One of my friends called me a few weeks ago and asked me: "Would you be interested in smoking?" My first thought was "A bit of a weird way to ask if I want to smoke a j together but he's probably already completely baked and can't properly articulate what he wants to ask" so I answered him: "Sure, come over. I was about to fill a new pipe so happy to share it with you!" He bursts out laughing and tells me: "No, not that kind of smoking!! You remember I started this welding project, making a smoker out of an old water heater?? It's ready but I don't want to use it at my place and am looking for someone to host it for a while." In the end, the smoker ended up with another friend who lives around the corner. He's not so much into smoking (he prefers edibles) but this kind of smoking.. he's really into it. So last Friday we had our first smoking session. My buddy put a lamb leg in the smoker, I added a big pack of ribs and a beer can chicken for which I'll provide some pictures underneath. I didn't take pictures of the ribs but will share the recipe for the marinade at the end of this post for those who want to try it as well.
We marinated the chicken with the same marinade that we used for the ribs. In the morning we took it out of the fridge and spread its legs over a 0.5l beer can. (If Zomby Woof reads this -> "Get your mind out of the gutter!"). The first hour we smoked it without aluminium foil around it and then, after the first hour, we wrapped it in alu foil and smoked it for another 3 hours. The smoker's temp was anywhere between 100C and 120C (210F and 250F) for the entire smoking session (4 hours for the chicken, 8 hours for the ribs and lamb).
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This was the result (you can see that 1 wing didn't make it home but I seriously have no idea who's responsible for that):
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I wanted to pay homage to my cultural heritage by taking a Belgian beer for this beer can chicken. So I took the nastiest (and cheapest) Belgian beer I could find over here, Martens Pils. Now, I grew up very close to the Martens brewery (few kms from Holland as well) and have some nostalgic memories about this beer. It really is a nasty beer but was always cheaper than the others so as a 14-year-old with 15€ in your pockets, you rather go to a bar/café that serves Martens Pils for 1.2€ per beer instead of going to bars/cafés that served Jupiler, Stella Artois or Cristal Alken for 1.5€ per beer. By the time you get 16, you become more of a beer snob and suddenly only want any of the pils mentioned above instead of Martens Pils. To revive some of those great early teenager (beer) years, I bought 2 Martens Pils cans, 1 for the beer can chicken and 1 to drink while smoking.
The chicken came out very well. The meat was soft and tender with a delicious beer-smoke undertaste. The ribs came out very good too, they melted like butter in the mouth or as
@musashi would say it so nicely "het was alsof er een engeltje op mijn tong pieste"
Recipe for the marinade:
- 1/2 cup of tomato ketchup
- 1/4 cup of olive oil
- 1/4 cup of (white) wine vinegar
- 2 coffee spoons nescafe coffee (the powder coffee)
- 2 table spoons date syrup
- 1 table spoon brown sugar (if possible, with molasses)
- salt, cayenne pepper, sweet paprika powder, garlic powder, dried cilantro (add as per your personal taste)
-> mix it well, then rub your ribs, chicken or other meat in it and let it marinate overnight. If you're in a rush, let it marinate for at least 2 hours but the longer, the better.
I hope you will all be able to enjoy the same smoking experience as the one I experienced last Friday.