Cooking Outdoors Grilling, Camp and Dutch oven Cooking!

Smoked Jalapeno Poppers on the Camp Chef Big Gas Grill

Football tailgate recipes are available everywhere these days, I am guilty of throwing a few up from time to time and this is no exception. The big point I want to make here is the technique and not the recipe, though the recipe is pretty darn good if I do say so myself. You might remember the recipe from a previous post: Plank grilled stuffed jalapenos, a popular recipe in my grilling classes also.

These jalapenos, stuffed with a cream cheese filling, spiced up with “Fire salt”, topped with bacon, smoked on a Cedar plank and very tasty, are one of those “You just can’t eat one” snacks, perfect for the tailgate party. However, what do you do if you do not have a cedar plank handy? Smoke them with smoking chips, of course!

I converted my Camp Chef Big Gas Grill into a smoke box, used some of my favorite smoking chips and grilled the stuffed jalapenos for the football ‘Homegate” game. “Homegating” is a new term that is floating around, that refers to tailgating at home or setting up the party before the football game, which is what most of us do. I noticed that the NFL is kicking this term off as well.

Whether you Homegate or Tailgate, this recipe is perfect to share with your friends for some game time grilling!

The Camp Chef Big Gas Grill comes with two cooking grates; just remove one as I did, to add the smoking chips to the grill box. If you need the space for lots of food, move the chips to the middle of the grill box and put the grate back on.

The chips are not in direct contact with the flames, there is no need to soak them, as this would just create steam instead of smoke.

Smoking chip flavors to consider: Apple, Cherry, Pecan, or any light fruitwood will go nicely with this recipe.

Prepare your stuffed Jalapenos, my recipe is here: Cedar Plank Stuffed Jalapenos

I only used the left burner on my Camp Chef Big Gas Grill, set to medium/low and the chips started smoking within minutes. This is about two cups of dry Apple smoking chips placed in the bottom of the Camp Chef grill box. Close the lid to trap the smoke and start grilling!

Clean up is a snap, just remove the grill grates, and dump out your ashes.

Using smoking chips in your Camp Chef Big Gas Grill can open up a world of grilling opportunities. By adding smoke to your grilling recipes, you will replicate that rich smoky flavor that comes from low and slow BBQ techniques all from the convenience of a portable camp stove.

A couple of words of caution when grilling with this technique – Always keep a fire extinguisher in the grilling areas and wait till your smoking chips are completely cold before disposing.

I would be interested in hearing of any other Camp Chef Big Gas Grill tips or grilling tricks you might have tried.

Camp Chef is a Cooking-Outdoors sponsor, they provided the Big Gas Grill at no charge for review and recipe development and these techniques are my own.

Camp Chef Smoke Vault Hawaiian Jerky recipe

Jerky, in my house is a comfort food. I try to keep some available for those quick snacks my boys are always requesting. Originally I made my jerky in a dehydrator in the house, as I have shared before, not a favorable experience to Mrs Outdoor Cook. My new smoker of choice has been the Camp Chef Smoke Vault, a perfect choice for large quantities of beef jerky, smoked to perfection.

The 18″ Camp Chef Smoke Vault gives me plenty of rack space to add my jerky, plus adds the extra dimension of smoke that a normal dehydrator will not have. Temperature control is a snap, just set it to low and forget about it, a constant 200 degrees for as many hours as needed. If you want the temp lower, just open the vents or crack the door open a bit to adjust.

I like to add smoking chips to my jerky recipe for the first hour, adds great flavor and coloring (dark mahogany). Fruit woods are a good choice but stronger woods such as hickory and mesquite can be used also, just limit the exposure time so you do not overwhelm the flavor of the jerky your making.

These recipes are from my “100 Classic Jerky Recipes” cookbook.

A couple of additional tips I can offer:

Place meat in the freezer for a hour to make slicing easier.
Generally speaking, the leaner the meat, the better is your jerky. Remove all visible fat.
For old fashioned jerky, cut strips along the grain.
Keep your jerky strips as uniform in size as possible for even drying.
Flank steak, skirt steak and London broil, are all good meat cuts for making jerky.

Hawaiian Jerky recipe

1 pound lean meat, thinly sliced
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tbs brown sugar
1/4 tsp pepper
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1 clove crushed garlic
1/4 c pineapple juice
1/4 c soy sauce
1 can crushed pineapple – optional
Cherry smoking chips

Combine all ingredients except meat in a 1 gal zip bag, mix well. Add meat, coating all pieces. Seal zip bag, removing as much air as possible. Refrigerate 6 – 12 hours.

Camp Chef Smoke vault set to low, add chips and smoke for 3 hours. You can use light or dark soy sauce for this jerky recipe. I used dark soy sauce.

Here is a quick and easy venison jerky recipe for all those deer hunters out there:

Venison Jerky

1 – 1/2 pds deer meat, 1/8 thick strips
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 tsp black pepper
1 tsp accent
1 tsp onion powder
1/4 Worcestershire sauce
1/4 c soy sauce

Combine all ingredients except meat in a 1 gal zip bag, mix well. Add meat, coating all pieces. Seal zip bag, removing as much air as possible. Refrigerate 6 – 12 hours.

Camp Chef Smoke vault set to low, add chips and smoke for 3 hours. You can use light or dark soy sauce for this jerky recipe.

Jerky is easy and tasty, you can make jerky from many types of meat including Turkey. It store well, tastes great and is extremely easy to make. Your local butcher or meat counter will be happy to slice your jerky meat for you if you ask, saving you even more time and many of the marinade ingredients are already in your pantry.

Give the Camp Chef Smoke Vault a try, it works great and produces amazing tasting smoked food in a small space with almost no effort.

Pizza on the Camp Chef Smoke Vault

Just recently, one of my YouTube “Cooking Everything Outdoors” show fans asked me if you can bake a pizza on the Camp Chef 18″ Smoke Vault. Honestly, at the time I had no idea. Camp Chef claims that the Smoke Vault can reach 500° F, so that should be hot enough to make a decent pizza and there is nothing better than grilling pizza in my book so I decided to put the question to a test and see if the Smoke Vault could produce a quality grilled pizza. Or smoked pizza if you choose to crank up the smoked pizza taste profile.

My first step was to find a pizza stone that fit my 18″ Smoke Vault (note: if you have the 24 ” model any size stone should fit).

Removing all of the racks but one, I placed my rectangular pizza (12″ x 15″) stone on the remaining rack which resulted in a perfect fit.

I did place the rack on top of the side holders so my pizza stone would sit on the rack and not the holders.

Next I added water to the water tray, then I preheated the Smoke Vault for 15 minutes on the high setting with no chips in the chip tray.

When the Smoke Vault was heated properly I placed my first test pizza on the stone.

Pepperoni for the boys, of course! This was a full 12″ pizza. I should have rolled out a rectangular shaped pizza, oh well!

Pepperoni Pizza browning up nicely after 10 minutes. I decided to rotate the pizza at this time to even out the browning (back to front). Another 5 minutes in the Smoke Vault and it was done. I chose not to add any wood chips on this pizza, not sure how the boys would have liked it.

Next it was time for the Margarita pizza. No chips for the first ten minutes (no reason for the timing, just testing at this point).

Here is a good photo of the Pizza stone placement in the Camp Chef Smoke Vault.

E9DF25C9 0AE8 403B B00B 23A1E4C047B3 Pizza on the Camp Chef Smoke Vault

Here the smoke chips have been added to pizza cook at 10 minutes to finish with a smoky taste. I used hickory chips from Two Trees Products “Best of the West” brand.

Margarita pizza cooked in the Camp Chef 18″ Smoke Vault.

After this first round of tests, I will say that the Camp Chef 18″ Smoke Vault can and does cook beautiful pizzas. The crusts were done, the ingredients were cooked through, all in about 15 minutes. My next run will be with full smoke and trying to cook multiple pizzas. As a final note, the boys loved the pepperoni pizza and our Margarita pizza had a subtle smokiness that could only get better.

Have you cooked pizzas in your Smoke Vault? Let me know how you do it!