Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em

I’m in love.  His name is Bradley and he smokes – a lot -  but that’s why I love him.  Meet Bradley:

Bradley is the one in the middle.  The smoker.  Not the cat.  Not the grill.  Sure, he may seem small compared to the grill but he packs a flavor wallop!  We brought him home a little over a week ago and after a good seasoning dry run, I made a batch of ribs as our first test.  Obviously I liked them:

Though I found them less tender than the ones I had been doing in the oven – practice makes perfect, however, so practice is what I have been doing.  Saturday I smoked some wings with a honey-mustard-garlic sauce and some apple wood smoke – delicious – so much so that there was no time for pics before they were devoured.

My first public test of sorts was for Easter Sunday.  I went on down to Butcher Boy meats in search of a fresh ham, which they didn’t really want to sell me.  “you know this won’t taste like the ham you’re used to, right?” was pretty much the response I got – Yeah, yeah, I know what it will taste like!  I tastes like real meat not a salt lick!  After talking the butcher into parting with an 8 pound fresh ham, I brined it for a few days in a brine with maple syrup, salt, cinnamon, cardamom and cloves.  Next time I will brine for about a week but I had been busy so some brine is better than none.

Next I smoked that bad boy at about 200 using apple wood for about 8 hours.  Unfortunately I had to do this the night before, since we would be out most of the day on Sunday and we are not yet comfortable with leaving a smoking device unattended on the back deck.  When we returned home I had about 3 hours before dinner so I glazed the ham with a maple-mustard glaze and popped it into the oven at 200 degrees until it reached 150 on the meat thermometer.  I let it rest about 30 minutes before slicing and thanks to a few smart twitter pals, served it with a Spanish Rioja, which was an absolutely perfect complement.

The moral of the story is – smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.  You won’t regret a moment and neither will your guests!