I smoked a couple of pork butts a few weeks ago and decided to make some Pulled Pork Chili out of some of it. This kind of chili was something I had never tried but it turned out pretty tasty! This is what I started out with.
and here is what it looked like after adding some tomato sauce, Ranch Style beans and chili seasonings. The bowl was topped with fresh green onion and grated cheddar cheese. It was served with fresh peppers and some grilled beer bread.
Yesterday was another bachelor day for me. The wife and kids were out of town for a couple of football games and I was on call for the week end. My thoughts, while at the grocery store that morning, were to smoke a meatloaf. So I bought a small, 1.32#, package of 97% lean ground beef and a couple of 1# rolls of Jimmy Dean regular sausage, with the intent of cooking a meatloaf and a stuffed fatty of some sort.
As luck would have it, I received a call while at the store and had to go to work for a couple of hours to repair a small Internet outage. By the time I got back home, I was HUNGRY and didn’t want to take the time to fire up the smoker. My mind was set on meatloaf though. So I mixed about 1/2# of the ground beef with about 1/3# of Jimmy Dean sausage, added some diced onion, one egg, some oatmeal flakes, a dash of worchestershire sauce, sea salt, black pepper and some catsup. The mix was formed into two patties and put on the gas grill with some onion slices covered with EVOO and a dash of black pepper. 
While these were on the grill, I heated up a small cast iron skillet with some new canola oil and started some tater tots, sliced one of the deli fresh onion rolls I bought at the store and got my plate ready to go. Ya have to remember, I was HUNGRY earlier so I was past that point by now. If I had not been so hungry, I would have toasted or grilled the bun after slicing it. here are a couple of pictures of the final product. Meatloaf Burger and Tots.
I nearly always throw on a fatty or two when i fire up the smoker to cook something. Fatties are easy to put together and cook quickly.
For this one, I flattened one pound of pork sausage then added some left over pulled pork, chopped onions and pepper jack cheese. Then applied a liberal coating of my homemade rub before rolling it up.
Here they are on the smoker along with a London Broil. The fatty in the foreground is not stuffed, but it was coated with a mixture of brown sugar, ground ginger and a touch of cayenne pepper for some added kick.
Here is the finished pulled pork stuffed fatty after the first round of taste testing……
And here are some slices of both fatties.
This was the first cook on my new Pro Q Smoker and it was a very long one. Twenty one hours to be exact. But the finished product was worth the wait. The culprit in this 21 hour cook was this stubborn 8# pork butt.
I gave it a heavy mustard slather and coated it liberally with my home made rub before putting it on the smoker with some cherry wood for smoke. It needs to reach an internal temp of about 200 degrees for pulling, but the darn thing hung at 150 degrees or so for hours and hours.
Finally, the beast is done and ready to go in the cooler to bring it back down to about 160 degrees before pulling.
This pulled pork sandwich, with my home made sauce, was well worth the wait!
Here’s a tasty recipe for appetizers that I found on the BBQ Brethren Forum.
You start with some packaged meat balls, or you can get creative and make your own. Wrap them with bacon and season with a rub of your choosing. Smoke or grill until done.
We started with a 3# Rib Eye Roast seasoned only with sea salt, black pepper and Jim Baldridge’s “Secret Seasoning.”
The gas grill was heated to a high heat and the seasoned roast was put on to sear both sides of the meat.
The roast was brought to an internal temp of 150 degrees over indirect heat on the grill. Once pulled, it was allowed to “rest” for about 30 minutes before slicing.
The meat had a wonderful flavor and texture & could possibly be the best Rib Eye I ever tasted. It was served with twice baked potatoes, fresh corn, ABT’s and moink balls.
Chicken breast strips marinated in Caribbean Jerk sauce are rolled around fresh pineapple, jalapeno strips, pepper jack cheese and hot & spicy bratwurst chunks then rolled in bacon before grilling.
I decided to cook something on skewers today and came up with the idea to use some smoked sausage, green and red bell pepper, fresh pineapple, fresh pitted cherries, onion and carrots that we had on hand.
After preparing all the ingredients, I put them on the metal skewers, laid them on a hot grill and sprinkled them with a mixture of brown sugar, ground ginger and a touch of ground cayenne pepper. They cooked pretty fast and were turned frequently.
They were served with some coconut ginger rice noodles, spiced peaches and spiced apples. The flavor was incredible!
I finally got around to trying a bacon weave today. It started with maple bacon, Jimmy Dean maple sausage, ham chunks from a twice smoked ham, frozen hash browns and some chopped onions.
After flattening and shaping the sausage I added some chopped onions, hash browns and chunked ham. Then it was dusted with black pepper.
Next the maple bacon was woven on to the top and dusted with a mixture of brown sugar, ground ginger and ground cayenne pepper.
In the smoker for a little over two hours at 275 and here’s the finished product.
I bought a new meat grinder recently and decided today that it was time for some ground round burgers. A 4# bottom round roast was cut into approximately 1″ chunks and put in the freezer for a few minutes to chill along with the new grinder.
After running the meat through the grinder for the first time, I added one package of McCormick Onion Gravy Mix and ran it all through for the second time.
Next, I added some chopped onion, minced garlic, sea salt, Famous Dave’s Steak and Burger Seasoning and a little Sticky Pig BBQ Sauce and mixed it all up to make the 1/2 pound patties. These went on the gas smoker along with some hickory chips at about 250 degrees until they were near done. Then some were topped with pepper jack cheese and another with American cheese to suit the tastes of my family.
Onion buns were spread with a butter garlic spread and toasted on the gas grill. The toasted buns were then applied a thin layer of Sticky Pig Mustard Sauce, some fresh lettuce and a dollop of guacamole dip and served with a hot garlic dill pickle and corn chips.
Along with the Becks they went down really well!