A Smokin' Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving smoked a lot of meat. I did two turkeys, a 20lb and a 15lb, an elk roast, venison steaks, three pork butts, venison ribs and a partridge in a pear-tree. Ok, I didn't real smoke a partridge or a pear-tree, but I did cook the rest.


Wednesday night before Thanksgiving I was exhausted. In had been up all night helping to cook 250 turkeys for needy families in our area. When I got home I needed to make the brine for the turkeys and a marinade for the elk and venison steak. It was a difficult task to do as I kept forgetting what I was doing. But I made it.

I don't remember falling asleep but I do remember waking up at 5 am thinking,"I need to get the fire going for the turkeys."

We were planing to eat at 1:30 so it gave me a good seven hours to make sure the meat was cooked properly to 160+ degrees.

By six I had the turkeys on and by ten I had the elk on. The elk only took about two hours to cook to 140-145 degrees.


I ended up grilling the venison right before we went to my sisters so they would be fresh. I used my Texas grill to cook everything on so once the turkey and elk was done I added some wood and heated up the grill to grilling temp and put the steaks on.

The other meat I listed I actually cooked on Friday for a party that night.

The venison ribs I smoked for 2 hours, wrapped them in foil with Strongbow apple cider for an hour and then glazed them with some BBQ sauce and put them on the cooker for another 45 minutes.

Everyone enjoyed the flavors of each of the meats.

The brine for the turkey is as follows:
1 gallon of water
2 cups salt
1 Woodchuck apple cider (I use Granny Smith)
1 Tablespoon pepper
1 Tablespoon favorite rub
1/2 cup brown sugar

I don't use a brining bag as they are expensive but I do use either a roasting bag or a garbage bag to hold the liquid and the turkey and stick them in a cooler with some ice for at least 12 hours. I get the cooker to about 275 to cook the turkeys.




The marinade for the elk was:
2 cups red wine (if you wouldn't drink it don't cook with it)
Half a large onion chopped
4 cloves of garlic crushed
2 Bay leaves
1teaspoon pepper
2 teaspoons favorite rub

I let the elk roast and venison steaks marinade in this mixture for 12 hours also. Since the elk is lean I made a bacon lattice to wrap it in. I put it on the cooker with the turkeys for about two hours (140-145 degrees).









Here are the finished products.

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

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