Breakfast!

So what is a BBQ guy doing making breakfast? Well, I don't BBQ all the time. It's too hard to keep pancakes from going through the grill grates ;)

As my lovely wife mention in a recent blog, I often make breakfast on Sundays.

One of my favorites is pancakes. I have my own recipe that started as an IHOP knockoff recipe, but I've modified it. IHOP supposedly uses real buttermilk, but since I find it unfit for human consumption, it is a shame to buy a quart of the stuff just to use 12 ounces and give the rest to the cats. So I modified it to use powdered buttermilk that keeps (nearly) forever.


JHOP Pancakes

1 1/4 cup flour
5 Tb powdered buttermilk
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt (I prefer kosher)
1 1/4 cup cold water (the colder the better)
1/4 cup oil (I prefer canola)
1 egg (beaten)

Wisk together dry ingredients
Drop in egg, oil, water quickly
Wisk everything together until smooth

Cook over low-medium heat on griddle. 300 degrees worked really good on an electric griddle I used once, but normally I use a two-burner griddle on our gas stove.

My BBQ Crew in Action

Cooking wood observations

One of the problems of being a BBQer in Kansas is that good cooking wood is not easy to come by. The only native trees here are cottonwood (a softwood -- softwoods are only suitable for campfire cooking) and western red cedar (which makes kreosote when you burn it).

So, I have had to scrounge up good hardwood with which to BBQ.

Last year, I took out some trees growing on our property in order to make room for another access fill to the highway. Fortunately for me, the largest one in the way was an apricot tree. It had been damaged by ice storms the previous winter and needed to come down anyway. There were also several small cherry trees ranging from 3-6 inches in diameter. While I miss the cherries, I don't miss the brushy mess that that area was.

Anyway, the end result is a nice pile of (now) dry apricot and cherry firewood.

Also, last winter I saw a guy on Craigslist from Denver selling white oak firewood. It was $150/ton and since we were looking for an excuse to go to Denver at the time, I decided to take the pickup and get a ton. So now I have plenty of oak as well. It was actually trimmngs and waste chunks from a mill that produces railroad ties. But hey, it's not treated, not rotten, and is a hardwood so all is good. But man oh man, is it ever hard to split. You can bury and axe in it clear to the hilt and it won't split that tough old oak!

Here are the woods I have tried and my notes on them.:

• Apple: my all-time favorite for smoking but used up my supply long ago, light frity aroma, mild flavor, burns fairly fast and flames easily. My favorite for turkey and chicken
• Apricot: similar to apple in flavor, but slightly stronger. Burns moderately fast and flames easily. Good all-around smoking wood. Particularly pleasing with poultry. I have a large supply of apricot right now and have grown quite fond of it.
• Cherry: the cherry I have used is from small trees, 3-6" diameter so the wood is very light colored. Dark heartwood would be different. It burns slow with moderate heat and low flame. Strong aroma, and medium flavor. Fruity like apricot, but stronger. Makes a nice pink smoke ring. My favorite for sausage!
  
• Hickory (Walmart chunks): strong aroma, strong flavor, moderate burning rate, flames well, best with ham or large cuts
• Mesquite: strongest aroma and flavor - use sparingly when smoking, but good choice for grilling, burns slow but hot with weak flames, a smoking black chunk of mesquite is hotter than a flaming chunk of fruitwood. My favorite for pork chops and for grilling burgers and steak. Easiest smoke to make a definitive "smoke ring" in the meat with.
• Nectarine: burns fast and cool with similar flavor and aroma to apricot. I've only used this once and only had a few pounds of wood from a storm damaged branch from one of my dad's trees.
  
• Oak: similar to hickory, but not as strongly flavored. Red oak is stronger than white oak. Burns slow and moderately hot. Flames easily. Makes very little ash. Not as hot as mesquite, but hotter than fruitwoods. My current favorite for slow smoking beef brisket.
• Pecan: the only pecan I've tried is some chips I got on eBay. Moderate flavor, I'd say between the fruitwoods and oak for strength, but heavy aroma. Burns cool and can produce lots of smoke with little flame. I use this for smoking cheese! (Can't wait to get some pecan logs and try on other stuff.)