Tag: bbq

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Photo of two Big Green Eggs flanking a pizza oven outdoors in New England during the winter. The egg on the left has smoke rising from it and the pizza oven has a visible wood fire inside.
Eggs and pizza!

I forgot my phone one day this week. I hadn’t gone far and could have gone back for it. But, I decided I could survive a work day without the infernal thing. It was wonderful not being interrupted by it throughout the day, and I only felt an ever so slight disconnected feeling once, or maybe twice. The only real bummer was the basketball game invite that I didn’t see in time. While I’d like to say this made me totally rethink my relationship to technology and am going to forgo all mobile communications, my phone hasn’t left my side since.

Hot on the heels of last week’s human.json, I added an AI policy to this site.

On Saturday, we successfully extracted the Big Green Egg from the deck at the old apartment. I was worried we’d have trouble getting it down the stairs, but it turned out to be lighter and easier to handle than than expected. It now resides on a farm in the country with other, old Green Eggs.

This also gave us an opportunity to have one of our infrequent live jams. Jamulus is amazing in that it lets us play together every week, which would be impossible otherwise. But live is so much better. I think we sounded pretty good, I hope the neighbors agree.

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A small, bass pedalboard with preamp, chorus and Beat Buddy pedals on a wood floor with a hand written set list.

On the jam this week, we decided to get somewhat more organized: I put together a playlist ahead of time. Not surprisingly, the jam was smoother without the usual “what are we playing next” routine where I suggest a song and the other guys suggest alternatives. We also added a new (for us) song that sounded shockingly good the first time through. Our set list is somewhat eclectic, but I can see us heading in a slightly more rockabilly direction. If that’s the case, I might need an upright bass.

A friend had some BBQ sauces delivered from Alabama this week. We tried them out on some chicken, the verdict: The Dreamland BBQ sauce is delicious and the Big Bob Gibson White Sauce is, perhaps, and acquired taste. I’ll give the white sauce a couple more chances, but it may prove too mayonnaisey for my tastes.

The 3D printed boat part I designed came back from the printer this week. While the print quality on this one isn’t as good the as the first, it should work. I’ll drop a full write-up in the Projects section after I’ve installed it on the boat.

Finally, I noticed some weirdness on the site this week. No, jpreardon.com is not (intentionally) hawking prescription drugs. Someone managed to inject spam into a few of the pages and posts recently. I think I’ve removed all of it now, and security has been tightened to prevent it from happening in the future.

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Four half-racks of BBQ pork baby-back ribs on a sheet pan.

A favorite around here are these Smoked Gochujang Ribs. That low-and-slow recipe calls for over 6 hours in the smoker, which requires some advanced planning. Since last year, we’ve had good luck with a faster recipe Brian turned me on to, I think it’s how they roll in Alabama. It calls for a slightly higher heat and can be on the table in a couple hours. The results? Almost as good as the low-and-slow method.

Recipe

I’m writing this down here so I don’t have to go digging into my message history next time I cook them:

  • Prep a couple racks of pork ribs
    • Remove silver skin
    • Slather with yellow mustard
    • Sprinkle spices on all sides: Salt, black pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, paprika. I go light here–not looking to develop a bark. I also leave out sugar to prevent burning
    • Keep in refrigerator until time to cook
  • Prepare grill for indirect cooking and stabilize the temperature around 325º
  • Put ribs on the grill bone side down, or use a rib rack
  • Cook covered maintaining temperature
  • After an hour, check the internal temperature, you’re looking for around 190-200º
  • Once ribs are at temperature, brush on your desired glaze. I glaze both sides twice letting them cook for a couple minutes between applications. Be careful not to burn the glaze at this point.
  • Remove ribs from grill and serve.

Notes

  • I generally don’t add hardwood, but it probably wouldn’t hurt, just go easy on it
  • For the glaze, I use some BBQ sauce–home made or store bought–thinned with water for easier brushing. I will try the gochujang glaze in the near future.