Super Best BBQ

Going to start this off not as a Carolina Boi... but more true to the Yankee Blood flowing through me

Local Tapa's place has some AMAZING Smoked Pork Belly, the sauce is to die for! Hands down some of the best BBQ I've enjoyed!



Even served it with some ritzy slaw!

In terms of sauce I love a good vinegar based sauce, Carolina Gold is my favorite! It pairs well with pork and chicken, not so much beef. Though I'm more familiar with Pork BBQ, hoping to find some amazing beef bbq, Though I'll have to travel outside of the south

 

You want good beef BBQ then come to Texas. Look up the Texas Monthly top 10 BBQ joints and choose one. Places like Louie Mueller's, Mickelwaithe's, La Barbecue, Kreuz's, etc.. will blow your noggin if you've never had next-level brisket. If you ever make it here don't settle for any old place. Choose wisely. When you get brisket at these places it's ALL about the meat, btw. This can be hard to accept for sauce-centric BBQ fans and generally I do loves sauces when it comes to food but when I'm eating top tier brisket I lose any desire to veil the goodness with sauce and it truly doesn't need it. Some places such as Kreuz don't even have sauce available.

 

Also, if you ever make it over here be sure to indulge in some smoked sausage.

 

Oh I'm a lover of all things. Meat with sauce and without. I HATE eating beef "with sauce" a waste really. Chicken and Pork, meats whose flavor I'm not super impressed with are really well complimented by a good sauce

So I'm egar to get some good Texas beef bbq, also speaking of beef. It's not the be all end all, but here in Myrtle we've got a nice Brazilian Steak House Called Rio's. Serving BBQ the Verb, my wife the carnivore ironically hates it... which blows my mind, I love it. Most of there meat is smoked or cooked on spits, and it's all fantastic! I can't speak for the authenticity, but as a whole they serve a helluva good product... and it's all you can eat too. I'll have to take some pictures the next time I go, I love getting the flank steak there, well done with a nice charred crust of umami meaty goodness! Even better is the Pineapple, it's smoked and cooked with a cinnamon crust. Tastes the best after it's been sitting in steak au-jus [not gravy but the natural juice that escape from the steak] for 5-6 minuets!

It's a shame, actually the best picture I can find of the concept, comes from their competitor... who went out of business... still I enjoy the concept, and their execution of BBQ as a verb

 

Yeah those types of Brazilian BBQ places are not uncommon. One of the most well-known chains is Fogo de Chão. The first time I ever ate at a restaurant like that was actually in northern China believe-it-or-not. My wife and I had Brazilian BBQ in Austin not that long ago. She wasn't that into it even though she is also quite the steak lover.

We've had some old and we'll-loved BBQ places here in Waco for a long time but none of them had top-tier brisket until recently when a new BBQ trailer opened up. I was pretty stoked to discover it. I never could understand why we were such a desert of great brisket given our location.

 

Sadly I live in a very un-cultured little town so I was happy to have seen it. Thankfully my wife LOVE Pork BBQ, so hopefully when things settle down I'll have a chance to share some good home grown SC spots,

Hopefully I can get a chance to swing into TX and try some top tier brisket, can't say I have it yet. Do you have any pictures to share

 

I actually just had some Snow's BBQ delivered/heated up the previous weekend. The brisket was great, the fatty side was fantastic, better than any nyc texas style BBQ joint that I've tried. Comes out cheaper too since nyc places charge about $25-30 for a lb of brisket.
I was fortunate enough to try Franklin's bbq when he cooked at a meat festival in nyc, I would say the Snow's delivery was about 70% there.

Never knew that a whole bunch of BBQ joints delivered until I ran into the link below, most of the links in the article don't work anymore, but you can google for a place's website and they should still do delivery.
http://www.texasmonthly.com/bbq/buying-guide-mail-order-bbq/

 

Awesome! It's never as good reheated as getting it fresh out of the smoker but it's something! Man - $25-$30 a lb?! I guess that's probably reflective of the increased cost of doing business in NYC.

 

For me there's nothing better than a Boston butt, bone-in, on the smoker. It smell like the world's biggest, best piece of bacon all night long . Pulled with some apple cider vinegar/mustard based basting sauce, fresh slaw and a soft bun. Nothing to beat it.

 

That was a fun video! I love Korean BBQ too. I may go by Manimal Smoke House next time I'm in Seoul.

 

Here is something I did in the smoker a while back. I'll post as thumbnails since it's quite a few pics



I smoked a whole slab of pork belly, 6 racks of ribs and a bunch of chicken wings. I have the Weber smoker 18 instead of the 22 so I need to cram stuff in where I can. My standard cook time for ribs is 4 hours at 250F. I was guessing a bit for the pork belly and thought it might take 5 hours so I put it in an hour earlier. It's in two pieces because it wouldn't fit as a full slab so I cut off one end. This also enabled me to experiment as well and have one piece fat side up and the other piece fat side down. I found fat side up to work better for whatever reason. Turns out the pork belly only needed about 4 hours as well, but it's ok because it needed time to rest. The wings take about 45 min and put them on the top rack after I removed and foiled the pork belly.

The pork belly is honestly the best thing I have EVER made in my smoker. I made sliders with the pork belly with some pickles and sliced red onion in potato rolls. It's best to eat without sauce. I tried one with sauce and it just covered up the taste. I will definitely do this again. The leftover pork belly is great to cut into slices and cook like bacon. Also good as a pork bun and in ramen.

I'll edit this post with recipes I used later.

 

@Cspirou jesus that looks epiiiqqqq when's dinner?!? being from argentina i love grilling meats but i don't know anything about smokers or bbq...

 

@brencho

Thanks! I made it for a friend that was defending his Ph.D and he wanted it to be epic. I'm from Texas but I never really learned to smoke while I was there. However I do know what it's suppose to taste like, so I mess around until I find that it matches what I remember.

Slow smoked meat is great but I also think that you can get superb results without smoke. You can do the same thing in the oven and it will be fine. The only real exception for me is a Texas brisket where they only use salt and pepper because they want the smoke flavor to come through.

I really want to go to Argentina one day and try all the BBQ they have there, especially the beef.

And if you want me to cook for you guys it's really easy. Just organize another SBAF meet and I'll bring the meat. (Although no gaurentees)

 

You don't really need an elborate setup to BBQ/smoke. I do it on a gas grill using indirect heating. You just light one outside burner and cook meat on the opposite side of the grill. You can put the wood chips of your choice in aluminum foil packets and place them directly over the lit burner and change them out about once an hour. The goal is to keep cooking tempurature around 250 degrees.

 

2kg Pork shoulder on the BBQ rotisserie last weekend:

- dry rub (paprika, sugar, salt, celery salt, mustard powder, onion and garlic) and left wrapped overnighted
- smoked for the first 2 hours with a smoker box with cherry wood chips

It seems the results are always better if a dry rub with a decent salt content can be applied the night before - a couple of hours just doesn't seem to cut it. Someone also gave us a syringe for injections so I tried injecting the pork with a mixture of bourbon and honey, but I think my technique was poor because the marinade seem to just leak out the other side!

Once the wood was gently smoking I set the pork turning at 130C indirect heat with a water pan underneath. I find the only trouble with using the smoker box on the gas bbq is that even with the burner at the lowest it seems to be a bit too hot to make the wood last for longer than an hour, so I need to refill it once.




After 3 hours..



After 4 hours, the temperature stalled at 70C for what seemed like an eternity! Guests were arriving soon, so I had to raise the temp to try and power through. At the 6 hour point it was do or die. The internal temp was 90C so I declared it good to go. Luckily, all was well. The bark was crisp but maybe a little more charred than i'd like. The meat was extremely tender and moist - almost ready to fall off the spit. Once the string was removed it kind of just fell apart.

Served it in toasted buns with bbq sauce and coleslaw - went down well.

Any tips for pulled pork, I'd love to hear them!

 

@Jeb

The stall at 60C is entirely due to evaporation. There are a few ways to deal with it.

- Wait it out. This will add 2-3 hours of cooktime
- Wrap it up in foil and continue cooking. This is called The Texas Crutch and is a common technique for beef brisket during competitions. Wrapping limits evaporation by preventing the steam from escaping.
- The higher the humidity* the less evaporation occurs (why you remain sweaty in the jungle). Be sure your water pan has plenty of water. If there is a film of fat of top from the drippings then it will not evaporate. This might not be as feasible depending on the design of your smoker.

I don't start checking pork shoulder until 6 hours and I usually don't expect it to be done until 8 hours have passed. If it doesn't pull apart by the time guests arrive, don't freak out! just make chopped pork instead of pulled pork.

Don't worry too much about the smoke only lasting a couple hours as well. You don't get that much more smoke flavor after awhile.

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*East Texas is super humid. I wonder if that is why the BBQ works out so well there. Hmmmm

 

Thanks for tips!

I'll definitely keep the Texas Crutch in mind - can you still achieve nice crispy bark that way? Or can you just crisp it up at the end with a little direct heat?

In hindsight it would have been better to get it started earlier, rather than trying to time things exactly. No problem with it resting for a while if it gets done early.

 

If you're doing pulled pork cook it ahead of time if possible. It's too unpredictable to still have it cooking as guests are arriving. Also, smoked food often benefits from sitting in the fridge for a day or two.

If I'm doing pulled pork I apply 2 hours of smoke in a Bradley smoker then I move it to the oven and continue to let it cook over night. It's safer and better controlled than my smoker or bbq. You can use a meat thermometer with an alarm if you want. Sometimes I use the Texas crutch, but you don't really get the crunchy bits and perfect bark then, but you're pulling it so it doesn't really matter.

One of the best tricks I've learned is to slather your meat in yellow Mustard before applying the rub. It acts as a glue and absolutely no Mustard taste in the end.