Kinder's Meats Deli BBQ - Fairfield, CA

Two new BBQ joints in two nights, and two posts to match.

Tonight found me in Fairfield, CA. After a trying day with a critical computer failure I wandered into Best Buy to by a thumb drive in the hope that my computer awakes long enough for me to pull a bunch of data off the local drive. Curses for not backing up regularly and/or saving critical files to the cloud.

What does this have to do with BBQ? Well, I asked the guys at Best Buy for a BBQ recommendation. They both said to go to Kinder's. Bonus points for it being really close to my hotel.

Cut it close by getting there at 7:45 - they close at 8. They didn't have any issue with me ordering that close to closing and eating there.

Got the pulled pork of course. Their standard sando comes with mayo on the top bun. Never had that, but rolled with it. Added coleslaw and baked beans. Plus a beer and it only set me back $14.34.

Not my favorite coleslaw - but I am really picky - still ate most of it. Enjoyed it added to the sandwich. Beans were good and hearty.

They pork was tender and had a nice flavor. The Kinder sauce added a nice touch of flavor without overpowering he meat.

I would come here again for sure. Who knows, maybe I'll head back tomorrow to try the BBQ Beef sandwich. 

They actually have three locations - Fairfield, Danville and Pleasanton.

In Fairfield they are at:
1363 Oliver Road, Suite C
Fairfield, CA 94534

They even have an Android and iOS app. Looks like they are on Facebook & Twitter, but no account info is on the menu.

A New Joint - Dickey's Barbecue Pit (Lodi)

Mobile post.

Tonight I find myself in Lodi, CA on a business trip. Whenever I find myself overnight somewhere I seek out BBQ. Here I was only able to locate two locations, and one closed at 4 pm so that was out.

So I heard from a few people that Dickey's is the place to go for BBQ. I didn't think much about the name at the time. When I pulled up I recognized it as a chain because there is one about to open in San Marcos near us.

Truth be told I was disappointed because I really like to find those classic, single-location joints that do some catering on the weekends. But I was ready for BBQ so in I went.

I grabbed a menu and got in line. My go-to item for the first time at a location is the pulled pork sandwich. But I didn't see one on the menu. Well, turns out the "Big barbecue" is a sandwich with your choice of meats (not that you'd know that from the menu).

So I got that with pulled pork (which he pulled right there) with the Dickey's BBQ sauce. They also have a sweet sauce and a spicy sauce. And I got two sides - coleslaw to add to the sandwich and barbecue beans. Add a bottle of Coors Light and the total came to $14.26.

Well, short review - I am looking forward to stopping by the San Marcos location and eating at Dickey's again.

I don't care for most coleslaw. I like theirs. I might like it more with a few raisins and a few chopped nuts, but good just as it is. Just a little sweet.

Enjoyed the beans too. Lots of other sides to investigate during future visits.

The pork was nice and tender. Sauce has just a little spice. Good flavor. I did enjoy the sandwich more with the coleslaw on it.

If you ever find yourself in Lodi and wondering what to do for lunch or dinner, swing into Dickey's at 1379 S. Lower Sacramento in the Lowe's shopping center.

Dusting off the Smoker for July 4th

Can you guess what I am doing on July 4th?

The Butt is trimmed and rubbed

Like a ton of folks, I will be firing up the smoker tomorrow and slow cooking some pork butts.

I am trying a new flavor base this time. For years I have used molasses as my base, but from the start I have wanted to use honey. So in honor of the birthday of America I am trying honey.

Sticking with my old standby rub, Bad Byron's Butt Rub. Best to just mess with one thing at a time. I love Bad Byron's tagline - "A little Butt Rub makes everything better" - ain't that the truth!  =)

I picked up 14.84 pounds of Butt at Restaurant Depot in San Diego on Monday. It was hard to not get more Butt and toss in some Ribeye (on sale!) as well. But I was good. Lots of other supplies yet to get for the party on the 7th.

I trimmed up the two butts a bit. There was some serious fat on the larger of the two. Coated with honey. rubbed with Butt Rub, wrapped and back into the refrigerator.

On the 7th we are having family and friends over to hang out, eat, drink and spend some quality time together. Serving pulled pork sandwiches and hotdogs. If people know what's good for them we will have a lot of leftover hotdogs...

Well, now that I have that done, I'd better finish cleaning up the kitchen and get to bed.
After the butts are done tomorrow we are heading out for a date - San Diego County Fair or dinner and a movie. We shall see...

First Smoke of 2009 – Pork Butt / Pulled Pork

We finally got our entry cards for Restaurant Depot so just had to wander around a bit. Hit heaven when we walked into the cooler – that’s a lot of meat in there! Pork Butt was on sale, OK, force me – I’ll grab 14 pounds and see if the smoking gods let me make some smoke this weekend. As you see below, it all worked out.

Got the smoker and all out in the open and ready to go…

Did not get the butts rubbed and in the refrigerator overnight since I wasn’t sure it was going to happen. So they got about an hour or so rubbed and wrapped. I used Bad Byron’s Butt Rub over my secret base again. Need to try some other rubs next time. Or better yet, make my own.

I wanted to try smoking at a bit higher heat this time to see if I could get the cook time down a bit while still keeping the end product moist and tasty. Ended up with about 8 hours for the bigger piece (smoked closer to the fire box) and 8 1/2 hours for the smaller part.

Here’s a peek after about two hours. This is my first time with boneless (I meant to grab the on sale bone-in, but didn’t read the label carefully!). Things look like they are progressing well.

After four hours things are really coming along. The bark is starting to firm up well. Looking pretty tasty.

The Five hour mark is where the bark really sets in. Man it was dark. Still chugging along with the Best of the West lump (a ton of shake in this bag – is that common?). First time with Best of the West – not sure how I feel about it. I know a lot of folks use it, so I think I’ll try it again and see if I feel better about it next time. Got it on sale at Smart & Final – so that was a bonus! OK, back to the meat – here we are at five hours…

I pulled the larger piece at 190* (foiled at 170*) and let rest for 15-20 minutes.

Then got pulling. Moist. Bark was a bit strong for my wife’s taste, but she loved the meat. It was nice to catch her sneaking some meat when I was in the other room. She really did like it!

The smaller piece was further from the fire box and went to about 193* in 8 1/2 hours (I also foiled this one at about 170*). Let it rest for about 20-25 minutes and started pulling.

Good results here too. Very moist. Nice and dark.

Got it bagged up and in the refrigerator. I think I know what’s for lunch today!

Need to spend some time with the vacuum packer today. Like many out there, I like to freeze it in single or double serving sizes and then reheat by boiling for 20 minutes or so before dropping on some bread for lunch.

I added some oak and a little avocado wood along the way on this cook. Need to resupply the cooking wood pile.

I was thinking about doing an apple juice injection, but since I got a late start on things I was just scrambling to get it going. Even had to fun to Smart & Final to get the charcoal since I was out and my oak supply has dwindled.

This should keep me set for pulled pork sammies for a bit! If I’m not careful my wife will start eating them too – I guess that’s OK. Just means I’ll have do cook more!

Two Pork Loin – 8 and 6.5 Pounders

We stopped by a Vons on the way home from Thanksgiving dinner. I’ll tell you what – this is a good time to shop for meats, right after Thanksgiving. We picked up a 22 pound turkey for under $7 and about $100 worth of pork loin for about $30. Good prices!

The turkey is for a dog club holiday party in a few weeks. The pork loin for a Loin’s Club Christmas Party a week after Thanksgiving. The ‘best by’ dates were still far off, so the loin stayed in the refrigerator. There isn’t enough room for the bird, so it went into the freezer.

Jen asked to have one loin with a Chinese BBQ marinade that we have used before and really liked. Wasn’t sure how it would smoke up, but I said “sure!”. It was being smoked the day after her birthday after all… The other one I wasn’t quite sure what to do with. That is until I opened the cabinet to check out some rubs and saw the apple rub. For some reason that jumped out at me as a perfect flavor for the pork. It was D-Dog’s Apple rub.

Started off by marking the Chinese BBQ marinade. I multiplied the recipe by eight since the loin I was going to use was an 8 pound giant. After making it I knew it still wouldn’t cover it, but just couldn’t bring myself to make even more. So I figured I’d turn it as few times before bed and again in the AM.

Here is the finished marinade…

Here is the loin after sitting all night and being turned. It looked like it took on the marinade pretty well. There wasn’t enough room in the refrigerator for a pot or bowl big enough to fit the loin and marinade, so I coolered it on ice with a thermometer over night.

I’ll include the full recipe for the Chinese BBQ marinade at the end of this post. And yes – it does work well in the smoker.

The 6.5 pound loin got a mix of my secret sauce and a liberal rub down of the D-Dog’s Apple rub. It was plastic wrapped and put back in the refrigerator for the night. Sorry, I failed to get a photo here.

In the morning Mojo (one of “the” Big Dog’s) helped by testing out some of the oak I was going to use…

After the wood was declared ready for use I got a full chimney of lump charcoal going and got ready to go.

This is only my second time using this smoker. I know that it leaks air like crazy – need to work on that. I was also working with a new thermometer today. The temps were all over the place and finally settled down after nearly an hour.

One of these days I need to spend some time working on sealing up the doors on this smoker. Don’t really need to open the chimney much with all the leaks this guy has!

I figured what I would do is put on the larger loin for 60-90 minutes before putting on the smaller one. Hoping that they would finish about the same time. So I got some fresh oak on the fire to get the smoke going, and dropped in the Apple rubbed loin. If you caught my error here you were faster than I was. It wasn’t until I went to get the Chinese BBQ loin about an hour later that I realized I did them backwards! I dropped the 6.5 pound loin first! Oh well – that’s how it goes…

So the Apple rub went on first…

Temps were a little high for the first hour too – on top of my mistake! So it was crusin’ to temp a lot faster than I had expected. Maybe because for the first hour the temp was 25* higher on the grill than I thought it was! That could have just a little to do with it.

I pulled and foiled the Apple rub loin at about 145* F. Then I added the Chinese BBQ loin…

I worked to keep the temp in the middle of the smoker at grate level around 120* – 130*. My target of 125* was fairly steady. After the Chinese BBQ loin went in I added another little piece of oak to get some fresh smoke going. Also added a little fresh lump first to keep the temps going.

I used a lot less charcoal than on my last smoke (Pork Butt). I think there was less wind, and the lump burns a bit hotter, and I was using some whole oak wood too. I think it was a lot to do with the wind. Looking back at the photos for that last smoke I recall how windy it was – we had to wrap the smoker to keep the heat up!

The smaller loin came off the pit when it hit 160*. It would have to sit for a bit since it went on too early and cooked faster than I had expected. I decided then to not cut these till just before leaving – in the hope of keeping them as moist as possible.

I foiled the 8 pounder when it hit 150*. It came off at about 160*. It would have to sit a little over 90 minutes before I would be ready to cut.

Here’s the Chinese BBQ loin sliced and ready for the pan. This one was really nice when served. I foiled it and pulled it earlier than the smaller one. So it was REALLY juicy. Which was nice because it held up better to sitting in the oven for a bit – it was still nice and juicy when served.

And here’s the Apple rub loin all sliced up. This one turned out to be just a little dry, but not too bad. I cooked it a little too far, especially since it ended up sitting in the oven for awhile before being served.

Something must have gone right – I got lots of compliments on the pork throughout the night.

I would certainly do pork loin again. I think the key is to foil early, and cook to medium doneness (150*) and pull. It will continue to cook more, so if you go any further than that it will start to dry out.

OK – I promised to include the Chinese BBQ pork marinade at the end, and here we are…

Chinese BBQ Pork – from the “Chinese Cooking Class Cookbook” put out by the Editors of Consumer Guide back in 1980. This cookbook is dirty because we use it a lot, there are some good recipes in there.

[ Note: this recipe is really for an appetizer dish (for 2 pork tenderloins at 12 oz each) – so it doesn’t make a ton – but do the math and make what you need, it is an easy one. I made 8 times what it calls for and wasn’t able to submerge my 8 pound pork loin, but it was OK since I turned it and had it marinating for 10 hours. ]

1/4 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons dry red wine (I used a Cabernet Sauvignon we opened for cooking a few weeks ago]
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon honey
2 teaspoons red food coloring, if desired (I did not do this)
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 clove garlic, crushed (I cut it up a little too)
1 green onion, cut in half (I cut it into about 4-inch pieces)

 

What is your favorite method or trick for pork loin in the smoker?

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My First Pulled Pork

And the first time using the "new" smoker. Actually lugged it up to my friend Mike's place. Turn's out they had a family wedding the day before we planned to smoke, so we were going to be feeding about 17 family members.

 

I pulled two pork butts out of the freezer. They were just over 13 pounds together. Didn't get them out quite as soon as I had hoped, so turned to the CBBQA Forum to get some tips on faster defrost. In the end they were thawed late Saturday evening for a Sunday cook, so I rubbed them up with Bad Byron's Butt Rub and tossed them back in the refrigerator for morning.

We got a late start. Neither of us had done butt before. Mike had the coals going in the firebox before I got there, and we put the butts on just about 11:15 AM.

We added a small Tri-Tip and a sausage too. Also put a chicken on the rotisserie later too (used Butt Rub on it too, and it was tasty). The Tri-Tip and sausage went on about 2:15 PM. Pork butt was 131* internal temps at this time.

We added more soaked oak chips as we went along. We had the smoke box running with about a 10 degree difference from side to side. She was running about 210 at the hot side and 200 on the other.

We added a towel pretty quick - lots of air leaks. Going to have to work on that.  In the afternoon the winds picked up a little so we added the fancy brick mod to keep the towel on. It seemed to do pretty well keeping the drafts down. We took it off once to see what would happen - the temps shot up really fast. Was also glad to see it drop back down fast when the towel went back on. 

By 6 PM the natives were getting restless. So we decided to pop up the heat and get things moving along. We had already lost one family that didn't want to wait any longer and had a long drive home. So we tossed on a oak branch piece. That caught and the temps went right up - so turned down the air flow - kept her at about 250/260. At this point the pork was at 166 internal - as you can see in the photo to the left.

We wrapped in foil a little after 6. We pulled the meat before we really wanted to, but we were going to loose everyone, and the other meats were all done. We ended up pulling it at about 7 PM and the internal temp was at 174*.

Below you can see what I chopped for Mike's family to gobble up - yes chopped, I wanted to get it done fast at this point. On the cutting board are also the Tri-Tip and the sausage. That Tri-Tip was tasty. But so was the pork! Next to that is what I pulled after getting home that evening.

 

I pulled 1 1/2 butts and vacuum packed them up in 2 serving sizes. There was probably about 16 servings at least left there.

I'll be enjoying this meat for some time, and I learned a lot on the cook too. Not bad for my first run at pulled pork! I think we are going to try brisket. None of us have done a brisket before either. This is my kind of learnin'!

Enter the Team Pork Fiesta Bowl Sweepstakes!

[ Here's a contest that folks will like to enter for a variety of reasons. ]

 

Fire up the grill and bring along the mega phones, foam fingers and team jerseys. The Other White Meat® and Ray Lampe (a.k.a. Dr. BBQ), tailgating expert and author of newly-released The NFL Gameday Cookbook (Chronicle Books) will be partying in the parking lot with lucky "Team Pork" fans as part of this year's "Team Pork Fiesta Bowl Sweepstakes!"

Be sure to enter yourself in this "draft!"  One national winner will win:

• All-expense paid trip for two to the 2009 Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Ariz.
• Two tickets to the Fiesta Bowl game
• VIP pass to a private tailgating party with Dr. BBQ himself, Ray Lampe

To enter the online sweepstakes, simply fill out the information below and click submit!  You can also check-out the official rules for details on the mail-in sweepstakes.

Contest begins on September 10th, 2008 and will run through December 1st, 2008.

One lucky winner and a guest will be selected on Dec. 8, 2008!

 

Follow link to enter: http://www.theotherwhitemeat.com/aspx/promos/tailgatesweeps.aspx

Pork Butt? What's Pork Butt??

Well, it's not the butt of the pig as you might expect from the name.

This page is actually very informative:
http://www.virtualweberbullet.com/porkbuttselect.html

It has a good explanation of the cut, and lots of info on preparation too.

I've been craving pulled pork, so I think I'll try my first pork butt here soon.
HogWild BBQ has also been an informative blog that I've run across: http://hogwildbbq.blogspot.com/2007/04/pork-butt.html - Hog says that his pulled pork, when vacuum sealed and frozen, holds up really well. That's good for me because I always end up with way too much food - and I hate to waste it. I've got to work on finding folks to feed when I do large pieces of meat. Then again - if it freezes well, that can mean a nice lunch for me for some time!

New Plan - Gotta Get Started

OK - so the bacon smoke will have to wait a little bit. There is some learning to do on curing and such before I jump into that. But it will be done.

I got some pork for Jen to use in a meat loaf - and thanks to the huge portions at Costco, there is some left over. So I am going to fire up the new Brinkmann and do a small little smoke to get back in the game. Photos and notes to come.

I'd better try this new equipment out at least once before Saturday - that's the day I'm doin' the turkey! (assuming of course that the bloody thing defrosts by then!) It had better defrost, because then it is off to a holiday gathering and right into X-Mas eve. Given the cold weather I don't think I'm going to have much time to brine it - yes, I know I said earlier I wasn't going to do a brine - but I think I've changed my mind. Of course, I might not have any say in the matter...

I'm going to whip up some rub that I am totally making up from scratch, pop some stuff in the cavity and go for it!

But first the pork...

Bacon!!

A posting today on the California BBQ Association Forum made my mouth water for bacon. It got me thinking and I decided that Bacon is what I want to try next on the ole smoker. Also thought it would be a great gift for folks that are cooking big family breakfasts for the holidays.

Here's the specific post

Now I am attempting to gather information on what, how, when and why - anything that will aid me in learning what to do to smoke some good bacon.

So if any of you readers out there have tips, tricks or whatever about smoking bacon - send them on as a comment to this post! I'll be sure to keep notes on what I do and post that up along with photos.

May 27, 2007 (date of the smoking)--

So my wife Jen keeps telling her folks how good my smoked ribs are. So one day they decided to come up and find out for themselves. Now the pressure was on!

So why not try something totally new just to raise the possibility of totally screwing it all up!
We pulled a full chicken from the freezer that had been in there way too long, and added that to the list. Plus the ole standby pork ribs, and fresh salmon. Decided to do the salmon on the BBQ since the little smoker didn't have enough room for all this meat. No vegetarians here!

First step, prep the meat. So I pulled out the ribs and cleaned them up.

Not as many as I often do. This package was from a different store, but that proved to be OK because I didn't have much extra room!

Next comes the rub...I often use too much, so tried to use a light hand here. Used some untraditional stuff for pork. Santa Maria tri-tip spices, and a new rub from Costco - yup, the Seafood Rub. (as a side note - this seasoning is fantastic in hamburger - we get organic hamburger, put a ton of this seafood seasoning in it and BBQ patties - man, it is great. Better than homemade meatloaf and a lot easier!)

Used some standard chicken seasoning inside and out on the bird.

Next it's time to fire up the coals (wood chips already soaking - I always forget that step!)

Lay on the meat and sit back with a beer and wait.......

Here's the chicken. Man, this was yummy.

The pork ribs - just can't seem to go wrong here.
Meat just falling off the bone, great taste. My father-in-law actually gave me a fantastic restaurant style review the next day. And restaurant would have been proud with his review!

Add the salmon which came off the BBQ hot, moist and cooked just right.
We ended up skipping all the sides we had planned. After some chips and guacamole, then seeing all this fine looking meat, everyone wanted to save room for the real reason we all got together!

So I still feel like I'm not really sure what I am doing with this whole smoking gig (this is about my third or forth go at it) - but I seem to be doing OK for a guy that feels like he is blowing it!