Butts, Bacon and Balls

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homebrew & bbq

Smoking Fanatic
Original poster
Sep 21, 2007
838
11
NE Nebraska
It's been kinda busy here today. We sorta got a late start so nothing made it into the smoker until almost noon, but it's been full since then. We did 35-40 pounds of butts, about 13 pounds of Canadian bacon divided into 4 different cures. And then we threw in some test runs of frozen pre-cooked meatballs and salmon balls.

Here are the butts, rubbed and ready to go. These were half of a case of butts we got at Sam's Club for $.90 a pound. One of them (back left) was probably less than 6 pounds, but the two in front were both 10 pounds or more.
s7300095jv0.jpg


My better half whipped up a batch of the salmon balls while I was rinsing and soaking the Canadian bacon. I didn't get any pre-smoke pics of the Canadian bacon, but here are the pre-smoked appetizer balls.
s7300096vz8.jpg


Here are the smoked varieties of Canadian bacon.
from l to r: cowgirl's basic recipe, cowgirl's recipe with onion & garlic powder, Charcuterie's recipe, Debi's recipe
s7300097us7.jpg


The butts are all foiled and in the oven at 210°. I'm going to leave them overnight. If I have time, I'll get the Canadian bacon sliced tomorrow and add more pics to this thread.
 
WOW you have a smoke going on brew-looks good-can't wait for the finish pic's
 
Looks really good.


How do you like your Masterbuilt? I really love mine after a few days, of using it but I have 2 chip loaders break on the welds.

Do you use wood chunks or chips?
 
I love my MES! It does the things I need it to do and it doesn't take a lot of babysitting. I've been using my a little over a year and recently had to replace some of the wiring to the heating element.

I use chips that I get at Walmart, Menards, Lowe's, etc.
 
Thanks for you're quick reply I used chips and chunks and I'm thinking the chuncks were the problem jamming the loader and getting stuck.

How long do you get smoke after loading, mine seams to get about 1 hour. Also do you have smoke leaking from the door? They told me that was normal. I find it hard to believe that a gasket should leak, why have a gasket?
 
Yeah, an hour to an hour and a half seems about right when I put in a handful of chips.

No, I don't have smoke leaking around the door. The only smoke that comes out of the smoker is through the top vent (other than when I open the door to do something with the meat).
 
[That's what I thought, I am getting a snow job from Masterbuilt. I have had 2 new Masterbuilt's this week and both leaked smoke from the top and side gasket. CS told me that was normal, she said "you wouldn't want to get hot smoke in your face when you opened the door would you?"

Huh?

Well, I bougt Sam's club 3 year extended warrantee and I won't lose on that. I will get it fixed!!
 
Great looking stuff, Terry! Looks like you're going to feed an army
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Well, that's sort of what I'm doing. My parents are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary in about 4 weeks and they asked me if I could have pulled pork ready for 100 people. So the butts will get pulled, packaged and frozen until then. The meat and salmon balls are test batches to see if they will work for appetizers for that same 100 people. The Canadian bacon is a taste test to see how the recipes compare and which my family prefers.
 
Well, I haven't made it to the slicer with the Canadian bacon yet, but here are the other results.

Here are the meatballs and salmon balls after their trip through the smoker... about an hour or so for each.
s7300098ig1.jpg


And here are the four butts.
s7300099rh3.jpg


This is about half of the juice that came from the butts. We put it in the fridge so the fat solidifies and then we can remove it. When we package the [font=verdana,Sans-Serif]pulled[/font] pork the juice gets divided between the packages.
s7300100aq5.jpg


And here is part of the [font=verdana,Sans-Serif]pulled[/font] pork. I have one more of the butts that still needs to be [font=verdana,Sans-Serif]pulled[/font] and so far the meat consists of a heaping 9x13 pan and one of the pans I had the butts in, also heaping full.
s7300101fj7.jpg


I'll add the Canadian bacon pics whenever I get a chance to get them sliced.
 
The Canadian bacon is sliced and packaged. We did about 6 sampler packages to go to the brave volunteers who are willing to taste our experiments. Those packages have 3 slices of each of the 4 cures and they are simply marked A, B, [font=verdana,Sans-Serif]C[/font] & D.

Here is the sliced Canadian bacon. The first picture has two rows of cowgirl's basic [font=verdana,Sans-Serif]cure[/font] (on the left) and two rows of her [font=verdana,Sans-Serif]cure[/font] with onion and garlic powder added. The second picture has the Charcuterie [font=verdana,Sans-Serif]cure[/font] on the left and Debi's on the right.

s7300102qs1.jpg


s7300103pn0.jpg
 
The salmon balls were really good. They'll make a great appetizer. Now we're just trying to figure out what kind of sauce to whip up to dip them in. I think a light sweet and sour sauce would be good, but my wife is leaning toward a mayo-based mustard-dill sauce.
 
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