my first cook for a crowd

[peter yeoman]

I have to cook for about 40 people on sunday week,my three kettles will be full of beef, pork and saltbush mutton,.Ive been doin a bit of pork lately with webers hickory woodchips and its great .
Can someone give me some ideas about "flavouring"with the woodchips or should I go the smokey sauce to enhance it.I have peices of apple,mulberry and redgum woodchips .

[Davo]

G'day Peter,

It depends on what cut of pork you intend on cooking, if you have a leg of pork with the skin on, you'll want to make the best of crackling and to do that, first pour some boiling water over the skin(rind) on the crackling to render some of the fat, dry it off with paper towels, make a series of diamond shaped cuts into the skin being careful not to cut into the meat, rubs a fair lot of salt into the skin, really giving it a massage then you can do the same with pepper if you wish, i'm sure you could use other spices if you want but i just use salt and pepper, then you roast the pork at around 180-200C to ensure the skin goes nice and crispy without burning it.In the early part of the roasting, you can smoke the roast by placing a big handfull of soaked Apple woodchips in a folded foil parcel and poke a few holes in the parcel to let out the smoke.When you are setting up your fire in the kettle, make sure you soak the woodchips at the same time allowing at least 1 hour.
Cook the roast pork till 77C internal temp then take off, foil and rest for 15 minutes or so before carving.
If you want to try Pulled pork, that is an entirely different method where you'll want low & slow heat to around 225F (107C) to do this, you can set up the fire using the Minion method wheras you place a chimney full of unlit charcoal on one side of the kettle, if you have them on hand, 2 paver bricks blocking the fire on that side by placing the bricks end to end (best to put the bricks in first, about one third along the charcoal grate and place the unlit coals between the bricks and the side wall of the kettle...this becomes a heat barrier. Heat up 1/3rd chimney of charcoal and place over the unlit charcoal,as above, place a foil parcel of soaked woodchips ontop of lit charcoal plus put a few handfuls of soaked chips naked over the lit charcoal as you'll need some smoke before the parcel gets hot enough to smoke. Alternatively, if you have some fist sized redgum chunks, put them on the fire dry and bare..no need for the foil parcel.
For that many people, you might need 2 x 2.5 kilo pork scotch fillet roast which is probably the closest you'll get to the American Pork Butt, season the pork all over generously with a dry rub (plenty on the internet) and place on the opposite side of the kettle to the fire. I always place a small foil tray of cold water on the food grate(to be cont.)

[Davo]

over the fire so that it will help to keep the temps under control. Don't forget to place a large foil tray under the pork on the charcoal grate opposite the fire otherwise you might end up with a gunky mess in the bottom of your kettle making it harder to close and open the vents if the juices mix with left over ash.
If you have one of those remote probe type temp guage units, place probe inside the thickest part of the meat and carefully feed the other end of the wire through the top vent holes of the lid and plug it into the sensor so you can keep an eye on the internal temp of the pork, you only need it in one of them for a rough guide on how things are going in there as you don't want to be lifting the lid at all. Like the old saying goes.."if ya lookin', ya not cookin'"
Place an ordinary weber type guage through another vent hole to keep an eye on lid temp, you don't want the lid temp to go over 250F but preferably around 225F.
Now it's just a waiting game, it will take ages, roughly 1 hour per pound so for 5 kilos, you're looking at 10-12 hour cooking session but that's not all folks...when the pork gets to about 75C internal, open lid, take pork off, foil it in at least 2 layers of foil making sure all is covered with minimal to no leakage possible, and place back on kettle, check water over fire, check coals, and put lid back on till the internal temp gets to about 90C, take off again, wrap in some old towels and put in an empty icebox (esky) for about 2 hours, after then, take out, and be careful, it'll still be very hot but once unwrapped, you should be able to pull all the meat apart easily with a pair of forks or with your fingers if you dare....should be the most moist pork you've ever eaten and the smoke flavour through it should be delish....you'll have a nice crust but it might be a bit pasty being in the foil. Some BBQers don't foil it untill the temp gets to 90C or 190-5 F to get a crunchier bark (crust), it up to you.But a pork scotch fillet roast and practice on one first before the big day....it's great fun.
Hope this helps pete and send some pics of the big cook-out if you can and let us know what you did and how it went.

Cheers

Davo

[Commander Cody]

peter,

i tried to use paint to draw you a diagrame of what davo was trying to say, made a mess of it so had a look around a few sights and remembered bbq blue had a drawing of set up for smoking.........dont know if phil and paul allow links to other sites..........but here goes anyway...my appoligies to the mods if i have done wrong on this..

http://www.bbqblue.com.au/smoke_woods/s ... smoke.html

kevin

[Davo]

Thanks Kevin for finding that drawing, I forgot about BBQ Blue's site as I think he's retired from it and given up.It's ok to bring in pics from other sites Kev providing it is in line of what we do I guess.

Pete what i did do is forgot to mention the bottoms vents of the kettle, Kettles are great for holding onto heat and once hot, it's hard to bring em down so by using your temp guage you've put through the lid, once it gets to about 200F , close your bottom vents to about 25% open, with the combination of water over the fire and closed vents, the temp should only climb steadily anyway as you've only got a small mount of lit charcoal compared to unlit so the temps should not get away on you and the charcoal must burn down rather than up and that makes it last so long.
In the picture that Kevin found, you'll notice that kettle has the small ring vents, should be 3 of them and were pre-one touch systems, just close all down to about 25% open and work from there.
The top vent can be closed to 50% but i wouldn't close it any lower than that as you might get some creosote soot over your foods and is recommended if possible just to control it from the bottom vents rather than the top.

Cheers

Davo

[peter yeoman]

Thanks davo and commander for the info,also when you talk about putting a tray of cold water in the kettle ,do you place this directly above my charcoal or just anywhere near it ? I will have a test run this weekend with some pork and see how i go.

[Davo]

G'day Peter,

Place the tray of cold water overtop where the fire is on the food grate. This works as a heat sink and helps keep the temp steadier throught your cook.

It will consume a bit of energy but not too much and you'll have to check on it from time to time, maybe once an hour to replenish the water.

It's a similar set up that the WSM uses with the waterpan but of course the WSM is on a much larger scale.

Make sure you have a steady hand Pete and don't splash any water over your coals, you'll have ash flying everywhere.

Cheers

Davo

[peter yeoman]

Ok will do that tuesday on my ,,,,,wait for it.... new Weber Ranch kettle ..I cant wait.

Cheers.

[urbangriller]

Peter,

If you are using a Ranch you can put bricks in front of the fire to increase the heat sink effect and minimise the radiated heat.

(you can squeeze a couple of bricks into a regular kettle for the same effect)

Cheers
Chris

[Captain Cook]

Ok will do that tuesday on my ,,,,,wait for it.... new Weber Ranch kettle ..I cant wait.

Cheers.

Now thats what I am talking about. No good having all that charcoal if you haven't got something of a decent size to burn it in.

Cheers

Cap'n

[peter yeoman]

yeah ,they say you run four weber baskets instead of two ,can fill them up no worries.

[Davo]

Pete,

Did you order that Rancher through Weber Australia or have it imported yourself?

You'd have to be one of a small handfull in this country to have one. I have yet to hear of anyone on this forum having a Rancher... @ $2200 they are expensive yes, but a great investment either way you look at it.Next step is to make you own pellets out of your redwood and get into pellet smoking.
Good ony mate..we want to see pics of something rare in this country.

Cheers

Davo

[peter yeoman]

Davo,
It is coming direct from Weber , my business Riverina redgum charcoal " will be supplying weber with redgum charcoal .we should have their bags by the end of july,and by mid august we hope that our charcoal will be Australia wide.
We have been getting our product finely tuned as weber has done a huge amount of testing our product. We are very proud of this and cant wait for it to start as its been a long time in the making.
As soon as i get it on Tuesday ,I will add some photos ,

Cheers Peter.

[Davo]

Well Peter, That is bloody fantastic mate,,,,,congratulations on your deal with Weber,this is to be highly commended and I'm looking forward to seeing and using your product when it hits the stores.
I'm sure you will do well if the price of your product if very competitive with what's out there and hopefully we charcoal heads will have some variety in fuels.
Good luck and keep us all posted on what's going on!!

Cheers

Davo

[urbangriller]

Good News Peter!

I like the Australia wide bit!
At Last!

Chris