The Steaks are in - Kansas City Steak Company

The Steaks are in - Kansas City Steak Company

Kansas City Steak Company

The Order Process

Kansas Steak Company made the order process real easy.  There web site is very easy to navigate and also informative.  They do have a 12.95 flat rate shipping.  If you place and autoship they will waive the shipping charges.  I placed my autoship for 6 month down the line but you can easily go on there web site and reschedule it for sooner or later or even pause the autoship.  You can also select the date you want your order to arrive.

They frequently have deals and specials so click the sale link and see what you can find. Also be sure and pay attention to the banner at the top of the page.  The day I ordered they had 2 free 14 oz bone in filets with any order over $100.  They also have great prices on Add on Items.

Note there are at least 2 other ways to get free shipping.

1 - If you order prime beef you get free shipping

2 - If you have a promo code you get free shipping.

First Impressions

They came well packaged in a heavy duty Styrofoam cooler with dry ice.  I ordereed 6 steaks 2 Filets and 4 T-Bones.  Each selection came inside a cardboard box and shrink wrapped.  They arrived frozen in excellent condition. Each box contained a seasoning packet.  It also came with a cooking suggestions book and $25 off your next order of $75 with free shipping.   

The Cook

They recommend leaving in the vacum seal  packaging.  The directions say thaw in refrigerator for 24 hors prior to cooking.  I seasoned with my normal dry rub so I could see how the taste measured up to my local butchers T-Bone.  I cooked them about 5 or 6 minutes per side until an Internal temperature of 140 at 350. I did use Grill Grates and was able to obtain nice sear marks,

The Taste

The steak did taste good,  It was a little grizzles in parts.  The steaks at my local butcher tastes much better and for a significantly lower cost.  I do have 5 more T-Bones Left and plam on cooking them a little differently next time.  I will use the porterhouse recipe on traeger web site which includes smoking for 30 to 45 minutes and then doing a reverse sear.  

Customer Service

They do seem to have really great customer service.  When I cancelled my auto ship they asked me why and i stated I could get a better quality and better tasting steak from my local butcher for less so they sent me 2 more T-Bones.  I sure do hope they taste better.  I will update as soon as I do the cook.

Grilled Iowa Chops and Baked Potatoes

Grilled Iowa Chops and Baked Potatoes

Grilled Iowa Chops and Baked Potatoes

The notorious “Iowa Chop” is the seriously thick* and succulent pork chop, cut from the lower back of the hog, just behind the rib. Recently dubbed the “Porterhouse Chop”, they have a characteristic T-bone shape, with a substantial amount of loin meat on one side of the bone and a portion of tenderloin on the other side.  The thickness (1.25-1.5 inches) of this chop led it to be coined “The Iowa Chop”, in the 1980’s by the Iowa Pork Producers Association. The Iowa Chop is still in high demand and is used widely still today throughout the Midwest and beyond. The above defination of an Iowa Chop taken from the Web Site http://foodandswine.com/

Iowa Chops are one of my favorite things to grill on the Traeger.  They always come at tender and Juicy.  It really is the most perfect meat.  I often grill them with sweet potatoes and pineapple, but for this cook I changed it up a little and cooked baked Potatoes with them.  I did have pineapple left over from yesterday Ham Steak and Pineapple cook.  I didn't brine or marinate this time.  I used Trader Joe's Coffee and Garlic rub.  You can use your favorite rub or just salt and pepper.

Ingredients:

6 Iowa Pork Chops about 1 inch Thick and 1 LB each (T-Bones)

Your favorite Dry rub for Pork

4 Large Baked Potatoes 

Preperation

Wash Baked Potatoes

Cut in 1/2

Wrap in foil

I used a smal half to clean and season grill

Rub Pork chops with your favorite rub.

I used Trader Joes Garlic and coffee rub

Grill Setup

Start Traeger on smoke for 10 minutes with lid open'

Preheat lid closed to temperature 375

The Cook

I placed the Potatoes on the grill for about 50 Minutes 

After 50 Minutes I placed Pork Chops on grill

After about 7 minutes I flipped the Pork Chops

I Continue to cook the Pork chops  till an Internal Temperature of 140 degrees

The Wrap and Rest

Once desired temperature reached remove from grill tent with foil and allow to rest for 15 to 30 minutes

Name Brand Pellets Bargin Prices Mail order

Name Brand Pellets Bargin Prices Mail order

Bargin BBQ Pellets

I love  the convenience of shopping from home.  I dont enjoy getting in the car driving to the store and fighting thru the crowds.  Don't get me started on those parking lot's.  When It comes to BBQ Pellets I have found some of my best Prices Mail order. I recently posted about Sportsmans WareHouse having various brand pellets at 50 to 60 cents a pound mail order.

Lately I have noticed you can get great prices on Pellets at Walmart  Just Click this link and look down the left side of the page for anything that says shipping pass. It has been my experience that anything that says shipping pass will offer free shipping on orders of $50 or more about 80 to 100 pounds of pellets.  You would also have the option of free store pickup if you prefer or for just 1 bag.  I have recently seen Trager pellets for less then $13 for 20 lbs as well as Pacific Gourmet Pellets for $11.76 a bag.  Check the link often you are bound to find something you like,

Bucket List Recipes

So many recipes so little time

As I surf the BBQ Websites I find what I like to call my bucket list recipes.  I use to save these recipes to pinterest and sometimes I still do but some of them are so good I want to place them in my Blog also.  They will always state that they are a buck list recipe,  As with any bucket list I hope I never get to all of them but its fun to dream.

Hamburger Wrapped Mozzarella Hot Dog

Above picture and recipe from SlapyoDaddyBBQ.com Link below
Hamburger wrapped mozzarella hot dog

Harry Soo  who runs Slap Yo Daddy BBQ Blog, is a Grand Champion Pit Master.  When I stumbled on his site my BBQ Bucket list seemed to grow exponentially.  I wanted to cook virtually every recipe on his page,  Here are just a few that made my mouth gush water falls, those saliva glands were working so hard.

Bacon wrapped pineapple mozzarella rings

Swedish Hasselback Pit Roasted Cheesy Bacon Potatoes

Bacon wrapped donuts

Because its not only about the bacon

Grilled Waygu Tuscan Tomahawk Steak/

Smoked Grilled Coffee Crusted Tomahawk Steaks

Barbecued Pineapple Pork Loin Ham

Barbecue Chicken w Alabama White BBQ Sauce and Whiskey Hollow Barbecue Beans

Lobster Caveman Style

SYD Barbecue Ribs with Pico De Gallo

#BucketListItem

Are You Ready for Some football

Are You Ready for Some football?

fOOTBALL AND TRAEGER

The Football season is right around the corner and nothing seems to improve football more then some food on the Traeger.

Click here for hot dog post

Click here for my pizza post

Here are some Traeger Recipe for good football eats

Big Game Day Ribs

STICKY TERIYAKI PORK & PINEAPPLE SKEWERS

BACON-WRAPPED POULTRY PORK SKEWERS

Meatball Onion Bombs

Brats in Beer bath

Pulled Pork

Pulled Pork Mac and Cheese

Simple Steak

Flat Bread Pizz 3 ways

Super Bowl Food The Ultimate Football Food

Some of My Favorite BBQ and Grilling Website

Some of My Favorite BBQ and Grilling Links

BBQ and Grilling Links

All Things BBQ

Amazing Ribs

Every Sunday The BBQ Pit Boys have a new Video Recipe.  Most if not all of there recipes are easily adaptable for the Traeger

BBQ Pit Boys

Legendary Pit master Aaron Franklin's PBS show with many video episodes of all things BBQ

BBQ With Franklin/

One of the first recipe pages I found and still one of my go to's

Date Night Doins

Great Recipes using GrillGrates

GrillGrate Recipes

Malcom Reed of Killer Hogs BBQ Team has a great recipe page with many videos

How to BBQ Right

Over 1200 BBQ Sites

The Smoke ring

Smoking meat has some great recipes this is where I got my idea for grilled lobster.  I havent purchased his sauce or rub which he pushes in almost every recipe.

Smoking Meat

Recipes and more with Videos

The Smoking Pit/

Thermoworks the maker of Thernapen and Thermopop among many other Thermometers has a blog.  It has many topics including grilling and maintenence of your Thermometers

Thermoworks Blog

The Traeger Recipe page is amazing.  It's recipes are purpose built for use on the Traeger and they have a huge number of them and are constantly adding more

Traeger Recipes

Hot Dogs and More on the Traeger

Hot dogs AKA Tubular Meat

The great thing about hot dogs and other Tubular Meat (Sausages and Brats) is you can always seem to squeeze a few on the grill.  I like that best at a high Temperature 375 or more to get a good char

but pretty much any cooking method works as long as your get the proper internal temperature.

Most of the time I just cook them as is but every now and then  I do prefer a Beef Hot Dog like Nathans. The Brats and Sausage are often Pork Products

 I do something special like wrap with bacon, or better yet stuff with cheese then wrap with bacon.

Here is the Traeger recipe for Bacon Wrapped Cheese hot dog

Bacon Wrapped Cheese Stuffed Hotdogs

As you can see I have cooked hotdogs all by themselves.  I have cooked them with hanburgers and pineapples, pizza and pork chops and pizza.

Just Hot Dogs

Pineapple, Hamburgers and Hot dogs on the Junior Rack

Hot Dogs and Pizza

Hot Dogs all alone

Hot Dogs all alone

Beef Chart

Beef Chart

I have seen other Beef charts like this before and have always found them to be extremely helpful.

I enjoy the fact that you can easily tell which cuts of meat come from which parts of the cow.  It also gives you recommended cooking methods for each cut of beef.  I have slow smoked many of the cuts that indicate pot roast or just roast.

You can Click Here to see some of the things I cooked with beef

The below beef chart came from this article

Here is a meat doneness Chart that I really like

The Below Meat Doneness Chart came from

Pulled Pork Leftovers 20 plus cooking Ideas

Pulled Pork Leftovers 20 plus cooking Ideas

Pork Butts soon to be Pulled Pork

When I cook pulled pork on my Traeger Jr I normally cook a pair of 7 to 8 pound butts.  It doesn't seem to take more pellets to cook that 2nd butt  so why not have leftovers.

Pulled Pork Omlette

Pulled pork sandwiches are great, but there has to be more.  My wife makes a mean pulled pork omelette (my favorite) and a pulled pork hash.  I also love pulled pork on a cheese burger.  Pulled pork would make an outstanding filling in a beer can burger.  Click here to see How I cook Pulled Pork

Here is a compilation from google on pulled pork leftovers including pizza, won tons, mac and cheese, shepards pie, waffle sliders and many more.

Pulled Pork 10 ways

Pulled Pork 18 Wyas

Pulled Pork Leftovers 20 ways

Labor Day a Long Weekend of Smoke - Traeger Recipes

Labor Day a Long Weekend of Smoke - Traeger Recipes

Labor Day SmokeFest

The wife left town for a few days to wish her mom a happy birthday in Iowa, so its just me and the dog,  It Looks like I have a Long Weekend of smoke ahead "Traeger on".  Here is what the proposed menu looks like.

Saturday Dinner

Dinner is Ready

Bacon Wrapped Filet

Lobster Tail

Pineapple

Corn on the Cobb

Traeger Recipe

The beauty of cooking the Lobster Tail, Bacon wrap Filet, Pineapple and Corn on the Cobb Together is that all start and finish at the same time,  I go into greater detail about the cooking methods elsewhere in this blog but the Readers digest version is Pre Heat to 225 cook steak and Lobster to an Internal Temperature of 135 to 140 about 45 minutes

Bacon Wrap Filet and BBQ Recipe

BBQ Corn on The Cobb

BBQ Smoke Pineapple

Sunday Lunch

Sunday Lunch and Leftovers Pork Steaks, Brats and SweetPotatoes

Pork Steaks

Cheddar Brats

Sweet Potatoes

Traeger Recipes:

Pork Steaks:

These pork steaks are pre-seasoned with Bobs BBQ seasoning.  Cook them at 350 on the Traeger till an internal temperature of 140 to 145.  About 10 Minutes on each side

Cheddar Brats

 Cook them at 350 on the Traeger till an internal temperature of 140 to 145.  About 10 Minutes on each side

Sweet Potatoes

I wash the Sweet Potatoes

Cut them in half wrap in tin foil

Cook at 350 on the Traeger until soft about 60 Minutes.

Sunday Dinner

Porterhouse Steak

Traeger Recipe Porterhouse Steak see Video

If Video dosent paly Try Porterhouse Video Link click here

I will follow the Video except

I will use Trader Joe Garlic and Coffee Rub

Monday Dinner

Pulled pork

 Pulled Pork Traeger Recipe

Ingredients:

Bone In Pork Butt 6 to 10 lbs or more

Your favorite Dry rub for Pork

Apple Juice in spray bottle

Preperation

Rub Pork Butt all over with your favorite rub

Grill Setup

Start Traeger on smoke for 10 minutes with lid open'

Preheat lid closed to temperature 225

Some People smoke for first 3 hours either using 180 or the smoke setting

then raise to 225.

The Cook

Right before placing on grill spray with apple juice all over

Place Pork Butt on Traeger

Spray with apple juice every 30 minutes or so

After about 3 hours you can move to shallow pan with enough apple juice to cover bottom of pan

At about 6 hours place temperature probe in Traeger.

Continue to cook till an Internal Temperature of 203 degrees

The Wrap and Rest

Once desired temperature reached removed from grill double wrap in foil and place in cooler to rest for 1 to 3 hours.  Pull and enjoy.  We use a light coating of Jack Daniels BBQ sauce after we pull

Recipe Notes

I delay putting the Probe in because its going to take 10 hours or more to cook and the probe gives the smoke a few more places to escape.

Some people wrap the butt  (Texas crutch) at about 160 to get past the stall

Tong Test if you dont cook to temperature --When you can lift the Butt with Tongs and the bone falls out its ready

For more Labor day cooking ideas see the Traeger Blog

Please Note:

Any recipe I make is just a guideline.  I am not a big fan of gooey sauces so almost everything is I cook would be a dry rub.  You of course should experiment and see what works best for you.  I don't often recommend a rub because it is a matter of personnel taste.  These recipe would also work well on most other pellet grills or charcoal and gas grill using indirect heat for the low temperature recipes.

My Best Traeger Purchases

My Best Traeger Purchases

Traeger 

When I first purchased my Traeger I joined some facebook user groups on Traeger, I surfed the user groups and went to the web sites of the Guru's.  I purchased some things to enhance my cooking experience based on the Limited research.  Needless to say some of the things I purchased will make there way into a goodwill bag.  Here is a brief Detail on what I would and wouldn't do if I had to do it all over again.  I have my top 3 in no particular order and some honorable mention Items again in no particular order.  I will also list some of the things I purchased that didn't work as well for me as the items on this list.  These are just my opinions and I realize that alot of this is subjective.  So if you have something that works for you then I think thats fantastic, its all about the good food we produce.

Top 3

GrillGrates

GrillGrates

I have already written an extensive blog Post on the GrillGrates.  These were the 3rd or 4th thing I purchased to help sear meats better.  I purchased a cast iron griddle which while it did work it didn't seem to give me the advantages of GrillGrates.  I also purchased a few other metal grill baskets that have since been given to goodwill.  One Great feature of the Grill Grates is I can use 1 Pannel, 2 Pannels or all 3 pannels on my Traeger Jr. Because of the design of the GrillGrates you can add wood chips, or pellets in the valleys to enhance the flavor.  The juices from the meat tend smoke in the valleys adding flavor,  I have used the Grates to cook the food from begining to end and becasue of the holes you get the smoke surrounding the meat not just on top.

 Click Here for GrillGrate Blog Post

Junior Rack

Junior Rack

The Junior Rack is such a great time and Pellet saver.  It lets you cook twice as much food at one time without using twice as many pellets.  I love to cook on my Traeger but I always love playing with my grand kids or watching a movie with my wife.   If I can cook a meal and be done in 45 minutes instead of 1 hr and 30 minutes why wouldn't I.  At one time I consider the option of making my own 2nd rack using nuts and bolts and washers and of course some kind of grill rack but decided to give the Junior rack a try. I am happy I did.  Its well made works well and I highly reccomend it!  The food below the rack is hard to turn.  I remove the rack with heat resistent gloves, turn the food and replace the rack,

You can get your rack here

Ortech controller

                              Ortech controller

My Jr came with a Low, Medium, High Controller.  After I had it a few months I replaced it with the ortech controller.  It is my understanding at one time they produced a similar controller for Traeger. Some people use more expensive PID controllers but this seems to work for me.  A few advantages it had over a similar Traeger controller that I considered was an easier method to adjust P-Settings and when you turn it off it goes through a shut down cycle.

Honorable Mention

Insulation Blanket

Fire bricks

Insulation Blanket and Fire Bricks

The Insulation blanket and fire bricks are used to maintain better temperature control,  The Fire Bricks line the bottom of the grill and absorb and hold heat so when you open the grill you don't have a huge temperature drop,  The Insulation blanket along with the fire bricks help keep the cold air out so you maintain your temperature and burn less pellets in the winter.  Some people talk about saving money and using  welding blanket instead of the Traeger made to fit insulation blanket.  I deciding against using a welding blanket when I found out it had fiberglass fibers,

These Items were also covered in the following blog post
http://traegerrecipesbymike.blogspot.com/2016/08/fire-bricks-helpful-traeger.html

Thermopop, Thermapen and Igrill 2

Thermopop, Thermapen and Igrill 2 in middle

Thermoworks makes both the Thermopop and Thermapen Instant read thermomaters. The brand new Thermopop cost $29 and reads an accurate temperature within 3 to 4 seconds.  The Thermapen is accurate and faster but costs considerable more,  Most people should be able to work with the Thermopop just fine.  The Thermapen might be overkill.  I have both along with a whole slew of other thermomers I dont need.

The Igrill 2 is a leave in thermometer which allows you to monitor your grill remotely.  I also purchased a maverick which while many people love I had a hard time with the on/off switch perhaps because of my arthitis. I also had a few cheaper remote thermoneters with only 1 probe and shorter range and various other shortcommings,  You get what you pay for.  Mamy people enjoy the Tappecue, It works off WiFi and is more expensive then the Igrill 2,  Tappecue reveiw from amazing ribs.

This remote probe shows some promise

Wow Low Price Mail order Pellets

Wow Low Price Mail order Pellets

These Pellets are 9.95 per 20 lbs  with very reasonable shipping charges. I have never used this brand it seems a good price option.  Please Comment. If you purchase 15 bags you save $20 till 9/5/2016.  This seems like a good option for those who cant find Pellets Locally.

Here is an Online Review of Gourmet BBQ Pellets

They also have The below Pellets for 14.99 for 28 lbs as far as I can tell these dont count for $20 off $140 deal