Sunday, July 25, 2010

Ewe... No its Goat

This weekend was a first for me. I smoked a goat for about 60 people. A scary prospect as I had never done this before. I searched the Internet, my cookbooks and asked people who had cooked goat before for any help. I found the recipe I used in the Big Bob Gibson's BBQ Book. It was good.

The night before the cook, I needed to do some prep work. I needed to rub some pork butts I was going to smoke, make my BBQ sauce, BBQ mop and the Barbados baste so the next day everything would be ready to go.

We were over at the cook site by 7am to get the fire going. While I was starting the fire, my wife and brother-in-law finished cleaning the goat my other brother-in-law had butchered. Goats are hairy beasts and the meat had picked up some of that hair when it was butchered.

After the meat was cleaned we rubbed the goat with suya mix. Suya is a street food you can buy in West Africa. It is beef or goat coated with a spicy mixture of ground up peanuts, pepper and other spices. I had the four goat legs and a couple of other smaller pieces of goat that needed to be cooked. The four legs and the pork butts all went on at the same time as they would take about eight hours to cook at 225 degrees.



Every hour I would add wood and spray the pork butts with the mop. After the first three hours of cooking I started to baste the goat with the Barbados baste every hour.



Around 12:30pm I put the rest of the goat and the chicken on. My plan was to start to pull the smaller pieces off at 5pm and keep them in the warmer.



5pm came around and the chicken was ready. I pulled it off and dipped it in BBQ sauce I had been warming and put it in the warmer to be served at 6. The pork and larger pieces of goat weren't quite ready so I started to pull off the smaller goat pieces and slice them up. Of course I had to take a taste sample. It was good.



By 7 we had all the meat off, cut up and many happy diners. Those who had eaten goat before complemented me on doing a great job of cooking it.










My mop:
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup water