Smoked Pot Roast on the Weber Jumbo Joe

I fired up the Weber Jumbo Joe and threw a chuck roast on the little pit.  I had the bottom and top vents set to 50% open.  This little guy ran great, real steady temps.  It held right at 265F for three hours.  I added about ten more unlit briquettes at the three hour mark and it ran great for another four hours.

A seven hour run on such a little grill is freakin awesome.  I smoked the beef four four hours in hickory then wrapped it in foil for another three. 

Here is what it looked like at the end.

Way to go Jumbo Joe!!

Going big with the Weber 26 inch Grill

I've got a buddy over on the West Coast who has been breaking in his new Weber 26 inch grill.

He has been sending me a stream of pictures that started with this one:

So far he's grilled some leg quarters, cold smoked 10 pounds of cheddar, gone low and slow with four slabs of St Louis spares and made some stuffed pork loins.  Getting to live vicariously through the grilling adventures of others is a pretty sweet gig.

One reason I am excited to watch him work is that I have always wondered if this grill was an exceptional combination of smoker and grill or if it was sub-optimized on both ends.  At the rate he is going I suspect I'll have a definitive answer in a month or so.


This grill costs about $100 less than the 22 inch WSM and appears to be just as functional with a larger capacity.  There has to be something I am missing or else more people would be buying this grill. 

Consider this a work in progress...Grill on, baby! Grill on!!

How I grill steaks

There is nothing magic here.  No top secret recipes.  I just get some nice looking meat, season it up and grill them on a kettle.  In this cook I was using my Weber Jumbo Joe.

About four to five minutes a side gets me to a nice medium rare.  I loved making this video.  I use this video to relax when I feel like the world is going to crap.  I love listening to the steaks sizzle and the birds chirping.  Everything is nice, calm and happy.

I hope you enjoy the video.  I had fun making it!

Weber Jumbo Joe

There is a new addition to my Weber collection, a Weber Jumbo Joe!  This brings me up to six Webers...only 30 or 40 to go!

I was on twitter the other day asking if anyone had a Smokey Joe Platinum they were willing to sell.  These got discontinued around 2008 and I haven't had much luck catching them on eBay.  I wanted the Platinum since it had the 18 inch cooking grate but was still portable like the Smokey Joe Gold.

A fellow Tweeter was kind enough to point me to the newly released Jumbo Joe instead!  The Jumbo is new for 2013 and isn't even listed on the Weber website yet.  For whatever reason though, it is available now on Amazon.

The Jumbo has the 18 inch grate like the Smokey Joe Platinum, the lid lock and lid holder like the Gold and the bottom mounted air intake vents of the Silver.  The new Jumbo Joe looks like it really does have the best of all of the previous Smokey Joe grills.

My order showed up a few days ago and I just got around to putting this grill together last night.  It took right at 15 minutes to assemble with no problems at all.  I did my first cook with the grill this afternoon (nothing fancy, just some chicken thighs) and was very pleased.

Thanks for dropping by.  Any of you folks have a great Weber collection started?

Updated 11/18/12:
I have hooked up a rotisserie for the Jumbo and roasted a whole chicken.  I have grilled up a bunch of New York strip steaks.  I have slow smoked some beef short ribs for four hours.  I have pretty much run this grill through all of its paces and I like it a lot. I wrote my comprehensive Weber Jumbo Joe Review that provides some greater detail.  This grill is worth owning and displaces both the Smokey Joe Gold and the 18 inch One Touch grills.

Weber kettle grills

I love my Weber kettle grills and am excited to make a new addition to my collection.  I have a 22 inch Platinum, an 18 inch Silver and a Smokey Joe Gold.  They make me very happy!

I learned today that for 2013 Weber is offering the Jumbo Joe!  The Jumbo Joe is the newest incarnation of the Smokey Joe Platinum and is designed specifically for tailgaters.  It is on Amazon for $70 and I am placing my order in the morning.

I have absolutely no need for another Weber kettle but I think it is my patriotic duty to buy one to help stimulate our economy.  When the unemployment rate drops below 7% you can thank me!

Apricot Mustard Glazed Pork Tenderloin

Now this was a tasty little piggy!

This pork tenderloin got a brine bath overnight.  I threw it on the grill naked (the tenderloin, not me) and cooked it over high heat for about 20 minutes.

I made a glaze out of 1 cup of apricot preserves mixed with a heaping tablespoon of Dijon mustard.  I started glazing and turning (to keep the preserves from burning) and grilled until the tenderloin hit an internal temp of 145F.

The potato salad was straight out of the tub by Reissers.  This was a great combination.

This was a very easy cook that looked impressive and tasted great.  This would work great with peach preserves as well.

Shrimp and grits

Hey, I am in Louisana now so I've got to make some shrimp and grits every now and then!  These had been marinated about 30 minutes in a Pineapple Habanero marinade.  I sauteed the little fellas with two tablespoons of butter and the juice of one lime.

Served the shrimp up over a bed af grits and poured the pan sauce over everything.

This was good...very, very good.

I'll get back to eating pig after a while but for now I think I might be able to live off of shrimp and grits!

Agave brined ribs

I have been playing around a lot recently with country style ribs.  I have been pretty good about packing the flavor to these guys but have struggled to get them as tender as I like.

This time around I tried bring the ribs overnight.  I used a brine with 1 pint water, 1/2 cup agave nectar and 2 tablespoons of kosher salt.  They brined overnight.  The next day I dried them off and gave them a solid coating of dry rub as follows:
4 Tbls turbinado sugar
2 tsps chili powder
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp lemon pepper seasoning.

I cooked these ribs for two hours on my Weber kettle until they hit an internal temp around 170F.  I glazed them with some more agave nectar and went to town stuffing my belly!

Life is good these days.

Working on my country style ribs recipe

I have been having a blast recently trying to get better at cooking country style ribs.  I have a great time taking a subject and learning everything I can about it.  I have been smoking, grilling and cooking these guys in crock pots.

I don't have a perfect recipe yet but my ribs are consistently getting better.  I have a batch in a honey brine tonight that I want to put on my smoker in the morning.  If the weather forecast is right and we end up getting a few inches of rain I guess I will try them in the oven instead.

If you have a great recipe or technique for country style ribs I would love to hear from you.  Thanks for dropping by!

Some grilled chicken thighs

I did some reading about how folks do bbq competition style chicken thighs and decided to give something similar to it a try. 

Started by flipping the thigh over and removing the bone with some scissors. After the bone is out trim away any fat deposits, veins, and anything else that doesn't look tasty.

Now that the back of the thigh is completely opened up hit it pretty hard with a dry rub.  Let the rub work its way in for a while then flip it over and rub the skin side.  Here is a good list of recipes for dry rubs that you can make if you don't feel like buying a commercial rub.  If you want to use a commercial dry rub used by the pros then 3 Eyz, Simply Marvelous, Oakridge BBQ and Smokin Guns are all excellent choices.

I grilled these on the top rack of my Genesis 1000LX with the back burner off and the front two burners on medium.  Yeah, I know you can't use a gas grill at a competition.  I was just goofing off and having fun. 

After 40 minutes I started checking the internal temperature of the thighs and I pulled them off the grill at 170F.  Here is what they looked like right before I took them off.

These were really good and still plenty moist even though I didn't brine them.  I know that these are nothing close to true competition chicken thighs.  I didn't scrape the fat from the skin, I didn't use any smoke and I didn't sauce, glaze or inject.  I still had plenty of fun though!

Grilled Sirloin

I had a supply of a good peppery rub on hand and gave it a try on some sirloin. Four minutes per side over high heat on my Weber Genesis.

Dang I enjoyed this guy. It's been months since I had a steak.