Category Archives: WSM

Warm smoked side of Salmon

I’ve done my fair share of salmon on the OTP, but this time I was trying something different. I wanted to do some warm smoked salmon, since I had a nice group of friends coming over tonight. It was one side of salmon with the skin still on, so I could play around with it nicely.

First I did was to salten it. There are 2 ways of brining, wet and dry, and I choose the wet one. I took 10 liters of water and added 1 kg of salt to it. (ratio is 100 grams per liter of water).

now, keep stirring until all the salt is dissolved and absorbed by the water. Doesn’t takt that long, just be patient. Took me about 5 minutes.

Added the whole salmon and let it in there for about 60-90 minutes.

After that, I removed the salmon from the brine and let it dry out in the fridge for at least 24 hours.

Now, for the smoking, I had to play around a little. I couldn’t get the temperature in my smoker under 85 degrees, so I had to go with that. (Celcius, not Fahrenheit).

Once in the temperature, I cut the salmon in 2 parts and placed them on the grill on smoking planks (although they absolutely didn’t burn, what was the idea). I used the planks to make sure I could remove the salmon from the grill rack, and not have it stuck to it at the end of the smoke.

I applied whiskey barrel wood, but I guess all wood would be good. Just choose your own personal preference.

I continued to measure the core temperature and maintaining the lowest temperature possible in the WSM and kept adding hands of whiskey wood to it, to keep the smoke levels going, especially in the beginning.

After about 1 – 1,5 hour, temperature hit a 45 degrees celcius mark and I decided it was time to have a go at it.

Now, just put it on the table, add some forks and a bowl of fresh warm bread and let them have a go at it. It was delicious!

3-2-1 spareribs

So, after playing around with my sous-vide machine, which makes making ribs very very easy, I decided to go old-skool and bring out the loyal Weber WSM. Fun addition this time, since I received my new Flame Boss 500, which was due for it’s maiden run.

I took out 2 racks of ribs yesterday, and defrosted them slowly. I took off the membrane on the bone side, just to make it easier to eat and season.

For the rub, I used the faithful Basic Barbecue Rub and dusted it nice and thoroughly. They already looked fine like this, but we still had some time to go.

3-2-1 stands for the times in the grill and the methods to grill it.
3 hours of plain grilling at about 105-110 degrees (I chose 107, because I can with the flame boss)
2 hours (although 1,5 was enough for these ribs) wrapped in aluminum foil with some moist, flavour and fat
1 hour of plain dry grilling to harden up the bark after the moist 2 hours in aluminum foil (and half of that, basted with BBQ sauce, as a finishing touch).

So, after the first 3 hours in, I wrapped them in Aluminum foil with some apple juice, whiskey, brown sugar and ghee butter. Awesome combi, as it turned out.

They came out (after 1,5 hours wrapped) like this.

Already looking tasty, but very soft right now, after the ‘steam session’.

So the weather in the Netherlands might not always play as nice as it should, but we can manage a prolonged session of rain. (btw, if it was just the OTP, I wouldn’t mind some rain, but I had some electronics connected to it with my FlameBoss 500)

Grilled them dry for 30 minutes and then basted it with my own home-made rib sauce and grilled for another 30 minutes.

Awesome result. Took me over 6 hours to cook, but they were gone in 15 minutes, like they should!

Classic Pulled Pork

Today, being a day off in the Netherlands, Liberation Day, I’ve chosen to do a long, long overdue low and slow pulled pork. I got myself a great boston butt and started with a great rub, the Carolina Dry Rub on it. Classic, but you can’t beat it.

First, I defrosted my little butt yesterday evening, and rubbed it in completely with my Carolina Sweetness.

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A good night in the fridge, packed in plastic will do the trick nice, and this morning, I fired up the WSM and filled the bowl with water. Also added some chunks of Apple wood to the coals.

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Around 120 degrees Celcius it came, and my meat went up nice and quietly. The pork went pretty fast up to around 70 degrees Celcius, and remained there for about the entire afternoon…..

 

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By now, it was about 4,5 hours of core temperatures of in the 70’s. But it started moving again!!!! Fortunately! Around 19:30 the pork was done. 12 hours exactly.  94 degrees Celcius and ready to come off. I choose not to wrap it around 70 degrees in Aluminum Foil, but keep it going a bit longer and slower to get a better bark.

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After pulling it, I made some great sandwiches with some warmed up BBQ sauce, and it was delicious. Really good with some Coleslaw too! (recipe under the link! )

I’ve had a great meal after a good day of grillin’!

(tip:  You can deepfreeze your pulled pork, but don’t mix in the sauce just yet. Freeze just the meat, and add the sauce when you’re re-heating it)

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Smoked gurnard from the WSM

Starting from scratch, both with ingredients and with knowledge, I’ve bought about 15 gurnards at the local fish market, only to find out at home that they were not yet cleaned. Learning curve up ahead, but don’t worry, it’s just fish, so how hard can it be…. ;-).

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First I made a cut in the neck of the fish, behind the gills, to the belly, and I opened up the belly of the fish. When cutting up the neck and bones inside, the guts of the fish actually came out themselves, leaving me with a beautiful, clean fish.

Now I removed the spikey backfin and needles and cleaned it up.

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These fishes needed to be brined in fresh water with salt. I added 500 grams of salt in about 5 liters of water, and stirred until it was dissolved.

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Leaving this for about 1-2 hours, they get a really good salty flavor, enough to make it ‘fingerlicking’ good! I’m really enjoying it so far.

When brining is about te be done, we start the WSM and fire it up with some coals and let it come up to about 100 Celcius.

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The ideal temperature for the WSM filled with water. No wood has been added yet. When the Q is warming up, we dry off the fishes after rinsing it with some fresh water. (use an old towel for this, please, but make it a clean one).

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Once the Q is about 70 degrees Celcius, we add the dried gurnard and let it dry in the nice ambient temperature of the WSM. When it reaches about 100 degrees, we add 2-3 chuncks of apple wood. Not soaked in water, but just on it. large chunks, that can smoke up to about 30-45 minutes. The fishes can be on there for about 1-1,5 hours.

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When it’s done, I served it with some oven fried potato chips with rosemary and garlic. Awesome! Fish and chips!

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Kansas Style ribs

What to do, what to make? To answer that question, the procedure in our house is rather simple. I go to the freezer, open the meat drawer and just take a look at what I’ve got and what feels good. Well. The first thing I saw, were some nice meaty rib racks.

Choice is made, it will be ribs. Now to figure out how to cook them this weekend. For that, I decided to open my new ‘bible’ from Steven Raichlen, which is a guru in my opinion. Pretty soon I had a lot of ideas about a lot of meat, but I was still looking for the ribs, in that case. ….

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