Going to take a few days off here, so I’ll pop back up with a Photo column on Tuesday.
I rarely look at cookbooks when I’m doing barbecue unless I want some new side dishes or I want to branch out and try grilling in a cuisine that I’m less familiar with.
Serious barbecue books are mostly not so much cookbooks in the sense of recipes as they are technical manuals. (The Franklin Barbecue’s cookbook, for example.) And most of those aren’t very useful to me because they’re for people with serious hardware—a big drum with a smoker box on the side. (I had one but I bought a cheap one, big mistake, the fire box and the interior grill mechanism corroded away within three months. Back to Weber kettle for me.)
I’m doing brisket today for putting in tacos. It’s a half-brisket, the “deckle” cut. I’m not a purist: I start it in the oven on low heat for about six hours, then it’s on the grill with low heat and smoking wood for a few more. It’s going to be a tricky day in terms of dodging the rain so that will also come into play.
I’ll do some sausages tomorrow with rolls. I like to make a mix of grilled peppers, grilled red onions, fresh herbs, hot sauce, balsamic vinegar and a bit of mustard as the condiment for sausages.
Not sure about Monday itself, but I think pulled pork with some white beans and some home-made pitas are where it’s headed. Then we have a week of great leftovers to work with.
I’ve shifted over the years to preferring either long-and-slow grilling with smoking woods of a substantial piece of meat or to really quick sears of something that doesn’t need a lot of cooking but would benefit from a bit of wood smoke over charcoal heat. I find that something that needs a lot of attention and monitoring over 15-20 minutes is kind of a pain with a charcoal grill—that calls for the precise temperature control of a gas grill (which I think doesn’t generally add all that much to the taste of food) or just doing something on the stovetop.
Image credit: Photo by Jonas Allert on Unsplash
Somewhere, John smiles.