Chef Dan Smokes- with a CaveTools Smoker Box!

Chef Dan does a lot of smoked meats at the Elkhorn Inn, both for us and our guests, and his smoked lamb chops, ribs, duck, pork loin, and salmon are pretty amazing, if I say so myself! He even does a smoked Cajun Beer Can Chicken! Although we do have two gas grills, he usually winds up using our trusty old charcoal grill as a smoker- even in the freezing cold of a West Virginia mountain winter!  (Yes, he is smokin' in the snow in that photo!) So we were Very pleased to be able to test the Smoker Box from CaveTools.com, and found it truly to be of great value!

The Cave Tools Smoker Box is simple enough to use: it’s a well-made, sturdy, stainless steel box (3” wide, 9” long, and 1 ½” deep) with a hinged lid that has holes for the smoke to escape, and it holds two cups of the wood chips that will turn your gas or charcoal grill into a real, live smoker! It holds plenty of chips, but its relatively small size means that it will fit perfectly between “flavorizer bars” and the grill grate, or directly on top of the charcoal, depending on what kind of a grill you have, and it’s sturdy enough that it won’t warp from the heat. You can easily lift the lid to add more wood chips, too. One of the best things about the Smoker Box is that it has no holes on the bottom, so the wood chips won’t catch fire- they’ll continue to smolder instead of burning, like good little wood chips should! No “instructions” come with it, but that’s not so terrible: you simply put the soaked wood chips in the box, and put it on the grill!

One of the coolest things about the CaveTools Smoker Box is that it comes with a special website link that has a 30-page Barbecue Recipe Book, as well as a Meat Smoking Guide, that lists the times and temperatures for different meats, as well as the flavor profiles for different kinds of wood chips, so you can decide what you want to use, depending on what meat or fowl or fish you are preparing. We’ve collected a lot of recipe info over the years that Dan has been a chef, but this Guide was new to us and of Great value!  The list of wood chips alone made us long to try ones we haven’t yet used!

Cave Tools also has a GREAT YouTube page, with 100s of excellent BBQ video tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/user/GrillBrush  I spent Hours pouring over their videos, which cover basically everything you’ve Ever wanted to know about grilling, smoking and BBQing!

Chef Dan likes to use Hickory (“Sweet to Strong with Heavy Bacon Flavor”) and Mesquite (“Earthy Smoke Flavor”) wood chips, as well as Jack Daniel's Whiskey Barrel Oak chips and for smoking chicken breasts and riblets, he used the Jack Daniels chips. He first soaked the chips in water for ½ hour, and then placed them in the Smoker Box, and put the smoker box on the grill- he used our Weber Gas Grill.

Chef Dan also likes to use a variety of Rubs and Mops, which he makes up himself, depending on what he’s smoking. For his smoked lamb chop racks, for example, he’ll coat them with olive oil and a mixture of Italian herbs, wrap them in Saran Wrap, and let them marinate in the fridge overnight. He’ll then “mop” them periodically, as they smoke, with a mix of coffee and wine and spices. Rubs and mops are where you can really get creative!

For the smoked chicken breasts he mopped them with Korean BBQ Sauce, and the riblets he coated with olive oil and mixed Italian herbs before placing them on the grill. Then he tucked the Smoker Box under the grill rack, shut the grill and let 'em smoke! Easy-Peasy!

Chef Dan, smokin' in the snow- at night, no less!

Our Weber Grill, with the Smoker Box on the left, under the grill rack

 The Smoker Box is quite inexpensive, and with all the cool stuff you get to go along with it, it’s quite the bargain! AND, for my loyal readers, I have a special coupon that will get you an ADDITIONAL 15% off when you purchase it on Amazon! 15% Off Amazon.com Coupon Code: TJ4VTYCS

It also comes with a LIFETIME SATISFACTION GUARANTEE, so if, at any point, you are unhappy with your Smoker Box, you can return it for a full money back refund! They REALLY take Customer Service seriously- which we love!

Smoking, BTW, is for WAY more than ribs and burgers! There are tons of really delicious "foodie" things you can do with a Smoking Box:  

Herb-Rubbed Smoked Ribs

Smoked "Lacquered" Duck

Smoked Pork Tenderloin with a Chilean Quince-Merken Glaze

Herb-Rubbed Smoked Cornish Game Hens

Chef Dan with his Smoked "Cajun Beer Can Chicken"

Herb-Rubbed Smoked Lamb Chops

Salmon, smoked on a wood plank, and Smoked Corn on the Cob

For more information on the Smoker Box, you can see it on Amazon.com here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B011VJ51J8/ref=sr_1_23?ie=UTF8&sr=8-32&me=A3IEEDMWTA8OSP&keywords=smoker+box&linkCode=as2&tag=hyacinth18-20  

and on the CaveTools.com website here: http://cavetools.com/products/smoker-box-wood-chips/?utm_source=Blogger&utm_medium=Review&utm_campaign=SmokerBox   

They have a lot of other cool BBQ tools, too, so this really Is the place you want to go for your BBQ needs- and for great gifts for the Grill Master in your life!  

Let me know in the comments what YOU like to smoke- and how you do it!

Foie Gras & Truffle Cheese!

I have just been on the receiving end of Truly Great Customer Service- from www.igourmet.com from whence Dan's Hanukkah present came. (You must remember Hanukkah- it was a couple of months ago...) Back in Nov., with H looming over the horizon, I decided that Chef Dan, a.k.a. "Smokin' Dan", Landgraff's undisputed Master of Smoked Meat & Other Gourmet Things, was a husband Truly Worthy of a gourmet holiday present. This, after all, is the man that one guest said could "kick Bobby Flay's butt" in a Food Network "Throwdown"; the man whose recipes are in the The Great Country Inns of America Cookbook; the man who literally put Landgraff, WV on the map for Fine Dining, the man who cooked Thai Pumpkin-Mango Soup & Herb-Stuffed Cornish Game Hens on "Good Morning West Virginia" television in his Chef's Whites at at 6.a.m. after a 5 hour drive thru an ice storm. This is the man who processed 8 quarts of pesto from a 5-gallon drum of basil leaves, and who can spend 5 hours happily tending his smoker, creating ribs and chops that are almost orgasmic in their delectability.
This is also the man who saved us from a life of me crafting our dinners from tins of soup & bags of pasta. (Note: I believe that everyone has at least One Good Recipe. I have two. I can make a truly excellent 4-Cheese Eggplant Parmigiana that takes me all day to create, & I know how to do Serious Pesto. Yes, I can do a wonderful Chicken Soup with Matza Balls ("floaters", like my Grandma made), Pumpkin Strudel & Flan, and a lot of Sephardic & Mizrahi dishes, but I basically cook from Recipes. This is totally different than what a chef does. Having watched how Dan operates in the kitchen, which is on Another Level entirely (No Recipe Required!), I have learned my limitations, and gladly ceded the chef's toque to him. I have, indeed, been blessed).
This, in short, is a man Truly worthy of an $18 wedge of cheese.
And so I concocted "8 gourmet days" for Hanukkah 2007, including an Ebay garlic roaster, & a gift box from www.igourmet.com full of all sorts of things he'd enjoy cooking with (and testing out on lucky "foodie" me): truffle salt & butters, Italian & Irish cheeses, Spanish Hams, Andouille Sausage, & French pates. All things you can't get at the Princeton Big Lots (where, by the by, we Do get a lot of great gourmet things, such as imported oils, tapenades, condiments, & fancy European cookies...)
Well, igourmet ran out of some of the things I'd ordered by the time they went to ship my gift, so Dan's present wound up lacking several items, & we were both severely bummed. But BOY, have they made it right! I just got an email that the missing white truffle paste is about to arrive - along w/a gift tin of French foie gras! Everything we got from them was truly excellent, from the Italian truffle cheese (grated & melted over gnocchi, w/sauteed mushrooms!), to the Buffalo Mozzarella (w/sliced, fresh tomatoes, pesto, & capers, drizzled w/Big Lots Best Modena Balsamic Vinegar and the Sicilian Olive Oil I brought back from a TJ Max in Kansas I found during a FEMA deployment), to the Serrano ham & smoked pork loin (toasted sandwiches what-to-die-for!). I know this sounds like a paid ad for igourmet at this point, but when you actually find a company that bends over backwards to Do The Right Thing, you want to leap into the air for joy. These folks actually deserve "viral marketing", so here it is. They ain't cheap (but I always shop thru www.mypoints.com so at least I get "points" that we use for Wally World gift certificates & Omaha steaks...), but www.igourmet.com has won our business. When we do have the money for a luscious treat, that's where I'll go to find it. And I gotta tell you: that truffle cheese was Fine...
Back to the kitchen to see what Chef Dan is up to tonight...