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Ross's Big Green Egg-venture


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A little over a year ago I got a new grill called a Big Green Egg. If you've not familiar with the Big Green Egg it is the self proclaimed "Ultimate Cooking Experience" , check it out here Big Green Egg! It is basically a ceramic "kamado" style charcoal grill that can be used as a grill, smoker, or oven. The Egg burns natural lump charcoal and is made of high temperature ceramic that gives you the ability to sear steaks over direct heat at over 1000 degrees or do a low-n-slow smoke for 12+ hours with precise temperature control without adding any extra fuel. It is also great food baking pizzas, breads, or anything else that you can bake in a traditional oven.

 

I am by no means a professional chef, but I love spending time cooking on the Green Egg. I'd like to use this thread to share some of my recipes, and discuss outdoor grilling with anyone in the TPR world that is interested! Feel free to share some of your own recipes and tips!

 

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The Big Green Egg

 

By adjusting the opening on the top and bottom of the egg you can go as low as 200 degrees for 12+ hours, or as hot as over 1000 degrees for high heat direct grilling.

 

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Here is the daisy wheel opening on the top of the Egg

 

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The air vent on the bottom

 

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Direct High heat grilling some pork chops

 

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This is the set up for indirect smoking a pair of beer can chickens

 

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Another beer can chicken

 

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Baking a pizza on a pizza stone

 

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Another pizza, I think this one was a spicy cajun pizza

 

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This was my first (crappy) attempt at a calzone

 

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Here is a standing rib roast that I did for Christmas this past year, again my first rib roast. It actually ended up tasting a LOT better than it looked. I thought I had ruined a fairly expensive cut of meat, but the flavor was fantastic.

 

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And finally some Gator Skewers I grilled this year while watching Anthony Davis dunk all over the Gators!

 

More pictures and recipes to come!

Edited by Hilltopper39
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That is one of the coolest devices I've seen in a long time. I think its ugly as sin but this thread has inspired me to seek one out locally, I don't even have a grill and perhaps IO was waiting for something as awesome as this!

 

Thanks for making me salivate tonight

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Big Green Egg's corporate headquarters is in Atlanta so you should be able to find one fairly easily! I know most all ACE hardware stores carry them. They are kinda ugly in the stand alone "egg-nest" like mine is but I've seen some awesome custom tables that some people have built that are amazing. If you are considering buying a new grill I would highly consider an Egg. It has it's pros and cons but it's versatility and durability is hard to beat ( there is a lifetime warranty on all parts).

 

If you need more convincing I'm going to try to post some pics of a pork shoulder I roasted this weekend for 14 hours at 225 degrees F, it was delicious I say the least.

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The Egg comes with the nest like my was sitting on but here is a standard table that most BGE dealers sell ready to assemble

 

 

And here are some totally awesome custom outdoor kitchens that some people have built

 

 

 

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^^Clean up is really easy, you have to scrape the grate off like any other charcoal or gas grill and that's about it. Your burn natural lump charcoal in the Egg instead of briquettes (Lump charcoal is available just about everywhere that briquettes) and since the lump is more efficient than briquettes it leaves very little ash. About once every 3 weeks or so you have to scrape the accumulated ash out through the bottom air vent with an ash tool and it takes about 5 minutes. A whole 20lb bag of charcoal might leave a shoe box full of ash. The inside of the Egg looks dark and dirty but if you ran your finger across it and did the old white glove dust test you would have very little ash on your finger. For a charcoal grill it is surprisingly very clean!

 

Here is the ash tool

 

And here is a guy cleaning out the ash.

 

And that's it!

 

^Chuck, the Egg basically does everything a Webber Kettle can do, just more more efficient. For example if you wanted to smoke a pork shoulder or brisket on a Webber Kettle for 12 or more hours you would probably have to add more briquettes several times and constantly monitor the thing to maintain your desired temperature. With the Egg I've done smokes for 14-16 hours at 225 without ever having to open the lid or check the temperature. The ceramics also allow your to grill at much higher temperatures than an un-insulated kettle ever could, you can sear steaks at well over 1000 degrees on the Egg.

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Enough talk, let's cook some meat over fire! We'll start with something simple, tonight's victim a bone-in ribeye steak.

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A bone-in Ribeye, a little over a pound and about an inch thick

Something is missing....

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That's more like it

 

Now lets start the Egg. I start mine by tearing off a few pieces of the Big green Egg Fire Starters and lighting in the pile of Lump Charcoal. There are different methods for lighting the charcoal (electric starter, chimney starter) for different types of cooks but for the steak I try to light as much of the charcoal as quickly as possible.

 

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The starters are lit

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The fire starters will turn into some decent size flames fairly quickely

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after about 10 minutes the starters will all burn away and you should have some coals on the bottom that are glowing red

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Once you have the coals on the bottom lit you can close the lid, open the air vents, and let it start to burn!

 

After you have the coals ignited on the bottom (about 5-10 minutes after starting), and the lid shut with vents open it takes about another 5-10 minutes to get the entire pile of charcoal burning red hot, perfect time to prep the steak! I seasoned the steak with a little salt, pepper, olive oil, and a touch of McCormicks Montreal Steak Seasoning.

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Salt, pepper, montreal steak seasoning

 

At this point the Egg should be up to temperature.

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When the lid was shut about 10 minutes ago it was at around 180 F

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Looking down into the top air opening it appears to be ready!

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The temp gauge is now reading well over 800 degrees (sorry for the fuzzy pic)

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And the Egg is ready!

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Put the grate on the egg, close the lid fora few minutes and let the grate heat up and we're ready to cook. I upgraded to cast iron grate few months ago and it is awesome, leaves great grill marks.

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And we're ready to go.

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So, come out to the Big Green Egg Lab, and see whats on the slab.....

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Once the steak is on I like leave it in place for about a minute, then rotate it 90 degrees then shut the lid for a for minutes.

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Depending on the thickness of your cut and how well done you like your meat after a few minutes open the lid, flip, and close the lid again.

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Beverage to accompany the steak, not a typical red wine but instead a Victory Golden Monkey in a mug from the Epcot German Pavilion, this is a theme park website after all.

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And pour one out for the homies.

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Steak is done, a nice medium to medium rare, what do you think of it Janet? You don't like it?

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Well I didn't make it for YOU!

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I broke my thermometer last week so really didn't have any idea what m internal temp was, but I was pretty close.

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A better picture with the flash off, nice medium center with great flavor.

 

The steak turned out really well, but I had to have approval of one of the worlds most highly regarded food critiques. Not Guy Fieri, not George Foreman, but my dog Lexi.

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And the verdict is......

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Lexi says it's a 10! A f*ing 10!

 

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed it. The recipe for world famous Swansons Ribs is coming up sometime next week.

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You had me at meat tornado

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks for all of the comments everyone! I really didn't know what kind of interest anyone around here would have in the Big Green Egg or grilling in general but with thanks for the views so far! How about another creation on the Big Green Egg? This week lets try one of my favorites, a smoked Boston Butt.

 

One of the nicest features of the Big Green Egg is the precise temperature control that you can obtain by slightly adjusting the bottom air vent and the top daisy wheel. That combined with the insulation of the ceramic material makes it possible to smoke meats at consistent temperatures for long periods of time without having to add more fuel or constantly monitoring your temperature setups. For the Pork Butt, I ideally like to keep the temp around 200-225 degrees F for as long as possible till the meat is done. I usually don't like to cook by time but instead by internal temperature. For the pork butt, I try to cook it to an internal temp. of 195-200. You can safely serve it at around 160 but you wont get that real nice and juicy pulled pork until around 195 when all of the connective tissue has broken down and melted away. Enough talk, here are some pictures!

 

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Light the Egg

First lets get the egg lit. For a long cook like this I would usually fill the fire box all the way to the fire ring but was a little low on charcoal this day and had to use all I had. It turned out to be enough.

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Add in soaked wood chips.

Now for the smoke I used apple wood chips that had been soaked in water and some coffee for a few minutes.

 

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8.5 lb bone in Boston Butt Roast

Here is our Pork Butt (which is actually the pork shoulder, there is a reason they call the cut a Boston Butt but I don't know what it is), this one is about 8 pounds with the bone in. I usually like to use bone in when possible but have done boneless with the same method and had very similar results.

 

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Cover in yellow mustard ( actually used a datil pepper mustard)

I start by covering it in a plain yellow mustard then applying a dry rub. The mustard doesn't really add any flavor but give the rubb something to stick to and creates a nice "burnt" crust when the smoke is complete.

 

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Apply the rub

Now apply the rub, I was all out of my special pork rubs so used a combination of Salt, pepper, Tony Chacheres Cajun Seasoning, cumin, brown sugar, garlic powder, chili powder, paprkia, and Cayenne.

 

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Both sides are rubbed up and we're ready to go

 

The setup I use in the Egg itself for a indirect cook is as follows. The Big Green Egg makes a device called a plate setter that basically covers the interior of the egg and deflects the heat (and smoke) around the meat indirectly and out the top vent. You use the plate setter to cook pizzas, breads, ribs, anything you want to cook over indirect heat.

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The Big Green Egg plate Setter, feet down

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Plate Setter Feet up

 

The I use the plate setter feet up, with a drip pan under the meat (just to keep my plate setter from getting too dirty more so than to catch the dripping), then the grate installed on the feet, then the roasting rack with the meat on top of the grate.

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Plate setter in the egg feet up

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Plate setter feet up, then a drip pan, then the grate, and the pork butt in a V-rack.

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Another picture of the set up

 

After the meat is in the egg, close the dome and adjust your vents accordingly until you get the temperature you want, in this case around 225.

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Bottom vent

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top vent

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temp

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I love that last picture, no better way to start a nice Saturday then with a giant piece of meat in the smoker at sunrise! I had the pork butt on the egg and ready to go by around 7:30 am. The rest of this report will be pretty minimal since after I have the temp set I usually won't open the egg for another 8-12 hours. I usually monitor the internal temperature of the meat with a probe, but my probe broke the week before so I had to open the Egg every couple hours to manually check the temp with a meat thermometer.

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About 4 hours in

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It's slowly getting there, the slower the better!

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After about 10 hours

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Temp is getting close to where I want it, around 195

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And we're close enough

 

 

The next step is my super top secret step for delicious pulled pork. I remove the butt at around 195 degrees F, cover in a little bit of sauce and honey, then tightly wrap it in several layers of Aluminum foil. Once it's wrapped I'll place it in a cooler (with no ice obviously) and let it sit until I'm ready to serve it. I like to let it rest for at least an hour but I've kept it in the cooler for 5-6 hours before without the temperature fluctuating more than 4-5 degrees. Letting it rest in the foil at that temp the meat just steams itself and comes out unbelievably juicy and tender.

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Remove from the egg and set on some foil

Where the bark fell off you can see the the pink color that the meat turned to from where it absorbed the smoke.

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Add a little sauce, then wrap tightly in some foil

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let rest in a cooler

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Let it sit as long as you want at this point, until your ready to serve it.

 

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Lexi approves!

As always I need the approval of an qualified food expert before I serve it to anyone, she approves!

 

After about an hour in the cooler we are ready to pull and serve. Remember earlier when I said that I like to use the bone-in Boston Butt roast? Well the true test of quality and doneness comes when it is time to remove the bone. If the meat is tender and juicy the bone should slide right out without any effort, let's see.

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ready to be pulled

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Looking good!

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The true test.....

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And the bone pulls away without any effort

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Lots of delicious juicy pork

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After 14 hours it was worth the wait!

 

This Butt turned out really well but wasn't my best. I usually like to leave the dome lid shut for the entire duration of the cook and just open it to remove when my internal temperature probe is at the temperature I want but since my probe was broken I had to open it every couple of hours to check my temp. It still turned out really well though, and that's the thing I love about barbecueing, it's pretty hard to mess up! Good barbecue is really really good, and bad barbecue is still pretty decent. Over cooked and a little dry? throw some sauce on it! Not a ton of flavor in the meat? throw some sauce on it! Under cooked? throw it back on the grill or in the oven or in a skillet, then throw some sauce on it and it will still be pretty decent!

 

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Thanks for Reading! Feel free to leave comments, tips, suggestions, sarcastic and suggestive jokes about meat and temp probes, constructive criticism, mean criticism, or any requests for future recipe reports! Have a great weekend everyone!

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Bourbon-soaked wood chips would be much more my taste than coffee, though you did please me with the finishing glaze

 

btw I drove past their corporate showroom the other day. It's fairly near my house, I just never put the picture together (always wondered wtf a big green egg showroom was haha) so I'll have to stop by during their hours!

 

I'm definitely not an expert chef (ask anyone here!) but this has inspired me to step my grill game up

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Bourbon-soaked wood chips would be much more my taste than coffee, though you did please me with the finishing glaze

 

btw I drove past their corporate showroom the other day. It's fairly near my house, I just never put the picture together (always wondered wtf a big green egg showroom was haha) so I'll have to stop by during their hours!

 

I've done bourbon soaked chips before and they were great, but it's was awful hard to waste a cup of perfectly good (albeit cheap) Kentucky bourbon just to soak wood. There's too much bad Tennessee whiskey in this world to waste perfectly good Kentucky bourbon on soaking wood chips .

 

I bet the corporate show room is incredible! There are so many cool accessories and gadgets for the egg that I can barley go to ACE Hardware anymore without but something new, the corporate show room would probably bankrupt me!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thank you! The yard looks a bit like a swamp right now after the storms this weekend but it's a nice view most of the year (except the 5-6 months when it's too humid sit outside longer than 10 minutes).

 

Pulled pork has turned into one of my favorite things to fix on the Egg, it's generally a cheap cut of meat that is easy to prepare and usually turns out really well! I love fixing 6-8 pounds of it on the weekend and having leftovers for the week to make tacos, salads, sandwiches, and pizzas with. It also freezes really well.

 

I've got pictures of some great smoked pork chops and a Kentucky Hot Brown Pizza I did a few weeks ago that both turned out really well that I'll try to get around to posting some time this week. I'm getting hungry just thinking about the Hot Brown Pizza again, it was so simple but so flavorful.

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Here's a great recipe for smoked pork chops that I got from Cooks Illustrated. I'm a huge fan of Cooks Illustrated, if you like to cook at all I would highly encourage subscribing to their magazine or their online web site. They basically cook a dish over and over again until they perfect the recipe and then publish their results, which are usually flawless recipes. They also do equipment reviews( that are completely unbiased since the publication has NO advertisements),and have a lot of great general tips and techniques for all kinds of things around the kitchen. Enough of my Cooks Illustrated endorsement allready lets cook some meat over fire! This recipe was written for a Weber Kettle Grill but it's pretty easy to adapt the recipe to the Green Egg, so here goes!

 

Start with 4-6 bone in rib chops, the thicker the better!

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4 bone in rib chobs, about .5-.75 pounds apiece

 

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Cut 2 slits in the fat, this keeps them from shriveling up when they cook

 

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2 slits in the fat cap on the outside of the chop

 

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Basic seasoning, salt, pepper, and a little Tony's (I throw a little Tony's on everything!

 

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Skewered the chops through the meat and close to the bone

 

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You want each chop to be about an inch apart to allow for circulation of smoke

 

 

 

I started the Egg using the same methods described previously in this thread before beginning the preparation of the pork chop skewers. I also soaked some wood chips and wood chunks (mixture of apple and hickory I think) for the smoke. The set up for this cook is indirect heat with plenty of smoke. After you smoke the chops to around 120 degrees internal temperature I want to glaze them with some sauce then cook over direct heat for a few minutes on each side. So to do this I placed my plate setter legs upe with a drip pan ONTOP on my cast iron grate so I could smoke the chops at around 350 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour, then remove the plate setter open the damper and then grill each chop over direct heat for a few minutes each side.

 

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I soaked the wood chips and chunks for about 10 minutes while preparing the meat and heating the egg

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Here is the setup for this cook, indirect heat with the plate setter installed feet up, and a drip pan under the chop on the top grate.

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Here the set up in the egg, again indirect heat with plenty of smoke

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Lid shut, I regulated the temp to around 350

 

The goal for internal temperature during the smoking part of the cook is around 120 degrees. I was busy cutting up a pepper and onion and cooked mine a little long to around 135, but they still turned out pretty good!

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After about 45 minutes of smoke, and around 120 degrees internal temperature

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Remove the chops from the smoke around 120 degrees. The smoke really changes the color and texture of the meat (and adds a ton of flavor)!

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Apply a little barbecue sauce to each chop

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Sauce on all of the chops

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Tent with foil while setting up the grill for direct heat

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I had the plate setter sitting on top of my cast iron grate, so I could just remove that set up and go right into a direct heat cook.

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Some peppers and onions while the grate is coming up to temp

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Grill each chop sauce side down for a few minutes on each side until the inter temp is around 140-145

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The final plate, let's eat !

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Dinner is served!

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Loving this thread! I love to grill and have heard many good things about the Big Green Egg. Once my old gas grill decides to go, I'm definitely getting one of these!

 

I haven't done much research on them - what do they come with? Does it come with the accessories (stone, v-grill, etc) or do you buy these seperately?

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Loving this thread! I love to grill and have heard many good things about the Big Green Egg. Once my old gas grill decides to go, I'm definitely getting one of these!

 

I haven't done much research on them - what do they come with? Does it come with the accessories (stone, v-grill, etc) or do you buy these seperately?

 

The unit itself only comes with the standard porcelain cooking grate but everything else is extra, which kinda sucks but Big Green Egg has a whole catalog full of accessories that are really nice (but can be a little expensive). Here is a link to the Eggcessories on the BGE web site Big Green Egg Eggcessories. You'll want the Big Green Egg brand plate setter to do indirect cooking and pizzas and baking and stuff like that (I think it was around $40-50?),because it is designed to perfectly fit the egg, but other than that the rest of my accessories are cheap generic brand stuff I've found at kitchen stores and Bed Bath and Beyond. For example the Big Green Egg brand pizza stone is about $50, but I use a $15 stone from Bed Bath and Beyond and it works just fine. The V-rack I used to cook the pork butt in was a part of a $10 turkey rack/pan set I got a Walmart around Thanksgiving.

 

It's about like anything else in life, you really get what you pay for. The Egg isn't cheap by any means, but it's a great piece of equipment that should last a lifetime if you take care of it. You should definately look into one when your gas grill finally craps out. Or just get one now and have 2 grills, the more meat you can cook at once the better! I miss the convenience of a gas grill at times, but the Egg is a lot of fun and is so much more versatile.

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Thanks Ross...I did a little poking around myself yesterday and see that a medium costs in the $6-700 range. Quite pricey, but like you said...if you take care of it, it would last a lot longer than any gas grill.

 

We usually end up going through a gas grill about every three years and even though we invested in a stainless one this time, I was disappointed that the spot weld for the drip tray guide has already rusted completely off even though I have a huge burlap cover that I put over it when not in use.

 

Think I'm going to save my $$ for one...the food you have shown in your reports has me drooling!

drooling-homer-simpson.jpg.e8ca032da19175f482ca4fb6338fbe5f.jpg

Mmmmmm.....meeeeaaat!!!!

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^ Yeah, that was kinda of my rational when I decided to get one. I mean a really nice stainless steel gas grill like a Weber Genesis or something will cost you a good $700-$1000. I'm sure one of the nicer gas grills will last longer than a cheap one but for that kind of price there is just so much more the egg (or any kamodo style cooker) can do.

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I'll have to try a brisket again sometime in the next couple of weeks. Brisket is a little tougher to do, I've done a couple before but neither of them turned out very good. Sometime it can be hard to find a good cut of brisket from a regular grocery store, I need to find a good butcher shop and get a whole untrimmed piece and try it again.

 

Tri-tip has been my favorite cut of beef here lately, tri-tips only take about an hour or so to do and has amazing flavor.

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