Tall Tales & Falsehoods

This year I am getting off the bench and stepping onto the field of BBQ Competition. The weekend of March 26-27 (my birthday!) my newly formed team, The Proud Purveyors Of Pork, will be competing in the Bordertown BBQ Cookoff in Clover, SC!

For over three years I have honed my BBQ skills as both a SCBA judge and a backyard cook. Now I am putting it to the test. So far there are over 20 teams entered into the SCBA BBQ competition. At least five of the tames finished in the top 10 of the SC BBQ Comp series last year. This will make for a good stiff competition as well as a great way to make new friends. I have no illusions going to the cookoff. I do not expect to win or even place. For me it all about the friends and family that I will be surrounding myself with on my birthday. My wife asked what I wanted to do for my 30th and this is exactly it. With this I can make off yet another thing on my list of life goals!

The Proud Purveyors of Pork (website soon) will consist of my wife, Memphis, my brother his wife and kid, my father and cousin! I hope to be one of the best marketed BBQ cook teams there with t-shirts, hats, aprons, table cloths, stickers, and sauce bottles. (It pays to have the ability to be able to print this kind of stuff yourself!) I plan on tweeting about the experience while it is happening as well as documenting the whole experience.

This is a big step for me and I look forward to making it. Wish me and the team good luck!

Brinkmann Upright Smoker

For Christmas I got a Brinkmann Upright Smoker. It is a good little unit for the price, however after cooking on it a few times it is easy to see you must make a few modifications in order to get better results from smoking your meats. The main drawback I have to this smoker is the holding temperature of the box. When I cook a pork shoulder I want to keep a constant temperature of around 215 degrees. However with my Brinkmann Upright Smoker my temperature normally hovers around 165. I feel as if the small fire basket that came with the grill is to small in order to hold enough fuel to get the grill up to temperature.

Original Fire Basket

I have found a way around not being able to get my my Brinkmann Upright Smoker up to temperature by smoking the meat for the first 4-6 hours and then transferring it over to my gas grill to finish it off. But I want better results from my Brinkmann itself.

When I smoke meats I like to use a combination of Hickory wood chunks and lump charcoal briskets. The provided firebox pan is too small for my taste so I decided to build a new one. As you can tell in my choice of smoker that I am a cheap so I looked around the house to see what I could use to build my new firebox. Lucky for me I had a small sheet of metal lying around the house so I got to work.

Measurments

I devised a plan to build a box that would slide into the already provided railings of the Brinkmann Smoker. The side walls would be slightly taller than the front walls which would make my firebox a bit deeper than the one provided. In theory this would give me more surface area to place wood chucks and lump charcoal in order to raise the temperature of my smoker.

Making the lip

Not having the proper tools around I had to improvise which included a lot of banging with a sledge hammer. However after much frustration I got the basic shape I needed.

Basic Shape

Next I needed to cut and tack weld in the front and back walls. This was pretty straight forward especially when I got out the angle grinders to help it fit into my hole!

Tack Weld

Front and Back Welded In

The key to getting anything to burn hotter is to make sure you have the right air to fuel ratio. In order to help achieve the proper amount of mixture I drilled 3 holes in each side, 2 in the front and back and five small holes in the bottom. In theory this should help draw a good amount of air across the surface of the wood and charcoal.

Air Holes

Two hundred degrees is darn hot, so a quick weld of a handle is in order!

A Hot Handle!

Not to shabby. Too bad this big boy is made out of thicker steel than the smoker is itself. The firebox actually weights more than the smoker itself.

Fire Box

Once I tried this bad boy out I figured the weight was to much. After a quick bit of thinking I decided that I would lay down 1 inch steel tubing in the bottom of the Brinkmann and sit the new firebox on top.

1 Inch Tubing

Next to finish it all off and to protect it from rust I spayed it down with high temperature black paint to match the rest of the grill.

High Temp Paint

It fits perfectly and besides the actual weight of the firebox, it looks like it belongs in the grill. I have increased my surface area by 60% with this little modification and hopefully it will bring my temperature to where I need it.

Brinkmann Firebox Mod

The past couple of weeks I have been looking for inspiration for a custom made grill. While the internet can provide you with lots of information and insight sometimes it is best to go out and experience the real thing. So when the opportunity came up to judge the Kingstree Pig Pickin Festival I jumped all over it.

The festival is a real treat of Lowcountry Style BBQ. They serve it two ways down here, hot and hotter! With over 60 teams this year I knew I would get to sample a few really good BBQ plates. I was not let down! However after judging my taste buds had just about enough of the hot pepper vinegar based BBQ, so I decided to see how each cook was set-up to to prepare these great samples.

The big difference about this competition verses others that I have attended is that this competition brings out a bunch of what I like to call “backwood cookers.” These cooks are traditionalist. They still cook and prepare the BBQ the same way that their Grandfather’s once did. I love to see it. It gets away from all the glitz and glam of most competition and gets right down to the meat of it all, The Q!

While I didn’t find much inspiration for building my own rig I did find tons of fundamental principals in BBQ itself. It was a fun competition and I took away a lot of valuable information.

Below is a few photos of the different ways people were cooking at the Kingstree Festival.

Wow, It has been a year since the birth of my child – Memphis Addison Pope. Over that time I have learned a lot about her and hopefully she has learned some about me. I know at this stage in her life I hold major influence over her; her likes and dislikes, her taste in music and art and even her eating habits. I am trying to make the best of it by showing here some of the the things that have influenced me over the years and that may (or may not) influence her.

My wife asked  me to design an invitation for her first birthday party and while I normally turned down these opportunities I deiced to go for it. I have a hard time designing for myself. There are too many options, too many possibilities that I can do which makes it hard for me to settle on just one idea. All I knew for this is that I didn’t want to go the traditional princess route. I know her mind will be warped soon enough so I wanted to go in a different direction.

Memphis Pope First Birthday Invitation

As you can see I pulled the reference from the great Sun Records logo and built the invitation around that. It is a gate fold in the center of the 45 and opens up to a traditional “faux” letterpress poster. I would have loved to actually had it letter pressed by Hatch Show prints our of Nashville or Yee Haw Industries out of Knoxville. Maybe another time.

Memphis Addison Pope I love you and hope you are not to mad at me for trying to raise you to like some of the things that I think are cool. I know soon enough that you will want to have a princess theme birtday party but for now how about some Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, and Jerry Lee Lewis?

With the fourth of July vastly approaching I wanted to make sure I had everything on hand to have a successful cookout. This year I am going to make a whole mess of ribs and I needed to knock out the dry rub before hand. This is the same dry rub that I use for my Boston butts as well as my new recipe for salsa baked chicken. I highly recommend trying this rub as a base for your own. That’s how this rub came into existence. I am using something that I dug up from Bob Gibson and have made it to my own.

It’s pretty basic but if you have any questions please feel free to email me or leave a comment. Happy grilling everyone!

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Ingredients:

1/2 Cup Sugar
1/2 Cup Paprika
1/3 Cup Garlic Salt
1/3 Cup Kosher Salt
1/2 Cup Brown Sugar
1 Tablespoon Chili Powder
1 Teaspoon Cayenne Pepper
2 Teaspoon Ground Black Pepper
2 Teaspoon Crushed Red Pepper Flakes
1 Teaspoon Oregano
1 Teaspoon Cumin
1 Teaspoon Dry Mustard

Directions:
1) Mix all ingredients in medium size mixing bowl

* You can store the dry rub at room temperature indefinitely.
** Should make enough for 2-3 butts.

Dre's Butt Rub On Ribs

Great as a rub for pork and chicken. Maybe to sweet for beef.

There is much more to cooking great BBQ than sauce, heat and smoke. Most are intimidated by it all. To overcome that intimidation I recommend starting off with a much more simple approach.

With this approach you can test the waters while learning some of the simple pleasures of cooking good BBQ.

Ingredients:

1 Boston Butt (Pork Shoulder)
1 Batch Of Mop Bucket Swine Sauce

Cooking Equipment:

1 Crockpot

How To:

1) Place the Boston Butt into the crockpot
2) Pour in the Mop Bucket Swine Sauce to where it covers 7/8 of the meat.
3) Turn the crockpot on high and let it sit for 10-12 hrs. (You won’t burn the meat just make sure you have the sauce in the crockpot. If it evaporates add a bit more.)
4) Turn off the crockpot and let stand for 30-60 min.
5) Remove meat from pot. It should start to fall apart.
6) Pull meat apart. It should be stringy. Make sure you separate it from the fat.
7) And That’s it! You now have some pretty tasty BBQ.
Use the last bit of the Mop Bucket Swine Sauce as your finishing sauce.

My simple notes:

What I do is put in the meat and then pour the sauce where it is covering about 90% of it. Turn on the slow cooker about 9pm and let it cook overnight. Then around 7 am I turn it off. About 8 am I bust it up in the cooker. It should fall right apart. The I shift through the meat taking out all the fat and traying the meat. Toss out all the juices/sauce. You should have some sauce left over from the night before to use as a serving sauce if anybody wants it. You shouldn’t need it but it’s good to have.

It has been exactly one week since I have started a new way of thinking and consuming food. (Some people like to use the word “diet,” but I think of too many negative things when I hear the word diet.) Last Sunday my wife and I stated An Adventure of Food.

We wanted to look at food in a new light and figure out ways of experimenting with it. The main purpose of our Adventure is we wanted to find out creative ways of reducing our body weight while enjoying better foods. We took a base weight of our selves and set goals. From there using a pretty nifty little iPhone application (Loose It!) we calculated our target weight and calorie intake. This gave us a baseline for the experiment with food to begin.

Since last Sunday my wife and I have eaten many more meals together, shared conversation over long walks and developed a new since of family bonding. We still eat what we want, but we control our portions. We now exercise, along with Harley and Memphis, on a regular basis. We even formulate meals that neither one of us ever thought we could. So far the Adventure of Food has been a great success. Even if we do not loose weight, I think Heidi and I both have gain much more out of it.

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For those of you who were wondering:

My Daily Calorie Budget: 1,637

I was 2,162 calories under my weekly budget.

So far I have lost 4 pounds.

At current rate I will reach my target weight July 10, 2009

Favorite meal of the week: Marinated Italian Chicken Breast over a bed of Rotini Pasta Salad

Since CREATE South 2009 I have had a few request for my sauce that I used on the BBQ. While some feel as if your sauce is your mark on the BBQ world I feel as if it is just a tool in the genetic make-up of your meat. So here it goes in full glorious detail!

The Mop Bucket Swine Sauce is used as a both a finishing sauce and as a basting sauce for pull pork BBQ (is there any other kind?) This is a pepper/vinegar sauces that has just the right amount of bite. It is best to make the sauce at least one day prior to serving.

Ingredients

• 4 Cups of Apple Cider Vinegar
• 0.25 Cups of Brown Sugar
• 3 Tablespoons of Salt
• 3 Tablespoons of Crushed Red Pepper Flakes
• 1.5 Teaspoons of Cayenne Pepper
• 1 Teaspoon Ground Black Pepper

Directions:

1. Pour vinegar in large sauce pot and bring to boil.
2. Stir in brown sugar. Let it fully dissolve.
3. Next add salt, cayenne and black pepper.
4. Stir.
5. Add red pepper flakes.
6. Let boil for 3-5 minuets.
7. Remove from heat and let cool.
8. Pour into your “mop bucket” sauce container.
9. Let sauce sit for 6-8 hours.
10. Shake and serve.

Sauce will hold for up to six months in controlled temperature.

* Best to make this sauce one day prior to serving.

Another year has come and gone for CREATE South. It was a great experience this year. As one of the co-founders of CREATE South my hands touch all facets of the conference. For better or worse that is just how it is. We learned a tremendous amount from 2008 and even more form 2009. CREATE South 2010 should be even better.

As I look back on getting CREATE South 2009 together I wanted to make sure I posted some of the key points that I think will lead us to an even better conference in 2010.

• Remember to have fun
• Don’t forget to ask for help
• Know your strengths and weaknesses
• Plan ahead
• Have contingencies
• Find more sponsors

I like to tell myself that this is a grassroots conference. This takes a little pressure off. With a grassroots effort, things tend to a be a little more laid back, expectations from others aren’t so high, and the ability to change everything at the last minute is ok.

Andre @ CREATE South 2009 By Chrys

I do not like structured environments and I want to make sure that CREATE South stays true to the grassroots feel. One day I want to be able to hand off CREATE South to the new blood and let them run with the philosophy that we have instilled in it.

One of the best things we did this year was partner up with Horry Georgetown Technical College. In doing so we had a new found partner with some of the same goals. They were able to provide real life, hands on applications for their students to test their skills. CREATE South in returned received a venue to have the conference and an ongoing working relationship with a leader in the community. For that I am grateful.

Between planning, organizing and cooking I got to have a little fun and meet some really cool people. For me the conference isn’t what I learn in the session but rather what I take away from the people that I meet there. This year was a great exercise in networking for myself and my ideas.

I feel as if CREATE South 2009 was a big success. It laid down a firm foundation to build an even better conference with in 2010.

Until then check out some of the other CREATE South 2009 links:

Tiffany Trent Blog Post

CREATE South 2009 Flickr Group Pool

The Twitter Talk

I love food. As some of you may know I am a certified BBQ judge for the State of South Carolina (SCBA) as well as a member of the KCBS. This weekend I will become the youngest Certified Senior Judge in the state of South Carolina. I am pretty happy about this. I have worked hard over the past two years to achieve this status and will wear my new had with red sash with pride come Saturday. If you get a chance come on out. For more information check out www.smokeonthebeach.com.

Also for all lovers of meat you might want to check out some of the tasty recipies that Home Ec 101 is having for their BeefitsWhatsforDinner.com promotion. They have recipies for Mediterranean Beef Pitas, Walnut Crusted Roast, and Herb Crusted Steaks. Plus they are having a promotional giveaway from a giftcard and cook book. Go check them out and eat some meat!