Adding moisture to the skin at low temps is just going to give you moist, floppy skin.

If you’re firing up the oven anyway, just put the chicken pieces on a sheet pan and broil them for a couple of minutes.

I do it often when I make Adobo.

Keep an eye on ‘em, they go from perfect to burnt, quickly.

I have seen many people that glaze the skin with butter or olive oil to help crisp it.... I figured tallow would do the same thing. It didn't really help all that much, but I'm sure it didn't hurt it. Maybe if I could have gotten it on the skin sooner - but I waited until the skin tacked up well - I didn't want to brush all the seasoning off of it.

I feel like I'm missing something simple to get the crispy skin - feeling the shame of not being able to 'punch THAT hole on my man card'. I have no shame in an oven finish, but it still seems like it should be doable on the smoker. My buddy who is a bbq 'coinsurer' made a comment long ago that you either get GREAT smoked chicken with sad papery skin or poorly smoked chicken with GOOD skin - never both --- seems like he knew something.... I am just so pleased with the amount of smoke I can get into the chicken! I just finished up the last of the 'pulled' meat from the last chicken last night on a sammy --- just INCREDIBLE! I always think to myself 'damn, not ANOTHER chicken sammy' when I make them (day after day), but when I get done eating it, I think to myself 'goddamn, that was the best one yet!'. I even pulled a breast out of the freezer last night after I finished the sammy just so I can make more -- I've got a loaf and a half of bread, tomatoes and a head of lettuce to use up....

Maybe try this?

https://youtu.be/G6cLwAFkeEI

Or this...

https://blog.zgrills.com/how-to-get-cri ... %C2%B0%20F.

A friend gave me some trout, so I smoked them up today:



Hey, here's a fun game we can all play!

Question: How many bones are in the trout fillets shown above?

A) 500 million
B) 375,412
C) A and B
D) 42 trillion and one
E) All of the above

Jesus fuck . . . I spent about three hours (ok, slight exaggeration) deboning and ended up with three cups of meat.

Maybe I just need practice.

next time leave the head on, gut em then smoke em, once done the whole shebang comes out deboned




looks good, how they taste? think Kok is better?

This guy has smoked trout before! Definitely the only way to go. Want to buy a vertical cabinet smoker for this and a few other reasons.

Tastes good, but I don't have enough experience with other species to give an informed opinion, and I've never had Kokanee.

Gf is doing keto, so this is a sugar-free recipe. Just sprinkled some sea salt over them, let them sit in the fridge for maybe 6 hours for some moisture to come out, then sprinkled pepper and garlic powder on them and let them set in the fridge overnight, then smoked low and slow until they hit 140.

Good stuff. But, similar to celery, this was a negative calorie endeavor for me. I'll have to check out your method next time.

Well, I had seen this done on a few YouTube videos by LeRoy & Lewis, and Chuds BBQ . . . so I decided to give it a shot! The challenge was to take the most disgusting cut of meat ever, and turn it into something edible!

And there they were at Business Costco: Beef cheeks!







F'ing NASTY! And no, I didn't trim it at all. First step was to put a light coat of salt and pepper on it, then into the smoker for a few hours until it looked like this:



Then I stuffed it all into the Instant Pot and scooped the rest of my wagyu tallow on top of it (which was a little more than is shown in the photo):



Then turned the IP onto sous vide mode at 190 degrees, and let it cook overnight. The idea was to basically confit it I guess, cook it in melted fat and melt down the fat on the meat. The next morning, the stuff at the bottom of the pot was fairly tender, but the rest was not since it wasn't all under"water." So I pulled it all out, tore what I could into smaller pieces, and put it back with the tough stuff on the bottom.

I did that again a few hours later, and it was getting better.

Come about 3:00, I poured all of it into a colander and started squeezing the shit out of with my hands. (Using cotton gloves with nitrile gloves over them!) I was able to squeeze pretty much all of the fat and shit out of it; I did have to pull out a few chunks that hadn't rendered, but just a few.

I ended up throwing out 1-2 quarts of fat, and I was left with a big bowl of just meat. Here's the result:





Barbacoa, baby! I was sweating it a little since Mr. & Mrs. Usrifle were coming over for dinner, but it turned out pretty good. It was a lot of work and I'm not sure if I'd do it again; I'd probably use an easier cut of meat next time. But it was a good challenge, and I'm happy with the outcome.

One thing I did "wrong," looking back at it, was using the Instant Pot given that I didn't have a huge amount of tallow to start with. The IP worked great from a temperature control standpoint, but the pot is kind of tall and skinny, so I didn't have much of the meat under the tallow to start with. I think doing proper sous vide with meat + tallow in the bag would have worked better, or even using a crock pot (with wider bowl) like Chud does in one of his videos.

Anyhow . . . a fun experiment.

Ay Chihuahua!

All i can say is, it was REALLY GOOD! It was tender and the seasoning was on point. Wifey and i both really liked it, it was a definite success.
A lot of work turning nothing into something, I was impressed.
I'm always up to try one of his Kitchen "experiments". Steve has Kitchen skills.

nice steve, ya looks like you just butchered a cow.



end looks great, hope the guest enjoyed it

Nice job.

It’s fun to learn stuff to apply to your future endeavors

I have to say I have had cheek tacos and it tasted like steak!

Can you describe the flavor? Smoke?

I didn't notice smoke, just the seasoning and the beef.
Really nicely seasoned with a little kick to it.
That was my first time for Barbacoa, it was really good!

Finally got off my ass and went down and snagged a couple of branches off an apple tree. The two smaller ones cleaned up nice and easy - the moss and the lichens just brushed off.... the bigger one, not so easy - figured I'd let it sit in the sun/heat for a few days to see if it helps.

I 'think' I have enough apple to last me quite a while in the WSM and kettle...
Nothing like playing chicken with your foot (in sandals) and a chainsaw after a couple of beers.



I figure it will be usable by the end of the week if needed with the nice weather we have -- they dry out REALLY fast when you slab them. Really looking forward to going crazy with some apple smoke!
Debating whether I should go down and grab some more plum and some bigger cherry too....