Chicken Wings with Tzatziki

Chicken wings cooked on the @kamadojoeuk Classic II. Seasoned with Angus & Oink Porky White Chick. Paired with @BrazenChili No 28 hot sauce and a nice refreshing tzatziki. Tzatziki works really well with spicy wings as it counteracts/compliments the spice from the hot sauce.

Ingredients (For the Wings)

  • 2kg Wings
  • Angus & Oink Porky White Chick
  • Sauce of your choice (I used @BrazenChili No 28)

Ingredients (For the Tzatziki)

  • 1/2 cucumber
  • 200g Greek yogurt
  • 1 large clove of garlic finely chopped/minced
  • 1 handful of finely chopped mint leaves
  • Pinch of salt
  • Juice of half a lime

Gear Used & General Cook Notes

  • Kamado Joe Classic II
  • Cooked direct at anywhere between 200 & 250 degrees celsius
  • High heat gloves are useful for this cook
  • Thermapen

Method

Take your wings out of the fridge and allow to come up to room temperature. Liberally coat with Angus & Oink Porky White Chick (or any dry rub of your choice). Setup your BBQ for direct cooking (no heat deflectors). Once the grill hits between 200 & 250c (400 – 480F) , put the wings on, ensuring they are spread evenly. Take a look at your fire as you will usually have a zone that is hotter than everywhere else. Leave the wings or about 5-10 mins and then start flipping with a tongs. You will likely need to rotate them in and out of the hot zone on the grill to ensure they don’t burn. We like a nice char on wings in our house, but not every one does so rotating them around the grill surface can help avoid too much charring.

After about 10-15 mins start checking for temperature with an instant read thermometer. Chicken is cooked at 75c (170F) but i like to let wings cook to at least 80c (178F). Once cooked, take them off and let rest for a few mins.

For the Tzatziki, cut the cucumber in half and scrape out the seeds with a teaspoon. Coarsely grate it, and squeeze out the liquid using paper towels. Add to a bowl with the yogurt, garlic, mint, salt and mix well.

Optional: Squeeze in about half a lime to add a little kick

Enjoy 🙂

Check out the full video below

Posted on by CloudyBBQs 0

Pork Tenderloin Bites

This is something I’ve seen a few people do and I’ve wanted to try for a while. Pork tenderloin (or pork steak depending on where you buy it), cut into pieces, wrapped in bacon, and smoked. It’s definitely meat heavy, but its topped with some pickle for balance :).

Ingredients

  • Pork tenderloin
  • Binder of your choice (I used a local producer called Brazen Hot Sauces – No 19)
  • Bacon slices (I used hickory smoked)
  • Your favorite BBQ rub (I used Angus & Oink Sweet Bones & Butts)
  • Cocktail Sticks
  • Smoke wood (I used hickory as the bacon was hickory smoked)
  • Pickles
  • BBQ Sauce (I used Sweet Baby Rays Brown Sugar & Hickory)

Gear Used

  • Kamado Joe Classic II
  • Thermapen

Method

This is a pretty straightforward cook with amazing results. Prepare the BBQ for indirect cooking at 130c (260f). Add some smoking wood.

Cut the pork tenderloin into chunks. Cover with the binder of your choice, and season with a BBQ rub. Roll each piece in a strip of bacon and use a cocktail stick to keep them together. Top with a sliced pickle. Place on the BBQ fro about 15 mins.

After 15 mins, baste with BBQ sauce and open your vents to increase the BBQ temperature to about 160c (320f). Leave for about 20 mins.

After 20 mins, check the internal temps with an instant read thermometer and ensure they are minimum 60c (140f) but aim for 65-70c.

Allow to rest for 10 mins & enjoy!

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Spicy Chicken Tikka Madras

Marinade Ingredients

  • Roughly 250g of greek yoghurt
  • 1tspn cumin
  • 1tspn chilli powder
  • 1tspn corriander
  • 1/2 tspn turmeric
  • Pinch of cinimon
  • tspn paprika
  • 1 inch fresh ginger minced
  • 3 large cloves of garlic minced
  • Juice of a lemon

Sauce Ingredients

  • 1 cinnamon stick
  • 3 Cardamon pods
  • 1 large white onion diced
  • 3 cloves garlic
  • Similar amount of ginger
  • 1 tblsp chilli powder (cashmeri if you can find it or smoked is also nice)
  • 1 tblsp garam masala
  • 1 tspn turmeric
  • 1 tspn paprika
  • 2 tspn coriander
  • 1 tspn salt
  • 1/2 tspn black pepper
  • 1/2 tspn fenugreek
  • 2 tins chopped tomatoes
  • 2 tblspn tomatoe puree

I absolutely love Indian food. The spicier the better but it also has to have flavour. I especially love cooking Indian dishes over charcoal as you get that intense smoky flavour in each dish. Today’s cook is one of my all time favourites – Spicy Chicken Tikka Madras.

First off you need to marinade the chicken. Mix all the marinade in a large bowl and add about 800g boneless/skinless chicken thighs and make sure they are all well covered (trust me chicken thighs are best for high heat cooking as they dont dry out like chicken breast will). Pop it back in the fridge for at least an hour or up to 24 hours. I work from home so i will typically marinade my chicken on my lunch break so they will marinade for about 5 hours before cooking but i have also applied this marinade and cooked immediately. It really depends how much time you have.

I’m using the Kamado Joe Classic II for this cook. Setup the BBQ for direct cooking and you want it nice and hot. About 250c (475F). I’m using long skewers to cook the chicken but as i mentioned in the video if you dont have those you can put the chicken directly on the grates (it just means you will have more cleanup to do as the marinade will char on the grates!). Turn the chicken regularly until it gets a nice char (dont worry its not burned…charred bits will add to the flavour of the overall dish). As always, monitor the internal temp until it reaches between 70c & 75c (170f) and take the chicken off to rest. Cover with foil to keep it hot. It will finish off in the sauce later.

Next up is the sauce. I’m using a cast iron dutch oven as it will withstand the charcoal heat and not burn the sauce, but you could just as easily be doing this in a wok or large pan over a stove.

Start by adding a cinnamon stick a 5 cardamon pods (best to smash them open first to release the flavours). One the cardamon pods start to pop add in the diced onion and let it soften. Next add in the garlic & ginger and let it cook for about 30 seconds to a minute. Next we will add our dry spices, for a dish like this where all the dry spices go in together i will prep the at lunchtime after prepping the chicken. Add them all to the same bowl

  • 1 tblsp chilli powder (cashmeri if you can find it or smoked is also nice)
  • 1 tblsp garam masala
  • 1 tspn turmeric
  • 1 tspn paprika
  • 2 tspn coriander
  • 1 tspn salt
  • 1/2 tspn black pepper
  • 1/2 tspn fenugreek (If you’re in Ireland i found this in Tesco)

Mix in the spices for about 30 seconds to a minute (any longer and they will burn and you will get a bitter taster to your curry)

Next mix in 2 tins of chopped tomatoes and simmer down. Add in 2 tblspn of tomatoe puree and simmer.

Once simmered down add back in the chicken and cover with the sauce. Let it simmer for about 10 mins and it is ready to eat

Serve with rice & naan bread & enjoy! Check out the full video below. Comments & feedback welcome!

Posted on by CloudyBBQs 0

Surf ‘n Turf – Scallops & Reverse Seared Tomahawk

Ingredients

  • A Dozen King Scallops + shells
  • Tomahawk Steak
  • Garlic Butter (I cheated and bought a stick of garlic butter but you can make your own)
  • Angus & Oink Texas Steak
  • Salt
  • Pepper
  • Furikake (optional)

This was a really fun cook. It was my wife’s birthday and I had planned a nice family dinner out at a local restaurant and a couple of days before she decided that she would prefer a nice family occasion at home with me cooking :). So when i asked what she would like on the menu, her answer was 100% surf ‘n turf! For anyone not familiar with the term, surf ‘n turf means something from the sea (surf) and something from the land (turf). Typically its some type of fish (i usually go with prawns) with some form of steak. I had recently ordered Scallops with their shells from eatmorefish.ie so this was the perfect opportunity to use them. I typically try to use local butchers for my meat but at the last minute I picked up a tomahawk steak from my local supermarket.

I have cooked scallops before, usually searing them on a soapstone but because i had the shells i wanted to try something different. So i decided to portion them into the shells, seasoned them with salt, pepper & furikake (which is a Japanese seasoning consisting of of a mixture of dried fish, sesame seeds, chopped seaweed), drizzle them with melted garlic butter, and put the shells directly on the hot charcoal. I used the Weber Jumbo Joe for this.

For the tomahawk i seasoned with Angus & Oink Texas Steak, using the Meater probe, cooked the steak indirect at 120c until it reached an internal temperature of 53c. Once it hit 53c, took it off and wrapped in foil to rest. To finish, open up all the vents on the Kamado so the temperature rises and put the steak back on the soapstone for 2 mins per side to sear it. Let it rest again and serve.

Here is the video of the cook. Please comment below or on the YouTube channel

Posted on by CloudyBBQs 0

Hello World

My day job is in IT as a cloud architect with VMware and in the software world when you learn a new language the first thing you do is write some code to say “Hello World”.

So this is my “Hello World” – On a non-IT topic that inspires and excites me everyday – BBQ.

For as long as I can remember I have loved to fire up my Weber Genesis 410 gas grill to cook the basics (Sausage/burger/Steak) but in the last 4 years I have expanded my skills by moving to charcoal cooking with a Kamado Joe Classic II, and more recently with a Weber Jumbo Joe.

Ireland is not know for all year-round BBQ weather but I have never let the weather get in the way of a cook so I have cooked in the rain, used umbrellas & popup gazebos or just got wet. More recently I’ve added a fully covered outdoor kitchen to my garden but more on that in another post.

I hope you find my content useful and I’m always open to suggestions on how to improve so please get in touch.

Posted on by CloudyBBQs