Beer-can chicken with home-made rub

On Monday night, I made a beer-can chicken with a rub of my own creation. I've fine-tuned the basic process of cooking the chicken so that I get a good level of doneness throughout the bird, so I feel comfortable experimenting with other parts of the meal.
I made the rub using the following ingredients:

• Cider vinegar
• Honey
• Garlic powder
• Tomato paste
• Red wine
• Salt and pepper
• Cayenne Pepper

It turned out very red, looking a lot like pasta sauce. The strong vinegar and cayenne pepper flavours made it a much more spicy rub than most store-bought rubs I've tried. I really like the spice for a rubbing onto a whole chicken, since you don't have a lot of skin to get the flavour into the meat.

I created the rub on the go without any planning, and I was very pleased with the flavour of the meat when I was done. I also used my usual mix for the beer can, consisting of beer, salt, pepper and garlic.

Some More Beer-Can Chicken

After a long break from barbecuing, I did a beer-can chicken. I used the cajun rub, but I only put garlic, black pepper and salt in the beer.

It was pretty tough keeping the temperature up, but tonight was the warmest out of the last few (a balmy -5C) so the cooking worked out.

The meat was tender as ever:

Beer Can Chicken, Again

I did beer-can chicken again today. I used a different rub, Roasted Red Pepper and Garlic. It turned out great. I dropped the cooking temperature this time, to around 300F. This made the meat even more tender this time.

I did the foil-packet-roasted veggies with this meal, with diced potatoes, carrots, and turnips.

The leftovers are simmering away in a chicken soup now.

Kangaroo

My butcher has a distributor that can get kangaroo. I decided that this would be a pretty interesting meat to try. My understanding is that its quite popular in some parts of Australia, where it's even possible to get in on a pizza.

The meat came in 1kg packages of tenderloin imported from Australia. The meat is a very deep read colour, similar to venison. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of the meat during the cooking process.

I grilled it yesterday, and the cooked meat was was very rich in flavour. I was very impressed by how tender the meat was. It might have too gamey a flavour for some people to enjoy, but I plan on preparing kangaroo tenderloin again in the future. With its rich flavour, it would go very well in a stew.

Frenched Rack of New Zealand Venison

Brady's Meats had some frenched racks of venison from New Zealand, which I grilled yesterday. They came in packs with 4 bones each, divided into two pieces (2 bones each). I seasoned them lightly with black pepper, salt and garlic powder, and then grilled them with indirect heat.


I also modified my roasted vegetable recipe to use carrots. I pre-boiled the potatoes so that they would cook in the same time as the carrots, but not so much that they would soften up and turn to mush when I mixed them with the carrots and seasoning.


Here are the venison racks, just after searing:


The general consensus on the internet for cooking venison is to cook to an internal temperature in the range of 120-130F. This much lower than beef, because the meat is much leaner, so there is much less fat to heat in the cooking process. I was having some trouble with my digital thermometer, so I had to use a bit of gut feeling and poking at the meat to gauge its doneness.

Here is a shot of the whole meal:


The venison turned out excellent. The meat was a deep red colour, and the flavour was very rich. I will definitely be doing this recipe again.

Prime Rib Roast, with Potatoes and Turnips

Today I tried out a new wet rub, Clubhouse Roasted Garlic and Peppers. I used it on a Prime Rib roast, and I was pretty impressed with the results.

I also tried out a new recipe for roasted potatoes and turnips on the grill. I mixed the following in a bowl:

• Diced potatoes
• Diced turnips
• Olive oil
• Coarse grind black pepper
• Oregano

You can see the mix here:


You then place the mix into packets made from tin foil folded over:


And then onto the grill, alongside the meat:


The potatoes are cooked over direct heat, and the roast is cooked using indirect heat. I found that moving the potatoes to the back of the grill, and leaving the whole front half of the grill to let the air rise up in the convection current worked best. Placing them against the far left of the grill seemed to cut off the airflow too much and prevented the beef from being properly heated.

The whole meal:

Pork Tenderloin

Today Jordan cooked up some pork tenderloin. It sat in a garlic and black pepper brine for 12 hours, and then went on the grill over direct heat for about 15-20 minutes.

On the grill, about 10 minutes in:



Just after being pulled off the grill:



The final product: