Tiny's Tantalizing Text

I know I'm a day late, but this time it's not my fault...honest. I tried on a few different occasions yesterday, but the site was really slow or wouldn't let me in.

Pretty sure I told ya'll that I got a smoker for Christmas (Bradley Original, Black, automatic "bisquette" feeder for the wood/smoke). Well, I seasoned it on the 5th, and my first smoke was on the 6th. I did a "bone-in" turkey breast, just seasoned with some seasoning salt mixture on the outside. It was alright, but lacked something, I'm sure a brining would have made it come out better. On this round, I was also going to do a whole chicken, but the one I knew of in my freezer turned out to be already cut up, didn't know in the other freezer we had a complete chicken (well, no feathers or stuff like that).

My second round with the smoker came out a little better, but also a little worse. This time I mixed up a very basic brine (1.5 C Kosher Salt in 3 Gallons of water), and soaked my 2 racks of baby back ribs and 3# pork loin roast overnight. On smoke day, I put them in the smoker with 10 of the bisquettes, which gave me 3 1/3 hours of smoke. My cabinet temp only got to 175 degrees, and at the 5 hour mark, my loin only had gotten to 147 degrees, so I finished the meats in the oven since it was supper time. The ribs turned out pretty good...and bad, if you can believe that. The end of each mini rack (had to cut each rack in half to fit on the smoking racks) was just way overpowered with smoke, and there was a thin membrane of some kind that needed to be pealed off the bottom. From the end bone in, however, the flavor was pretty good, and even had the color I was looking for.

It was hard to do, but the pork loin made it through the night intact, and made awesome sandwiches Monday and Tuesday. Have a little left that should go into a sandwich for me today, but if Dad wants it, I'll let him have it. This loin/roast brought to mind another item I would like to get, and I really didn't have a hard time selling Dad on the idea. Our next purchase will be a meat slicer. Just a cheap basic one for now, to make sure it's gonna work to save us some money on lunchmeat type stuff (maybe other stuff too). Found one that I should be able to obtain for +/- $50 through brylanehome.com, and as soon as I can find that much room on one of my credit cards (I know they're bad for my financial health), I'm going to order it.

It's going to be a little too cold to try to smoke anything this weekend, but I already have my mind made up on what to do next. When Dad and I went to the City on the 13th, I picked up a couple of boneless turkey breast rolls (about 3# each), so I'm going to do one of them. Both if we happen to have the slicer by then. I'd also like to do another pork loin roast...they're on sale at one grocery store for $2.49/lb., but I've seen whole loins in this store for around $1.69/lb., so we'll see what happens. Also kind of had plans to smoke some chicken wing pieces for the Super Bowl party that I'm going to, but I think I'll just do Buffalo wings instead. I don't want to ruin that many of them.

Well, that's about all I have for today. Take care, and thanks for reading.