I've always hated round steaks because they're tough and gnarley. That got me to thinking, unless properly cooked, brisket is tough and gnarly, maybe round roasts are the same. Unfortunately, they are often priced waaaaaay too high for what they are around here, so I've never tried smoking one. Until today. I found them buy one, get one free. So I picked up two 3lb roasts, threw one in the freezer and fired the smoker up.
For the rub, I decided to keep it very simple. Roughly equal parts NM red chile powder and paprika (roughly 1/4 each, I typically never measure anything,) about a table spoon of onion powder and about a tablespoon garlic powder. I wanted it simple because I'm going to start using the local stuff in my rubs and I want to know how they work with smoking. I figured on 2hrs/lb, 10-15 minutes to blast it at high heat to firm up the bark, and an hour rest time. So far, everything has gone off like clockwork.
After applying the rub and preheating my smoker for about an hour, put the roast in, fat down.
It got down to about 20f at my house last night, so the bricks were still cold. Just putting the thing in dropped the chamber temp down to 70f.
Normally, that size fire would run me up to 280 or 300. It didn't even get to 210 before enough had burned that I had to add more wood. Cold brick sucks a lot of heat and takes a lot of wood. That's cool though, because I'm not hurting for wood at the moment.
And the smoke was nice, thin and blue.
Once it got up to 160, I then foiled it and took it up to 200. By this time, it took a much smaller fire to keep things hot as this one would maintain 250 without a problem:
Then, I decided to blast it for 10 or 15 minutes at over 300 just to firm up the bark. Even cranking out that high heat, the temperature still dropped. That meathead physicist in the other thread was right. It is evaporative cooling. It went from 201 down to 189 while in the chamber and it only took 10 or 15 minutes to do this! Here it is after I pulled it. After snapping that photo, I pulled a little piece off. I hope I didn't make a mistake by trying to firm up the bark as it was a little dryer than I was hoping, but I didn't even go 1/4" down, so I think I may still be OK. From the little taste I had, it was like a mini-brisket.
It's currently resting, again in foil. It's not a big piece as you can see, but, hey, it's an experiment and it's not for a bunch of people.
Also to go with this are some beans:
My beans are typically very simple, and I like them that way. 2 to 2 1/2 lbs dry beans in the crockpot, rinsed and checked for rocks, about 1/2 bulb freshly pressed garlic, about 1tablespoon baking soda and 4 pieces of bacon. Then I put them on all day on low.
Then there's the green chile:
That it is before I knew how much Au Juice I was going to get and I didn't know if I was going get enough to use or if I would have to use some chicken stock. It's about a half of an onion, 4 or 5 cloves of freshly pressed garlic and a large pile of chopped roasted green chile. Turns out that I got about 1/2 cup of au juice, so I poured that in, covered it with water and set it to simmering. The smell was very pungent and very good with that au juice in it, and the chile is nice and hot too. My nose will be running tonight!
Oh yeah, all of that gets served on top of fritos. It's going to be like a super frito pie.
I did have one faux pas. Apparently, some of my green wood got mixed in with my cured wood and I threw a nice green piece of wood in expecting it to burn because, you know, I thought it was nice and dry. I looked up and there was this nightmarish billowing white smoke coming out. Fortunately, I got it under control rather quickly. I should have snapped a pic to show people what you don't want running over your meat.
I'll post more pics when I tear into the thing.
For the rub, I decided to keep it very simple. Roughly equal parts NM red chile powder and paprika (roughly 1/4 each, I typically never measure anything,) about a table spoon of onion powder and about a tablespoon garlic powder. I wanted it simple because I'm going to start using the local stuff in my rubs and I want to know how they work with smoking. I figured on 2hrs/lb, 10-15 minutes to blast it at high heat to firm up the bark, and an hour rest time. So far, everything has gone off like clockwork.
After applying the rub and preheating my smoker for about an hour, put the roast in, fat down.
It got down to about 20f at my house last night, so the bricks were still cold. Just putting the thing in dropped the chamber temp down to 70f.
Normally, that size fire would run me up to 280 or 300. It didn't even get to 210 before enough had burned that I had to add more wood. Cold brick sucks a lot of heat and takes a lot of wood. That's cool though, because I'm not hurting for wood at the moment.
And the smoke was nice, thin and blue.
Once it got up to 160, I then foiled it and took it up to 200. By this time, it took a much smaller fire to keep things hot as this one would maintain 250 without a problem:
Then, I decided to blast it for 10 or 15 minutes at over 300 just to firm up the bark. Even cranking out that high heat, the temperature still dropped. That meathead physicist in the other thread was right. It is evaporative cooling. It went from 201 down to 189 while in the chamber and it only took 10 or 15 minutes to do this! Here it is after I pulled it. After snapping that photo, I pulled a little piece off. I hope I didn't make a mistake by trying to firm up the bark as it was a little dryer than I was hoping, but I didn't even go 1/4" down, so I think I may still be OK. From the little taste I had, it was like a mini-brisket.
It's currently resting, again in foil. It's not a big piece as you can see, but, hey, it's an experiment and it's not for a bunch of people.
Also to go with this are some beans:
My beans are typically very simple, and I like them that way. 2 to 2 1/2 lbs dry beans in the crockpot, rinsed and checked for rocks, about 1/2 bulb freshly pressed garlic, about 1tablespoon baking soda and 4 pieces of bacon. Then I put them on all day on low.
Then there's the green chile:
That it is before I knew how much Au Juice I was going to get and I didn't know if I was going get enough to use or if I would have to use some chicken stock. It's about a half of an onion, 4 or 5 cloves of freshly pressed garlic and a large pile of chopped roasted green chile. Turns out that I got about 1/2 cup of au juice, so I poured that in, covered it with water and set it to simmering. The smell was very pungent and very good with that au juice in it, and the chile is nice and hot too. My nose will be running tonight!
Oh yeah, all of that gets served on top of fritos. It's going to be like a super frito pie.
I did have one faux pas. Apparently, some of my green wood got mixed in with my cured wood and I threw a nice green piece of wood in expecting it to burn because, you know, I thought it was nice and dry. I looked up and there was this nightmarish billowing white smoke coming out. Fortunately, I got it under control rather quickly. I should have snapped a pic to show people what you don't want running over your meat.
I'll post more pics when I tear into the thing.
