Back in 2011 I had a bunch of vacation time I had to use or lose. I'd worked too hard for it to let if go by the wayside so I scheduled two weeks off. Got bored one day and decided to make an attempt at BBQ. Headed to Home Depot and dropped a whopping $89 for a CharBroil offset smoker....which I knew absolutely nothing about using. Loaded up on what I thought i'd need to get started, stopped at the grocery and grabbed a rack of baby backs, put the rig together, and fired it up. To say my first attempt was an epic disaster would be the understatement of the century. The ribs tasted like they had been marinated in kerosene, basted with turpentine, and glazed with shoe polish. We had sandwiches that night for dinner :-) Talked with a friend the next day that had decent experience smoking meats and he gave me some pointers. Tried again on Day 2 and saw some improvement but still pretty horrible. We ordered out for pizza that night. Same friend directed me to this place where I lurked, read, and learned for quite a while before actually joining. Since finding SMF and gleaning knowledge from so many incredible people here, I quickly started turning out some REALLY good Q. At this point the wife is finally on board and loving what's coming off the smoker. With her support it makes my hobbies much easier to indulge in since she makes and manages the money around here. I'm now on my 5th smoker, which is a custom built pit fabricated to some pretty exacting specifications....all of which I learned about here. My ribs, brisket, turkey, pulled pork, etc have become staples for us and a bunch of friends that absolutely love coming here for BBQ. That experience in and of itself is life changing but only the tip of the ice burg.
Fast forward to early last December. I've been a sausage junkie all my life and finally decided to start making my own. After reading reams of information here and getting a Kitchen Aid stand mixer for Xmas along with a grinder / stuffing attachment I pulled the trigger and made my first batch of sausage. It came out really well....or so I thought at the time. I had nothing to compare it to though. My first batch was breakfast sausage, for two reasons. I love it and it's my wife's main choice of breakfast meat. She only likes bacon on BLT's so my decision was based in big part on her preferences. Over the course of a few batches I figured out that I simply did not have the correct equipment to meet my expectations. The stand mixer, with it's 275 watt motor, just didn't have the necessary power to grind the meat efficiently so I bought a 3000 watt grinder with part of my Christmas bonus from work. WOW!! I think I could put a Volkswagen in there and grind it into scrap metal :-) It also came with the tools for stuffing the casings but on my 2nd try with this I noticed a huge problem. The first 6" of sausage that went into the casings looked like it was supposed to but very quickly started looking one-dimensional and pasty. Then it dawned on me what the auger driven tools are just turning my farce into pate'. The meat will not go through the stuffing tubes as fast as the auger is designed to push it so it's just spinning around and making what looked like Silly Putty. Back to Amazon and ordered a designated 5# - 7# vertical stuffer. Now we're getting somewhere!! Sad part is that this was recommended to me by one of the members here but I ignored it. Stupid move on my part. This makes ALL the difference in the world on the final product. Since Christmas I've really started dialing in techniques and recipes (the majority of which are my own now) and turning out some amazing sausage.....to the tune of over 150# in two months AND the wife is once again on board.
Had an afternoon off preceding Christmas and got bored. Decided to try curing some bacon. Read a bunch of stuff on SMF, had a couple private conversations with very knowledgeable (and helpful) folks here, and off to Costco I went. Bought the smallest pork belly I could find. Didn't want to trash a bunch of meat if it didn't come out right. Cut the belly into 2 pieces. Made one piece as a pepper crusted and the other with Disco's Maple Bacon recipe. My fears of it not turning out right were totally unfounded. This was the best bacon I've ever had, bar none!! Now here's the interesting part. Please pay attention to this Disco, it's important. Wife came home from church one Sunday morning while I was slicing the bacon. I had a couple slices of each (in different pans) going and some sausage links for her in a third pan. She mentioned how great the maple bacon smelled and during breakfast asked if she could have a taste. This is a first for her so naturally I agreed. That was the beginning of the end :-) She took all of my maple bacon and gave me her sausage. It was that good!! Thank you Disco for what is literally another life changing event!! Now, every weekend morning when I ask what she wants for breakfast the first response is "maple bacon". That's pretty impressive coming from a woman who would always give me her bacon if we went out for breakfast. She just wouldn't eat it. Needless to say that has become a mandatory item around here. The pepper bacon is amazing also. I love it any time but it makes the best BLT's you could ever imagine.
Fast forward again to last Saturday. I really like a good burger but my wife absolutely loves them. She had found a line of gourmet pre-made frozen burgers at H*E*B (it's a Texas thing) that she liked and we were out of them so she grabbed a box on Saturday. I looked at the box and realized she'd bought Jalapeno pork patties. This is not what she wanted and was distraught as there were aspirations of burgers for dinner one night over the weekend. As she was preparing to make the hour + round-trip to exchange them I told her not to worry about it. We have a little grocery store a mile from the house. I'd go get the meat, grind it up, and make her custom burgers. Her response was "we can do that?" Certainly we can....and that's exactly what we did, after coming back to SMF to determine the best meats and ratios for burgers. Cut, chilled, ground, and mixed the meat exactly to her specifications yesterday afternoon and grilled for dinner. They were fantastic!! Best burgers either of us have ever had. Needless to say she is hooked on that concept also. Yet another life changing event for us due to this forum.
In summary I am not kidding in the least when I say that this group has forever changed our lives in a very good way. I cannot thank enough each and every one of you who has contributed to the information here. I still stand by my assessment that this is the absolute best group on the 'Net. Thus far, here is a short list of things that we will never buy again commercially or from a store:
-BBQ of any sort
-Sausage
-Bacon
-Hamburger (patties or pre-ground)
I'm sure there are other things but that pretty much covers all of the major food groups :-)
Awed in Lago,
Robert
Fast forward to early last December. I've been a sausage junkie all my life and finally decided to start making my own. After reading reams of information here and getting a Kitchen Aid stand mixer for Xmas along with a grinder / stuffing attachment I pulled the trigger and made my first batch of sausage. It came out really well....or so I thought at the time. I had nothing to compare it to though. My first batch was breakfast sausage, for two reasons. I love it and it's my wife's main choice of breakfast meat. She only likes bacon on BLT's so my decision was based in big part on her preferences. Over the course of a few batches I figured out that I simply did not have the correct equipment to meet my expectations. The stand mixer, with it's 275 watt motor, just didn't have the necessary power to grind the meat efficiently so I bought a 3000 watt grinder with part of my Christmas bonus from work. WOW!! I think I could put a Volkswagen in there and grind it into scrap metal :-) It also came with the tools for stuffing the casings but on my 2nd try with this I noticed a huge problem. The first 6" of sausage that went into the casings looked like it was supposed to but very quickly started looking one-dimensional and pasty. Then it dawned on me what the auger driven tools are just turning my farce into pate'. The meat will not go through the stuffing tubes as fast as the auger is designed to push it so it's just spinning around and making what looked like Silly Putty. Back to Amazon and ordered a designated 5# - 7# vertical stuffer. Now we're getting somewhere!! Sad part is that this was recommended to me by one of the members here but I ignored it. Stupid move on my part. This makes ALL the difference in the world on the final product. Since Christmas I've really started dialing in techniques and recipes (the majority of which are my own now) and turning out some amazing sausage.....to the tune of over 150# in two months AND the wife is once again on board.
Had an afternoon off preceding Christmas and got bored. Decided to try curing some bacon. Read a bunch of stuff on SMF, had a couple private conversations with very knowledgeable (and helpful) folks here, and off to Costco I went. Bought the smallest pork belly I could find. Didn't want to trash a bunch of meat if it didn't come out right. Cut the belly into 2 pieces. Made one piece as a pepper crusted and the other with Disco's Maple Bacon recipe. My fears of it not turning out right were totally unfounded. This was the best bacon I've ever had, bar none!! Now here's the interesting part. Please pay attention to this Disco, it's important. Wife came home from church one Sunday morning while I was slicing the bacon. I had a couple slices of each (in different pans) going and some sausage links for her in a third pan. She mentioned how great the maple bacon smelled and during breakfast asked if she could have a taste. This is a first for her so naturally I agreed. That was the beginning of the end :-) She took all of my maple bacon and gave me her sausage. It was that good!! Thank you Disco for what is literally another life changing event!! Now, every weekend morning when I ask what she wants for breakfast the first response is "maple bacon". That's pretty impressive coming from a woman who would always give me her bacon if we went out for breakfast. She just wouldn't eat it. Needless to say that has become a mandatory item around here. The pepper bacon is amazing also. I love it any time but it makes the best BLT's you could ever imagine.
Fast forward again to last Saturday. I really like a good burger but my wife absolutely loves them. She had found a line of gourmet pre-made frozen burgers at H*E*B (it's a Texas thing) that she liked and we were out of them so she grabbed a box on Saturday. I looked at the box and realized she'd bought Jalapeno pork patties. This is not what she wanted and was distraught as there were aspirations of burgers for dinner one night over the weekend. As she was preparing to make the hour + round-trip to exchange them I told her not to worry about it. We have a little grocery store a mile from the house. I'd go get the meat, grind it up, and make her custom burgers. Her response was "we can do that?" Certainly we can....and that's exactly what we did, after coming back to SMF to determine the best meats and ratios for burgers. Cut, chilled, ground, and mixed the meat exactly to her specifications yesterday afternoon and grilled for dinner. They were fantastic!! Best burgers either of us have ever had. Needless to say she is hooked on that concept also. Yet another life changing event for us due to this forum.
In summary I am not kidding in the least when I say that this group has forever changed our lives in a very good way. I cannot thank enough each and every one of you who has contributed to the information here. I still stand by my assessment that this is the absolute best group on the 'Net. Thus far, here is a short list of things that we will never buy again commercially or from a store:
-BBQ of any sort
-Sausage
-Bacon
-Hamburger (patties or pre-ground)
I'm sure there are other things but that pretty much covers all of the major food groups :-)
Awed in Lago,
Robert
