I am curious how often you guys spend hours preparing a meal and end up being personally disappointed. Even if the rest of the eaters think the meal is good to great.
The reason I ask is... I just spent many ihours to smoke a young cow elk loin. I thawed it all week in a zip-lock that drained the blood. I salted it and left it in the refrigerator on a grate for almost 24 hours. I let it come to room temperature while I was preparing the rest of the meal. Then I smoked (apple wood) it between 200 and 230 until it reached 127. About 2 1/2 hours. Then I let it rest wrapped in foil for at least 30 minutes. It was good, but I expected it to be better.
I did trim all of the silver skin and anything else that looked suspicious.
Really, I am simply curious if all of these fantastic pictures you guys post were as good as they look. My loin would have been a great picture. But I thought it was lackluster. Everyone else said that they liked it, but you never really know what they thought. They were probably happy not to spend the day fixing a meal.
I did make some fantastic scalloped /au gratin potatoes. They will be even better tomorrow.
Take care and thank you for your input.
