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.
My first deep dish pizza on the Big Green Egg.
Starting to work up three racks of ribs for Mothers Day dinner on Big Green Egg.
Checking in on the ribs in the Big Green Egg. Warning: this picture may cause hunger. 🙂
Ribs are up to temp! Capping the Big Green Egg and will let them sit on it until dinner!
Ribs anyone? Big Green Egg FTW!
Getting ready to put dry rub from Mike Rock on the 7.5 pound grass fed brisket.
Brisket rubbed and ready to rest for the night before meeting the Big Green Egg tomorrow morning.
Last prep tonight for tomorrows brisket, soaking chips. Black Cherry. Mike Rock and I eat well tomorrow!
I really believe that the James Brown mega-funk playing while the brisket was rubbed will make it taste better.
Problem: Sun has now come out and started to raise the temperature of the Big Green Egg past 220 °F. Solution: Umbrella.
Tonight’s brisket is on the Big Green Egg! Dinner in ~12 hours. Bet Mike Rock can smell it at his house.
Smoke.
For those following todays brisket here is the 6-hour check-in. More cherry chips added.
Forgot the picture of the brisket.
Brisket at hour 12. Hoping Mike Rock and I get to eat soon. 170 internal temp. Surly whetting the appetite.
Brisket done. Time for Mike Rock to carve.
Brisket is unbelievable. Amazing! Very moist too! Mike Rock and I very happy.
Next brisket is going to get started at 8:00pm the night before and cook while I sleep. It was amazing, but 9:30pm dinner is too late.
I was super lucky this year and got a good number of these amazing sausages made by my friend Kevin. These are the best sausage I’ve ever had. Delicious.
At Clancey’s getting large hunks of meat to bring to the Big Green Egg!
Reviewing The Cook’s Bible by Chris Kimball. Chapter 28. How to Roast Meat.
Just finished pepper rub on tenderloin with Mike Rock and firing up Big Green Egg. Surly flowing.
Big Green Egg is in action turning whole tenderloin into magic.
Making plans for tomorrow’s breakfast. Old Recipe Johnny Cake on the Big Green Egg.
Best day in months. Wow. Awesome everything. Spent hours outside. First shorts day of the year for me. Big Green Egg at dinner too!
Be Smarter, Calibrate your Thermometers
I’ve been firing up the Big Green Egg throughout winter and as the weather has started to get a little nicer I’ve been grilling even more. I’ve been really frustrated lately though with my grill not coming up to temperature as fast as I thought it should. I also have been getting some odd results. I recently put a couple of racks of ribs on and they came out really dry and overcooked. I had the temperature right the whole time, and couldn’t figure out what was wrong.
Then things got confusing. I took out my Thermapen and a couple of other thermometers and started getting really odd temps all over the grill. Today I fired up a pot of water to calibrate the thermometer that sits in the dome of the Big Green Egg. This is the one I use constantly to know the internal temperature of the grill.
Whoa! That’s not just off, it’s horribly off. I was shocked that the thermometer was reading -60 °F lower than it should be. A quick turn of the nut on the back and it was calibrated!
Why am I posting about this? It’s a really simple thing, but I bet a lot of people don’t do a calibration. Your out there grilling away and you need to know your temps. I’m not sure if being outside all winter causes the calibration to get all screwed up. Either way it was off so much that I was grilling at temperatures that were just way too hot.
I had the newly calibrated thermometer in tonight for some grilling and things were so much better. Lesson learned. Get a pot of water boiling and make sure all your thermometers and probes read 212 °F on the nose.
Firing up Big Green Egg to smoke two racks of ribs.
Baked Ziti from April 2009 Cooks Illustrated. Looks great!
