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

New Toy!

My wife and family ROCK!!

One of my brother-in-laws had some 55 gallon drums. One day I mentioned to him it would be cool to turn one into a smoker. I wasn’t sure when I was going to do it but I kept thinking about it but had other things to do and bigger butts to smoke.

Well, my other brother-in-law thought it would be cool to surprise me with a smoker for my birthday (which is in July) so the BILs talked it over and decided they would build me a smoker from the drum. The contacted my wife and asked her if she could get them information about how to build it.

She listened as I talked and heard me talk about the BBQ Brethren forum and started to nose around the site. She found a link to instructions on how to build one and then read some of the comments and modifications people recommended. She passed all this info on to the BILs and they created my new smoker.

It was almost finished but they had a few questions none of them could answer so they had to surprise me early. They showed me what they had and I was totally SHOCKED!!

I showed them the modifications they were asking about and later that weekend I had a new smoker in my back yard. I’m sure the neighbors love that. Guess I need to make them some BBQ. ;-)

I think this is one of the coolest and best presents I have ever received. It was a total surprise and a very thoughtful gift but I think they had some ulterior motives, more BBQ.

Thank you to my family for this wonderful gift.

"Prayer-dogs" and Ribs

The last two weekends were spent at BBQ competitions. The first in North Augusta, SC and the second in Linconton, NC. I really don’t know how teams can go out every weekend and enter a competition. It would be crazy!!!

The North Augusta competition was the First Annual Banjo-B-Que. It was a pretty big event with some pretty big names. I got to meet both Tuffy Stone of Cool Smoke and Johnny Trigg of Smoking Triggers. both are great guys and fun to talk too.

Our team got to North Augusta and got set up. that night we cooked steaks for part of the cook off, supper and for the sponsors of the contest to eat. They were great. We got everything cooking and were settling in for the night but our neighbors were partying like it was 1999 and we had to ask them to turn down their music.

We were vending at this event but had decided to do “Prayer-dogs.” We gave away hotdogs and prayed with the people we gave them to. It was amazing all the things people had and have going on their lives. Some had friends missing, cancer, broken homes. All had something they needed prayer for. We gave out 130 “prayer-dogs” that day.

There was a chance of rain all day but it held off until we were packing up. Then we had to make a mad dash to get everything in the trailer.

Over all we didn’t do to well in the competition, though our ribs placed 10th, we had lots of fun and were able to encourage many people.

Last weekend we were at the Hog Happenin’ in Lincolnton, NC. We were there just to compete, have a good time and meet some new people.

The bikes at the rally were really cool and lots of interesting people went by. We had a little rain around 9:30 Friday night and it shut down all the festivities. It was a nice quite night.

Freedom Church in Lincolnton have a youth center on the square where the competition is held and they have opened it up the past few years for the BBQers to use. they have water, clean restrooms and fresh coffee. It was great to be able to get a little break in AC and talk with some really good guys.

Our ribs this time took first place and or chicken 14th. We need to work n our brisket and pork some more but we are getting there.

Things to remember:

• Lots of water for summer competitions
• Get packed before the awards ceremony
• Meet new people
• Have fun

Boss Hog Cook Off 2010

This weekend I attended the Boss Hog Cook Off in Waynesboro, GA, the bird dog capital of the US. It is one of the best competitions I've been to. It is well organized and the volunteers make sure you are taken well care of. One of the things we noticed was it seemed like the community was really involved. Local business sponsored different parts, they had a hospitality room for volunteers and contestants and kept it stocked with water and snacks. The ladies who organized it divan awesome job.

We got off off to a later start then planned. We needed to be onsite by 3:30 Friday afternoon and left at noon. The GPS said it was a 3 hour 45 minute drive, we would be cutting it close. We arrived at 3:30 just making the cutoff time.

One of the thing this contest does is a wing contest for Friday evening. It is free to enter if you are already cooking, so we entered. They dropped off our brick of wings, they were still frozen solid, and we started the thawing process. Thankfully they pushed wing turn in time bit so we could defrost them and get them fully cooked. We turned in the prescribed number to the judges and the rest were served to the public.

We did awful in the wing category. We thought they looked and tasted great. The judges were local celebrities so we think some of them were confused on the judging scale or just didn't like spicy wings. At least we had a good snack.

We prepped our other for meats for the competition and got them cooking. This time we changed our rib and brisket recipes to others that we liked much better then the previous contest. The brisket used my home made rub and a mop recipe that I found online. The results were much better. Our brisket took fourteenth place and the ribs seventh. Our chicken, which we thought was our weakest meat, came in eleventh and our pork, which we thought was our strongest, came in twenty-somethingth

Overall we came in sixteenth which was an improvement over last time. Now we have some minor tweaks to do to improve our scores but we think we have the basic formula right.

Thoughts:
Plan to leave earlier than needed
Cook your meat how you like it
Be organized - it makes the contest much more relaxed
Have fun with the anything but categories but focus on the four main ones

BBQ Judging, it's tough but somebody has to do it.

This weekend I judged my first BBQ contest. It was interesting. We arrived early and waited fir the judges meeting to start at 10 am but it didn't start until. About 10:20. When it started it went fairly quick. They introduced the coordinator, the person who set up the contest and finally the mayor of Anderson, where the contest was held. After all the introductions were done the coordinator went over the rules. By this time it was 10:50 and we were to start judging at 11 because there was a sue contest too. They quickly finished up and had us go to the judging room.

I was assigned to judge the backyard category. Not bad on its own but I only got to judge chicken and ribs. Only one piece of the chicken was really good. One was rubbery and salty the others tasted like the cooks used lighter fluid and didn't let it burn off all the way. The ribs were a bit better. Three tasted really good but one of them was very tough, it could have cooked a bit longer.

It was fun and I look forward to doing it again but look forward to judging the professional teams and tasting all four of the meats.

Thoughts:
Show up on time
Take your time and taste the food
Use the water and crackers to cleanse your palate
Talk to the other judges
Have fun


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