Carnivore lads night and Smoked Brisket Recipe

In the little village I live in we have a bunch of real foodies, and are lucky to have Steve from Pitmans Farm where we can nip to for our fix of well aged beef. Over a few beers one evening we had come up with the idea of a beefy carnivore night to cook and taste different cuts of beef and discuss the results. So Steve and I put together a tasting menu of the following delights.

Slow and Smoky Brisket~Traditional Slow Roast Brisket~Pulled Beef~Dino Beef Ribs~Smoked Brisket Chilli~Tuscan Grilled Veal and Dexter T-Bones~Dirty Veal Fillet~DIrty Dexter Skirt.

We also had some nibbles of pulled veal, fennel and cajun pork scratchings.

The brisket was 60day aged and took 8 hours to cook, being dry aged for so long it took a lot less cooking than younger briskets and had a wonderful depth of flavour, I used Butt Rub dry rub and smoked low and slow at 110-120deg C for 6 hours in the Kamado Joe ceramic BBQ over pecan and apple smoke. I then wrapped in foil and poured in half a bottle of beer and a glug of bourbon, cooked at the same temp for another hour, and finally brushing with BBQ sauce, and cooking for another hour uncovered. I allowed to rest in foil for another hour. The result was smoky and had a really good aged beef nutty taste well balanced with the smoke.

All the food went down well and it was fun discussing the various cuts of beef, cooking methods and techniques.

 

GrillStock BBQ Joint

I love going on little foodie adventures with my family, and they just about suffer my passion for good food. We just had a little trip up to Bristol, to visit GrillStocks new BBQ Joint, in St Nicholas’ Market.

Not often venturing into the Big Smoke, it has been quite a while since I’d been to St Nicholas’ Market, so was pleasantly surprised to see what a bustling foodie mecca it had become with lots of tempting options, but seeing as I had dragged my family up for this, we had to go for BBQ. We opted for a Pulled Pork Bap (£4) and a ‘Holy Moly’ Special (£12) to share between 4 of us.

The pulled pork bap with slaw was juicy and smoky, and my kids enjoyed it immensely having been raised on good BBQ. The ‘Holy Moly’ Special consisted of a pulled pork roll, a rack of baby back ribs, some burnt end beans, it was only later that I realised it should have come with extra slaw and some pickles, but was nonetheless very good, I probably would have liked the sauce for the beans a bit thicker and richer as it has soaked up into the bottom of the roll making it very soggy, the ribs were fantastic, smoky and spicy.

Seating is the only real issue here, and we visited at a busy time, it’s difficult hanging around for an empty table with a couple of hungry little foodies, but as we left the tables had all been freed up.

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Baby Back Ribs City Style

Well I’m still away with work and seriously missing my BBQ food,  I thought about doing a follow on from my Waitrose “BBQ style” brisket with some ribs from a supermarket “BBQ” range, I had a look, reached out….paused….and then thought sod it! I can do sooooo much better myself.

Ok so I haven’t got my BBQ handy that I’d automatically reach for to do some ribs, but I thought I’d have a damn good shot at having some half decent ribs.

I picked up a couple of racks of baby backs, removed the membrane on the inside, and used a combination of BBQ rubs from M&S, mixed together the Hot & Spicy and Sweet and Smokey rubs were a pretty good approximation of the home made rubs I’ve been concocting recently. So I used the two rubs, and worked into the ribs with my fingers and left for an hour.

I then cooked the ribs at 180degC for one and a half hours until just browning and softening, and then brushed with some fantastic Bone Suckin’ Sauce from Lakeland and cooked for another 20 minutes.

Not bad, not bad at all, ok it wasn’t up there with my usual BBQ ribs, but it was a whole world away from vac packed pre marinated ribs.