Introducing the "Grilling and Smoking" Community

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So I did a thing today... I was getting ready to write my post this morning about a cook I did on my Weber Kettle this past weekend and I realized there isn't really a great place to share this kind of stuff. Sure, the @foodiesbeehive community has a subsection for BBQ, and back in the day @s3rg3 had a community called "Grillin and Chillin", but it looks like he left the chain back in early 2023.

So I decided to start my own community about all things grilling and smoking. I'm in a number of groups over on that Web 2.0 platform called Facebook and the number of people in those communities is pretty impressive. I'm talking up to 100x the total number of active users here on Hive. It's impressive and frustrating all at the same time!

If you have been following me for a while, you know that I love to grill. I live in Michigan where the winters can be a bit brutal at times, but that doesn't stop me from grilling year round. I've owned small grills, upright smokers, offset barrel smokers, gas grills, and my current cooker is a Weber kettle. The only thing I haven't cooked on is a pellet grill or a Big Green Egg style, but that doesn't mean those aren't allowed.

I hope this can be a place where people share their favorite cooks, recipes, methods or anything in between. I'm still working on the details as far as rules and things like that. There are a lot more options for communities these days than the last time I created one many years ago.

My hope is that this can grow into a great resource for many people.

If nothing else, the photos alone should be worth it!

I got home from running some errands on Saturday morning and @mrsbozz said to me, "you're having steak tonight for dinner".

Okay, twist my arm!

She had already gotten the steak and chicken out of the freezer so it could start to defrost, but we needed to get her chicken marinating since she doesn't eat beef. Lately I've been pounding down our chicken to tenderize it as woody chicken is becoming more common and it's not very fun when you bite into a piece.

She uses a simple marinade of soy sauce, oil, garlic, honey, and some spices. It's a really easy and flavorful marinade.

Then she asked what I wanted as a side for the meal along with the brussels sprouts she planned on cooking. My choices were mac and cheese or potatoes. Since I had already had home fries for breakfast and tater tots for lunch, I decided to go with mac and cheese.

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We've been doing mac and cheese in this small Lodge cast iron pan for several years no. It's so well seasoned that when you are finished you can basically just wipe it with a wet paper towel and it is totally clean for your next use.

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Her chicken cooked off fairly quickly since I had pounded it pretty thin. This was actually enough chicken for both her dinner and here on Wednesday she is still taking it for lunch at work.

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It doesn't really look like it, but I think my steak was a New York Strip that I got from Sam's Club on one of our recent visits. Either that or it was a ribeye I picked up at our local meat market a while ago. It actually looks more like a ribeye to me now that I take a closer look. It certainly had a decent amount of fat on it like a ribeye would have.

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Again, if you have been following me for a while, you know that I pretty much exclusively use charcoal when I am grilling. I can use gas (my Blackstone Griddle uses gas), and I have in the past, but I always prefer wood or charcoal to do the majority of my grilling on. Some might argue it takes too long, but with the right tools, it's usually not too bad.

Plus it just gets hot as hell as you can see from the photo above. I've yet to see a pellet grill that can sear off a steak like charcoal or infrared can.

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Plus, I just love rolling smoke! Well, this kind of smoke...

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If you are a Weber aficionado, you know that the built in thermometer is pretty much useless when it comes to your kettle. Most people either replace them or buy a stand alone thermometer to gauge the temperature inside the grill. While I have no doubt it was quite hot inside my kettle, I don't think it was really as close to 500 degrees as the photo shows.

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In the end, it was a delicious dinner and a very successful cook. Try not to laugh at me too hard for cutting up my steak ahead of time. I wanted to show how perfectly medium rare it was and I was also eating while sitting on the couch watching basketball, so I didn't want to try to use a steak knife with the plate sitting on my lap!

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I'm not expecting a couple hundred thousand users or anything, but I hope one day we can grow this community into something really great. Hive has a lot of potential and having these "groups" set up ahead of time could go a long way when the masses finally start adopting the platform.

I look forward to seeing your posts!

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Sports Talk Social - @bozz.sports

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All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or @mrsbozz unless otherwise sourced