Charcoal Grilling / Beef

I grill with charcoal for fuel on several of my cookers which would include my ceramic cookers, Backwoods cookers, WSM cookers, Weber kettles, Weber charcoal chimney, and a couple of home made cookers. I do this both direct which is over the fire with the drippings from the meat going straight into the fire and also indirect with a drip pan between the meat and the fire. Most of this grilling is done at elevated temperatures over lump charcoal.



Ribeyes are really hard to beat cooked over a very hot lump charcoal fire with the meat just in the tip of the flames on an outside cooker. The above ribeyes were cooked on my WSM smoker.



Great steaks MUST start from great meat!! For my ribeye steaks, which is by far my favorite steaks, I usually purchase the whole CHOICE ribeye loin and then cut the steaks into the thickness to suit me. Many times a year, in my area, the select grade will be on sale but in my opinion, spend the extra $1.00/2.00 a pound to get a better grade of meat. It must be choice or above!



The first thing I do with my whole loin is to cut the tail off of the steaks as I want this fat for sausage or hamburger. I vacuum seal it and freeze for later use.



For our regular ribeyes steaks, I cut them about 1-1/4" to 1-1/2" thick and then vacuum pack them for the freezer. We also like what I call a State Fair steak sandwich and for this treat, I cut the steaks to about 1/2" in thickness.



Just like your steak, great burgers start out with great ground meat. Never, I say never, if you want a great tasting hamburger, buy any ground meat that is leaner then chuck. And even with chuck, you will need to add some fat for the best results if you are grinding your own meat. If you want something leaner than chuck, grind up some liver and it will have about the same amount of flavor and moisture as a brick on your bun! I put burger ground from sirloin and round in this same catagory. FAT makes a great burger!! I usually make my burgers from the fattest cuts I can find and then add more fat from my other meats. I think about 65%lean and about 35% fat really make the best burgers. You bite into on of my home ground FAT burgers and all the juice and flavor from the fat will squirt into your mouth and you will think you have died and gone to heaven! The flavor is wonderful! Stay away from those bricks!



For the best steaks, you really need a hot fire and this takes a lot of lump charcoal as you see in the picture. This is my Big Green Egg with a full load of coals and all fired up and waiting for some steaks!



These are some fat burgers and a couple of ribeye steaks that have been salted and peppered and ready to go on the cooker. I will sometimes use a little garlic powder on my steaks as well but nothing else.





With a good hot fire like you see in the picture with the flames licking at the bottom of the meat, a great steak cooked to about rare or medium rare will only take about 3-4 minutes a side.







Now those are nice looking ribeyes ready for the plate.



This is a plate of my State Fair cut ribeyes along with a couple of butterflied pork chops. They sell a sandwich with this cut of meat at the fair and it is just a killer meal. I cut them around 1/2" to 3/4" thick and then grill them at a high temp over lump charcoal for just a few minutes a side.



With a hot fire, they only take a couple of minutes per side. If I am serving to a group, I hold the steaks in a pan of hot Lipton onion soup. They come out of the onion soup and then onto a big bun for serving. It doesn't get any better than that for a sandwich.



This is a few of the State Fair steaks done on a plate with the butterflied pork chops. Good stuff!



One of my favorite meals is a good steak off of my large Big Green Egg.

All my Backwoods cookers have the removable water pan which allows me to cook steaks and chops on them at just the tip of the flame with a lump charcoal fire if I want and these cookers will also do a great job with a steak meal.



T-bones on the Backwoods smoker.



Another great steak dinner.



I do burgers both direct and indirect at many different temperatures as we do eat them often and I can usually find some room on any cooker for this great treat when cooking our other meats. Burgers are just wonderful as long as they are cooked over a charcoal fire.

For cooking them alone on a cooker, I prefer to do them direct on my ceramic cookers or my Weber kettle at the very high temps like I use for my steaks.





The above pictures show the burgers being cooked direct on a very hot fire. They cook in about the same amount of time as the steaks for rare and medium rare and that is about 4 minutes a side on a hot fire with the flames licking at the bottom of the meat.





The above pictures shows some burgers being cooked indirect on a ceramic cooker. Using a cooking temp of about 325-375 degrees will also make a great burger but it does take longer.



This is a mixed cook of burgers and sausage links just going on the ceramic cooker.



About done on the cooker and looking good.

Doing this article and seeing all the pictures sure makes my hungry so I think I will lay out some steaks for supper.

Hot and Super Spicy Italian Sausage

This is a great recipe for Italian sausage but it is very hot and spicy and by far, the best recipe I have ever tasted for this wonderful treat. This sausage stuffed into casings and eaten as a sandwich may be too hot and spicy for some of the family but used loose (bulk) in all other recipes is just something that you won't soon forget! It is really that good!

We use it in our pizza, meatloaves, meatballs (both over spaghetti and in meatball hero sandwiches), calzones, stromboli, stuffed bell peppers, fatties, lasagna, marinara sauce, spaghetti sauce, and some other casseroles.



This picture shows about 18 pounds of my Italian sausage ready for the freezer.

We usually make it up in batches of about 8 pounds to as much as 18 pounds. It does freeze well and will hold fine in the freezer for about 6 months.

Ok...Let's get started. You will need a way to grind up the pork butts for this treat or if you are lucky and have a local store that still has a real meat department, just have them grid the butts up for you when they are doing their own sausage. I usually grind my own pork in my Kitchen-Aid mixer and I also use the mixer to mix each 4 pound batch of meat. You will need some method of grinding up some of the spices for this meat and I usually use a mortar and pestle but I think a small spice grinder would work as well. If you plan to stuff the sausage into casings, you will need a stuffer of some type and of course, the casings of your choice. The Kitchen-Aid with the correct attachment will do it but it is a two person operation for the best results.





I start by cutting up the pork butts into pieces small enough to fit into the neck of my Kitchen-Aid grinder attachment.



It is now ready to go thru the grinder.



I then run the pork thru the grinder and into a few bowls or pans.





My recipe is for about 4 pounds of ground pork per batch as that is the largest amount I can mix in my Kitchen-Aid so I usually weigh out my ground pork into bowls of 4 pounds each. You can do larger amounts if you want to mix by hand.



Again, for 4 pounds of ground pork butts:

4 TBL crushed fennel seed
4 TBL crushed red pepper
4 TBL oregano
4 TBL very finely chopped onion
2 TBL MSG
2 tsp coriander seed (crushed)
2 tsp paprika
2 tsp fresh ground black pepper
1 tsp white pepper
1 tsp caraway seed
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
Bout 14 cloves of fresh garlic (crushed)
Bout 8oz water or wine

Grind or crush up the seeds and items in the recipe as needed and place them in a large cup of about 8 oz of water or wine and let this soak for about 20 minutes before use.



This is 2 batches ready to be mixed into the ground pork by hand or mixed up in the Kitchen-Aid.



I place the ground pork back into the mixer bowl and pour the spice mixture over the pork. I use the dough hook on the mixer to mix up the spices in the sausage. Again, I am making 4 pound batches of the sausage.



About 8 pounds of my Italian sausage as it was finished up in two batches in the mixer.



This is about 12 pounds of sausage.



This is about 17 pounds of sausage.

At this time, I will usually fry up a pattie for a sandwich and taste it for the seasonings and make a change here if needed. At least, that is the excuse I use to the old woman to get a sample this wonderful treat as early as possible.



The meat then gets covered and goes into the fridge for about 2-3 hours to let the seasonings work into the meat before I vacuum pack it for the freezer or stuff it into casings.



I usually put either a pound or a pound and a half in each bag. I think this picture shows 1-1/2 pound bags ready for the freezer.



This batch is one pound bags of sausage.



Try that on a pizza...Good Stuff...Nuff Said!

WSM / Pizza

While scrounging around my files looking for a sausage picture, I came across this very first bake on my Weber Smokey Mountain (WSM) cooker. I think this bake was done in the Winter of 1999.

I set the cooker up for baking on my hearth and then fired it up and waited for it to get up to about 475 degrees which is the temp I wanted for my two "Thick and Chewy" crust pizzas.



Was a cold Winter day with some snow and the WSM did a fine job with this bake.



I made enough dough for two 14" thick and chewy pizzas in my Kitchen-Aid mixer and prepped the first pizza and placed it on the cooker.

While the first pizza cooked, I made up the second pizza and had it ready to go when the first pizza came off the cooker.



This great little cooker does a great job with about any type of task that you can throw at it and does it well.

You can find more information on how I setup and bake on this cooker under "WSM Cooker" in the "Table of Contents".

Pork Steaks

Pork steaks are wonderful cooked on any type of outside cooker or smoker and are very easy to prep and cook and will always make a nice base for any barbecued meal.

The steaks are usually cut out of a pork shoulder and preferable the butt section and the thickness can vary from about 1/4" to over 1-1/2" thick. The thickness of the cut may determine the best method of cooking the meat.



This treat originated around the St. Louis area and the meat is usually cut thin and after the addition of a rub or marinade of some type, just grilled and then glazed with Maull's sauce or sometimes grilled and then placed in a pan with the Maull's sauce which is usually cut with beer and then baked or simmered for some additional time. Other older methods for preparing this treat might be to sear over direct heat at a high temp and then finished at a lower temp. With this method, they would dip the steaks in sauce after they were done and put them back on the grill to caramelize the glaze at the end of the cook.

There are many other methods of cooking or smoking this meat including casserole dishes, crock pot cooking, Dutch oven cooking, and the list just goes on forever with both grilling and smoking, indirect of direct cooking, and the truth is, that it is about impossible to mess up a good pork steak.



In my area of the Mid-West, I can usually find these steaks on sale for no more than about $1.39 a pound and often at about a dollar a pound. They do freeze well so we always purchase extra when we find a sale.

I like to purchase the pork steaks that are cut around 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick and then just apply a good rub and cook or smoke them indirect at a good low and slow temp of around 250 degrees. I can always make some extra room on the cooker for this meat as it is a great barbecued meat.



This shows 10 pork steaks in my contraption for my Big Green Egg all rubbed up and ready for the fire.



After I got the cooker on temp, I just carried this out and dropped it into my ceramic cooker.



This picture shows two layers of pork steaks on the ceramic cooker. This was an indirect cook.



Of course, you can also do them direct over a hot lump charcoal fire and they will also come out well.



These are direct on my large Egg.



These are indirect on a raised grid in the ceramic cooker.



This picture shows some pork steaks on my pellet cooker. When cooking these by themselves, or with some chicken, they will cook as well at a raised temp of around 325-350 degrees which is also better for most chicken cooks.



Pork steaks, along with my crunchy hot buffalo wings, are two items that I can always find room for on my cookers on most of my cooks.



More pork steak on the pellet cooker with a mixed cook of other meats.



Another mixed cook with some pork steaks. It's just a great treat and super easy to cook.



These next few pictures will show the pork steaks done and ready for serving. The different look and color that you see in the pictures comes from my different methods of handling the sauce and finishing the steaks on the cooker.











To finish these steaks, I will sometimes just apply some sauce near the end of the cook, or I might start adding some layers of sauce during the last half of the cook, or I might make up a good glaze with some honey and caramelize it on the steaks before I pull them off the cooker. In my opinion, about all finishing methods are very good on the pork steaks.



Finishing the steaks without any sauce is also good and I often use this method when testing a few rubs against each other for their taste on a meat after it is cooked. It's a great way to compare products.

I couldn't finish an article on one of my favorite treats without including some information from an expert and my friend, Juggy D. Beerman who is from Missouri, and is known for his recipe and method for producing the best pork steak in the Mid-West. This is what Juggy would tell ya...

For the Marinade:

2 cups Wishbone Spicy French Dressing
1 cup lemon juice
2 cups apple juice
1 (12 oz) can of cherry cola
1 cup Woeber's Spicy mustard
1/4 cup habenero hot sauce
1/4 cup of rub

You can reserve some of the marinade for a baste if you so desire. I don't baste the steaks for the first hour or two of the cooking time.

Due to the acidic content of the marinade, I would not marinate the pork steaks more than eight hours or the meat will turn to mush. Because of the sugar in the marinade, I do not cook the meat directly over the coals or above 250ºF. I usually use the kettle for this but the WSM works too. I like to use cherry wood for the smoke flavor.

Depending on the thickness of the steaks, they take anywhere from two to four hours to cook. You won't be able to render all the fat out between the muscle areas like you do a pork shoulder, but quite a bit of the fat will cook out. I consider the steaks done once you can easily separate the muscle areas. Once you can pull two areas of the meat apart, apply the finish sauce of your choice and give the sauce a little time to thicken on meat.

Give them a try as I am sure you will enjoy.