Social Saturday is BBQ Day V3 - How big is your meat?

It was okay. I got nervous and pulled it at 175, just scared of drying it out. Some of the pull near the bone was delicious, some of the slices were good, but overall, it was a bit dry.
 
Hey All,

So overall I did pretty decent at this last competition with a 10th overall, and my highest score being a 6th in Brisket (as well as $25). My pork didn't come out very good and my box sat for too long before I turned it in, so I know it was cold by the time the judges got it. It was a tough competition though... with the wind, and being right there on the harbor, the temperature was damned near 32°. I hadn't prepared properly and was sitting out there with some track pants and a hoodie... shivered for about 16 hours straight. haha

Met some really good people and the contest itself was a lot of fun. They forced us to vend both on Friday night (chicken wings) and again on Saturday (pork butt) which wasn't so bad, but they started the vending at 1pm right there in the middle of the competition meat turn-in window. It was pretty silly people walking up on my cook site and wanting to try my food as I'm cutting my pork butt and brisket and trying to get it in the competition box.

Tried my hand at a wagyu brisket and I'll never do that again.... no matter what I did to that thing I couldn't get all of that internal fat to render out and the end product was just way too fatty. I even cooked it longer than my CAB Choice brisket and it still was nothing but fat... pretty much threw the entire thing in the garbage... $200 straight into the trash. :-(

Did the waygu brisket just hit a stall on you?

I see you were cooking in 32° I am in upstate NY and when ever I do a smoke in the winter I have add a half hour for every hour of cook time.

Last NYE I did a brisket and after 18hrs said the hell with it and finished in the oven as the I think it was getting to cold outside and just kept in the stall state.
 
It was okay. I got nervous and pulled it at 175, just scared of drying it out. Some of the pull near the bone was delicious, some of the slices were good, but overall, it was a bit dry.

Fresh ham is a hard cook... when it's part of the whole hog it's different because you have all other parts of the hog sucking up the heat, but fresh ham really is a pain to cook. I've done a few and they are always come out marginal at best. Ham is one of those things that if people want it I feel it's better to just buy a cured / smoked ham and reheat it in the cooker. haha
 
Did the waygu brisket just hit a stall on you?

I see you were cooking in 32° I am in upstate NY and when ever I do a smoke in the winter I have add a half hour for every hour of cook time.

Last NYE I did a brisket and after 18hrs said the hell with it and finished in the oven as the I think it was getting to cold outside and just kept in the stall state.

It certainly wasn't in the stall as it temped at 198° before I pulled it. I posted the issue on the BBQ Brethren forum and most people seemed to think that it was because I was using the probe test. The probe tests works fine for CAB choice / prime briskets, but when you get into highly marbled wagyu there is so much fat (which was at 198°) that the probe test kind of fails because all of that fat is warm, so even if you're probing the flat, you're really just probing warm fat which feels like butter. Lots of people said they were cooking their wagyu's to an internal temp of at least 210° as it's necessary to render out all of that internal fat.

I have to say this seems correct as with the probe test I really felt I had the brisket exactly where I wanted it, but once I sliced into it there was nothing but fat. It was obvious I hadn't cooked it long enough... so just one of those caveats with cooking a piece of meat with which I wasn't very familiar. I'm still happy as my CAB choice (back-up) was good enough to take 6th place.
 
Smoking a whole hog (~80Lbs) this weekend on my offset smoker. It's a dual-door smoker so I'm still mentally preparing myself for the challenges involved with that, but I'm excited. I'm going to do my best to get some good pictures of the process and make a little Imgur photo album.
 
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Got my pig yesterday (85 Lbs dressed) and got him trimmed up and ready to go for the smoker. I pulled out the spare ribs because I'm going to cook them "competition style" for my Dad who loves my ribs more than anything. While the flavor of whole hog (or pig in this case) is amazing the ribs always end up a bit mushy. For the most part this was an easy process... took the skin off the hams to expose them for some rub and smoke, cut out about an inch of the belly on each side to get rid of the nipples, and took out the upper 3 ribs and the chest plate. Got it injected up and and it's sitting out side all night (~35°) and I will put it on the pit at about 6am tomorrow morning. Looking to cook at 225° for about 10 hours over pecan and may be some maple wood on my offset smoker.

I'll add some pics to an Imgur album and link it and keep adding images over the course of the cook (at least I will try). Cheers all!
 
Hey everybody,

This thread is pretty much dead but figured I'd throw a quick post together. So my business has been in hiatus for a while as I have decided to go mobile and have a food truck built rather than try and upgrade my smoker trailer to make it legal for food service. Unfortunately after dealing with this for so long it's just easier to get a food truck and finally get around to BBQ'ing for a job.

My last post was my whole pig and it was terrible... I had issues with airflow in my smoker as I did a poor job with the foil wrapping and it restricted quite a bit of heat and airflow movement through the smoker. I got it done and was excited to eat it but holy crap the pig had no flavor... I injected the hell out of it with my normal hog injection and nothing tasted good. The meat was so bland... I did chop it up outside when the temps were at or below freezing, so I'm sure that didn't help, but it just sucked. I threw damned near the whole pig away and was able to salvage just enough for a few pulled pork sandwiches for dinner for the family.

Anyways, I'm looking at jumping in feet first into the food truck thing and will post some pics of the build / layout / design as it goes. I'm excited about it and as long as I can get the financing I should be looking at roughly April / May time frame to fully up and running.

Hope everybody had a good Christmas and New Years! Cheers!

@Rob Battisti How is the restaurant coming along buddy?
 
I LOVE pork belly! I really like cutting the belly in half ; half the belly I cook to about 210° internal so I can pull it, and the other I will cook to about 205° so I can slice it. Chef Tom from All Things BBQ has a really good recipe for this and it's amazing for making some good sandwiches.



Edit: For crispy skin you'll need to do the last half hour or so at something like 350-400° or else it won't crisp up. You could also do the entire cook at 325-350° and that will have a much better chance of crisping up the skin. Scoring it into a cross-hatch pattern and rubbing salt into the crevices will also help and will give that nice crackling that people love. Here's another video showing a guy doing this with a rolled up belly, almost like a porchetta without the loin.



 
Hey Everybody, looks like this thread has died again. Anyways I'll post an update for shits and giggles : I'm about 3 weeks out from picking up my food trailer and FINALLY getting my BBQ business moving. I spent about 8 months dealing with my county and what they will / will not permit and I found out they WILL NOT permit any mobile food units in the county. The restaurant union is very strong in this county and its influence is apparent because there are no mobile food units in the county that operate. I did happen to find out that the USMC bases (Camp Lejeune, MCAS New River, Camp Johnson, and Stone Bay) don't require a permit by the county as they do their own inspections. They do allow mobile food units on those bases and in fact they're currently looking for a BBQ truck/trailer as the last guy they had moved on about 6 months ago.

So about a month ago I bought a BBQ trailer shell... 20' long trailer with a 14' box, 6' porch, and a vending window. I took that trailer to a fabricator and they are working on installing the wiring, plumbing, cooking equipment, and a nice new smoker on the porch. So once I get the trailer back I can move forward with the inspection on the base and hopefully by June 1st I will FINALLY be serving BBQ. haha

Here's a pic of the trailer :

I'm having the following equipment installed : 3 bay sink, handwash station, fresh/gray water storage, on-demand hot water system, refrigerator, tables, warming cabinet, and a "Carolina hog style smoker" with a wood firebox and propane assist.
 
Hey Everybody, looks like this thread has died again. Anyways I'll post an update for shits and giggles : I'm about 3 weeks out from picking up my food trailer and FINALLY getting my BBQ business moving. I spent about 8 months dealing with my county and what they will / will not permit and I found out they WILL NOT permit any mobile food units in the county. The restaurant union is very strong in this county and its influence is apparent because there are no mobile food units in the county that operate. I did happen to find out that the USMC bases (Camp Lejeune, MCAS New River, Camp Johnson, and Stone Bay) don't require a permit by the county as they do their own inspections. They do allow mobile food units on those bases and in fact they're currently looking for a BBQ truck/trailer as the last guy they had moved on about 6 months ago.

So about a month ago I bought a BBQ trailer shell... 20' long trailer with a 14' box, 6' porch, and a vending window. I took that trailer to a fabricator and they are working on installing the wiring, plumbing, cooking equipment, and a nice new smoker on the porch. So once I get the trailer back I can move forward with the inspection on the base and hopefully by June 1st I will FINALLY be serving BBQ. haha

Here's a pic of the trailer :

I'm having the following equipment installed : 3 bay sink, handwash station, fresh/gray water storage, on-demand hot water system, refrigerator, tables, warming cabinet, and a "Carolina hog style smoker" with a wood firebox and propane assist.


Looking good Hollywood! Outstanding focus to realize your dreams. Sempre Fi
 
I'll post some pics of my recent work later. I'm really enjoying my adventures in smoking.
 
looks good.. i can't wait to start smoking meats again... had a hiatus during the winter...

my wife still owes me a new pellet smoker.. i'm looking at a yoder ys640... :)

https://yodersmokers.com/ys640-pellet-grill.html

Personally I resent and hate Yoder for all the bullshit with their offset smokers (design flaws they ignored for years), but their pellet cookers are pretty high quality. If you want to check out a solid pellet cooker at a more modest price take a look at www.grillagrills.com. Check out the Silverbac or Grilla models and see if they tickle your fancy. Again, that YS640 is a solid piece of equipment and it's amazingly mobile when on the "Competition Cart" that they sell.
 
I went to Myron Mixon's restaurant outside DC a couple weeks ago.

It was all Mexicans working there and the pulled pork tasted like some nasty generic crockpot fare that was only good when drowned in sauce.

Super disappointing, but I imagine it's nothing like the pork he cooks for competition. Also, Myron has pictures of just himself all over the walls of the restaurant. lol, self absorbed can.
 
Personally I resent and hate Yoder for all the bullshit with their offset smokers (design flaws they ignored for years), but their pellet cookers are pretty high quality. If you want to check out a solid pellet cooker at a more modest price take a look at www.grillagrills.com. Check out the Silverbac or Grilla models and see if they tickle your fancy. Again, that YS640 is a solid piece of equipment and it's amazingly mobile when on the "Competition Cart" that they sell.

yeah.. i've seen those grill grills.. they look like solid equipment... but my wife is the one buying it for me.. so i'll probably go yoder... lol
 
yeah.. i've seen those grill grills.. they look like solid equipment... but my wife is the one buying it for me.. so i'll probably go yoder... lol

Yeah, fair enough, it's a good piece of gear and they are very solid with good customer service. I was close to buying an FEC-120 to put inside my trailer because they are NSF rated (restaurant quality) but holy shit are they expensive. This was one of those issues that was holding me back because the county was telling me every single piece of equipment needed to be NSF rated. So a normal 3-bay sink costs $200 but an NSF-rated one is going to cost you upwards of $1k. Same bullshit goes for a shelving rack... about $60 normal and over $300 for NSF rated. Shit like this makes opening a mobile food business prohibitively expensive and that initial debt ruins a lot of businesses.

Initially I was looking at doing a food truck but SO MANY of those fucking things are almost dead before they begin. People are starting out with $100K in debt for a truck / supplies and that's forcing them to do $20-25K in sales per month or they're not going to end up making that loan payment. Crunching those numbers it was shocking how much everything costs and I'm glad I moved over to a trailer and am starting "bare bones."

Just rambling in a response to you, sorry. haha
 
Yeah, fair enough, it's a good piece of gear and they are very solid with good customer service. I was close to buying an FEC-120 to put inside my trailer because they are NSF rated (restaurant quality) but holy shit are they expensive. This was one of those issues that was holding me back because the county was telling me every single piece of equipment needed to be NSF rated. So a normal 3-bay sink costs $200 but an NSF-rated one is going to cost you upwards of $1k. Same bullshit goes for a shelving rack... about $60 normal and over $300 for NSF rated. Shit like this makes opening a mobile food business prohibitively expensive and that initial debt ruins a lot of businesses.

Initially I was looking at doing a food truck but SO MANY of those fucking things are almost dead before they begin. People are starting out with $100K in debt for a truck / supplies and that's forcing them to do $20-25K in sales per month or they're not going to end up making that loan payment. Crunching those numbers it was shocking how much everything costs and I'm glad I moved over to a trailer and am starting "bare bones."

Just rambling in a response to you, sorry. haha

damn that's pricy... my yoder only cost me a pair of diamond earrings.. lol
 
I went to Myron Mixon's restaurant outside DC a couple weeks ago.

It was all Mexicans working there and the pulled pork tasted like some nasty generic crockpot fare that was only good when drowned in sauce.

Super disappointing, but I imagine it's nothing like the pork he cooks for competition. Also, Myron has pictures of just himself all over the walls of the restaurant. lol, self absorbed can.

Shit, I had no idea Myron had ventured back into restaurants after that bullshit he had to deal with his previous restaurant, "Pride and Joy." That's really a shame about his restaurant BBQ being crappy again. That was the issue he had with "Pride and Joy"... he mentioned it in an interview one time and basically they brought him in saying they would do it his way, but after things got up and running they were doing generic BBQ and he refused to have his name attached to it.

Most restaurant BBQ is pretty poor considering how long they hold the meat and often you're getting served left-overs from the day before (or longer). I went to Sam Jone's BBQ yesterday in Greenville, NC and it was pretty god damned amazing. Right as you walk up they have the smokehouse and they are 100% doing whole hog in pits and using hickory wood. You can smell it immediately so you know it's the real deal. Great atmosphere, amazing customer service, and the food was authentic and delicious. I love the way Jones and his family do whole hog and how they serve it... they crisp up the skin and mix bits of it into the chopped pork and it's so fucking good!
 
First smoke. Beef and pork ribs.

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Smoked turkey breast is really underappreciated.

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Chicken wings that were probably the best wings I've had in my life. Charred on the grill quickly to crisp the skin.

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Pork butt.

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Beef plate ribs.

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Spatchcocked whole chicken.

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And some smoked prime rib. Seared it on the cast iron, covered it in a garlic butter with thyme, then smoked until it hit about 125 before resting.

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