Weekday Ribbing

So, the best thing about my job is that from time to time I work from home. I find this to be the perfect opportunity to be able to cook a fun lunch despite being on the clock. Of course...when one wakes up these days...never know how much rain has fallen or is on the schedule for the day...Now, the other day I received a care package with the book Smoke and Spice in the mail from my favorite, semi blog-retired BBQ guru William of Never Trust a Skinny Chef fame. Turns out it was this incredible book on BBQ and since I'm such a newbie at it there are some great recipes in it. One in particular caught my eye as I decided to do a riff on a dry rub for some really great ribs from the meat girls at Chestnut Farms.
Now...instead of a paprika based rub, I went with 2 TBS light brown sugar, 2 TBS dark brown sugar, 2 TBS all spice, 1/2 tsp each of nutmeg, cayanne, cinnamon and onion powder. I don't put salt/pepper in the rub as I put it on the ribs separate..always. Let it sit overnight in the fridge.
I got up a little early to start the fire on the BGE. The wonderful thing about smoking ribs on the egg is that once you fill up the egg (not too much mind you!) with hardwood charcoal the egg you don't have to keep shoveling more wood into it. Easy, eh? Perfect for workin' from home 'Q!

I had soaked some cherry smokewood overnight in water and added only when I opened the smoker. Now...these were spare ribs, but I decided to still employ the 3, 2, 1 method. 3 hours uncovered smoke at 225, 2 hours wrapped in foil, 1 hour unwrapped. Below is the exciting photo of the ribs wrapped in foil!
Ya gotta put the foil on. After a total of 5 hours...this was the yummy goodness
I added a little apple cider to keep the ribs moist for the last hour of smoking. What came out off the egg was unexpected yet really really tasty. Truth is that I'm very used to the paprika based ribs, but these had a wonderful savory flavor with some great little crunchay bits to nibble on. Not really all that sweet, in case ya'll were wondering and the flavoring from the local/organic ribs was really incredible. Beats getting take out any day of the week!

********************Finished!!!********************
********************Fun folk stuff ********************

Jaymie Gerard - W

Honay Mustard Chicken

So, I hope ya'll had a great 4th of July weekend! I had the distinct pleasure of being able not only to attend the wedding of my friend Jeanne and her husband Phillip but to be the principal photographer!! It was a great way to spend the day and I had a wonderful time shooting some happy people

So I was browsing through the naked wiz's Big Green Egg page when I ran across a recipe (from a woman named Cat) for honey mustard chicken. The lineup included:
Some olive oil, honay, salt, pepper, soy sauce and my addition...some lemon thyme that I bough from the Natick Organic farm. Mmmm...lemon thyme. Basically the ratio was 3 TBS Mustard, 1 TBS Honay, 1 TSP Soy Sauce, Salt/Pepper and some Thyme. Whisk it all up and you've got your sauce:
Now I now that raw meat isn't where ya'll are at for blog viewing raw meat...but what I did was to put the honey mustard sauce on top of the chicken and let it come to room temperature for about an hour. A few hours beforehand, I had thrown some applewood chips in with some water to soak. At the last minute, right before putting the chicken on the grill I dropped the smokewood on
Looks pretty good, eh? Now, this brings up an interesting point...I've discovered that the dome temperature is about 30 degrees less than what the temp is on the grill. I set the grill for 300 dome temperature and cooked for about 55 minutes. Admittedly I started making this dish a little late...so to actually have dinner in a reasonable time I made a crab/avocado salad with roast red peppers.
Now, I have neglected to mentioned that the one thing thing that I tried which was that I spatchcok'ed the chicken!! I had a bit of experience with this when I made a duck for thanksgiving. So..after 55 minutes, flip the chicken and give it another 30 minutes to crisp up the skin
What came out was SOOO damn good! Seriously...I love rotisserie chicken and this was just about as close as I've ever tasted to that. I'd love to make this again with perhaps some garlic!! mmm...garlic! Though I had already eaten dinner, I had to have a leg...just to try. It reminded me of my Dad who always had a left over Turkay leg the day after Thanksgiving :)

FINISHED!!!
*****************Sweet Music********************
Deadsy-The Key to Gramercy Park