Steaks on the Santa Maria

 It’s almost an unwritten law in the central coast that your Santa Maria grills are for Tri Tip only. But because red oak is so flavorful on meats we needed to do more. So we chose New York Steaks, and boy were we glad that we did!

Nothing beats the taste of a steak cooked over an open fire.  So to begin we headed to Costco to pick up some steaks. We narrowed our choice down to either NY or Rib Eye. Now if I were only doing a couple of steaks the choice is simple, Rib Eye all the way. A good Rib Eye is probably my favorite cut, I could eat it everyday, except then my cardiologist would probably string me up by my thumbs! 

The first rule in picking steaks is to always get the best cut that you can afford. Fortunately Costco carries both Choice and Prime Cuts of beef. We ended up with the Prime Cuts of both New York and Rib Eye steaks were (like I said I love Rib Eye!). Now this is where I should be explaining about the importance of and how to pick a well marbled steak, except for me it just boiled down to picking steaks with a flecks of fat throughout the steak and just overall looked the best to me.  They were between an 1-1/2” - 2” thick, which is perfect for the Santa Maria. We brought them home and seasoned them with just Salt, Pepper, and Garlic Powder. We then set them a side a let them sit for an hour to absorb the salt and reach room temperature while we prepped the grill.

Next up was starting the fire, set aside a good hour to burn the wood down to coals, you’ll have to keep adding wood in order to create a sufficiently decent base for cooking the steaks.

Then it was time to load the grill with the steaks. Needed to be a little careful as the Santa Maria Grill does a great job of directing all that heat. I am ashamed to admit that my reach and my belly were not sufficiently different, causing me to toast myself as I worked the grill.

I definitely recommend flipping the steaks often. This avoids one side becoming just a little to well done.

The steaks were on for about 20 minutes until the reached an internal temperature of 130-135 degrees. At which time we pulled them from the grill and let it rest for about 5 minutes, This resulted in our steaks looking like this: 

After doing the steaks on the Santa Maria, I can safely say that I will never grill a steak again on the gas grill. The flavor of the red oak and the prime steak is outstanding and I highly recommend it for those that like a delicious and juicy piece of meet. 

Smoked Stuffed Hamburger Patties

So here at CCG we love burgers! So I was  watching Guy's Diner, Drive-ins, & Dives doing a show regarding best hamburger joints. During the show he he found a place that actually smoked their burgers and another that put the cheese on the inside of the burger.

So me being me thought how about we smoke a burger that has the cheese in the middle! So after a brief conference (Ron, we doing burgers in the smoker with cheese in the middle) we went for it. 

First we thought we would do two sets of burgers, one with no cheese and the other with the cheese in the center. We thought we would need a control group to see the difference, like cheese oozing from the burger wouldn't be enough.

So here at CCG we prefer that our burgers are made from 80/20 hamburger and are cooked to a final temp of 160 degrees.

Each patty was 6.4 ozs and for the cheese in the middle we split the patty in half. We used Kraft American Singles for this go round. For this attempt we basically folded the cheese into a rectangle and laid it on the bottom portion of the patty, placed the other half of the hamburger on top and shaped the patty. The cheese ran end to end on the patty, so it was close to the outer edge of the patty. This turned out to not be a winning idea.

We smoked the burgers for an hour and then transferred them to the grill to sear the outside. 

The burgers looked great and smelled smokie. So I was really looking forward to see how they tasted.

  

The results:

As I took that first bite I was so looking forward to the ooey-gooey cheese running out and down my chin. To my surprise, it didn't taste cheesey! Neither did the second or third I looked inside and there was no cheese. Well we found the cheese. 

Obviouly we will need a different plan.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           /

So being one not to give up a few days later I tried again, though this time I just stuffed them with cheese and used by grill. The results were a little different.

These were delicious, although didn't have the smoked flavor. We will do this again, But this time we will use the Santa Maria Grill to get our smoked goodness in the meat.

‘Jakes’giving Smoked Turkey

This year we will be smoking our turkey in the Humphry’s Battle Box. We will be smoking not only the whole Turkey but 3 additional breasts to give us a little extra meat. The big smoke will take place on Monday, what we call ‘Jakes’giving, in honor of our youngest daughters Significant Other. Which has him leaving on Tuesday to join his family in Borrego Springs, a happening place in the middle of nowhere, for their traditional Thanksgiving. Youngest daughter will drive out on Friday after the Black Friday shopping spree with her mom and sisters, that now takes place Thursday evening.

First up:

THE PREP

Whole Turkey - 17.22 lbs Wet Brine. - Weber’s Apple Brine Recommended 24 hours - we did 33.5 hours

The Brine:

After pulling the bird from the brine we, coated the skin with a little olive oil, seasoned with just black pepper and granulated garlic, and then let it sit for an hour while we prepped the smoker.

For our fire we put a layer of Hickory wood chunks at the bottom and then covered them with Weber’s Briquettes. After getting the smoker to 225° we popped the bird in and were ready to go. 

The bird ready To Go

We brined and smoked the neck for use in our gravey. We felt using the drippings from the turkey would be way to Smokey. So we smoked the neck and then pulled it after 5 hours.  We let the bird smoke for 8 hours. As you can see from the above picture we used multiple probes to track the temperature while it cooked and pulled the bird when they hit 165. And of course while we waited we had to find some way to occupy the time 

A pecan infused Bourbon, Chocolate bitters, simple syrup, and a muddled orange slice. M-m-m good

The Finished product!

After pulling the Turkey we let it sit for 20 minutes before we carved. The taste from the brine was delicious, and the moisture from the brine was impressive. Even our resident Turkey hater thought that the turkey tasted great and was ready to smoke another one.

While we were enjoying the Jakesgiving turkey, we put the three additional breasts in the smoker.

———————————————————————————————————-

Turkey Breast’s - 3 Breasts @ Avg 1.5 lbs ea
Wet Brine - Barbecue Bible’s Bourbon and Maple Brine
Recommended - Overnight - we did 16 hours




The brine for these breasts was very basic. Except for the salt it’s title tells you all the other ingredients. So needless to say the flavors aren’t very complex. But if you love Bourbon and Maple (and who doesn’t) The taste is mighty nice.

To do a fair comparison of the brines we prepped the breasts the exact same way with olive oil, black pepper, and granulated garlic.

These only took 3 hours to smoke. Like the whole turkey these breasts were very moist, even after sitting until Thursday! Wish I had remembered to take a photo. The breasts cane out looking fantastic..

A Place for Outdoor Cooking along the Central Coast

Hi all!!

We're Ron and Len, just a couple of barbecue and smoking fanatics wanting to keep a journal of our outdoor cooking exploits as we learn to master my new outdoor grill, Humphey's Smoker, and my Santa Maria Grill.

This little experiment will be a blast as while Ron is the more meticulous on working from a plan, I tend to be the free spirit kind - opening the spice cabinet and pantry to just use what the mood strikes me to use. So between the two of us we should end up with lots of 'interesting' concoctions. Some will work and some won't but the adventure should be worth the trip. We will have pictures, recipes, and honest opinions of how the stuff works.

To start here's a couple pictures of our 'lab'




Only thing missing is the Santa Maria Grill, which we'll add soon.

So come back often as we start to post our grilling and smoking experiments.

So Happy Grilling Everyone

-Len