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.

Cooking with Fire! - Contest

Cooking with Fire!

This year I had some t-shirts made for the blog by Kong Screen Printing in Austin, TX, and stickers done at Contagious Graphics in Charlotte, NC. Both are great printers and easy to work with. Because I have a couple extra t-shirts and lots of stickers I'm going to run my first contest.

Head over to facebook.com/bbq4fun, like my page and post your best picture of summer grilling or BBQ. There needs to be food in the picture that has been cooked with fire. There will be two winners; the photo with the most likes and the photo that my esteemed panel of judges (my wife and girls)  like the best. The winners will receive a Q4Fun t-shirt (sizes are limited), a Q4Fun sticker and a baggie of my rub. The contest will run until August 17, 2013 and is only for those in the continental US.

The t-shirt.

The sticker.

The Q Rub

Eating for a Good Cause

This week I had the privilege to take my wife to the 17th Annual Taste of the Nation Charlotte which is part of Share our Strength. Thanks to CLT dining for informing me about this event. This event featured over 20 area restaurants. They shared their food and time to help those less fortunate be able to have food. All the proceeds went to a couple local organizations, Second Harvest Food Bank and Community Culinary School of Charlotte.

The Joy of BBQ

I'm looking forward to this weekend. Saturday I plan to get up around seven, start a fire in the cooker and cook some pork butts and chicken. Some people say, "That's a lot of work for some food." It may be, but I find it enjoyable and relaxing.

My oldest brother is in-town visiting so I promised him and his family some real BBQ. It is a labor of love. Love for my family and love for the experience of BBQing.

There is something about a cooker, fire  and raw meat that just feels so good. BBQ is about the process and the finished product. Maybe it appeals to that primitive man in me. The caveman you might say. Using raw heat to turn a slab of meat into a work of culinary art. Maybe there is some what of a religious experience in it. After all God said that the sacrifices were "a pleasing aroma." (Exodus 29:41). Yeah I know pork is not a kosher meat and never used in sacrifices but when I smell the cooker going that's one of the things it makes me think of.

After the meat is cooked and shared it is nice to know my family and friends are enjoying it. The sounds of good conversation around the table or no sound at all as they eat. Just hanging out with them after a long hot day near the cooker. That is what makes BBQ so great for me.

BBQ is always better when shared with friends and family.

First Mini Catering Gig

This past weekend one of our friends asked me to cook for their sons b-day. He wanted butts, slaw and potato salad.

I did four butts and a big that's-a-bowl of coleslaw and potato salad. I used a fellow designer's (Jeff Fisher of LogoMotives) coleslaw recipe. It was very good.

Well I was supposed to be up at 3:30 am to get the butts on by 4:00 so they would be done in time for the party. I didn't get up until 5:30. D'OH!!

Well the butts didn't quite get to the temp I wanted (195) but they were done (180-185) and tasted great. The people I was cooking for are all Carolinian's and very particular about their Q, they all loved it.

Here are a couple pictures from the cook.
The cooker


Smoking nicely


The butts about half way through.


Things I learned:
1: Make sure when you set your alarm you turn it on.
2: cooking a little hotter does help get the food done, but it still takes time.
3: smoked hotdogs that roll in the grease from a pork butt are very yummy.

Smokin' Gumbo

This week is our ASC fund raiser at work. One of the annual traditions for it is a chili cook off. Last year I entered and won. So, of course this year I had to defend the title. The theme of the fund raiser this year is Mardis Gras, so, of course, the food was to be Cajun or Creole.

I tossed around a few ideas and decided to make a gumbo using smoked chicken, smoked andouille sausage and smoked peppers. The only gumbo I have ever made has been a quick version that I don't really think qualifies as gumbo but more as a soup.

I went online and searched for a recipe to use and found one on Food Network. It is one of Emeril Lagasse's gumbo recipes. I used the main part of it but altered it to suit my needs and style of cooking. 


Ingredients
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups chopped onions
• 1 cup chopped celery
• 1 cup chopped Roasted bell pepper
• 1 pound smoked sausage, such as andouille or kielbasa, cut crosswise into 1/2-inch slices
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne
• 3 bay leaves
• 6 cups chicken broth
• 1 pound smoked chicken removed from the bones.
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley leaves
• 1/2 cup chopped green onions

Directions
Combine the oil and flour in a large stock pot over medium heat. Stirring slowly and constantly for 20 to 25 minutes, make a dark brown roux, the color of chocolate. Add the onions, celery, and bell peppers and continue to stir for 4 to 5 minutes, or until wilted. Add the sausage, salt, cayenne, and bay leaves. Continue to stir for 3 to 4 minutes. Add the chicken broth. Stir until the roux mixture and water are well combined. Bring to aboil, then reduce heat to medium-low. Cook, uncovered, stirring occasionally, for 1 hour.

Add smoked chicken. Simmer for 2 hours. Skim off any fat that rises to the surface. Remove from the heat. Stir in the parsley and green onions. Remove the bay leaves and serve in deep bowls over rice.

How I did it
That is the recipe I used. I made my stock also and smoked my chicken, sausage and peppers which bring a nice flavor to the mix. I followed the above directions after I had smoked my meat and peppers.

I butterflied the chicken and took the backs, necks and gizzards, put them into the stock pot and covered them with water, chopped celery, garlic, onions slat and pepper and brought it all to a boil. I then put the lid on  and let it simmer over medium heat while I cooked the meats and peppers (about two hours).

Butterflied Chickens

Chicken stock cooking

I smoked the chicken as I talked about in my "Smoked Chicken" entry. It took about two hours for it to be ready. I added the andouille to the smoker about half way through so it would cook for an hour. 

The smokin' meats

Done cookin'

I let the chicken cool down and then carved it. As I carved the meat off the bones I added the bones and some of the skin to the stock. It gave it that extra punch of flavor. 

Once that was all done I strained the stock into another bowl so I wouldn't have any chunks in the broth. I then started the roux. Roux takes time, but is worth it to make it right. It is not difficult but you do need to watch it carefully so it doesn't get too dark, too quick.

The roux

After the roux was done I added the "Holy Trinity" onions, celery and the roasted peppers.

The roux and the trinity

Then the andouille sausage was added.

Marrying the flavors

Once it was all combined I added the stock and let it simmer. 

Flavors combining into a happy mess.

After simmering for an hour gumbo and the chicken was combined and it simmered for another two hours with the flavors getting all happy.

Ready to serve.

I made the gumbo on Saturday for our Thursday event so the family taste tested it to make sure it was all good. This also allowed the gumbo to sit in the fridge to let the flavors get more integrated. 

The final product

Thursday I served it all up and ended up tying for first place. It was a good time and good food. I would make this dish again just because the flavors are so good. 

Holy Smoke!

This weekend I was asked by Lakeshore Christian Fellowship to smoke 280 lbs of pork for a youth fund raiser. I personally don't own a smoker big enough to handle that amount of meat (32 butts) so I contacted my friend who owns the Catchafire for Q BBQ team and borrowed his Lang smoker.

I enlisted the help of my wife and daughters. We went over to the church Saturday night and rubbed all 32 butts and took them out to the cooker. I got the fire going and by 10 had the pork on the cooker. They needed to be ready by 9:30 am to go to another campus and be ready for when first service was finished at 10:15 Sunday morning.

Before my wife left for the evening she asked me twice if I had enough wood for the cook. Of course I did.

The plan was to add wood every hour to keep the temperature between 225-250 degrees and spray the meat with a mop sauce (1 cup Apple cider vinegar, 1/2 cup worcestershire sauce, Soy sauce, water and olive oil). Oh yes, and to stay awake all night.

With that amount of meat on the cooker, it was full and difficult to keep the temperature where it should be. I started to use more wood than anticipated. About 1:00 am I realized that I would run out of wood before the cook was done. Around 3:00 am my spray bottle broke so I could no longer mop the meat. Looking at the meat at 3 I wasn't pleased with it's progress. It should have been farther along so the only solution was to cook hotter which required more wood.

To stay awake I had my laptop with me and watched a few movies and also set the alarm on my ipod for each hour. I dozed here and there but never really fell fast asleep, so that was good.

At 5:45 I called my wife. "sorry I woke you but I need to get more wood." No "I told you so" or anything from her but a quick "we'll be there in a few." She is awesome!

By 6 I was worried the meat wouldn't be done on time. And had three sticks of wood left. My wife showed up a little after that and I put the remaining wood on the fire to stoke it up and we went to the store room and got some more wood.

With more wood and the cooker hotter the meat started to look like I thought it should. By 8:30 I was able to pull off eight butts that were closest to the fire and move the rest forward to get more heat.

After that everything went well. The church youth, my wife, and I worked to pull the pork and run the trays to the servers. The kids who helped were great and did a great job. Each of them was interested in learning a bit more about BBQ and the terminology used when talking about it.

Many of the people that ate thanked me and complemented me on the pork they ate. A few asked if I had a restaurant (I don't) and a couple wanted to buy full butts to take home. Thankfully there was enough that they were able to.

From a cookers perspective the event was a success even with the hic-ups we had.

So what did I learn from this?

• Always listen to your wife
• Take more wood than you think you'll need
• Take a back-up mop bottle
• More wood
• Don't forget the charcoal to start the fire
• Wood
• Take more sauce than you think you need
• Did I mention wood?
• Have fun

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

Q Chili

This is a recipe I came up with after smoking some pork one weekend and we needed to eat up the left overs so they wouldn’t go bad. It was a hit with the family. I also do competition BBQ some weekends and sometimes we enter the “anything but” category. We needed a dish for one competition so I made this. It was a hit with my team and came in third.

1 Onion

4 cloves of crushed garlic

2 TBLS Olive Oil

1 bottle Woodchuck Cider (your choice of flavor)

1/4 Cup soy sauce

2 TBLS Worcestershire Sauce

2 TBLS Apple cider vinegar

2 TBLS Mustard BBQ sauce

1lb smoked pulled pork (no sauce)

1 roasted pablano pepper

2 roasted bell peppers (red and yellow)

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

1/4 tsb black pepper

1/4 tsp celery salt

1/4 tsp paprika

1 tsp Chili powder (or to taste)

1 can diced tomatoes

1 can black beans

1. Dice the onion and saute in a pan with the olive oil and garlic until it is translucent.
2. Add cider, soy sauce, worcestershire sauce, apple cider vinegar and BBQ sauce; bring it to a boil and let it reduce down.
3. Add the pork and mix it in.
4. Chop up the roasted peppers and add them to the pot. Let it simmer for a bit. (you can put it in a crock pot at this point to let it simmer for a while or to keep it hot when serving)
5. Add all the dry spices and mix it up.
6. Add the tomatoes and the black beans and mix it up. Let it simmer until the smell makes you want to dig in.

I like to smoke the peppers when I make BBQ pork which gives the chili another level of flavor. When I make this I add some of my rub and use the mustard sauce I make. I have found the heat in it comes after the initial flavor to the back of your throat but it is not overpowering.

Snow Q

This weekend I smoked some pork and a brisket. It was the first time I smoked a brisket so I had a bit of fear going into it. I really didn't want to ruin it. The other obstacle I ran into was snow. When it snows it is harder to keep the smoker at the right temperature so the meat may cook quicker (due to high temperature) or longer (due to low temperatures). Well, turned out I had a flat not a whole brisket so it only took about 5 hours to cook it as opposed to 10+.

Another thing I did was video my process. I won an iPod Nano form Dealsplus on twitter and decided to give it a go. the video didn't turn out too bad and neither did the Q. Here is the video:

The snow Q turned to a swamp Q by the end of the day as everything melted.

Below is the final brisket cut up (ok the part that made it the container, the rest was eaten quickly).
And here are the two butts before I pulled them. I didn't take any photos of the pulled pork though.

What is BBQ?

I grill and I BBQ. Aren’t they the same thing? No. Don’t you fire up the BBQ for burgers and hot dogs? No. Grilling and BBQ are two different animals. Both are good and give you great results. But, they are very different.

Grilling and BBQ both use fire to cook your meat on a cooker of some sort. It can use gas (though that doesn’t make great BBQ, IMHO), charcoal or wood. You get a fire going and throw the meat on until it is done. That’s about it for similarities.

Grilling is hot and fast. You can fire up your grill and be ready to go in a few minutes. You put your meat on it for 10 minutes to 2 hours, depending on what you’re grilling. Usually your cook temps are around 300° F. It creates a hot, quick cook. I love to grill burgers, hotdogs, steaks and chicken.

BBQ is low and slow. You fire up your grill, usually charcoal or wood, and bring it up to about 230°F and your cook time can be anywhere from 3 hours to 18 hours depending on the meat and the weight of it. BBQ usually imparts smoke to the meat and breaks down the connective tissue slowly giving you an awesome tender piece of meat as a finished product. Pork, Chicken, turkey, beef, ribs all work great for a low and slow cook.


So when I’m talking about BBQ, I’m talking low and slow. As I continue to blog I will be adding some BBQ recipes and some grilling recipes. But the main focus will be on BBQ.