Mark Robson joins us one again for the Big BBQ and GRILL show for 2020. We catch up with Mark and get some info on his Unraid Server and find out he has 2! We also dive into the value and cost savings that grilling brings and how to purchase and cook meat for value, and still enjoy the taste. Lots here and you just might want to head out the YouTube video (below or in the show notes) for all the pictures that Mark show us. I think you will enjoy the show.

Full show notes, transcriptions, audio and video at http://theAverageGuy.tv/hgg441

Join Jim Collison / @jcollison and Mike Wieger / @WiegerTech for show #441 of Home Gadget Geeks brought to you by the Average Guy Network.

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Podcast, Home Gadget Geeks, Mark Robson, Grills, BBQ, Pork Shoulder, Barbecue, Temperature, Pork, Meat, Beef, Jerky, Charcoal, Smoke, Weber

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Jim Collison  [0:00] 
This is the Average Guy Network and you found Home Gadget Geeks show number 441 recorded on April 16 2020.

Jim Collison  [0:22] 
Here on Home Gadget Geeks we cover all your favorite tech gadgets that find their way into your home news reviews, product updates and conversation. All for the average tech guy. I’m your host Jim Collison broadcasting live from the average guy TV Studios, in here Mike a snowy Bellevue Nebraska I think we’re four to six inches maybe in a weird freak spring snowstorm Are you going to go out and build these it’s perfect snowman. Snow right the kids get out there?

Mike Wieger  [0:47] 
The boys and I went out after dinner and we threw some snowballs at the stop sign news of a competition obviously there’s our going very far at three and two, but they like building it and then they say it’s free ice cream because we package it with snowball and they walk inside They eat it all night and tonight snow that wet. Dense snow is perfect

Jim Collison  [1:04] 
for some free ice cream. Super, super good for that mark. Do you guys still have snow on the ground up there? You’re up and no,

Mark Robson  [1:10] 
no, no. It was gone as of last week.

Jim Collison  [1:13] 
Okay and no nothing nothing nothing coming. Hopefully you got better weather coming to

Mark Robson  [1:18] 
we do we’ll get another week of this cold stuff like today was about freezing a week from now. They’re saying it’s going to be four or five degrees above zero. minimums. Yeah, I

Jim Collison  [1:29] 
don’t. We don’t know what that’s what that’s

Mark Robson  [1:32] 
based on freezing.

Mike Wieger  [1:34] 
We don’t know what any that’s why Americans. We done assignments by nine divided by 15 plus 35. Like isn’t that the

Mark Robson  [1:42] 
Google?

Jim Collison  [1:43] 
Yes, right. Yeah. Or hey Siri or whatever. Of course, we post the show with World Class show notes in this time. If you’re listening to the audio, you probably want to come out watch the video on YouTube. We do have video RSS feeds. I haven’t said this in a long time but I have a video large enough video small. If that’s something you want. I don’t encourage people to watch it on YouTube, but I had some listener say Hey, can I just download the video and Okay, I guess that’s okay. So all of that is available at http://theaverageguy.tv/subscribe if you want to get it done that way you can also join us live on our mobile app a great way to join us each and every week. Easiest way to find us live by the way, go to HomeGadgetGeeks.com there’s a big Android and iPhone button just choose those download it, put it on your phone, always have it in case of an emergency. And we thank our Patreon subscribers who help pay for that each and every month. Big thanks last week, Jon, Spencer Unraid, Mike, maybe the most popular show we’ve had. I’m not gonna lie. It was crazy. What all the conversation that went on in discord and Twitter about it this week.

Mike Wieger  [2:43] 
You know, the the prep for this week’s show has been enjoyable. I’ll say that.

Jim Collison  [2:49] 
Yeah, yeah. So we also big thanks to Jon and Spencer who joined us from on Oh,

Mike Wieger  [2:54] 
sorry. I was I was already thinking about this week about last year. Last week about Unraid well how

Mark Robson  [3:02] 
many people were in discord started a new Unraid build this week

Jim Collison  [3:06] 
3 or 4 for sure?

Mark Robson  [3:07] 
Yeah and some pretty powerful and rebuilds yeah

Mike Wieger  [3:09] 
Jon I think wins for biggest and baddest build he posted his his new specs for the for the build he’s building now he just put up your hey yeah I was gonna say go bigger go home puts all of us to shame I think with with his new setup but oh last week I think sparked a lot of good conversation I’ve been enjoying a lot of you guys in the Unraid channel on discord, asking questions talking about tips and tricks. I think everyone’s just been helping everyone out there. I know john got a lot of good tips for everyone on his build on what he ordered. I think a lot of other people have been posting questions so well the talk out there so keep keep putting it out there if you guys are interested in Unraid use that channel out there post questions anything. Talk about it.

Jim Collison  [3:52] 
Mark, have you you got Unraid running anywhere

Mark Robson  [3:55] 
dual

Jim Collison  [3:56] 
dual? What does that mean?

Mark Robson  [3:58] 
I have two Unraid servers

Jim Collison  [4:01] 
Wow I knew I knew a little bit 2 but I know

Mark Robson  [4:03] 
I have I have one that first when I first got Unraid is like six two I think and added a package where you you bought one for 80 bucks and you got a second for 100 like 20 bucks more it was it was a almost like buy one get one at 30% Yeah, so I bought two. I set one up right away, ran it for about a year and a bit upgrade of the processor brand again. Got the second one running as a backup using completely spare parts I had around the house so I could backup my waste pictures on multiple systems. And then the second one hasn’t been ran in probably three years. But the primary just got upgraded again to the pro so I can have unlimited drives on it is running now as he on 24 GB of RAM, 2 HBA cards. It’s and now a 16 or so an 1060 to do right now do Folding at Home but eventually do encoding. transcoding.

Jim Collison  [5:03] 
Nice.

Mike Wieger  [5:04] 
Yeah. And I love that locked to has he’s like on the opposite end, right? He’s doing like,

Mark Robson  [5:10] 
Atom Power.

Mike Wieger  [5:11] 
Yeah, yeah, it’s an Atom 230 board and that he’s running it on and I agree. So we have people on all ends of the spectrum doing like, hey, what can I run this thing like what are the main specs i think i think a lot to hit out of the park with that one. And then you got like john over here building like more powerful 10 times more powerful than like the rig I’m podcasting on right now for his Unraid build. So the community here is so much fun, because they’re doing all sorts of builds. It’s been it’s been fun to watch.

Jim Collison  [5:35] 
Yeah, it hasn’t been good. And I’ve enjoyed the conversation and always sparks a lot of excitement when we do that. And so, by the way, the contest that’s going on if you want one of those Unraid what we call this stickers, the they’re not pillows, but they’re badges. That’s what they’re called for your box. Take a picture of what you’re building, even if you’re in the midst of it, Jon, take some pictures be creative. I’ll be selecting some of the best pictures out, jump on Twitter, send me an @Unraidofficial an email with the email, a Twitter a tweet, there we go with the picture of that beer is coming fast.

Mike Wieger  [6:11] 
I was gonna say, Well, I jumped to this week’s show when you were talking about last week’s show. So you know what, let’s just reset the start. Now,

Mark Robson  [6:17] 
how long is that beer?

Jim Collison  [6:18] 
I don’t know. It’s only a 6%. That’s the sad part stronger than I anticipated. So take a picture, send it to us on Twitter, copy me put @Unraidofficial on there and I’ll be selecting a few of those in Unraid. We’ll be sending those out. So thanks to Jon and Spencer for doing that as well. We appreciate that course. Tony Rayner joined us as well. Last week, Tony, thanks for jumping in and being a part of the show. We always appreciate it. All right.

Mike Wieger  [6:42] 
He started a new build two out there.

Mike Wieger  [6:45] 
Yeah, yeah. He just started a new build this week, I think or he’s gonna do it after he was done with his seven, seven days on so I think he actually just started I think he’s running on Nuc. That’s what he said. So excited, everyone. It started Unraid builds after last week and it makes me very, very happy. Inside now,

Jim Collison  [7:00] 
it’s super great. Ryan, who’s been on the show before? So same here, Brian can’t decide if I want to stick on VMware or build an Unraid. And the answer is both. You do both. That’s, that’s

Jim Collison  [7:12] 
fine. You got a bunch of equipment there. You know, you can totally do that. Yeah. And so I get this, this stuff gets insane pretty fast as we think about what’s available out there. But anyways, if you’re if you missed last week’s show, it’s probably worth going back to from here on out. It’s going to be all barbecue. So that will set the tech aside. Well, Mike’s gonna bring some tech in as we talked about, but mark, good to have you back on Good catch up with you. Welcome to Home Gadget Geeks.

Mark Robson  [7:39] 
Thank you. I think it’s my fifth or sixth I think

Jim Collison  [7:43] 
so. I’m going to show you a T shirt here pretty quick. I think for this we always bring you on to talk about in the past we’ve had Mike Howard on as well. Of course Mike’s not feeling well. And so we our thoughts and prayers go out to Mike because he’s he’s battling cancer. Mark, we always Reach out to you. You’re I always like I always see your stuff coming in Twitter, I mean on Facebook and just some of the stuff that that we do and it’s always super delicious. One of the things I wanted to kind of lead with tonight because we’re, you know, we’re in the middle of this, this COVID 19 situation and, you know many of us have been isolated or unlocked down or in quarantine, whatever you want to call it. And I don’t know about you, but for me, like my cooking has gone to a whole different level because my wife is still working, she’s still going out, she’s in healthcare. She’s still going out and doing the things that she needs to do. And so my daughter and I’ve kind of taken over the cooking responsibilities and so I’ve begun to think a little bit more now about what we’re eating, but as before it’s kinda what’s for dinner. You know, it’s kind of the knucklehead caveman. You know, what’s for dinner. And over the last couple years, I’ve gotten more, more and more involved in that. We’ve always looked at this idea of grilling and smoking and as I’ve always thought, kind of a premium experience. But in all actuality it might be actually the most economic way to look at me when we think about it in bulk. Agree or disagree with me mark on that is it is it can it be economy in large quantities.

Mark Robson  [9:13] 
It depends on the cuts of meat you’re getting but most of the stuff that barbecue originated by cooking low and slow because they were cheap cuts of tough meat. It’s evolved now so that’s not the chicken wings used to be a penny apiece right now they’re not now you’re paying 10 bucks for 10 wings like that. That’s the stuff that was the offshoot is now the high end stuff lobster used to be garbage now is top of the line. So buying a cut of meat like a pot roast or pork shoulder or brisket used to be the really tough long pieces you had to braise need to cook really slowly for a long time. There’s still some of the cuts are still cheap, but then you’re finding other stuff like you’re getting into the the type of raising of pork or They’re calling it it’s the pork the pig always has a happy life. I think they’re doing this thing where it’s the the heritage pork where you’re paying $15 a pound for the for the pork shoulder. Okay. You get that stuff it’s gonna make expensive the stuff I’m buying typically is $3 a pound Canadian which is like a buck 50 for you guys are

Jim Collison  [10:20] 
two bucks for you guys. If I were looking for a couple cuts of meat just right off the top of your head what today it was gonna get you know I wanted to jump into this what are some good cuts to start with.

Mark Robson  [10:30] 
You can always find pork shoulder and so like Mike can vouch for what he paid for it because he did one the other day I think we’re paying we typically try and get them for three bucks a pound. Around Chinese New Year we can get for a buck a pound. We bought before a buck a pound and put them in the freezer and then pull them out in the summer just wrap them up and foil and saran wrap and pull them out in this in the summer and fire them up. And like I’ve done a 19 pound pork shoulder for brisket I get for about five bucks a pound. That you lose about 25% of trimming. And then you probably lose another 20% to just operation but you’re still paying about $1 50 or $2 a pound for what people are going to eat. So we’ll get like a 19 pound brisket, trim it down does 16 ish pounds and walk away with about 12 pounds and jerky I got for a new jerky by about 15 pounds at a time I trim three pounds off and they end up with six pounds of pure jerky.

Jim Collison  [11:31] 
Now when you say you’re buying jerky like I’ve never really understood this and maybe others have it either. What kind of is that special meat you’re buying just for that? We’re going to talk about it a little bit later. But what are you buying to make jerky

Mark Robson  [11:41] 
Eye of Round either either Eye of Round or Outside Round.

Jim Collison  [11:45] 
And you’ve got a picture. Let’s see if I can get if we can get to that go

Mark Robson  [11:49] 
ahead. So that’s one of them. That’s the trimmed out one’s. Eye of Round or Outside Round. Okay. And that’s Let me see if I can actually rotate this It’s not gonna work in it. Yeah.

Mark Robson  [12:09] 
So that’s what we call it in Canada, but the Canadian butchers and us butchers are different, different terminology. But we pay about three bucks a pound for that. So it’s pretty cheap.

Mike Wieger  [12:22] 
And when I think of jerky, I think of like, that’s gotta be one of the longest cooks. You do. Is that right? Or is it no higher heat shorter?

Mark Robson  [12:30] 
No, it’s about five or six hours per batch. And you’re just slicing. It’s super thin. Is that the thing? Or Yeah, so let me see if I can find some there’s a peppers are put into it. That’s how thin it goes. So that’s my jerky racket about to go on. So they’re about a quarter inch thick when you start off, so you’re getting the whole you’re cutting it down to a quarter of an inch. Yeah. Okay, marinating it. Yep. And then cooking it for about five or six hours at 250

Jim Collison  [12:58] 
how long in the marinade?

Mark Robson  [13:00] 
Two or three days if you want to okay there must be a call for is a day but you can do two or three days

Jim Collison  [13:05] 
do you make your own marinate out would you be if you buy a brand of it can you buy our brand Can you just buy

Mark Robson  [13:11] 
the brand new category ikey you can this is made this is called

Mark Robson  [13:19] 
Dr Pepper jerky

Mark Robson  [13:21] 
and there’s a girl who has a recipe online for but if you do a search for Dr Pepper jerky, as Dr. Pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, a couple other things, those peppers are put into it. And then I the first time I made it in the house, my wife came home after the stuff was marinating and it was a it may seem busy made a pepper spray in the house. So she clocked into coughing. So I wouldn’t love to do it in the house anymore. So now what I do is I reduced down the sauce because that’s one of the key things you have to reduce down the sauce. I reduce it down and then they chop peppers up, put them in raw. I don’t bother boiling them whether it’s reducing down with it and then I put it in some stupid hot hot sauce on top of that, so it makes jerky. That’s you got to be pepper had to like it. Okay, so I’ve learned to work in it safe. You could you could you could make a version of that that’s not necessarily hot and spicy right that way you call the the Dr. Pepper jerky normally is not. Okay, I’ve made it. I’ve cranked it up to the point where it’s I like it. Yeah, it puts a sweat on my I like peppers and a push to sweat my forehead. But it’s not the standard stuff. The standard recipe is not spicy. Yeah,

Mike Wieger  [14:28] 
yeah. Making my mouth water just

Mike Wieger  [14:30] 
looking at that and hearing you talking about like the hotness of it. I’m a huge hot fan as well. Man, it’s funny when

Mark Robson  [14:37] 
you think about what you pay for jerky. jerky is expensive.

Mike Wieger  [14:40] 
extremely expensive for like the tiniest amount of jerky to

Mark Robson  [14:43] 
Yeah, so I do I do in six pounds of jerky which doesn’t sound like a lot. But it was costing me What’s this? So it was say 40 bucks in me about another seven or $8 and stuff. So we bought probably about $35 $30 Canadian, or us very complete, right? And you’re looking you’re getting six pounds of homemade jerky. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s

Jim Collison  [15:09] 
less than a pretty economical way to get it done that so you’re taking that meat, you’re slicing it down you you’re showing it on racks. Yeah. Right. So you’re marinating it first. Yep. Then it’s going on a rack, right? Yep. And then what?

Mark Robson  [15:24] 
I put it on the barbecue for five hours a batch so I can fit all those four racks for barbecue at once. Okay. And when I’m doing it that I do two batches, so those two those two roasts will give me two batches. Okay. And then I pull it out and I vacuum seal it and one and a half pound bags and stick it in the freezer. Okay, and then pull out a pound.

Jim Collison  [15:44] 
Say I didn’t have the big grill that you have, but I’ve just got an average size grill, maybe one to two racks. I could do it in the oven. But if I wanted to do it on the grill, what would I? What kind of temperature are what I kind of want to get to 250 and are you adding smoke to it when you’re doing it? So, just straight up Could I if I wanted to, yeah, I had smoke.

Mark Robson  [16:04] 
If I wanted to, you could add liquid smoke in the marinate if you wanted to. Okay,

Jim Collison  [16:06] 
in two, two and liquid smoke is just a, it’s just a flavor right that I’m putting in there to kind of give it that smoky flavor. We’ve talked about liquid smoke here before 254 How long

Mark Robson  [16:19] 
is it it’s, it’s a texture more than time, okay, it takes about five or six hours, but you want it to where you can sort of start pulling it apart. And then the trick is you put it in Ziploc bags or like I haven’t bowls here, there and just let it air dry a little bit because if you put it in a Ziploc bag and close it up, you’re gonna get all the moisture is gonna come back out of the meat and one side of the bags. So let it air dry for an hour or so and then vacuum seal it and it freezes. Fantastic. Do I have

Jim Collison  [16:48] 
to vacuum seal it? I mean, could I could I just be leaving the branch and get as much air out as I can and throw them in or?

Mark Robson  [16:54] 
Yeah, okay, I vacuum sealed because it keeps it fresh. Yeah. So but I didn’t Do a vacuum sealed bags I when I want to eat it, I pull the bag out. I put it in a Ziploc bag and I put it in the freezer and I pull a couple pieces off. Let the frost in the counter for half an hour then I go and eat it when I want to eat it.

Jim Collison  [17:10] 
Now you say a couple pieces like I’m used to jerky when I see when I buy jerky in the store. It’s kind of in strips. Yeah, it’s definitely getting more jerky steaks. So Woody, do you cut these down into strips then?

Mark Robson  [17:22] 
No, I’ll take a couple of those quarter inch round pieces. Yeah, so it’s about three inches diameter. By a quarter inch. We start cooking it and it’s about an eighth of anyone’s done. So it’s like a little it’s like a piece of Canadian bacon. That’s like a round disc of jerky.

Jim Collison  [17:38] 
Okay, and you just just tear it right off the bidet and repost. Tara Tara right off. Okay. Yeah, yeah, that makes that makes sense. Mike, what do you think I like I want to go make some jerky.

Mike Wieger  [17:47] 
I that’s I’m planning out my run tomorrow to hyvee I’m gonna get the I have the round and we’re gonna start making some jerky right? Probably tomorrow. The jalapeno

Jim Collison  [17:57] 
boys. Well, and this is the thing so pretty. economical a pretty good snack a pretty good protein snack to have around a low

Mark Robson  [18:03] 
fat high protein.

Jim Collison  [18:05] 
Yeah, no. And in Mark, one of the one of my thoughts is like, okay, not okay. And we said this last week too, not everybody gets to stay home, like and if you’re out there and you’re in healthcare and you’re working and you’re in the public, listen, we appreciate what you’re doing out there. I don’t, I never want to give any indication that we’re somehow favoring those folks that could get them or make light of the sacrifice that our folks who go out and are working in the public and spending time helping the public and in healthcare, you guys are really the heroes through all this. So I don’t I don’t want to make any light of that. But there are a bunch of people at home at this point who you know, I’m kind of thinking this is where I’m at I’m kind of in lockdown and I the other day, I was thinking like I could easily put something on in the morning and and you know, monitor it throughout the day right and then get six or seven hours on the smoker. Right? Like

Mike Wieger  [18:50] 
that’s how I’ve been doing it. I mean, this has been so this past week leading up to when you asked me about last week’s episode to answer on this week’s I was talking about how you know Being quarantined to home. So I was prepping for this week I’m like you know what we got a barbecue all week so we did we did you know roast. We did pulled pork. So we do I can’t remember all we did three different cooks all week. It is the same but yeah, you’re right it’s being able to stay at home be able to monitor it you know and just enjoy the smell really is my big thing. I love being able to like okay, boys, let’s go outside for a little bit. Go outside just just breathe it in. There’s nothing better and it fills the neighborhood because I can always tell my neighbors are smoking because that smell just walk around. There’s nothing better than that. That’s that smell. First of all, it’s the wood you know, it’s an early cooking you just smell the wood. And then as that meat flavor starts to get in, you know, they’re getting closer like hey, I’m gonna head over to that neighbor’s house because they’ve got something on the grill.

Mark Robson  [19:49] 
Why not? pork shoulder was done on

Mark Robson  [19:52] 
the ribbon over on Sunday. Yeah, it’s when the pork shoulder done on Sunday. You couldn’t we woke up in the morning it went on it o’clock at night. at eight o’clock in the morning we still smelled word we didn’t smell the smoke didn’t smell the meat yet we still smell the smoke at about 11 o’clock so about 12 hours in we started smelling the pork smell coming off the meat.

Mike Wieger  [20:16] 
Yeah, certainly better now the other good part about being home too is you get to let it so this was the first time I was telling you guys pre show you know huge I’m cooking for an event and I have not been good I have not learned from Mark in cooking ahead of time because I never know how to how do I keep this hot but not put it in the fridge and let it get cold. So I’ve always cooked like right up to the point where we’re gonna eat and usually for me that means rushing at the end right cranking up the temp rushing at the end. So there’s last port but I did just the other night. I let it go because I’m gonna be home anyway I let it just ride and that took 16 hours something that I probably rush into 1213 hours. It ran for 16 actually almost 16 and a half hours just staying on 225 the entire Time, let it go tell it 203 is my attempt that I like for our pulled pork. And it made the world of difference and I’m talking massive difference. Hannah was like, What did you do differently? This is the texture, the consistency, everything I’m like, honestly, it was just not rushing at the end, letting it go all the way and really letting it hit 203 honestly, not like, it’s like 195 I’m gonna pull a huge difference. It’s that eight degrees you think okay, what’s actually 95 and 203203 throughout the entire cut of meat made the biggest difference that stuff I didn’t even need my like, I call him what he called the the clause, the clause I didn’t need the clause I put on my gloves, and I just pulled it apart. And it was just didn’t even need to when you don’t need those things a huge difference. So yeah, I’ve learned a lot just from having the time to honestly do vote. Because I that’s one thing I’ve always struggled with barbecue is I struggle To have the time, but when you have it, man, make a difference. And Is it delicious?

Mark Robson  [22:04] 
Do it the opposite way. Finish it sort of finishes at noon and let it sit and wrapped in a cooler for five hours.

Mike Wieger  [22:10] 
That’s what this that’s what this was. Yeah, initially, it finished at 10am and don’t need it until at night so I put it in a cooler from 10am to 4pm. I mean, I pulled out and pulled it and maybe that was a different set for that long. Is that the difference?

Mark Robson  [22:25] 
Yeah, we did one one time, New Year’s Eve.

Mark Robson  [22:29] 
I have my timing all screwed up. So the thing instead of being done at like 11 o’clock in the morning, get done at five o’clock in the morning. So it was minus 30. I’m pulling this frickin pork shoulder off the barbecue in my pajamas at five o’clock in the morning. Wrap it up in the foil, put it in the cooler. We drove two hours that day in minus 30 weather. So we wrapped it at five o’clock the morning we had it for lunch at one o’clock. And the thing just fell apart. It was just there was still 160 degrees, seven hours later.

Mike Wieger  [22:58] 
And so you didn’t pull it you just wrapped tin foil wrapped in a towel put it in the cooler rove and then pulled it what yeah, I think that was the difference because it was the most tender fall off the bone. Just just a tad a pink, which I think I had way too much pink in my previous cooks. I almost want to apologize to anyone who came to my house for the first two years I was going to smoke and be like please give me another shot like come over one more time. I promised by ribs won’t be dead dry. I pulled pork will be way better because you know you’re really excited when you first get a smoke like oh come on over. I made a pork but it’s really good you start inviting people over and then like two years three might be three years and now you’re like oh god I feel so bad for those people who ate my first like round of pork I learned so much you do you learned and Mark honestly from you your recipes and your pictures that you post things like that. I learned from that I I’ve been doing a lot more Google foo right. And then it’s a there’s just nothing that can replace practice. Know How many have you done On your grill, and don’t dress and dress.

Mike Wieger  [24:04] 
Yes. And how many have you been able to do because you can google and you can know you can have all the data. Everyone’s grill is different. Everyone’s times different knowing how to do it and knowing how you’re, you know, knowing what to look for in your meat is it’s just it takes so much time I think in 10 years from now, I’ll have a whole nother level of like, Oh wow, I had no idea what I was doing three years in

Mark Robson  [24:26] 
it like I got to the point now where I want to try and have the meat done early to mid afternoon. So I’ll figure out what the heck the outside end of the time window and plan not for two o’clock in afternoon for 6pm dinner that was done at 10 o’clock in the morning. I don’t care you wrap it up if it doesn’t matter if it’s pulled pork or brisket. We did ribs the other day and they were done in three and a half hours because you never know the thing what barbecue is done when it’s done. Right. You know, I could have left the I think the ribs are right right there. Yeah, right there. I could have left those on longer. Those were pulled them out of the freezer button the frost overnight. sprinkle them with sucker busters SPG and throw them on and they were done in three and a half hours we wrapped them up and sat in the counter for a couple hours and then we ate them for dinner and they’re still warm when they eat them and they were juicy and tender and fall apart and

Mike Wieger  [25:19] 
I and that’s the hard part two is getting to the point where you’re at mark where you know, okay, they’ve been on for three hours. I don’t care I know that they’re done I’m going to pull them off for as me I struggle with that still like I still do my 321 now my one at the end I know is totally optional right after the three two usually okay after I’ve wrapped them for two hours, they can probably come off but I’ve ended up with some very overdone ribs. I never up you don’t Okay, so I never ate three three straight on to wrapped and then I need to do one hour open depending on if they need it. And all my ribs. I’ll be honest, I haven’t perfected ribs. They always know a little bit on the dry side.

Mark Robson  [25:58] 
So my good but my retro A recipe you throw them on at whatever time you want, like 180 202 25, whatever, some more smoking temperature, right? Yeah. You cook them until you grab them with a pair of tongs, you bend them and they break. When you start seeing that meat break when you bend them, they’re done.

Mike Wieger  [26:17] 
Got it? So you see open no wrap anything just keep them on the whole time.

Mark Robson  [26:22] 
Yeah, they’re they’re not much harder to do than port but the only hard part is figuring out when they’re done and if you want to saw some sauce about half an hour before you start getting a breakage so you got to figure out when they’re starting to break but not at the breaking point yet.

Mike Wieger  [26:34] 
Do you ever end up with really dark black unders? So I when I put them on I feel like my first two hours for some reason even though I’m on direct he and I think I fixed this. We’ll talk about this later. Quick Tip for fixing a pellet grill. We were temperatures are way off. But my my bottoms when I put them ribs, bone side down, just hard almost. And the top is just now finishing up huh

Mark Robson  [27:00] 
That almost sounds like you’re missing. You’re missing one. deflect but the trigger grill and the rec tech I have both have a they have a plate over top of the fire pot and then they had the drip pan on top of that. So there’s two layers of diffusion It almost sounds like you’re missing one of those layers

Mike Wieger  [27:15] 
yeah I’m not yeah I have I had actually in mine has. So mine has the fire pot. It has the box over top of that. The drip pan and my drip pan is two pieces and you can slide it to allow direct or indirect to open up the horns and closes them so it’s two pieces of steel in there wherever or whatever it’s made out Yeah. And and yeah, it’s just it’s caused I think I fixed it since then I have not tried to record since I fixed so here this is a perfect time interjected by grill for some reason my I use a Green Mountain grill same as a trigger essentially it’s a different brand of pellet grill. What I did not know was I am I am meticulous about cleaning that thing out right going in cleaning up the firebox. They say to do it every one to two bucks. I do it about every bag that came out that firebox loaded up with some, some new pellets, things like that, when I did not know was how important it is for that firebox. So when you put your little box over the What do you call it the pot right

Mark Robson  [28:15] 
over the fire pot

Mike Wieger  [28:16] 
to deflect over the fire, but at least on the Green Mountains, I don’t know if trigger runs the same way. But there’s this little box you put over that there is a very precise measurement that you need to do from side to side because it deflects the smoke a certain way. And what that affects is your temperature your thermostat in your grill that says hey, the grill is this temp. So I’m good. I don’t need to turn the fan or Hey, the girls a little cool. I need to turn the fan. Well the way I had it set. I just threw it in there. I had no idea that had any impact on it. I throw it in either way too far to the left, which crank the smoke to the right away from the thermostat. So my grill thought it was always under temp. So it was cranking and so even though my grill thought it was 225 I realized It was like 325, almost 100 degrees hotter because it wasn’t sensing all that heat, because the heat was going straight to the right. And the right is where my smoke stack is right up the stack and out the grill, never hitting the thermostat. So the thermostat didn’t realize it was that hot. So there are certain things in there. And I think that’s why Honestly, I was charging some of those things because I think the temperature inside the grill was a little bit hotter. Had I been using a thermostat that would have known the grill temp versus the meat temp, I would have known. But until then I really I really hadn’t been using that in this season with the new problems. So just a little tip up for grill if you are green mongrel user, and you’re if you’re a gym, bogey, greenmount grills it’s 9.25 inches. You need to have that thing from the left. I mean, it’s it’s that precise so that they know, hey, if you have a 9.25 you’re gonna pick up the correct temps. So kind of interesting. I don’t know Mark, if you run into anything weird like that you didn’t realize, but I thought my girl is clearly broken when I called Green Mountain. grill. They walked me through that we fire it up sure enough it picked up the right temps and was fine.

Mark Robson  [30:05] 
The only thing I noticed was on the rec Tech has no problems at all with it. That’s out of all bang for the buck. That grill is built better than anything I’ve seen. Everything on it is heavy duty stainless steel doesn’t hasn’t worked. It’s the one I have I bought used. It had five years of competition on it before I got it and I’ve had it for three or four years. And the thing is just the tank, the trigger where the RTD is to pick up the temperature. One trick I’ve run for about three years is you put a folded up paper towel roll behind it so it doesn’t get doesn’t pick up the temperature of the metal behind it. It just picks up the actual temperature of the heat of the of the chamber. The other thing is when you’re measuring temperature, you want to do it. You want to put your thermometer close to the tip of the RTD that the your grill is using. So that you’re you’re trying to see if it’s close or not. You got to measure it. From the same spot that it’s actually using it from, right? Because depending on where you put it, if you’re doing grill level, if you’re six inches higher than role level, if you’re near the fireball not near the fire bot, you’re going to get a variation of 25 or 30 degrees.

Mike Wieger  [31:13] 
That’s true. Yeah. Because I know that now when I put so I use the meter me at

Mark Robson  [31:19] 
on the wireless thing.

Mike Wieger  [31:21] 
The wireless one. Yeah, love that. But it’s great cuz wireless. But I know that I mean, the, the ambient is what they call the ambient tab that’s picking up from right outside the meat, it’s gonna be less than what my grill is set up because that’s obviously way higher because I stick mine straight on top, sometimes to the side, straight on top. And usually I’m middle to right. My thermostats on the left. And at first, if you don’t think of this through makes you go crazy. Like why is my ambient saying it’s 212 when my grill sent at 225? Well, it’s good. It’s a way to the right and it’s not in the same spot as where it would be

Jim Collison  [32:00] 
You know one of one of the things I think is really important is you guys are talking specs on individual you know devices and they all are different even similar products set up a little bit different Mike you you kind of learn this even smaller products set up either incorrectly or a little bit different can cause different results. I think for me the key has been to know my gear so to use it enough Mark you’ve in the show’s in the past you know you’re still trying to get me on a Weber to do charcoal we got you send me prices all the time. In fact, you know the prices better in Bellevue do and I’m gonna I’m gonna eventually get there. But I have been focusing on you know, I have a 1997 Sunbeam grill that I have retrofitted with with I have cast iron burner and I have deflectors in there that basically make it kind of a gives me the ability to control the temperature in there much better than when it was just an open grill. Right and so it’s it’s still kind of focus. It kind of still works as a grill but it really is a better smoker than anything else. I’ve kind of made it so smoker. Right? I use Mike Howard got me using the tube. What do we call those amazing smoking to the amazing smoking tubes that are in there. I got a bucket, you know, five gallon bucket with a lid that’s got hickory pellets in there that I just fill that thing up with and throw it on the grill. Mike taught me to get that started. I was burning that thing up in about an hour. He’s like, No, no, no, that should last you five, four or five, six hours, right? So all that stuff I need to practice on and I needed to learn my grill like I needed to learn. How does my grill work? I think I can make great stuff. I made pork shoulder for my wife’s birthday just a month ago, which feels like about 10 years ago, just to be honest. We had pork shoulder because of all the pork shoulder we talked about here on the show. And and I made it on the grill in seven hours. And and it was good. I wish now now that now that I know I need to wrap that thing like I need to start even earlier. So I can wrap it for three hours. That’s my takeaway from you guys tonight. Right? But Mark I think the key on all this and Mike I hear what you’re saying is you got to practice some of this stuff you got to you got to be willing to go out and give it a try right you got it you’re gonna make a few mistakes right Marquis I’m sure

Mark Robson  [34:11] 
you’ve we’ve had bombs we’ve had some that are like I’ve had people over the ribs and all of a sudden they’re not good. Or we entered a contest one time in our neighborhood and went to Costco one week got ribs and it was three racks went to Costco another we got ribs it was two racks for the same weight. So the ribs are significantly Meteor right it was take me eight hours to get baby baxton which typically four and a half contest seven like Yeah, no problem. I got plenty of time and I’m cracking temperature and cracking. Trying to get the thing going faster and faster. Because it was me then when it’s done you can’t rush it

Jim Collison  [34:48] 
well and what you’ve taught me mark over the years and I have learned like every time we have you on every year we do this I learned something new is this is that there’s not a big difference between grilling and smoking. In the sense of using the grill, it’s really the heat, the amount of heat you use, and the length of time that it’s on there. And, and low and slow has been man that has been a revolution. For me in my own cooking. In other words, giving it more time putting the meat on even when I cook turkeys now, for Thanksgiving or whatever, I want to give that thing just as much time as I can and get it at the lowest possible temperature I can within reason to let that thing just sit in and cook. Not a difference necessarily in the in the in the contraption I used to same grill, you know, when I cooked it in three hours when I used to cook a turkey in three hours and now I’m shooting for like five if I can maybe six. And now I’m thinking you know I’m gonna start like, I’m gonna get up to let that thing go for seven, wrap it up and let it sit for two right that way and just let that meat continue to kind of cook off the bone so it just falls off right. So Don’t get confused. Don’t get confused. grilling and smoking aren’t all that different in the sense. I mean, if you’re gonna smoke it, you want to smoke flavor. You got to get something in there to kind of create the smoke. But I could do this without smoke right I could low and slow in the oven if I wanted to mark

Mark Robson  [36:13] 
Yep. Yeah, well, everybody does a lot of people do.

Mark Robson  [36:20] 
crock pot pro beef or crock pot pulled pork.

Mark Robson  [36:25] 
The difference between doing crock pot pulled pork and doing pull pork in the grill is all the fat that comes with the pulled pork in the crock pot is what it soaks in. You do on the grill, it all falls off. That’s the biggest difference between doing it and the oven better or worse or I don’t like it the crock pot. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Even doing what Mike said doing it at 195 to 203. I took a cooking class one time from a guy that I respect. He’s a champion winning barbecue competitor. He does this cohort 195 then you pulled it all apart and he’s pulling chunks of fat out that haven’t rendered yet. He said Well this is part of the reason why you do it 195 you can pull these out and you discarded them for the competition. But if you ever go to Kansas City barbecue society judging school, they’ll actually say you don’t want to eat the food you get served as judge you don’t want to eat that every day is barbecue. It’s too much it’s too rich is too I would just a state picture is to riches to flavor falls to over the top. If everyday food you don’t want it like that. So he does his the 185 and pulls out the fat pieces. I put mine the 205 and all the fat renders out. Right. So my pulled pork on that picture at the end. picture there, that pork is really lean. There’s almost no fat in it by the time you’re done. Like if you can empty out that lasagna pan and there’s not a lot of grease in the bottom row.

Jim Collison  [37:49] 
You’re laying it on the grill, you’re letting the fat drip into the burner right at this point you’re not cooking pan, pan and pan

Mark Robson  [37:58] 
drops onto a drip pan right The way the smokers the pellet grills work is the grill. And then there’s a drip pan, and then the heat deflector neath that so all the grease runs off the drip pan to the end and into a bucket.

Jim Collison  [38:08] 
Yeah, in my grill. So I have a traditional Sunbeam that’s got kind of the grilling surface on the bottom, and then it’s got a second layer on the top, I could put that pork shoulder or whatever on the very top level and put a drip pan underneath it right, and then get that thing up to in my case, I set it all the way almost not quite all the way down, but to the very lowest setting. I have a Wi Fi or I have a Bluetooth thermometer as well that I put in there and kind of tested some various things. So I kind of know, okay, this is the best temperature to kind of have it at. But I could do it that way, right. If I didn’t have a traditional smoker, I could put it that way and let it drip right into the pan underneath. I never thought of doing that. But that’ll work right.

Mark Robson  [38:51] 
You could do that or you could actually put a like a steel castor oil pan with a cookie sheet, not a cookie sheet one of those cooling tray But you know the grill the metal rolls, yeah. Put that on to put the pork on top of that. Then you have another layer of heat deflection between your pork and your that’s a good idea and gets it just a little bit off the grill and all the juices fall into the pan. It’s a great I can

Mike Wieger  [39:14] 
buy pork butt and I’m done. I lifted off there’s actually a whole layer of fat on sticks to the great that I like it pulls off that entire bottom layer of fat that the thick part that obviously has rendered down and he marks here to give you the advanced tips. I’m here to give you the rookie tips. If you’re on a pellet smoker lay some tinfoil down on your on your drip trays because I just started doing that Mark I don’t know if you believe I just they ordered new trays for this year but I’m like you know what, I’m so sick. These things are disgusting. They’re so hard to clean grease from that stuff is stuff to clean off. I started just lay it so on all the smokes I’ve done this year. I’ve had just tinfoil laid down. It can last One or two smokes playing at home. Maybe even more. I don’t know. I did one or two and just pull it off and your trayzell words make any difference on the cook. It doesn’t it doesn’t affect on your on your drip trays on your whatever you mark what what’s the official form? We’re calling drip trays.

Mark Robson  [40:21] 
drip pan I usually the drip. Yeah. I use the rhinos. Heavy Duty. Sorry, Alcan heavy duty aluminum foil. Yep.

Mike Wieger  [40:30] 
It’s nice and thick and you just enjoy it. Yes, that’s the best part about why just throw it out do it. And it doesn’t. I was always worried I was gonna affect the heat of blocking all the heat from coming up. No, it doesn’t. And it just saves you from buying new new trays and it just saves you the cleanup. It’s so quick and easy. I can’t believe for the last three years I have not been doing that.

Mark Robson  [40:55] 
Another tip is to actually use multiple layers of so when you get one layer done your thought layer And you just replace it and you always have your first pan.

Mike Wieger  [41:03] 
Oh, you blew my mind mark. That’s genius like I can’t believe I haven’t bought. Now tomorrow morning, I’ll be out there laying multiple layers of tinfoil down on my smoker.

Jim Collison  [41:12] 
bra. Brian says he does crock pot pulled pork, but half a stone block to drain the fat away from the meat.

Mark Robson  [41:19] 
That make sense. Do Yeah, that’s a good, yes. Interesting.

Jim Collison  [41:22] 
No, I think there’s some good. Again, I think this is one of those things where it takes some it takes some practice and there’s no wrong answer on this, right. And one of the things is, you know, want to emphasize again, some of these cuts of meat can be very economical if you’re going for the fashionable stuff. Well, that’s gonna be more expensive. But if you’re going for the cuts of meat that aren’t as popular right now, you may go and go to your local meat market, like just kind of every city just about every city has kind of a meat market in it or something, a store that specializes it and see what’s economical and then go back on the internet and say, Okay, how are people cooking this because there will be YouTube videos, right of how people are cooking This meat and it will allow you. You know, for a lot of folks, this is just a tough, economical time doesn’t mean you need to settle for crap. Like you can really still get some good stuff.

Mark Robson  [42:11] 
We just came off Easter and if you guys get it but every Easter we get primary on sale for like six bucks a pound instead of 16 or 20 bucks a pound is six bucks a pound right after right right after Easter. for Easter we get for Easter. Okay, so this was a like a three pound single bone prime rib roast, that we cooked like a steak. So we reverse seared it. So I smoked it for I want to say an hour and a half to get the inside temperature is I think 120 degrees. And then I put a caveman style on the coals to finish up side of it. And then we slice it up as slices and lots of this. So a three pound loss of this I think six meals. It was six place six servings. Yeah. So that was $15 of meat Canadian for six meals.

Mike Wieger  [43:00] 
Yeah and and and what that meal right there that you’re showing on screen would cost as to go out to like a restaurant and have all the plate. Yeah, exactly. looks amazing. I mean, that’s why we’ve done it. I mean, our 13 $14 pulled pork, pork shoulder is what I buy. Yeah. My so I smoked out the other night my wife and I and my two boys. My boys are a little mine do two and three years old. We an eighth of it. So that would last eight meals for four people and we’re not even doing it or I’m at home eating it for lunch and dinner, but they’re not right there. Yes. I mean, I mean, you’d be amazed how much meat you get off of $14 in America in Omaha, Nebraska. That’s a

Mark Robson  [43:41] 
large, that’s a large lasagna pan, and the two pork shoulders filled to overflowing. So we had a meal for Tuesday, only two of us in the house so that we had a meal for the first night. We had a meal the second night. My wife made an Asian noodle meal with it last night. I had it again for lunch today. And then she packaged it And half pound bags and buttons in the freezer. And we have another I want to say eight meals out of it 10 meals out of it.

Mike Wieger  [44:07] 
And and that I would call it a mark if you agree. I think the pork shoulder is probably like the intro. Easiest, best thing to get your first smoking, put it on, let it go put a thermometer in there when it hits whatever temperature we prefer. I prefer to have three I think Mark’s had to have five, pull it off. Like you can get fancy with it. You can spray it with Apple saw or apple juice. You can do a bunch of stuff, but I don’t do anything. I don’t either. One. They’re amazing, right? You rub it down and then once you put it on, easiest thing you’ll ever cook. Best way to impress your wife with your new expensive smoker purchase. Make her a pork butt because then she’s like, oh, man, that was so worth the money you just spent on that new grill,

Mark Robson  [44:49] 
and then you buy another one.

Mike Wieger  [44:51] 
Well, I’m still working on that point mark, I need to get some tips from you on how to convince the wife I need a second one.

Mark Robson  [44:56] 
So don’t tell her just buy it.

Jim Collison  [44:58] 
Let’s do this. Let’s Through this really quick because this is one of the things I’ve been learning right so pick up pork shoulder we had to the last time we did this. I put a dry rub on it Mark what do you what do you like when you’re prepping it I just kind of use salt and pepper and some garlic and some onion powder and I just I went to the spice cabinet and picked out things that I thought were good. But when you think about a dry rub for a pork shoulder, what would you What would you throw on it?

Mark Robson  [45:24] 
There’s a recipe called magic dust. And it is the if you don’t speak Canadian, he said magic dust. Sorry.

Mike Wieger  [45:33] 
Just sorry.

Mark Robson  [45:35] 
Yes Canadian.

Mike Wieger  [45:37] 
And that he said sorry.

Mark Robson  [45:40] 
Boot magic.

Mark Robson  [45:46] 
Just Google that and that is a phenomenal, basic homemade barbecue grub. So just the the ribs are the pork shoulder and mustard. Yes. Put that out. overtop of this stuff, let it sit there for a night put on next day

Mike Wieger  [46:04] 
and some people I mean even have like a question like mustard Like what? It’s a binding agent That’s all it is. You will not taste the mustard mustard is literally just a little bit goes a long way. Yeah scratch laughter I love it down in your with your hands right rub the whole pork butt down. Sprinkle this magic just barbecue seasoning or, you know what if you want to use her go to your local store and get some sort of rub. I use I go to there’s a place in Omaha called the hub helping you barbecue. This guy is a professional world class smoker. He has the best stuff and I just like you know what, it’s easier for me to go there and trust him and he always is suggesting recipes for me when I go in there it’s more of a lesson and how to smoke something new than it really is me buying anything. I just go in there to buy stuff to support the guy because he gives me so many awesome recipes. Um, here’s another one that down and then put it on there and go.

Mark Robson  [46:57] 
stocker buses is pretty good. That’s what we did last time.

Mark Robson  [47:01] 
They have one called SPG that I put on my pork ribs last time. They’re phenomenal.

Jim Collison  [47:05] 
Yeah. You said that for you said that before.

Mark Robson  [47:08] 
Yeah, beef and pork is fantastic, but I used their pork ribs oxys SPGs right there.

Mike Wieger  [47:14] 
Or do you rip your ribs down with mustard too? I usually just go straight. I don’t I don’t do the binding age on a rib should I?

Mark Robson  [47:24] 
I do well, first let’s get the skin skin no skin issue the way you need to take the back skin off. You pull the skin off and the secrets of building skin off of ribs. You use a piece of paper towel Yeah.

Mike Wieger  [47:36] 
Oh, whoa. Okay, so I have the hardest time getting that back thing off. It does not come off easy for me. I’m getting bad cuts of meat from IV which I probably am. I haven’t invested in nice ribs lately, but I cannot get that that backs can off

Jim Collison  [47:52] 
Mike if you want to see a good video so Steven Rocklin does a key has a couple videos on ribs and just just you know, go on On on YouTube, just go out and search on YouTube, Stephen Rocklin. And he will show you go in there grab like like Mark said, grab that paper towel. It’ll just pull that right off and how much time

Mike Wieger  [48:11] 
I spent so much time trying to get that that skin off.

Jim Collison  [48:14] 
You can ask the butcher to do it too. If you’re in a if you’re in a meat place. Okay, I can ask them to take it off.

Mike Wieger  [48:20] 
But it’s amazing. He will die. To start off didn’t know that was a thing. Yeah, you buy ribs. You think I just put these on the smoker. I just do it. Make sure you’re pulling off that back. It’s on the bone side if you guys haven’t done it before, right and you’re pulling off this almost layer of skin that lips super crusty and disgusting after you smoked it. It’s definitely important. By

Jim Collison  [48:42] 
the way, I think mustard is the best kept secret in in grilling and a lot of ways it adds such a unique flavor to a lot of the things that you’re doing and and it’s just not a bad it’s not a bad thing to start with. But okay, hold on. Let’s go back. So dry rub some pork shoulder.

Mark Robson  [48:58] 
Yeah. All right, Rob. back one second further. If I’m doing ribs if I use something like magic dust, I’ll use mustard as a base. If I’m using SPG I don’t. I just was SPG. I just sprinkle it right on the ribs and I was done.

Mike Wieger  [49:11] 
Yeah. What’s the difference? There

Mark Robson  [49:14] 
is a flavor profile. There is a bit of a flavor. It comes from the musters tangy, salt, pepper, garlic isn’t tangy so I don’t tend to put them on it. But then with a salt pepper garlic I sprinkle I sort of splash it with lemon juice before I serve them. So you got salt, pepper, garlic and a bit of lemon juice on the ribs when you’re serving them that way. But I’ve been doing like a traditional style rub was ribs, I’ll put mustard on. So magic dust that was the first I’ve ever made. You can see from the ingredients it’s got a it’s got a fairly simple list of ingredients paprika, salt, sugar, mustard powder, which can make it hotter or less hot chili powder, cumin, black pepper, granulated garlic and cayenne. Real simple Use those ratios, put them in a shaker and you’re good to go. And it keeps raw. So, rub it down with mustard, rub it down with a rub, let it sit there overnight. Throw it the smoker next

Jim Collison  [50:12] 
day, and I think a lot of people are familiar with mustard. That yellow mustard we’re talking a little bit about chat you know the cheapest yellow mustard. French’s mustard. That’s not what we’re talking like. This is mustard powder. This is a mustard powder.

Mike Wieger  [50:28] 
Let me just say this though. Oh shoot you ain’t you must seriously I’ve been doing this wrong the entire time.

Mark Robson  [50:33] 
You’ll know the rubbers yellow mustard but okay powder here is

Mike Wieger  [50:38] 
Oh my god, okay, it’s making sure that the binding agent was still our standard yellow cheat mess. Yes. Got it.

Jim Collison  [50:44] 
Well, but but Mike is a I would say it’s the better quality mustard you can get even for the binder, the better flavor you’re going to get like I’m a I’m a I think it changes things and that that yellow kind of the cheap yellow mustard is not does not taste fair. good to me. I’m not a big fan of it. But we’ve gotten some more expensive, some better flavored mustards and we do it kind of with our fish and some of those other things. And man grilling that with low and slow with that kind of monster. Wow. I mean, if you ever I think if you ever want to add instant flavor to something, just get a really good mustard and put it on there. And this is pre like this is pre with it not I’m not talking about squirting it on your hot dog when you’re done. That’s a whole different thing I’m talking about on the pre roll. Okay, so we got some dry rubs, we got some things mark, we’ve we’ve now covered this with something. Do I have to if I had a pork shoulder? Can I could I just throw that thing on there or do is do I really do I really need a dry rub to to make it work.

Mark Robson  [51:42] 
I’ve never honestly tried roasting roast or pork shoulder with no rub. Yeah,

Jim Collison  [51:48] 
yeah, no, I know you. I know you don’t. But could you?

Mark Robson  [51:52] 
I don’t know. Um, the other thing about barbecue it’s always fun to experiment, right? Yeah, you can always grab like some reason right now where you can Getting them as sort of two rows instead of one larger one. So next time just grab two of them and yeah, coat one and don’t go the other.

Mike Wieger  [52:08] 
And that’s the one thing I’ll say Marxism is really important way on early in the show, which was a barbecue is meant to make really tough, cheap cuts of meat really good, right? Because low and slow kind of tender as the mixed pace really good. That’s the best part about barbecue. You reach the temperature supposed to reach the lower the slower probably the probably the more tender and better it’s going to be experiment to your heart’s desire with that. Number one that ends up with bad cooks like I’ve done right is sometimes is bad and doom for yourself, do them for yourself and your wife or your wife will just laugh at you and make fun of you for some like that. And but but with that, I think you’ll get a lot better once I started getting a lot less. I was so uppity about smoking. I was gonna be really good once I got used to it. Well, hey, this might not turn out. It ended up a lot better because you experimentation I think Marco for you. has been probably the best learning process for me and how certain stuff tastes.

Mark Robson  [53:04] 
I’ve tried so many different variations on

Mark Robson  [53:08] 
a BTS or stuffed jalapenos or atomic buffalo tours whatever you want to call them.

Mike Wieger  [53:14] 
floaters my favorite. I’ve never heard that but that’s awesome.

Mark Robson  [53:17] 
you’ve ever had those?

Mike Wieger  [53:18] 
I’ve never heard that. No, I haven’t.

Mark Robson  [53:21] 
They’re they’re half jalapenos that you stuff with cream cheese and cheddar cheese and spices and sausage and then wrap them bacon and put them until the sausage is crisp.

Mike Wieger  [53:32] 
It sounds so good.

Mark Robson  [53:33] 
So I tried that with that recipe. I’ve tried it with pepper sticks in it. I’ve tried it with chocolate and peanut butter. I’ve tried it with cream cheese and steak. And it’s just it’s just you play around with it. You just have fun with it. I tried doing it with have an arrow into the jalapenos. It tries to try it out with parmesan and pepper. So that was a different one to

Mike Wieger  [53:57] 
this. How you get to Mark’s level is you experiment Well, no one no one’s ending up with a picture as he has here that you’re seeing on screen without experimenting a little bit and really well.

Jim Collison  [54:07] 
I did I bought some extra thick cut bacon the other day. I mean like super thick, like, like eight strips in a pack,

Mike Wieger  [54:14] 
like the whole pig was there.

Jim Collison  [54:16] 
Basically the pork belly. Yeah, it was basically the pork dog. And so I took the frog mats This is something Mike Howard had me buy a couple years ago, right these silicon frog mats You know, they’re they’re kind of, they’re kind of gritted you know about a half inch by half inch. You can throw them on your grill, you can cook fish on them or vegetables or whatever. And I just took straight to put the mat down and then I took a piece of tin foil and made a little boat like a little flat boat just brought the corners up. In you know how you bake, how you bake bacon in the oven for 45 minutes and it gets a stage really flat and really crisp and it’s a great way to do it in the fat just kind of lives in that we do it in a in a cookie sheet and then we put tin foil on it. So Don’t have to you know we can get that grease out of there. Did that on the grill in those frog mats and all man that was great still about the same time. 3540 minutes. Really what temperature? pretty high. pretty hot. So we’re three 320 sounds really good. You’re laying in the street cookie sheet straight on the grill trade. I’m just laying on a frog mat on a on a tin foil kind of boat so to speak. It’s you know, I bring the edges that keep the bacon grease from dripping off and catching fire. But oh my god, it was so good. My neighbors were just I was driving them nuts. They’re like, why don’t you cook it?

Mark Robson  [55:38] 
Mike, you gotta try doing bacon on your on your Green Mountain.

Mike Wieger  [55:41] 
I do. I’ve never done it. Okay, so So what Jim said mark, you’ll take it like compare all my Green Mountain anything I need to do differently than what he did.

Mark Robson  [55:50] 
Put it on the grill. Because we have a drip pan you just put it on the grill and let the grease run off of it.

Mike Wieger  [55:55] 
Because there’s not community flame up

Mark Robson  [55:56] 
right about flame up. You want to take one step further. Whatever I usually do that that mark on I try to remember if I’m cooking if I’m cooking like the ABTs I’m cooking around 250 produce scotch eggs I do the same thing. So I do scotch eggs which are horrible day crops and sauces me wrapped in bacon and then smoked.

Mike Wieger  [56:15] 
It pretty much turns into I mean jerky at that point right? If you did it long enough it almost be super thin slice an hour. About an hour Yeah, but it turns wonderful and crispy is making breakfast tomorrow. It’s it’s I need to go to all go to hyvee they’re 24 hours still. I’ll go there after the show.

Mark Robson  [56:32] 
I’m like I gotta go. You gotta go there. You got to do they still find them?

Mike Wieger  [56:36] 
Well, cuz Okay, Mark, we can’t we can’t get past this show. And I actually sadly have a hard stop tonight in about seven minutes. But I want to hear about your other Okay, besides me. You have done potatoes. You’ve done so much other stuff. Tell us about some of your other cooks that have I mean your potato mix. Maybe it has meat in it, but it looks so good. What other things can we do with the smoker besides just our traditional meat so we always know about Otter.ai there it is right there. I see the advertisements by the way for like Green Mountain trigger and they have like they have all sorts stuff in their grill and they’ll be like okay, honestly I’ve never cooked anything besides meat in my my smoker.

Mark Robson  [57:10] 
We’ve done well. If I’m gonna do higher heat stuff I use I typically use my my Weber I don’t usually my use my smoker fail this type you can do it But okay, but we’ve done bread we’ve done cookies. This was a potato veggie bake. So it had Oktoberfest sausage, potatoes, carrots, onions. Olive oil put on there for like an hour and that was it. It was like my wife right now isn’t working. She’s off because of COVID so I am working so sort of the opposite of gym where she’s at home all time making stuff. So now she looks after dinner but then it comes to the barbecue side actually go up there and do it. Yeah. But this was something that she prepped. I came upstairs and taught on the smoker and we had it like an hour and 10 minutes I think to cook it

Mark Robson  [57:57] 
at 375

Mike Wieger  [58:01] 
Looks delicious.

Jim Collison  [58:02] 
By the way, let me let me just say this. There’s some conversation going on about our arteries right now in the chat room. And I appreciate that. But by the way, you can do this straight vegetarian. So the other night we did some zucchini and onions, you can throw some carrots in there, roast the potatoes, put it on the grill, add some, you know, add some time or some you know, whatever you like parsley. Put that on there and let that let those vegetables especially like maybe on one of those frog mats, make sure your onions are good size. You don’t want to get too thin because a fallen man you can get maybe add a little bit of olive oil to that you can grill or you can grill or even smoke vegetables and still have a really good meal.

Mark Robson  [58:49] 
The pulled pork and the brisket or free pork and the jerky are very lean.

Jim Collison  [58:54] 
Right? Right cuz you’ve rendered all the fat out of your render all the better. But there is ways to do this mark. I mean For folks who want to eat a little healthier, or at least the appearance that they’re eating healthier you we do almost all of our bell peppers. We do all our Kini, we do our onions,

Mark Robson  [59:10] 
smoked salsa,

Jim Collison  [59:12] 
take we have that Pampered Chef tool that will that will dice for you, you know, to get a couple get a couple things that garlic and put those in and spread that in there.

Mark Robson  [59:21] 
Yeah, yeah, we get we get more than just a red meat on our plate too. Like there’s some fresh veggies and some potatoes.

Mike Wieger  [59:27] 
Well, it’s funny you joke about that. That’s been the joke of you, my wife and I she’s like you do a really good job making great meat. I really wish you could take care of the sides as well. Because I’m always like, okay, I made the meat I’m done. And she’s like, Okay, what do you think of the science like potatoes? So learning how to do all that stuff I could find easy recipes for that sort of things that would be huge for my meal prep and eliminating really hurting because my whole goal barbecuing is saying babe, like take the night off from cooking. Like she does so much like cooking around here. It’s it’s me really giving her a break. Oh, wow. Okay, is that bacon wrap over lunch. lettuce, cabbage. You have to explain this one. This looks delicious too. But, you know, I’m also very, very much interested in eating that.

Mark Robson  [1:00:09] 
There was some I found a recipe somewhere for a bacon wrap cabbage where you cord out and you stuffed the inside I think with butter and spices and you’re on the outside with bacon and you roast it and yeah, we started around.

Mike Wieger  [1:00:20] 
You beat it. I don’t

Mark Robson  [1:00:21] 
I don’t know. That looks delicious, though. It was a Patty’s Day. So we did that with a corned beef. Oh, there you go. Good.

Jim Collison  [1:00:28] 
So, Mike, next time you’re grilling, I could do an outtake get some get some broccoli.

Mike Wieger  [1:00:33] 
The problem is I don’t grow too many steaks because of the fact that I only have the Green Mountain today. That’s why I need a gas grill.

Jim Collison  [1:00:40] 
Yeah, whatever can be. You do need to get charcoal Weber

Mike Wieger  [1:00:44] 
was saying that.

Jim Collison  [1:00:46] 
Maybe you can get matching too late for charcoal.

Mark Robson  [1:00:49] 
It takes as much time as it does for gas.

Mike Wieger  [1:00:52] 
Ah, I don’t know if I

Mark Robson  [1:00:55] 
had one. And I’m not allowed to have another gas grill now because of it. Really For another gas girl in the house because she doesn’t like the taste of the food on that versus a charcoal. It’s so good. Like so amazing. You do.

Mike Wieger  [1:01:09] 
I can be down for that. Yeah, it’s also one more thing my wife because my wife’s already out there using my tiny little camper gas grill. And she’s really good at it. I’m like, dang it now she’s better me than that. So maybe I do charcoal. It’s it’s an extra steps you will be willing to take

Mark Robson  [1:01:22] 
so your vs reversers mistakes, you get some nice thick steaks or nice roast reverse here. So you’re smoking to 120 you toss on top of the coals, like this is where we’re getting ready to do some steaks

Mike Wieger  [1:01:32] 
and you’re saying on the coals not on over great. You’re seeing the nickels I do both. So the

Jim Collison  [1:01:39] 
caveman with caveman.

Mike Wieger  [1:01:41] 
caveman style is usually just straight on the coals so I’m sure that’s what you mean. Right? Like

Jim Collison  [1:01:45] 
Yeah, reverse here to It’s weird. You don’t think it’s gonna work but it’s so good.

Mike Wieger  [1:01:50] 
Oh, brown guy showed it to me and how long you keep it on those coals.

Mark Robson  [1:01:54] 
But a minute total

Mike Wieger  [1:01:57] 
little trick you can watch I just get it on. Get it off. Yeah,

Mark Robson  [1:02:00] 
yeah, it’s already cooked right it’s like Scooby so you’re already getting the whole meetup 120 degrees and you just turn the outside

Mike Wieger  [1:02:06] 
she’s almost doing it for texture taste on the outside and you really are for internal temp.

Mark Robson  [1:02:11] 
Yeah, see there’s a there’s a terminology for certain Amna cameraman there but but it’s it’s making that caramelization the outside of the meat. So you could basically get the whole steak up to a reasonable temperature and then you literally toss the thing onto onto the coals to finish it off. So that was New Year’s Eve when I was doing that.

Jim Collison  [1:02:30] 
You got to try it. It’s It’s amazing. Okay, all right. I think it’s gonna come off with coals and stuff attached

Mike Wieger  [1:02:37] 
to it. Yeah, you need to get a Weber with charcoal on it. That’s my honestly like, that’s what I grew up on. The whole

Mark Robson  [1:02:44] 
secret is this silver cylinder in the middle of the grill. 15 minutes and you have your cold ready?

Mike Wieger  [1:02:49] 
Yeah. Wait for doing this, that cylinder cooking or getting the coals ready and then you’re pouring them into the Weber. Yeah, putting them inside whoever

Mark Robson  [1:02:59] 
I know. Don’t use lighter fluid.

Jim Collison  [1:03:01] 
Got it? Correct. Yeah, little paper underneath light it at a light that it’ll go up in a chimney it’ll light the the charcoal down when it gets hot 15 minutes, turn it over and just pour it in there you can that way you can pour it anywhere you want, you can do indirect that way you can pour in a corner you cannot even you’re not limiting yourself where you initially correct correct God and spread them out. You can kind of do it that way. And then in this case, like with these, you’d put them in a section level them out take the meat put it right on the on the on the on the

Mike Wieger  [1:03:30] 
only less than them I think in this weekend. Sadly guys, I do have a hard cut off right now. But uh, and I’m gonna follow up next week because I have a bunch of recipes I’m gonna take in. Mark gave me some ones for my beef that I tried to cook last week. I think my wife would like a lot better. So we’re going to be doing a lot of barbecue in the next few weeks. So I’ll be giving you guys an update. Mark, always good seeing you. I like

Jim Collison  [1:03:55] 
see Mike, thanks for coming in man. See you next week. The The recipe I was going to give him on the broccoli super easy. Don’t need a grill for it. So take a cookie sheet, put some tinfoil on it, cut your broccoli up into just little little chunks. throw that on there. Great. some ginger, throw it over the top of that salt and pepper it put in the oven at 400 for 20 minutes, and you get baked broccoli. I never that was a hellofresh find. I never thought of baking broccoli. We always steamed it and it was always awful. It was wet and slimy and gross. In cooking. Broccoli changed everything. Like it’s like oh my god, this is great.

Mark Robson  [1:04:37] 
So the three things you can do that with broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts. Yep.

Mike Wieger  [1:04:43] 
Yeah. You can kind of do them.

Mark Robson  [1:04:45] 
Yep. And the other thing we do instead of using ginger we use Parmesan. Yeah. So use olive oil and parmesan and bake it and we do that all the time because I don’t like I’m same way I’d rather have ruff ruff vegetables than it was boiled,

Jim Collison  [1:05:01] 
yeah, steamed or even seemed we would do all we’d go through all kinds of gyrations to steam these and get them just right and they just always be mushy and kinda hellofresh got got a speaking those and, and you can, you can get all kinds of recipes on the internet for baked broccoli, I just never thought of doing it that way and it was super delicious. You can have your broccoli going. So you get you know, 20 minutes out off the grill. You can throw these in the oven and they’ll come out fresh and ready to go for you for and I’m a big steak and broccoli fan. That’s just that’s kind of my Those are my two favorites to kind of pair together with a red wine and I’m pretty much maybe a cigar at the end. Yes, yes. I’m sauteed Yeah, have you. So like let’s just talk about sauteed mushrooms really quick. Have you done it? So I have a I have a pan for my grill that I can put in the grill and get really hot. Have you just done that on the grill where you throw the throw the mushrooms in there and add some stuff to them and just go saute them with the meat.

Mark Robson  [1:06:01] 
I’ve done mushrooms, think how the burger doesn’t have. We get the big portabella heads, the ones that about four inches diameter. And we’ll take those, take the stem out of it, drizzle olive oil on top of it and put steaks by some top of it and then put those on the grill with the veins up and cook them for about 20 minutes. And all the juice from the mushroom comes into the veins and then put those put a burger on top of that. But we’d have those mistakes, just portobello mushrooms on the side of the steak. But I do have a walk from my Webber. I’ve used Yeah, but those we used to do those protocols all the time. If we’re having a steak, we’d have a portable beside it.

Jim Collison  [1:06:44] 
Yeah. One of the things that’s been interesting Mark during this time this crisis that we’re in is when I go to the grocery store, and I haven’t been in three weeks so I This was two This was three weeks ago. But like all the fresh produce was packed like we could have in that time. I could have gotten anything we were buying fresh celery, we were buying fresh fruits. They were all there. I don’t know what it’s like now but it is one of those things that everybody made a run on of course stuff that would be around for a while. Man we we had some of the best fresh vegetables we’ve ever had. And then the other thing, Sammy Scott and really my daughter, she’s gotten really kind of cookie cookie ish in this cooking ish. And she we made our own vegetable stock this week. So all the fresh stuff that we’ve gotten in either hellofresh or we bought we put in a bag, throw in the freezer, and she spent some time on Friday, just boiling, you know, just cooking that up for a couple hours adding some stuff to it and we get two gallons of vegetable stock free that Yeah, we know it’s in the freezer, that wasn’t in the freezer. We’re also gonna, here’s what I want to ask you. Before we kind of wrap this thing up is I’ve got a whole chicken. Actually I have two whole chickens that I bought. By the way. They’re like six bucks. Yeah, they’re not Very expensive right to hold chickens. I want to put that on the grill for a day and that’s one of those kind of things I want to put on at seven in the morning and let it go for hours like it. You know when 85 202 25 something like that, what do I need to do? I’ve done turkeys. But what would what kind of advice would you give me on a whole chicken? I By the way, I bought that we talked about that a couple years ago, I bought that roaster. Yes. Do I use that or do I so what do I do? What What kind of advice would you give

Mark Robson  [1:08:30] 
me there’s two different ways you can do it you do on the roaster, which I still love. You can also spot chop, spatchcock it

Jim Collison  [1:08:36] 
and that’s it down the center.

Mark Robson  [1:08:38] 
And yeah, you end up you basically rip the cut the backbone out of it, and you break it by a break the front of it ribcage and then you put it flat. It allows it to cook better because it’s more consistent across the whole thing. But the other part of it is quick to temperature. cook it till it’s just at the same temperature. So I think chickens 165 Fahrenheit. If you let it go for longer, you’re gonna I find it probably dried out and tough. Okay, so, chicken one of the things I put my thermometer into it and get it as soon as I hit 163 I’m looking at pulling the thing off. Okay, cuz I want to get it off as soon as it can. You see,

Jim Collison  [1:09:12] 
yeah, I am kind of looking at we want to make some some chicken stock off of it. So I do want to get it kind of roasted to the to the temperature where it does begin to separate from the bones so that we get much much meat. I always I always hate that when I’m eat chicken and it kind of sticks to it. I’d rather just kind of fall off.

Mark Robson  [1:09:31] 
Well, the other thing is talking to I think a lot of cooking classes with a chef that was at a barbecue store. The barber store another business now so the classes are dried up, but his way of doing it was he said you never want to make stock from cook chicken. You want to de bone the chicken, cook the breasts and cook the legs and cook everything else and toss the raw carcass into the stock. Okay. All right. That’s more work and it’s harder because He’s different. meat off when it’s done right but he said it gives you a lot better chicken thought flavor.

Jim Collison  [1:10:04] 
Okay, going on, it’s good good to know. That’s that’s really good. Yeah I was I was gonna get lazy with it and roast that thing for a while and then let it kind of fall apart and then take the kind of the pieces that are left after we take what we want and make chicken stock out of it. But that kind of makes sense.

Mark Robson  [1:10:19] 
What I usually do is I’ll cook them up I think I’m not sure if every picture of it or not. But I’ll do I’ll buy a couple of chickens when they’re on sale and they’re like $7 a chicken put them up on the on the smoker at 350 until they’re 165 pull them off, let them cool down a bit, then throw my gloves on and you rip all the meat off of it. And that process will sort of process all the meats. We have a big bowl of chicken meat Yeah. When it’s actually able to when you’re actually able to handle it. Right.

Jim Collison  [1:10:48] 
And again, what I’m thinking of doing is is starting it in the morning, letting it get up to temperature probably by lunch or after lunch. It’s probably up to temperature, pull it off. Rapid let it rest And then in the evening, start pulling it apart. And I figured that would give us probably a couple meals out of that. Yeah. For us and and then we could do a variety. You know, we could kind of process it dark meat, breast meat, you know, the other pieces and then make a few we could probably make a few things out of that.

Mark Robson  [1:11:19] 
Or just toss it into one big hole big bowl. We don’t even bother suffering. Yeah, we pull the meat off the legs and meet at the wings and dress and right. Yeah, and then it’s, we get like, we’ll find that we start using it for like an Asian noodle salad and then what they’re using it for a chicken omelet or chicken and broccoli omelet or t shirt. And then we start for you whenever we left.

Jim Collison  [1:11:43] 
Yeah, no, I think it’s good. Ken. And I thought about this. I always do my turkeys whole, but he said spatchcock in Turkey. On the acorn for Thanksgiving. Yum. I never thought about that’d be some work to spatchcock a turkey, don’t you think?

Mark Robson  [1:11:56] 
No, they’re not that bad. Not that it’s not that hard. Actually. Get the bones out. It was amazingly easy with a sharp knife or with a pair of scissors. Okay, yeah. Ken bought a an acorn after one of our first barbecue shows. And I still love my acorn. I still have it I can’t ever see getting rid of it until it falls apart. But I’ve had it I want to say six or seven years now, I don’t think still goes and I’m actually looking at buying a stainless steel grill for it cuz I don’t want to receive my cast iron every time we do pizzas or steaks.

Jim Collison  [1:12:28] 
Mark, anything else you wanted to share that we might have missed? on this?

Mark Robson  [1:12:31] 
I don’t think so. Actually, there was

Jim Collison  [1:12:36] 
by the way, cabbage. Are you kidding me?

Mark Robson  [1:12:39] 
I was good. It was really good. This might, this might be one of my next purchases if I can find one. So this is the benefits of a pellet smoker being as computer controlled, but the beauty of charcoal being that it’s a gravity fed Terkel grill and it’s getting a lot of attention. So these gravity fed charcoal things have been around for a while. This one’s actually a computer controlled one. So there’s no messing around with it.

Jim Collison  [1:13:05] 
Mass jabil is the name of this. Yeah. Okay.

Mark Robson  [1:13:08] 
It’s getting great reviews. It’s got 4.6 on their own site out of 82. But it’s actually getting good reviews on people’s reviewing sites also. So it works in similar principle to a pellet grill where it actually has a charcoal feed and a fan instead of pellets and a fan. And then you put wood chunks on top of the extra flavor and when you’re done, you shut down the vents and the thing goes away. Yeah.

Mark Robson  [1:13:31] 
So it’s a

Jim Collison  [1:13:33] 
it’s a nice play on on, you know, fed auger fed, and yeah, he’s just using charcoal. Right. And the gravity requires special charcoal.

Mark Robson  [1:13:42] 
Nope. Just lumping lumpar Bearcats, a gravity fed. A typical gravity fed cabinet style smoker is about 2000 bucks. Do you think they’re selling for four or $500? So Matthew boats always known to be a bit of a lower end grill. Oh, but okay. Yeah, it review so far they’re getting great reviews and Weber who was thought of as one of the top makers of grills with their pellet grill is getting absolutely slammed there are people returning them before they even got delivery of them because they’re having fires on them the they came out with with a brand new they had a huge product launch the reviewers were reviewing them live and they were having fires numerous people are having fires with them and people are returning to the store before they even took delivery. So it’s it’s funny how the market can go

Jim Collison  [1:14:31] 
sometimes Yeah, no right on you know, you just never know. You know, and I’m I have an old like i said i think i bought mine we bought our first house in 96 and I bought a sunbeam grill just so we’d have a grill it was 140 bucks at Walmart maybe and I just wanted to grill you know, I got I got the cheapest, not the cheapest but pretty close. And I’ve retrofitted that thing with cast iron grades and I’ve put cast iron burners in there. I’ve tried different kinds of deflectors I’ve talked I’ve messed around with different kinds of rock just to

Mark Robson  [1:15:04] 
kind of get what I love rock on the palette things and

Jim Collison  [1:15:07] 
yeah, no I just just kind of messed around with it each time to give it a little bit of different it’s, it’s it’s had so much heat in the in it, it started to bow out. So I’ve had to get I had to run a bolt and screaming like I have gotten all 100 and whatever I paid for this thing of you know of value out of it, but it pulled it back together. One of the things now after we’re talking about this mark, I have heat deflectors all the way across and it really doesn’t make it an effective grill anymore. Like it’s really hard for me to sear on that thing because it’s deflecting the heat so evenly and I’m in I’m getting, it’s warming up to certain temperature but I’m not getting that searing that I want at times and now that I’m in our talking about this, maybe I’ll switch one side to have the deflectors the other side to be open and then that gives me the ability to do some direct or indirect, I mean, whenever it’s not big enough, I would do large volumes on it, but it would give me an opportunity for the way we cook to have that flexibility to do indirect and direct or both or right I mean, because it’s it just gives me some options.

Mark Robson  [1:16:15] 
Or it could be due to my lover.

Jim Collison  [1:16:20] 
You’re gonna, you’re gonna I’m gonna get one your I am gonna get a Weber just for you and, and I’ll have that I keep the spring.

Mark Robson  [1:16:29] 
It’s such a great tool slash toy, right? It’s so versatile. One thing that popped up in discord this week is how many of the people on the group actually are smoking one form or another? We have people on whether Weber Smokey Mountain we had people on whether Weber 22 inch kettles that were doing smoking. I know Brian Ayers got a massive smoker. I think about seven or eight people in that group now that actually have them are doing smoking or something.

Jim Collison  [1:16:57] 
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I’m smoking on This I mean I’ve figured out how to do it how I’ve taken practice but I’m figuring out how to smoke on my on the Sunbeam grill that’s not traditionally would not be a smoker with the with that amazing tube and in figuring the right place to put it and how it needs to work and how much I can do and where does the meat need to go? So it can be done you don’t have to the current grill that you have you may be able to get some some I think that amazing smoking tube is $15 that the the you talked me into that chicken

Mark Robson  [1:17:33] 
chicken roaster the rubber chicken roaster

Jim Collison  [1:17:35] 
Yeah, I think it was 3040 bucks. It wasn’t very much. Yeah, we have it I haven’t used it as much but maybe I need to pull it out for this for these for these turkey or these chickens that I have. So it doesn’t have to be you know, I started looking at the triggers I started looking at you know, all the stuff you guys talk about in was just it was tough for me to stomach a 434 or $500 investment. Some of these are thousand, right? Yeah, as I go But for those for the for the average guy who wants to be a little more economical, you totally can do this on your grill. It just you got to know it. You got

Mark Robson  [1:18:10] 
it. You got to play with it. I bought a Napoleon charcoal grill. It wasn’t a lot of money it was 200 bucks us. Bought it assembled it try playing with it. I couldn’t control the heat at all. It had manufacturing issues with it. I took it back to the store about a Weber same price. At 200 bucks is less than you pay for a lot of gas grills and you can do high heat you can do offset you can do I love doing chicken wings on it when you’re doing an offset. You can do rotisserie you can do pieces on them. You can do bread on them is getting back into using charcoal again which is a little different but it’s it’s it’s something that you can play with and learn with. Or you can do it through your grill like I tried doing ribs with my before targeting in charcoal. I did a lot of ribs on my gas grill I got frustrated with it because I was losing too much heat at the back and I would jam the back vent with tin foil. And then at one point, I got my first charcoal grill. And then I want another one. My wife said, well, you have to get rid of your gas, you have to get rid of another grill to get a second grill. So I got rid of my gas. And then somehow I stopped the other three. And so now I have three, four grills and a pizza oven.

Jim Collison  [1:19:24] 
Yeah, but you use them all the time. Right? Yes, you use them that time. Yeah, it’s a good it’s a good story. You know, earlier in the show, someone said I was a little quiet on the mic. I think I was struggling a little bit with that earlier in the show. I just realized I had the audio processing enabled on stream yard. I think I was testing that for some Yeah, forgot to turn it off. Hopefully my audio is gotten a little bit better. Hopefully people can hear me tonight and actually we’ll fix that in the podcast so I don’t even matter mark. Thanks for thanks for jumping in with us tonight. It’s always great like I always this tonight hasn’t costed me any money. Just yet yeah so to speak yet it almost always did there’s a couple shows where I actually bought stuff right online and you know in Don’t get me wrong the last year I’ve been looking around you know every store I go into that has grills in I had been eyeing I’ve been waiting for some target cells some really nice Weber’s that are the the kinds you like you know with the with the for the charcoal at the bottom, the charcoal receptor. Yeah, the catch pan, the catch receptacles 22 inch or whatever it is. And I’ve been waiting for those twice. I missed those on clearance at the very end. I was like can you can pick them up for 99 bucks or whatever on clearance. At the end of the season. Maybe this fall will be will be the opportunity or Craigslist you keep sending me. Every time we do a show for two or three weeks after you send me like hey, there’s a guy over there. That’s got one I was

Mark Robson  [1:20:57] 
looking today there was none.

Jim Collison  [1:20:58] 
Yeah, I’m gonna I think I’m gonna wait for the recovery a little bit and in use what I have, but certainly as we pull out of this, and we kind of move into a recovery posture for most people. Very option you guys, you guys feeling pretty bad up there in Canada or is it is it you feeling pretty good about it?

Mark Robson  [1:21:18] 
It depends on the industry you’re in. I was on a WebEx little while ago talking about it. And it was everything from bankers to HR people to high tech. I work in the water and wastewater industry and we’re a supplier and a Integrator for that market. So we’re still doing okay. From what we’ve heard, the projects are still going ahead because their capital investments of infrastructure, they can’t not do them. Communities are growing, they need to have more fresh water and they need to have more treated water so they have to go ahead with it. So we’ve been we’ve been lucky. The guy that owns a company is a buddy of mine and he’s always said he is very hard to outsource the creation of water. Yeah, yes. So it’s locked into an industry that has to be local. It’s also a very service oriented industry. So for us, we’re okay. Some of our suppliers are getting harder to get some products in. Yeah, but most of our suppliers are considered critical infrastructure also. So, so far, okay. My wife works in the bank, and she’s not working right now. Because the bank She works in shut down the mall, or the mall shorts got shut down. Yep. So they moved her to another branch, but then that branch into getting doubled up with people, so it wasn’t really safe either. They had more staff and they did

Jim Collison  [1:22:39] 
customers to close.

Mark Robson  [1:22:41] 
Yeah, yeah. So she’s off but there’s a just like, you guys. Have we got big stimulus checks on everybody?

Jim Collison  [1:22:48] 
Yeah, and those just came in and they’ve been coming all week for here in the US. They’ve been coming all week for people. I think I got mine yesterday. And I unfortunately I owed in taxes this year. About the price about welcome. Got the stimulus deck. Now Hey, listen, I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth that basically wiped out what I owed in taxes. And that’s never a bad thing. But it’s been interesting to say the least. And in of course, you know, you might be listening to this show a year or two from now and it’s all over. Hopefully we’ve made it there’s no zombie apocalypse or I keep seeing people like hopefully we’ll get this out if there is a zombie apocalypse hopefully get the ones from The Walking Dead and not the ones from from zombie. What’s the Z? No, the Z or something? Something’s z. I can’t I it’s Brad Pitt. Isn’t that one.

Jim Collison  [1:23:43] 
The movie Brad Pitt is gonna come up.

Jim Collison  [1:23:46] 
Yeah, it will. But it I can’t believe I can’t. It’s it’s just escaping me now. But those zombies can crawl and they’re fast. You know, we don’t want those. We went the slow ones. Is this going to happen? I think we’re I hopefully I think we’re going to be fine. I’ll say this again. If you were aware, the world wars either this if you were, if you’re struggling through this, please don’t take any of this as you know, extravagant or or over the top. We I was hoping tonight and one of the things that asked you marker in the pre show was Hey, when you when we start doing some of this stuff, could it can it be economical and you’re like, heck yeah, I mean, some of the bigger qualities and some of the cuts of meats, it can be very economical. And so maybe this is a way you know, we’re all cutting. We’re all trying to figure out how to do this a little bit cheaper and and hopefully tonight has been away. By all means, you know, $1,000 grill might be out of order, but maybe the grill that you have can take some retrofits

Mark Robson  [1:24:52] 
and add a single grill other than my inexpensive rubbers I buy anything new. Everything I bought, I found used.

Jim Collison  [1:24:59] 
Yeah, another way to Do it another way to do it in a way to be economical in in a way to, you know, even talk about some of the prep and the freezing and being able to, you know, store it for long periods of time or whatever. And it can be a very kind of economical way to do it, Mark, stay around a little bit for some post show, if you would, and we’ll take some, take some questions from folks that are out there a couple reminders though, before we go, one, don’t forget, I appreciate folks that support us on Patreon. If you go to the average guy.tv slash Patreon, we have a $5 plan. There’s also some plans if you want to sponsor a leak or write a post, if you’re in a business and you want to promote something, got a couple plans out there if you want to partner with us to get it done. I did Park I got an email from a you know one of these marketing folks. It’s like, Hey, your site could really use some optimization, you know, and I was like, ah, I said, so I went to one of these free, you know, Link break, because broken links are a real big problem, right. You get penalized a lot on your site by Google if you have a lot of broken links. So I went out and I haven’t I don’t do any of that stuff. I just Post I’ve gone back I’ve 10 years of this got stuff right 10 years of shownotes that Andrew wrote you know eight years ago the links that God only knows if they actually work anymore. I think I had like, like 400 broken links I always say like, oh maybe this is a project I can do when you know a little little bit at a time but I do it right oh my gosh, it’s gonna take a while to go down and track track all those broken links that are out there if you want to join us in our discord group the average guy TV slash discord in the Facebook group the average guy.tv slash Facebook the discord group honestly he’s just more active right now we have more channels and there’s a you know there’s a distributed computing in a cigar and Unraid and smart home and hardware all that’s out there. barbecue is out there if you I’m sure that’s gonna blow up this week as we’re out there talking about it so if you want to join us in discord, the average guy that TV slash discord and that does work. Now don’t forget you can send me an email Jim at the average guy.tv if you want to sponsor anything Like the beer the opening beer you can do that as well just send me an email and we’ll figure out how to get that to rate subscribe all that stuff on YouTube. Hit the like button down there if you would we approve we appreciate that that helps us get discovered on YouTube moves us up a little bit in the rankings it does matter their reviews don’t on iTunes but the little like button down there does make a difference. So if you haven’t done that, click on that here today. Don’t forget the average guy TV platform both web and media hosting. Powered by Maple Grove partners get secure reliable high speed hosting from people that you know you trust course, that’s Christian and he does a he does a great job for us. Now they have some redundancy in that network as well. Maple Grove partners com plans start as little as $10 a month and you just get the greatest service ever. Maple Grove partners.com win. Thank you for joining us tonight. If you’re here for the first time come back on Thursdays We do this every Thursday. It’s not always barbecue. Next week. Aaron Lawrence is with us talking about she’s also from Canada. I don’t know what it is about. About folks from Canada. Mark you guys This must be smarter. I think in Aaron Lawrence’s back lab, a bunch of her reviews and be talking about she’s just a great guest. So we appreciate her coming on as well. The week after that McCabe is back all about the lawn. So he’s this guy. He’s got nuts. Oh, I shouldn’t say it that way. He’s gone crazy on his lawn care. It’s really nutso on his lawn care and he’s got a whole bunch of stuff he’s put together so think of this show with with barbecue and grilling. Two weeks all about the lawn.

Mark Robson  [1:28:28] 
So the crossover because we use the thermometers, he

Jim Collison  [1:28:32] 
he does,

Jim Collison  [1:28:33] 
he does use thermometers that he waits just for the right temperature of the soil before he applies, his chemicals and and so we’ve got that to coming up as well. We are live every Thursday 8pm Central, nine Eastern out here at the average guy.tv live if you’re if you’re listening live, stay around for a little bit of post show. With that, we’ll say goodbye

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