Another birthday and more food to order

[valve90210]

This weekend was my Dad's 70th birthday so my mum planned a family gathering and asked if I would provide some meat for it. Always happy to help out and loving the smoking I naturally agreed. I decide on pulled pork, pulled lamb (a first for me) and brisket.

Knowing that we wanted the meat for lunchtime on Saturday and that we were going to a radio controlled model show in the afternoon I decide to do the meat in advance to make life simpler for me. As such I cooked the meat last weekend, vacuum packed it and froze it.  This really seems to work well and I have to say I was quite pleased with the results, and none of the meat was left over so it was quite a success!

Pulled Pork:

 

Pulled Lamb (I'll definitely be doing this again):

 

Beef Brisket:

 

I'm really enjoying being able to cook something that everyone is enjoying like this, it's very satisfying!

[Smokin Monkey]

Good looking spread of food! I am sure your Dad was well pleased with the Birthday fair!

[Moonhead]

All looking pretty tasty. I'd say you had a very happy gathering. Got me thinking about the lamb, I'll be giving that a go very soon.

[Smokin Monkey]

Yes, let's see the Pulled Lamb recipe!

[valve90210]

Oh lordy a recipe...erm, it was a sort of a throw a rub together with what I had in the cupboards (if I remember rightly - salt, garlic powder, paprika, pepper, cumin and what is probably sacrilegious...a couple of oxo cubes...), stuck the rub on overnight.

Then I did the same as I do for pulled pork. Smoked at 110C for about 3 hours with fruit wood pellets, spraying every hour with apple juice. At that point I foiled it and stuck it back in the smoker until it hit 90c (I'd normally do pulled pork to 85C but had read a few places saying 90C for lamb so gave that a try).

I then wrapped it and let it rest in my cool bag until it was cool enough to pull. Before I pulled it I drained all the liquid I could off into a jug, covered it and put it in the fridge. Once pulled I bagged up the meat, vacuum packed it and stuck it in the freezer. The next morning I took juices out of the fridge, removed the top layer of fat and disposed of it. The remaining jelly I vacuum packed and put in the freezer.

I took the meat out of the freezer on Friday evening and defrosted it overnight in the fridge and simply reheated the bags in a water bath at my Mum's and once warm I unbagged tghe meat and loosened it up, then I poured over the juices and tossed the meat until all the juice was taken up.

[Genevieve]

Sounds great!

[Martyn Catanach]

When you vacuum packed the liquid did you use vacuum pouches or just a normal vac bag , interested as I will need to do this with my next smoke 

[valve90210]

I just used my normal sous vide bags. Having put the juices in a jug in the fridge they weren't really liquid when I was vacuum packing them, I scraped off the top layer of fat and was left with a lovely jelly which is nice and simple to pack, as you can see below.

Before vacuuming:

After vacuuming:

[Wade]

When vacuum packing liquids like this the easiest way is to freeze them in a suitable shape container first before releasing it and placing it in the bag. That way there is no risk of getting liquid inside the vac packer. The same as Scott's solution bur reducing the risk of liquid spill a little further.

[Martyn Catanach]

Good skills Wade, that's what this forum's all about,sharing experience