Brazilian BBQ

If you have ever eaten at a Brazilian BBQ place, you probably remember the that disk with red and green on it that you thought would mostly be on red but fondly remember you couldnt stop leaving it on green. What you probably dont remember is the smokey flavors in every bite of meat they brought you. In Brazil, when they BBQ they throw some wood on the fire and smoke the meat while it grills. Usually I reserve my smoking for my Weber Smokey Mountain and leave the grilling to my Weber One Touch Kettle grill. However, last week I started to experiment with the idea of adding some smoke to my high heat recipes. 

My first experiment was with some chicken thighs that I wanted to do on the grill instead of the smoker since I didnt have 3 hours. When I usually do this, I dry rub the thighs with my rub and some olive oil and then sear the thighs on both side before moving them onto the indirect side and letting them finish. This time I decided to throw some apple wood on the charcoal and let it get some smoke for about an hour before pulling it off.

While it wasn't as 'smokey' as on the smoker, there was an added flavor profile from the apple wood and there was crispy skin. Something that we dont get on 'low and slow'.

Last night I decided to try it again, but this time with a 1.5 inch thick ribeye. I had read in Cooks Illustrated that if you want to get a really good sear on meat, you should take an aluminum pan and invert it over the coals to superheat the grate. While the grill heated I put some kosher salt, fresh ground black pepper and olive oil on both sides.

First 2 minutes with the meat at 45 degree angle.

2 minutes facing the opposite direction

And then the magic moment when you flip it over and get to see that awesome crust you have formed with the sear.

Now that you know the oustide is nicely cooked, we need to bring the internal temperature up. However before I did that, I threw some cherry wood on the charcoal to turn this BBQ into a Brazilian BBQ.

I placed the cover on and then let it smoke until the steak was medium rare.

Aside from the great color on the steak there was an added sweet smokey flavor to the steak

Reverse Visiting Day

This weekend marked a festive weekend for the Jewish religion - Shabbos Nachamu. On this weekend throngs of families go to the Catskill mountains for a weekend retreat. This weekend also marked visiting day for sleepaway camps which would mean a perfect storm of heavy traffic for the ride home. Thankfully a group of smart minded parents decided to get a van to bring our boys back here instead of us driving and contending with the traffic. This would also mean that a huge BBQ would be in order to welcome our son back home, even for a few hours.

The days festivities started at 8:30 AM when I cleaned out and started the smoker.

I used the minion method of lighting a handful of charcoal and leaving a bunch of unlit charcoal in the bottom to carry the 8-10 hours I wanted for this smoke.

The first thing to go on were the 10 pounds of ribs that I had picked up on a special order on Thursday night.

For the ribs I made my regular Dry Rub plus the addition of brown sugar when I added it to the ribs to help with the bark formation.

For the first part of the smoke I went with pecan and cherry wood.

3.5 hours into the smoke I brushed on some of my favorite BBQ sauce and double wrapped them in heavy duty aluminum foil. I then placed them on the lower rack of the smoker and added the chicken that I had used the same rub (without the brown sugar) and placed that on the top rack. The chicken I smoked for 3 hours with apple wood.

While this was going on, I got busy with the grilling part of the BBQ. In the kitchen I prepared 16 spiral hot dogs and the hamburgers.

When the ribs came off, they were literally falling off the bone

As for my son, I think he appreciated the BBQ and coming home for a short visit

But the thing about BBQ, when its done from the heart, it wants to be shared with friends because that is what true BBQ is all about.