I thought I could grill until this thread. I'm clearly a novice. My only trick is putting a can of water inside the grill and slow cook. Wife bought a new grill for us this year. I prefer the one that went to the dumpster. It burns too hot.
Reverse searing steaks, who does it?
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Trichinosis is rare in the US. Different animal feeding practices. So you can grill a pork chop like a steak and be safe. Yeah it is hard to get past the idea of a pink pork chop, so go 135-140 degrees.
Since the 80’s slogan, “Pork, the other white meat.” Breeders started breeding out all the marbling in pork to compete with poultry and they use white hogs to do it. That is what you get at the grocery store. If buy a local hog that is a colored skin hog, the meat is more red colored. More flavor. Still behind on marb
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That stuff is my goto on pork chops.Did a bunch of greek food over memorial day. Including steaks with this seasoning:
Will definitely be doing this again.
While sous vide does make getting tender cuts easier with less risk it does make me feel like I have accomplished something when I can grill, cook, smoke a slab of flesh to its best representation of perfection.
JFC. We eat med rare/med pork all the time. Haven't died yet. It's something people were suppose to believe several years ago. It's just not a thing now. But if you are a weakling cook your pork to a stiff well and enjoy.
So you do like gas or charcoals?? Smoke from wood or charcoal does not necessarily mean smoked meat.
I did give up the offset when it rusted out in favor of a barrel smoker and a kettle grill to save space and have more cooking flexibility. But that means I pretty much have to use charcoal with wood chunks instead of nothing but wood splits.
But I agree, for pure smoking nothing beats 100% real wood.
I am starting to feel uneasy agreeing with you so much. I can agree to these absolutes about cooking the meats. This is what we should be able to embrace about others.
All I know is that I have grilled steaks with direct heat on the egg (dome closed) and they had a wood fired taste. I feel like sometimes I can taste chemicals when using regular briquettes on charcoal Weber, so I generally use the gas Weber.
Pretty sure they are standard ones. Regular kingsford. Use lump charcoal on the egg. Maybe I need to up my charcoal game for the Weber.
I generally only eat pork slow cooked and or in some form where it is highly season and part of another dish.
Like a steak? Never.
That said, sure, my concerns about safety seem to be outdated.
I have mixed feelings about lump...
Pros:
Burns hotter
It's clearly pieces of real wood
Big chunks can burn for a good long time
Cons:
Burns hotter (you don't always want that)
Sometimes I find shit that looks like pieces of pallet wood and crap like that
Half the bag is pulverized dust sometimes, and I've also found rocks
I have probably a few times. Growing up my mother wasn't the best cook when it came to cuts of meat. It was never anything I enjoyed that much. And I never bothered ordering it over what I considered much better cuts of meat at a restaurant. Maybe I'll give it another whirl.
But I do like pork. Growing up in the midwest I've had my fair share of these:
Do you also order a heart attack on the side to go?But I do like pork. Growing up in the midwest I've had my fair share of these:
I agree with this. As another pro for lump, amazingly little ash left behind. Depending on your setup and ash collection and removal, that can be a big deal.
But ultimately, it comes down to inconsistency. Never know what you're going to get...bag full of dust and chips? Bag full of logs and planks you have to break up to fit in your chimney? Bailing twine and nails?
I appreciate the ideal aspects of lump, but I see serious grill people on youtube, and every time they buy a bag of lump, they pour it out and sort it into piles and collate it by size so they can choose from different size groupings depending on their cook, throw out the third of the bag that is unusable chips and crap. I'm pretty serious about my grilling, but that can eff right off. I'm not buying a bag of charcoal (expensive at that if its even decent lump), only to then have to sort it out like halloween candy to figure out which third of the $40 bag goes straight in the garbage, and which huge pieces I need to set aside until I do a pig roast.
And besides the inconsistency of the bags themselves, you simply don't get consistency from cook to cook. A chimney full of Kingsford briquettes ALWAYS takes the same amount of time to be ready, ALWAYS burns at the same temperature, ALWAYS burns for the same amount of time, etc. No surprises EVER.
Lump just isn't consistent because there's too much variation in piece sizes, and air flow because of the various shapes. And you can tell some pieces that look the same are totally different densities.
I'm sure if you have a big smoker where you fill a hopper with 20 pounds of lump...the volume probably evens out the variations...every 20 pounds of the same brand lump probably burns relatively similarly over 16 hours or something. But on a chimney by chimney basis for a family grill session...way to much volatility.
Dealing with that uncertainty just isn't worth the advantages. My go to is the Kingsford Professional at Costco. The price is insanely good when it goes on sale, and I buy the limit to last half the year. It burns hotter and longer (I think) than Kingsford blue, and leaves less than half the ash. But it still has the rock solid consistency you get with Kingsford briquettes.
Maybe it varies by region. Here in Iowa, a big bag of lump might have a small rock or two in it, and there are big pieces and small pieces, but I haven't really noticed it being as bad as you two describe. More importantly, I haven't noticed it affecting the cook on the egg, especially when using indirect heat. If it indeed burns hotter, that just means you need less of it, or you need to adjust/restrict the supply oxygen, which is quite easy to do on an egg or other kamodo style unit. Not sure why that is considered to be a bad thing...
I'll throw this out there while we're on a grilling thread.
Sometimes we talk about charcoal starters. I've always hated using newspaper because the ash left behind, and a lot of the wood based starters like tumbleweeds smoke more than I like. My go-to has always been the weber parrafin cubes. Perfect every time. However, it requires a trip to home depot or lowes to get them when I'm out.
Saw this suggested on a forum, and it's been rock solid to me. Fill up a mason jar with cotton balls, and then soak them down with rubbing alcohol, as much as they will soak up before you have the alcohol gathering at the bottom of the jar, and cap it off. Much cheaper fire starters, and you can get the stuff at any grocery or drug store.
I've been using the alcohol soaked cotton balls now for a while, and they work great. They essentially work exactly like the weber parrafin cubes if not better. Two of them under my chimney always takes care of it and leaves nothing behind.
I've seen versions using vaseline instead of rubbing alcohol, but with how good the alcohol ones work, I don't have any interest in the extra mess of dealing with vaseline.
Sometimes we talk about charcoal starters. I've always hated using newspaper because the ash left behind, and a lot of the wood based starters like tumbleweeds smoke more than I like. My go-to has always been the weber parrafin cubes. Perfect every time. However, it requires a trip to home depot or lowes to get them when I'm out.
Saw this suggested on a forum, and it's been rock solid to me. Fill up a mason jar with cotton balls, and then soak them down with rubbing alcohol, as much as they will soak up before you have the alcohol gathering at the bottom of the jar, and cap it off. Much cheaper fire starters, and you can get the stuff at any grocery or drug store.
I've been using the alcohol soaked cotton balls now for a while, and they work great. They essentially work exactly like the weber parrafin cubes if not better. Two of them under my chimney always takes care of it and leaves nothing behind.
I've seen versions using vaseline instead of rubbing alcohol, but with how good the alcohol ones work, I don't have any interest in the extra mess of dealing with vaseline.
I would probably use more often on an egg, where the entire process is managed by the extremely precise airflow, and that it's not really built for two zone cooking or a variety of different charcoal setups. Plus I would want the least ash possible to clean up in a kamado.
And at least you're getting a consistent source. I've just bought one too many expensive bags of lump that pissed me off with too many chips, or pieces too big to fit in a chimney.
If you think this is overkill, wait until my son goes off to college this fall. My only other kid will be a sophomore in high school and is a diligent student who doesn't play sports, so I will have way too much time on my hands. I imagine lots of grilling and lots of golf are in my future.
