Tall Tales & Falsehoods

What are your thoughts?

To get you to understand what BBQ means to the shout I wanted to showcase a documentary put out by the Southern Foodways Alliance. They have multiple films about the Southern way of life and recommend you check them out.

Whole Hog from Joe York on Vimeo.

To go along with the BBQ On The Waccamaw poster assignment I wanted us to look at one of the best know BBQ competitions around. The Jack Daniel’s World Championship Invitational Barbecue is know all over the world and is an invitation only event. Lets take a look at some of the posters of years past that were printed on a traditional letterpress.

Create an identity/poster for the BBQ On the Waccamaw contest on May 13-14, 2011. The BBQ on the Waccamaw contest is a part of the Bluegrass on the Waccamaw festival.

The most important info that needs to go on the poster is the title (aka The Identity) the dates of the contest and the location. The competition is a pork based competition with a pulled pork and a ribs category. There will be a sweet and savory competition aka “anything Butt” on Friday night. It is presented by the Waccamaw Sertoma.

Poster should be 11×17
Full Color and Bleeds are accepted.
Due Date is April 12th
Should have a graphic element that can be adapted to a logo type for the competition.
Please think about the printing options for this as well (research letterpress and screen printing).

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.

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.