I have one of these. Using propane makes it easy to control the temp.

Weber Smokey Mountain. It is amazing. http://www.virtualweberbullet.com/ There is an active forum in there where tons of good info is posted.

I think I am gonna make some pulled chicken today.

Gotta get the wsm. Buy quality, only stings once

yup WSM is the only way to go.

Damn, that OP looks bomb!

Absolutely.

Awesome. I ordered the 18". Pretty sure I'm going to make BBQ one of my weekend hobbies, I've always like good BBQ but never had any way of making it myself til now.

Sorry just saw this now.

I only had the cheese on for an hour of cold smoke.

You have to seal the cheese up really well and then let it sit for about 10 days and just let the smoke permeate the cheese. It turned out really good.

Competed in my first BBQ competition this weekend, BBQ at the Summit, in Dillon CO.

Here's some pron of my turn-in boxes:

Pork (sliced and pulled)


Brisket


Ribs - did loinbacks instead of spares. Next time, spares.



Chicken



Also cooked and sold some wings (honey/sriracha/apricot) among other things.


The team



Chicken was good enough to earn us 5th place out of 75 teams. Cash prize! No calls in the other meats, which was too bad because I thought the pork was ****ing perfect.

Going to Dinosaur tonite! Will give a TR.

Chicken - 6
Pork - 6
Ribs - 5
Brisket - 7

Everything looks good but i'd eat the **** out of that chicken. Very nice.

HOME MADE BACON TOOTHPICK?!

Grunching this thread - I'll catch up soon.

I need some help.

I offered to cook some chicken and ribs for an outdoor event (tennis tourney) this Saturday. I will prep and smoke Friday night for service the next day at noon at a public park using a grill to finish everything. The guy running the show bought all the meat. I picked it up from his house a half hour ago, and he bought spare ribs with the brisket bone? still attached. Can I separate this myself somehow before I smoke it? After cooking? Should I bring it back to the meat market and ask them to cut off the non-rib part? Ideally, I would like to just cut the rack into 2-rib pieces after cooking but I think this cheap cut will be difficult to deal with. Help a brotha out please.

cutting full spares down to St.Louis spares is pretty easy. Take a full slab and place it vertically with the brisket bone down on the cutting board then push straight down. The rack will flex at the cartilage joints. Take your largest sharp knife, roll the rack so that the "dish" faces up then cut across that line.
Here's a pretty good how to video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_MGM_RRTUQ

**** that noise don't you have a table saw at work?

Thanks SDP.

We have several saws, but they are soaked with cutting fluid, oil, and metal chips.

+1 City Market is unbelievable. Also, pretty much all of the joints in Lockhart, TX are pretty outstanding. I've never tried it, but i've heard Snow's in Lexington is supposed to be the greatest thing ever, and judging from the picture that was posted earlier in the thread, the rumors may be true.

Awesome thread btw.

I have a question about rating 75 different competitors in a BBQ contest. For it to be fair, it all has to be rated by the same panel correct? Meaning you have a panel of people that sample 75 platters?

Also, for San Francisco, there is only one BBQ place, and it is ****ing super legit, Da'Pitt BBQ

The Yelp reviews are poor (lol CA ppl)...they get tons of **** on there for being dirty, out of things, messing up orders/forgetting stuff, and being super stoned all the time...but it is excellent.

OMG I wanna slit my wrists. I want BBQ so bad but I live in mother****ing New England.

Anyway - I've done the Alton Brown ceramic smoker and it works great....insanely smokey pulled pork after 12 sweet hours of hickory. Getting the temp right can be a bit of a pain, but once u do it once it's ez.

Also - somebody gave me a bottle of Arthur Bryant's sauce and I hate it tbh. It's way too overpowering. The slightest bit of sauce takes over everything.

Went to the BC BBQ Championships in Whistler a few weeks back, ate so much BBQ for a $5 donation was ridiculous. A group of friends and I (2 of whom are red seal chefs) are starting up a BBQ team to enter events in the Pacific Northwest. As well, we're going to design and build our own smoker (**** YEAH!)

Tomorrow though, going to get certified as a PNWBA (Pacific NorthWest Barbecue Association) Judge. $50 for the course and includes (obv) samples of everything to be judged. Epic Monday imo.

I can tell you that every single successful competitive BBQ guy foils ribs these days. Most follow some variation of early smoking without, foiling and then finishing outside of the foil. It isn't old school, but virtually everyone has converted. Brisket and pork butt are still usually not foiled, but most everyone uses injection, which at one point got the same reaction as foiling.

There are as many different judging certifications and processes as there are contests, but the general method is that there are preliminary panels who pick the best from their "heat" and promote it to more experienced "final" judges. Nobody tastes everything.

There is a lot of variation in what is preferred from one location to another. For instance, at Memphis in May (probably the biggest single comp), the general belief is that their judges prefer a more sweet style, so that everyone slathers on the brown sugar and sprays constantly with apple juice. Texas comps prefer a more spice-centric approach, etc, etc.

i've only ever used a charcoal smoker, this idea of turning a gas grill into a smoker is intriguing. i have a four-burner brinkman's gas grill with a rack over the main surface... if i set a single burner to low on the far left, set up a smoke pouch or similar above it, and put the meat on the upper right (or for something big like a pork butt, maybe just on the far right side), is that likely to work at all?

couple friends and i had a sauce competition with some pulled pork a few weeks ago and i took the unofficial vote with i guess what you would call a st. louis style homemade sauce vs. a buddy using melvin's out of the jug.

It'll be hard to keep the temperature below 300. Might work if you add a water bowl in the middle to act as a heat sink.