KnucklHed BBQ
Babbling Farker
I posted this over in the BBQ Disasters thread, but thought that it might be a big enough failure to deserve it's own thread...
**PROCEED WITH CAUTION**
I had a friend ask me several months ago to make pulled pork and brisket for 200 peeps at his parents 50th anniversary. I said yes... :doh:
Pork came out great as it usually does. Brisket, umm, not as well...
I usually inject briskets with Butcher's beef marinade and prime dust, well I had the prime dust, but was all outta the butchers marinade, no biggie, prime dust is pretty good and I'll just grab a couple beef marinade envelopes at the store, it won't be the same, but this aint competition so I think we'll be alright.
Now - I want to make this quite clear - The results of this Kroger beef marinade and Butchers Prime Dust injection from hell is in no way the fault of David from Butchers BBQ - His product is great - The bad seed in this equation was the Kroger marinade, I'll explain in a bit...
So I mix up the 2 envelopes of kroger krap with the prime dust and start poking holes in the 7 full packers I've got. I just injected 1 side thru the cryo pack, again, not competition so I figured 1 side would be enough...
I toss 2 packers on the UDS and 3 onto the char-griller at about 6 pm on friday night (everyone is set to be chowing the next day at 5 pm, I planned on getting them to 190* and then hold them in a hot cooler till they're ready to be served).
At about 1:30 am I go out to check on everything, I poke my dull ice pick probe at them to see how things are progressing and to my total disbelief, the probe sunk into the meat about 1/2", like it was already done!! :shocked:
WTH??!!! I scrape the probe across the top and a piece of meat tears out... Oh this can't be good.
I taste it and it completely MUSHES in my mouth.
We're not talking about over-done soft "pulled" brisket type texture... we're talking about wet dog food mush!!!!
From a past expirence, I get this sinking feeling in my stomach. I head back inside and dig one of the kroger envelopes out of the trash and there it was... "Beef Marinade... with TENDERIZER" Oh crap. What have I done?
Well I decide to let them finish cooking and see how they look in the morning. Maybe I could cut off the top layer of mush and still get decent brisket out of the rest of it.
Sleep depravation makes you think wierd things. :crazy:
So about 8 am when I get the courage up to test it out again, I poke it with the probe and it slides right through. I scrape the top of the meat and it literally opens up a crevice. Oh this is bad.
We'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.
***WARNING*** ***WARNING*** ***WARNING*** ***WARNING*** ***WARNING*** ***WARNING*** ***WARNING***
**SOME PEOPLE MAY FIND THE FOLLOWING PICTURES DISTURBING AND INAPPROPRIATE TO POST ON A BBQ FORUM - VIEWER DISCRETION IS STRONGLY ADVISED**
More tack marks than a heroin junkie
It really didn't look too bad when you sliced it...
Until you tasted it or tore a piece off... below is a pic of the same slice as above.
This is what it looked like when you pulled all the nasty crap off the top... it had been sitting out for a while by the time I took this pic so it's especially ugly looking.
My bucket of SHAME...
Of the 7 packers, only a few points were able to be salvaged. Since I had injected only thru the top of the cryo, the flats were the worst of it... here's what I had left of 7 briskets.
I had to scramble at this point - there was no way I would be able to recook enough briskets to feed that many people.
I called Costco and asked how much Tri-Tip they had on hand - they said several cases - I could have all I needed - $3.48/lb... OUCH!!
I grabbed a 56lb case, trimmed them up, seasoned with doctored montreal and tossed them over a hot lump fire...
Used the traeger as a holding area
I cooked them all to about 120* and moved them to hotel pans to take to the party - that gave them enough of a rest to come up to about 130* (sorry, no sliced pics, was too busy!)
I was blown away - I served 50lbs of med rare beef to a couple hundred people and only about 4-5 asked if I had anything that was more well-done!! Amazing! :clap2:
Out of 24 tri-tips I ended up with only 3 left over!!!
That day was both the biggest disaster and biggest save of my life... hope that NEVER happens again!
Lesson learned - I will ALWAYS be checking pkgs for tenderizer in the future!!
**PROCEED WITH CAUTION**
I had a friend ask me several months ago to make pulled pork and brisket for 200 peeps at his parents 50th anniversary. I said yes... :doh:
Pork came out great as it usually does. Brisket, umm, not as well...
I usually inject briskets with Butcher's beef marinade and prime dust, well I had the prime dust, but was all outta the butchers marinade, no biggie, prime dust is pretty good and I'll just grab a couple beef marinade envelopes at the store, it won't be the same, but this aint competition so I think we'll be alright.
Now - I want to make this quite clear - The results of this Kroger beef marinade and Butchers Prime Dust injection from hell is in no way the fault of David from Butchers BBQ - His product is great - The bad seed in this equation was the Kroger marinade, I'll explain in a bit...
So I mix up the 2 envelopes of kroger krap with the prime dust and start poking holes in the 7 full packers I've got. I just injected 1 side thru the cryo pack, again, not competition so I figured 1 side would be enough...
I toss 2 packers on the UDS and 3 onto the char-griller at about 6 pm on friday night (everyone is set to be chowing the next day at 5 pm, I planned on getting them to 190* and then hold them in a hot cooler till they're ready to be served).
At about 1:30 am I go out to check on everything, I poke my dull ice pick probe at them to see how things are progressing and to my total disbelief, the probe sunk into the meat about 1/2", like it was already done!! :shocked:
WTH??!!! I scrape the probe across the top and a piece of meat tears out... Oh this can't be good.
I taste it and it completely MUSHES in my mouth.
We're not talking about over-done soft "pulled" brisket type texture... we're talking about wet dog food mush!!!!
From a past expirence, I get this sinking feeling in my stomach. I head back inside and dig one of the kroger envelopes out of the trash and there it was... "Beef Marinade... with TENDERIZER" Oh crap. What have I done?
Well I decide to let them finish cooking and see how they look in the morning. Maybe I could cut off the top layer of mush and still get decent brisket out of the rest of it.
Sleep depravation makes you think wierd things. :crazy:So about 8 am when I get the courage up to test it out again, I poke it with the probe and it slides right through. I scrape the top of the meat and it literally opens up a crevice. Oh this is bad.
We'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.
***WARNING*** ***WARNING*** ***WARNING*** ***WARNING*** ***WARNING*** ***WARNING*** ***WARNING***
**SOME PEOPLE MAY FIND THE FOLLOWING PICTURES DISTURBING AND INAPPROPRIATE TO POST ON A BBQ FORUM - VIEWER DISCRETION IS STRONGLY ADVISED**
More tack marks than a heroin junkie
It really didn't look too bad when you sliced it...
Until you tasted it or tore a piece off... below is a pic of the same slice as above.
This is what it looked like when you pulled all the nasty crap off the top... it had been sitting out for a while by the time I took this pic so it's especially ugly looking.
My bucket of SHAME...
Of the 7 packers, only a few points were able to be salvaged. Since I had injected only thru the top of the cryo, the flats were the worst of it... here's what I had left of 7 briskets.
I had to scramble at this point - there was no way I would be able to recook enough briskets to feed that many people.
I called Costco and asked how much Tri-Tip they had on hand - they said several cases - I could have all I needed - $3.48/lb... OUCH!!
I grabbed a 56lb case, trimmed them up, seasoned with doctored montreal and tossed them over a hot lump fire...
Used the traeger as a holding area
I cooked them all to about 120* and moved them to hotel pans to take to the party - that gave them enough of a rest to come up to about 130* (sorry, no sliced pics, was too busy!)
I was blown away - I served 50lbs of med rare beef to a couple hundred people and only about 4-5 asked if I had anything that was more well-done!! Amazing! :clap2:
Out of 24 tri-tips I ended up with only 3 left over!!!
That day was both the biggest disaster and biggest save of my life... hope that NEVER happens again!
Lesson learned - I will ALWAYS be checking pkgs for tenderizer in the future!!
