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This week's meal prep: yaki udon with beef. いただきます！

Hi, American brothers and sisters! 🇺🇸 I’m Tsu-san’s wife. 😊 I’ll pop in from time to time with food-related posts. Nice to meet you all!

i'm pretty decent at bbq pulled pork. this is a pretty small cook at only 8lb 7oz. my technique is taken largely from a youtube video i found years ago and can no longer find. my dad and i call it the snake method, because of the way you arrange the charcoal in the kettle. you make a ring around ~75% of the perimeter or a round kettle grill with briquettes - one on the grate, one leaned against the kettle itself, and then a third stacked on top of those two. in the gap you didn't cover, place an aluminum drip pan half full of water about the same size as what you're smoking. then place wood chips, pellets or chunks of your favorite type of tree. i used hickory. get one side of the ring started by placing a handful of lit briquettes. after you start the ring, it's time to prepare the hog. you place it on something that can get messy, and will be sturdy enough to carry it out to the grill. the bark should consist of a mixture of mustard (or your favorite binding agent) mixed thoroughly with your favorite dry-rub. i used my grandmother's homemade mustard and some off the shelf Stubb's bbq rub. you can smear it in with your hands, but i use a brush. cover the bottom (the side without the fat cap) and the sides with the mixture and take it out to the grill. carefully place the meat cap side up on the grate over the aluminum pan. cover the fat cap side and touch up any spots you missed or rubbed off in transit with what's left of your mixture. cover the kettle with the lid, with the exhaust outlet at the opposite end of the lit side of the ring so that the smoke has to transit the diameter of the grill. make sure the air inlet at the bottom is about half way open. monitor the temperature inside until it gets steady somewhere between 200°F and 230°F. it may take an hour or so to stabilize, and you can make slight adjustments to the inlet and outlet as needed. now go to sleep. by the time you wake up, the snake will have burned around 3/4 of its way to the end. now you have about two hours of fuel left. at this point, check the internal temperature, being careful not to touch the bone with the thermometer, as it will give an inaccurate reading. you'll probably be around 150°F to 180°F. two more hours will not be enough. it's smoked by now, so all that's left is to heat it up. if you want to finish it on the grill or in the oven. you can rotate the grill and extend the length of the snake or just bake it in the oven. whichever you decide on, the internal temperature needs to reach or exceed 195°F and it's fine to increase your cooking temperature up to 350°F. you want it to remain at that temperature for some time so all the fats holding the tissue together melt away. i let the internal temperature get past 200°F before I take it out just to be sure. when you take it away from heat, immediately wrap it in aluminum foil twice around with the reflective side facing in. next, wrap it in a towel, and place the towel in a styrofoam cooler and leave the cooler in the sun. now it's another waiting game, so feel free to run some errands. in about 2-3 hours, you can unwrap everything and pull it apart.