A barbecue adventure, the saga unfolds.

Matthew said:
For us low and slow old-timers, getting pork butt turned in at 1pm means we start it at midnight or even earlier. Then we grab a chair or cot and take a nap, getting up to monitor temps as needed. That's some good times!
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Now you've got me curious. Are there any rules in the competitions regarding technology? Can you use a smoker that has electronics that keep its temperature automatically? If not, can you use a recording thermometer of any sort?

This got me thinking about a pork tenderloin that I grilled the other day. First time I've done that, my wife buys them a lot and always just cooks them in a pan in the oven. I've always thought they were "okay" but they tend to be a bit on the boring or even slightly dry side. But the other day she was off somewhere with the kids and called me to ask me to cook one, so I fired up the grill...

I have a Meater Plus temp probe that I've had good luck with, even with things I thought I was cooking correctly it has made me better, and it's nice to be able to get an idea of how long something will take to cook (I'm constantly getting asked that almost every time and answers with "about" in them aren't accepted :rofl:), and what the temps are inside the grill and in the meat.

It's also interesting to see the temp graph, and I would imagine that seeing these trends could be really helpful in a bbq competition. FWIW, it was probably the best pork tenderloin I've had, much more flavorful and juicy than normal (don't tell my beautiful bride) even though the temp did overshoot the target while resting:

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flyingcheesehead said:
Now you've got me curious. Are there any rules in the competitions regarding technology? Can you use a smoker that has electronics that keep its temperature automatically? If not, can you use a recording thermometer of any sort?

This got me thinking about a pork tenderloin that I grilled the other day. First time I've done that, my wife buys them a lot and always just cooks them in a pan in the oven. I've always thought they were "okay" but they tend to be a bit on the boring or even slightly dry side. But the other day she was off somewhere with the kids and called me to ask me to cook one, so I fired up the grill...

I have a Meater Plus temp probe that I've had good luck with, even with things I thought I was cooking correctly it has made me better, and it's nice to be able to get an idea of how long something will take to cook (I'm constantly getting asked that almost every time and answers with "about" in them aren't accepted :rofl:), and what the temps are inside the grill and in the meat.

It's also interesting to see the temp graph, and I would imagine that seeing these trends could be really helpful in a bbq competition. FWIW, it was probably the best pork tenderloin I've had, much more flavorful and juicy than normal (don't tell my beautiful bride) even though the temp did overshoot the target while resting:

View attachment 144194
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I don’t know about the rules for other bbq societies, just the KCBS. KCBS allows for wood, pellets, and charcoal. So pellet grills are allowed, that means that temp controlling devices are allowed. Years ago temp controls were prohibited. Once pellet grills became popular, KCBS rules were modified. Pellets are compressed wood, and wood is allowed, so pellet grills are allowed.

Absolutely temp probes are allowed. It wouldn’t be a contest if you didn’t hear the alarms beeping all the time. Most people, me included, like the Thermoworks products. They are rock solid, and we use them hard. Fireboard products seem to to have a good reputation, but I really don’t know anything about them. Thermopro is a brand I used for a long time, kind of a budget brand, but the probes worked well for me. They just don’t seem to be built for the hard use and handling they get at a contest.

Meaters are great. One of my teammates has a 4-pack. I haven’t used them enough to be familiar with the wireless connection and still haven’t figured out how to connect them to my phone when there’s no network connection. He’s less network savvy than I am. At a contest there’s typically no wifi. We’d use them if we could. Sure, wireless probes are allowed.

As far as pork loins: I like cooking them at home. I’ll get a whole loin, remove the silverskin, rub with a light layer of yellow mustard, then coat with rib rub. The mustard adds some flavor but mainly allows the rub to stick. My preferred internal temp is 137. Pull it, then cover it with foil and let it rest. It will be awesome. I will cut a bunch of thin slices for sandwiches and thick slices for smoked loin chops.

Edit: I forgot to add - I know you cooked a pork tenderloin, not a loin. Try pulling it at a lower temp. We call pork tenderloin “pig candy”.

Here’s a temp chart I use:

 
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Matthew said:
Edit: I forgot to add - I know you cooked a pork tenderloin, not a loin. Try pulling it at a lower temp. We call pork tenderloin “pig candy”.

Here’s a temp chart I use:

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Interesting. I can see how that fits, but I've always heard 'pig candy' to refer to the most excellent appetizers made from bacon.

https://www.virtualweberbullet.com/pig-candy-candied-bacon/

That's but one recipe; I always brush mine first with maple syrup, both for the flavor and to make the brown sugar stick better. The light dusting of cayenne is important to balance the sweetness. This stuff is really good.
 
GaryM said:
Interesting. I can see how that fits, but I've always heard 'pig candy' to refer to the most excellent appetizers made from bacon.

https://www.virtualweberbullet.com/pig-candy-candied-bacon/

That's but one recipe; I always brush mine first with maple syrup, both for the flavor and to make the brown sugar stick better. The light dusting of cayenne is important to balance the sweetness. This stuff is really good.
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Welp, that’s also pig candy. You should try pork belly burnt ends, that qualifies, too

I do something similar to your bacon recipe when I’m the first one up in the morning and I already am tagged to be the one to make the family breakfast like Thanksgiving or Christmas. It gives me something to do while I sip on my holiday coffee and wait for everyone else.

A couple years ago I was working a bbq contest at Copper Mountain, CO. There was a dessert category. One team turned in a plain box, no garnish. Inside were 6 thick slices of candied bacon and six shot glasses of some really fine bourbon. That was a big hit with the judges.
 
Matthew said:
…when I’m the first one up in the morning and I already am tagged to be the one to make the family breakfast like Thanksgiving or Christmas...
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I lean towards biscuits, fatties, and Bloody Marys.
 
TCABM said:
I lean towards biscuits, fatties, and Bloody Marys.
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My house generally requests biscuits and gravy for those occasions. But chef is usually the first one up, feeds the cat, and starts the coffee. So I might as well enjoy the peace and solitude with an Irish coffee or three, and make up a batch of candied bacon for an appetizer. It's a bonus if the smell doesn't wake anyone else, since that means it's more for me.
 
Matthew said:
Most people, me included, like the Thermoworks products. They are rock solid, and we use them hard. Fireboard products seem to to have a good reputation, but I really don’t know anything about them. Thermopro is a brand I used for a long time, kind of a budget brand, but the probes worked well for me. They just don’t seem to be built for the hard use and handling they get at a contest.

Meaters are great. One of my teammates has a 4-pack. I haven’t used them enough to be familiar with the wireless connection and still haven’t figured out how to connect them to my phone when there’s no network connection. He’s less network savvy than I am. At a contest there’s typically no wifi. We’d use them if we could. Sure, wireless probes are allowed.
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I bought a Meater 2-pack last fall, and after 3 consecutive cooks (including one Christmas Day prime rib) where I got burned for 30+ mins trying to get the stupid things to connect, I said forget it and sent them back for a refund. Probably some level of operator error, but it shouldn't require troubleshooting every single time you want to go cook, IMO. Bought a 4 pack of the (at the time new) Thermoworks RFX probes and have been very pleased ever since. No issues connecting ever, and I can be on the other side of my property with a house in between, and still connected to them. No fancy app like Meater has with predictive cook times (which were optimistic until they weren't), but ambient temp probes and meat probes report with no fuss. As you can probably tell, I'm not a fan of Meater, and id regard them more in line with Instagram/Youtube peddled crap, than I would a real company like Thermoworks. But to their credit, once they figured out that I was not interested in a replacement and was forever done with their products, they were fairly efficient and professional with the return/refund process. It was almost as if they'd done it a few times :)
 
35 AoA said:
I bought a Meater 2-pack last fall, and after 3 consecutive cooks (including one Christmas Day prime rib) where I got burned for 30+ mins trying to get the stupid things to connect, I said forget it and sent them back for a refund. Probably some level of operator error, but it shouldn't require troubleshooting every single time you want to go cook, IMO. Bought a 4 pack of the (at the time new) Thermoworks RFX probes and have been very pleased ever since. No issues connecting ever, and I can be on the other side of my property with a house in between, and still connected to them. No fancy app like Meater has with predictive cook times (which were optimistic until they weren't), but ambient temp probes and meat probes report with no fuss. As you can probably tell, I'm not a fan of Meater, and id regard them more in line with Instagram/Youtube peddled crap, than I would a real company like Thermoworks. But to their credit, once they figured out that I was not interested in a replacement and was forever done with their products, they were fairly efficient and professional with the return/refund process. It was almost as if they'd done it a few times :)
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Meater was one of the first wireless probes. It was one of those crowd funded things and was vaporware for quite a few years. The hard part is keeping the battery and electronics from cooking. The 4-pack is supposed to somehow connect to the base station and the base station connects to your network. My friend’s place has a detached steel shop where he keeps his smoker. That shop is far enough away from his house he can’t get a wifi signal. Meater user interface on the base station is pretty hard to use and their online docs don’t seem to help me very much.

I’ve been able to get the base station to connect to the probes and display temps but never to the phone app. At contests there’s no wifi so you lose any hoped for advantage.

My Thermoworks with the two wired probes and remote display gets a lot of use at my house and at contests. At contests you really don’t need something with a lot of range or a remote display since you are usually within a few feet of the smoker the whole time.
 
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See ya in a couple hours.
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asicer said:
That desk looks like there's a good story behind it.
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It cost one dollar - a surplus purchase from the Ampex corporation sold direct from their HQ building in 1989. Ampex originally made the reel to reel tape recorders used in the television industry for airing commercials, but now they appear to make data recorders.

Scored a metal filing cabinet too.
 
Tasty looking chicken.

Is your cat qualified to eat chicken bones? Many are not, ours were.

You eat a lot of chicken, and the cat seems well fed...
 
No, unqualified on bones. But he generally prefers tri tip, raw. He's not fat at all, but he is big. He weighs like 25 pounds. I think he might be a puma instead of a housecat.
 
Technically, it isn't BBQ: But I have a nice tri-tip getting ready for a reverse sear. I made a very nice pico de gallo for a side salad. I also have baked beans ready to go, and a bottle of nice looking wine. I'm not a wine snob, but I like a nice one...I just don't know what's good or not. My local liquor store has a wide enough selection, but I could spend hours looking up reviews, so I sort of close my eyes and pick something that isn't too cheap or too expensive and hope for the best. I got a pinot noir for tonight.

One of the guys on my former BBQ team works at the meat counter at a local grocery store. I don't normally buy my meat there, they don't always have the best prices, but I really should go there more often. I went to the place where I normally buy tri-tips but they didn't have any, so I went to my buddy's place. He wasn't working that afternoon, so I got the "kid". I got a nice looking tri-tip, then I was going to trim off the silver-skin and anything else that needed to go and I realized that had already been done. Huzzah!

We have a 40th anniversary coming up in a couple weeks, so this is a nice warm-up.

Now I'm taking a Blue Board break for a minute before I make a herb butter and start the roast.

Life is good.
 
It never hurts to tip the meat cutter, if you have access to a grocery store that cuts up primals or better yet a butcher shop, and go there regularly around the same time schedule, asking them for a “good” piece of a cut and if it is, tipping them the next time you see them and soon they will “set aside” the great cuts for you. Not all cows/cuts are the same..
 
Flatiowa said:
It never hurts to tip the meat cutter, if you have access to a grocery store that cuts up primals or better yet a butcher shop, and go there regularly around the same time schedule, asking them for a “good” piece of a cut and if it is, tipping them the next time you see them and soon they will “set aside” the great cuts for you. Not all cows/cuts are the same..
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Oh, I’ve had plenty of times where I’ve been invited in the back to pick out exactly what I want.

Ok, so before anyone says I failed: I pulled it at 125, but the resting carryover brought the thin end to the medium side. I get to eat my failures. The larger side was med rare.

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Matthew said:
Oh, I’ve had plenty of times where I’ve been invited in the back to pick out exactly what I want.

Ok, so before anyone says I failed: I pulled it at 125, but the resting carryover brought the thin end to the medium side. I get to eat my failures. The larger side was med rare.

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It's tough to judge sometimes, because you tend to end up with too rare on the big end, or too done on the small end. If it's too rare, it's tough and chewy, and it it's too done, it's dry and chewy.

Tonight will be the mother of all NY strips - I scored a 2.25 pounder.
 
Sac Arrow said:
It's tough to judge sometimes, because you tend to end up with too rare on the big end, or too done on the small end. If it's too rare, it's tough and chewy, and it it's too done, it's dry and chewy.

Tonight will be the mother of all NY strips - I scored a 2.25 pounder.
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gfhbd.jpeg

I got a whole strip loin on sale the other day. Meat guy cut it into 1.25” steaks for me. I got about 12-14 of them. They are big enough for us to split one. We’re into strips for a while.

By the way: around here NY strips are called KC strips.
 
Matthew said:
I don’t know about the rules for other bbq societies, just the KCBS. KCBS allows for wood, pellets, and charcoal. So pellet grills are allowed, that means that temp controlling devices are allowed. Years ago temp controls were prohibited. Once pellet grills became popular, KCBS rules were modified. Pellets are compressed wood, and wood is allowed, so pellet grills are allowed.

Absolutely temp probes are allowed. It wouldn’t be a contest if you didn’t hear the alarms beeping all the time.
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Cool. I'm sure there's probably still some purists complaining somewhere, but if the goal is to cook something well, there's still art to it even if you use tech.

Matthew said:
Meaters are great. One of my teammates has a 4-pack. I haven’t used them enough to be familiar with the wireless connection and still haven’t figured out how to connect them to my phone when there’s no network connection. He’s less network savvy than I am. At a contest there’s typically no wifi. We’d use them if we could. Sure, wireless probes are allowed.
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They use Bluetooth, so no WiFi network is required. The newest multi-probe ones also have WiFi if it's available.

Matthew said:
As far as pork loins: I like cooking them at home. I’ll get a whole loin, remove the silverskin, rub with a light layer of yellow mustard, then coat with rib rub. The mustard adds some flavor but mainly allows the rub to stick. My preferred internal temp is 137. Pull it, then cover it with foil and let it rest. It will be awesome. I will cut a bunch of thin slices for sandwiches and thick slices for smoked loin chops.

Edit: I forgot to add - I know you cooked a pork tenderloin, not a loin. Try pulling it at a lower temp. We call pork tenderloin “pig candy”.

Here’s a temp chart I use:

Click to expand...
Thanks for the tips, will definitely be giving them a try!

35 AoA said:
I bought a Meater 2-pack last fall, and after 3 consecutive cooks (including one Christmas Day prime rib) where I got burned for 30+ mins trying to get the stupid things to connect, I said forget it and sent them back for a refund. Probably some level of operator error, but it shouldn't require troubleshooting every single time you want to go cook, IMO.
Click to expand...
Interesting to read of the problems people have had with the Meater. Mine's been flawless. I generally light the grill and when I go back in to grab the meat I pull it out, stick the probe in the meat, open up the app on my phone to tell it what I'm cooking, and in 30 seconds I'm good to go.

Matthew said:
Meater was one of the first wireless probes. It was one of those crowd funded things and was vaporware for quite a few years. The hard part is keeping the battery and electronics from cooking.
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That's the biggest issue I have - I frequently get max temp warnings from it and sometimes need to crack the grill lid significantly to keep it from overheating. I have the Meater Plus, which has a max temp of 527ºF; the newer Meater Pro can go up to 1000º.
 
Matthew said:
As far as pork loins: I like cooking them at home. I’ll get a whole loin, remove the silverskin, rub with a light layer of yellow mustard, then coat with rib rub. The mustard adds some flavor but mainly allows the rub to stick. My preferred internal temp is 137. Pull it, then cover it with foil and let it rest. It will be awesome. I will cut a bunch of thin slices for sandwiches and thick slices for smoked loin chops.

Edit: I forgot to add - I know you cooked a pork tenderloin, not a loin. Try pulling it at a lower temp. We call pork tenderloin “pig candy”.
Click to expand...
Are you doing that with a heritage pig such as Duroc or Berkshire? Or is it simply commodity pork?
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Cool. I'm sure there's probably still some purists complaining somewhere, but if the goal is to cook something well, there's still art to it even if you use tech.


They use Bluetooth, so no WiFi network is required. The newest multi-probe ones also have WiFi if it's available.


Thanks for the tips, will definitely be giving them a try!


Interesting to read of the problems people have had with the Meater. Mine's been flawless. I generally light the grill and when I go back in to grab the meat I pull it out, stick the probe in the meat, open up the app on my phone to tell it what I'm cooking, and in 30 seconds I'm good to go.


That's the biggest issue I have - I frequently get max temp warnings from it and sometimes need to crack the grill lid significantly to keep it from overheating. I have the Meater Plus, which has a max temp of 527ºF; the newer Meater Pro can go up to 1000º.
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I’ll have to borrow my buddy’s Meater 4-pack someday and sit down with it until I figure it out. I just haven’t had the time to work it out. And I will have to do it purely with Bluetooth to take Wifi out of the equation. It’s been a while but I think I was able to get the probes to talk to the base unit, but I don’t think I could get a good connection to my phone.

Let me know how the pork loin works out. There’s at least one BBQ society that has a pork loin category. I don’t get it. The loin is so lean and mild, the only real flavor you get is from rubs and sauces. And they cook so quickly it doesn’t take a lot of effort.

I like cooking pork loins, but they are really not challenging enough for a contest.
 
asicer said:
Are you doing that with a heritage pig such as Duroc or Berkshire? Or is it simply commodity pork?
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For loins at home? I get whatever Sam’s carries.

Some heavy competition teams do get heritage breed butts. But around here there are no pork loin competitions so it’s really hard to find anything special.
 
I've run the smoker twice in the last week. For Labor Day it was chicken...two whole beer can chickens (one to carve, one to pull) plus 2.5 lbs of wings.

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Two days ago it was a Malcolm Reed recipe...hot Italian sausage stuffed with a mozzarella stick and wrapped in bacon. Now I've gotta get back to eating salads for a few days as penance
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GaryM said:
I've run the smoker twice in the last week. For Labor Day it was chicken...two whole beer can chickens (one to carve, one to pull) plus 2.5 lbs of wings.

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Two days ago it was a Malcolm Reed recipe...hot Italian sausage stuffed with a mozzarella stick and wrapped in bacon. Now I've gotta get back to eating salads for a few days as penance
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View attachment 144864
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I’m going to try the sausage and cheese idea the next chance I get.

I’ve had good success with wrapping a chunk of cheese inside a sausage ball, sort of like a stuffed meatball, just not quite like your recipe.

Edit: I looked more closely, I see you left the casing on after you stuffed the link. Have you tried with and without and noticed any difference?
 
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