Barbecue can be a contentious topic - barbecue or barbeque or BBQ; Weber or Big Green Egg or Caja China; wood or lump or charcoal or (shudder) gas; oak or hickory or apple; pork or beef or chicken; Kansas City or North Carolina or South Carolina or Texas or Kentucky or Georgia or Tennessee; brined or not; rubbed or marinated; sauced or dry; to mop or not to mop... You get the idea. But when all is said and done, the only thing that really matters is how the food tastes after it comes off the fire. And to that end, the Big Green Egg has consistently produced for us some of the best food that we've ever tasted. Here are pics and recipes for some of our cooks on the Egg. Some are traditional barbecue dishes, and some just show off the versatility of the Egg. We've tried to include detailed steps, but a lot of our cooks have been more by feel than by the book. For more detailed recipes, and some of our non-Egg cooks, also see our recipe archive page. Dave has also been asked to write for the Get Your Grill On food blog and will be putting some of his recipes there. |
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| Grill Fried Chicken | |
 You’ve heard of chicken fried steak? Well this is grill fried chicken. The long cook over indirect heat renders the fat out the skin so you get the crispy goodness and a juicy inside of traditionally fried chicken plus all the smoke and spice of the grill. |
 Marinate cut-up chicken overnight in 2 cups low fat buttermilk mixed with 1-2T hot sauce (Marie Sharp’s MILD Habanero Pepper Sauce is good). Drain chicken and dredge in a mixture of 1 cup flour, plus 2T of your favorite barbecue rub (I use Bone Suckin’ Rib Rub), and 2T kosher sea salt. Coat well, shake off any excess. |
 We set the BGE up for an indirect cook at 325°F. The chicken went on for 30 minutes of undisturbed cooking to set up the breading. After 30 minutes, we carefully flipped the chicken and checked and flipped again every 15 to 20 minutes until they are done (about an hour and a half, or until a thigh piece hit 180°F internal. |
 The end result was very tasty. Because of the breading, the meat stayed moist and the skin was crispy without being greasy. The marinade and the rub added a nice amount a spice |
| Puerco Pibil | |
 This is our version of the classic slow-cooked pork dish that we've enjoyed many times when visiting Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. It relies on achiote paste (a blend of of annatto seeds, Mexican oregano, garlic, cumin, cloves, cinnamon, black pepper, allspice, and salt) for a lot of its flavor. |
 We started with a 5-7 pound pork butt marinated overnight in a recado of orange juice, lime juice, lemon juice, achiote paste, garlic, canola oil, dried ancho pepper, and Adobo powder. |
 The marinated butt went on the BGE for a 12-14 hour indirect cook at 225-250°F using hickory and guava wood for smoke. Once the butt reached 190°F internal, we wrapped it in heavy-duty foil and let it rest in a warm oven for an hour. |
 After resting, we shredded it using a pair of bear paws, mixing in the leftover marinade. The end result was earthy, tender pork with plenty of warmth from the pepper, and a nice bite of citrus. See a more detailed recipe Get Your Grill On. |
| Pork Char Sui | |
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For New Years we wanted to try to duplicate the tasty red pork that we get at our local Chinese restaurant. We started with a 13-pound pork butt (shoulder roast) thinly sliced into strips. Rather than use food coloring to get the traditional red color, we went back to the original method and cured the pork lightly with 1t per pound of Morton's Sugar cure. The pork cured for 2 days, then rinsed, and marinated overnight in 1c soy sauce, 1/2c honey, 1/2c Hsing wine, 1c hoisin sauce, some crushed garlic, and 2t five spice powder. We hit it with a good coating of Dizzy Pig Tsunami Spin and roasted the strips directly on the Egg at 300°F until the the thickest pieces hit about 160°F internal Sweet and savory - very nice. |
| Tuna Confit | |
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Confit is meat that has been slowly cooked in fat to boost the flavor and preserve the meat. We seasoned 2 tuna steaks with kosher salt and fresh cracked pepper, and then covered it with a cup or so of olive oil along with roasted red peppers, garlic, bay leaf, and a little preserved lemon. The tuna roasted indirectly on the Egg at 300°F until it was cooked through, about 30 minutes. After it had cooled, we flaked the tuna into a container and covered it with the oil. Best tuna salad ever. |
| Smoked Almonds | |
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We tried our version of Rick's recipe for smoked almonds. We soaked a pound of raw almonds in warm water for about 15 minutes, drained them, coated them with a little Canola oil, and seasoned them with table salt, soy sauce, honey, and Dizzy Pigs Swamp Venom seasoning. They smoked over hickory at 300°F for about 20 minutes until dark and smokey. Man they were good. Blue Diamond eat your heart out. |
| Tri-tip | |
 Beef tri-tip is a cut from the bottom sirloin. It's very lean, very flavorful, and very tender if cooked properly. Here the tri-tip is getting seared at about 450°F direct. |
 After searing it for 3 minutes on each side, we set the BGE up for indirect cooking and dropped the heat to 350°F and pulled the roast off for a 10 minute rest when it hit 135°F internal. Here it is sliced for serving - tender and tasty. Save the juices to spoon over the meat when serving. |
| The Man Cook '07 - Ribs, Canadian Bacon, Pulled Pork, & Pastrami | |
 Our freezer was getting a little bare, and Gelina was going away to visit a friend, so I decided to spend the weekend doing some serious barbecue. First I had to remove Gelina's hat - she had been using the BGE as a drying rack, sigh... |
 First up - 2 very nice pork butts that I seasoned with a paste made from kosher salt, garlic cloves, Dizzy Pig Coarse Dizzy Dust, cider vinegar, and olive oil. |
 Looking good after an all-night cook at 225°F over hickory and grape vine. I pulled these when they hit 190°F internal. |
 I removed the outer "bark", chopped it up, and then added it back to the pulled pork along with some Lexington-style sauce. This all (well, mostly) went into quart freezer bags. |
 Next up was Canadian bacon and pastrami. I smoked them at 225°F over hickory and grape vine until the pork hit 165°F and the brisket hit 175°F. |
 Here's the finished brisket. I used my standard pastrami recipe and it turned out great - tender and tasty with very little fat. Some of this made it to the freezer, but most of it ended up in sandwiches. |
 The Canadian bacon also turned out great. See my general bacon recipe for starting point. I added 1T per pound of Dizzy Pig Red Eye Express to this batch as was very impressed with the flavor. This got divided into 1lb servings for many breakfasts to come. |
 I timed my final cook of the weekend to have ribs ready when my dear wife returned home. The 2 outer racks are beef ribs seasoned with a Texas-style rub and the rest are baby backs coated with Dizzy Pig Raging River. |
 We were in for rain, so I set the BGE up with it's rain cap and sealed my thermometer in a zip-lock bag. |
 I cooked these indirect at 225°F with guava wood for smoke until the meat between the ribs hit 190°F. Very tasty. |
| Beef Ribs & Scallops | |
 For a change of pace, we decided to do a little surf and turf on the Egg. We started with beef back ribs. They look a lot like huge spareribs, hence the nickname "dino ribs." These were hit with a little balsamic vinaigrette and dusted with Dizzy Pig Cow Lick. |
 These ribs came from the back of a prime rib roast. They were done indirect at about 225°F using grape vine for smoke. This is what they looked like at about 2 hours into the cook. |
 Beef porn - as the ribs started to curl we flipped them over. See how the meat is already starting to pull back from the bones. At 190°F internal the ribs were pulled, wrapped in foil, and returned to the BGE until they hit 210°F. |
 The finished product was very tasty. Not greasy, but rich and flavor full. The meat almost fell off the bone. In retrospect, they could have easily gone another hour before putting them in foil. It's probably impossible to overcook beef ribs as long as you keep the heat low. |
 On to the surf - big ol' sea scallops. One half was marinated in sweet chile sauce, lime juice, and soy sauce. The other our take on Wish Willy’s lime chili marinade that we had in Belize. |
 The scallops and asparagus were done direct on the BGE at about 400°F. Note the grate extender that helped keep the scallops moist. |
 Scallops are done when they lose their translucence and turn firmer and opaque, not a minute longer. |
 A great combination - the scallops were sweet and tender, the ribs were rich and meaty, and the asparagus was a crisp al dente. |
| Pastrami | |
 St. Patty's Day generally means green beer, corned beef, and puking on your shoes. We went the corned beef route. Here's our little 3-pound brisket and the curing spice. |
 A close-up of the cure - for a 3-pound brisket we used 3 T of Morton's Sugar Cure (plain), 1 T brown sugar, and 2 T of Penzey's Corned Beef Spices (brown & yellow mustard seeds, coriander, allspice, cracked cassia, dill seed, bay leaves, cloves, China ginger, peppercorns, star anise, juniper, mace, cardamom, red pepper, whew...). |
 We worked the cure into the brisket and put it away to do it's Irish mojo for 24 hours. |
 The cure was washed off and a light coating of Dizzy Pig Cow Lick was applied. |
 Loaded Egg - the brisket is top left. Other goodies include a pork tenderloin and cured salmon. Everything was cooked at 250°F over guava wood. |
 We pulled the brisket at 200°F internal and wrapped it in foil for an hour. Sliced corned beef - Gelina made pumpernickel bread and we had reubens fit for a king. |
| Pork Butt | |
 Pulled pork is a wonder of the bbq world. We started with an 8-pound roast (despite its name, the butt comes from the shoulder of the pig) and seasoned it with a rub. |
 The firebox loaded with lump and a mix of apple wood and grape vine for smoke. |
 We inverted the plate setter to diffuse the heat and put a pan of water under the meat to add moisture and catch the fat as it's rendered from the butt. |
 Butt on! Starting at 7pm, we cooked the seasoned butt between 225-250°F. Low and slow heat not only cooks most of the fat out of the meat, but melts the gristly bits and connective tissue to the point that the butt will literally fall apart and melt in your mouth. |
 It's 11am the next morning and we have butt!The butt is done cooking when the internal temp hits 200°F. The dark coating is called "bark." It's very smoky and chewy. |
 We used bear paws to shred the meat and make sure that the bark mixed in with the rest of the pork so that you got a little taste of it in every bite. |
 A mess o' butt - we finished it with a little vinegar sauce and served it on cheap white buns with cole slaw, baked beans, and Summit Pale Ale - now that's living! |
Butt Facts
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| More Butt | |
 Pulled pork has become a regular item on our menu. To avoid running out, we decided to do up 3 butts this time using different rubs - Dizzy Pig Coarse Dizzy Dust, Dizzy Pig Red Eye Express, and Goya Sazón. |
 The Egg loaded with butts. We did them indirect with a drip pan at between 225-250°F with grape vine for smoke. |
 9 hours later the Acurite butt alarm went off when the temperature hit 190°F internal in the middle-sized butt. |
 We foiled them and let them sit in a warm oven until they hit 200°F internal. |
 Time to pull - all were good, but the butt done with Red Eye Express was drier/smokier. Should be remarkable with a sweeter finishing sauce on it |
 We roasted the butt with Sazón (coriander, annatto, garlic and salt) on it in the oven at 350°F for about 30 minutes to make carnitas. Mmmmmmmmm.... |
| Pulled Ham | |
 We decided to do something a little different than traditional pulled pork - pulled ham. We started with half a pork butt (Boston butt or pork shoulder roast) and cured for 5 days using 1T per pound of Morton's Sugar Cure and 1t per pound of Dizzy Pig Red Eye Express. |
After curing, we soaked it for about 2 hours in fresh water, let it air-dry for another hour, and but it on the BGE indirect at 250°F with hickory for smoke until it hit 140°F internal. After it hit 140°F, we moved it to a foil pan and started basting it with a glaze of: 1/4 cup brown sugar 1/8 cup maple syrup 1T cider vinegar 1T Worcestershire sauce 1/2 cup coffee 1t Coleman's mustard 1T frozen orange juice concentrate It went back on the BGE, still at 250°F, and we basted it every 20 minutes or so until the butt hit 190°F internal. Then we sealed the pan with a foil and let it sit on the Egg until it hit until 200°F internal. We pulled it just like you would pulled pork. It was salty, and sweet, and tangy, and ever so delicious! |
| 1500°F Steak | |
 We opened up all the vents on the BGE and let 'er roar. The charcoal looked like lava and and the grill temp was around 1500°F. |
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 We cooked it 3 minutes on one side, flipped, cooked it 3 minutes on the other side, flipped, shut all the vents on the BGE down and cooked for 3 more minutes. Then let it rest 5 minutes. |
 Perfect - crispy on the outside, medium/medium rare on the inside. At what they charge for prime beef, this is not a Wednesday night kind of steak. It's more of a marry-me-all-over-again kind of steak. |
| Ribs | |
 3 slabs of trimmed spare ribs. We sprinkled them with them with good brewed vinegar and Penzey's Galena Street Rub. |
 They marinated overnight and we hit them with more rub right before putting them on the BGE. |
 They cooked indirectly for 4 hours at 225°F and 1 hour at 275°F with apple and grape vine chunks for smoke. |
 We finished them with a light bbq sauce. They were so tender you could slide the bones right out. |
| Bacon | |
 We decided to try our hands at making our own bacon. Using Morton's Sugar Cure, we cured a port butt and a loin. We used a tablespoon of cure and a tablespoon of sugar per pound of meat. The butt cured for 7 days, and the loin for 5. |
 They went on the BGE at 225°F for an 2 hours, and then 300°F until the loin hit 165°F internal and the butt hit 145°F. We used 4 hunks of hickory for smoke. |
 The loin turned into some of the best canadian-style bacon we ever had. It's fully cooked, so you can just slice it and eat it. |
 The butt became what they call buckboard bacon - kind of a cross between country ham and Canadian bacon. It's safely cured, but you still need to cook it |
 The beginning of a very fine breakfast. |
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 The Canadian bacon was so good that we've started to get requests for it from friends and family. Here's 12 pounds worth on at 250°F with a mix of soaked and dry chunks of hickory to get more smoke. |
 Great end result. The loins were cured for 5 days using one tablespoon each of Morton Sugar Cure, white sugar, and brown sugar per pound of meat. |
 Not content with our Canadian bacon success, we decided to to try several styles of buckboard bacon. This is an old-West style of bacon using pork butt instead of belly. We started with 3 little butts, each about 4 pounds. |
 The first butt got a simple cure of Morton's Sugar Cure and white sugar |
 The pepper bacon was the same simple recipe, except with the addition of a tablespoon of fresh ground pepper and one tablespoon per pound of brown sugar. We also dusted the butt with a little more ground pepper right before it went into the BGE. |
 Now the Tasso bacon was a tad more complicated. |
 The butts were stored in separate ziploc bags and cured for 6 days. Every day they were flipped at least once. Then we rinsed the cure off and soaked the butts in fresh water for about an hour to get the excess salt out of them. |
 3 different cures. Guess which butt is which. |
 All the butts were smoked on the BGE at 250°F over chunks of hickory until they hit 145°F internal. They are cured, but not fully cooked. After slicing we cook them by baking the slices at 400°F until crispy. We ended up with about 9 pounds of bacon. |
 The Tasso bacon sliced. All 3 butts turned out |
| Turkey | |
 For our first Thanksgiving with the BGE we just had to cook our turkey on it. We made up a batch of the Hound's Citrus Brine - it looks nasty and smells strange, but it does amazing things to poultry. |
 We brined a 14 pound fresh turkey for 12 hours.Brining causes the turkey to hold more water as well as pull some of the flavoring deep into the muscle. A ziploc big bag helped keep the mess down. |
 We used a old stoneware crock to contain everything. Once the bag was sealed it was topped with several ice packs and stored overnight in our unheated garage. The idea is to keep the brine below 40°F so nobody gets the trots. |
 Is it chilly in here, or is it just me? Icing the breast (a fine Mad Max idea) keeps it from over-cooking. |
 Washed, dried, chilled, coated with canola oil, and ready for the grill. The bird went on at 500°F to seal in the flavor. We used just a couple of small chunks of apple wood for smoke. |
 The grill is set up for indirect cooking using an inverted plate setter. We put the rack in a pan to catch the juices and used 3 of the little BGE feet between the pan and the setter to avoid scorching the pan. |
 Here's what it looked like after 30 minutes. Then we dropped the temp to 350°F and roasted it until the temp in the breast hit 161°F. |
 A great bird - crispy skin, moist breast meat, tender dark meat, and tasty pan juices for gravy. |
| Christmas Day Egg-a-thon | |
 We also smoked a pair of fatties (not what you're thinking) - they're Bob Evans sausage seasoned with Dizzy Pig Dizzy Dust. |
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 I rubbed the chicken with Dizzy Pig's Swamp Venom and the ribs with their Dizzy Dust. Thanks to my dear wife for getting me their gift pack. |
 Here's the salmon drying after getting a coating of Dizzy Pig Raging River. |
 Loaded grill - the BGE was set to indirect heat with a 225°F dome temperature and grape vine and hickory for smoke. |
 The chicken came off the Egg when it hit 175°F and was wrapped in foil until it hit 200°F. |
 This was a big, old free range bird, but it shredded easily. I used a pair of insulated food gloves to save my hands. I recovered a cup of the drippings for a finishing sauce. |
 After the chicken came off, the salmon went on for about an hour and a half. One piece was so moist it just fell apart when I tried to take it off. |
 The ribs came off next - dark and smoky, mmmmmmm. The Dizzy Dust formed a crust that got pretty black, but held a lot of the moisture in the meat. Very tasty. |
 Finally, the fatties - these will go great with biscuits for breakfast. |
| Pozole | |
 After enjoying pozole (a stew made from hominy, pork or chicken, and green chiles) in Mexico, we decided to try a version of the dish on the BGE.We wanted to try the barbacoa technique, where the meat cooks over the stock. It started with one nice frying hen that was rubbed with Goya Sazón and placed on a vertical roaster. |
 The BGE was stabilized at 350°F and we put a cast iron dutch oven full of stock (water, onion, chicken neck, 1/2 cup Mojo Criollo, garlic, and roasted jalapeño) onto the inverted plate setter. BGE feet were used to raise it off the plate so it wouldn't scorch. |
 The idea had been to vertically roast the bird over the stock, but in one of those measure-once-cut-twice moments I discovered that this setup would be too tall to fit in the Egg. |
 So the bird ended up just sitting on the grid above the stock and just had to make sure that the bird's juices drained into the stock. It cooked until the bird hit 165°F. |
 After the chicken was done the stock cooked for another half hour just to reduce it a bit and increase the smoky flavor. |
 The chicken was shredded into the stock and then we added the hominy and green chiles and let it simmer for another half hour. It was amazing - rich stock, tender chicken, smoky aroma, wow! |
