To smoking meats, you dummies!

Before we went to Las Vegas we bought a gas smoker, and Sunday was the first time we were able to try it out.  For our first time I think it went extremely well.  We cooked a 5 pound chicken and a 2.5 pound brisket.

Our set-up:

I know there are smoking purists out there that would laugh at us for using a gas smoker, but I think it did a great job, and there seems to be a lot less baby-sitting than a traditional wood smoker.  I’m sure once we have this gas smoker down, we will probably look into a wood smoker.  But for now, this will cook all of our awesome smoked meats!

The brisket:

First Brian covered it with a light coating of mustard, so the rub would have something to stick to. Next we used one of the many BBQ rubs we have received as gifts over the years (I think people were trying to tell us to start smoking meats).  Brian also cut deep slits into the brisket to help it soak up all of the smoky flavor.  Next time we are going to try putting garlic cloves in those slits for added flavor.

The chicken:

For the chicken I rubbed a garlic/thyme/rosemary/BBQ salt/butter mixture under the skin.  It smelled awesome even before it was cooked!

We used mesquite wood chips for the flavor.  We ended up going through the whole bag you see in the picture.  I guess we will need to buy this stuff in bulk!

We put the meat into the smoker at a temperature of 225 degrees.  Let the smoking begin!

We were expecting the meat to cook for about 5 hours to reach their ideal temperatures.

In the mean time, Brian decided that cooking meats wasn’t enough to do on a Sunday, so he built the base to hold our enormous umbrella on the new patio (on the deck it was actually anchored into the deck).  It took him no time to build, and it looks great and serves it’s purpose.

To go with our dinner of smoked meats we made up a fruit salad, grilled corn on the cob, and invited our friends, Frank and Lynn, over to be our guinea pigs for the smoked meat.  We told them ahead of time that they needed to be brutally honest about the meat so we would know what to do better for next time, which I think they did.

The meat that we thought was going to be done around 5 P.M. ended up taking until about 7 P.M. to get up to temperature (or as close as we were going to let it get).  The chicken got up to 165 degrees and the brisket to 173 degrees.

Our finished products:

The meats were very good, but there are some things we would change for next time.  The white meat on the chicken was a little dry (the dark meat still very moist), so we think the chicken needs to come out of the smoker at about 160 degrees (it always cooks a little longer after you take it off anyways).  Otherwise the chicken was great.  We will keep doing different variations of a butter-under-the-skin rub.

The brisket was flavored very well, but we think it was a bit on the dry/tough side.  The main reason we think it was like this is because we only let it get to 173 degrees.  We also did not marinate the meat beforehand, which I think would have drawn in more moisture. From what we have read, it also needs to be at 180 degrees before the fat starts to break down and become tender.  The plan for next time is to get the brisket to 180, take it out of the smoker, wrap it in foil and set it in a cooler for and hour or two to continue to stay at 180 and keep breaking down the fat.

An overall change for next time to help keep the meat moist is to use our mop sauce more frequently.  We used a beer/herb butter mop sauce about every hour.  You want to keep the mop sauce very basic so it doesn’t mask the flavor of the smoke and meat.  Next time we will do the mop sauce every 45 minutes. Finally, now that we know how long these guys take in our smoker we can do a better job with our timing (in relation to dinner time and the meats being done close to each other).

Overall I think we were successful.  It was a lot of fun doing all the prep-work, watching the meat cook and then having an awesome meal at the end.

I think this Sunday we are going to attempt pork shoulder (to make pulled pork sandwiches).  I honestly cannot wait!

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After eating out all weekend in Vegas, it’s nice to come home this weekend and eat a bunch of home-cooked meals. We will be eating dinner on our friends’ dime Saturday because they are getting married, but on Sunday I think we are going to try smoking some sort of meat in our new smoker on our new patio.  I’m sure you will see a blog about it in the near future.

For this Friday Feast I made Southwestern Pasta Bake (courtesy of Rachael Ray, can you tell I like her recipes?). We have never had this before, and I haven’t actually tried it yet, so I hope Brian likes it when he comes home tonight for dinner.

Southwestern Pasta Bake

Ingredients
* coarse salt
* 1 lb penne rigate or cavatappi pasta
* 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
* 4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves, cut into bite-size pieces (6 oz. each)
* 1 tablespoon ground cumin
* 1 tablespoon ground coriander
* 2 tablespoons chili powder
* coarse black pepper
* 1 large yellow onion, chopped
* 3 garlic cloves, chopped
* 1 jalapeno, seeded and chopped
* 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
* 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
* 2 cups milk
* 3/4 lb sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
* 1/4 cup fresh cilantro leaves, chopped
* 1/2 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
* 14 oz. can of fire-roasted tomatoes

1. Preheat the broiler to high and position the rack 8 inches from the heat.
2. Bring a large pot of water to boil; salt the boiling water and cook the pasta until slightly undercooked—a little chewy at the center.
3. While the water is coming to a boil, preheat a large skillet over med-high heat with the vegetable oil.
4. Season the chicken with cumin, coriander, chili powder, salt, and pepper; add the seasoned chicken to the hot skillet and cook 4-5 minutes or until lightly browned.
5. Add in the onions, garlic, and jalapeno peppers; continue to cook 5 minutes.

6. While the chicken is cooking with the onions, make the cheddar sauce.
7. In a medium saucepan, melt the butter and add the flour to it.
8. Cook 1-2 minutes over medium heat, then whisk in the milk.
9. When the milk comes to a bubble, stir in the cheese, cilantro, parsley and fire-roasted tomtatoes with a wooden spoon.
10. Season with a little salt and pepper; remove cheese sauce from heat.
11. Once the pasta is cooked, drain it and add back into the large pot.
12. Add in the contents of the chicken skillet and all the cheddar sauce; stir to combine.
13. Transfer mixture to a baking dish and place under the broiler to lightly brown.

Looks yumm-o!

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We were in Las Vegas from last Friday afternoon until Monday morning. We had a lot of fun, but we decided that it probably isn’t necessary to go back any time soon. I don’t really feel like rehashing every detail of the trip, so I will give a rundown of the highlights (and low-lights in some cases- FU Dan Marino!).

We stayed at Hooters Hotel and Casino. It’s only one minute off the strip, across the street from MGM. It was very cheap, and there were no kids in the pool.

We walked up and down the strip a lot looking at all the different casinos. Here are some of our favorite things:

The Lion Habitat at MGM.

Boobies everywhere (this set happened to be at Treasure Island).

Beer pong at the cheapest casino on the strip, O’Sheas. They had $2 Miller Light and $4 well drinks.

The strip at night. It kind of reminded us of Times Square- lots of lights, lots of people, but much farther spread out.

The fountains at the Bellagio dancing to music. This was probably our favorite thing to see on the trip.

Eating wings at Dan Marino’s is a very bad idea. Or any food at Dan Marino’s for that matter. The worst restaurant ever. The excuse the manager gave for why the wings were so awful, “Some people like them, some people don’t” (in a Mexican accent of course).

The coolest hotel on the strip, the Luxor. They have elevators that ride at an angle.

More boobs.

Hungover Brian watching the Nascar race after a night of heavy drinking at the Bobby Slayton comedy show. It was very good (from what we remember…).

Glass ceiling at the Bellagio. This place was packed with people. It was a very fancy hotel.

The buffet at the Flamingo. Yummy. They had a sushi station!

Lots of live flamingos at the Flamingo Hotel.

Of course we had to go to the Nascar Cafe on our way to downtown Vegas.

Freemont Street in downtown Vegas. The whole ceiling lights up at night playing different videos. This is considered old Las Vegas, and Binion’s is where they hold a lot of the famous poker tournaments. There were a lot less people here than on the strip, and the beers were cheaper.

Our favorite neighbors Niki and Dusty who put up with us on the whole trip. They look happy because they know the trip is almost over (just kidding). We had a lot of fun with them.

Well, that’s it. It was a good time, and it was fun to go with friends. I think anyone who reads this post should start thinking about going on some sort of group trip, like a cruise in the next couple of years. I know it would be a blast!

Update: Go here for all the pictures.

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The patio is done!

Well, the hard part is at least.  We will still be adding a water feature (small pond/waterfall) and landscaping around the patio and deck, as well as a pergola over one corner of the patio (the corner farthest from the deck).  But besides all that- we are done!

The last weekend of work actually started on Wednesday. Brian had a lot to do this day if we had any hope of getting the patio laid before our mini-vacation the following weekend. First he finished the patio edging (the 4×4s surrounding the stones). This was time consuming work (which started the previous Sunday), as it involved a lot of leveling and the annoying task of notching the timbers. Next Brian put down landscaping fabric and then created the leveling system for the sand. One board was installed temporarily along the ground (to be removed and filled with sand later) along with a longer board that would be pulled across the edging to create a level surface.

Thursday, two tons of sand were dumped in our driveway which Brian hauled into the patio that night.  Next he leveled the sand, which took well past sundown. He wanted to get it all finished so we would be able to pick up the stones on Friday.

I didn’t have to work on Friday so in an effort to get more done, Brian took a half day off and we went to pick up the stones and bricks from Home Depot.  This was not fun.  We needed 186 large stones and 136 small bricks.  The large stones were over 20 lbs each! It took us three different trips (using the Jeep and a trailer) to get it all.  It really, really sucked.  But it probably wasn’t as bad as hauling four tons of gravel and two tons of sand.

Our goal for Friday had been to just get the bricks, but that was done fairly early and we wanted to get a head start on laying the stones (we had heard that Sunday would be the hottest day of the year).  Brian actually trusted me with the stone/tile saw, so I cut stones while Brian laid them.  It took us about 3 hours to get all the stones put into place.

We still had to fill in the cracks with sand and rent the compacter again to make sure the stones were set, but that was easily done in a couple of hours on Sunday.

Edit by Brian: Courtney says this was easy because she wasn’t dragging around a 300 lb vibrating plate compactor!

It’s such a relief to be done.  Brian tells me this was the most back-breaking thing he has ever done, so I guess I’ll trust him on that.

Head on over here for more pictures from last week. I’m sure we’ll keep updating you on our other smaller projects as we get them done.

This weekend we are taking a well-deserved break and heading out to Las Vegas!

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The thoughts of Brian and Courtney and now also represented by a new sister site!

MegaFireOnYourFace.com

MegaFireOnYourFace was created to be a picture only blog. The name comes from a late night comeback from Courtney. I said something, I’m sure it was assy, and she replied: “Mega fire on your face bitch!”

It was very funny at the moment and has been a running joke ever since. I guess we’ll see over time how well our experiment goes … wish us luck!

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Day five.  June 9th, 2008.

Our last day.  How sad.  But at the same time it was so much fun!  My brother had to go back to work, so we were on our own for the day.  Our first stop was a trip across the Brooklyn Bridge.

It’s about one mile across and many people who live in Brooklyn actually choose to bike across it every day to get into town.  We only ended up going halfway because it was horribly, horribly hot … like 97 degrees hot.  Brian protested many times saying how much he didn’t want to do it because it was so hot, but once we got to the middle, he really appreciated the beautiful architecture and he enjoyed reading about how it was built.  Plus there was shade, which helped out too.

After we walked back across the bridge we were near the J&R electronics storefront (the internet site where Brian shops that has really great prices on electronics).  Their store-front is huge and takes up one entire city block.  We looked around a bit to cool off and ended up buying a used Blu-Ray disc of 3:10 to Yuma.

It was then about lunch time so we went to meet my brother at his work, but by the time we got there we didn’t have enough time left to sit down and eat because…..

Brian had scored us tickets to see a taping of David Letterman!!  It was so cool (literally).  When we got back to NY, we might try to get tickets again, it was that fun.  It might seem like a touristy thing to do, but it was very cool.

Ed Sullivan theater is right near Times Square, so we walked through it as fast as possible- it was packed as usual.  We got to the theater and stood in line to get our tickets.  After we got our tickets they let us go for an hour to do whatever, so we ate lunch at Familia (a NY Pizza place) and then bought all of our NY souvenirs in a cheap place at Times Square.

We went back to the theater to stand in line and wait some more.  After waiting for about 15 minutes they funneled us all into the foyer of the Ed Sullivan theater, which sucked because it wasn’t air conditioned and it was very hot and people smelled.

They finally let us into the theater which is kept at 52 degrees (I think) which felt awesome.  The seats are given out at random and we ended up to the far left of the stage, 5 rows back, right in front of the band.  I don’t really think any seat is bad.  We got to see Dave interview Tom Brokaw and Eleta Weideman (daughter of Isabella Rosalini and grand-daughter of Ingred Bergman).  The guest band who performed was Gnarls Barkley- I think that was the best part.  The whole thing was over in about an hour and a half.

After the show we headed home to meet my brother for dinner.  On our way to Matt’s apartment we saw a restaurant sign advertising half-price sushi- we had to go there.  It was really good and we ate a lot of sushi.  We also had jalapeno margaritas, which were surprisingly very tasty.  They used tequila that had been marinating with jalapenos for many days (I can’t remember exactly what they told us).  The jalapenos just gave the margarita a little bite.  This is something we will be making at home sometime.

After dinner we were all full so we went home to relax and get to bed early because our flight left at 6:30am the next day.  We were very sad to leave, but I’m sure my brother was excited to get his bed back.  Thanks to Matt and his roommate Matt for letting us take over their apartment for a few days.  We can’t wait to come back!

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Weekend 3 of our patio project started out pretty ominously. When I got home Friday I was presented with the challenge of hauling 8,000 lbs of gravel back to the patio.

It's worse than it looks!

Since you are supposed to compact only two inches of gravel at a time, I just needed to get half of it back there Friday night (so we could minimize the amount of time we had to rent the compactor on Saturday). Let me just say that this was an awful task … I have never sweat so much in my entire life! Filling the wheelbarrow isn’t too bad, its pushing and dumping the wheelbarrow that killed me. It took me 3 or 4 hours to move half of the gravel.

Saturday morning was better because Courtney was there. Courtney helped by spreading out the gravel after I dumped it, and she often came out front to help fill the wheelbarrow. My neighbor Mike also showed up for the last 5 loads- better than nothing I suppose :). The plate compactor ended up working badass and the gravel feels like concrete now. In the 20 hours that I worked on hauling gravel I managed to lose 7 pounds (from water I imagine).

Sunday morning I started working on the border around the patio. I decided to use 4×4s, mainly because I get off on overdoing things. After measuring, I notched the posts and then fastened them to the ground with 3/8 inch rebar driven 16 inches deep. I had to cut the rebar from 4 foot stock, and that presented it’s own problems until I figured out a method.

I still have more border to do, but I can hopefully get that done this week, along with ordering the sand and getting that in. It’s starting to look like something that will one day resemble a patio!

You can check our more pics here (along with a funny video of dogs humping). Sadly, my next weekend is a little hectic, so I don’t know if I will get a lot done except for Sunday.

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July 25th Edition

A little break from our tales of New York City.

This is another recipe from my Rachael Ray cookbook 365: No Repeats.  I really like Rachael Ray recipes, but I do think they take a lot longer than 30 minutes to cook.  I guess if you had a sous chef to prep everything for you (shred cheese, chop onions, etc.) 30 minutes might be more accurate.  This recipe took me about an hour to complete, including clean up, so it wasn’t too bad.

Today I made BLT Pasta Bake.  This recipe has a few of my favorite ingredients in it- “b”acon of course, “l”eeks (not lettuce- I can’t imagine that would be too good in a casserole) and cheese.  It also has “t”omatoes if you hadn’t already figured it out.  It is goooood.

BLT Pasta Bake

1 lb elbow macaroni
1 tablespoon EVOO
8 slices bacon, coarsely chopped
2 large leeks, trimmed of roots and dark green tops
coarse black pepper
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon paprika
3 cups whole milk
1 cup chicken stock or broth
3 1/2 cups grated gruyere cheese (I used swiss)
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 pint cherry tomatoes
3/4 cup plain breadcrumbs

Place a pot of water on to boil for the pasta. When the water reaches a boil, add some salt and the pasta, and cook until al dente.

While the pasta cooks, heat a large skillet over medium heat. Add extra-virgin olive oil and chopped bacon and cook until crisp.

While bacon is cooking, split the trimmed leeks in half lengthwise, lay the leeks cut side down and thinly slice into half-moons. Fill a large bowl with water and mix the leeks into the water.

Allow the water to settle and the dirt and the grit to settle to the bottle of the bowl. Using your hands, draw the leeks from the water, taking care not to unsettle the dirt.

Drain the cleaned leeks on a kitchen towel, pat dry and, and then add to the pan with the bacon. Season the leeks with salt and pepper. Cook until leeks are tender, about 3 to 4 minutes.

To start the cheese sauce, heat a medium sauce pot over medium heat. Add the butter and melt, then add the flour, cayenne, and paprika and whisk together over the heat until the roux bubbles; cook for 1 minute more.

Whisk in the milk and stock and raise the heat a little. Bring the sauce to a quick boil and simmer to thicken, about 5 minutes.

Remove the sauce from the heat and whisk in 3 cups of the grated cheese and the mustard. Set aside.

Add the cherry tomatoes to the leeks and continue to cook for 2 minutes. Remove from the heat and reserve.

Preheat the broiler.

Drain the pasta and add it back to the pasta pot. Combine the reserved leek mixture and the cheese sauce with the pasta. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Transfer the pasta to a baking dish. Combine the remaining ½ cup of grated cheese with the bread crumbs.

Top the pasta with the mixture. Place the dish under the broiler until the cheese melts and the bread crumbs are brown.

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Day three. Saturday, June 7th 2008.

This day was a big day.  We were going to the Belmont Stakes to hopefully see the Triple Crown threat, Big Brown, win the his final race!  The Belmont Stakes are held at Belmont Park in Long Island, which is a 45 minute train ride from downtown Manhattan.  We boarded the train at 10:00 A.M. and finally got through the gates into the park at 11:30 A.M.

There was quite a crowd to see Big Brown race (~80,000- which coincidentally wasn’t going to happen until 6:00 P.M.)

We had a full day of drinking, hanging out, and watching horse races ahead of us.

At first we had people saving us seats outside in the sun, but it was too hot to even sit out there for 10 minutes, so the guys found abandoned (broken) benches behind some doors and started dragging them out to the shaded areas of the stadium so we didn’t have to endure the sun and heat.

Brian looks very hot.

Ahhh.  Much better (but still freakin’ hot).

One cool thing about this place is you can bring in your own food, but you have to buy their alcohol- which is very expensive.  $11 for a 16 oz. beer- ridiculous!

This stadium is pretty neat, but according to my brother, is the most “ghetto” horse track.  They had an area behind the stadium where a lot of people set up tents and watch the races on TV from their own lawn chairs.  The girls called this the giant frat party.

After about 5 hours and 8 beers, Brian and I were looking for restrooms only to find out that they had been shut down due to low water pressure.  This was probably the biggest crowd ever at the Belmont, and the facilities were not able to keep up. This is when we finally got fed up.  They had only put four port-a-potties near the stadium so the lines were unimaginably long.  Your only option if you had to go pee was walking clear out to the parking lot (through the frat party- a ten minute trek), where there were plenty of stalls.  It got so bad inside the stadium that outside the men’s restroom was a trash can where men were lining up to relieve themselves.

This was it for me.  I was ready to leave (yes, before the big race).  Our plan was to take the train back into Manhattan and then watch the rest of the races from the comfort of a bar (with working restrooms and cheaper beer).  We ended up making it to an Irish Pub (that I can’t recall the name of) in time to watch Big Brown lose the race.  He ended up in last place of course- the first time a Triple Crown threat had ever done so. You can see more Belmont Stakes pictures here.

We then headed home to meet my brother (who had stayed for the whole thing) and got cleaned up so we could go out and try some frozen yogurt at this cool place called Pinkberry (they’re only in NY and California and Matt said we had to try them). Sadly, the line was too long and we went to a really great ice cream shop called Emak and Bolio’s instead.

We came home and started watching There Will Be Blood, but Matt and I fell asleep (Brian watched the whole thing).  After the big day, it was nice to crash fairly early.

-Brian Anderson was a contributing editor on this story.

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