Lamb Ribs, Egg Nog Pork Sausage, and more! (Long & Pr0n heavy)

[BigButzBBQ]

Keeping up with my new tradition of forgetting to post stuff until about mid week, here is my last week in review.
Let's start with what got smoked last night. When it comes to my work week, I run on leftovers and I definitely wanted to make sure that I would have plenty of them for this week. So, I took some meat out to thaw.

First up was the Lamb ribs. I have never done these before and honestly had no idea what to expect from them. My instincts were to treat them alot like beef ribs. When I pulled them out of the package, they looked really thin and I figured it wouldn't make any sense to bother with trimming the fat off of them.

Next up was something to help the seasonings stick.

and that was rubbed into the meat.

Then came the rub. I went with a beef style rub. In short, light on the sugar, mainly S&P with garlic and then some oregano and basil thrown in.

Once the lamb ribs were out of the way, I decided to go to work on the pork sausage. I was in one of my strange moods so figured I would try combining some unusual ingredients.

Now, before I officially get carted away to the loony bin. There was some sort of logic behind this. I figured that one of the great tastes is breakfast sausage with french toast. To me, Egg Nog has very similar flavor profile to french toast. The sausage went into a bowl and was then followed by 1/4 cup of egg nog.

I then mixed this up and found out that I had used entirely too much egg nog. It pretty much required that I squeeze the sausage to the point that some of the egg nog ran out so it would stay together.

After the egg nog sausage ball, I moved on to just making a simple pork sausage with chorizo swirl fatty. Once everything was ready, onto the smoker it went cruising at about 300.

I let the lamb ribs go until the point where I could see the meat pulling away from the bone and thermometer slid right through the meat. The temp was at about 170 when they came off.

As you can maybe tell from the last picture, these ribs blew up huge! They had to be twice as thick as they were when I initially put them on the smoker! The grand realization that most of this was due to the extremely high fat content of this cut became quickly apparent as soon as I cut into them.

On the upside though! They were absolutely delicious! The meat was like butter and the fat was very very tasty. I didn't even sauce them!
Next to come off was the chorizo swirled fatty. I've made this before and love the combination. You will most likely see other pics of this later in the week.

Then came the Egg Nog Sausage Ball.


I must say that the two things I noticed immediately about the Egg Nog Sausage Ball was that the meat had stayed relatively white in color and that it had just the faintest of pink smoke ring on it. Mind you I did not use any rub on it so that may be reason for the light ring. Also it tasted like really great smoked breakfast sausage! But, there was no noticeable egg nog flavor to it at all. Well, back to the drawing board on that one.

As far as the rest of the week went.
Monday we had some spectacular pasta topped with shrimp, bacon, and broccoli!

Sunday, I decided to cook up this bad boy on the smoker. There will be more pics of this to follow this week as well.

Friday, Christmas eve dinner consisted of Prime Rib! The rub I made for it was excellent, however, it somehow got cooked about 5* too long. The medium well crowd loved it but, I like mine plenty bloody. Here are the leftovers of the 12lb beast.


Starting to think healthier for the new year, I even managed to sneak in a salad for lunch one day.


Thanks for looking!

[deguerre]

I officially bow to you, my culinary friend and master.

[bluetang]

Yes sir, may I please have another

[1_T_Scot]

Mmmm good looking food!!! I'd hit that Prime Rib Hard!!

[Wrench_H]

I saw that fatty on twitter last night right before I went to bed and was afraid I would dream about it all night. That thing looks awesome. I love the flavor of chorizo. Nice work.

[deepsouth]

awesome stuff. i saw the first picture of the cooked ribs and thought, "that's not the same thing that went onto the grill." nom nom nom nom

[BigButzBBQ]

Originally Posted by Wrench_H

I saw that fatty on twitter last night right before I went to bed and was afraid I would dream about it all night. That thing looks awesome. I love the flavor of chorizo. Nice work.

It's hard to explain the magic of that chorizo fatty there is a huge texture difference between pork sausage and the chorizo. Plus it's a great way to inject some southwestern flavor into a breakfast sandwich.

[bigabyte]

Fantastic! I love the egg nog idea. Maybe just a spiced custard filling is in order, maybe with a bourbon glaze?

[BigButzBBQ]

Originally Posted by bigabyte

Fantastic! I love the egg nog idea. Maybe just a spiced custard filling is in order, maybe with a bourbon glaze?

I'm thinking you are right about that. The flavor wasn't concentrated enough but, I think with a stronger blend it would work, bourbon glaze might be a nice touch as well.

[Phubar]

Very nice Butsz!

[Garyclaw]

Wow Tom! A great week of meals there. I'm thinking I should come up and stay with ya for a week. Those lamb ribs look awesome.

[BigButzBBQ]

Originally Posted by Garyclaw

Wow Tom! A great week of meals there. I'm thinking I should come up and stay with ya for a week. Those lamb ribs look awesome.

I must say I was pleasantly surprised by how they turned out, haven't cooked lamb in forever and never the ribs. The only bad part is that now I want to do more.
I recommend visiting during the summer months.

[deguerre]

Originally Posted by BigButzBBQ

I recommend visiting during the summer months.

Where's your sense of adventure?

[BigButzBBQ]

Almost forgot.
Here is the Chorizo swirl fatty I had for lunch today. Accompanied it with some leftover dumplings from the chicken and dumplings we had for Christmas Eve. I would have shown pictures of that but, you would have ate your monitor.


For dinner, I didn't have any buns so I sliced up some of the butt I had smoked on Sunday and added some broccoli rice stuffing on the side.

and for those who like it a little saucy...


I love having leftovers to eat at work.

[BigButzBBQ]

Originally Posted by deguerre

Where's your sense of adventure?

It's only because the smoker is going all summer as opposed to having to be whipped int submission out of it's cozy den on my porch.