BBQ 101

We have been fortunate to escape all of the horrible weather in Wisconsin. We got to Florida long before the bad stuff hit.

Back by popular demand - on Tuesday January 13th I put on a BBQ class that was eagerly attended by 7 daring BBQ cooks. Last year we had high winds the day of the class and had trouble keeping the temperature up in the cookers.

Since the Weather Man had forecast gusty winds and heavy rain as a cold front came through, I set up the class in the campground gazebo.

Monday was a busy day for me. It started by sweeping out the gazebo and washing down and sanitizing the counter tops and campers sink and then setting up my cooker.

I picked up the meat on Monday and I also picked up some bags of smoking wood chips from Fire up the Grill outdoor kitchen store in Port Charlotte. Dave, the owner, was kind enough to get us started with samples of some of the smoking woods he sells in his store.

On Monday afternoon I prepared a brine mixture for the 13 lb packer cut Brisket. I brined this hunk of meat overnight in a mixture of salt, sugar, and spices.

Tuesday morning I fired up my smoker about 7:30 – it was up to temp (a perfect 250*) by the time the eager students showed up at 8 AM.

I wanted to get the brisket on as as possible, so I demonstrated how to trim the brisket, showed the way the grain of the meat ran in different directions, seasoned it with my own special rub, and into the smoker it went.

Next I demonstrated how to trim and season a Boston butt (does not come from the butt of the pig and has nothing at all to do with Boston). Then it was hands on for the cooks as the students took their turn at trimming and seasoning 3 more Boston Butts.

I put on 3 or 4 Turkey drumsticks for tasting samples for lunch. They turned out so good that we had Irene go to Wal-Mart and get a dozen more. For additional tasting samples, I made up a couple of pounds of pork sausage which was great with the sweet hickory smoke flavor.

Next we trimmed slabs of ribs into Kansas City racks of ribs. All were seasoned to perfection and into the smokers they went.

The weather man was right on the mark. Mid morning the winds picked up so we put the tarps up on the gazebo to block the wind. All day long the weather got worse. In mid to late afternoon the heavy rains came through. It sure was good we had the shelter of the gazebo.

All in all, the class was a resounding success. Everybody had fun and picked up a few new tips. In total we cooked a 13 lb brisket, about 20 lbs of pork butt, 12 racks of ribs, 2 lbs of sausage and over a dozen turkey drumsticks. Everybody went home with a 20 page class handout and plenty of “Q”.