A few weeks ago, I said to my wife, next time you get some chicken wings I want them to smoke. I then went about doing the usual online research on smoking chicken wings. What I found out is that people don't normally do smoked wings, like smokehouse restaurants will do them, because they smoke everything, but generally people don't. I thought, well it's worth a try and so I rubbed them down with another custom rub. I didn't use any chilli flakes, since my wife had a shot at me for using them on the last rub. So, this one consisted of:-

2 tablespoons sugar brown
1 tablespoon black pepper
1 tablespoon sea salt
3 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon cumin
2 teaspoon garlic powder

At 3:38 PM the pit went on, with the chicken on about 20 minutes later. I decided to use Apple pellets with this, as I want some smoke, but nothing too strong. At 5:40pm, the wings looked nicely cooked and smelled great.

But how did they taste ? Really delicious, but they didn't taste that different from normally cooking them. For the time that was put into the cook, I think the same results could have been achieved doing them on direct heat in 6-10 minutes. Still, you have to try these things, otherwise, you wouldn't know.

This morning my son made the rub for 4 x Porterhouse steaks that my wife had bought. Blake used the mortar and pestle, combined the ingredients together and rubbed down the steaks. He was also licking his hands after, saying that he was going to lick every single finger as it tasted so good. I thought, well that's a good start. For this rub, I slightly altered the rub from last week, basically, doubling the garlic powder and taking out the oregano, as I felt that has a better flavour profile with chicken rather than beef. So, this rub had:-

2 tablespoons sugar brown
1 tablespoon black pepper
1 tablespoon sea salt
3 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon cumin
2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon chilli flakes

I didn't have a lot of time to do this cook, as my wife was coming home and wanted them for lunch, so at 11:00am the pit went on, with the meat on 20 minutes later. It was then getting closer to 1pm, with my wife (and myself) starving at his point. The meat hadn't quite reached optimal internal temperature yet, so I wrapped the steaks in foil and put them back on. They then quickly got up to temp and I took them off to rest. I knew they weren't going to be as juicy as the previous time I did Porterhouse steaks, but I didn't overly care, I was hungry and wanted to eat.

My wife complained that they were too spicy to eat and had a shot at me for doing this as our son has to eat them. Turns out, he and I both lapped them up, whilst my wife missed out.

The next day, I figured out why my wife thought they were too spicy. It turns out my son and I had used 2 tablespoons of black pepper instead of 1. I guess, we were going for a Texas-style rub, at least that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it :)