Budget Cuts – Great Eats On the Cheap!
Right now is the time of year when everyone’s taxes roll around – and whether you’re lucky enough to get a refund, or have to pay, it certainly makes you think twice about expenditures. And let’s face it, groceries have gotten more expensive this year.
So in this edition of the Griller’s Gold Blog, let’s have a look at some ways to have a great meal cooked on your pellet grill fueled with those amazing Griller’s Gold Premium Wood Pellets!
Let’s do this!
Budget Cut – Chuck Eye Roast (the Beefy Secret!)
A chuck eye roast is a roast cut from the center of the chuck. The chuck is the primal cut that encompasses the shoulder part of beef cattle, so it is a working muscle.
Chuck is typically what you use to make beef stew or pot roast. It likes a long, slow cooking method for maximum tenderness. BUT! The chuck eye, by the way it’s cut, can actually be grilled like a steak to medium rare.
Chuck eye roasts are kind of oval in cross section and square to cylindrical in shape and are between 2 and 4 inches thick. A direct cousin of the Chuck Eye is a Delmonico Steak – which is a steak cut from the chuck eye.
The thing we like about a chuck eye is you can see a clear grain direction in the meat (in this photo it is running from the lower left to the upper right) therefore, when carving it, it is easy to spot the grain and make cross-grain slices, which enhances the tenderness of your finished meat.
We love doing a Chuck Eye roast on our pellet grill using the reverse sear method.
Here’s how…
Reverse Sear Method for Chuck Eye Roast
Buy:
Chuck Eye Roast (2-4 lbs) – plan on ½ lb precooked weight per person. When we spot them at the grocery store, we usually buy two – one for now, one for the freezer!
Prep:
Go over the outside the roast and trim off any silver skin or obvious gristle. Because it is a working muscle, there will be some connective tissue that cuts through the roast – don’t worry about that, we’ll deal with it when it’s done and carved.
Seasoning:
We like to do at least a 2 hour kosher or sea salt “dry brine” on it prior to cooking. Give it a generous sprinkling of salt all over at least 2 hours prior to cooking (but if you have time, 6 hours or even overnight does wonders!), then immediately before cooking, we coat it with a generous hit of freshly ground black pepper, granulated garlic, granulated onion and paprika. If you want a pop of spice, a nice shake of chili powder also adds to the flavor.
Grill Prep:
Make sure your grill is clean as you’re going to need to fire up to hot temperature later to sear. Load up with your favorite Griller’s Gold Premium Wood Pellet – the stronger flavors are great with this – Cherry, Hickory, Smokeshack or Competition Blend work great, as does Charcoal, although that has a more subtle flavor. Preheat to 250 for the “low and slow” part of the cook.
Cooking:
Once the grill is stable at 250 (most pellet grills take about 15 minutes for this), put the meat on, insert a probe in the thickest part and close it up!
Set a timer for 20 minutes for turning. Turn the meat every 20 minutes until the internal temp hits 125F for medium rare. If you like it more done, adjust accordingly.
Rest:
Take the meat off the grill, wrap it in a double layer of heavy duty foil, then nestle it in some folded towels. We like to put it in a picnic cooler as well. Let it rest for 1 hour. About 15 minutes before the rest ends, fire your grill to it’s highest temperature (ours goes to 550F) and let preheat.
Sear:
Unwrap the meat and bring it to the grill. Sear it on the grill for about 8 minutes, turning every 2 minutes, so each side will be against the grill for two 2-minute cycles, then bring it in.
Serve:
Slice it across the grain (you remember that, right?) in ¼” or so slices and enjoy.
We love this with the usual steakhouse sides of garlic mashed potatoes, a good veggie like sauteed spinach or roasted asparagus, and a bottle of big red wine – Merlot, Cabernet, or if you got a nice tax refund, how about a French Bordeaux? Gotta live a little right?
Budget Cut – Pork Loin Roast:
Thankfully due to the abundance of pork production in the US, pork prices have stayed pretty low, so our favorite thing to do is a whole pork loin roast on the grill. These massive cylinders of meat are great for serving a crowd, and the nice thing is, it responds beautifully to the Reverse Sear method we just described. We’ll note the differences as we go here.
A whole pork tenderloin is usually a 5 to 6 pound piece of meat, about 18” to 24” long. It is about 4 or 5 inches in thickness and is oval shaped in cross section. The price on these varies between as low as $0.99 a pound to about $4.00 a pound.
The cut is comprised of several muscles, so the texture and flavor varies end to end. In fact, you can buy one of these and butcher up into a good amount of “freezer food” with roasts, pork chops, etc. We love buying these for that reason.
In the picture here, the lower right end is the “sirloin” end and the upper left end is the rib end. The rib end meat is a bit fattier. In the middle is the “center cut” which is where typical pork loin roasts are cut from, and the sirloin end is usually sliced into thin “breakfast” pork chops. But put away that knife, because we’re cooking this bad boy whole today!
Reverse Sear Method for Whole Pork Loin Roast
Buy:
You’re buying a whole pork loin roast – these are most easily found at Sam’s Club, Costco and other large big box retailers and they are in cryovac packaging. Try to avoid buying ones that say “up to 12% solution of pork broth, salt and …” – those are pre-brined and while they cook up nice, they can be a bit salty and that limits your seasoning creativity a bit.
Prep:
Take it out of the package. That’s it. No need to trim these. They will occasionally have a fat cap on one side, and that’s fine – leave that for flavor.
Season:
Just like for the chuck eye roast, first dry brine it with a generous hit of kosher or sea salt for a couple of hours. But DON’T do that if you bought one with the solution injected in it. After the dry brine, we like to mix up a rub of equal parts sugar, fresh ground pepper, granulated garlic and onion, paprika, and then ½ part chili powder and ¼ part dry mustard powder. For a large roast, use 2T for the whole parts in your mix, which means a ½ part becomes 1T and a ¼ part becomes 1/2T. Rub it generously all over the meat.
Grilling, Resting and Searing:
Follow the instructions for the Chuck Eye roast – it’s the same with one exception – go low and slow until it hits 140F internal. Pork is best between 145 and 150F when finished.
We love to cut this into thin slices if we’re doing sandwiches, or in thick pork chop like slices if we’re serving as a plated dinner.
Some additional great “Budget Cuts”
For chicken, we love chicken thighs and for some reason those are always inexpensive! We also love turkey – whole turkeys are always a great value year round – usually priced between $3 and $4 a pound.
That’s a wrap!
You see! You CAN eat like a king without spending a fortune. Wishing you a happy spring time! Thanks again for reading the Griller’s Gold Blog!
