Edward Terry

Although the image above is not bacon, it is a bacon encrusted brisket. Little brother Phillip threw down in the Bacon Takedown during SXSW this year at Emo’s and did up some “BBQ Brisket Birthday Beans” that he concocted. While he didn’t win the contest, we met many of cool people including the hilarious dudes over at Taco Town who wound up being victorious with their Crack Tacos.

Taco Town and the Beans!

Phil told me a story about one customer who did make multiple trips back to his area requesting cup after cup of the beans. The customer asked which restarunt he represented and when he learned Phil was a home bbq-er , the cusotmer said he should open up shop.

Later the customer was heard hollering “You were robbed bald man! You were robbed!” during the awards ceremony while eating beans he had pilfered straight out of the main serving tray while no one was looking.

You’ll get em next year little bro. Maybe I’ll have to get my competition on… LDT!

Everything tastes better with bacon.

COUSIN DAVE’S CHOCOLATE CHILI RIBS

This was an easy but super tasty recipe for baby back pork ribs. The “rub” was actually a type of paste that had ingredients such as chipotle peppers, ancho chile powder, cilantro, and an once of semisweet chocolate. That’s right ladies, I said it. Chocolate on your baby back pork ribs. All this was thrown into my little chopper along with onion garlic, lime zest, course salt and brown sugar to make a rub/marinade that I wanted to eat with tortilla chips as soon as I made it. It was like some freaky salsa someone might have entered in the Austin Salsa Festival.

Ribs marinated overnight and then went on to a 350 degree grill. They sat on the indirect side for just over an hour, bone side down. Then, I rotated them around for about 15 minutes. The last 5 minutes I flipped them meat side down to sear the sugar, and make a nice candy coating on the outside of the meat.

This recipe was fun and kind of a novelty with the chocolate in there. I don’t think I would change much about how I did them. The meat had the right consistency and the flavors in the paste really came on when grilled . I did go for high quality rib cuts and I believe it made the difference. I can’t wait to do this one again.

Smoked Brisket Number one

For Memorial Day I wanted to do something that would make our service men and women proud, so I decided to smoke my first brisket on my new Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker Smoker that Linda gave me for my birthday.

The rub was a simple course salt and cracked pepper rub. I wanted to try and replicate the Kreuz Market rub in Lockhart because it seemed simple enough and was always good. I did not use a mop sauce or anything like that while smoking the meat. The water pan had simple hot water in it, but I can use beer wine, cola, juice etc. to do some fancy flavors later on.

I smoked it unwrapped for 6 hours with the fat side down, making coals twice, and using water soaked hickory wood chips.

Overall I think it came out great for my first true smoked brisket. I had good beef flavor, some smoke flavor but not too much, and a nice smoke ring through out the cut. Lessons for next time include taking its temperature a little earlier for a more rare flavor, and cooking fat side up for a more juicy cut. The meat wasn’t dry but it wasn’t greasy as hell either. A mop sauce may be fun to try as well.

For my Dad’s birthday we decided his present would be all of us going out to his house and doing a cookout for him. I wanted to grill something extra special for him, and we have done rib-eyes and other cuts before. I decided on a full beef tenderloin that was hand cut and tied just for us. I contemplated untying it and making a filling and rolling it back up, but this cut of meat stands well on its own flavor-wise. I was advised not to try to cover up the taste too much with other flavors. I did marinate it with a bock and molasses style marinade that was just sharp enough to get you going, but didn’t over-power the beef’s taste. Usually a cut of meat like this is done in a broiling pan so doing it on the grill would require some attention.

I made two full cans of hardwood charcoal and put them on top of charcoal that was in the pit already. I let that sit for a while and turned it over so i had a nice full bed of charcoals to work with. I oiled the grates as much as i could but I still had some sticky parts so I will watch that next time. With the bed of coals ready and the marinade cooking down to a baste the meat went on with my Dad saying “Mmm boy , I love cow tongue!”  (thanks Dad lol)

I knew I had to turn this meat over as if almost on a spit. I didn’t want to burn anything and I didn’t want it over cooked. The meat took about an hour and some too cook, turning and basting the whole time. I did have a little bit of suger-burn also. I also cooked with an open hatch because these coals require allot of 02 too keep going and I didn’t want them to go out. I wasn’t after a smoky flavor with this dish either.

The meat came off the grill and was allowed to stand for about 10 minutes. The strings were snipped off with a pair of scissors and pulled away. The length of the tenderloin was cut into medallions and set out for serving.

In the end, everyone seemed to enjoy it , my Dad got seconds so I guess I succeeded there. I may consider doing this one on a gas grill with a closed cover next time, possibly on a rotisserie. Also, I need to watch my cook time as it could have been pulled off a hair sooner.  I am looking forward to do doing this one again, and it was kind of cool to boast about being able to do a cut of meat like this on a coal pit.

Beef Tenderloin on the Grill

This was a one that I did for a party a couple of months ago and wanted to show off a bit. I got a hold of some pretty good flank steak from the local market and did a rub consisting of a few ingredients including oregano seeds and cumin. Linda had bought quite a few pounds of New Mexico Hatch Green Chilies. She cleaned and roasted them and set them in her freezer to use through out the year. I used some of the hot ones for this gill dish, but you can use whatever you want here, including other thin sliced vegetables.

Once the flank steak was hit with the rub and allowed to sit out for a while I cut it into thin strips long-ways. Then I took about two of the chilies and laid them on top of the cut. I then cut about 10-15 short pieces of butcher string and laid them out in a row like train tracks. I took the steak/chilies and laid them across the butcher strings. I then rolled the steak/chilies into a roll at least twice over so it would hold the chile flavor in while cooking. While I held the wrap, I acquired the help of Linda’s daughter Amanda to tie the strings in simple knots starting from one end and down to the other.  I was able to get about 3 of these full rolls out of the piece of steak I had. Once the roll was secure I cut the roll crossways about half way in between each string so that each “medallion” would have a piece of string that would hold that piece together while it sat on the grill.

A grill set to medium heat with about 3-4 minutes max on each side does these things pretty well. You could brush on a chile-based baste if you wanted to here.

I think this is a fun recipe because it looks pretty cool to do, and you can get some “ooos and ahhs” when you show up with your medallions of steak and chilies. If I were to do this one again I would leave off the cumin and go with more traditional steak or fajita seasonings because the cumin overpowered the chilies a bit.

Enjoy!

The Fourth of July is creeping up on us and all I can think about is sweet sweet BBQ so I wanted to do a quick recap of successful grilling done in the past year. Enjoy!

Japanese Style Yakitori Skewers with leeks and Bahamian style rice.

Beef and Chicken Fajitas

Bacon wrapped Ham steaks and asparagus.

Jerk style Short Ribs. The jerk rub and sauce that go with this recipe is made from scratch each time

Bacon Wrapped Pork Tenderloin with apple baste. Ingredients for the rub include dijon mustard, brown sugar and Tennessee whiskey.

Other stuff we have done but I didn’t get shots of were chicken quarters and full racks of beef ribs, sesame seed style shrimp, “Margarita Chicken” with my own marinade concoction that included a few tequila shots, and a host of veggies and fruits. Some things I want to give a go on are a full brisket, rotisserie style fowl, and I need to straighten out my burger pattie mental block.

“OU Weekend” turned out great as we decided to throw down with one of the more complicated recipies in out BBQ Bible. These ribs included a pineapple juice-jalenpeno marinade, a rub that had several different spices including brown sugar, honey, thyme, ginger, a little garlic, and other things. A custom BBQ sauce was made by Phillip to go along with them. When i cooked these i decided not to turn them but set them bone-side down and let the meat on top sort of “bake” inside the grill. These things were very good. We will probably do this one again despite the prep-work involved. Pina Coladas, Rum mixers and other fun tropical drinks were served up.

The ensuing party was pretty fun, after the game and the destruction of OU (YouTube link) we headed out and went to a Karaoke bar. I think it was called Little Tokyo Karaoke on North Lamar. It was fun but the people running it tried to shake us down so we haggled with them and vowed not to go back there. We then went to a bar called Barfly’s that is located in the back of a Burger-Tex restaurant in our neighborhood. As seedy as it was I will probably go back there due to location and prices.

Due to the nature of the ribs and drinks that were served, clean up of the house was interesting because everything was sort of stuck together. We found rib bones under the sofa and other strange places. Over all a great weekend and good food.

I’ll get some pics and vids up in the galleries soon. I’ll alert you subscribed people to it.

-Ed

Tried a recipie form my “BBQ Bible” for yakitori. Chicken thighs with leeks grilled with a soy,mirin,garlic,sugar glaze. Included Shrimp Fried rice as a side.