I miss my barbecue.

Well...

A couple of months ago my wife gave birth to our first child, a very sweet and wonderful daughter.

But...

Since then I haven't managed to barbecue a single thing, not even grilling a cheap ass shop brought burger. I think I'm getting charcoal withdrawal.

I am planning on getting back into it this weekend and I have to cook a load of food for a work party in July, I've ordered four pork shoulders from a good butcher in Devon for that. I'm looking forward to really filling up the WSM.

Also I'm going to Grillstock in a weeks time, the biggest (and maybe only) barbecue festival in the UK.

I shall post some interesting stuff about that I'm sure.

Right, see you next time!

T-bone Steak On a Saturday

A buddy of mine has just moved down to London so last Saturday I thought I'd cook a celebratory meal, and what better than a nice juicy T-bone steak.

I'd not been a fan of T-bone until I tried it in the US last year, I'd never been impressed with it over her but done right it was gorgeous.  The steaks in the supermarket are always unimpressive so I ordered some from a butcher in Devon and boy was impressed.

After trimming it down I covered it in a thick paste based on garlic and Worcestershire sauce. I was hoping the strong flavours would go well with the meat and give a nice finish to it. So covered in paste it was clingfilmed and stuck in the fridge to really draw in the flavours. I left it for about 7 hours before cooking and I think that was about right.

Cooked on the grill along with some new potatoes and portobello mushrooms. The potatoes had been parboiled and doused in olive oil and rosemary and had been on for about 20 minutes before the steaks joined them. I had a problem with my heat distribution and had to juggle the food around, as you can see the steaks and potatoes at the back were cooking better than those at the front.

Grilling in the dark is never fun, I really need to get a decent porch light. After a fair amount of guess work I took the steaks off and let them stand before serving. While they were standing I grilled some tomato halves as an extra side. As it happens the steaks were done just how I wanted them, medium rare. I leart a few things for next time, for one I'd start cooking sooner and try and fix the heat distribution but the key thing I learnt is to take photos of the cooked food before you eat it!

The First Pulled Pork of Spring

Spring has officially arrived in South East England with the first sunny weekend of the year. In preparation for this I purchased a brand new Weber Smokey Mountain and what better way to christen it than with some pulled pork.
As you can see, a shiny and new WSM and actual sunlight, both rare things in dreary England.

On with the cooking.

I like a bit of kick to mine so I mixed a rub of mustard powder, garlic granules, salt, pepper and a generous amount of cayenne chili powder and smothered the pork shoulder the night before and left it in the fridge over night. I've used a boneless shoulder only because I couldn't get anything else around here.

I got up at 7am, fired up my chimney starter. When the coals were going I layered them on top of unlit coals in the WSM and threw in a few hickory chunks. By 8am the pork was on and I was relaxing waiting for my guests.

After four hours it's starting to looking pretty good, but you might see a problem if you look closely. The oven thermometer on the grate is at 300ºF, a fair bit too hot for low and slow cooking. I'd never used a WSM before and I wasn't sure how the ventilation was.

My last vertical smoker (Pro Q) couldn't get enough air to stay lit half the time so I played it safe to start on the WSM and left them open. BIG mistake. After some trial and error I ended up with them between half and two thirds closed.

After nine hours it was looking good, and a quick poke with a finger showed it was feeling good too. You can see the temperature was at 275ºF here, still high but better, I let the water butt get too low. Damn those guests and their interesting conversations, can't they see I'm barbecuing!

It came apart beautifully and that bark tasted great, the mix of flavours was spot on. The bark had a kick and the meat had that wonderful hickory taste.

During the last hour I whipped up some sauce for it. Ketchup base with Worcestershire sauce, cider vinegar, mustard powder, salt, pepper and of course some hot sauce for kick. Half mixed in with the pork and half on the side.

Served with in buns with coleslaw side. There was enough for 12 buns.

One guest who had never had pulled pork before (this is England remember) told me it was the best pork she'd ever eaten, not bad for the WSM's first outing.

Next time on Atomic Barbecue I'm cooking T-bone steaks and maybe some wild boar, just your average Saturday barbecue right?

Beef Ribs

Welcome to the new blog. I've recently purchased my first smoker, the Weber Smokey Mountain, and I thought it was about time I wrote about my hobby. I haven't had a chance to fire it up yet so instead I'm going to post about some wonderful beef ribs I cooked up on my kettle grill last summer. The ribs were from Donald Russell.



To start I've cut the ribs into more manageable sections, two or three ribs each piece.

Next is the rub. This was a mix of black pepper, chili powder, brown sugar and garlic powder. Rub it into the meat, this really needed more rub, I underestimated here. For best results cover them and refrigerate for 8-12 hours to let the rub get to work.

Here I'm getting the grill ready. I've filled the chimney starter with long life coals (also known as heat beads) and prepared a layer of unlit briquettes on half the grill.

The grill has been warming up for a few minutes now. I dumped the lit briquettes on top of the unlit ones, next to them is a metal tray full of water. This helps regulate the temperature while cooking.

If I was cooking meat straight on the grill for a long period it would also catch the fat and stop flare ups and burning.

 Here I'm searing the ribs over a medium heat, about 10 minutes turning once. I had to do a bit of shuffling here, my cooking area wasn't big enough for all the ribs at once.

As always with a kettle grill the lid should be left down for actual cooking, I've only opened it up to take a photo.

Once they were seared nicely I put them in a foil tray and brought out the sauce.

The sauce is a mix of Cabernet Sauvignon and a good quality BBQ sauce, I would normally make my own but this was a weeknight and it was already getting late.

I've smothered the ribs with the sauce, next I got some foil and tightly covered the tray, making sure it was a reasonable seal.

 Now the easy part. I stuck it on the grill (covered of course) and left it for an hour. After an hour I came back and turned the ribs, spooned some sauce from the tray over them, re-covered the tray and put them back in for another hour.

 Here they are all done. They look pretty impressive I have to say. This was my first attempt at these and I'm pleased with the outcome.

This lot serves six people comfortably or four with seconds.



I served them with cornbread (that's the muffins) and a very good Macaroni Cheese recipe I got off Meemalee's Kitchen blog. These cornbread muffins were from a packet (Aunt Jemima®) but I prefer my own recipe which is a little bit lighter, but again I didn't really have the time to do it (okay I probably did but I was lazy).