Smoking
Part of the fun of my own blog is that I get to put what I want on it....on nice summer days, when it's not to hot - IOW, early in the morning, it's really fun to smoke some meat! Personally, I'm not very good at this, but I do know what smells good and looks even better. And most people who have received the benefits of this, have raved about how excellent it tastes, as I'm a vegetarian and rarely eat meat. But this is such a beautiful process that it's fun to watch....and smell while it's cooking!
One caveat - this is not a definitive tutorial on smoking - this is only a documentary...as I haven't got the slightest idea about smoking - just that it's fun to watch and smell!!!
The first thing is to get a good piece of meat - my friend loves the meat at Sam's and so he's trying a whole loin pork cut - how can you go wrong with this.
This is a great piece of meat, but it needs some work. First is to remove a lot of the fat and tendons - tendons are the tough part of the loin. Take a fillet knife and slice it just under the tendons and then pull with the other hand and they will slice right off.
This is what the loin should look like.
Next you want to shake a rub onto the meat and wrap it in foil and let it soak in overnight in the fridge. Start your fire in your smoker - which can be a grill with one section blocked off for fire & smoking the other section for the meat. Here the smoking section is on the left. Start your fire with a few coals, and have your pecan, hickory, cherry or piñon wood soaking and ready to put on your fire. Take your meat out of the fridge and place on the grill section.
It should look like this - smoking chamber off to the left, and the meat smoking on the right. Here a few more coals are added for heat, with some wood chips (hickory here) are added to continue the smoking and the lid closed.
The temp shouldn't go over about 225° to 250° - it does sometimes, but you want to bring it back down when it does
Omigoodness - isn't this looking just slightly yummy?!!! I can't wait.
OK have to wait which takes about 3 to 4 hours - depending upon what the meat thermometer says except that a little testing and looking isn't all bad:
The best way to test is just slice it open
The final test is if it's tender enough to cut with a fork....it is - it's done!
The sure sign of great smoking is the pink rim around the edge of the smoked meat - these are called the ketones and aldehydes, which I'm not sure what they do with smoking except that they're supposed to be there and it's a sign of great smoked meats!!!
You can use this same method with turkey, baby back ribs - we haven't tried it yet with beef tenderloin but think it would work swell....at least it smells and tastes wonderful - I've had the turkey before and it's very, very yummy. My family swears by the ribs and tenderloin and my nephew is totally beholding to me over this smoked meat - that says it all right there!
