Weekend Cook-Failure & Success-Two Sides of Same Coin

(Scroll Down for Pix-The last picture is the Money Shot)

This past weekend I was looking forward to making my first batch of lamb ribs. The lamb ribs were a so called Denver cut, which is the lamb equivalent of St Louis cut pork spare ribs. The recipe was from Stephen Raichlen's Project Smoke TV show and featured a sweet and spicy cherry cola BBQ sauce. I picked two sides which could hold their own with the robust flavors I was expecting from the lamb. I made Smoked Fontina Cheese Mashed Potatoes from Chris Grove's The Kamado Smoker and Grill Cookbook. I also made Smoked Creamed Corn from Project Smoke. For bread I choose Honey-Wheat Black Bread from King Arthur Flour. This was said to be the Canadian version of brown bread, using honey in place of molasses. I always look forward todays when all 3 Eggs are in action. This day one was setup for 225 degrees indirect with cherry wood, another at 350 indirect with cherry wood and the 3rd for baking at 350 indirect (no smoking wood)

Fail 1: The Black Bread became Black Bread Squares when I let the dough rise to much. It became too airy and soupy and wouldn't hold it's shape. I suppose I should have added more flour, but I did't have time to mess around, I threw caution to the wind and placed the dough, which was more like a batter, in a jelly roll pan and placed it out on my baking Egg. I did't get much rise, just spread. There was enough rise that I could cut what should have been logs into squares. When it was time to eat, it turned out the squares were fine. They still had great flavor and had the proper texture despite having the wrong shape. So if you are going to fail with food, I guess this is the way to have it happen. The food doesn't look quite right but it tastes great vs. food which looks great and tastes bad.

Fail 2: The ribs seemed to go perfectly from start to finish. When I cut into them they had a nice smoke ring and were moist on the inside. They had a great tasting bark on the outside from the spice rub and the cherry cola BBQ sauce was excellent. The meat had a totally different flavor than any ribs I'd ever tasted. So far so good. We all soon discovered that all was not well. These ribs were about 1/3 meat 2/3 fat. I placed my knife on top of the bone and sliced off the piece of meat above the bone. There was just about zero meat left between the bones. The piece of meat from above the bone was riddled with veins of fat and required a lot of fussy trimming. You also had to cut layers of fat off parts of the top of this piece of meat. One thing happened that helped save the day. Three of us were more into eating meat than fat and there were also two fat lovers. So the meat eaters kept cutting into additional ribs to get enough usable meat. The fat lovers switched to eating the fatty pieces the meat lovers were setting aside. So despite the 4 racks not having enough usable meat to go around, everybody was still happy. But these ribs were not cheap and for my money there was way too much fussiness involved eating these for the reward. On a scale of 1 to 5: For flavor a 5, for texture a 5, but for the usability of the cut of meat a 1 or 2. Your mileage may vary. Once again though, this was a good way to fail. Plus in this case it was the cut of meat chosen, not a screwup by me cooking it.

The Remaining Items: I will move on to the pictures in a moment. Just let me say the two veggie side dishes were excellent. The mashed potatoes had a great flavor from the cherry wood smoke, fontina cheese and garlic. The creamed corn seemed to have more flavors than the ingredients would suggest. Everyone mentioned how flavorful it was. Both sides held their own and paired well with the flavorful lamb.


The Honey-Wheat Black Bread was going along fine until I let another prep task distract me from stopping the first rise. The batter turned out too soupy. I almost threw in the towel because I didn't have enough time to start fooling around with adding more flour. At this point Black Bread Squares were born. I placed what were supposed to turn out be the round logs on a jelly roll pan. Like hermits do, the logs spread instead of rising. Surprisingly the end results were usable.





The creamed corn started by taking ears or corn & a quartered onion and spraying them with olive oil and seasoning them with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper. Then they were smoked at 225 using cherry wood for 20 minutes. The kernels were removed from the cob and the onions were diced. They were heated on the stove together with butter, heavy cream, brown sugar, kosher salt, freshly ground black pepper, and freshly grated nutmeg.



 

The ribs were rubbed with freshly ground black pepper, kosher salt, brown sugar, unsweetened cocoa powder and smoked paprika. Then it was off to the Egg which was under the watchful eye of my CyberQ WiFi and the CyberCook software. The ribs were smoked for 3:20 at 225 using cherry wood. Tip: These ribs looked like a really tight fit. Rather than loose heat trying to arrange them for the first time on a hot Egg, I tested them in the Kitchen to see if I needed a rib rack. I took a cold grill grate from one of my other Eggs and did a test fitting. When in doubt pre-flight test your setups on  a cold Egg or a cold grill grate.





The ribs were sprayed with cherry cola every hour. Here they are after the first hour of smoking.





While the ribs were smoking I made the excellent cherry cola BBQ sauce. It used: Garlic powder, onion powder, freshly ground black pepper, Liquid Smoke, A-1 sauce, Worcestershire sauce, ketchup and (of course) cherry cola.





The ribs came off the smoker after 3:20 of smoking.





The mashed potatoes used unpeeled red bliss potatoes which were cooked and mashed in typical fashion but with minced garlic and fontina cheese added to the typical ingredients. The potatoes were placed in a 2 qt. Pyrex dish and topped with more fontina cheese. Then it was onto another Egg for a 20 minute indirect cook at 350 using cherry wood.






Thanks for looking and reading!

Jim