Cooking
Outdoor cooking experiments—primarily on my Big Green Egg and new Traeger grill—are documented here. Posts recount brisket attempts, sous‑vide pork butt sessions and holiday tenderloin traditions, with candid notes on smoke, temperature and results.
- Picking up two whole beef tenderloins for tonights grilling extravaganza! I (heart) Clancey’s.
- I really need to learn to call my meat order ahead to Clancey’s. Let them prep ahead of time.
- Getting whole beef tenderloin at the butcher is like having your birthday at Applebees - everyone claps and congrats abound.
- Getting whole beef tenderloin at the butcher is like buying a MacBook at the Apple Store. “Congratulations!” and big smiles.
- Man, there goes more arm hair courtesy of the Big Green Egg.
- I’m experimenting with the tenderloins tonight. Hopefully I won’t regret it. 😕
- Tenderloins were great. Consensus around the table is the coffee beat the pepper crusted.
Big Green Egg truck spotted in front of Settergren’s Ace Hardware.
Eggciting!
Intermediate stage for porterhouses on Big Green Egg. Firing up to 700 °F to finish.
Luckily found out early my Big Green Egg is frozen shut. Also lucky there is charcoal in it to burn and thaw
Four pounds Beef Tenderloin going on the Big Green Egg.
Plated.
Big Green Egg Pro Tip: Vent Alignment
Over the weekend I decided it was time to do a full cleaning of my Big Green Egg. Now and then I find it helpful to actually pull out the fire box and fire ring to get all the ash out of every part of the grill. I know that I need to do this if I can’t easily get the temperature on the grill up over 650 °F. The airflow is just being limited. Time to clean out all the parts.
I got it all cleaned out and as I was putting the parts back together I took a moment to think about technique when pulling ash out with the ash tool. I’m right-handed, and I find that I have a much easier time working the ash tool from the right side of the draft door with my right hand. Thus far I’ve always aligned the fire box to be centered with the draft door (per the instructions). This time I tried something new.
Since I work the ash tool from the right hand side, I put the ash tool into the draft door and then put the fire box in so that it was also aligned on the right side. The result is that I have a lot of open space that I can work the ash tool over and am much more effective at getting ash out as needed. (If you are left-handed I would align the draft door and fire box to the left side.) I also have very little need to work the ash tool with my left hand since I can reach most of the chamber from the right.
In these pictures the ash tool is inserted along the right hand side of the draft door and fire box. For a refresher on what the fire box, fire ring are see the Big Green Egg components section of their website.
Brand new gasket for the large Big Green Egg tonight. It always feels like the grill is shiny and new with a brand new gasket. It closes with a soft thud, and the seal is perfect. Time for an extra low temperature smoke with a perfect gasket.
Deck Resurfaced
Sometimes I get really excited by projects we have done around the house (garage shelves, rain gutters. Right now I’m really excited about the new decking boards that we had put on our deck. Our deck surface was original with the house, now 20 years old. The boards were rotting out in places and the nails constantly were coming loose. This weekend Terry Owens, the awesome owner of Como Lake Carpentry, pulled off all the old wood and replaced it with brand new cedar.
Now we’ve got great new wood with a wonderful neutral stain. Here are some more shots of the new deck.
Bistecca alla Fiorentina on the Big Green Egg.
