Easy Smoked Beans & Ham

Here's a quick recipe for a colder rainy November evening; Easy Smoked Beans and Ham

Comfort food is defined by Beans and Ham. It sticks to your ribs and is quite tasty. We all remember ham and baked beans from our youth, so here is a smoky dinner to warm your heart, or stomach on a colder November night. By the way, it's raining and 40 degrees here in Iowa tonight.

Ingredients:

22 oz can of some body's original baked beans
1 small onion
1 jalapeno pepper
1/4 cup yellow mustard
1/4 cup zesty BBQ sauce
Your favorite rub

1 disposable shallow aluminum baking pan
NOTE: If one of your family doesn't like onions or jalapenos, put some of the beans into a small loaf disposable aluminum baking pan inside the larger pan and just put some of the original beans into that pan.

Dice the jalapeno and onion keeping jalapeno seeds and ribs out of the mixture. Add these to the beans.

Mix the yellow mustard and BBQ sauce in with all the beans.

Sprinkle lightly with your favorite rub.

Start up your smoker or grill with a smoking pack and set to medium heat and good smoke. Place the beans pan on a lower grate and let smoke for 1/2 hour before placing ham on the grate directly above the beans pan.

Mix 1/4 cup yellow mustard and 2 tblsp zesty bbq sauce along with 1/4 cup beer and slather both sides of the ham steak. Sprinkle the rub on both sides.

Place the ham steak above the beans pan so it can drip into this pan while smoking. Smoke for one hour.

When you finish, you will have some nicely smoked beans with smoked ham juices dripped into the pan. Very tasty! Enjoy.

Dr. Dave

Steak and Blue Cheese Wraps

When we were in Texas for brother Ski's 50th birthday, Saucy Joe served steak and blue cheese wraps which were received with acclaim. My wife Linda and friend Lois Brass were co-opted for assembly. Here is his recipe and Dr. Dave's spin when tried a month later:


Hi Dave,
I wanted to type this up for you and get it to you for the weekend. I'll post soon.

Smoked Steak appetizer:
Six fist size pieces of steak (low in fat. I used a type of chuck and some sirloin) 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 inches thick.
Or one larger piece of meat cut down into smaller pieces.
Kosher Salt
Fresh ground Black pepper

1/4 of 8 inch wheel of Maytag Blue cheese. Each quarter was individually wrapped.

1 cup of pecan halves - 4 oz.
1 Tablespoon unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon salt

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 350 degrees.

ToastBake the pecans in a shallow baking pan until fragrant and a shade darker, about 10 minutes.
Toss hot pecans in the pan with butter and salt, then cool.
This can be done 1-2 days before

I cooked and smoked my steak on the Weber Kettle grill. I used a combination of wood chunks (hickory)
and briquets for the fire. I added soaked wood chips (cherry) for the smoking process.
I had the coals piled a few briquets high on half of the grill on no heat on the other half.

Pat dry excess moisture from each steak with a paper towel. Add salt and pepper to each side.

Sear the steaks with the grill lid off for 2-3 minutes on each side to give them each a nice char.
Place them on the non heated part of the grill, add the soaked wood chips and close the lid for 12-15 minutes.
Depends on the thickness of the meat. You want to give them some good smoke, but the meat needs to be
red to pink-red in the middle.

Let the meat rest for 10 minutes and then place in fridge to cool.

I did this all in the morning for afternoon assembly.

Assembly:

Slice the steak as thinly as you can. Taste testing is required as there will be small pieces that won't work for
rolling up.

Slice the cheese a little at a time into thin strips.

Place pieces of broken pecans and blue cheese onto the slice of steak and roll up, threading the toothpick through
the rolled up steak.

It may not be pretty, but it'll stay together and still tastes delicious.




Dr. Dave’s Version of the Saucy Joe’s Blue Cheese and Sautéed Pecan Stuffed Steak Wraps

Dr. Dave smoked two 2 pound sirloin steaks for 1 hour @ 225°F using Jack Daniels™ oak barrel smoking chips. I did not have the patience to carefully wrap blue cheese with the thinly sliced steaks. So his steak wraps were more ‘folds’, i.e. the steaks were folded over the blue cheese and pecans. Taste didn’t suffer.

One suggestion would be to place the meat in the freezer for about 30 minutes before slicing. It slices thinner that way.

Next time I’ll mix the blue cheese and pecans together into a paste. Then I’ll roll them into small cylinders and freeze for about 30 minutes to keep them in shape for rolling into the steaks.

Would you take a leg of ham as a down payment??

This article made me think how great it would be to be in the banking business in Italy. They'll have to develop a whole new set of currency exchange rates based on cheese, wine and legs of ham. Oh, and what about the little symbols we use for types of currency??

At this rate of exchange, the United States of America's debt is 27,332,875,638 wheels of Parmesan Cheese. Guess we'll have to adjust Fort Knox a bit so it's better temperature/humidity controlled.

Here's the article: How to get a leg up on the banking business.

A Youngster Has His 50th!

Dr. Dave has to work on minimizing those wrinkles and reducing the bags under his eyes. Nothing can be done for the lack of hair. While celebrating Ski Sullivan's 50th birthday, Dr. Dave got told he was a good dad for raising such a fine son as Ski Sullivan. This would be a hellava compliment if I were Ski's dad, but I AM his (not that much) older brother!

That said (and wellness plan in progress), the party was a smashing success. I am still dreaming of the blue cheese wrapped steak slices that Saucy Joe conceived. The concept was an appetizer bar. Cocktails, appetizers and converted main courses which were served as appetizers. Man! I ate like a king!

Dr. Dave brought BBQ'd pork butt and brisket for late night meals. These were consumed as needed. I smoked until the meat temperature heated to 160 degrees F, and then I wrapped them in aluminum foil and froze the pork butt and the brisket. These transported in a cooler from Iowa to Texas, and then were heated in the oven to feed the hungry guests.

All in all, a lovely time! I'd travel 900 miles for a party any time.

Saucy Joe! Post your recipes!

Dr. Dave

You Broke It You Should Fix It!

The get-even opportunity we all wish we'd taken. A musician (talented one too) witnesses baggage crews throwing his guitar cases on the tarmac and a $3500 Taylor dies in the fray.

United gives him runaround, claims no responsibility for his claim and ends up getting roasted (this is a food blog) via social media forums and video views.

Says Carrol in his blog:

In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged. They didn’t deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say “no” to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world. United: Song 1 is the first of those songs. United: Song 2 has been written and video production is underway. United: Song 3 is coming. I promise.

His 1st (of three) video below.

A Little Musical Interlewd

Sent to me by an esteemed member of the SaucyJoes Blog, this music is definitely a great way to kick off your week.

The magnificently indefinable Asylum Street Spankers began in 1994 at a booze and hallucinogen-fueled party at the Dabbs Hotel in Llano, Texas. There Christina Marrs and Guy Forsyth met Wammo.

Frog NOT! Stew

Dr. Dave is not too proud of himself this morning. The shrimp boil was not successful. These platitudes come to mind:

1. Patience is a virtue.
2. A watched pot never boils.
3. Too many cooks spoil the broth.

Do you know how long it takes 25 quarts of water to boil? I don't. The watched pot never did boil. Something else; they call it a shrimp boil for a reason. The key word is: BOIL! Boiling water has so much cooking energy. Hot water does not. I was running out of time.

While I was watching the pot not boil, my helpers were cutting up potatoes and corn. I had just brought a full bag of potatoes, intending to cut up twelve of them. Instead, the whole bag was dissected. Way too many potatoes! It's my fault for giving inadequate instructions.

So...I added too many potatoes to non-boiling water...which continued to not boil. After too short a time, I added the corn, mushrooms, onions and peppers. All of those can steep pretty well in hot, but not boiling!, water. Finally I added the shrimp.

When the shrimp turned pink (natural thermometers), I pulled the basket of food out of the pot ready (not!) to serve. The corn, peppers, onions and shrimp had cooked. The potatoes had not. I out them back in the non-boiling water, and they still came out hard.

So the shrimp non-boil was a non-success.


Lessons learned:

1. Get there early-If I had shown up two hours early, maybe the water would had boiled.
2. Do your own food preparation. I would have kept the amount of potatoes to a minimum.
3. Follow the recipe! Don't start cooking until the water boils!

Also, do you know how many beers it takes to make a pot of water boil. I do, but I can't remember. My nephew Drew Ayling had to chauffer me home. Thanks Drew!

I think I'll stick to smoking for the rest of the weekend.

Dr. Dave