, badges, preferred products), and the price diminishes while the usefulness goes up, in my eyes. Hell Sam's Club has a propane fired griddle that for all I know will do almost the same things.
Despite the price, I stand by my recommendation.
pat
Last edited by UNM1136; 05-28-2018 at 12:56 PM.
You might have made them a sale, and I'm really hungry now.
Lemme know if you do, and how happy you are with it. Can't endorse the youtube cooking show enough, even though that whole thin blue line thing lead me to refuse.
pat
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