Rice Pudding

I unfortunately didn’t take a picture of this one.  But it’s rice pudding, how can you go wrong.  I made this on New Year’s Eve and it was a huge success.  I only slightly modified it from the Ina Garten recipe I watched on Food Network that day.

This is not low calorie in any way, shape or form, but it’s worth it.  Next time you want a treat give this one a try.

Perfect Rice Pudding (serves 6)

3/4 cup white basmati rice
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
5 cups half-and-half
1/2 cup sugar
1 extra-large egg, beaten
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Combine the rice and salt with one and a half cups water in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan. Bring it to a boil, stir once, and simmer, covered, on the lowest heat for 8 to 9 minutes, until most of the water is absorbed.

Stir in four cups of half-and-half and sugar and bring to a boil. Simmer uncovered for 25 minutes, until the rice is very soft. Stir often, particularly toward the end.

Slowly stir in the beaten egg and continue to cook for one minute. Off the heat, add the remaining cup of half-and-half, and the vanilla.  Stir well. Pour into a bowl, and place a piece of plastic wrap directly on top of the pudding to prevent a skin from forming.

Serve warm or chilled.

Read Full Post »

Chicken Fried Hamburgers – Holy Cow

Yes you read it right, Chicken Fried Hamburgers. I found this recipe in Kenny Shopsin’s book, Eat Me. The book is a great read and I recommend that you check it out on Amazon or your favorite local bookstore. There are great stories mixed with recipes from his restaurant in New York.

This past week has been interesting to say the least. We started the week out slow, then got extremely busy and then ended with a crazy catering at a UNR Wolf Pack football game on Saturday. On Tuesday morning we thought the restaurant was going to blow up, burn down or just get sucked into the nether. We were all busy working when we started to smell burning electrical wire. We immediately all started running around the place smelling every piece of equipment. It was a mystery at first and then the power started to flicker on and off.

“Oh crap,” I thought. I’m a pessimist or a realist at best and I was having visions of something burning in the walls. About then one of the employees yelled out that she was pretty sure it was one of the display cases.

We all stuck our noses in the case and agreed something was wrong. Now I started thinking that the brand new compressor I had just recently installed was burning up and I could see the dollar signs mounting. Nancy immediately called our refrigerator guy who asked us a few questions and told us to turn it off after the lunch rush and he would be by at the end of the day. Fortunately when he got there he discovered that it was only the plug thingee where one of the lights plug in. Damage = very little. YAH, this one worked in our favor.

As for the crazy UNR catering. I will tell you this, don’t trust a college student to point you in the right direction and always leave yourself time when you are delivering food. We fortunately gave ourselves more time than we needed, unfortunately we asked many college students for directions. To make a long story short, we rode the elevator up four floors, down three floors, walked halfway around the stadium to the left to only find out that it was a dead end, back to the start, all the way around to the right, dead end again, out the gate, back in the gate, up two stories and then we finally found the skybox. We did get our exercise for the day though!

Okay, on to the recipe. If you like hamburgers and you like grease and you like breading and you want something rich, then this is the way to go. I made the burgers pretty thick, about three quarters of an inch and they took a long time to cook in the oil. Next time, if there is a next time, I will do them a bit smaller than one half of an inch. The outcome was as follows – Nancy ate half and then told me I was crazy. Randy ate one and said they were interesting, but he liked them. Jacob and I ate one and a half each and then proceeded to start frying all kinds of crap while we watched Survivor (24, Survivor, Top Chef and Project Runway are my favorites shows!). If I recall correctly, we deep-fried some popcorn, cheese, peanut butter, bread and a cheese sandwich. Nancy scowled at us from the couch as we stunk up the house.

Chicken-fried Hamburger (makes 6 hamburgers)

Ingredients

• Peanut Oil for deep-frying
• 2 pounds ground beef (15 to 20 percent fat)
• Kosher salt and pepper
• 4 large eggs
• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
• All-purpose flour for dredging
• Hamburger buns
• Your favorite burger accoutrements

Preheat a deep fryer or a large potful of peanut oil over high heat to 375 degrees. Form the meat into six, five to six ounce patties. Season liberally with salt and pepper.

Whisk the eggs and cream together in a shallow bowl. Put the flour in a separate bowl or pie pan. Dredge one of the hamburger patties in the flour and brush off the excess. Dunk the floured patty in the egg and cream mixture, lift, drain and repeat, dumping the patties back in the flour and then back in the egg and cream until you have gone through the process three times.

Carefully place one or two burgers in the oil and repeat with the remaining burgers, being careful not to overcrowd the deep fryer or the pot. Cook the burgers for 4 to 5 minutes until the crust is golden brown. While the burgers are cooking, butter and lightly toast the buns.

Serve them like any other hamburger…don’t forget to take your blood pressure medicine! Devour.

Read Full Post »

Chicken & Nut Stew

Okay, Okay, no picture today. This blog thing is getting in the way of my life! haha

I started to workout again this week and so far so good. Eating good and working hard, well for the past two days at least. We started drawing plans for the interior of the restaurant today and spent a good hour talking with the head architect last night about the place. Things are looking great so far.

I almost decided tonight that I was done blogging, but I’m having too much fun to quit. Though I did disappoint myself with the lack of a picture. I was trying to prepare dinner and watch the debate and Nancy worked late so by the time it all rolled around I just wanted to eat and be done with it.

For those of you who write blogs how often are you discouraged and ready to quit? Help me out!

Okay here is a picture of some cupcakes we just made in the restaurant today. I need something colorful in this post!

This recipe is adapted from the book Cafe Beaujolais, which is where I found the INCREDIBLE recipe for pate a choux gnocchi. If you haven’t checked it out you should for sure. It wasn’t too hard to make and the results were restaurant quality.

Getting back to the Chicken and Nut Stew. The sauce was really good, if you like peanut butter – I do! I didn’t eat much though since I didn’t want my workout to go to waste. I served it over jasmine rice and everyone loved it.

Enjoy and sorry again for the lack of a picture.

Chicken and Nut Stew (serves 4)

Ingredients:

• 2.5 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 medium-sized onions, chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 6 medium-sized tomatoes, chopped
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1/2 (8 oz) pound of smooth peanut butter, almond butter or cashew butter

Season chicken with salt and cayenne pepper. Saute the chicken in a heavy-bottomed dutch oven or large saute pan in olive oil oil with onions and garlic for 15 minutes. Watch to make sure you don’t burn the garlic.

Add tomatoes and saute an additional 5 minutes.

Whisk together nut butter with tomato paste and chicken stock until fully combined. You may try heating the peanut butter in a glass bowl in the microwave for a few seconds to get it soft first. Pour into pan with chicken. Stir constantly for 5 minutes over medium heat. Add salt to taste, temp chicken, looking for 160 degrees, remove from heat and serve over rice.

I made 2 cups of rice which was a perfect amount for the meal. Save the leftover sauce to use with noodles.

Read Full Post »

San Francisco and a Pastitsio

Okay things are not looking too great on the eating good side of things.  I will say though that I haven’t been eating any cereal with half and half or large bags of Peanut M&M’s.  I did sneak a piece of cardamom coffee cake today at the restaurant, but it was a small piece.

I was supposed to start working out this weekend after the trip to San Francisco, where I did in fact eat quite a bit.  I had cupcakes at Kara’s Cupcakes and at Miette. I thought Kara’s were as good as ours and I really liked their cream cheese frosting.  I think Miette’s are a bit dry and both of the times I’ve been there, I’ve been disappointed.

We had a great time on the trip and made a few discoveries in the tons of restaurants we surveyed.  I won’t bore you with all the details except to say if you are in the city and want an awesome place for brunch, you’ll have to wait for 30 to 45 minutes, check out Brenda’s French Soul Food.  The place was awesome, the food was great, staff was super friendly and their beignets are to die for!  Not just regular beignets, but these were stuffed.  One with chocolate, another with Granny Smith apples and cinnamon honey butter and another with Crawfish with cayenne, scallions and cheddar.

The first set of plans for the exterior of the new building are almost done.  I can’t share too much information, but we will have a patio outside with water and a fountain, windows that open to allow the beautiful spring and summer weather in and about 900 square feet of kitchen…10 times our current space.

We did have a scare today when I found out through a third party that the building will be in a specially zoned area because of its proximity to the Reno/Tahoe International Airport.  For about a 1/2 hour we thought we wouldn’t be able to go forward with the concept without some major changes, bad changes, but after doing some research we found out that we were okay after all.

So planning goes on…I actually spent tonight working on our new breakfast and lunch catering menu for the Winter edition.

So on to the Pastitsio.  I love Pastitso.  I often eat it at a local restaurant here in Reno called the Blue Plate.  How can you go wrong?  Meat, cheese, bechamel and pasta!

The meal took some time.  I started around 5:15 or so and I think we ate at 8:00.  This would be great for a weekend or a day you were home early from work.  The meal was excellent.

Pastitsio (makes 10 – 12 portions)

adapted from the cookbook Modern Greek

For the Pasta:

• 1 pound ziti
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 3 tablespoons grated kefalotiri or parmesan cheese
• 1 cup bechamel sauce

For the Pie:

• 2 tablespoons butter, melted
• 5 cups meat sauce
• 3 cups bechamel sauce
• 3 tablespoons breadcrumbs (I used panko)
• 3 tablespoons grated kefalotiri or parmesan cheese

This recipe is all about the order.  Make the meat sauce first.  When you have about 30 minutes left before the meat sauce is done start on the bechamel and start the pasta water.  When you are about 15 minutes from from the meat sauce being done, cook your pasta.

Pasta – Bring a large saucepan of salted water to a boil.  Add the pasta and simmer for 10 minutes or until almost soft.  Drain in a colander and transfer to a large bowl.  Allow to cool and then add the beaten eggs, cheese and bechamel sauce. Toss the pasta until well coated with the mixture.

To Assemble – Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Brush the bottom and sides of a rectangular 9×13 inch baking dish with the melted butter.  Spread a third of the pasta evenly in the dish can cover with half of the meat sauce.  Add another third of the pasta and cover with the remaining meat sauce.  Add another third of the pasta and cover with the remaining meat sauce.  Spread the remaining pasta over the top and spoon on the bechamel sauce, smoothing it over the top.  Sprinkle on the breadcrumbs and cheese.  Make for 40 minutes or until the top is golden brown.  Let rest for 10 minutes before cutting and devouring!

Bechamel:

• 4 cups milk
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/2 teaspoon allspice berries or ground allspice
• 8 tablespoons butter
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 4 tablespoons grated kefalotiri or parmesan cheese
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

Heat the milk, bay leaves and allspice in a saucepan over low heat or in the microwave in a glass bowl.  Don’t let the milk burn.  You are looking for 150 degrees or so.  Melt the butter in another saucepan or saucier, then add the flour and whisk for about 5 minutes until combined.  Slowly ladle or pour, be careful, the hot milk into the flour mixture (discarding the allspice and bay leaves) and whisk constantly until the sauce thickens.  Remove the saucepan from the heat and, when slightly cooled stir in the cheese and nutmeg.  Add salt and pepper to taste. (makes 4 cups)

Meat Sauce:

• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 medium-sized yellow onions, peeled and diced
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 celery stalks, diced
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh flat leaf parsley
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 sprig fresh thyme
• 2 pounds lean ground beef
• 1/2 cup red wine, (drink the rest of the bottle while making this, I did)
• 1 15 ounce can chopped tomatoes
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon allspice
• 2 bay leaves
• Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

Heat 3 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat and saute the onions, garlic, celery, parsley, oregano and thyme for about 5 minutes until softened. Transfer the mixture to a bowl and reserve.

Add the remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil to the saucepan and saute the ground beef, stirring often to break up the pieces, for about 10 minutes until browned.  Add the red wine, tomatoes, tomato paste, cinnamon, allspice, bay leaves, salt and pepper and saute for another 5 minutes. Return the onion, garlic and celery mixture to the saucepan, stir well and simmer the sauce for 45 to 60 minutes or until the sauce has thickened. (Makes 5 cups).

Read Full Post »

Curried Rice with Shrimp

It starts for real today. The architect for the new building met with us today to go over some of our requirements for the new place. Up until this point it was all up in the air, serious, but not super serious.

The economy is in the tank, the stock market fell 500 points today and we are talking about building a new restaurant from the ground up and we don’t even have the money secured yet. No risk, no reward!

We figured out today that the restaurant will be approximately 1,800 square feet with almost half being devoted to the kitchen and storage. Current kitchen = 87 square feet, new kitchen = 900 square feet. I think we will be able to stop turning down business soon.

So tonight I told myself I need to kick it into gear. I need to start working much more on the business planning and complete all of the projects that are out there. I need to engage and reinvent myself for the upcoming 9 to 12 months. Here are my priorities starting right now.

1) Spend more time with my wife, whom I love dearly, away from work so when we are working our ass off and arguing (her words) and debating (my words) in the next year we can realize that it’s only about work. We are going to San Francisco in a few weeks to kick this off.

2) Spend more time with my stepson Randy because he is in the thick of it at the University of Nevada at Reno and needs all the support he can get. Spend more time with my parents in California since they are the reason I’m successful and able to do any of this.

3) Make a new to do list with deadline dates for all of the projects I want to work on and actually do them. Don’t play paintball if I’m not on schedule. Don’t buy any new books or hobby stuff unless I’m on schedule.

4) Get up one hour earlier each day, thank GOD for everything I have, drink a cup of coffee and read something for pleasure so I’m not pissed off that I don’t have as much leisure time.

5) Work out every night regardless of whatever the hell happens, even if I have to stay up until 11:00 to do it.

6) Come up with a comprehensive blueprint for what is working and what is not in the current location so as not to make the same mistakes again.

7) Increase baked good sales by 50% within a three month period! Yeah Joannie is going to like this one. Much of the business plan for the new place calls for a huge increase in baked goods. Why wait?

8) Cook dinner at least 2 times each week and blog about it! Continue to improve my photography skills. The photography part really needs to wait until paintball season is over for the winter and then I can trade out the time.

9) Eat less than 2,000 calories per day, at least 6 days per week. Lose 20 pounds in the next 5 months.

10) Increase the traffic to my blog from the current 500 to 800 visits per day to more than 1,200 per day.

Okay there it is. I think it covers everything that is really, really important for the next 6 months. Let’s see how it goes. How many do you think I can achieve out of the 10 things? Damn, there are so many more important things I need to do as well.

Oh, here is the first pic of the empty lot where the building is going! This corner is the 4th busiest in Reno, there are businesses on all corners with the exception ours. The daytime population in a 5-mile radius is 140,000 people. I only need .00107 of them to come in each day. Should be a cakewalk. Which we will be selling a lot of. Cake. See Nancy’s blog this week!

So what about the recipe? Well, here it is. Of all places I found it in Real Simple Magazine and I would have passed on it, but it had curry in it, which I love right now, and it was also easy. The perfect food for after work.

I made a few adjustments to the original recipe with Nancy’s help to spice it up a bit.

Curried Rice with Shrimp (serves four)

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 2 carrots, chopped – I didn’t have any, the dog ate them
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 3 teaspoons curry powder
• Pinch red pepper flakes – adjust to your level
• 1 cup jasmine rice
• Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
• 1 1/2 pounds of large shrimp, peeled and deveined
• 1/2 cup fresh basil

Heat the oil in a large skillet, with available lid, over medium heat. Add onion and carrot, cook stirring occasionally until soft, 6 to 8 minutes.

Add the garlic and curry, cook, stirring until fragrant about 2 minutes. If it starts to burn, turn down the heat. Cooking the curry activates the spice.

Add rice, 2 1/2 cups of water, 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper,  and pepper flakes. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 15 minutes.

Season the shrimp with 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper. Nestle the shrimp in the partially cooked rice. Cover and cook until the shrimp are opaque throughtout, 5 to 6 minutes. Fold in the basil, this is the best part, and serve right away.

Read Full Post »

White Bean & Chicken Chili / Soup

I’ve been gaining some weight lately.  I can’t really attribute it to the blog or anything in my life.  I just love to eat and have been doing a bit too much lately.  For those of you new to the blog, I’ve lost about 45 pounds in the last year and now I’m in good shape.  I need to maybe lose about 15 more pounds, but I’m mostly happy at this weight.  Everyone who comes into the restaurant who know me well tells me I should be done…I don’t believe them.  I unfortunately can be a perfectionist sometimes and I oftentimes just plain reject compliments.  Oh well, we all have our faults.

This week was fairly slow catering wise – we didn’t have any events for a change and of course it was a short week with the holiday.  The restaurant was fairly busy, but still below my goals.  It was a good week to catch up on things though and we continued to do some organization and deep cleaning.  It’s a funny business.  We are really slow in January, start to pickup up in February, will be pretty busy through May, super busy June, July and August, slow in September and October and then nuts for November and December.  It works out that we make a ton of money for a few months and think, wow lets go buy something or go on a trip, then we have a slow month and the extra money seems to disappear again.  It keeps us on our toes though and Nancy and I have a trip scheduled for San Fran later this month that we are really looking forward to.

We are known around town for our baking and I did have some fun taking pictures for our website this week of a few of the cakes we make.  We did a Red Velvet Cake, our Signature Carrot Cake along with a Pumpkin Spice and Vanilla Layer Cake.  Here are few pics for the fun of it!

So, back to eating too much!  I have and so tonight I decided to cook something simple out of Cooking Light.  I found this recipe in the recent issue and adapted it to meet my needs.

I thought it might be too spicy/hot at first glance, but it turned out perfect.  It reminded me more of a soup though than a traditional chili, but what do I know?  I can tell you though that Jacob never eats any chili I make and he said he really liked this one and in fact went back for seconds which is always the telltale sign that he likes it.

So give it a try and let me know how it goes. I think this might go well as a starter to some brisket or pulled pork or better yet as the main with some corn bread.

Also for those of you who cook a lot or have a food blog…how do you keep your caloric intake down? Especially those of you who bake!

White Bean Chili / Soup (serves 4)

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons canola oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 cups less-sodium, chicken broth
• 5 teaspoons of Tabasco (if you desire a less spicy version lower to 2 teaspoons)
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 1/2 pounds boneless, skinless, chicken breast
• 2 tablespoons cornmeal
• 2 15 oz cans cannellini beans or other white beans, rinsed and drained
• Greek or Plain Yogurt
• 2 tablespoons thinly sliced green onions for garnish
• Lemon wedges from one lemon

Heat oil in a dutch oven over medium heat.  Add chopped onions, cook for five minutes until onions are softened, stirring often.  Add garlic and cook for one more minute, make sure to stir so as not to burn the garlic.

Add chicken broth, Tabasco, salt and the chicken to the dutch oven.  Bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat to low and simmer for 15 minutes. Remove chicken and place on a plate to cool.

Add the cornmeal and beans to the broth.  Using a whisk mix well.  Simmer for another 15 minutes with the lid off.  Mash about one quarter of the beans on the side of the pan.  Shred the chicken with your hands and add to the pan.  Simmer for another five minutes or until the chili thickens, stirring frequently.

Top each serving with yogurt, sprinkle with green onions and serve with lime wedges. Devour!

Read Full Post »

Kansas City Beef Brisket – Slow Barbequed

I seem to have a backlog of recipes to write about. I did fish and chips last week and made some super cool baked eggs, baked in toast. Watch for this one – it was super easy and combined cheese, eggs, toast and bacon, with a bit of cream all in one small muffin-sized package.

First up though is the brisket I smoked on Sunday on the new Weber Smokey Mountain. This is the third brisket I’ve made in the past six months and the most successful. The first version I started on the gas grill and finished it in the oven wrapped in aluminum foil. It was good, but lacked the smoky flavor.

The second version I made on my old charcoal Weber. The idea here was to get more smoke. Somehow, maybe I was sleeping in, I like to sleep in, I started late, about 4 hours later than planned, and didn’t finish it until 10:00pm that night.  My wife now frowns a bit when I start talking about making anything that takes more than 4 or 5 hours.

The rub on this version was perfect and I will share it below. I ended up overcooking the bottom of the brisket when the grill got a bit too hot and I forgot to turn the brisket in the last few hours. It ended up with about 1/4 inch of crust, which tasted great, but was not quite what I was looking for.

The third and last version I did this past weekend. My new smoker was delivered from Amazon last week and on Saturday I pulled it out of the box and put it together (in the family room – thanks, Nancy)!

Once again, I did sleep in this time, I started late, but I figured I had plenty of time to get the brisket done, low and slow.  I filled up bottom of the smoker with a load of fresh charcoal, threw the brisket on the top grill, closed the lid and took a temperature reading….140 degrees! What, no way, has to be wrong.  I’ll wait a bit and see what happens.

15 minutes later, 135 degrees. Oh crap. I throw in another load of charcoal I had working on the side. The temp goes up to 150. Something is wrong, but I have no idea what it is. The smoke is coming out of the thing like clockwork, but the heat is not even close to the 225 I’m looking for.

20 minutes later, 150 degrees still, I thrown more charcoal in, the temp goes up to 175 and then won’t budge. At this point I have enough charcoal in the bottom of the smoker to power a small steam engine. I’m now figuring it has something to do with lack of oxygen, but all the vents are open and things should be going well.

Now I’m starting to think about the bacteria that will start growing on the meat soon if I don’t get the f$%##ing temperature up. Ok, more coals and then more coals. Finally about 75 minutes into it I have the temperature at 225. Ok now, I have some time to think so I head to the Internet to see what I can find out.

Aha, the first picture points out to me that I forgot to the put the charcoal grate down as well as the charcoal chamber. How do I run a restaurant, not sure.  Good employees I guess.  Don’t ask me what I was thinking, but basically the charcoal was getting no airflow. I had it all piled up on the bottom of the smoker! CRAP.

So what to do. Well, I couldn’t handle it, I had to fix it. So I pulled the top and middle section off the grill and then used tongs to relocate the charcoal, fix the grill, put the charcoal back, put the meat back on, and pretty much started all over again. DOH!

Well, what time did we eat you might ask? I was shooting for the brisket to be done at 7:00 and I pulled it off the grill at 9:30. Not so bad, 30 minutes faster than last time. Hahaha. The meat was great and the smoke flavor was perfect. I can’t wait to do some ribs or pork shoulder next!

Here is some helpful info:

• The Virtual Weber Bullet – Great web site will everything you want to know about the Smokey Mountain.
• Pick a brisket that weighs 5 to 6 pounds and has a layer of fat at least 1/4 inch thick. Don’t pick up a small trimmed brisket that has not fat. It will dry out quick.
• If you want smoky flavor, but don’t want to spend all day cooking the brisket, start it on a grill, 250 to 275 degrees, until the internal temperature is 140 to 150 and then finish it in a 325 degree oven, wrapped tightly in heavy duty aluminum foil, for an hour and a half or until the internal temperature is 190 degrees.
• Thinly slice the meat across the grain and make sure to let the meat rest for 20 minutes before cutting.
• If using a gas grill it should be easy to get the temp to 250. You will most likely leave the back burner on med and turn the others off. You will want to make a smoke pouch. You can do this by placing your soaked chips on a sheet of heavy aluminum foil, cover the chips with the foil, making an enclosed pouch. Then poke holes in the top so the smoke can escape. You will place the pack on top of the burner that is producing heat.
• When barbecuing with indirect heat using charcoal you will need to add fresh coals every 45 to 60 minutes to maintain the temperature. In the past I would add unlit briquettes to my coals but I noticed that it took too long for them to burn and put off heat which meant uneven heating. Now instead of emptying the entire charcoal starter of lite coals into the barbecue I leave 3 or 4 at the bottom, then add 10 fresh coals on top and set aside. By the time I need to replace some of the coals in the Weber these coals are ready to go.

Kansas City Brisket (serves 6 to 8)

Recipe adapted from Peace, Love and Barbecue which is a great BBQ Book with recipes and stories!

Ingredients

• 5 to 6 pound Beef Brisket with fat cap of at least 1/4 inch

Rub

• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup dark brown sugar
• 3 tablespoons Lawry’s season salt
• 3 tablespoons garlic salt
• 1/2 cup celery salt
• 1/2 cup onion salt
• 1/4 cup paprika
• 3 tablespoons chili powder
• 1 tablespoon ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon ground sage
• 1 teaspoon mustard powder
• 1 teaspoon ground chipotle powder
• 1/4 teaspoon ground thyme

Mustard Slather

• 4 tablespoons yellow mustard
• 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
• 2 tablespoons good beer

Combine all the rub ingredients and blend well. Set aside. In a bowl, whisk the mustard, vinegar and beer together until incorporated. Set aside.

Coat the brisket with the mustard slather. Season the slathered brisket, liberally, with the rub. Marinate overnight if you have the time. If not don’t stress it.

Smoke the brisket at 225 to 250 degrees for approximately one-and-a-half-hours per pound. Turn the brisket at three hours and then after another one-and-a-half hours.

Start with one cup of wood chips and then 1/2 cup every hour when you add more coals.

Cook to an internal temperature of 190 degrees. Take brisket off grill, tent with heavy duty aluminum foil and let rest for 20 minutes.

Here is the rub from Steven Raichlen.

Steven Raichlen Lean and Mean Texas BBQ Brisket Rub

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons chili powder
• 1 tablespoon coarse salt
• 2 teaspoons black pepper
• 1 1/2 teaspoons garlic salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons brown sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons onion powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/2 to 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Combine them all in a bowl and mix well. Rub the brisket on all sides!

Read Full Post »