I began prep on Sunday night with 16 lbs of pork butt split into three parts, and 5.5 pounds of salmon. I used the typical salmon recipe, this time I did one quart of brine and still separated things into 4 bags. I used this pulled pork recipe, and this dry rub recipe per Ben’s recommendation. The pulled pork recipe looked to be a reasonable beginner’s complexity, too… I considered this pork butt set to be just three of the one used in the recipe, so I had 1 cup of dry rub that I used on the three.
I used a 16.5 lbs brisket from Costco, $2.99 per pound. Turned on the smoker to 225, added hickory wood chips. Trimmed 1-2 lbs fat off, took just over half an hour to trim. Sliced it in half so it would fit in the smoker. Took out two smoker racks to help it fit.
Some notes from the first time I used the smoker - I made smoked salmon. The result was awesome - I’ve made it a couple times since then, and am just dropping this here for future note.
I really just followed the instructions. I used Diamond Crystal Kosher salt, as he recommends - which, BTW, is probably going to become my goto salt. I used Costco salmon without the skin on - it worked perfectly. I brined in Ziploc bags - no problem. The whole thing came out perfectly. I think I only brined for a few hours, then dried for a few hours. Since then, I’ve brined and dried for longer, but this first batch of fish really needed no improvement.
Sarah and I did a big trip of the UK and Ireland in October 2017. I’ve made a series of blog posts about these, intended to be informative to the person planning a similar trip. The posts are listed in order, below.
Sarah and I are in line to get on our Norwegian Air flight home. I guess it’s time to wrap these posts up.
Some things to mention.
There’s lots of free WiFi. Still, having data access over the air is amazing. Google Project Fi gave me data access everywhere for the same price I pay at home. Phone calls are a bit expensive, but who makes those? WiFi calling is normal and texts are free.
We took some side trips from Dublin - one to Cork/Blarney castle/Midleton, and one to the Cliffs of Moher with a few extra stops in there…
It’s easy to take the train from Dublin to Cork, be and from there you take the Cork bus to Blarney castle and Midleton (Jameson’s major distillery). The train leaves from Dublin Heuston station (pronounced like the Houston in Texas), and takes a couple hours. Buy tickets online, print them on the machine at the station, and hop on! Electric outlets and wifi are provided.
Land at Dublin airport, take a trip through passport control, buy a Leap card at the tourist desk inside, put €20 on it, step outside to the bus stop, hop on the Airlink 757 bus, get a tour of downtown from the top of a double decker bus, step off 30 minutes later in downtown Dublin.
I pushed the accelerator of the Peugeot 3008 to the floor, as I slammed it from fifth into third to accelerate up the hill and around the corner while the rock wall on the passenger side caused the proximity sensor to light and the lorry passed within inches on the driver’s side. Lock one, lock two, Loch Lomond on the right and an ancient wall on the left.
On the morning of 7 Oct Sarah and I headed to the Stansted airport to fly to Glasgow. It’s fairly easy to get to the airport, there’s a train out of the Liverpool Street station that takes you right there. I got tickets in advance, and they’ll take them right from your phone screen. We cashed in the remaining funds on our Oyster cards before heading out - the normal Oyster machines at the station will give your remaining money back.
One thing I questioned before we got here was the wisdom of using this thing called The London Pass. It’s a card you purchase for 1, 2, or 3 days of entry into a ton of attractions. On our first partial day here I realized it was probably a good deal for us, in part just so that I wouldn’t have to constantly wonder if any one place’s entry price was really worth it. Obviously there are many things in London that aren’t covered, but there are so many common tourist attractions that are covered, and it makes sense to use this card if you’re going to do those things for three days. In all, we saved almost £20, saw at least one thing we probably wouldn’t have otherwise, and didn’t have to wonder once whether an entry price was worth it. Let me run you through our trip.
