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:

Beer-can Chicken

Today I made some beer-can chicken. I used the following recipe of my own adaptation.

Beer Can:

• Sleeman Original Draught
• 1/4 jar of Clubhouse Cajun wet rub

I rubbed the inside and the outside of the chicken using another 1/4 jar of Clubhouse Cajun rub.

The chicken took about 1-1/2 hours. The bird got turned once during the cooking process to even out the heat. I cooked it to an internal temperature of 170F on the lower thigh facing away from the heat. The lit burner was at about 75% for the whole duration. In better weather (it was around 6C and very windy tonight) would have used a lower setting on the burner, and kept the cooking time the roughly same.

The bird on the grill (blurry due to low light):



The whole meal, including roast potatoes with cheese and roast carrots (my standard, basted with olive oil):


I'm pretty sure this was the most tender chicken I've ever tasted. The skin turned out crispy and delicious.

Pulled Pork Pizza

A friend of mine works at a local pizza shop, and he was kind enough to make some pulled pork pizza using the pulled pork I cooked up earlier in the week.

The pizza topping were:

• BBQ sauce instead of tomato sauce
• Cheese
• Onions
• Pineapple

After running the pizza through the oven with just those toppings, we put on the pulled pork. We chose to put on the pork after cooking the pizza because we were concerned some of the sugar in the BBQ sauce in the pulled pork might burn in the direct heat of the oven.

The results were fantastic:

Kansas-style Pulled Pork

I got a 3-lb cut of pork shoulder shank to make some pulled pork. I put it in the slow cooker on low with:

• 1 diced onion on top of the meat
• 1/2 litre of white table wine
  
• Pork shoulder
• 1 diced onion in the bottom of the cooker

Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of the pork at the start. I started the cooking process at midnight. At about noon the next day (so after 12 hours on low), I took the meat out of the cooker, discarded the juice, fat layer and the bone. After 12 hours of cooking, the bone and the fat layer are totally disconnected from the meat and just fall right off. You have to be really careful to not have the meat fall into pieces and splash down into the hot wine and juices as you remove it from the cooker, since the meat is very tender at this point.

You then pull the meat. This can be done by just running two forks through the hunk of meat, or if you let the meat cool, by using your hands.

The reason pork shoulder is so cheap (it was about $6 for 3 lbs from Sobey's, which isn't the cheapest grocery store in town), is that it is very dense with connective tissue. Normal cooking processes leave the connective tissue intact, which make it very tough and undesirable meat. However, when you cook the meat for 12 to 20 hours on very low heat (below 220F), the connective tissue has a chance to dissolve, release delicious fatty juices, and allows the meat to simply fall apart.

After pulling, and adding one more diced onion, the meat looks like this:


At this stage, I added 1 jar of Compliments Kansas City Smokey BBQ Sauce. For a discount brand BBQ sauce, I was very impressed. It was very smokey, and not overpowered with sugar like a lot of other BBQ sauces.

After adding sauce:


At this point I turned the cooker back on to low, and let the meat cook for another 8 hours to let the flavours develop even further. The final product looked like this:


On a bun with potato salad and coleslaw:

Rib-eye Roast

I did a rib-eye roast with garlic, black pepper and olive oil as a rub. I also roasted potato and carrots basted with olive oil.

Rack of Lamb

Brady's Meats in Waterloo has a great selection of prime cuts of meat. I did a rack of lamb that I got there, with their rosemary and mint seasoning. For sides I had roasted potato and I grilled a few cobs of corn.

The corn just needs to soaked in water for about 30 minutes with the husk on. The husk gives off a very strong smell as it cooks, which I worried would get into the lamb. However, as soon as you pull the husk off the corn, the smell disappears, and no odour at all is left in the lamb. I cooked the corn directly over the lit burner until the husk started to blacken, and then moved it to the top rack to keep warm.

The lamb turned out great. It was probably the most tender lamb I've ever had.