Spoiler alert: Smoked Chuck is the Bomb Diggety!
Not long after I posted my intentions yesterday, I fired up the OK Joe, got Chuck Roast and his little brother Chuckie out of the fridge where they had been quietly resting since dry brining them noon time the day before, sprinkled a healthy coating of Meathead's "Big Bad Beef Rub" and they were ready for cookin'
The before:
Smoked these at ~250-ish using the Stubbs charcoal briquettes and some Mesquite wood chunks. One advantage of the Offset Smoker over a vertical is you can easily toss the wood chunks on the fire one at a time throughout the smoke, rather than having to try and bury them in the minion pile of charcoal. My experience is that the buried ones all seem to go off early in the smoke and you get the voluminous white smoke at the beginning and not much of anything later. Throwing a chunk in the firebox every 30 minutes or so keep a steady and continuous thin blue smoke going, and I think that is probably better for getting smoke flavor into the meat.
Flipped and flopped the roasts a couple of times through the cooking. I had intended to cook them for ~ 4-5 hours then stick them into a disposable roaster pan and seal the top with foil with some liquid in the bottom (either beer or beef bouillon), but got kind'a lazy in the heat of the day (it was a scorcher here yesterday) and since the stall was not too long, opted to just cook them without any crutching or wrapping at all. Meat went on at 8: 30 AM and hit my 197 F internal target temp at 4PM, so total time on the smoker was 7 1/2 hours. Not bad considering no crutch.
Wrapped them in foil and towels, and into the faux cambrio (cooler) for an hour. Unwrapped them just before dinner and marveled at their color
The after:
They may look to the uninitiated like just a couple of burnt up turds. But oh no... they were not.
Pulled one of the two clods, and about 1/3 of the other. It shredded up by hand (with gloves, still very hot) quite easily. and of course we had to sneak us a few tastes before serving, just to be sure it was "OK". The Big Bad Beef rub is not for the meek at heart. It has a real nice peppery, spicy flavor, concentrated by the smoke and dark flavor of the bark. Yumm-eee!
Dinner is served!
It was unanimously determined to be awesomely delish! We ate the pulled beef either plain or on rolls with choice of sauces. Wow, what great beefy flavor. I recommend trying this for sure.
That's some yellow zucchini fresh from my Son in Law's garden in the upper right. None of us had ever had it before. Cooked it on the grille in a foil pouch. It was really good, a lot like summer squash.
And then, after dinner I sliced up the rest of the 2nd roast a' la Brisket, for sandwich making through the week I tell you what... that Chuck is a pretty damn good substitute for Brisket at less cost and about half the cooking time of a big ol' brisket.
Now... pulled Beef is no substitute for pulled Pork. The latter is still my favorite. There is something special about the taste of rendered down and crisp pork fat that makes me delirious. But this Chuck Roast dealio is a great change of pace when you've got a hankerin' for some cow meat.
