Electric Meat Smoking with Liam O'Sullivan Part One

Liam took this picture of his electric smoker.

Twitter is a wonderful thing.  That's how I met Liam Sean O' Sullivan who (let's say loves his Cubs baseball team) as much  almost as much as his barbecue! He's currently in Central Illinois (Champaign) but does up some very tasty creations. So I wanted to showcase them here. 

First of all, how do you smoke your meat?

"I won't lie. I cheat at smoking.  And I'm so happy about it.  I use an electric smoker. I make really lame smoke bombs (I wrap my wood in foil, but leave the sides open so it smolders instead of burns). " 

Electric Smoking Hint: Liam uses hickory chips and often a pan of water to keep his food moist.

What do you do for pork?

"Pork at 170. Once at 180, wrapping it, and placing in a pan. Bring it to 205 and we're golden! When I wanted to make my pork have a little extra oomph, I injected half a jar of giardinera oil. (Chicago style hot peppers, soaked in oil. The oil holds the spices).  Did I mention 5 full injectors through the fatty side of the pork?  Most of it cooks out, but you get a little bit of a kick."

Liam's pork looks scrumptious.

Any recipes you'd like to share? 

Liam's individual meatloafs, yum!

"Here is my individually smoked meatloaf.  The recipe idea was taken from smoking-meat.com , but I used sweet peppers instead of jalapeños."  

 

What does barbecue mean to you? 

"To me, bbqing is what you do when the weather is nice and friends come over to eat. It could be any type of food, just tossed on the grill/smoker/fryer. Just the other week we did a bachelor party for a friend, and it was pulled pork, some burgers, and sides. And was the simplest yet tastiest thing I'd had in quite some time. It also seems to be the essence of American food. Every other type of food seems to be a derivative of another country, but bbq, bbq holds it's own as truly American. And as an Irishman, I love that."

What do you obtain your beef?  

"I use www.rkbeef.com for all my beef/pork products. The website is outdated, call Ryan for product info."

Go To : Part two: Liam's Smoke Bomb Chicken Bacon Wrapped Chicken Part Two.