Pot Roast in a Pressure Cooker

First time making a pot roast in the pressure cooker!

2.8 lbs of meat (trimmed to perhaps 2.25 lbs) were first seared on my Blacklock #8 cast iron skillet.  I placed cut potatoes, carrots and celery on the bottom and then put the meat on top of that.  Beef Broth was used for the liquid.  I added a little bit of salt and pepper and that's about it.

The end result turned out pretty good!  The meat was extremely tender.  Potatoes were a bit too soft.  Perhaps I should have added it halfway into the cook instead, but doing it right from the start is just easier.

The rule of 20 minutes per pound was what I should have done, but I just let it go for an hour.

I'd do this again.  It is about as easy as it gets.

(Sorry for the grainy photos... they were taken with my iPhone 6s+ and there wasn't enough light over the stove!)

10 lbs of Pull Pork on the 18.5" WSM

10 lbs of pork butt on the 18.5" Weber Smokey Mountain smoker with water in the water pan.  It would have been 14.4 lbs, but I needed some of the pork for other dishes.  The meat was purchased from Costco.

I split the meat in half as I usually do to get more bark and to speed up the cooking time. I used Pork Barrel BBQ's All American Rub and Apple Wood for the smoke. I let it run until it hit the stall and then wrapped it. The pit temp stayed around 235 degrees but jumped up to 270 after wrapping. When the meat hit 202 degrees I removed it from the smoker.

The pork butts finished off with a total cook time of 5 hours reaching 202 degrees on the top grate and 205 degrees on the middle grate after wrapping. Pulled easily! Very moist this time. One of the best I've done so far.

While some people like to cook the meat without wrapping or cutting so that the bark is literally charred black, I don't like it like that.  I like a nice dark brown bark, but not black.  I only had one cook that did that because I did not cut the meat which made the cook time something like 12 hours and I didn't wrap it, just to see what would happen.  I prefer this method of cooking to cut down the total cook time and to prevent the black charring.  Some would disagree with me, but hey... it's me that's eating it, not them!  Everyone has their own method... I just like this method better for time savings and for health reasons!

Pizza!

My family made four pizzas tonight (the first one wasn't photographed).  Each pizza was handmade and different.  Ingredients included sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms, spinach, fresh mozzarella cheese, cheddar and Monterey Jack cheese, and tomatoes from our garden.

Baked for 12 minutes each at 500 degrees.  Very good!  Crust rose and was nice and crisp, but soft was well.  We'll do this again in the future!

Ribs and Chicken Legs

I am grilling chicken legs a bit differently today.  I purchased two Bayou Classic chicken leg racks and am trying them out.  Once I think it's time to move the legs, I will move each rack to the other side so that the inside legs can get some heat as well.  The legs have Weber's Kickin' Chicken seasoning on them.  A foil drip pan is below the rack below the charcoal grate.

The ribs are baby back ribs cut into thirds.  The rub is a modified Costco Rib Rub with added cayenne pepper in it.  I will do 2-2-0.5 on these.  Temp is rather high today in the smoker hanging around 292 degrees.  We'll see what needs adjustment in time based on this high temp.  I will wrap and add just water in the wrap along with Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce.

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Two hours into the cook and the legs are done!  Most were in the 185 degrees or higher range.  Very moist chicken!  Crispy skin, but a bit tough due to the lower heat intensity of cooking this way.  Still, it's probably the best chicken legs I've ever done!  I'll do it this way going forward.

Aroma Restaurant - Vernon Hills, IL

Typical Indian Buffet - Aroma Indian Restaurant - Vernon Hills, IL

Not bad for $15 including tax and tip.  The standard things were there... butter chicken, goat curry, tandoori chicken, paneer something or other... I never know the name of things!  Still good though!  And of course, Mango Ice Cream to top it all off!

Spare Ribs On The 18.5" Weber Smokey Mountain Smoker and a Surprise Pizza!

Haven't smoked anything in several weeks and so I was getting a bit antsy about it, so I bought some spare ribs at $1.99 / lb.

Yes, no need for the probe in the meat, but I always probe everything. I'll do 2.5 - 1.5 - 0.5 on these at around 260 degrees. Smoking this time on the 18.5" WSM with Kick Butt Hickory Rub and using Hickory wood for the smoke. Water is in the pan. Monitoring with the ThermoWorks Smoke remote.
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One hour, 45 mins into the smoke:

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Sauced with Sweet Baby Rays and Wrapped at 2.5 hours into the cook:

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The finished product.  Ended up doing 2.5 - 1.5 - 0 due to time constraints of getting dinner on the table on time.  Yeah, I could have left them in longer for wrap time to soften it up a little more, but it wasn't bad.  Still tasted great though!  Adding just water in the wrap was fine.  I don't think it really needs Apple Juice.  The added moisture kept the meat from drying out like it did the last time I cooked ribs without any water.  Decent pull back of the meat from the ends of the bones.

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We also made a homemade pizza like we did last night, but this time we put it in the smoker to start and finished it up in the oven!  My wife does not like cheese so her half is cheeseless with chicken pieces.  The other half had cheddar / Monterey Jack cheese with sausage.

Pizza From Scratch

My wife decided to make a pizza from scratch!  She watched some YouTube videos and followed the instructions using our own garden's tomatoes.  Cheese was only on my half as she does not like cheese.  She put chicken on her half and Italian sausage on my half.

The pizza dough didn't seem full cooked when I took a photo of the whole pizza, so we decided to put it back in the oven for another 4 minutes.  Well, good thing we didn't go any longer than 4 minutes as it started to burn the edges!  We believe the oven temp was too high at 450 degrees and that the pizza may have been too close to the top of the oven as well.

Overall though, it wasn't too bad!

Frying Egg Rolls In The Drizzling Rain

 The patio umbrella comes in handy when frying egg rolls in the rain!

I do not have a cover for the big wok, so I hoped that the umbrella would keep most of the rain out of the oil.  Some stray droplets still got in there, but overall, the umbrella did a good job keeping the oil from getting rained on and splattering me with oil.  I try to keep the oil temperature around 350 to 375 degrees, but the first batch got away from me and the oil temp rose to nearly 450 degrees!  Those first egg rolls came out a bit too brown.  They fried up really quick though!  The rest of the egg rolls were just fine.