Cooking With Fire

I had some leftover chicken from a previous cook, some tabouleh and decided to add charcoal grilled vegetables: courgette / zucchini, fennel, and spring onions / scallions.

They were very simply prepared, just lightly dressed in olive oil, a little lemon juice, salt and pepper, then grilled over a direct heat. I gave the fennel slightly longer than the courgettes or spring onions to give it a bit of char.

5:00 AM: My alarm goes off, reminding me to do BUTT STUFF. It's not as funny as it was yesterday evening. I snooze the alarm and then get out of bed anyway. Downstairs, out to the back porch, uncover the big green egg, start the charcoal, turn the alarm off again. I loaded it the day before, filling the fire box all the way up and cramming four gnarly pieces of hickory into the charcoal. It's charcoal from the bottom of the bag and there are more small pieces than I expect, but I went with it anyway. Indirect heat plate and drip pan go in, followed by the grate. I watch the needle creep up to 225F and then lock the vents down.

5:30 AM: I pull the pork shoulder out of the refrigerator, unwrap all ten pounds of it, and immediately feel overwhelmed. I've done a few chickens and two racks of ribs on the egg, but nothing this massive. First I flip it over and score a diamond pattern into the fat cap, and then cover the whole thing in yellow mustard and BBQ rub (label: sea salt, brown sugar, paprika, garlic, onion, "other spices".) Back out to the BBQ to check if it's stabilized. It's still running cold, so I open the vents wider and watch the needle creep up to 225. This is the longest I've ever cooked anything. I try not to obsess about all the things that will go wrong.

6:15 AM: The butt is on the grill. I'm leaving it alone for 3 hours so the smoke can do its thing. To keep from hovering, I go inside and mix up the BBQ sauce: apple cider vinegar, brown sugar, cayenne, black pepper, and salt. The recipe says to boil the solution and that effectively fills the house with homemade pepper spray.

7:00 AM: My wife and daughter are awake and coughing. I am wildly unpopular.

7:05 AM: Finishing the BBQ sauce on the patio. Most of it goes into a plastic squeeze bottle, but I pour 8 oz through a coffee filter and into an all-purpose spray bottle. I'll be using this, starting at 9:15, every half hour until the butt reaches 165 internal temp. It's a brisk morning and every window not facing the patio is wide open to let the horrible vinegar/capsaicin stench out of the house.

7:10 AM: Yoga and coffee and a lot more coughing.

9:15 AM: Here we go! Spray meat liberally, insert bluetooth thermometer, set timer for 30m. Chase daughter around the yard in the interim. The app says the butt will be done by 6:30. The temperature is climbing steadily, but I know it'll stall out at some point. The stall can last as much as six hours and isn't predictable, so fingers crossed that it'll work out.

1:30 PM: 165! The meat stalled for about an hour at 145, but we're past that now. I've been spraying it every half hour and it's finally time to wrap it in foil. I've already set up a tray and it's the work of about a minute to lift the lid, remove the butt, wrap it up, and replace it. I open the vents wider to get the temp up to 250. They're wider than I'm comfortable with, but at this point I'm largely on autopilot and just want to make number go up.

1:40 PM: Time to lay down. The bluetooth thermometer is registering a lower ambient temp than I expected, but the grill thermometer is sitting solidly at 250. I hand-wave it away as the foil messing with the thermometer in some way. Meat temp is still climbing. A tiny voice in the back of my mind reminds me that I have the vents open a lot wider than expected but I ignore it.

2:40 PM: I sure don't like the ambient temperature reading. I expected it to start climbing, but it's been sitting at a plateau for the last 15 minutes and has just started to tick down. Internal temp is still climbing, albeit slowly. I race out of bed and check the grill thermometer, which shows 240. Uh oh.

2:45 PM: We've trained for this. Actually, no, we haven't. We've never done this before. But we've thought about doing it. We've thought about it a lot. I have a pair of welding gloves, a tray, a fresh open bag of charcoal and my heat gun lighter.

Don gloves, open vents all the way, open grill, remove butt. Remove grate. Remove drip pan. Remove indirect heat plate. Underneath, I see two glowing coals and a sea of ash.

Here we go.

Rake the ashes. Dump in another full load of charcoal, aim heatgun into the center, hold the button down until center glows red. Replace indirect heat plate, drip pan, grill, and butt. Close lid, stare at thermometer and will it up to 250.

2:50 PM: The thermometer app notifies me that it will be another eight hours before the butt will be done. That's less than ideal. I leave it alone.

4:30 PM: Against all odds, internal temp continues to climb. We're at 191 now. My ambient temperature graph looks like a polygraph session. The app says we're ten degrees and an hour and a half out.

My brain is working overtime coming up with worst-case scenarios: it'll be dry, it'll be unevenly cooked, it'll be burned, it'll climb out of the BBQ and steal my wallet.

6:15 PM: Internal temp is 202. Time to take it out and let it rest for an hour. I use the time to run to the store and pick up wine. My wife made pasta salad the night before and is cooking peas. What's in the foil? What did I do?

7:15 PM: The moment of truth. I'm dreading this, but I don't want to wait any longer. I unwrap the thing and cut into it, mostly thinking about Captain Ahab finally stabbing that pesky whale. The knife slides into it like butter. It pulls apart easily. The bark seems ok.

We quickly load up plates. I offer the crowd-strength BBQ sauce to the table but there are no takers.

It turned out! I made pulled pork! My daughter complains loudly until she tries it. We all get up for second helpings. I run a plate over to the neighbor. The rest gets shredded and bagged up for leftover sandwiches and enchiladas.

It all worked out! I'm already planning my second butt.

Links I used: https://thebbqbuddha.com/how-to-smoke-a-boston-butt-on-the-big-green-egg/ https://www.aforkstale.com/carolina-barbecue-sauce-recipe/

My nemesis. I think I need to work it more when forming it. Ended up being a bit over-cooked and dry, but still with great flavour.

Chicken Shawarma

• 12 skinless, boneless chicken thighs
• ¼ cup lemon juice
• ¼ cup white wine vinegar
• ¼ cup olive oil
• 1 cup plain yogurt
• 8 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoons salt or to taste
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon ginger powder
• ½ teaspoon allspice
• ¼ teaspoon ground coriander
• ¼ teaspoon nutmeg powder
• Salt and pepper to taste

Garlic Sauce

• ¼ cup plain yoghurt
• ¼ cup mayonnaise
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 1 tsp dried mint

Lebanese Rice

• ½ cup vermicelli, broken into small pieces (or orzo)
• 1 ½ cup white long grain rice
• ½ onion, finely chopped
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 750 ml stock, strained
• Salt

Fixin’s

• Pitta bread
• Cucumber
• Tomato
• Red onion
• Lettuce
• Pickled green chillies

Cooking

I cooked the chicken on a kamado grill with a heat deflector over one half of the fire. This allowed for indirect heat roasting, and also direct heat grilling on the other half. You can achieve something similar on a regular barbecue by piling all your coals up on one side of the grill so you have a direct, fierce heat section, and an indirect section of the grill.

If you don’t have a barbecue at all, you could roast the chicken in an oven then finish under the grill / broiler.

1. Make up the marinade, add the chicken, and leave it to do its magic overnight.
2. Tightly pack the marinaded chicken thighs onto a skewer.
3. Roast until the internal temperature is ~ 65c / 150f.
4. While the chicken is roasting, make the garlic sauce, and chop and de-seed the cucumber and tomatoes, slice the red onion and lettuce. Optionally season the salad vegetables (I used a restrained drizzle of olive oil, a squirt of lemon juice, salt and pepper).
5. Wash the rice.
6. Add some oil to a pan and fry the vermicelli until deep, golden brown.
7. Remove the vermicelli and reserve.
8. Gently fry the onion and garlic until soft, then add the vermicelli, the rice, and the stock.
9. Bring to a simmer, cover, and leave for 10 minutes.
10. Check the liquid – it should all have been absorbed. Put a sheet of kitchen towel over the pan, replace the lid on top, take off the heat. Keep the rice warm in an oven at 100’c.
11. Once the chicken has reached about 65c / 150f move it to direct heat and turn regularly to get some nice colour on the outside.
12. Pull the chicken thighs off the skewer and spread out over your grill for a couple of minutes a side – this will just make sure there’s no wet marinade left and will give a little more texture to the chicken.
13. Put the chicken thighs on a plate, tent with foil, and rest for 10 minutes.
14. While the chicken is resting make a shallow cut in one side of each of your pitta breads and toast them on the grill for a minute or two each side. This should help create the pocket.
15. Chop the chicken into strips.

16. Put some of the salad veggies in a pitta bread, add some chicken, dollop over some of the garlic sauce (and optionally some chilli sauce) and scoff.

Lovely fresh sea bream from the fish monger at the local market. Gutted and cleaned. Cavity stuffed with garlic, parsley, and lemon. Sides scored three times. Seasoned with salt and pepper.

Grilled over charcoal in my old Argos Home Drum Charcoal BBQ.

Served with salsa verde and crushed new potatoes (new potatoes, steamed, then crushed and roasted low with a little olive oil - they’re kind of a midway between mash and roast potatoes). And a cheeky rosé Sancerre

Done!

OTT (or 'Over The Top') chilli done on a Kamado Joe.

Onions, green peppers, jalapeños, tomatoes, pinto beans, adobo paste and stock were added to a dutch oven and set to simmer over a low heat.

I took a seasoned mix of beef and pork mince and formed it into a ~~BRAIN~~ meaty lump then set it on a grate over the chilli. As the lump smoked, any juices dripped down into the pot below.

After a couple of hours smoking, the meat was cooked through and the chilli had reduced nicely.

I broke up the meaty lump and stirred it into the chilli, then gave it another hour, still over a low heat, let the flavours combine and develop.

Boerewors and chicken sosaties cooked over Kameeldoring (Camel Thorn) wood on a Kamado Joe.

This was taken about the point where I realised my fire was way hotter on one side than the other (which is why one of the kebabs looks ready to go and the one closest to the sausage looks almost raw. Perils of cooking over wood, I guess, but worth it and I balanced it all out in the end. Will do better next time!

I brought the Kamado Joe up to a temperature of about 125C with one grate as low as possible over the coals and the other as high as possible with a heat deflector under it.

The steak was taken from the fridge over an hour before cooking time and then very simply, but liberally, seasoned with Diamond Crystal kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper.

The initial cook time was on the top grate over the heat deflector for about 90 minutes as it gradually came up to an internal temperature of just over 50C.

I let the steak rest under a foil tent while I opened up the top and bottom vents on the Kamado Joe to let it rip up to a searing heat, maybe 10 minutes or so and a dome temp of about 300C. Then I gave the steak just a couple of minutes on each side (including the edge).

The final temperature was just about bang on 55C.

Served with chips, grilled mushrooms, and dijon mustard.

Fantastic.