Labor Day weekend is now over and we can finally calm down from the busy weekend of smoking meat and laying new flooring. We decided to smoke our first brisket in several years on Friday of the holiday weekend. We also wanted to smoke a whole chicken since we had one in the freezer and needed the room for some pork shoulders. I anticipated a 16-18 hour smoke for the brisket based on what I had researched. I seasoned it with salt, pepper and a little garlic powder and put the brisket on the smoker around 6 pm on Friday evening. I set my alarms for midnight, 3 am, 5 am and 7 am to be able to check the smoker, add water and wood chips as necessary. I slept through my midnight alarm but woke up at 1:30 am and checked the brisket. The temp was at 180, so I decided to wrap it at that time. We have heard and read in multiple places that meat will only absorb the smoke for the first 4-6 hours of the cook time and most will wrap it in peach paper or foil. I wrapped the brisket in foil at 1:30 and put it back on the smoker for the rest of the cook. At 5 am it had reached 200˚ internal temp so I pulled it out and let it rest for several hours. I then put the chicken on and let it smoke for about 4.5 hours. The chicken was just seasoned with salt and pepper.

When I sliced into the brisket, I did not smell the smoke, did not see a smoke ring or much juice coming out of it. It was super tender though. The chicken smoked until it got to about 163˚ internal temp when we pulled it. I let it sit a few hours as well covered. When I cut it off the bones, it was moist feeling and felt tender. My girlfriend sampled it and said the meat tasted good and had the smoke flavor but the skin was bitter. I pulled the skin off the meat and packaged it up. Overall, this smoke was subpar to our standards. I need to figure out what went wrong on both meats and adjust for the next smoke. I am not sure yet when we plan on smoking as we have a bunch of brisket and chicken to eat.

I haven’t written in quite some time now, since life has been on the crazy side lately. We haven’t smoked much the past year or so, with the exception of the usual pork shoulders when we have found it on sale. We recently found Kroger had salmon on sale for a good price and picked up a few filets. We found a recipe that called for it to be cured for 12 hours, have the cure rinsed off then put in the fridge for 12 hours. After the 24 hour period, you let it sit at room temp for 1-4 hours and smoke. Our plan was to cure it Saturday into Sunday and smoke it Sunday evening. Unfortunately, the weather didn’t cooperate Sunday and we were not able to smoke because the rain hitting the smoker will cause issues keeping the smoker temperature consistent. Finally, the weather cleared yesterday and we were able to smoke the salmon when we got home from work. It wasn’t a bad smoke at all.

The directions called for an hour smoke at 200˚ using alderwood chips. We haven’t seen a local source for those chips and haven’t used them yet, so we do not know how the smoke flavor would be with those chips. We had hickory chips on hand and decided to use those instead. the directions said to smoke at 200˚, but the smoker used only goes down to 225˚, so that was the temp smoked at. I figured it’s take less time since the temp was a little higher, but that is not always the case, as I am learning. The salmon smoked for an hour and 10 minutes at 225˚ to reach an internal temp of 150˚.

Now, I am not a salmon fan. It usually tastes too fishy to me. This salmon though, turned out fairly well. I still noticed a hint of fishyness, but it wasn’t offputting like it normally is. It was salty though. We think because we let it sit too long before cooking it, although we had rinsed the cure off. We think the salt penetrated the fish and kept making it saltier even after it was rinsed. We will try this again and watch the weather closer so we can smoke it closer to when it needs to be smoked than a couple days later.

We also found brisket on sale at Kroger. It has been awhile since we found it for a good price and I have been wanting to smoke brisket again. It has been a few years since our last brisket smoke. Stay tuned as we will fire up the smoker and get a brisket going within the next couple weeks.

We recently pulled what was marked as venison steaks out of the freezer to make a vegetable venison stew, only to realize it was a venison roast. We seasoned it with salt and pepper and pan seared it. Once all sides were seared, we added it to the crock pot with a bag of frozen beans and carrots, chopped potatoes, some beef broth, worchestershire sauce and some other ingredients and let it cook all day on low. I am not typically a beef or vegetable stew fan but this was good.

Since we are running low on venison, and it is deer season, I took advantage of the season to go hunting. We have bow, modern gun (shotgun), muzzle loader and bow again. I will take advantage of the modern gun season and hunt as much as I can during that 2ish week period.

This year I only saw and shot a buck. I am a little bummed that that was the only deer I got but am glad too. Not only was it additional meat in the freezer, it was a nice 8 point buck. I took it to an Amish butcher this year since the butcher I wanted to take it to wasn’t doing deer this year. I received a call this week that the meat is ready to pick up. Turns out it only took 2 weeks to process the buck. I am getting back at least 15 pounds of jalapeno cheddar summer sausage and 26 pounds of ground. I should also be getting back steaks, the tenderloin, back strap, and hopefully roast and other cuts of meat. I am curious and excited to see how much meat comes back from this buck. I am also hoping it doesn’t taste gamey. Last years deer weren’t gamey, but I have read that if a deer runs that makes the blood move more and pumps the adrenaline which causes the gamey taste. This years buck did run a short distance and stumble a few times after I shot it, which makes me wonder if it will have a gamey taste or not.

To Be Continued…

On Memorial Day, like many Americans, we decided to cook out. Well, in our case, smoke out. We smoked 2 pork shoulders our Isaac’s graduation party so we could serve pulled pork. We smoked something else but I don’t remember what it was off hand. I had seasoned both shoulders with salt and pepper, mostly pepper. Once the smoker was going, I cleaned the grates off with a grill brush and scraped any stuff that was flaking off the door and sides off. I had soaked the hickory wood chunks over night and once the coals were ready put the wood chunks in to start smoking. Once there was smoke and the smoker was at 225˚, I put the meat on and let it smoke. It seems like the meat took about 10 hours until it reached about 195˚. We pulled it off and let it rest on the counter for about an hour then pulled it apart. It had a good smoke flavor throughout the meat, unlike other recent attempts.

Fast forward a couple weeks to the week of the graduation party, we decided to smoke baked beans and chicken wings. Unlike last time, we only bought a 2# bag of dry beans and let them soak overnight. After they soaked for about 15 hours, we ringed them and boiled them for about an hour. While boiling the beans we prepared the “sauce” and added the beans once the boil was done and put them on the smoker for a couple of hours. We also put 3 racks worth of wings seasoned with salt and pepper and let them smoke with the beans. The beans turned out still pretty firm and the sauce wasn’t as “soupy” as I had wanted or expected. We may have to boil the beans longer the next time. The wings turned out well though.

Everyone enjoyed the wings and pulled pork, even teased one of the guests about enjoying my smoked meats. We ended up with roughly 1 pork shoulder worth of meat left. Although I wish it would have all been eaten, I am glad it was enjoyed and we were able to have left overs for about a week. From the left overs, we added it to an egg scramble with green bell peppers and onion the next morning and wrapped it in tortilla shells similar to breakfast burritos. That turned out to be really tasty. We also made pulled pork quesadillas with some of the left overs as well as the usual pulled pork sandwiches. It is a real confidence boost to see so many people enjoy the meat I smoke. Hopefully whatever I did with this smoke, I continue and the meat stays as flavorful as this time.

One of the cuts of meat I got from the buck I got last fall was venison chops. There were several packages of chops and we have cooked 2 packages, I believe, so far. The most recent was this past weekend and the remaining tonight. This package we opened over the weekend contained 4 chops. 2 of them were cooked over the weekend and the other 2 tonight. I seasoned with a stone bought seasoning and pan fried in butter. Tonight I sautéed an onion and mushrooms in butter and olive oil. When the meat was about done, I put the mushrooms and onion mixture in the pan with the meat. The weekends chops were a little over cooked but not bad. Tonight’s shops were cooked perfectly. I will definitely do this again. I served with a side of kraft Mac and cheese.

Looking back at my posts, I didn’t realize it had been so long since my last post. Anyways, a few weeks ago we smoked a pork shoulder, chicken legs and Mac and cheese.

The Mac & Cheese we cooked most of it on the stove, put it in a foil pan with the cheese and some additional milk. We cooked it at 225˚ until the cheese was melted. I was able to taste and smell the smoke, but it was subtle. I had used the large chunks of hickory wood, most of which was soaked in water over night.

The pulled pork was seasoned with salt and pepper and smoked for about 13.5 hours. This was a much longer smoke than normal, as it usually takes 6-8 hours to smoke. The crust had a slight smoke flavor but it didn’t seem to penetrate the meat well. The smoke usually penetrates the meat well and I don’t think anything was done different this time. The final temp was about 190˚ when I pulled it off. Normally U want it about 195˚ to 200˚.

The chicken was seasoned with chicken seasoning, I believe, and smoked for 2-3 hours. When I checked the temp, it was reading between 165˚ and 175˚. Once rested and we began to eat the meat there were a couple pieces that were still pink and had blood coming out. Again, the chicken didn’t have a real strong smoke flavor.

I am not sure if the lack of smoke flavor in this meal is due to having to clean the smoker or something else I am missing. It is frustrating and looks like a I need to do more research on this.

It’s been a little while since I have posted, but we made a venison stew this evening for dinner. It was pretty tasty. The recipe was supposed to be a crock pot recipe, but we decided to make it in an enameled Dutch oven. We started with 2-3 pounds of venison roast cut into bite size pieces. Toss the meat in Xanthan gum (or flour – we used xantham gum to keep this keto) salt & pepper. Brown the meat in batches with avocado oil. Remove meat and add a little more oil and sauté a small onion chopped. Instead of potatoes and carrots, we used 3 stalks of celery and 2 bags of frozen cauliflower and about a pound of fresh green beans. Add the cauliflower and celery to the meat mixture with 8 oz sliced mushrooms, 4 cups of beef broth, and 1 tablespoon paprika. Cook in a crock pot on low for 7.5 hours. Since we didn’t use a crock pot, we cooked in the oven for about 50 minutes 400˚. This turned out pretty well for our first venison stew. We would do this again, likely adding some garlic. Worcestershire sauce was part of the original recipe but we didn’t add it. It may help but we wonder it it may add too much of a salt flavor.

We also made venison and noodles this week. This is similar to beef and noodles but with venison instead. We took 3 fairly small venison roasts and cooked them on low in the crock pot all day with 1 can of beef broth. When we got home from work we proceeded to shred the meat. We added it to a pot of noodles cooking in beef broth. This tasted good but could have used some seasonings, maybe just salt and pepper would have been enough with a little bit of onion.

This week we made Venison Philly Steak and Cheese. We sliced onion, green pepper and venison steaks and cooked them together in avacado oil and a little butter. Once cooked, we put them on hoagie buns with 2 slices of provolone cheese and heated them in the oven until the cheese was melted. There were so good. I would definitely do this again.

I am currently making venison jerky. We used Hey Girl Hey’s recipe, https://heygrillhey.com/dr-pepper-jalapeno-beef-jerky/. The smoker we are using is a Masterbuilt electric smoker we got on sale. I chose to use this smoker because the few other times we have used it, I have had a hard time getting the smoker temp above 160˚ F and about 160˚ is where you want to smoke the meat at to make jerky. So far today, I am having a hard time getting the temp above 125˚ F and am not sure why. This smoker seems to have issues and am not as happy with it. We will see if I end up using the dual fuel one to finish the jerky. I will fire the other smoker up before to long anyways since I will be smoking chicken thighs in it. I am hoping this jerky turns out well. I will update this post once the jerky is done to let you know how it turns out.

Update is that it is a little spicy but good. I am not sure it’s as tender as I will like it but we will see over the next couple days if it lasts that long.