Recipe: Quick Pork Tacos

Here's a quick recipe I did this past Saturday using Meyer's Eligin 3 Mistake Chili Seasoning and Tabeñaro Hot Sauce. I needed something quick for lunch that was easy and filling. So I made this taco with salsa and pork.

Ingredients
For the taco

• 4 thin cut pork chops
• Half an onion
• Pork fat (or some other oil for sauteing)
• 2 tbls 3 Mistake Chili seasoning
• 1/4 NC BBQ sauce (vinegar base)
• Tortillas

For the salsa (This is what we had from our garden so it's what I used.)

• Cucumber
• Garlic
• Tomato
• Cilantro
• Tabeñaro Hot Sauce

Directions
Slice up the onion. Cut the pork chops into strips. Heat up a pan with the pork fat in it. Add the onions, the pork and the Chili Seasoning. Let it cook until the meat is browned and cooked all the way through. Add the BBQ sauce and let it all cook together.

Dice the cucumber, tomato, cilantro and garlic. Mix them all together in a bowl. You can add the Tabeñaro sauce to this to the heat you like or after you make the taco add it to the taco.

Put some of the meat mixture on to the tortilla, add the salsa on top and some Tabeñaro sauce and enjoy.

Review: Meyer's Spicy BarBecue Sauce = Spicy, Sweet Love

Creator: Meyers’ Elgin Sausage
Location: Cuetopia, TX - Home of the Fighting Sausage Heads 
Cost: $4.95 + shipping and handling
Link:  Spicy BarBecue Sauce

Meyer's Elgin Smokehouse makes a variety of rubs, sauces and other delectible delights that I have had the privalige of reviewing. I've had the Spicy BarBecue Sauce sitting on my shelf for awhile trying to find just the right thing to try it on.

Truth be told, I'm not a fan of sauces. BBQ meat must stand on its own and the sauce only enhances and brings out the flavor. In my book, if you need sauce the meat isn't seasoned right. Well, I did find something to use the spicy sauce on. In fact two something's; smoked wings and Pigs on the Wing.

Drunken Chicken with a Twist

I've been thinking about trying to make a drunken spatchcock chicken for a long time. I finally tried it this weekend and videoed it. Normally with a drunken chicken you take a half can of beer and stick the chicken on it and set it on the cooker until it's done. Spatchcocking basically means you butterfly it. Therefor it can't fit it on a can of beer any more. I laid mine on a rack in a pan and put some wine in the pan to cook it. It was a first for me to try it this way and also video it. 

Happy Holidays!

Ok, so I'm a bit late. We're into the new year all ready and lots is going on. I have a few reviews coming this month for my friends at Meyers Elgin Sausage, a review of the super fast Thremapen and another of ThermoWorks fabulous thermometers (TW8060) and my new cooker. 

It was a good Christmas. I got a Louisiana Grill pellet cooker for Christmas from my very good friends and a ThermoWorks thermometer. I also did three cooks between Christmas and New Years to really break the new cooker in. 

Louisiana Grill Pellet Cooker. 

Review: Sweet & Hot and beefy goodness

Creator: Meyers’ Elgin Sausage

Location: Cuetopia, TX - Home of the Fighting Sausage Heads

Cost: @$14.95 +shipping

Link: Beef Jerky

I got more beef jerky from Cuetopia, this time it was their Sweet & Hot. This jerky is better then the plain beef jerky. The spices they use on it give it a nice sweet flavor and a great hit of heat. It is not too hot so your mouth is on fire but just a nice pleasant heat. This jerky is also moist compared to Meyer's beef jerky.  It's not greasy just moister. 

The family all got in on this bag of jerky and we all decided this was the better of Cuetopia's jerky. Its not to hot and just the right amount of sweetness to make it oh, so good. You get a hint of the hickory smoke they used to smoke the jerky in also making for a very pleasant eating experience. 

This jerky is a definite must taste and would make a great stocking stuffer or two. On the Gibbs Ribs scale* I gladly give this jerky a full rack. As the folks at Cuetopia say “We make our jerky for us to eat; we just sell what’s left over.”

*When I do reviews, books or otherwise, I rate the items with ribs (they are my favorite BBQ dish). A full rack is great and a single rib is poor. I will tend to stick to a full rack, half rack or one rib.

Meyer's Elgin Sausage - Part III (Smoked, Spicy and Oh, So Yummy)

Creator:Meyers’ Elgin Sausage
Location: Cuetopia, TX - Home of the Fighting Sausage Heads
Cost: @$21.50 +shipping
Link: Sausage

All good things must come to an end. Last weekend my supply of Meyer's sausage did. It was a happy but sad day. Happy because I got to savor the wonderful flavors of their Hot Smoked Sausage and Smoked Mexacan-Style Sausage with Jalapeños (Tejano). Sad because I now have no more Meyer's sausage and I'm not sure I will like what we get here. Ok, that last bit is crazy talk because we love sausage, but it defiantly won't be the same.

Last weekend we had some friends over and I smoked some meat including the sausage. Meyer's sausage smokes nicely. It plumps up and the juices are released in the casing making for a nice juicy sausage that is full of flavor. As I said in my first review of Meyer's sausage the casings are firm but not tough, this makes for a nice eating experience. You don't feel like a dog trying to tear through a piece of leather.


Hot Smoked Sausage
This sausage is great. The flavor is like the smoked sausage but they add a bit more red pepper to give it a nice kick. Some "hot" sausages are so spicy you don't taste the meat because your mouth is on fire. Not with this sausage. It gives a nice burn but you still can taste it. It just enhances the flavor and eating experience. For some this sausage would be too spicy but I think it has just the right amount of heat.

Tejano
I really liked the flavor of this sausage. This was also my wife's favorite along with the Smoked Jalapeño sausage I reviewed in Part I. It has a great chorizo flavor and the jalapeño brings the sweet pepper flavor to it. It is no surprise why this sausage won a second place people's choice award.

The hot sausage would great in scallop potatoes, chowder or any number of dishes. The Tejano sausage would be great in enchiladas, Mexican stews or other dishes with a south-of-the-border twist. I had left overs of both so I chopped them up and made a gumbo with some pulled pork I had. The sausage brought the right amount of extra spice to the party and made my families mouths happy.


Both of these sausages receive a full rack of ribs with a side of sauce on the Gibbs' Ribs* scale. I definitely recommend ordering some from Meyer's Elgin Sausage and try some of their other goodies.

*When I do reviews, books or otherwise, I rate the items with ribs (they are my favorite BBQ dish). A full rack is great and a single rib is poor. I will tend to stick to a full rack, half rack or one rib.

Review: Meyers Elgin Sausage Sausage - Part II (Beef and Potatoes)

Creator: Meyers’ Elgin Sausage
Location: Cuetopia, TX - Home of the Fighting Sausage Heads
Cost: @$21.50 +shipping
Link: Sausage

After the first set of sausages we had from Meyer's my wife kept asking when we would be eating the others. I decided Sunday night would be a good night for a pack. I was home and the ladies were out shopping so I decided to make supper for us.

In the variety of sausage I got from Meyer's Elgin Sausage was a pack of beef sausage. I really enjoyed the other sausages they made and thought they would work well with scallop potatoes. So, I decided to make scallop potatoes and sausage. Normally I cook the sausage with the scallop potatoes but since I knew the ladies wouldn't be home soon, and the potatoes would take an hour, I decided to smoke the sausage.

I put the charcoal in the chimney starter and lit it so the charcoal would be ready when I put the potatoes in the oven. I thought about smoking the potatoes too but didn't have a disposable pan. I got the potatoes in the oven and got the cooker fired up with the ready-to-go coals.


The cooker was at 250° so I put the sausages on and let them cook. I checked them once after about 30 minutes and turned them over. About 10 minutes after my wife and girls arrived home supper was ready.


The beef sausage is really good. The spices in it bring out the beefy flavor of the meat and they have a little bit of heat, like good sausage does. They seemed to be a bit juicier then the previous sausages and the casings a little tougher. I think I could have cooked them a little longer as they didn't quite split. My wife said these were her favorites along with the jalapeño and cheese ones. After making sausage for so many years Meyer's really knows what they're doing.


These sausages go great with scallop potatoes and would go great with sautéed peppers and onions or just by themselves so you can enjoy the full flavor of them.

On the Gibbs Ribs* scale these also get a full rack. I'm looking forward to trying the next two packs I have.

*When I do reviews, books or otherwise, I rate the items with ribs (they are my favorite BBQ dish). A full rack is great and a single rib is poor. I will tend to stick to a full rack, half rack or one rib.

Review: Meyers Elgin Sausage Sausage - Part I

Creator: Meyers’ Elgin Sausage
Location: Cuetopia, TX - Home of the Fighting Sausage Heads
Cost: @$21.50 +shipping
Link: Sausage

One of the BBQ people I follow on Twitter is @cuetopia. He is the official Twitter spokesperson of Meyers Elgin Sausage and the Fighting Sausage Heads. Since I have been following him he has tantalized and taunted me with pictures of their smokehouse making sausage. I finally procured some to test and do a review on.

Some friends invited us over to watch a football game, eat chili and socialize. I figured this would be a great time to cook up three packs of the sausage and get some other opinions about them.

I looked at what we had and decided two "regular" and a spicy one would be good to try. I pulled out the Smoked Sausage, Smoked Sausage with Garlic and the Jalapeño & Cheese.


I didn't want to do a long smoke, so I decided to grill the sausage. I used some Kingsford Hickory charcoal. Once the fire was going I put the sausages on.


About every ten minutes I rotated them so they could cook evenly and move them around so no sausage was on a hot spot too long. The temp on the grill was low so it took about 30 minutes to cook them. The sausages cooked up nicely. Swelling up, splitting and releasing their juiciness into the coals making for a mouthwatering aroma.


Once they were cooked I put them in a dish with cheap labels and tinfoil separators. After all we didn't want them to get mixed up.


All three of them were juicy, not greasy like some sausages. Their casings gave a nice crisp snap when I bit into them or cut them. They weren't tough like some, where the whole casing tears off as you try to gnaw through the outer casing to get to the tender meat on the inside. Just the right toughness to hold it all together to grill or smoke.

Smoked Sausage
The Smoked Sausage is great. I took a bite and thought, "WOW! That's good sausage." It has just the right amount of smokiness so you can tell that it has been smoked over hickory wood but not too much where it's overpowering.

These sausages are great by themselves but would make a dish of scallop potatoes really good. My wife makes a great corn chowder and these would make it even better (that is hard to do as it is very good.)

Smoked Sausage with Garlic
I love garlic. Most dishes I cook have garlic in them, even my BBQ pork. I was looking forward to these sausages and was not disappointed. These sausages are just like the Smoked Sausages but with garlic. It is not overpowering, in your face, breath-of-death giving garlic. It is a subtle garlic flavor that enhances the overall taste sensation of the sausage and bumps it up a notch.

These sausages stand well on their own but would be good in an Italian sandwich with onions and peppers.

Jalapeño & Cheese
I like spicy. Every time I eat jalapeños or jalapeño flavored anything I feel ill. These sausages scared me. I thought, "Great, I'll eat these and my stomach will feel like it's turning inside out and my mouth will be on fire." Boy was I surprised!

These are my favorite sausages I have tried so far. The spice is there but not the, "grab-a-gallon-of-milk-my-mouth-is-on-fire" type. It is a nice slow burn. You really don't notice the heat at first but after a couple of seconds your mouth is pleasantly warm. My wife, who is not a fan of spicy, really liked them too. The smokey flavor and the heat make for a happy mouth and I had no ill side effects from the jalapeños.

These sausages would make great enchiladas or other Mexican style dishes.

All three of these sausages are great. I wish there were a local store I could by them at. If I had a BBQ restaurant I would serve these. To quote one of my friends when I asked him what he thought of the sausages, "Mmmm...mmm...mmmm...good. On the Gibbs Ribs* scale these easily get a full rack of ribs with extra sauce on the side.


*When I do reviews, books or otherwise, I rate the items with ribs (they are my favorite BBQ dish). A full rack is great and a single rib is poor. I will tend to stick to a full rack, half rack or one rib.

Review: Mmm... Beefy

Creator: Meyers’ Elgin Sausage
Location: Cuetopia, TX - Home of the Fighting Sausage Heads
Cost: @$14.95 +shipping
Link: Beef Jerky

The folks at Cuetopia were kind enough to send me some of their product to sample. I am glad they did. I received a box of some of their sausage, beef jerky and a rub. Over the next few weeks I will be posting reviews of the products.

I like beef jerky. My girls like beef jerky. When we go on trips we buy beef jerky at gas stations we stop at. If it is a local brand of jerky, we will try it. Otherwise it is one of the big name brands.

Myers’ jerky is great. It is beefy with the right amount of salt to bring out the flavor. It is not greasy or oily like some of the major jerky brands. It is not soft, which I like. They smoke it and dry it out so you have to suck on it and chew it for a while making it last longer, causing you to savor the flavor more.

I let my family try some and they all said the same thing, “Mmm… beefy,” and promptly asked for more.

If this jerky was in a store next to the other brands I would pay the extra for it. It is that good. On the Gibbs Ribs scale* I gladly give this jerky a full rack. As the folks at Cuetopia say “We make our jerky for us to eat; we just sell what’s left over.”

*When I do reviews, books or otherwise, I rate the items with ribs (they are my favorite BBQ dish). A full rack is great and a single rib is poor. I will tend to stick to a full rack, half rack or one rib.