Brisket success!

Hi, friends!

I wanted to tell you about my weekend and a fun party we had for my flag football team. It was a great season -- my dad coached us, and a friend's dad also from Scouts was the assistant coach -- even if we didn't win too many games. But we sure accomplished goal #1: have fun!

I was super excited to have my teammates over to our house for an after-season party. I made sure to tell them I was going to barbecue. And what would be the best thing to barbecue for a great group of kids and parents? Brisket!

Now my dad and I haven't had consistent success with smoking a brisket. It's a hard piece of meat to barbeque well. It has a really thick side and a thin side, and the whole thing takes all day to cook. It is a challenge to cook it all day and keep the uneven piece of meat juicy. The previous time we barbecued a brisket it turned out all burnt up. Not good. And my mom kinda thought it might be a bad idea to try it again, especially for friends coming over. Mom was thinking it might be less risky to try it just for our family first, to see if we can pull off a good brisket, before we introduce it for friends.

But we insisted to try it again. My dad and I got up early, about 7 am, to start preparing the brisket that we aimed to serve around 6 pm. We got a great quality brisket, about ten pounds of prime cut, and our first job was to get it out of the bag and trim it.

After we trimmed the right amount of fat from the brisket, I next had to prepare the rub. I've made some really tasty rubs before, but this time I decided to keep it simple with just freshly ground pepper and some good sea salt.

By now it was about 8 am and it was time to get it in the grill. You've all seen that I work with a pretty small grill. Other barbecue pit-masters might say my grill is not really adequate to smoke real barbecue. There is no off-set smoker nor is there much space to keep the brisket away from the heat that is so important for the barbecue process. My grill might be more suited to grilling steak, hamburgers or hotdogs. But you've seen that I've been able to make some great ribs.

What my dad and I did was to be very careful in banking the charcoal to one corner of the grill. We put a drip pan filled with water to the far side, where we would put the brisket. Our goal, with the limited grill space we would work with, would be to keep the brisket as far from the fire as we could.

Here's how we started at about 8:30 am. I placed the brisket on the grill

And then it looked like it was a good fit!

Now we settled in for the long haul. We had a 10 pound brisket so we figured it might take us about 10 hours to cook. Our goal was to keep the temperature consistently in the 200-225 degree Fahrenheit range all day. With brisket it is imperative to keep the temperature low and steady -- if you get the grill too hot you're just going to burn up your meat.

So we played around the backyard and neighborhood, and add charcoal and wood to the grill all day long to keep the fire going at the temperature we needed.

Finally my friends came over. Not everybody from our team could make it, but here we're starting to gather!

Finally after about 10 hours we were just getting too plain hungry. My dad made some hot dogs for the younger kids, but hey, we were here for brisket. I pulled the brisket off with my good friend Patrick. It looks pretty good doesn't it?

Now what would my audience say? These are my teammates, their parents, not to mention my parents and brother (especially Mom still a little uncertain about my brisket capabilities).
Here's what the audience said:

I think it was a hit! At least that's what everyone -- including my mom -- said! We barbecued that brisket very carefully, and we enjoyed every bit! We had some great sides, and then played in the backyard after supper, even had a fire around the fire pit. It was a great day.

I'd say Come and Take It, but then seeing how good that brisket turned out, I'm a bit shy in sharing.

See you again soon!

Your friend,

--James

Steak!

Hi, kids!

I hope your weekend was great! As you saw in my previous posts, my weekend was so much fun! I got to hang out with my neighbors and enjoy one of the best fall weekends so far in Austin. My dad even got the backyard fire pit lit up so we could roast marshmallows and make 'smores. For you who aren't familiar with 'smores, what you do is roast marshmallows over the fire, then make a sandwich with them in between two pieces of graham crackers and a piece of chocolate. Yum yum!

But before we got to have dessert, we got to have one of my favorites again: steak! The last time we grilled steak was at Garner State Park and we had tenderloin. This time my dad picked up some strip sirloin steak. That's another really yummy kind of steak. To be honest, there is what the grown-ups call fat marbling in the steak that makes it taste so good. The tenderloin is real soft, but it doesn't have as much fat in it, so the flavor is a little different compared to the strip steak.

Here I am getting the steak ready with some pepper that I ground fresh:

There are what my dad would call a few variables in grilling the steak (as with any meat) that are important if you want a tasty result. The type of steak (would you believe there are probably a dozen kinds of beef steak?) and it's quality are two variables. Some people say the quality of the beef is more important than the cut of the beef. But my dad always tells me we can grill some magic with no matter the kind of meat we get.

Other important items: getting the temperature just right, and controlling that temperature so that it remains constant. For grilling steaks, and I mean grilling and not barbecuing, it is important to get a high temperature. For barbecue and meat like brisket or ribs, you want to keep your temperature lower. Another very important variable is time. You can't overcook the steak. That would be awful! Would you believe that cooking steak has to be measured down to precise minutes? Thickness is another important variable, especially when we're talking steak. A thick steak makes for a juicy steak. If you have a thin steak placed over a high temperature, you better be ready to pull if off the grill real quick, or you'll end up with tasteless leather. Yuck!

For my steaks I got the grill smoking hot with two stacks of charcoal. The temperature was probably around 350 degrees Fahrenheit. My dad and I wanted to try a new technique with the steaks. We banked the charcoal to one side of the grill, to concentrate the heat and get the grill rack as hot as we could. I put the steaks on the charcoal side to start. You can see me wincing. It was hot!

I kept those steaks on that intense heat for about two minutes, then I flipped the steaks over. I wanted to sear those steaks on that very high temperature. Check out the flame!

After about four minutes, I then moved the steaks away from the direct heat. I let the steaks finish cooking for another 8 minutes, so about 12 minutes in total. They ended up seared on the outside, with those crisp grill markings and crunchy edges, and on the inside, juicy to pink right in the middle. This was pretty fantastic.

Dad made some mashed potatoes to go with the steaks, and boy oh boy did supper turn out great. Come and Take It!

Halloween!

Hi, kids!

Here in the U.S we celebrate every October 31 an event called Halloween. I'm not sure all the history to it, and it's probably a dark history that probably isn't kid-friendly, but nowadays what it means is we get to walk door to door and ask for candy. We call it trick-or-treating. We usually end up with a whole back full of chocolate and other candies.

The kids obligation is to dress up in a costume. You can be scary or sweet. As you can see, me and my brother chose scary costumes.

I was a skeleton:

My brother Andrew was a werewolf:

Scary! (Don't) Come and Take It (my candy)!

Come and Take It flag

Hi, kids!

My family and I drove out to Wimberley yesterday to see their Market Days. Once a month they gather hundreds of vendors who sell all sorts of neat stuff. We picked up some cool stuff. I finally picked up a Come and Take It flag.

Here I am in my backyard with Andrew and a couple of neighbor friends. I think I described the story to the flag before. It refers to the Texas fight for independence from Mexico in the early 1800s. There is a town nearby Austin called Gonzalez where there was a Mexican army outpost, and included in part of the armory was a single cannon. Well the Texican (what they called the Texans back then) townspeople rebelled against the Mexican army, and actually dared the Mexican army to try to take back the town and it's cannon. The Texicans famously and defiantly said, "Come and Take It"!

Texas went on to successfully win its independence, and for a few years in the 1830s was actually an independent republic. Texas later joined the United States and in 1845 became the 28th U.S. state. There is still fierce price in the independence of Texas!

Tarantula!

Hi, kids --

Yesterday we were getting ready to go out on errands. My brother Andrew went out the front door, and a moment later came back inside, ominously saying, "you've got to see this!" We didn't know what to expect. Guess what it was?

A tarantula at our garage door!

My dad got out my hockey stick, and we picked it up and tossed over the backyard fence. Good riddance!

You can come and take that tarantula!