A man, a can, and a plan

I wanted my inaugural post to be the antithesis of the alarming trend in American cooking - meals in 30 minutes or less. Sure, everybody's busy and finding time to cook rates just below clipping one's toenails, but there is more to life than "here's some evoo.....yumm-o". So with that in mind, I bring you some slow food - really slow food.

"THE PLAN"

I love BBQ. One rather nice Saturday afternoon in January, I craved it. I'm really picky about BBQ, though, so I don't eat it that often. There is an analogy about sex and pizza that gets drug out every so often. It's not true!! Bad pizza and bad sex are bad. Telling yourself anything different is settling for the lowest common denominator and makes you a bad lay. The same is true with BBQ. If I can do better myself, why would I pay for it?

While I can't help you with your sex life, I can try to help you make good BBQ.

Walking through my rather neglected back yard,one will find this beauty:



"THE CAN"

Yeah, it ain't pretty, but pure magic comes out of this can. My wife bought it for me for Valentine's Day about 6 years ago. She loves me. There are many different types of smokers out there, use what you like. I'm old school and really wouldn't like any other type of smoker. I'm stubborn like that.

The first step in smoking would, of course, be providing a source of smoke. Fire. I used a couple of hunks of oak that were lying in a neighbors yard and built my fire. For smoking, you don't want a classic cooking fire - hot coals, etc. You want a slow, smoldering fire that will draw indians from miles away.



While waiting for the fire to reach it's proper state, I turned my attentition to the chicken that I had in my refrigerator. What, doesn't everyone have a whole chicken in their fridge at all times? I rinsed the chicken, dried it well inside and out (smoking is a method of roasting - which means dry heat. Drying the chicken reduces steam, which is wet - as in not dry. See the logic here?), and trussed (tied) it. Thomas Keller has a great technique for trussing chickens, look it up. Learn it, love it, live it. The reason for trussing the chicken is quite simple; the breast cooks faster than the thighs, and the thin part of the breast dries out quite quickly. By tying the legs up to cover that thin part, you get a moister piece of white meat.

The next step in the whole process is a rub. Rubs add flavor to your meat while it smokes. They are very good things, unless you don't like flavor, which means that I don't like you. For my rub, I used
1 T garlic powder
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp mustard powder
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground New Mexico chiles

Do you have to use this? No!! get creative, let your tastebuds guide you. I don't claim to be the authoritative source on BBQ, I just happen to make some pretty good BBQ. This is simply a guide, a jumping off point. Play with it, make it your own.

The next step is to season the chicken really well with salt and pepper, then coat the chicken with the rub. Here's the trussed and rub coated chicken, and some country style ribs that I just happened to have on hand.



Out the back door and to the grill we go:



A BBQers greatest asset is patience. This is NOT a quick process. Seal the smoker, adjust the draft to allow for a nice cool fire with lot's of smoke and walk away. Smoking can dehydrate you, be sure to drink plenty of beer to avoid this. Make sure that your fire stays lit, stays cool, but don't do much else - leave it alone!!

2 hrs later:

Again, be patient and don't mess with a good thing. Liberally apply beer to yourself, read a book, do anything to not go open the smoker every 5 minutes. Your fire will get out of control from the introduction of more oxygen and the meat will cook too quickly. Which do you want; moist, tender, fall off the bone chicken or dry, tough, chewy leather worthy of the Colonel - but without that secret ingredient that makes you crave it fortnightly? If it's the former, then heed my words.

This doesn't have to be a marathon of cooking. 4 hours is usually enough to smoke a chicken. Here's the end product:



Yeah, I brought sexy back.

This same technique is applicable to almost anything that you want to smoke. Beef, pork, fish, vegetables, whatever. You simply need to play with the cooking time and temperature in order to fit your needs. Allow plenty of time, 4 to 16 hours, depending on what your smoking. As we can see, this is not a quick process. Don't do this on the spur of the moment. If you fail to plan, you'll be eating at midnight, you'll probably be too drunk to taste it after all of the liberal applications of beer, and you'll feel kinda funny the next day.