Unlike simply squirting BBQ Sauce out of a bottle this sauce took some work.  It started its journey on the stove in the house, but only long enough to thoroughly mix all the ingredients.  From there it was onto the grill with a huge chunk of hickory to further cook down and get that great smokey flavor that really sets this sauce apart.

One note about the picture above, even though the chunk of hickory is engulfed in flames in the picture, it did not remain that way once the lid was in place, the rush of oxygen upon removing the lid allowed it to burst into flames.  A chunk of wood in flames like that above will not produce nearly enough adequate smoke to flavor the BBQ sauce properly.

Ingredients
1 15oz can of tomato sauce
2 c apple cider
4 cloves of garlic pressed
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar (white vinegar would work as well)
1/4 c brown sugar
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1 tbsp honey
1/2 tbsp worcestershire sauce
1 tsp chile powder
1 tbsp thickener (cornstarch, flour, etc)

Instructions
Start by combining liquid ingredients in a sauce pan (one safe for the grill) on the stove over medium heat and bringing to a boil.  Stir frequently.  Once the liquid is boiling add in everything else except the thickener, stir and boil until the sauce begins to reduce slightly.  It should smell amazing at this point.  Slowly stir in thickener.  At this point prep the grill (fire up the chimney and get the smoking wood ready) and move the pan to the grill when it is ready and place it on the opposite side of the grill from the heat, add smoking wood and leave to cook uncovered.  Stir the sauce every 15-20 minutes, it should be simmering nicely.  Remove the sauce from the grill when it is thickened to the desired consistency.

It is a tangy sweet BBQ sauce and it is so tasty it has boldness and depth that I have no found in a bottled BBQ sauce and it is pretty simple to make, this is going on the list of favorites.  Before cooking the sauce I did wipe the inside of the pan down with a thin film of canola oil to make cleanup simpler, and it helped, the baked on sauce just came off under the faucet and the scrubbing was minimal.  Just be sure to use a pan you can live with being a slightly different color when you are done on the outside.

In the end I ended up with an excellent stand in using some ready made rubs and and brown sugar.  And a spritz with some molasses, cranberry juice, bbq sauce and seasoning, again we didn’t have any apple juice.  The day was full of improvising. You will find the recipes for the rub and spritz below.

I threw the meat on the smoker about 7:30 AM and it smoked at 225ºF with apple and hickory wood until it reached 165ºF, at which point I wrapped it in foil and threw it back into the heat until it reached an internal temperate of 205ºF.  Then it was, while still wrapped in foil, wrapped in old towels and thrown into the cooler for 2 hours to rest.  I then pulled it, put it on a sandwich and enjoyed.  It was most tasty not quite as tasty as the Brown Sugar and Rosemary Rub but it is certainly still edible, and will likely be the source of lunch room envy tomorrow.

Mix and Match Pork Rub
Ingredients
brown sugar
bbq3000
bad byron’s butt rub
mustard

Instructions
Mix together 2 parts brown sugar to 1 part each bbq3000 and butt rub.  When thoroughly mixed, spread mustard on meat in evenly.  Then rub meat liberally with bbq rub created above.  Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate over night or cook immediately.

Spritz Recipe
Ingredients
1 tbsp molasses
2 tbsp bbq sauce
1 c cranberry juice
1/4 c white sugar
1 tbsp bbq3000

Instructions
Combine all ingredients until mixed well.  Mop onto meat every hour until meat reaches 165°F.

Cooking on an open fire is not that difficult, it may seem intimidating at first, but, the most difficult part is finding a time and place to do it.  It does take a little more time than just firing up the stove but like I said it is rewarding.

The requirements are also quite sparse, you will need not much more than you would to make a normal breakfast on the stove.  You will need a cast iron skillet, some hardwood, a rack to suspend the skillet above the fire and some patience.  We had a fire the previous night so I woke up to some yet hot embers which I arranged in the pit, piled on some crumpled newspaper and some scraps of wood and blew on the embers until I had a flame.  At which point I nursed the fire with some hardwood until it had burned down into a nice consistent bed of coals that covered an area about twice the size as my skillet.  Once this was accomplished I chopped some of the remaining bits of hardwood into smaller pieces of wood, to be able to throw them onto the bed of coals to get more heat as needed.

After this I put the rack over the pit and placed the skillet on it with a bit of oil and added some sausages, cooking them until they were done and then it was onto pancakes and eggs in the same method.  The eggs were actually cooked in the sausage grease which made them all the better.  Several times throughout the cook more scraps of wood (kindling) were added to the coals to get more heat.  It worked great.

Cooking like a caveman is a great way to step back and just focus on cooking.  Focusing on the heat and the food.  It was great.  It reaffirms reason #2 of the 10 reasons to have a cast iron skillet.

Because we were out of pizza sauce and pepperoni we had to improvise and ended up making a pizza with chicken, spinach, basil and olive oil.  We then finished it with a balsamic reduction my wife whipped up.  It was light and most tasty.  The wood smoke flavored the cheese and crust nicely, it complimented the strong flavors of the basil and the dry heat and free flowing air from the grill gave the pizza a nice crispy crust .

So here is how I did it, I cheated, I first pre-heated the stone in the oven at 500°F for about an hour.  While I did this I got the grill ready with half charcoal – half hickory chunks; spreading the coals evenly around the charcoal grate.  I then cooked up a chicken breast, I had marinaded the chicken over night in a combination of 3 tablespoons of olive oil, a clove of pressed garlic and a teaspoon of paprika.  My wife wilted spinach and fresh basil leaves from our patio with some olive oil and pressed garlic.  Once the chicken was cooked up, I sliced it up, rolled out the dough onto my pre-heated pizza stone.  I then brushed the crust with olive oil, topped with the spinach-basil mix and cheese.  Then it was onto the grill for about 15 minutes.  At this point the charcoal had passed its prime so it took more time than I would have liked, but it was worth it.

So in the end we had two verdicts, I thought the grilled dough was much better than that baked in the oven.  My wife however would rather have the crust baked in the oven.  So what was the difference?  The pizza from the grill had a nice, crispy and slightly burnt crust.  Burnt in this case is not a bad thing, it was just lightly charred in the center on the bottom.  The pizza from the oven was much more moist and the crust was not nearly as crispy.  The crust from the oven also lacked the flavor the grilled pizza got from being exposed to the fire and smoke of burning wood.  If it was up to me we would be done eating pizza from the oven and keep the heat outside, and get a better flavored crispier crust from the grill.

Way back in my cupboard was a pizza stone that we had not used in a couple months, so out it came and into the 500°F oven until it was hot.  I did everything like before, plopped the dough on the stone; added sauce, cheese and toppings as quickly as possible and popped it back in the oven.  It did its thing, somehow cooking pizza on a stone is magical the crust was ‘fluffier‘ than before, it was awesome.  It did take me a while to realize how awesome it was, it wasn’t tell I was sitting back craving more pizza that I realized it was that good and it only had mushrooms and pepperoni on it.

I learn a couple of lessons this time that I will be applying to the next pizza we make.  First I will be sure to bake the crust alone in the oven for a few minutes prior to topping with sauce, cheese and toppings.  And second if I am going to be using alot of moist toppings I will be sure to pre-cook them a bit to get some of the moisture out.  With those two things, I dare say it will be pizza baking perfection.

Tomorrow we try pizza on the grill, wood-fire style.

I put 5 whole heads of garlic chopped finely in a quart jar with 3 tablespoons of cayenne and a bottle of tabasco.  I then filled the rest of the jar with water, covered and let it sit out and stew at room temperature for two days.  Then I uncapped it and it smelled like garlic and hot pepper, it almost smelled good enough to try it.

I then diluted it 1/4 cup of the mix to a quart of water, strained it and put it the spray bottle and applied it liberally to my remaining peppers and tomatoes.  So far it seems to be working, my sprayer is a little clogged but next time I will use a coffee filter or something else to get the chunks out when loading up the spray bottle.

Until I get somewhere where rabbits can be shot at will or trapped and released into the yards of unsuspecting victims, I will have to stick to the dragons milk until the rabbits change their taste.

There was a slight bit of kneading required in spite of the name but the dough was awesome, but it needs to be planned for and made well in advance.

Ingredients
3 c + extra flour
1 1/2 c warm water
1/4 c + extra olive oil
1 1/4 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp yeast

Instructions
Mix together dry ingredients thoroughly, then mix in water and olive oil until it is mixed evenly, it will be very wet, like sticky and not dough like wet.  Drizzle olive oil over the surface of the dough, cover bowl with plastic wrap and let set for 12-24 hours.  Once dough has raised.  Turn oven on the highest temperature possible (500°F in my case) and put cast iron skillet in the oven until it is heated well.  Punch down dough flip out onto a floured surface and divide into small balls and make individual rounds of dough, for pizza.  I made three.  Roll or stretch out the dough into thin crusts.

Have your toppings, sauce and cheese ready.  Lightly oil the skillet and then place the crust in the skillet.  Quickly put sauce, toppings and cheese on the crust.  Bake in skillet in oven until pizza is done.  Mine took about 5 minutes.

Even though you have a little more planning to do than with normal this crust is well worth the effort and advanced preparation.  I am glad I have two crusts left, I can’t wait to make it again.  This time it was just pepperoni, next time it will be much more elaborate.

The rub however, was the important part and it was a pretty traditional style paprika based rub, all but once I forgot it was on there it married with the meat so well, but I must have had an abnormally heavy section of rub under the skin that gave me a faint paprika taste in my mouth. So here is the recipe for the rub.

Ingredients
1/4 c paprika
2 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp kosher salt
1 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp cayenne
1 tsp dry mustard
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder

Instructions
Blend all ingredients thoroughly and rub generously onto chicken both under and over skin.

Once the chicken was rubbed I plopped it on the smoker at 250°F for about 2 hours over hickory and apple wood until it was cook through.  I basted the meat once which I think was unnecessary.   Usually I brine my poultry but I did not this time mostly due to oversight on my part, in spite of this it still turned out juicy and fell apart.

I started out by cutting my steaks up into about quarter inch this pieces of meat at a 30° angle across the grain of the meat.  This was fairly easy to do and using a larger than necessary knife made it even simpler.

Once the meat was cut I mixed together a rub as follows.

Ingredients
1/4 c brown sugar
1/4 c kosher salt
2 tsp paprika
2 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp ground ginger

Instructions
Blend together all ingredients in a small bowl being sure to get any clumps out of the brown sugar.

Once the rub was mixed together I then rubbed the rub into the meat, this amount of rub is good for about 1 1/2 pounds of meat.

I then placed it on the smoker with NO water in the water pan at 155°F for 5 hours over a blend of hickory and mesquite using my PID controlled electric smoker.  Using the propane would have probably been too moist to get good jerky and the charcoal might have been a little tricky to maintain that temperature for such a long period of time.  The electric with the PID controller is just easy.   At this point it was still a little moist in the middle but chewy and very jerky like, it was really good.

Even as mystery meat the reviews have been good, people have liked it, most importantly I liked it so I will be making more jerky and posting about it as I learn new things.

Previously I had not smoked a whole fish, and that was the plan to smoke the whole gutted fish, but I decided since I had forgotten to remove his gills when I cleaned him and he still looked rather surprised I had to smoke him without his head.  In reality there is nothing edible in there anyways.

After his stint in the brine, I pulled him out, did not rinse him and stuffed him with some lemon wedges and onions and tossed him on an oiled smoker grate.  I then smoked him at 190°F over some apple wood, I usually smoke fish over alder, but had heard that trout was excellent over apple wood and I was not disappointed.  Using my PID controller for my electric smoker it was easy/effortless to maintain temperature and once the smoke was rolling it was time to sit back and let him cook.

After about 2 hours I retrieved him from the smoker and using a technique I had recently learned I grabbed the spine with on hand and the fish with the other and gently removed the spine and all the bones from the fish, it worked great.

As if smelling the sweet smell of the apple wood smoke all morning wasn’t good enough, eating it was incredible.  It was done just right, flaky.  It was smoky but not too smoke and the apple wood complimented the lemon well and trout well, it was not fishing but it was fish.  It was in a word awesome, so trout beware I am coming for you.  If I only fish for one thing for the rest of the year it will be trout.