"smoker" news and stories

Cow head in banana leaves at Hill Country. Photo: Kat Kinsman

There comes a time in every girl's life -- when she's ripping open the long-braised skull of a short-lived calf in order to better wobble out its beer-marinated brain -- that she smiles contentedly and realizes she loves her life an awful lot. Then she goes for the eyes.

Well OK, not every girl's life -- but at least those of a troika of squeam-free dames including Hill Country's executive chef and cookbook author Elizabeth Karmel, Homesick Texan writer Lisa Fain and lucky, lucky me. And it all happened because of Twitter.

See a step-by-step barbacoa making slideshow and read a description after the jump. Warning -- it's not for vegetarians or the faint of stomach.

When I was younger and had trouble falling asleep, I used to fantasize about my perfect birthday party. I would plan everything in my head -- my dress, activities, the guests, even the flavors of cake I would serve.

Now when I can't sleep, I imagine my dream kitchen. It's enormous and beautiful and light, and it opens seamlessly into an outdoor deck area where I have another (you guessed it) huge kitchen. The outdoor kitchen is for serving guests and hanging by the pool (with hot tub and waterfall) in the summer. It has a gorgeous grill with a rotisserie, as well as a smoker and a shiny stainless steel refrigerator, sink and dishwasher. This is a bit embarrassing, but sometimes when my boyfriend and I are bored, we like to drool over these appliances in magazines and stores.

Who wants to use their imagination? After the jump, let's play make believe, and look at some amazing outdoor kitchen equipment and pretend that we own it.

Warehouse of weirdness Neatorama recently posted a list of "The Top 10 Coolest BBQ Grills," which they then amended to include many others. Sure, the Big Green Egg and its Kamodo counterpart put in appearances, but that's just the beginning. There's a HEMI-powered grill, and not one, but two different smokers shaped like 10- and 20-foot-long pistols. There are also plenty of new, hi-tech smoke boxes. And then there's the "World's Largest Transportable Smoker," which has 90,000 square feet of cooking space and, like the pistol smokers, comes from Texas.

This is a cookbook for anyone who is serious about barbecue and in it you will find no recipes directing you to simply slap a steak on top of hot coals. Instead, there are detailed guidelines for how to spend hours smoking your meat to perfection. Smoking meat with wood chips is a time honored (and time intensive) of preserving meat and imparting flavor to it. The motto of the book Championship BBQ Secrets for Real Smoked Food is "low and slow" and author Karen Putman is something of an expert in the subject. She has more than 20 years of experience and the title of grand champion from the American Royal BBQ Contest to attest to the delicious taste of smoked 'cue.

By the way, if you're serious about smoking and barbecue, you may want to take Putman's recommendation to use a charcoal grill and not a gas one. It's easier to maintain a proper temperature and an even heat distribution with coal, not to mention that it's a little more practical to keep it going for hours at a time while your meat cooks.

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Love barbecue? Got a smoker? I have a friend who smokes ribs and brisket, and getting an invitation to dinner at his house is like getting an invite to a red-carpet premiere. BBQ Junkie, a great blog about the barbecue scene in California, has this amazing-looking recipe for Kalua Pig made in your smoker.

It involves banana leaves, Hawaiian sea salt, and many hours, in the smoker, but when the end result looks as good as the platter at right, isn't it worth it? I wish I could just reach right into the screen and pluck a delectable sample of that meat right out of the screen.

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