Well, yesterday was our family Christmas, and I took all last week off to prepare for it. On my list of things to smoke was cheese, venison jerkey, venison summer sausage, venison pastrami, and lastly the main course of Sunday's family meal, a 9# bone- on prime rib.
Here's how the week went:
Monday: Woke up, decided to relax the 1st day of vacation, and midafternoon went to the watering hole to contemplate the weeks task.
Tuesday: No transportation. Truck broke.
Wednesday: Truck still broke, but getting fixed.
Thursday: Truck fixed. Snow storm be damned, I figured I had to get busy. So 20 minutes and only 5 miles later I arrived at Smoking Central (my parents house. They have a lot more room than my appartment.)
So I made up a two part brine for the venison pastrami and got that started curing.
Then I sliced up 3 deer roasts and made up a cure consisting of 1 part Stoagie/ 1 part Eldin Cutlip/1 part my own addition. Started it curing.
After that it was time to dig out of the snow storm
Friday: All I had to do was smoke the cheese. Smoked gouda, hard cheddar, and pepperjack. That was a 3 hour process. Wiped the cheeses off. Wrapped them in foil and stuck them in the frige to mellow until Sunday.
Saturday: Slept in before starting the 1st of 2 batches of jerkey. I hang mine so I dont get as much in per load as the folks that stack their's on those trays.
That evening I rubbed the prime rib with montreal seasoning and some fresh rosemary spriggs.
Sunday: Up at 7:00 AM in order to have the roast ready for 2:00 meal time. Place a 1- 2 oz. chunk of cherry wood topped with a TBS of minced garlic and 4 twigs of fresh rosemary (just like Stuart says to do!) Set the smoker at 225 awaited nervously to see how my 1st prime rib was gonna turn out.
I had planned for a 3 hour rest @140, but the internals took longer to reach the 130 I qas shooting for.
At 10:30 there was a 20 degree difference between the outside probe and the middle probe. At 12:30 the probe in the middle of the roast finally read 133, while the probe placed just on the inside of the 1st bone read 144.
I turned the smoker down to 140 figuring a 1 1/2 hour rest would be better than none at all. Well by 2:00 both probes read 144.
Sunday night at 7:00 the pastrami was loaded in the smoker with 2 oz. each of apple & cherry. Took it out at 12:30 and foiled.
Monday: Back at work and my but is draggin'
The results of my labors?
The cheese was excellent!
The pastrami exceeded my expectations.
The jerkey while tasting really good didnt have a consistant texture due to my hasty ununiformed slicing. Most just the way I like it, but some too done for me.
The prime rib was out of this world. The two 3/4" outside slices were medium. The rest was medium- rare. I was in heaven from the very 1st bite and in seventh heaven from all the raving and complimenting going on. (I was so worried about screwing up a $84.00 piece of beef. Now I already have a good start on my list of things to give thanks for next November!)
Thanks for siphering through my ramblings.
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!
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