Grilling, Smoking, BBQ, etc. WAYCT (What Are You Cooking Today) Outdoor Edition
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I like the outside of a steak to be dry so that the sear creates a crust. In fact, I dry brine overnight uncovered in the fridge and cook the next day after the surface has dried out to support better browning (either low and slow / reverse sear or forward sear depending upon the size of the cut). Liquid is the enemy of browning and crust. I would spray or mop apple juice on pork but I would not do that to a steak; that's just my personal preference.
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Gorgeous, @seawolf Looks absolutely perfect. Great bark, smoke ring, and the meat looks moist. What did you do?
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They look immense @seawolf fair play
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Honestly my experience with spraying is that it adds nothing other than moisture, however I can't bring myself to just spray water. Lordy I love smokin' meats
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Whenever I try something new,I just do one thing,and the first time I sprayed it made a distinctly positive difference. @LewisStonehouse You ever watch any of Aaron Franklin’s videos?
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Yeah well aware of Aaron Franklin, read the Franklin BBQ book several times and learned a great deal. Spraying definitely makes a difference, my experience has just been that what you spray it with doesn't make a great deal of difference because you're just avoiding the outside of the meat getting too overcooked and dry. I've never actually sprayed with water, but doubt it would be much different. There's just a mental block (me included) of spraying with something devoid of flavour, even though we know it doesn't add any flavour
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I’ve also had some BBQ mental blocks,spraying being one of them and wrapping…AKA The Texas Crutch being the other. I’ve since starting doing both with much improved results. I don’t have a proper offset smoker,I cook with a PK360,which allows me to do 2 zone cooking. I spend the extra money,and go to a butcher,as opposed to buying supermarket meat,which I think, has helped me elevate my game as well.
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I cook with a kamado, and I've learned to not do x.y,z at whatever time, but to go by feel and by the temp. So I spray when it looks dry, I wrap (with pink butchers paper) when it stalls. I've never cooked anything disastrous. I have also found that getting quality meat makes a significant difference
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Thinking about it the hard bit of bbq has nothing to do with meat/seasoning/cooking, it's building/maintaining a fire that gives a consistent(ish) temp and clean smoke
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@Jett129 oh man, that sounds like an invite I'll have to take up - thank you. If I do it I'll try and make it work to stick a roll of pink butcher paper in the suitcase, but as you know space and weight limits for suitcases is tricky in our game
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Texas as a starting point for me, but I quite often get experimental
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I like a mop (spray) mixture of apple cider vinegar and root beer. It's the ONLY place soda has entered my life in like the last 20 years or so…
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The spray don't spray is more a mental exercise in my opinion. Try doing one cut with spray and one cut without and see if it makes a difference on the same cook. The most important thing is the meat. If it has a lot of fat, it will stay moist.
Adding a bowl of water can help during long cooks because kettle bbq's tend to lose more air moisture because they have a higher airflow, on kamado's however I don't never bother.
When I give a basics course, I always say; keep it simple, stupid. Don't overdo because in the end, if it doesn't turn out the way you want it, you have no idea what you did wrong.
Learn to control you bbq temp, learn to season, and learn to let go and stop obsessing :).
If it turns out to dry, add water to the bbq. If it’s still dry, try wrapping. If its still try, maybe spray a little but I would never recommend it. Each time you open the lid to spray, you let all the moist air out and that has to build back up, using the same liquid you just added to the mix.
now about steak:
My perfect steak is a reverse sear. Seasoning is only fine kitchen salt to start, this helps create a bark. I start at 95 or so and let the steak sit indirect until I get the internal temp I want. It depends greatly on the type and cut of meat. usually, the more fat, the higher but I never go beyond 52°C :). Then I let it rest a long time (20min or more) in a thermal container, I don't ever do aluminum foil because it destroys the bark.
In the end I sear either over direct flame or in a skillet. I've used butter, oil, mayonnaise… the thing that works best is Wagyu beef fat
Also, people that inject steak with brine or applejuice or whatever, should be shot!
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now about steak:
My perfect steak is a reverse sear. Seasoning is only fine kitchen salt to start, this helps create a bark. I start at 95 or so and let the steak sit indirect until I get the internal temp I want. It depends greatly on the type and cut of meat. usually, the more fat, the higher but I never go beyond 52°C :). Then I let it rest a long time (20min or more) in a thermal container, I don't ever do aluminum foil because it destroys the bark.
In the end I sear either over direct flame or in a skillet. I've used butter, oil, mayonnaise… the thing that works best is Wagyu beef fat
Also, people that inject steak with brine or applejuice or whatever, should be shot!
@scarfmace I cook steak using exactly the same method
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