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Cooking salmon with indirect heat - The best way!
15K views
Feb 5, 2025
Do you want to know the secret to cooking the best salmon? It’s great to start with high quality meat and it’s great to add tasty seasoning, but the actual secret is to use indirect heat. That’s right, and in this video we take you through all of the steps to cooking the best king salmon on a simple bbq grill. So many people who don’t like salmon have never had salmon cooked this way. Too many people think you just need to season it really well and then cook it in a hot grill. Especially for thicker pieces of salmon direct heat just results in well seasoned cardboard! Oh yeah and the L is silent in salmon.
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0:11
[Music]
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all right
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today we're gonna grill some salmon
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we're gonna show you the best way to
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cook
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salmon uh and the importance of indirect
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heat
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on cooking salmon uh versus uh a lot of
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the ways people show you to cook salmon
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is with direct heat over a flame or in
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an
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oven and uh they you know maybe some of
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their youtube channels they pronounce
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salmon
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salmon you know but uh but in the
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pacific northwest
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uh we're gonna show you the best way uh
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to cook a nice
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thick piece of king salmon
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uh we're gonna start here by picking out
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our filet
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and uh we've had a good year this year
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this is one of our freezers
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packed full of salmon and all kinds of
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other stuff
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um but i'm gonna go with this uh this
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king
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that uh king i caught on the bogey
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um last year 2019 nice thick
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piece here and a nice nice belly piece
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even though this has been in here for a
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year i'm just going to cook up
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fantastic using using the method we use
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to cook a quick salmon on the grill in
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the silk northwest
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so here we go i want to show you
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indirect heat
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method of cooking uh a really nice filet
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account
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but i don't know if you can get closer
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on this but this is
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you know this is uh about uh maybe an
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inch and a half
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two inches thickness in this fillet
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and uh there's a big difference between
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this part of the meat
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and this part of the meat and the
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thickness the belly versus the the top
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of the salmon
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and this came off of a big probably 20
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pound plus king salmon we got
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um on the olympic peninsula last year
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you know
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if you cook this over direct tea if you
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put this on the grill and cook this
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thing
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and you need it to be done and all the
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way in the thickest part
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uh the texture is gonna be all off it's
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gonna be
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dry it's gonna be uh chewy and just kind
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of like
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you know just not uh not what we
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associate with great tasting salmon this
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could be a
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great tasting uh salmon meal
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with the the quality of this king salmon
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so many times people
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when they don't like salmon it's because
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uh someone's just kind of throwing it on
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the grill or they throw it in the oven
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and they just cook it until it's
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you know just done it's really easy to
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overcook especially
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big thick pieces of salmon and then you
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know they
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they baste it with all kinds of crazy
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you know spices
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and sugary stuff and it's basically uh
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you know it's like eating uh nicely
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seasoned cardboard it's uh and they
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associate that with
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with uh with salmon they go oh i don't
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really like salmon but there's a better
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way to cook
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uh your your good sam you can even cook
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a smaller fillet like this it's going to
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taste i think better
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than um than the than the direct heat
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method
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and that's what we're going to show you
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so uh
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if you're out there and you're skeptical
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and you don't you you don't like salmon
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and you've never had it this way
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you got to give this a try you got to
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keep watching and watch what we do with
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the salmon because it's going to taste
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absolutely amazing it's going to take a
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little bit longer to cook this way
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but it's going to taste just absolutely
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awesome so so this is a much smaller
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uh whole fillet this is on a smaller
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resident coho we caught back in june
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and um you can get away with direct heat
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cooking a fillet like this you know this
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might be
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more of what you'll see in the grocery
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store you buy some some wild caught
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uh coho salmon or maybe sockeye salmon
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you know you can
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you can get the grill marks on it and
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cook it over direct heat
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uh and like broiler in the oven uh
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baking
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frying pan or on the grill felix
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get out now out
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ethan just sprayed that whole area now
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the dog's in it
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hey guys the dog needs a bath now
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[Music]
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it won't stop that fast keep watching
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all right so here we've got our
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beautiful
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piece of king salmon fillet
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we're going to cook over a grill with
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indirect heat and
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again when it's cooked the correct way
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you really don't need a whole lot of
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seasoning so we're going to use
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a little bit of uh old bay
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um you can use i mean you can go simple
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as
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um you know like uh salt pepper
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um butter i mean you can go that simple
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and a good piece of meat is gonna
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is is um it's gonna
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it's gonna turn out really really good
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you don't you don't need a whole lot um
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you need a big complex recipe and
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marinade we got some good flavor on the
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outside we're gonna put a little bit of
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a little bit of johnny seasoning salt
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just a dash of that
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a little bit of salt make a seafood one
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that's really good salt on here
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um all right and then we're just gonna
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finish it off by putting a little slab
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of butter on there that'll melt and uh
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keep it nice and moist as we're
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cooking it for probably 45 minutes or
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now or something like that
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all right we're going to cover in tin
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foil now if i had a um
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if i was gonna do this with a smoker or
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like a traeger
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uh something like that um that i could
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get some good smoke
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uh i would uh i wouldn't be covering it
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entirely
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um but i'm just using a propane um
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barbecue
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um not my favorite but i just want to
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show an incredibly simple
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easy way to do it you don't need some
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you know fancy smoker
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uh to do it uh uh really well so
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i'm just gonna show you with the propane
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grill here we go we are ready to
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uh get this onto the grill one burner on
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the other two off and remember this is
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my
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uh belly side this is my thinner side so
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i'm gonna
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position that away from the heat
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source closest to the thickest part of
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salmon
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the same i'm going to close this uh and
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again we're going to cook this for about
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an hour 45 minutes
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like that we'll probably check in about
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half an hour see how we're doing
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um when you know that your salmon's done
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we're checking on this it's about dinner
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time
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and it is looking good
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oh my goodness see when it's done i'll
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have this white stuff coming out
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and it'll just be kind of flaky see that
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flakiness
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that's just perfect on this right there
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with uh
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see how juicy it is you're not going to
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get that with direct heat
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that you lose so much flavor and
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moisture
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this is the bomb all right now you can
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see it's a little bit better light
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this is uh almost perfect doneness
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we got the white fat coming out
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different areas we got flakiness
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here um this what we're looking for
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this is uh all cooked uh
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uh indirect heat to uh to perfect
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doneness it's gonna be super juicy
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flavorful let's get a little uh
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corner of this here
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oh my gosh
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man so good
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just cooked up with fat a little bit of
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salt
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about fantastic
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