John: 0:00

So today I want to talk about blackstone, because the blackstone griddle is something that a lot of people don't use all that much in the wintertime, but in the summertime they do, and sometimes they get rusted or dirty over the winter and they need to clean them. So we're going to go over that just a little bit in this podcast. I also want to talk about a brisket I cooked over the weekend. It turned out phenomenal, I mean absolutely fantastic. And then we're going to talk about them sliders that I did my last video and those were really good as well.

Intro / Outro: 0:39

Time to fire up that grill. From smoked pork to smash burgers, outdoor cooking just tastes better. This is the Okie Smokin' Podcast, and here's your host, John Barry.

John: 0:55

So yes, welcome in to the Okie Smokin' Podcast. So it's just going to be me today on this podcast. Dolores is out. She's not feeling well. Her voice is a little off, a little under the weather, got a little cold or something, so she didn't want to be on this episode and she is hopefully going to be back on the next one. So we wish her a speedy recovery. So you're just going to have to deal with me only on this particular episode. It's episode number 12. And it's quite amazing that we've made it all the way to episode 12 on this podcast. Very few podcasts make it this far. Go ahead, check it out. Look for Barbecue Podcast. You'll see most of them only have three or four episodes. We've got 12 and growing.

John: 1:44

So my name is John and if you do not know who I am, I run a YouTube channel. It's called Okie Smokin, o-k-i-e-s-m-o-k-i-n. You can check me out, and we just did a last video last Thursday and let's go ahead and jump into what that was. It was some meatball sliders and they actually turned out really, really good, and if you want to check that video out, just pull up my YouTube channel. But all I did was put some hamburger meat and some pork sausage and combined the two, it was more like 80% hamburger meat, 20% pork sausage. I used some just some SPG seasoning and some Boer's Night Out white lightning the seasoning they said it's a little spicy At times, you might get a kick to it Mixed all that together, we threw in a couple of eggs, turned them into some nice-sized meatballs, did not weigh them, did not measure them, and just basically placed them on a pan and added some marinara sauce. Those turned out. I'm just saying those were good. Those would be good if you were to make spaghetti or something and throw you a couple of those on the spaghetti as well. But what we did was just went ahead and put them in between two slider buns, threw a little Parmesan cheese on them and just ate them up. So that was an excellent, real quick video, so easy to make, something you can make in under an hour. More like 30 minutes, to be honest. No, I guess it has to cook a while. So probably about an hour for the total process, because I did put them in the smoker at 350 degrees after I had smoked them in a lower temperature of about 180, which I want to talk about that. So, coming up here in a bit.

John: 3:42

I was cooking a brisket, also over the weekend, and I set it to 180. It's the Pit Boss and I don't know if any of you have ever had this happen I'm sure you have but it was keeping the temperature closer to about 220, 230. I've noticed that lately my temperature has been a little hotter than what I wanted it to be, little hotter than what I wanted it to be. And I actually have a Weber Connect device, which I'll talk more in depth on on a later episode. Maybe we'll have an episode dedicated to that. But you can actually put a probe inside your grill and it will go ahead and tell you the temperature of the grill while you're cooking. Then you can put another probe inside your food and it was also registering much, much hotter.

John: 4:30

And when I cooked this brisket and when I cooked the sliders I noticed it as well. When I was just wanting to do 180, the temperature tends to read a little higher and I changed on mine. It has a P setting setting and I moved it from four to five and that allowed the temperature to actually stay closer, right around that 180 that I wanted for the initial cook of the sliders or of the brisket. I didn't do this with the sliders, but of the brisket I did over the weekend, which I'll talk a little bit more about in a bit, it kept it closer to that temperature that I actually wanted. So they say do not change that really. It's only supposed to be used, according to everything I've read, if the temperature is what Pit Boss calls extreme.

John: 5:19

I don't have a Traeger. I've never owned one. I don't have a treger. I've never owned one. I don't have any other model, so I don't know if any other models have this. And if you have a p setting on any other brand or a device, do you mess with it? You can email me, john, at oaky smokingcom, let me know. But I did not, uh, or I generally do not change it, but I changed it during this cook that I was doing over the weekend and it allowed that temperature to hold right at 180. I kept it at P-setting 5, and it was about 60 to 70 degrees outside most of the time. But for whatever reason it's running a little hot. So I'll keep an eye on that and keep you posted on how that goes.

John: 6:02

But back to the sliders. They did turn out fantastic. I mean it was. It was just uh, a really, really good. We put also a square. I got a block of mozzarella cheese from winco you can get this from your local grocery store and I put that inside the middle of it so it melted and a bunch of the cheese oozed out during the cooking process, but for the most part they came out great, have no complaint on it, and we really enjoyed those with that marinara sauce and on that bun.

John: 6:39

So that was, uh, our last video and one of the cooks we made over the weekend, dolores, made hers. That was keto friendly Because oh, I didn't mention I had onions as well to it and breadcrumbs. She did not have onions, she did not have breadcrumbs. She also didn't have the egg, which the egg is keto friendly, but she just decided to opt out of it instead of doing an egg for just her couple of individual ones, and so she opted out of egg. She opted out of egg and breadcrumbs and onions to make hers, so that hers was low carb. So now let's go to our next segment, which is going to be talking more about that juicy brisket.

John: 7:26

This, folks was phenomenal, and I was originally going to break out, and I'm getting to where I don't break it out as much as I'd like to, because I really do enjoy cooking with it. I was going to break out the Weber Smoky Mountain, put some charcoal in, I've got some hickory chunks and I've also got a lot of pecan wood that someone gave me and I got it kind of seasoning right now just sitting, and then I'm going to cut up some chunks out of it later after six months to a year. That's going to be great for that as well. But I've been doing so much pit boss stuff I just decided just to go ahead and try it in the pit boss and it did not disappoint. Let me just tell you how I did this, and I don't have a video on this, but I'll explain it. I did record myself doing it, not an actual video, so I think I might put it all together in one in the coming days at some point.

John: 8:22

This was a 12-pound brisket, just a packer brisket that you'd get at the store. I trimmed up some of the fat, not much because I don't want to take a bunch of the fat off. I actually think it makes it really good keeping most of it on there but I trimmed off some. That was a little excessive, a little over the edge or extremely thick to thin it up just a little bit. Little over the edge or extremely thick to thin it up just a little bit. And then I just took some mustard, which my buddy Hayden over at Hayden Grill and he he did one with just hot water and he put hot water all up on that brisket and used that as his binding agent, like boiling hot, and then use that to season it up. So you can do it a number of ways, but I've always used mustard. It's just what I've always used. So that's what I did. I have used olive oil, but mustard's my go-to one Then rub that all on it and just took my SPG seasoning, which is salt pepper, garlic I've got some paprika in there and some cumin, I think I got a little bit of onion powder, but for the most part it's salt pepper or salt pepper and garlic, and put that on it very liberally. I mean I put it all over that, did both sides, did the sides and everything so that it was covered. Then I tried this new seasoning. I've been trying Boar's Night Out White Lightning, which I've mentioned. I've been using it a lot and I sprinkled that all over it. It claims it has a little spicy to it and I think it might have a little kick, but I put that all over the brisket as well.

John: 10:13

This was, I want to say, about 6 o'clock in the evening. It was a Saturday night, so about 6 in the evening I'd done this. Then I went ahead and preheated the smoker, got it set to 180. Smoker got it set to 180 and that's when I started realizing I got the smoker, the pit boss, pellet grill, set to 180 degrees. However, it kept reading 220, 230. I says I don't want that.

John: 10:44

I went ahead and put the brisket on after I had it seasoned and was watching it. I used my Weber connect to check the temperature and it kept registering too hot. That's when I decided to go ahead and take the p, setting up one notch from four, which is the default and the most recommended, and I don't really recommend you change it too much because it can cause your fire to get too hot. It can cause the flame to go out if you don't do it correctly. But it worked great. It seemed to add more smoke and the temperature fell to 180, stayed between 175 and 190. And it was adding a lot of smoke 175 and 190. And it was adding a lot of smoke. So that's something to keep in mind and something I'm going to look at the next time. But I let that cook all night long.

John: 11:40

I woke up a couple of times during the night to make sure everything was okay and everything was. And then, around 7 am, 8 am this morning, I went ahead and wrapped it in foil. I triple wrapped it, actually in three layers, added some miller high life of all things on there, you can add beef broth, which is something a lot of people use, or apple juice. Well, I didn't have any of that. I always seem to have a beer in the fridge, though. Put a half a can of that in there, wrapped it up, triple wrapped it, threw it back on until it got to 204 degrees and wow, there's some in the fridge right now.

John: 12:30

And we had some slider buns left and I've been cutting it, throwing it in between the slider bun and I've been using some honey barbecue sauce. Let me see which this is, because this is really good, let me go get that. I ran in there real quick to see what it was. It's Kinder's Barbecue Sauce, honey, hot, and that might be what was adding the kick to it. But this is really fantastic. I got it at Academy and I think it was about $3.99 a bottle.

John: 13:02

I got it in some mild barbecue as well. It comes in a 15.5-ounce bottle. It comes with a little top on it, like you squirt it like a ketchup bottle or like a bar, you know, like a barbecue bottle. It's just squirts right out. And it was great to make sliders. Put your brisket on there and put some of that on there and put it between a bun or just dip your brisket in it and brian.

John: 13:30

My son said this is um. As I told him this is one of the best briskets I've ever made and he said it may be the best. Uh, so it. I mean, when we cut into it, it it just falls apart. It's got the tenderness, it's got the flavor. You can pull it apart, it's not tough.

John: 13:54

And there's one other thing I did at the end of this is and I have a problem with this part of the process because I'm always hungry when I get done and I get anxious and I don't have a whole lot of patience we put it in a cooler for over two hours and I think that really helped. And then when I took it out of the cooler it was still steaming hot and I said the next time I'm going to leave it in there three, maybe four hours, because I've heard the longer you leave it in there, that, I believe, is one of the secrets to cooking brisket and a lot of meats is letting it rest, letting it set. And that's what I did with this one is I let it rest, letting it set and that's what I did with this one is I let it rest. Usually we let it rest a half hour or something and we start cutting into it, but we let this one do a lengthy rest and I think that had a big, big improvement on how my brisket was first of all, but we cooked it. I'd say that was about a 15-hour cook and I'll try to put together. I basically recorded what I was doing. I didn't do like a video, but I can put it together with the voiceover so it'll make a nice video and talk about it so you can see that brisket, because I was very proud of that brisket right there.

John: 15:14

Now it's time we're going to go ahead and talk about the Blackstone, and it is summer, or not really it's spring, but it's approaching summer. We're no longer officially in winter. The weather is warming up or will be warming up, probably, no matter where you are, at least in the U? S. I know, and I do got to get a shout out to all these people. I do know I have people all across the country. I was looking at this. We got someone from the Russian Federation, the UK, india, all listening to us, germany. So thank you so much wherever you are, but here in the United States, where I am, it is approaching summer and spring, so the temperature is warming up and a lot of people do not actually use their blackstone during the off season and whenever they pull it out, maybe it's got rust, maybe it's not 100% clean. They want to kind of prep it up.

John: 16:09

And here are a few things you should do whenever you clean your griddle. Number one you want to scrape any large pieces of food off of it. I recommend you do that first and do that while it's hot. Use a scraper that you have that has a handle, where you're not going to burn yourself, you're not going to touch the griddle. Scrape all of that off. Pour some water on the grill. That will help loosen it up while the griddle's hot. It'll bring out that food and then you can go ahead and continue to scrape it.

John: 16:42

From this point it's time, once you've done that, just to let the griddle cool down completely. That way you don't burn yourself. So use your scraper, spray some water with a water bottle, let Let it cool down and then you can go ahead and continue the cleaning process. And it's also time to probably eat. Then you can go ahead and enjoy your meal. Let it cool down. Come on out a little bit later, after it's completely cooled down. At this point you can use a rag, a scouring pad or something if you need to scrape anything off. But for the most part, if it has most of the food off from the scraping of the scraper, the water and everything else, you probably could just wipe it down with a paper towel. But if you do need to, you can scrub off any of the food. That'll be fine. But if you do need to, you can scrub off any of the food. That'll be fine. And if you have any stubborn grime on there, you can add a little baking soda mix with some water and put that on there and just kind of scrub it down with a scouring pad or a grill stone and then just kind of use some clean water and rinse it off.

John: 17:50

What I don't want to do is use soap. I really don't want to use soap. I want to avoid soap at all costs. Use soap. I really don't want to use soap. I want to avoid soap at all costs. I just don't like to use soap. Now, when I completely redo one, I will, when I'm doing a major overhaul of the blackstone griddle, but soap is all out. I do not use soap when it comes to cleaning my blackstone.

John: 18:13

Then once you go ahead and do that, once the griddle is clean, it should be pretty smooth. You should be able to rub your hands across of it and it just kind of be like a smooth, like a bowling alley or something you know. And if it's not 100%, that's fine too. You may have a little rough spot in there or something. That's fine, you're good. But if you want to get it off, you can work on that spot a little more with a little water, a little baking soda and get it off. But once you're done, just go ahead and take a towel and dry it off. You want to kind of get that whole thing completely dry at this point, because that's the key to preventing rust.

John: 18:53

A wet griddle can become a rusty griddle, and you do not want rust whenever you have your griddle sitting in between cooks, and it don't take long to create rust if there's moisture present for it to do so. Another thing I do here is I like to go ahead and add some oil after it's dry, and I'll just add some olive oil or canola oil and rub it all over it after it's cooled down, and that will stay on there until I begin the next cook. That oil is going to also help protect it with rust or protect it from rust, and you're going to be ready to cook the next time you decide to use it. Now that brings me to the next criteria.

John: 19:46

If you do have rust, then you need to really clean it a little deeper than if you don't have rust, and sometimes the oil will appear to look like you have rust when you do not the oil. If you have extra oil or too much oil on it and you're just cooking, then you scrape it. You see that what looks like rust it? It probably is not, and you scrape it across and then you get that rust like look along the whole area that it's scraped, that's probably just oil. But if you know and are confirmed you have rust, you want to use a wire brush, you want to use something that will break that rust off and you want to go ahead and really get it gone.

John: 20:36

And once you get the rust gone, then you want to go ahead and really get it gone. And once you get the rust gone, then you want to re-season it. If you have an extremely amount of rust at this point, you may need to use a little soap, you may need to use a bit of water and get all that rust completely off of it. And once you've done that, then you're going to want to re-season it. You'll dry it down. Once you have all that removed, then go ahead and add the oil over it.

John: 21:02

Turn your griddle on high, add oil, get it completely on it I usually use a spatula or a scraper with a towel and rub all on it so you don't burn yourself Put you some oil on there, cover that whole griddle up and then let it burn till it quits smoking, let it re-season itself and once you're finally done, you cool it down, add a little more oil for storage. So, but the number one key to preventing rust is clean it after every use, add a layer of rust, don't leave any food particles on it, and you should be good. That's the keys I use and I keep my blackstone griddle clean and ready to use pretty much whenever we need to use it. We cook some sausage on it today, just some. I did that slider video I was talking about earlier and we had some sausage and I went ahead and used that up because we needed to get rid of that. Just had some of that today. So that's how we do the black stone.

John: 22:05

That's pretty simple. It's not too difficult. Some people think they're complicated. They're only complicated if you don't clean them and you let them get way out of hand. Then you got to do a major overhaul because you do get rust or something like that on it. But once again, I thank everybody for tuning in and listening. If you would like to uh, leave a comment, just go ahead and do so. You can john@okiesmokin. com that at . You can also visit my fan page at okiesmokin. com/fan page. You can there have a voice message that'll be played on a later episode and we'll see you next week on episode 13.

Intro / Outro: 22:44

Thank you for listening to the Okie Smoking Podcast. Episodes drop every Monday. Don't forget to follow this podcast or you might miss out on some delicious creations. You can also find us on our website, okiesmokincom, and on YouTube and other social media platforms. Until next time, keep firing up that grill.