Smoked and Fried Bologna and Salad

I did this two phase cook on my Cobb Grill and it came out quite well. My plan was to start off with a lower temp and heavy smoke cook on the rotisserie with my big chub of all beef bologna and then to convert the cooker over to high temperature frying for the second phase of this cook. 

I prepped my five pound bologna chub by cutting some slots around the outside of the meat. I then mounted the meat into my rotisserie setup and sprayed it down with some butter spray for a sticker, then sprinkled on a good spicy beef rub and it is ready for the fire.

This treat is a two phase cook and I like to just use a heavy hickory smoke for the first phase of the cook. I used the standard charcoal basket with 13 all hardwood briquets and two chunks of hickory on top for my smoke. I also added more smoke wood a second time during this part of the cook.

This was the start of the cook and you can see the smoke coming out of the Cobb cooker. I also used the Cobb BBQ Kit cooking grid under my rotisserie setup. This will allow some of the drippings from the meat to go down on the fire for some additional flavor. 

This part of the cook took about 90 minutes and the meat has now been smoked and is ready to come off of the cooker. 

At this point, I took the rotisserie off of the cooker, replaced the charcoal basket with the larger one with 18 hot briquets, added my grill grates with the smooth side up, and got ready to finish my cook. 

I took a head of romaine lettuce and cut it in half. Next step was to drizzle on some olive oil, some sea salt, some fresh cracked black pepper, and some garlic powder. I then just fried it up a little on my very hot cooking grid. Maybe two minutes a side and when it comes off of the cooker, I sprinkle on some parmesan cheese and then dribble on some poppyseed dressing and this makes a fine fried salad. 

I like to grill my sandwich buns so they were the next item on the grill. 

I like to cook my bacon first so I can then cook the bologna in the bacon grease.

I usually cut the meat pretty thick for my sandwiches. Next step is to fry this smoked meat on the Cobb Grill in the remaining bacon fat. 

I have a very hot grill and the bologna only takes about 2-3 minutes a side to get done. I actually like it charred up a little for the best flavor. 

I spread a sweet sauce (my veggie dipping sauce) on both sides of the bun, add a slice of lettuce, a slice of tomato, then the bacon and my fried bologna and that is one of my favorite sandwiches. And with the addition of the fried romaine lettuce, makes a great meal. 

Turkey Breasts / Char Broil 940X

I had 5 turkey breasts that weighed a total of 38.89 pounds to cook and decided to do them in my classic Char-Broil 940X charcoal grill. 

I started by mixing up my honey brine which will be injected into the meat. 



Next step was to trim off the excess skin and clean up the breasts. 



Injected 4 oz of the brine into each side of the turkey breasts. 



Got the marinade out as each breast will be brined and marinaded at the same time overnight in the fridge. The marinade will be Wish Bone Robusto salad dressing.



After injecting, each breast was placed into a zip-lock bag and then the marinade was poured in over the breasts. 



All 5 of the turkey breasts ready to go into the fridge for their overnight stay. I did turn them over a few times during this period to be sure the marinade was covering everything.

On the morning of my cook, I rolled my CB 940X to my cooking patio. 



I had the cooker loaded with some South American lump and hickory for some smoke and I lit off a charcoal chimney and when it was ready, I dumped it over my lump in the cooker. 



I got the breasts out of the fridge and took them out of their bags. 



I sprinkled a light coat of my no salt, no sugar, no burn, and high temp rub onto the meat.



I had the cooker setup where the left 2/3rds of the cooking grid was indirect and the right 1/3 was direct. As soon as my cooker got up to 350 degrees, I loaded the 5 breasts into the cooker. 350 degrees on the cooker thermometer measures about 285 degrees on the cooking grid. 



I cooked them about 1hr and 40 min and then wrapped them in foil. 



They cooked an additional 50 minutes and were done at a measured 165 degrees internal temp.



This is about as good as turkey breast can be prepared.

Pork Shoulder Roast on the Cobb Grill

This will be my last test cook on my Cobb Grill as I think it has earned a spot in my camper for the season. While it is not big enough to cook for a group, it will cook quite well for 2-4 people and produce a fine product. Items like a whole butterflied chicken, meatloaf, burgers, tenderloins, steaks, sausage, ribs, loin roast, and now a pork butt. Will also do some sides with the meat as well and will bake bread and pizza. 



I started with a Pork Shoulder Picnic that weighed about 4 pounds. I cut the skin off and trimmed off some of the fat and gave it a good rub of SGH. 



I filled the charcoal basket with a full load of Ozark Oak lump and brought the little cooker up to temp. Loaded my picnic shoulder and as you can see, I had plenty of room left if I wanted to add some baking potatoes, maybe a pan of baked beans, maybe some other grilled veggies, etc..



The cook took about 5 hours and I did add more lump twice during the cook. I also made up three packets of wild cherry chips and used them on top of the charcoal basket for extra smoke during this longer cook. 



The roast about 30 minutes before I pulled it off the cooker. 

The last step was to give it a glaze of Blues Hog with some clover honey for the last 30 minutes. 



I tented the roast with foil and let it rest for about 30 minutes and then pulled it. 



Meat tasted and looked great.





I added a potato treat and some fried sweet corn that was cut off the cob and it made a nice plate.

Chicken / Auto Temp Control / CB- 500X

I'll start with a few small modifications that I have made to this slick little tailgate cooker to improve the overall use.



The cooker comes with holes for a rotisserie in the hood and I plug these with a couple of balls of tin foil.



This hole in the lower right side of the cooker is for a gas burner and again, I plug it with some tin foil.

With the above mods, this little cooker will run the indirect low and slow temps for hours and I use the service door to run the higher temps used for baking pizza and bread. Works great!

Now, to set the cooker up with a Pitmaster IQ 110 Auto-Temp Control.



I removed the tin foil plug from the lower right side gas burner hole so I could mount the standard manifold from the auto control. For the unit to work correctly, the blower must be below the charcoal grate level. There are three mounting holes for the gas burner and I drilled out the top one with the next drill size so it would fit the toggle bolt on the manifold.



The Pitmaster IQ 110 is one slick control if all you want is cooker control. It doesn't have any probes for the meat that goes on your cookers. It is also about half price as compared to the other units on the market. The unit in the picture with this standard manifold will fit WSM's, Weber Kettles, my two classic Char-Broils, and with another adapter will also fit both my ceramic cookers and my Backwoods cookers. I believe it could be adapted to most all charcoal cookers. Not shown in the picture is the 110 volt power adapter which also comes with the control.



I used the toggle bolt to mount the manifold to the Char-Broil 500X. I then setup the cooker for an indirect cook by loading up the right hand side with a full load of Stubb's Brickettes charcoal.



I placed two Weber fire cubes in charcoal and lit them off. I placed a half pan on the left side for the drippings and added about a cup of water to keep them from burning. If you look close, you can see the probe connected to the back of the cooking grid. This probe controls the cooker temperature.



I hooked up the Pitmaster and decided to use my 12 volt Jump-Starter to run the unit. I used a Radio Shack 12 volt adapter cord to power it up. It was cold with a light snow and I didn't want to fool around with running 110 out to the cooker so this hookup worked fine.



After my starter cubes went out, I set my Pitmaster control to about 245 degrees and started it to bring the cooker up to cooking temp. I then opened up the left side exhaust vent in the hood so I could pull all the smoke and heat across my meat during the cook.



While the cooker was coming up to temperature, I prepped my four pound fryer by cutting out the backbone and then breaking the breastbone so the chicken would lay flat on the cooker. Some folks would call this spatchcocking but I prefer the word "butterfly." I then sprinkled on my low carb rub and it was ready for the cooker.



I placed the chicken on the cooker and added a few chunks of smoke wood.



This picture shows the chicken about halfway thru the cook.



The chicken just off the cooker.

Me and Mommy split this treat as she made chicken salad with her half and I made pulled chicken with my half.



I toasted up a piece of low carb bread, added some pulled chicken, then sprinkled a little of my low carb bbq sauce over it. Added some salad stuff and cheese and made a great low carb (6 grams) meal out of it.

The Pitmaster IQ 110 temperature control is a fine product and very low cost compared to other units on the market.

Hasty Bake / Classic Cooker

You know, Jimmy Carter lusts after beautiful women and I guess I lust after some of the older and more classic cookers and smokers. Cookers like the smaller 15" WSM, a Charbroil CB940, Cajun Grill, Hasty Bake, the two smaller Jedmasters, a Weber Performer in Red with the stainless steel table, and even a less expensive PK Grill to name a few.

I check the Craig's List about twice a week for some of these hard to find units and had been looking for one of the larger Hasty Bakes for about 3 years in the Indiana area. Last week I decided to look farther out and set my Search Tempest to 1000 miles from Indy and bingo, I got a hit in Mount Cory, Ohio! Heck, that is only 250 miles from the Po-Farm.

Some of the information in the ad stated the following...Made in USA. Been in dry storage the last 20 years, needs a good cleaning but this is a very nice large charcoal cooker. On it's way to the scrap yard, thought someone might appreciate it for what it is. The price was $10.00 dollars. Had these two pictures enclosed.





I called the gentleman and he told me that the cooker had been in his Mother's garage for about 20 years and other than a little surface rust, the cooker was in pretty good condition. I told him that I would take the cooker and asked him to hold it for me for a few days until I could get over there with some help to pick it up.

A few days later and early one morning, I picked up my good friend Jeff Toler (Anchorman) just North of Indy and we went over to Ohio and picked up the cooker and I had it back home at about 3:30pm in the afternoon. Pretty good for a 500 mile round trip.

All this time, I thought the cooker was the smaller Suburban size but after I got to checking it out, I found that it was a model 130 which is the larger and more desirable Legacy size model.

Looked it over good and it did need a good cleaning and had a broken firebox fire grate and was missing the heat deflector. The gentleman had told me that it did still have some ashes in the firebox when he rescued it from the garage and that did worry me some but the ash pan was fine and not rusted out.

With a few replacement parts, a good cleaning and reseasoning, some wire brushing and sanding, and a new paint job, I will add this cooker to my arsenal. Might be a great ending for a cooker that is probably near 30 years old at the present time. And yes, this is one fellow that will appreciate this old cooker as the seller had asked!



I am not sure I can get it to look as good as a new cooker as seen above and priced at about $1100.00 dollars but I'll bet it will cook just as good as a new one. As you can see, there has not been very many changes in the life of this 30 year old cooker.

Hasty Bake is a smaller company has been in business since 1948 and that is even longer than the Weber company and have built several models of these fine cookers over the years. They have a wonderful reputation and are a rock solid company. If they don't have a replacement part, they will make one up for you. They do treat their customers right.

I called the head guru, a Mr. Adam Myers at Hasty Bake and we talked about the age of this cooker. It doesn't have the indicator to show the height of the firebox and also doesn't have to pull out firebox feature. Other than that, it is the same as a new cooker. He figures it's an early 80's model cooker. I then ordered the three replacement parts I needed along with some accessories I wanted for this old classic.

The first thing I did to the cooker was to take it apart and then I scraped the inside down and removed some of that old grease and sludge. I then washed it all out and I put it back together and oiled it down good and then lit a hot lump fire and reseasoned the inside of the cooker. Now, I got parts coming in about a week but I couldn't wait and wanted to cook something in this old cooker.



I covered the ash pan with foil, and then placed two fire cubes on it, and then loaded up the right half of the firebox with some good Ozark Oak lump. I added 3 big chunks of hickory to the top of the charcoal. I then lowered the firebox right down and on top of the fire cubes and it lit off quickly and I had a hot fire in about 20-25 minutes.



I left just the one cooking grid in the cooker for this cook. I then raised the hot firebox up to about 9-10 inches under the cooking grid



This old chili-head does like his hot stuff and I rubbed these wings with a heavy dose of the very hot 80 grade cayenne pepper. I also made up some glazing sauce with about a half stick of butter, about 10 oz of Franks Hot Sauce, and about 2 tsp of the hot ground cayenne pepper.



I moved the cooking grid over to the left side of the cooker so it wasn't over the fire and loaded up my wings. Since I don't have the foggiest idea of what I am doing with this cooker, I guess you could say I was "winging it". I know, that's bad but I had to say it! Anyway, I let them cook indirectly like this for about 30 minutes. Slopped on a heavy dose of sauce, turned them over and slopped on another dose to this side. Slid the grid over to the right side and over the fire for some direct cooking and to set the glaze. I kept moving the grid back and forth and turning and saucing the wings until my sauce ran out and the wings were charred up to suit me.



Worked nice for this first cook and I removed the wings and shut down the cooker.



Love my hot wings!!

Will be more coming on this old classic cooker in the future.