Egg Trifecta - roasting, searing, and smoking

As usual my son and I decided to “go big”.  We went to Costco to get a brisket for an overnight cook.  We didn’t even have a meal in mind, we just wanted to cook a brisket and my wife decided she would like some of it to make chili at some undisclosed time in the future.  So while we were at Costco getting the brisket we decided to pick up “a” pork tenderloin for dinner.  Of course, at Costco that means two 2-packs of tenderloins.   We decided to prepare them two different ways.  First, we rubbed two of them with Dizzy Pig’s Jamaican Firewalk and cooked them indirect at about 300 until they reached 145 internal.   We wrapped them in foil to keep them warm until we served them.  Then we took the platesetter out and opened up the vents.  We put a cast iron pan on the direct grid and let the egg get up to 500+ degrees.  We sliced the other two tenderloins to about 5/8” slices, coated them with melted butter, added blackening seasoning and seared them on the cast iron.  Then for dinner we sampled both tenderloin preparations – specifically eating the blackened tenderloin as sliders on half croissants.  In the meantime we left the egg with minimal airflow so it could cool down to a low/slow smoking temperature.   We subsequently added some mesquite, oak and more lump and put the brisket (rubbed with a mixture of Salt Lick rub and Montreal Steak seasoning – with olive oil used to make it into a paste consistency) on for the night. at 10:45 PM while the thermometer was reading less than 200 degrees but I didn't worry about it too much as the fire was going and the vents were minimally open about 1/4" on the bottom and 1/8"on the top.  At 5:00 AM the grid was at 188 and the meat at 153 adn the fire was still burning.  I opened the vents a little more.  By 7:00 AM the grid was at 250 and the meat at 171.

The pictures taken with my phone are not very good, especially the one taken after the fire really got going while we were blackening as the flash did not go off – but it gives one the idea of how hot it was at that point.  The pic of the tenderloins roasting shows how not to insert a meat thermometer for this type of cook.  When the thermometer is not far enough into the meat it gives a falsely high reading.  The thermometer should be inserted from the end of the tenderloin so the more of the thermometer traverses the meat.  Once we did that we got accurate readings.  I'll try to remember to post the money pic of the brisket and apologize for not remembering to do so on the tenderloins.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Thanks for looking.