Review: Midwood Smokehouse

Name: Midwood Smokehouse 
Location: Charlotte, NC
Price: $$ - $6-$34 (that's for the Pig Out)
Hours: Sun - Wed • 11am - 10pm
Thurs - Sat • 11am - 11pm

Charlotte has a bad rap for BBQ joints. It's located in the center of the Carolina's, so you'd think they would have some great BBQ places. Well, over the last 10 years that has started to change. and it is AWESOME!

Recently my wife and I went to Midwood Smokehouse to try their BBQ. My friend Wayne of Big Wayner recommended it awhile back, but they had one location that I was rarely near it. In the past year they have opened up two other locations and one was much closer to me. I finally had a chance to get over there and try it. I was not disappointed.

BBQ & Brews - NoDa Brewing

After reviewing Virgil's Barbecue Road Trip Cookbook it got me thinking about which beers go well with which BBQ and grilled foods. With all the craft brewers around the country and summer here, I thought it would be cool to talk to some of the local Charlotte craft brewers and see what they said and which of their brews they would recommend for BBQ and grilling.

NoDa Brewing Company Brew House

BBQ is a food that is nuanced and affected by various factors, from rubs to sauces to the woods used to smoke it. Trying to pair the perfect beer can be difficult, so for this series, we'll be talking in generalities of flavors. Good BBQ allows the meat to show through and the various factors enhance it. A good beer should do the same or play counterpoint to the flavors.

I visited the NoDa Brewing Tap room and talked with Andy Grimes, sales/marketing beer guru. He was very knowledgeable about beer and BBQ. We talked about how to pair beers with BBQ and grilled items and he gave me recommendations on which of their year round beers to pair with which meats.

Swine 'n Dine for Charity

Team Swine 'n Dine: Frank Fields, Rob Ford,
Mike Bonn. Not pictured, Preston Cornett.

I received an email from my friend Gwen Poth who requested I check out and review this BBQ team who use their BBQ to raise money for 24 Hours of Booty in Charlotte. I always love it when other BBQers use their ability for good and to raise awareness for a good cause. After all OTT is a great event I help with, so I’m always happy to spread the word for someone else. Rob, the spokes person for the team, and I exchanged a few emails so I could find out about the team. We set up a time for me to meet the team and try some of their porcine product.

The Team
In the emails we sent back and forth, Rob gave me the history of his team, Swine ‘n Dine. It is made up of four members; Rob Ford, Frank Fields, Preston Cornett, and Mike Bonn. They started to cook at their neighborhood festival and sold sandwiches and pork butts and all the proceeds went back to the neighborhood. They really enjoyed cooking together and decided to cook for the neighbors once again. Their neighbors liked what they were cooking and asked if they would do it again for a third year. The team went from cooking 150lbs of pork to 400lbs per cook.

Review: NY Butcher Shop, Charlotte, NC

Name: New York Butcher Shoppe
Location: Charlotte, NC
Hours: Monday - Saturday, 10am - 7pm; Sunday, Noon - 7pm

I was talking to a judge at a BBQ competition and found out about a butcher shop in Charlotte. I had also heard about tri-tip, This is a standard BBQ meat in California and I had never tried it. I have search around the Charlotte area for it but could never find it. I emailed the butcher shop and found out they carried tri-tip and during the summer they would fire up a Big Green Egg to cook samples of that and other BBQ meats for customers. I had to go.

I decided I would get a tri-tip and a pork butt to see how this shop stacked up. I had visions of a huge walk-in fridge in the back that had meat hanging from hooks (cool) and a counter man with a white blood stained apron (not cool). I looked them up online and it looked like a neighborhood deli. I was still hoping for the walk-in fridge with the meat hanging.

My family came with me and we pulled up to a nice shopping center with a few nice shops around the butcher shop. We entered and were greeted with a prompt and friendly hello. The shop was clean, the people behind the counter had no blood stains on their aprons and they were very friendly. They let us look around for a bit, finished helping a customer and then asked if they could help us.

We talked for a bit about the different meat they carried. Much of it is vacuumed packed and shipped in as larger cuts and they cut it down. Due to federal regulations they can't have the whole animals hanging in the freezer to cut the meat off of. Which is sad but they do get larger cuts in and break them down.

They do have box specials where you can get a bunch of meat for a great price. I almost went with one of those but none had tri-tip and was looking forward to trying that cut.

Pork butt.

Tri-tip.

We settled on a Boston butt (they sell them boneless) and a Tri-tip. Both cuts of meat had good color and they vacuum seal them at the store after they are broken down. The butt had great marbling in the money muscle (the money muscle is like the fillet of pork butt) and nice marbling throughout the meat. The tri-tip looked to be a nice cut of beef with good marbling also. I decided to smoke both pieces of meat.

The money muscle. 

Pork butt ready to be rubbed.

Tri-tip ready to be rubbed.

I prepared the butt, as I usually do, the night before; honey mustard slather and rub. The tri-tip I rubbed about 4 hours before I was ready to put it on the cooker.




I heated the smoker up to 250° and put the butt on. The butt takes about 8 hours where the tri-tip only takes about 2. Being I had never done a tri-tip I read up on cooking it. They can be either grilled or smoked. I went with the smoke method.

Pork butt ready to go on the cooker.

I rubbed the tri-tip about 4 hours before I was ready to put it on and returned it to the fridge. About an hour before cook time I pulled it out of the fridge and let it warm up to room temperature. When I put it on the grill I put it on fat cap up (the fat cap is a layer of fat on top of the meat.

Fat cap on the tri-tip.

I like to cook it with the cap up as it helps to keep in moisture and as it renders it drips down I to the meat creating a basting action.

The meat cooking. 

After the tri-tip had cooked for an hour I flipped it over to help the bark on the nonfat side form. All the sites I researched on recommended cooking the tri-tip to 135°. After an hour and a half of cooking I started to check the temperature every 30 minutes. I didn't want to overcook the meat. The tri-tip had cooked for two and a half hours and reached 138° so I took it off and foiled it. I put it along with the pork butt into a cooler to keep it warm until time to serve.

Tri-tip ready to be carved.

Tri-tip carved and ready to serve. 

Both the butt and the tri-tip came out awesome. The pork butt was one of the best one I have cooked. The meat was tender, moist and very tasty.

I do recommend the New York Butcher Shoppe. The staff is helpful,friendly and fun. They know their meat and make great recommendations for what to cook and how to cook it. The quality of the meat is good and the service great. On the Gibbs' Ribs* scale I give them a full rack of ribs. I look forward to going back and trying some other cuts they have.

*When I do reviews, books or otherwise, I rate the items with ribs (they are my favorite BBQ dish). A full rack is great and a single rib is poor. I will tend to stick to a full rack, half rack or one rib.

BBQ & Blues 2011

September 9-10

This year the team I compete with has taken a break from BBQ competitions so I have decided to judge a few that are close by. BBQ & Blues is an annual event in Charlotte, NC that I have competed in. This year I judged.


I am a certified KCBS BBQ judge but have been interested in the MBN style and thought this would be a good way to find out about it. I sent in my judging application and was selected to help judge the backyard category of pork. I lucked out and got to judge ribs too.

My family had dentist appointments on Friday, so we thought we would go by the competition to see where it was and see what all was there. We walked around and I talked to various teams. It's a bit different not competing and seeing your competitors. Some have new cookers, new rigs and new trophies. Others never change.

We also got to check out the backyard cookers and sampled some of their anything-but entries. An anything-but is something other then BBQ. It could be wings, dessert, wrack of lamb or salmon. Usually it is made on site and cooked in a cooker. We got to try some wings and they were good.

Saturday my family dropped me off at the train station, which I took up to Charlotte. On the way a girl who was visiting from South Korea started to ask me questions about Charlotte and what I was heading there for. I told her about the competition and she decided to tag along and check it out. She had never heard or seen anything like it. I showed her around the festival and told her about how the meat is cooked and what the judges look for. One of the teams was kind enough to give her a sample of their ribs. She loved them. I had to head in to judge so we said good-bye and she toured the rest of the festival.

The judging for MBN is similar but different from KCBS style. In KCBS both professional and backyard categories are judged at the same time by two different groups of judges. It's quick and efficient and the meat is turned in within a 10 minute window so it is still hot. As soon as the coordinators have six boxes they are delivered to a table and the judging starts.


In MBN style (for backyard) the contestants line up and wait for the coordinators to start to collect the boxes. They have a turn in time and that is when the judges start to collect the meat. Each box is marked with a table number and a box number 1-6 to identify it. The coordinators write down the teams and the unique number. Once all the meat is set on the tables the judges are seated and the boxes opened to judge.

Both styles use three categories; appearance, taste and tenderness. MBN adds an overall score area where you give the meat a rating from 10 down.

I was able to judge both the ribs and the pork. Last time I judged backyard the rib entries were not good and the chicken all tasted like lighter fluid, so my expectations were not high. I was pleasantly surprised by the entries. All of them were good. In the ribs category there were a couple that had great flavor and tenderness and really stood out. One entry was really tough but had good flavor. Only one of them looked good, had good tenderness but the flavor profile was not to my liking. In the pork entries I judged, one of them I scored all 10s. It looked good, was tender and I just wanted to keep eating it. It had the right combination of sweet porkiness and salty bark. One entry tasted like it had been injected with bad juice of some kind. It had a sour, bad fruit taste which was unfortunate because it looked delicious and was perfectly cooked.

After judging I was able to walk around the competition some more and talk to some of the professional teams that had cooked whole hogs. I was even able to get some samples, and they were GOOD. Someday I will cook a whole hog.


Saturday was a lot of fun. Eating good BBQ. Talking BBQ with old friends, teaching new friends the finer points of BBQ and learning of some new places I want to check out and write reviews on.

BBQ & Blues 2011 II

The second day of photos from the BBQ & Blues competition in Charlotte, NC. I'm working on a third post about my experience and thoughts on judging for it. They also had a car show.