Howling Hog BBQ (at Howling Wolf Farm)

End of Season Wrap-up

2010-08-24T13:59:00.001-07:00

This weekend we finished the last of our major events by rocking out 20 different appetizers (over 6 hours) plus three briskets, three butts and a case of ribs for hungry family and friends at the 20th annual St. Divots 7 Fires Golf Tournament. It was a great experience, although I missed the party part of the event by passing out early on Saturday night. Good to know we can still rock the house even when half of the team is recovering from walking pneumonia!

Now is the time when I reflect on this season’s barbecue and look forward to next year’s competitions. All in all, I have to say it was one of our roughest seasons yet. After coming off our success at Harpoon in 2009, I anticipated we’d only move up. I was wrong. We fell victim to the biggest hurdle in competition barbecue – consistency. Our scores were up and down in each competition. In Merrimack, I had temperature probe issues and over-cooked some things. At Harpoon, our ribs and brisket were ok (10th in brisket); but not exceptional. In Maine, our ribs and brisket were mediocre, but we did better in chicken and pork than we’ve done in ages. To say we were up and down was an understatement.

Despite mediocre showings in our barbecue events, the bright light for team Howling Hog this season was found in the team as a whole. We’ve added new team members, long-time supporter Rob Hurley and his wife Tara Race. Rob has been a student of his Weber for years and adds a wonderful level of meticulousness and obsession to the grilling component of what we do. Rob’s first competition netted us our best trophy of the season with a first place in Flank Steak at the Merrimack grilling event. Between Rob’s cooking method and my spice and sauce recipe, we really had a winning combination. In Maine, Rob, Tara, Jenn and I were able to brainstorm collectively on how to cook our Iron Chef entry (the secret ingredient was lobster) in a way that gave us an 8th place rank out of the 30 or so teams who competed.

As a team, we’ve grown more cohesive whether it’s Rob and Tara, or Hank, Mame and Pete who are joining for an event. Set up, strike-down, and vending were smoother this season than they’ve ever been. To me, that’s probably our biggest success as a team. But, the truth is that the best of our season didn’t lie in our competitions, but in the friendships that continue to grow between us and folks from Feeding Friendz and Boneyard Smokers. During each of the three events we competed in this summer we had pot-luck dinners with our buddies. We’ve met family members, we’ve tossed back some brews and we’ve had no small amount of good times with these folks! This is the best part of what we do. And, of course, we’ve celebrated our successes. Feeding Freindz has moved into a new level of cooking this season. Their hard work and dedication brought them the finest of awards with Grand Champion trophies at Harpoon for both Grilling and Barbecue. As I write this, they have reported back from Dover, Delaware coming in 3rd overall among a group of over 80 teams! And our good friends at Boneyard Smokers have kicked up their game as well, pulling calls all summer in Ribs, plus some chicken and brisket in there as well.

I will say that this summer’s barbecue performance wasn’t a total loss for me as Pitmaster. I learned some good stuff both in competition and out of it. The value of good quality meat has grown clearer and clearer. When we switched chicken vendors for Maine and went back to sticking closer to IQue’s chicken method, we placed 13th – the best score in chicken we’ve had in four years. I learned that the pork coming out of Canada is substantially leaner than the pork produced in the US, and it’s important to pay attention to that – leaner means dryer – dryer is bad. I finally think I’ve reached a point with pork butt where I can put up good numbers – 9th place in Maine is the highest score I’ve gotten since Hogstock in 2007 (and I’m pretty well convinced that was a fluke). We’ve confirmed that the way we’re doing our chicken is working. At Harpoon, I confirmed that even with a slightly overcooked brisket, my recipe is still good (10th overall in Brisket). So, the truth is that we’re still on track.

As I look back on the summer and consider the progress of Howling Hog, I can’t lie that I’m disappointed with how we fared in the world of barbecue. Our inconsistency in the four food groups (chicken, pork ribs, pork butt and brisket) falls squarely on my shoulders. As the guy who has taken control of all of that stuff and not relinquished it, it’s up to me to figure out how to right the ship (so to speak). Good thing there’s a long off season in front of me! I’m planning to approach practice in a much more efficient and technical way. I’ve tried to take notes in the past, but have been a tad lazy with them. At this point, I’m not even sure if I could tell you WHERE my old notes are. Last night I put together a three-ring binder specifically for practice and I’m committed to keeping detailed notes. I’m going to try my best to practice something every month through the off-season, which I hope will get me over the consistency hump.

And there’s going to be a concerted effort to invest more in the team this off-season, too. I’m hoping that with a bunch of overtime at work, I can pull together enough money to buy us a 5’X8’ box trailer that can be towed behind my car. If we could lose the need to constantly borrow transportation, it would be a huge improvement for us. Plus, we can sleep in a trailer! There are other things to buy as well, a new camp stove, cambro units, better tables, etc. There’s always something we can buy to make things better.

With the end of each season, I have to remind myself that even though we’ve now been doing this for six years, we’re still just a fledgling team. While other teams do 6-10 competitions a year, we don’t do more than three. To date, we’ve only competed 13 times. Some teams do 13 competitions in a year! I have to remind myself that you don’t succeed overnight, that it (like life) takes hard work and dedication. Cooking for friends and family just for the fun of it continues to keep me grounded. Competition barbecue continues to keep me focused. During this winter I’ll just keep plugging away, trying to do better, and trying to keep it all in perspective. Food is fun. Barbecue is bliss. Smoke is spectacular. Family is life and life is good.

Peace, love and barbecue to all.

Chris Sargent, Pitmaster
Howling Hog Barbecue

Mainely Grillin’ & Chillin’ Barbecue Competition, Eliot, ME

2010-08-11T08:35:00.000-07:00

Howling Hog Barbecue wrapped up our last competition for 2010 this past weekend, by participating in the “Mainely Grillin’ & Chillin’” competition in Eliot, ME. The MGC is a benefit event for the Raitt Farm museum, in Eliot, ME. It is in its infancy (this was year number two), but I have to say that Lisa Raitt and her family are doing a spectacular job! It speaks loudly to the way the teams are supported that the number of teams that participated doubled between last year and this year.

Lisa and her Dad, Husband and other family members really took the time to make sure that we (the teams) were comfortable and had all we needed to make the competition successful. My hat is off to those folks, and I guarantee that Howling Hog Barbecue will be back in Eliot next season if our schedule allows it.

The folks at the MGC got Paul Kirk aka "The Baron of Barbecue" to teach a class on Friday.

Howling Hog rolled onto the Raitt Farm *on time* at about 12:00pm on Friday! (yes, that's right folks, Howling Hog Barbecue was actually ON TIME to a competition!) Our best barbecue buddies Feeding Friendz and Boneyard Smokers had held an adjacent spot for us. With myself, Jenn, Connor and new team members Rob and Tara present, we made fast work of set up.

From left to right: Howling Hog, Feeding Friendz (with Wendy waving) and Boneyard Smokers

Flying our colors. Rob's head lurks above.

The evening on Friday was light, as the barbecue competition wasn’t until Sunday. Several weeks before we got together, I had been emailing with Wendy, Sandy and Rob about doing a potluck among the teams with a focus on celebrating Jenn’s birthday which was Friday the 6th. As is always the case when you get this group together, the food was unbelievable. Rob and I did our FPF (First Place Flank steak) from Merrimack. Wendy and Tim did their EPS (eight place shrimp) from Harpoon. Fellow Feeding Freindz teammates Becky and Andy did an unbelievably good fish chowder and Sandy and Dave from Boneyard made Jenn and I a birthday cake! The food was spectacular, to the point that even I (who doesn’t like seafood – particularly things in shells) was blown away by all of it. Despite the rockiness of our 2010 season, it has been our growing friendship with these two teams that has made it all worth it. These are good folks right here.

The evening meal and celebration was followed up by a late-night visit to Eric and Cindi from Yabba Dabba Que. During the week before the contest, Eric had announced on the New England Barbecue Society forum that he was bringing his heavy-duty gas fryer with him and everything you can think of would be fried. Jenn and I foolishly found ourselves stuffing MORE food into our mouths as Eric wowed us with deep-fried kit-kats, sausage balls, Cornish game hens, rolos and garlic. I have to say that the deep fried garlic was WAY cool.

The MGC offered Howling Hog Barbecue some unique competitive opportunities that we’ve never had before in the grilling competition on Saturday. For our pleasure there were three opportunities to compete: People’s Choice Wings, Iron Chef (sponsored by J.P’s Shellfish) and Dessert (sponsored by Wyman’s Blueberries). Originally, I had only signed up for the Wings and Dessert competition out of fear of shellfish – I never cook the stuff – like EVER. I live in rural area of a state that has no ocean, and good shellfish is awfully hard to find around here. But, Jenn took me to task for not being willing to do it, and I emailed the Raitts to have them add me to the list.

The wing competition was unusual in that the teams were broken into three groups, each with different turn-in times. Attendees of the event bought tickets to be judges (allowing them to sample the wings), and the winner of each group then participated in a head-to-head wing competition to determine who had the best wings. Sandy and Dave from Boneyard Smokers made it into the finals but didn’t get called as the winner.

Everyone meet Nathan. He met a fiery death, but was well cooked.

The Iron Chef category was number two for the day. Rob, Jenn, Tara and I had been brainstorming about how to handle the multitude of shellfish offered by J.P’s. Rob came up with a maple-chipotle glaze that he thought would work with a couple of different kinds of shellfish. Out of the potential types, we were hoping that neither would be oysters or lobster. When the reveal of the ingredient came (two hours before turn-in time), the result was indeed lobster! When Jenn and Rob returned with our lobster (dubbed “Nathan” by Tara), the team rallied around Rob’s recipe and offered additional ideas to make it work with lobster. In the end we served up grilled lobster on fresh pasta with a maple-chipotle cream sauce. Out of the 33 teams that participated in the grilling event, our on-the-fly recipe came in 8th!

This is what Nathan looked like when done. He was apparently tasty.

For the Dessert category, the sponsor was Wyman’s, so we knew the key ingredient was going to be blueberries. Jenn had been working on a blueberry-lime tiramisu recipe for about two months and her execution was just gorgeous. With the turn-in rules allowing any container (instead of a standard 9X9 box), she put the dessert in glasses on one of Tara’s pottery platters. The resulting dessert was both tasty and pretty and out of 33 it came in 6th!

Jenn prepares the blueberry dessert.

Ain't they pretty?

Ready for turn-in.

We got a visit from my Dad's barbershop quartet, The Four Baritones, who sang Jenn a song for her birthday!
(Dad is on the left)

Saturday evening I began my part as Pitmaster for Howling Hog Barbecue by prepping my meats for Sunday’s barbecue competition. I had tried a new butcher out of Rutland in an effort to get some better quality meat than I had been getting. Unfortunately, this decision did not prove to be wise as the guy from Simply Meats gave me a package of butts that was simply rancid. When I had trimmed them before coming over to the competition I was a little concerned by the smell (some funkiness isn’t unusual when you take meat out of cryovac, but it usually dissipates after you rinse it). When I pulled the trimmed butts out of the cooler, they had started turning GREEN. Green, in general, is not a color you want associated with meat. So, a mad dash to a nearby Hannaford’s was made. Fortunately for us, they had two butts that would work for what we were trying to do.

Lost in a haze of woodsmoke.

The cook overnight went well, although the small size of the butts and the briskets made things a bit of a struggle. After Harpoon we had decided to get our chicken from Misty Knoll, because they offer better quality than what we had been getting. The chicken and ribs went on in the AM on Sunday. Our turn-in were pretty good, in general. We were happy with the chicken, the ribs were only ok, the butt looked great and the brisket appeared solid. In the end, we had a mixed bag of results. Our two weakest categories (chicken and pork butt) were our leaders at 13th and 9th place respectively. Butt has been a thorn in my side for years, so I was quite thrilled with such a high placement out of the 44 teams competing in the barbecue competition. Our ribs and brisket, however, pretty much tanked. I learned some good stuff with both, though, so I can’t call it a total loss.

After turn-ins, we broke our gear down with lightning speed thanks to the help of our newest teammates. By the end of the day, our friends had come away with several calls including a second place ribs trophy for Boneyard Smokers! Feeding Freindz was consistent, coming in at 9th overall. Our results were pretty representative of our season on the whole – inconsistent. But, as always, we walked away with some new knowledge on how to approach what we do and we saw improvement in our weakest categories. On Sunday evening we packed the trailer up and headed north to my Dad’s house in Auburn, ME where a shower and a real bed awaited us.

Almost packed up. I think our neighbors were entertained by all of our work!

Special thanks to Rob and Tara who joined us as a couple for the first time at a competition. They were lots and lots of help, and Rob took a number of these pictures. Thanks, guys!

Integration

2010-08-11T08:29:00.000-07:00

I've not been posting to this blog in a great while. This is mostly due to the fact that I've been doing much more with Facebook, and double posting things takes up too much time. But, I think I've figured out how to have this blog posted to the Howling Hog Barbecue Facebook page, so I can put information up here and have it automatically put on FB.

If this works, you can expect to see a few updates in the next day or so!

Cheers,

Chris

Spring is a comin'

2010-03-12T07:48:00.000-08:00

Spring is in the air up here in Vermont. The sap has started running and my driveway looks like a swamp. All of these things point to a future of savory smoke, fire and sizzling meat.

I'm on my way to my butcher's to pick up the first big meats I've been able to cook in about four months. Life has been too full to give me the time to practice, but Sunday I make the shift back into that groove (thank God).

I'll be sitting down filling out contest application forms shortly. We're going to try to do three competitions this year and by golly, we're going to try to win!

I look forward to picking up this blog where I left off last fall. Cross your fingers. I might just do what I mean to.

Cheers,

Chris

Soon

2009-10-13T13:18:00.000-07:00

Hi all. The Howling Hog Blog has been asleep at the wheel. Since wrapping up our family events for the summer, I've been balls to the wall at work. I've had some of my bbq equipment in the shop and even if it had been home I probably wouldn't have been able to use it. It's just been too darned busy.

But, the good news is that there's a light at the end of the tunnel. I just finished a major project and for the first time in weeks I don't have to work this weekend. I ordered briskets and butts from my meat connection and I mean to cook them. There will be smoke in the East Valley on Saturday and Sunday.

So, fear not, dear readers. I'm not gone, I've just been somewhere less desirable than in the kitchen or in front of my pit.

Cheers,

Chris

Sausage Sunday

2009-08-30T17:15:00.000-07:00

Not much to report re: Howling Hog at the moment, money's been tight so I haven't had the pit going since St. Divots in August. But, I've still been playing with food. Today I spent the afternoon grinding up two batches of sausage. 10lbs. of sweet Italian and 5lbs. of a beef sausage of my own creation, with a bit o' spice and roasted red peppers. Tis' a lovely thing!

My spicy beef sausage, pre-grind. Cilantro, oregano, garlic and other spices make it tasty!

Ground beef sausage (with 25% pork fat to keep it moist)

A couple of hanks of the Sweet Italian. Wicked good.

Not Barbecue - But Good

2009-08-23T12:23:00.000-07:00

This isn't related to barbecue, since I don't have the $$ to do any at the moment. But, it is related to playing with food and, of course, there's bacon in it so it must be good.

Farmer Girl and I have been batting the idea of apple bacon doughnuts for months. This morning we decided to give that a whirl, but after looking at the King Arthur Cookbook for a while we settled on fritters instead of doughnuts. Here are the results, and they're damned good.

Thank You

2009-07-29T08:17:00.001-07:00

My final post related to Harpoon is a word of thanks. As you all know, this was a tough year for us financially and it was difficult for us to afford even one competition and all the practice it took to find success. So, I want to formally say thanks to the following folks who helped us out with donations of money and/or stuff that helped us do what we do.

Rob Hurley & Tara Race (Gold star supporters!)
Dylan Wolters (Gold star supporter)
Rhonda Barr & Tracy Wolters
Sandy Sargent & Mary Lou Hofmann
Jesse Sargent
Pete & Mellissa Fellows
Kevin & Sarah Brennan
Peter & Theresa Gregory
Greg Henry
Ken Colby
John & Ardith Ruvidich
Rebecca and Tim Haskell
Jim & Maggie Francoeur
Peter Merriman & Suzanne Santarcangelo

I fear I may have forgotten someone on this list and if so I apologize. Last season I kept better notes. But know that given the crappy economy and that most of us are feeling the pinch from it, we appreciate whatever you offered our team that much more. We couldn't have done this all without you!

Thanks,

Chris

Harpoon Day 3

2009-07-29T08:11:00.000-07:00

On Saturday night, Mame treated us to a great dinner including steak, sea food and fresh tomatoes and mozzarella. We socialized with our neighbors and generally enjoyed ourselves. One advantage to having the Summer Sizzler Grilling Competition on Sunday is that there is no need to be up all night cooking. I woke up early on the third day of Harpoon having gotten a reasonable amount of sleep. In addition to the competition, Sunday is the day that we choose to vend barbecue, so we do have a bit more to do.

After another stellar breakfast a-la-Mame, we prepared for vending and determined how we were going to divide up the labor during turn-in for the competition. Unlike the barbecue competition, where my control freak genes keep me from letting others take charge of any of the meats, we all take a category. The categories on Sunday were lamb, fish, beef and chef’s choice.

My lamb was first up at 1:00. The dish I did was something I’ve started calling “Dad’s Karmic Kababs.” The recipe is based on a lamb dish handed down to me from my father that I’ve modified for a grilling competition. It’s an unusual dish with strong Indian flavors and a yogurt marinade. Having let the meat marinade overnight, I skewered it and popped it on the grill at about 12:15. In hindsight, it probably went on a little early, but in the end I thought it came out pretty well.

Dad's Karmic Kabobs.

The second category was beef. Old Bull bought a really nice tenderloin and rubbed it with a crust that I think has a lot of potential to be a high winner. It went out looking good and the scraps tasted fantastic. As with Mame, I hope the Old Bull keeps trying this one. In my experience with cooking the barbecue meats, doing the same thing over and over, keeping notes and making minor changes seems to be the best way to perfect what you’re doing.

Old Bull's Beef Tenderloin.

Mame was up at 2:00 with the fish category. Personally, I find fish a hard nut to crack because I just don’t have the access to it one would if they were on the coast, and I don’t tend to think about buying it in the stores where I live. Mame’s choice was to plank grill the salmon with a mild sauce. In the end, the sauce didn’t cut through like she felt it had in the past, which wound up hurting her score. Personally, I hope she keeps trying to do the plank grilled fish thing, because I think eventually she’ll lock it in and have some good success.

Our fish entry.

As always, Farmer Girl took on the Chef’s Choice category. This is a wide open category, meaning the cook can do whatever they want and they can garnish with whatever they want! Needless to say, Chef’s Choice really brings out the creativity of the cook. Those of you who follow us know that Farmer Girl won first place two years ago with an apple spice cake in this competition. She followed up next year with another cake that unfortunately was disqualified for not cutting it into six pieces as we had been told to do. The year between competitions she thinking about how the same cake could be improved and her plan was outstanding. Unfortunately, we didn’t successfully manage our work prior to turn-ins and because she was crunched for time, she had to skip one of the steps she had planned.

The Chef's Choice submission.

We vended our barbecue, baked goods and smoked eggs until 4:00 when the final awards ceremony came around. As it turns out, I took the first ribbon of the day with a 10th place award for Dad’s Karmic Kabobs! This would turn out to be our only bling for the grilling competition although three out of the four submissions placed well (11th in beef, 12th in Chef’s Choice) out of 35 teams. The cool thing for Sunday was that all of our friends took home awards in grilling. Pauline and Dave from Vermont Barbecue took 7th in lamb, Sandy and Dave of Boneyard got 5th in the same category. The folks from Feeding Friendz had a killer grilling day with 4th place ribbons in Beef and Chef’s Choice. Jenn said she tried their Chef’s Choice and it was excellent! Even better is that for the day they took 6th place overall! Way to go teams!

The end of the day was marked with big smiles and exhausted bodies. We loaded all of our stuff in, waving goodbye to all the teams as they left. The one contest we did this season turned out to be the best one we’ve ever had. It makes the sting of last season’s mediocrity much less strong and it takes made sacrificing other events to save money a positive decision. We did well, we saw some of our greatest friends, we cooked some good food and, as always we had the best time. Thanks to my family/team for all of their efforts, all of the pitching in and for being such great people. Thanks to our friends in barbecue Feeding Freindz, Boneyard Smokers and Vermont Barbecue for making a great event that much better – having good friends around you is priceless! And lastly, thanks to the fantastic staff at Harpoon who put an amazing amount of time and effort into making this contest a spectacular event for the teams and the fans.

Cheers,

Chris

Harpoon Day 2

2009-07-27T17:58:00.000-07:00

Our whole cook for the barbecue competition was much more organized and planned out that it has been in the past. I learned so much from the IQue demo our supporters Rob and Tara sent me to in April and I’ve incorporated much of it into what I do. The level of detail the best teams (like IQue) are putting into their competition products is astounding and I am blessed that our friends paid for my way to take that class because, as you’ll see later, it paid off!

Farmer Girl’s role in our competition program is to set up the chicken the night before and to be the person who boxes our turn-ins. It makes me gleefully happy that she’s embraced the job enough to be looking for ways to improve what she does on the net! She did a wonderful job this season.

Turn in comes fast and furious starting at 12:00 noon on Saturday with the chicken entry. We’ve made a number of changes to how we do our chicken since last year and this was our first opportunity to be tested in a competition. We were pleased with the way it looked, but I felt it came out over-smoked, which can be a problem when the judges are scoring you in the taste category.

Our chicken turn-in. It still needs work, but we're on the right track.

The Old Bull took charge of running the turn-in from our distant location down to the judges tent, a feat that becomes quite a challenge when you’re navigating through a sea of some 7000 people on the Harpoon midway. Now that I’ve added more steps to my competition program, I didn’t realize how much of a benefit it would be for me to not handle turn in. As always, the Old Bull is there when I need him to help!

At 12:30, the time came for our ribs to go out. I’ve been working on our rib recipe and method doggedly for the past couple of years and I feel that I’ve finally hit my stride with them. The addition of the Old Bull's homemade rib sauce to our ribs left me feeling very positive about the meat when it went out to the judges.

A tasty rack of ribs ready to go to the judges.

At 1:00, the pulled pork left the tent. I made a mistake and missed the opportunity to serve any sliced butt with our turn in because it crossed over the temperature threshold you need in order to get good slices without being under or over cooked. So, instead we pulled all of it, but the butts were over-cooked in some places and under-cooked in others making it difficult to find prime spots to pull from. I felt like this was my weakest category, mainly because of the weird way in which each butt cooked.

Our pulled pork entry.

The brisket, one of the toughest pieces of meat to cook (and one of my favorites) was last to go at 1:30. Although they seemed to finish earlier than I thought they would, I was pretty darned happy with the brisket. My experience tells me that when I’m happy with what we’re putting out, we do lousy, so my hopes were not high. As we tasted the two briskets (you always cook more than one of everything) Farmer Girl gave me some great feedback as I wrestled with which one to cut our turn-in from. They were both done well, but one seemed a touch underdone and one a touch overdone. With her suggestion, I took the one that seemed a little underdone. It looked great and tasted awesome when I brought it down to the judges booth. I always make the last run of the day because I like to hit the beer tent on my way back for a well deserved draft. The Harpoon Munich Dark was pretty tasty!

Our brisket turn in (it's a little out of focus)

I spent the rest of the afternoon prior to the awards ceremony in a bleary-eyed haze of sleep deprivation. Saturday was the busiest day at Harpoon and Mame and Farmer Girl did a brisk business selling our baked goods. We also had visits from friends and family including my Dad who came all the way from the great state of Maine with my step-mother to visit. It was a pleasure to see cousins and their little ones milling out in front of our booth, my Dad bumped into a band of roving barbershop singers and sang a song with them (much to his delight). All and all it was a delightful day!

My Dad (in the black cap) singing an impromptu barbershop tune.

Farmer Girl's friend and karate com padre Gael, and the Boy practice a little karate.

When we followed the bag pipers and the grand champion trophy to the awards tent at 4:30, we had no idea where we’d fall this year. The feeling was that we had put out the best we had to offer and we’d just wait and see. The results were worth waiting for! Our first call came for our ribs, 10th out of 42. Our second, and the best one of the day came in the brisket category – 2nd place! Considering that last year we came in 41st out of 43 teams, I couldn’t have been more thrilled!

The biggest surprise came when I finally had the chance to look at our score sheet. When you added the 10th in ribs, 2nd in brisket, 16th in pork shoulder and 25th in chicken (which obviously still needs work) it put us at 6th overall out of 42 teams! 6th! Out of the whole group! WOW! Considering that 5 years and 9 contests ago we were 38th out of 39 teams, we’ve made a heck of a lot of progress!

The support of my teammates has been essential to bringing this all together, everyone has their role. In his second year at Harpoon, Uncle Peet has joined us and his jack-of-all trades Mr. Fixit skill set and willingness to do anything we need has been priceless. Between Peet, Farmer Girl, Old Bull, Mame and the Boy, I am so blessed by being surrounded by good friends and family as we play this brilliantly absurd game. Six years ago I found out that people get together and “compete” to see who has the best barbecue. Five years ago I said, I like this idea, I think I’ll try it. Since then it’s been a wild and crazy ride. In 2007 we felt like we were on our way up, in 2008 we fell to earth hard. But that fall motivated us to do it better than we’ve ever done it, and my team rose to the challenge! Kudos to you guys for making this team such a wonderful experience!

Tomorrow I'll report back on day three, the Harpoon Summer Sizzler Grilling Competition, which was good to us, but even better to some of our best friends!

Harpoon 2009 - Day 1

2009-07-27T16:59:00.000-07:00

This is my first update to the blog in ages and ages, and I’ve been exhorted to update more often by my fellow barbecuers and friends. To be honest, I’ve been much more active on Facebook, where Howling Hog Barbecue has a page (search for Howling Hog Barbecue and you’ll find us). But, I’ll make an effort to be a bit more active up here! And now, my missives from Harpoon 2009...

As you all know we made it into the Harpoon Championships of New England Barbecue this year, and this past weekend was when the big event took place. It was, without a doubt the best competition we’ve ever had in barbecue!

Farmer Girl, the Boy and I arrived early on Friday to find that most of the teams had already arrived and were fully set up. Fortunately, our favorite spot (booth 43) isn’t one that teams vending barbecue are looking for because it’s too close to the entrance. For us though, it works well to be there because folks are looking for dessert as they leave. For the past couple of years our friends Tim, Wendy, Becky and Andy of Feeding Friendz (pronounced fren-zy) have been our neighbor, which makes the location even more delightful. This season, Sandy and Dave of Boneyard Smokers finally got into Harpoon and they camped out in the spot across from Feeding Friendz, so for us it was like we had our own little block of close friends nearby.

Having these great folks close by is such a great perk! We visit like neighbors, sample eachther’s turn-ins and mooch the foods we’re selling. Being able to walk over to another booth and just park your chair for an hour of chatting is just great. Feeding Friendz and Bonyard Smokers have been just great to us! I’m grateful that five years ago at Harpoon we found ourselves next to Feeding Freindz. Being able to talk with Tim in the wee hours of the morning as I suffered through being alone in the booth that night was certainly the way to begin a valuable friendship.

In addition to Feeding Friendz and Boneyard Smokers, Vermont Barbecue (aka Smokin’ Fools BBQ) from Randolph, VT were set up in their usual spot at the end of the midway in what’s jokingly referred to as the ghetto of Harpoon. Pauline and Dave are pros who work the fair and festival circuit in our area as their primary way of making money. We were pleased to hear that they’ll be setting up next to our interstate exit next month and will be selling their awesome barbecue less than 10 miles from our home.

The Boy has really come into his own at age eleven and was solidly into helping us get the booth pulled together after we arrived. He volunteered to get our tent and sleeping gear out and was all out helpful throughout the entire weekend. I couldn't be more proud!

The Old Bull, Mamer and Peet arrived in the early afternoon to find the tents up and our gear somewhat organized. Kudos to Mame this year for having a plan for how to organize our kitchen, the setup we had was by far the best we’ve had yet! By late afternoon we had prepped up the briskets, butts and ribs. After the cooks dinner, served by IQue, we had the chance to catch up with our friends and socialize before we had to settle down to the business of cooking the main meats for the barbecue contest. The barbecuing didn’t stop us from hanging out with our buddies and having a late night nacho platter before bed.

The overnight went smoothly, although as always I got about an hour of sleep despite trying to get some shuteye between midnight and three in the morning. I think I’m always a bit paranoid that I’ll sleep through my alarm and screw up the cook! Once the rest of the crew was up, we enjoyed a massive breakfast cooked by Mame, the team chef. In the past couple of years, Mame has willingly taken responsibility for keeping us all fed, a job I am so grateful that she does. As our team’s pitmaster I’m way too occupied with keeping to my cooking schedule and program to be held responsible for feeding people. The morning keeps us busy as we get ready to start vending our baked goods (all cooked by Farmer Girl) and putting on the chicken and ribs.

By noon, everything was done and turn in finally started to roll.

Harpoon Here We Come!

2009-04-07T04:20:00.001-07:00

WE GOT INTO HARPOON!

Changes in the Weather

2009-04-06T06:09:00.000-07:00

"Money's tight, nothing is free
won't somebody come and rescue me
I'm stranded, caught in the crossfire"

Some folks in the blogosphere have been wondering where I've been of late. No doubt I dropped off the face of the blogging earth. It's been a tough winter, and I've had to make some hard decisions about my favorite passtime. As the song lyrics say above, money has been pretty tight lately. While Farmer Girl and I have weathered the tough economy and still seem to have solid holds on our jobs, our financial situation is not great. Some debts that we've been pretending don't exist have come home to roost and it has forced us to cut back where we spend our money. It's been time to pay the piper for quite some time.

So, I announced to our fanbase that we're cutting back the number of contests that we'll do this summer from three to one. We should find out in the next few weeks whether or not we can get into Harpoon, which would be the contest of choice for us. Last season I was doing a side job that allowed me to fund most of our competition season. Having finished that work this fall, there just isn't the money to make more than one contest happen, unless there is an unusual outpouring of generostiy from our fans. Given the current economic climate, I don't expect that from anyone.

Of course, we've still been blessed to have fans who DO want to contribute to our cause this year and we're welcoming any donations we can get. If we can't get into Harpoon, we'll probably try to make Lake Placid since that's also one of our favorite events.

As much of a dissapointment this decision is for me (and it really had me down for a while), there are still good things going on. I'm still cookin' barbecue, so life ain't that bad.

Superbowl Sunday

2009-02-07T12:41:00.001-08:00

Superbowl Spread: Chili, Soy-lime chicken wings, cheddar jalapeno biscuits and the bacon explosion.

As is the tradition with Superbowl Sunday, Farmer Girl and I cook ourselves and a few friends some football appropriate food.

This year, I made a batch of long-trail ale chili from the sirloin I ground up the night before. So named because it's got a bottle of Long Trail Harvest Ale in it, this chili is a deep, rich mix of beans and meat. Also on the menu, were our last bag of the chicken wings we butchered off our chickens. I did them up with an asian-styled soy-lime syrup.

The bacon explosion: Pulled Pulled Pork Variation

Also on the menu was my variation on the "Bacon Explosion". This dish recently appeared as a feature in the New York Times. Many of my friends emailed me the link! Ironically, this recipe had already made its way through the various barbecue blogs I read about three weeks earlier.

A bacon lattice.

The bacon explosion is: A log of sausage stuffed with cooked bacon, wrapped in a bacon lattice and smoked for a couple of hours. In my case, I was short a pound of bacon, having only enough to make the all-important lattice. So, I substituted a package of my sauced, cooked pulled pork for the center stuffing. The sausage was our own sausage, which was also pretty neat. Check out the pictures!

All sliced up.

The Bacon Explosion Wants its Close-Up Now!

This year's Superbowl was one of the best games I've seen in years. Although the team I was rooting for didn't win, the Steelers (one of my favorite franchises) deserved the win they got. And, we celebrate their success with darned good food!

2009-02-01T11:54:00.000-08:00

This Christmas Jenn bought me a commercial-grade meat grinder. The kitchen supply store had to order it for her, and it arrived on Saturday. Saturday evening I got to play with it for the first time!

We're nearly out of the beef that we bought from North Hollow Farm in Rochester last spring. We ran out of hamburger quite a while ago since it's something we cook with a lot. Left in the freezer were a bunch of small sirloin steaks, which I really don't care for a whole lot. I'm much more into the fancier cuts of steak when I eat steak. So, I cubed all of the sirloin up and made it into hamburger in the new grinder! Way cool. It was a bit lean, but still made some excellent burgers.

On Sunday morning I pulled three tiny pork shoulders of ours out of the freezer and made my very first batch of sausage. It was a recipe for garlic sausage, which has (as you might have guessed) a bunch of garlic in it. With just some salt, pepper and red wine, I was able to make a very tasty loose sausage.

I'm using some of it in one of those bacon explosions for the Superbowl.

I'm really thankful to Farmer Girl for getting me this sweet new tool for the kitchen. I am embarking on a new journey of culinary goodness! Whoohoo!

Holiday Recap

2009-01-09T17:08:00.000-08:00

Smoke-roasted garlic,mmmm.

I’ve been a slacker blogger again. It’s a chronic problem, I admit it. But without the competitions, I seem less motivated to blog. And yet, I wouldn’t want anyone thinking I was spending my off-season eating TV dinners and watching TV.

The holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years) were all good to us. We’ve had the joy of entertaining family and, as you can imagine, we’ve cooked a lot. Here’s a little recap of what we’ve been up to….

Thanksgiving

The menu in my last post was implemented except for the beans, and it was all very tasty! My father and step-mother came over from Maine for the Thanksgiving Holiday for the first time in ages. Now that my grandmother has finally passed on, they had nothing keeping them in Maine. We were also joined by my mother and step-father and my father-in-law and his girlfriend. It was very mellow and very tasty.

The spread.

There are four Moms and five Dads diggin' in!

Pre-Christmas Cooking

Four pork butts and three beef briskets.

For the past four or five years, Farmer Girl and I have made an effort to make many of the gifts we give out, rather than buying stuff from the store for everyone. We do this to save money and because homemade gifts seem to please people more than store-bought gifts. While Farmer Girl is the queen of crafts (pottery and knitted goods) I do my part by making spice rubs and cooking barbecue to give out.

Well-rubbed beef.

Two weeks before the holiday I cooked up four pork butts and three briskets in the BWS. Once I cook them up, I pull the pork and chop the brisket and seal them in a bag with their own sauce. Frozen, they make great gifts.

The weekend I cooked for Christmas was over December 12th when New England (particularly Southern NH) was slammed with an ice storm. In our case we just got a bit of ice. The morning of my cook was gorgeous.

The view south from our house.

Christmas Day

Ever since the Boy was born, Farmer Girl and I have had a firm policy of not traveling on Christmas Day. We visit my parents up north on Christmas Eve and her parents join us for Christmas dinner on Christmas Day. This year we were joined by my Mother-in-law and my Father-in-law and his girlfriend.

Beef rib roast.

As always, I cooked dinner on the BWS, this time I did a beef rib roast. To cut costs, I went with a “select” rib roast instead of a “prime” rib roast, and I was really happy with the result.

New Year’s Eve

This New Year’s Eve was a little different than usual because neither Farmer Girl or the Boy were home! The two of them were at a New Year’s sleepover hosted by their Karate Dojo. Farmer Girl was one of the chaperones and the boy was a participant. But even without the two of them, I sallied forth with our tradition of hosting a New Year’s Eve Texas Hold’em Tournament with friends and family. A small group of six joined me for a pot-luck meal, drinking and cards. They were all good enough to allow me to take their money, so in addition to having a lot of fun, I made a tidy profit!

The one difference this year was that I opted not to barbecue anything. As my contribution to the pot-luck, I offered two “hot-dishes” (casseroles to most of us). I did a fiesta beef casserole with brisket instead of burger, and one of my favorite dishes, chicken divan. We also had sausages, 7-layer dip, pizza and a bunch of other snacks and goodies. We couldn’t even eat it all.

The evening was a delight, and I enjoyed my friends and family greatly. We rang in the new year with gusto and lots of food!

This wraps up my report, folks. Tomorrow morning I'm cooking up some pork shoulders and a turkey, so there'll be more to show and tell. Until then, peace, love and barbecue!

Thanksgiving Menu

2008-11-26T09:54:00.000-08:00

Well, we're off work for a bit as we celebrate the Thanksgiving Holiday here in "way too cold for November" Vermont. I thought ya'll would be interested to see what's going to be on our plates tomorrow. We're hosting both sets of my parents this year, so it's a small party with only seven to cook for. As you can imagine, we're cooking for about fourteen! LOL.

Here's the menu:

Smoked Turkey - I've got a 13.5lb Turkey that was raised on our farm sitting in a batch of brine as we speak. It'll go onto the BWS at about 8:00am tomorrow and will be lovingly roasted over lump and cherry.

Cornbread and Sausage Stuffing - Although I've long since stopped stuffing my birds, I still make stuffing as a side dish. This is my own recipe, one that has developed over years of experimentation. In addition to being made with homemade cornbread, it has Italian sausage, onions, mushrooms, apples and peppers in it.

Mashed Potatoes with Bleu Cheese and Roasted Garlic - I'll be smoke-roasting a head of garlic in my pit in the morning, which will get mashed into my potatoes. In addition to the fresh milk (right off a farm up the hill from us), I'll throw in some bleu cheese to make them that much more heart-stoppingly tasty!

Garlic Fried Green Beans - We've got some green beans from Farmer Girl's mom that we set aside in the freezer. Green beans freeze surprisingly well if they've been vacuum sealed. Sauteed up in garlic and butter, these will be our only representation of the color green at our meal.

Homemade Rolls - Farmer girl will be whipping up a batch of her fresh rolls.

Simple squash - My mom is bringing a simple squash dish.

Cranberry Chutney - My stepmother makes an awesome cranberry relish or chutney or whatever it's called. I just know it tastes good.

And for dessert:

Cranberry Cake - My dad is making a cranberry cake with a cranberry sauce.

Sweet Potato Peanut Pie - This is a recipie I found in "The Thrill of the Grill". It's taken a bit of tweaking, but now it's a fantastic pie with a great mix of sweet and salty.

Mix all of this together with some good coffee, wine and a few Wolaver's Oatmeal Stouts and we should all be napping by about 4:00pm.

So, to all of you out there who take the time to read my blog from time to time - have a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday! Celebrate your family, enjoy your food, watch some football and get in a good nap!

Best,

Chris

Where's He Been?

2008-11-18T08:58:00.000-08:00

In case anyone is wondering where the heck I've been and why I haven't been blogging, I offer a brief answer. For the past several months, my weekends have been dedicated to studying for the Planner's Certification Exam and doing a side job building a web site for a non-profit.

This Friday I completed the AICP exam and passed it, so that responsibility is now over. I should finish the web site in the next two weeks. Once that's all done, I can get back to cooking on weekends. More will follow.

I promise!

Cheers,

Chris

Sunday With Family

2008-10-27T17:19:00.000-07:00

As you've no doubt noticed, there was no "Friday Food Porn" this week. Truth is, I didn't cook. Instead, I spent the evening with friends and let them fleece me out of nearly twenty dollars at poker. But, I did get a darned good meal out of it - the wings and burgers were great!

This Sunday, though, I did take some time to throw some meat on a grill. My mother and step-father came down from up north to return the child we had loaned them for the weekend. In return for them driving all the way to our place, we cooked them a nice Sunday afternoon meal.

Not wanting to waste space, I threw two of our chickens and an odd little pork roast on the Weber and smoked it up with some wicked good lump and cherry chunks! Mmmmm!

Cooking Grass-Fed Meats

2008-10-27T16:36:00.001-07:00

Robert over at the White Trash BBQ Blog posed a question to me in a comment on my last "Friday Food Porn" post.

He asked: "Do you cook grass-fed meat differently than you cook grain-fed?"

This is an excellent question, and instead of replying to his post, I thought this would make a much better post for all to see. Farmer Girl and I are big proponents of grass-fed and family-farm raised meats. For the past seven or eight years we've raised some of our own animals because we feel strongly that this food is healthier and better tasting. At this very instance, for example, we've got five Tamworth pigs sleeping in their shed north of our house. Right behind me, a homemade hoop house contains some twenty turkeys. About three weeks ago, we put up some 25 chickens in our freezer. The only one of the three food groups (that's beef, pork and poultry for those keeping score) that we haven't raised ourselves is beef. At this point, our farm is a touch small for an animal that size. So, last spring, we used George Bush's tax rebate to purchase half a cow from North Hollow Farm two valleys over from our home in Rochester, VT. We purchased this meat, pounds and pounds of it, knowing that we'd have to treat it a little differently than we treat the grain-fed stuff you get at the supermarket.

My introduction to the difference in cooking grass-fed meats came from an exceptional little cookbook called "The Farmer and the Grill: A guide to grilling, barbecuing and spit-roasting grass-fed meat", by author and farmer Shannon Hayes. It's a little paperback cookbook, weighing in at only 164 pages. But the information about grass-fed meats is very good. Most importantly, on page 21 you find the key to cooking grass fed meats properly - don't use the USDA recommended temperatures for some meats! For example, the USDA recommended temps from rare to well done are 140-170 degrees Fahrenheit, whereas the temperatures she suggests for the same range are 120-140 degrees. Similar differences can be seen for veal, lamb, goat and pork. Interestingly, the big pieces of meat that we cook for competitions (pork shoulder and brisket) stay at the same temps most of us cook them regardless of grain-fed or grass-fed.

One of the main reasons we cook our meats as hot as we do is out of concern for our health. In the past several years, we've seen a rather large amount of food poisoning by e-coli and other pathogens. One of the biggest downsides to the way meat is most commonly farmed in the USA (feed lot, grain fed) is that there is a much greater opportunity for disease and ill health. One might assume that cooking grass-fed meats at a lower temp would be risky. Not so, according to at Cornell University which determined that grass-fed animals have far fewer E. coli than grain-fed animals!

But health issues aside, the reality is that grass-fed meats just can't handle the high-heat and high internal temps that grain-fed meats. If you buy a good piece of grass-fed beef and use the USDA temps, I guarantee you'll be disappointed, and you'll head back to the supermarket for that nice-marbled grain-fed beef. Having been converted to the value of grass-fed meats, I can assure you that if you stick with Ms. Hayes suggested temperatures, you'll find yourself quite pleased with what you cook. It does take some practice and repetition to re-learn how you cook beef, though. Just as an example, the pictures my "Friday Food Porn" below actually show a couple of steaks that I seared too much! So, I'm still working on it.

For more information on the benefits of grass-fed meats, I would suggest you go to the following locations:

One last note about Shannon's cookbook - the section which talks about how to properly cook sausage is fantastic. I had no idea how wrong I had been cooking my links until I read this book. There is no doubt in my mind that her suggestions had a lot to do with our 2nd place trophy in Sausage at Merrimack in 2008.

Cheers,

Chris

Saturday AM Quickie

2008-10-18T11:52:00.000-07:00

I just want to say that leftovers rock. Particularly, when said leftovers are grilled rib-eye steaks! I'm on my own for breakfast on Saturday mornings because Farmer Girl and the Boy are at Karate class. This morning I cut up the leftover rib eye from last night, sauteed it up with a small onion and a green pepper (from our garden!). I had the intention of making an omelet with the mixture, but laziness (and the need to get to work) took over and I just mad an egg scramble with it.

Rib-eye, pepper, onion, egg scramble with Dizzy Pig Rub!

I topped it off with Cabot Sharp Cheddar cheese and a dash or three of Dizzy Pig's "Raising the Steaks" rub. Mmmmmmmm. Good breakfast.

Chris

Friday Food Porn

2008-10-18T11:41:00.000-07:00

Several of the other barbecue blogs I read have been posting a friday picture of whatever foodee goodness they're whipping up. I thought I'd tag along. Friday's dinner is one of my favorites to cook. This is probably because it's Friday and that is a thing worth celebrating, but also because I feel as though I've got more time to play with my food.

On the left: Veggie Hobo Pack
On the right: Grass-Fed Rib-Eyes

Last night's dinner (I posted this on Saturday afternoon) consisted of grass-fed Rib Eye steaks from North Hollow Farm (two valleys over from where we live) and a hobo pack mixture of new potatoes, leeks, garlic, carrots and onions. All of the veggies came from the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) share we got from Four Springs Farm this season. It makes me extremely happy to be able to cook foods that were raised or grown less than twenty miles from where I live. Buying local is an important part of how we choose to live. And let me tell you - local foods just taste better!

Cheers,

Chris

The American Royal: The Superbowl of Barbecue

2008-10-06T07:06:00.000-07:00

I was finally able to scrape together the cash for a little practice this weekend. Between Friday night and Saturday morning I cooked up two pork butts and a pair of our own, freshly processed chickens. No pictures, unfortunately, as we misplaced the charger for our cameras battery. It has been recovered, but not in time to capture the porky goodness!

While I was enjoying the fun of practice, several other members of the New England Barbecue Society were doing the real thing, competing at the Superbowl of Kansas City Barbecue - the American Royal (AR). The AR has two contests over the championship weekend. The first, is the invitational, which you can only be invited to if you've won a state championship (in the instance where there are multiple "state championships" the AR representative is chosen by drawing names out of a hat). The New England Barbecue Society had two teams participating in the invitational this year, perennial NE circuit winners I Smell Smoke and IQue. In a field of 106 of the best teams on the KCBS circuit, our local teams did very well. Overall the teams came in 20th and 30th respectively, including a first place chicken entry for I Smell Smoke!

The second day of the AR is the "open" which is, as you can imagine, open to any teams willing to pay to get in (at least this is how I understand it, correct me if I'm wrong). This contest features not only a mix of the teams that are in the invitational, but a number of others, with a total team count of a whopping 459 teams! Again, ISS and IQue were very successful, with ISS again coming in 20th overall. Chris Hart's team, I Que were more successful in the open placing 8th overall! Also representing NEBS in the Open was Transformer Barbecue, who were in the upper quarter of the pack at 119.

I'd be lying if I told you I don't get awfully tired of hearing I Smell Smoke or IQue get called for a grand champion trophy at any of the events that we compete at. This summer at Harpoon ISS again took home the NEBS Team of the Year trophy. But the reality is that there's a reason that the folks from ISS and IQue (and now Transformer) are beating the crap out of the rest of the pack - they're damn good at cooking barbecue! And as much as it pains me to say so - they all deserve the success they've had. Someday I hope our little team can achieve some of the success these hard cooking folks have achieved. Until then, I'm glad they're out there representing us yankees in the American Royal!

And, most importantly - Congrats to I Smell Smoke and IQue! You guys are the tops of NEBS!

Cheers,

Chris

The Parts of the Pig

2008-09-30T12:47:00.000-07:00

I haven't been cooking much lately folks. Aside from a dandy batch of hot wings I cooked for myself before the football games, the smoker has been relatively quiet. I'm hoping to have the time to cook this weekend. If I am, I'll tell ya'll how it went. Plus, I'm pretty sure I owe you a wrap-up of the Tunbridge World's Fair.

Until then, though. Here's some food for thought. I might modify it a bit, giving the shoulder a little more credit for its tastiness.

Soapbox Rant

2008-09-17T12:10:00.000-07:00

I rarely use this blog for the purposes of spouting strong opinions about anything more than my love of barbecue, but for just a moment I want to climb up on my soapbox and rant.

CNN.com has posted an article that highlights the abuse of pigs at a commercial pig farm (http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/09/16/abused.pigs.ap/index.html). As I've read it, members of the extremist animal protection group PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) sent "spies" into a hog farm after an internal whistle-blower alerted them to the abuses. They apparently documented a number of nasty practices and abusive habits of the people who run the facility and now the news has gotten hold of it and is waiving it around for all to see.

My rant isn't with PETA, although as a group I often dislike their approach and their attitude toward meat eaters. And it isn't even with the abusive and awful treatment the pigs suffered at the hands of their handlers (although I think that is disgusting and disdainful). No, my rant is with the naive and ignorant general public.

When articles like this appear in our media, the general public is suddenly shocked and appalled to believe that the animals they eat for food are mistreated. The producers of said meats rush around and say "this was just one case, one rare outlier who certainly isn't the norm!" And the public buys it.

That's not the reality, folks. What PETA shed light on is, in fact the norm. I've seen examples of it my own self. See, the problem is that in order for the general public to get their meats as cheap as they expect to get it, corners have to be cut. Factory farming is based on volume and output. Animals are not treated humanely because to do so would force them to have to slow down their process and do things differently - that would cut into their bottom line and it might, god forbid, force them to raise their prices. The abuses the general public are shocked by are the nature of the food production beasts that they feed each day with their money in the big grocery stores. Without a human, personal touch, and a level of respect for the animal, the critters that become our food will lead dismal and horrible lives.

The best way to get that human touch, is to buy locally. Get to know your farmer. Find out who they are and what they stand for. Small-scale farmers are better able to care for their animals and give them good (albeit short) lives. This is not to say all small meat producers are good to their animals, but it is to say that you as a consumer have the ability to do your own due diligence and find out for yourself whether the place you buy your meat from treats it with the respect it deserves.

I believe strongly in buying locally and getting to know who produces the food I eat. It is the cornerstone of how my family lives our lives. My wife produces food for us and others and she does it with as much caring and respect for the creatures we eat as she can. Likewise, the other farmers we get our food from do the same. I do not have issues with those of us who eat meat. I have issues with those of us who are unwilling to take the time to get to know their food, to learn where it comes from and how it is treated. As a whole consumers determine which companies live and which die by how and what they purchase.

So, take some responsibility for what you eat. Take the time to get to know your local farmer. Be willing to spend a little extra for the knowledge that you know where your food came from and how it lived. And above all, be thankful that an animal gave its life for you to eat.

Ok, I'm done. Back to our regularly scheduled blog.

C.

Good Luck, My Friends!

2008-09-11T08:16:00.000-07:00

This weekend's NEBS KCBS contest is the Harvard Fall Festival which, as I understand it is a great little contest. It's held in Harvard Mass on a farm. We've never been, but have heard nothing but good things about it. We have friends who are going - teams Feeding Freindz and Boneyard Smokers, and I can assure you, we'll be thinking good thoughts for them as they try to compete with the regulars on our circuit. Good luck guys!

We would have signed up for it this season were it not for a conflict with our favorite local fair - The Tunbridge World's Fair. The Tunbridge Fair is one of those small fairs that still places agriculture and history at the forefront, and to us it's one of our favorite events of the year. Last evening our 10-year old son said that fair time was "just like Christmas!" I couldn't agree more. Although I don't do rides (fair food, centrifugal force and this blogger do not make a good mix), I'm there for two reasons - the sights and the food. I've already made a list of what'll be on my menu over the next few days, and it includes some good barbecue. Pauline and Dave from Vermont Barbecue will be vending, so they're on the list. There'll also be such treats as fired dough and sausage grinders. I won't bore you with the list at the moment, but I'll post a review and commentary from the fair this weekend.

Cheers, and good luck to our friends in Harvard!

C.

Officially Done

2008-09-08T07:48:00.000-07:00

Labor Day weekend officially marked the end of the barbecue season for Farmer Girl and I. We've opted out of a vending gig at the end of the month because we really couldn't afford to make it happen and, to be honest, we're fried from this season.

This weekend I gleefully watched the first games of the NFL season while cooking three small pork shoulders and two briskets in the BWS. The off-season won't be slow, though. There's lots more practice to be done before 2009 kicks off. And lots more food to cook!

Cheers,

Chris

Why we do this

2008-09-08T07:36:00.000-07:00

As my summer slips into the distance, I’m finally putting my own thoughts together with regard to our 2008 season. As you read in my previous posts this summer’s barbecue events were marked by the good and the bad. As the leader of our team, I could have found myself in a state of depression regarding my performance. However, the opportunity to take time away from both work and competition has given me the benefit of perspective. The weekend after Harpoon Farmer Girl and I held our annual birthday bash for the 19th year in a row.

The spread.

For those who don’t know, she and I have birthdays that fall three days from eachother, since 1989 we’ve been celebrating our mutual birthdays with a party for friends and family. As we laid out our food and enjoyed the company of our friends on August 2nd, I was reminded why I got involved in barbecue in the first place. It’s for these people. I love to cook. And even more than that, I love to cook for my friends and family. When compared to fellow barbecue teams we have a lot to learn, but among our friends and family we’re exceptional cookers with a solid base of fans. In speaking to someone several days after the party, they were still talking about how good the food was. These accolades make our efforts worthwhile.

Party meats - Pulled Pork in sauce, Pork Ribs and, Smoked Bologna.

Two weekends later, we headed up to Duxbury to run the food tent off of the first hole of St. Divots, the home-made golf course that hosts Old Bull and Mame’s Seven Fires Tournament. This is another party that has been going on for decades and like our birthday bash, the attendees leave impressed with the food and the fun that they’ve all had. This is why we do what we do. The sheer “over-the-top” spectacle of bringing finger foods to the tournament payers is well worth it. During the tournament we handed out multitudes of wings (hot and sweet), slices of steak, smoked kielbasa, flatbreads, sausage and spare ribs. Following the awards ceremony, we presented players with a massive meal that included pot-luck dishes from others as well as my pulled pork, more flatbreads and even a venison.

We do this for the laughs and the good times!

I think that one of the most enjoyable elements about cooking at St. Divots is that when I arrive, I’m never 100% sure what I’ll be cooking. Obviously, I knew the ribs were going to be served, because they came with me. And, the wings HAD to happen. But other foods show up as donations. For example, Old Bull’s brother brought a couple of good sirloins which got split between folks on-course. The night before the tournament, someone handed us a frozen leg of venison to cook! Farmer Girl does a fantastic job butchering venison (which is the key to making it taste good) and she spent three hours working on it. I was able to throw a pair of nice venison roasts on to the pellet smoker for the dinner crowd – they came out great!

These two events, which have been going on for almost twenty years, help define why we enjoy doing this. We do what we do because we love it. We love to cook. We love to cook for our friends. We love to do this and we’ll be back next season, trying our best to beat the rest.

Cheers,

Chris

Harpoon!

2008-08-15T07:53:00.000-07:00

My apologies for the tardiness of this report from Harpoon, clearly, I’m running a little late. My reason for the delay is two-fold: First, I’ve been enjoying my annual summer vacation, part of which has involved avoiding anything that seems remotely like office work. Any time spent on a computer (aside from checking email) has been dedicated to playing games like Civilization 4: Beyond the Sword and Titan Quest: Immortal Throne. Second, and more significant, is that I’ve needed time to reflect on Harpoon and the 2008 season as a whole. From the standpoint of pitmaster and team captain, it was not a very good season. Because of this, I’m going to break my report from Harpoon into two parts – a report about the competition itself and a report about the event, the near kidnapping of an advertising representative and why we do what we do. Later, I’ll follow up with my own thoughts about next season and my mission for the off-season.

Harpoon (Part 1) – The Barbecue Competition

As my fair readers know, this season has not been our best. Our scores have found themselves locked firmly in the bottom third, a departure from 2007. We had high hopes going into Harpoon. We’ve had success here and as our “home town” competition, we always feel pumped up. This year was no exception. We arrived early on Friday to find that most of the vendors were already present, but our preferred location near the entrance was still available. Over a period of about six hours, members of Howling Hog Barbecue rolled in from Duxbury and Waterbury. In the evening, Harpoon treated teams to a dinner provided by Chris Hart and his team I-Que. As always the food was excellent (although I could have gone through the line twice). Kudos to Chris and company for the spread they put out for us each year.

Unlike Lake Placid and Merrimack, at Harpoon the barbecue competition takes place on Saturday instead of Sunday. This means that Friday night is when the hard work and the sleepless night happens. Although our kitchen didn’t come together quite as quickly as I had expected it would, we had our operation up and running well in advance of the start time for our bigger cuts of meat. The overnight went smoothly, and the ribs and chicken went on in sequence in the early hours of the next day. I have to admit that I came into turn-in time feeling very positive about our prospects, which generally means we won’t do well at all.

Since lake placid, we’ve been trying a new approach to chicken. Now that the Old Bull is a pellet head (www.treager.com), I’ve put him in charge of cooking our only winged entry in the barbecue competition. The treager pit is capable of smoking at a higher temp, and we see this as a way to achieve the illusive crispy skin that so many of us shoot for. One of the harder parts of doing a whole chicken is deciding how to present it. In this case, we opted to bring a mix of white and dark meat into the mix, including some drumsticks. Our score for this product was in the lower middle of the pack, but considering that this was only our second shot at a whole bird, I think we did pretty well.

This time we entered a whole chicken.

Our next category on Saturday was ribs. As many of you know, ribs have been our Achilles heel. I spent several hundred dollars and many Saturdays practicing the art of cooking ribs during our off-season. Interestingly, I don’t think I really grasped how to cook them until the week before Harpoon. I’d been constantly undercooking the tasty bones, which accounts for our paltry scores in years past. Amazingly, in 2008 at Harpoon, ribs were our best category. Given our tendency to come in DAL (dead assed last) in ribs for the past several years, coming in 15^th out of 42 teams in 2008 is a resounding success. I can only point to the constant practice and advice I gleaned from the archives of the Barbecue Forum as reasons for improvement.

Our rib entry.

The third category in any KCBS sanctioned barbecue event is Pork Shoulder or butt. Because my scores earlier in the season had been so mediocre, I went back to some of my older methods of cooking. I really felt that this was a good decision (and I still do), although I made a serious error in choice of sauce (more about the sauce debacle later). As a result, our score in pork shoulder was only in the bottom third of the game – a major disappointment to me.

Our pork shoulder entry.

Finally, we submitted our brisket entry. Brisket is a meat that I felt as though I understood after scoring 5^th at Harpoon last season. I thought the meat was tasty and not too dry. The judges, however, seemed to think otherwise. The resulting score put us second to last in the brisket category. From 5^th to 41! Amazing. Aside from the fact that I banked on a popular sauce, I’m really not sure what the hell happened on this one. Back to the brisket drawing board for me.

Brisket. I really thought this was better than we scored!

One of the things I learned post-awards, was that judges hadn’t been too impressed with what was served. One of the biggest irritations to them was that nearly half of the teams present, ourselves included, were using the same kind of sauce. Blues Hog, which is an outstanding barbecue sauce, is popular with some of the better teams on the New England circuit. Much like in the NFL, when one team uses something and wins, other teams try to follow their lead. In hindsight, if I had opted to use my own sauce, I think it would have set me apart from the masses and might have moved us up a few ticks.

I will say that we were not the only small team to feel the sting of disappointment. A number of Vermont teams found themselves in the lower half of the scoring this year. I have no idea why, but many of us were scratching our heads.

Harpoon (Part 1) – The Grilling Competition

Just after the barbecue awards ceremony, the cooks meeting for the “Summer Sizzler” grilling competition was held. The time for this meeting had been moved up from previous years and I’m hoping they think twice about doing that again next season. The meeting was a mess. With the refrigerator truck for the Harpoon kegs to our right, and a band banging away to our left, it was VERY hard to hear. Teams were not on their best behavior either. One of the purposes of the cooks meeting (aside from getting your turn-in boxes) is to have any questions answered by the KCBS reps running the competition. Team members were talking over eachother and interrupting and generally being disrespectful to all of us. It was a bummer, and in our case, it lead (to some extent) to our biggest failure of the year. I had been charged with asking if the chef’s choice category needed to be cut into six portions (in standard situations, we would need to, but in an open category such as chef’s choice we might not). There was much back and forth about this. A number of reps said that they would “prefer us” to cut our entries into six portions. The reason that they prefer to have the entries cut up is that there is limited cutlery in the judging tent. It’s a pain in the rear to try to cut up a steak, for example, with a plastic knife. In the end, Ken (our KCBS rep), laid down the law and decreed that we would have to cut our entries. Unfortunately, this wasn’t what I heard (nor was it what a number of other teams heard). More about this later.

For 2008, the contest organizers shook up the grilling categories. Instead of sausage, wings and steak, we were cooking fish, lamb and beef (any cut). One of the mistakes I made this season as team captain, was not looking at the rules well in advance of the competition. Were it not for Farmer Girl pointing out to me that the grilling categories had changed, I might very well have brought a bunch of the wrong stuff! However, we were able to pull our entries together the week before the event.

Our fish entry was first. It was also the first time that Mame stepped into the pit and cooked up an entry of her own. She opted for a tuna steak, marinated and encrusted in sesame seeds. The cooking took us a bit to get used to, but in the end we turned in a pretty good fish entry. The score wasn’t exceptional, but for a first time entry, we were pretty pleased.

Grilled tuna.

The second entry was mine, a lamb dish with Indian overtones. Lamb is a tough type of meat for me to cook. This is primarily because I very rarely cook it. Lamb ain’t cheap, so it’s not reasonable for me to cook legs and legs of lamb. I practiced my boneless leg of lamb dish once before we competed and the scores were middling. Yet, if they run this category again, I think I can make some tweaks to it that will give it a chance at placement.

The lamb. In the future, I'll cook it in a different form!

The third entry was beef. In our case, the Old Bull did a wonderful beef roast on the grill. It came out very well and with a spicy horseradish sauce we felt good about the entry. But, beef is a tough category to compete in. Unlike lamb, beef is easy to find and practice is easy to do. Plus, with teams like the Anchormen and I Smell Smoke, who have members that cook for a living, the competition is brutal. Our scores reflected that.

Beef roast with a spicy horseradish sauce.

Going into the grilling competition, we knew our best shot at a prize would be the chef’s choice category. Our ladies first prize last season was brilliant and their attempt at a prize this season was even better. Were it not for my own mistake, I feel we would have walked away with SOME sort of prize. But...I messed up. When I walked out of the cooks meeting the night before, my brain processed the “we would prefer you cut the entry into pieces” as the rule. It was not. When KCBS rep Ken came to our booth with our presentation box, I knew I had messed up. Our best entry was our first ever DQ (Disqualifiaction). Telling Farmer Girl the news was heartbreaking. I’m still not sure I’ll be able to make that up to her.

A glimpse of what could have been another winner.

With a DQ factored in to our score, we did poorly over all in the Summer Sizzler, and the barbecue season for us ended with a whimper. There is much to think about and much to consider.

In the end the high point of the Summer Sizzler grilling competition wasn't our success, it was getting to see our friends Pauline and Dave of Vermont Barbecue take home their first Harpoon trophy! Dave, who's been cooking professionally for years, scored big in the lamb category - First Place! We're really excited to see another team from Vermont, particularly a team who lives a town away from our home base, take home a prize! Yay Pauline and Dave!

Smokin' Fools (a Vermont Barbecue Company)
with their 1st place lamb trophy!

Harpoon (Part 2) – Why we do this

I don’t want my melancholy report of how this all turned out to make it seem as though we had a lousy time at Harpoon or any event this summer. In fact, that would be far from the reality of it. Surely, I’m disappointed with how we did. I’m particularly disappointed with the mistakes I made as captain throughout the summer. But, the competition itself is only a part of why we do this. The main reason is because we like to do this. We love to cook and we love to be with other folks who feel the same way. And to that end, we feel like we really won this event. This season I feel as though we’ve finally become “regulars” to some extent. Teams know us by name now. At Harpoon I had a bunch of teams drop by and tell me that they read my blog.

Being considered part of this community of partying foodees fills me with a great deal of pleasure. In particular are the relationships that we’ve begun to cultivate. This season we found ourselves parked next to Tim, Wendy, Betsy and Andy of Feeding Friendz. These guys were my neighbors the first time I ever competed. Without their friendly nature and well wishes that first year, I might not have come back. But, I did and I’ve considered the folks of Feeding Friendz to be good friends ever since. To illustrate the kind and friendly nature of these guys, consider this trucker from the west coast. While we were setting up on Friday, this pretty big rig (sans trailer) stopped by the gate. The trucker had a weekend long layover and had never been to a barbecue competition before. Fortunately for him, he struck up a conversation with Tim and Wendy and within minutes, they had gotten permission for him to park his cab on site and he was a member of the Feeding Friendz team for the weekend. This, my friends, is why we do this – the people are just great.

Feeding Friendz checks out the big rig!

In addition to making exceptional neighbors, Feeding Friendz also deep fry a mean Oreo. In fact, their deep-fried Oreo operation resulted in one of the highlights of the event. During the off-season, Wendy had procured an inflatable Oreo man to act as their “advertising representative”. This plastic man stood proudly at the edge of their booth, enticing attendees to try some of the deep-fried desserts. Feeding Freindz’s offering was VERY popular and required a larger crew to keep the operation running while the main team members were working the competition. It’s fortunate for them that they had the extra bodies, otherwise, they might have been victims of a dastardly crime!

During the awards ceremony on Saturday, Tim, Wendy, Betsy and Andy left the booth in charge of their back up crew (friends and relatives). While they were away, a gentlemen apparently took interest in Mr. Oreo. He snatched the inflatable fellow and began to dance around the midway with him. The Feeding Friendz crew watched in mild amusement until the true intent of the dancer became clear. Breaking away from his dance, Mr. Oreo’s dance partner ran for the exit and, upon the appearance of his limo, began stuffing Mr. Oreo in the vehicle against his inflatable will. Luckily, members of Feeding Friendz were on the ball – tackling the assailant before he could make off with the ambassador of cookies and saving Mr. Oreo from a fate worse than being deep fried. You’ll be happy to know that he survived unscathed, although he was locked up at night for fear of a return attempt on his life.

Mr. Oreo celebrates his return to safety with members of Feeding Freindz.

Another high point of our social interaction this summer is a growing friendship between team Howling Hog and Dave and Sandy from Boneyard Smokers. Dave and Sandy are good people and we’ve had the pleasure of their visits whenever we’re at the same competition. Harpoon is so popular that there’s a waiting list for teams to get into the event. Boneyard is still on the outside looking in, so Dave and Sandy join Purple Turtle (their original mentors) as team members in order to be at the big event. So, we were able to have the pleasure of Dave and Sandy’s company at Harpoon on multiple occasions, which was a joy. These are good folks, and we’re delighted to call them friends.

One of the best things about this season was the addition of Farmer Girl’s Uncle, Henchman 24, to the team. He’s has been trying to make it down to Harpoon for the past three years and was finally able to break away from home commitments long enough to give us a hand and drink a lot of our beer. Although I had to fend off endless harassment and constant pathetic begging for drink “cue-pons” (as he calls coupons), having his presence at Harpoon was wonderful. Hopefully we’ll be able to count on it again in the future.

As mediocre as this season was when you look at the numbers, it was a very positive season. We learned a lot, both good and bad. We continued to become more a part of this collective of mad cookers and further refined our vending operation. I cannot look at this as a failure. Instead, I look at this summer as a challenge to improve and learn. I look forward to writing more about this as the summer winds down.

We also want to thank the fine folks at Harpoon who put on one of the best and most enjoyable contests in New England. Without their hard working staff and the respect they show for the teams, the Harpoon Championships of New England Barbecue wouldn't be the spectacular event that it is.

Finally, I want to thank the many folks who helped us make this possible. Without the involvement of Doctor’s without Boundaries and our many friends and family, we could not have made it through the summer without going bankrupt. Thank you all!

Cheers,

Chris

We interrupt your regularly scheduled program...

2008-07-11T09:14:00.001-07:00

I just wanted to take a brief interlude from barbecue talk to celebrate one of the most important things in my life.

On July 6th, Farmer Girl and I welcomed our 17th year of marriage. It's been a wonderful 17 years with all of the ups and downs a good marriage is supposed to have. Throughout it all, we've been here for each other.

Sweet sixteen and smitten with her.

So, here's to you Farmer Girl, my love! You're my best friend and partner for life. May there be many, many more years ahead of us!

Now back to the barbecue...

Smoke in the Mountains: The 2008 Lake Placid I Love Barbecue Festival

2008-07-10T12:59:00.000-07:00

The Lake Placid I Love Barbecue Festival (ILBBQF) is the second stop on our three-state competitive barbecue tour. In our opinion, the ILBBF is second only to Harpoon in its quality and the attention paid to its teams. As far as I understand it, competition organizers only have to provide teams with water, electricity and a place to go to the bathroom (in addition to the judging). There is a real value to making the participants of a competition feel appreciated. In the case of a benefit such as the ILBBQ festival, the teams are the draw that’s bringing folks to the event.

The view from the hill adjacent to the oval.

In its third year, the ILBBF is a fund-raiser to benefit the Shipman Youth Center of Lake Placid, NY. The legacy of the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics is clear throughout the town, but is no clearer to the teams as we have the privilege of camping out on the outdoor speed skating oval where Eric Heiden won five gold medals for the good ole’ USA.

The legends of the oval

The event is superbly run and its organizers go out of their way to provide services to the teams that no other events that we’ve competed at offer. Our lead contact is Shipman Youth Center boardmember Dmitry Feld.

The D-man strikes a gansta pose!

Under his guidance (with lots of help from Frank and many other volunteers), the event provides a number of special services to its teams. At the ILBBQF they provide teams with daily coffee and bagels in the morning and free ice. They’ve also arranged for us to have access to showers in the high school, which is an amazing perk!

Not a cloud in the sky!

This year the weather was absolutely superb with crisp, cool nights and bright, sunny days. The drive to Lake Placid is our farthest, clocking in at about three and a half hours of drive time. It’s longer than we’re generally willing to drive for a competition (which is why we only do three a year), but the scenery makes the trip worthwhile. We arrived late (common for us), but were set up very quickly. Unlike the Merrimack competition, we’re not just competitors, but vendors as well. By 5:00pm, we were open for business. Farmer Girl and Mamer lead our vending operation. At Lake Placid, we don’t sell any barbecue (except for smoked eggs and nuts). Instead, we’re all about the baked goods. We’re lucky that both Mame and Farmer Girl are talented bakers, because it gives us something special to offer folks. In fact, one of our greatest pleasures this season was the number of return customers who stopped at our booth.

The Midnight Grilling Bash took place on Friday evening. It’s a two category, open garnish competition. The categories are Strip Steak and Chicken. We took a chance during this event and grilled a whole chicken for the first time. Although it didn’t score exceptionally well, we’re of the opinion that there is potential in doing a whole bird. The Old Bull took charge of the bird while I was Mr. Steak. Unfortunately, Mr. Steak dropped the ball and left his favorite steak seasoning at home! Oy. This is the same stuff I used on my 8^th place steak two weeks ago. I also failed to follow through on my captain duties by not paying attention to the rules of this Grilling competition – it allowed for open edible garnish. The net result of the event wasn’t spectacular, but not horrible, either. We came in 17^th out of 26 teams. Placement in the bottom third of the pack would seem to rule our weekend, as you’ll find out.

Our steak entry.

Our grilled chicken entry.

Saturday was functionally a day off from competition cooking because this year we opted out of the “buck-a-rib” competition. This competition runs for three hours and is a people’s choice contest. Teams cook up a massive amount of ribs, sell them in singles for $1, and the attendees get to vote on who’s ribs are the best. I had planned to participate in the “buck-a-rib” competition, but a last minute brake job on my car left me without the cash to buy a couple of cases of ribs. So, our day was dedicated exclusively to vending. As I said before, one of the greatest things about our return to Lake Placid was the recognition from last year’s attendees. Many times folks stopped by and said “you guys were here last year! We loved your (insert baked good here)”.

Although I don’t produce any baked goods for vending, I was able to offer one of the most intriguing items – smoked eggs. It’s amazing what a conversation piece a bowl full of smoked eggs is! With hot sauces donated to us by Steve, the ownwer of Richard’s Vermont Made (who were vending as well), folks peeled their eggs and gobbled them up with glee. They sold so well on Saturday that we cooked up a second batch the next day. If you have the opportunity to sample any of the Richard’s Vermont Made sauces, I would highly recommend them. In particular, you should give their Hot Sauce a sample. It’s spicy and flavorful without overpowering you with the heat.

Because the barbecue competition at Lake Placid takes place on Sunday, everyone begins cooking their larger cuts of meat (briskets & shoulders/butts) on Saturday. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there’s nothing like walking the competition grounds in the wee hours of the morning. It’s quiet and only a few folks are out and about. The smoke from all of our pits floats gently in the air and, of course, everything smells fantastic!

Me and The Boy prepping up our pork shoulders.
A future competitor in the making? I sure hope so!.

Unlike our last competition, I did my job the way I was supposed to. No weird changes to my routine, no off-the-wall mistakes. In the end though, our products didn’t meet the judges muster and we again found ourselves in the bottom third of the pack at 27 out of 37. Although it’s a bit depressing to again see us place poorly, the resulting scores helped point me in a few directions which should lead to an improvement in our scores at our next competition.

12:00 Chicken entry.
Next time we use my rub.

12:30 Rib entry.
My sauce was not at its best.

1:00 Pulled pork entry.
Again, the sauce was not at its best.
And I need to go back to the way I was doing it before.

1:30 Brisket entry.
I thought it was pretty good, but I should have sauced it.

Regardless of our paltry scores, I have to give the weekend a great grade! We had a wonderful time visiting with friends and enjoying the company of our family members. We were even graced with a visit from two of our generous supporters!

Having taken several days to give our results some thought, I found that I needed to look back at what I did last season and how it was different than this year. I’ve changed a lot of what I do! At Harpoon in 2008, I scored well with brisket using a commercially available spice rub. I was too cheap to buy more of it, thinking that my own rub was nearly the same. Obviously, that’s not the case. So, in the past few days, I’ve ordered rubs from my supplier and have even picked up some other new products for testing. This weekend, in fact, I’m planning a full barbecue practice session. I’ll be cooking up brisket, pork shoulder and ribs. I’m going to do it right, too! If I can sneak out of work early on Friday, I plan to run my practice just like a competition, cooking through the evening and making sure everything is ready prior to the traditional 12:00 noon beginning of the turn in time. I’m looking forward to it!

The Merrimack Rockin' Ribfest - Day Two

2008-06-23T14:06:00.000-07:00

(Note: I posted three times today. Go down three posts and work your way up if you want to read this in order)

As much as the grilling competition was a happy surprise, the barbecue competition was a supreme disappointment on a number of levels. Now that I’ve had the time to think back on it, I’m not at all surprised it turned out the way it did. I was not there with my A game. In fact, I wasn’t there with much of a game at all.

The problems with the event really began the week before. I was unable to get pork shoulder and brisket in the size range I’m used to working with, each of them coming in less than five pounds the usual. Because of the distinct size difference in the meats I was working with, I found myself with little to do on Saturday evening. Usually, I have my meat on the pit by 8:00 so that it can come off the pit mid-morning and be put into a hot box for turn-in later that day. This night, it wasn’t on until much later. With all of that extra time, I did things that I don’t usually do when I cook for a contest. And that was the killer.

In addition to the bad performance of the chef, Mother Nature also decided to make the day a challenge. At about 12:55, right when our pulled pork turn-in was being boxed, the wind went from gusty to hurricane-like. I was standing on one side of our tent holding it down as Farmer Girl was putting the box together. It was exciting! Fortunately, our little tent stayed on the ground long enough for her to walk the box to the turn-in table and come back to strap it down with our ratchet straps (Thanks to Eric of Yabba Dabba Que for his method of tying down a tent! We used it, sans the spackle buckets to save our tent – the buckets will be purchased next week!).

Yabba Dabba Que's tent strap system is brilliant.
If my memory serves me right, Eric was (or is) an engineer.

Once the brisket went out, we quickly tried to break stuff down before the tent took off. Eventually, it got too out of control and, with the help of barbecuers and civilians (special thanks to Tim from Feeding Friendz for giving us a hand), we got it down and stuffed it into my trunk before it flew off. The rest of the afternoon was a whirlwind – literally. The rain that followed the stiff wind was incentive to load up quickly. By 3:15 we were loaded and headed over to the awards ceremony.

Ironically, it was my chicken that scored the highest (8th).
I smoked it in the weber instead of the BWS.

Ribs - I wasn't happy with these. I did a number of things to them
that I don't usually do. Where was my head?

Pulled Pork - Both shoulders were underdone. One was mushy, which,
if you cook shoulder only happens when it's overdone. Weird.

Brisket - Not done right. That's all I can say.

As I expected, there were no calls for us on Sunday, and the resulting score sheet was the worst showing we’ve had for a couple of years. Only the 8^th place in chicken was a positive. Truth be told, I’m glad it happened the way it did. Falling on my face so majorly was a great reminder that I can’t give this hobby only a fraction of my attention. If we’re going to win, I need to know what I’m doing and execute that plan to the very best of my abilities. As captain of this team, that’s my job!

This coming weekend is my first full weekend at home without any major plans, and I intend to spend Friday night cooking barbecue and paying darned close attention to what I’m doing. Lake Placid hits in two weeks. I’ve got a lot of work to do before then!

Cheers,

Chris

The Merrimack Rockin' Rib Fest - Day One

2008-06-23T13:50:00.001-07:00

This was our second year attending the Merrimack Rockin’ Ribfest. We do this event primarily because it’s relatively close to where we live (two hours drive) and very kid friendly. But, this weekend we were only two. Our son had the opportunity to spend a weekend with his Grandfather where he’d get to play with his excavator and tractor, and Hank and Mame opted out of the trip since they’ve had a VERY packed schedule of late.

As I told you all in my previous email, our focus of late has been on work and not on getting ready for the barbecue season. As you’ll find out in my day two report, the lack of focus showed. But, on day one, things were all good! We pulled into Merrimack far later than we had planned but found a good spot close to some of our favorite teams Feeding Friendz (that’s pronounced friend-Z) and Boneyard Smokers. These guys represent teams on the cusp, particularly Feeding Friendz. They all have the strong potential to win it all!

Check out Feeding Friendz's new digs!

One of the noted improvements over last season at Merrimack was the fact that we were allowed to keep our vehicles on site. Because this event takes place on the grounds of the Anheiser Busch brewery, security is tight, making our departure a slow process because they have to guide us out through the back with security (imagine the potential for damage if someone poisoned the beer! Seriously.). Having our rigs on site made it possible for us to load up without having to wait to get our cars like we did last season.

Unlike the Harpoon competition, Merrimack holds their grilling contest on Saturday instead of Sunday. This means that when we load in on Friday evening, it’s a much more relaxed environment. Farmer Girl and I were able to prepare a nice dinner, socialize a bit with our neighbors and get things organized for the next day. She was even able to get some practice in for our entry in the grilled fruit category.

The Saturday grilling competition had four categories: Fish steak, beef steak, sausage and fruit. Farmer Girl and I worked well together (as we always do!) and were able to get our submissions cooked and out in a timely manner. I did the grilling and she did the boxing. It’s funny but that seems to be the norm for most of the husband and wife teams. For my part, I’m glad to be able to turn my thoughts to the next entry as soon as I give her the food – it’s a load off my mind to not have to set up the box.

Here are the final submissions. We don’t have a picture of the fruit entry because I put the camera down somewhere where Farmer Girl couldn’t find it. I was soundly reprimanded for that decision! LOL.

Beef Steak - It probably should have been a touch more rare,
but I was happy with it.

Fish Steak - I went with Tuna. It tasted fantastic, although I think I overcooked it a bit.
At $15-20 a pound, practice is hard to afford.

Sausage - No, I'm not telling you what kind it is (trade secret!).
But it's very, very tasty.

Farmer Girl working on the grilled bananas.
Yes, I should have put the camera back after the last picture.

At 4:00, the final results were in. We were thrilled to come up with a 2^nd place trophy for our sausage and even more excited that we placed 4^th overall among the 25 teams that competed in the grilling comp. It was an excellent day, and I was more than pleased that we did it using the new Weber grill that was donated to the team by some of our most ardent supporters.

We should also mention that the folks from Feeding Friendz had an excellent showing missing Grand Champion by a sausage, so to speak. They took second in beef steak and first in grilled fruit! Way to go guys!

That's the extent of our day one adventures. The report, like the weather, would take a turn for the cloudy, but it wouldn't be without some excitement!

Cheers,

Chris

And now for something completely different...

2008-06-23T13:48:00.000-07:00

“How did you do on your test?”

“I passed! But I failed!”

“Then I am happy and sad for you.”

This quote from the 80’s classic “Real Genius” (starring a youthful Val Kilmer), sums up our first contest of the weekend. But, before I post about that, I need to back up a bit.

I’ve been awol from the blog-o-sphere. Since posting on February 28^th, nobody has heard a peep from me about the world of barbecue or anything else. My apologies. I’ll make it up to you. Promise.

My absence from the blog is due, for the most part, to an excess of working. Since February, I’ve been neck deep in projects including a stint of excessive studying for a certification related to my career (the results of which won’t be known until August).

This is not to say that I’ve been kept from barbecue. Nothing can keep me from the pleasure of the grill and smoker. I’ve smoked briskets, pork shoulders, ribs, nuts and eggs. I’ve grilled fish, steaks, sausages and fruit. I’ve tried to keep at it, but all the while my focus has been elsewhere. And this weekend at Merrimack, it showed. But, that’s a story for later.

Before I tell ya’ll about our first contests of the season, I want to make mention of the incredible outpouring of support Howling Hog Barbecue has seen from our friends and family this season. As I’ve mentioned in the past, this hobby is expensive, and the members of this team are not exactly wealthy folks. So, to help make this hobby less costly to our respective household budgets, I begged and schmoozed with friends and family and others who simply dig the idea of lending a hand to a small barbecue team out of Vermont. The results have been wonderful. Through the help of these folks, we’ve raised nearly a third of what I feel our yearly budget for competing is. With their help, we’re fully registered for all of our events, and were able to buy a new tent and some other much needed equipment and are the proud owners of a new Weber One-Touch Gold.

I want to recognize all of our supporters, they are:

Rhonda Barr and Tracy Wolters
Rachel and Chris Gilker
Pete and Melissa Fellows
Sally and Kelly Hull
Rita Seto and Nate Miller
Jim and Maggie Francoeur
Jim and Kathy Driesch
Eric Kenyon and Gigi Fanning

With special mention for their extreme generosity to:

Sandy Sargent
Rob Hurley and Tara Race
Doctors without Boundaries

Thank you to all of our good friends and supporters. We really couldn’t do this without you.

Cheers,

Chris

Is the fire out?

2008-02-28T07:16:00.002-08:00

For those of you who are wondering where I've been, I'm not gone or dead, and the fire is most definitely not out! The weeks since the Pats defeat at the hands of the Giants have been balls-to-the-wall busy with work and other stuff.

But, I HAVE been cooking. I'm going to put it in my plans to do a little catch-up work on the blog. I've been cooking ribs constantly, mostly because cooking them is a bit easier to squeeze into my busy schedule than the big meats which take 12-18 hours to cook.

The 2008 barbecue season is almost upon us - for some it's already started. As we begin to get rolling, I'll be posting a bit more information about planning and fund raising. There's lots to do before our first contest!

Cheers,

Chris

Superbowl Que

2008-01-29T10:18:00.001-08:00

There's really no way an American can avoid the knowledge that this weekend is Superbowl weekend. Every news source in the USA is spewing predictions about Tom Brady's ankle and the Giants underdog status.

At the same time, many of us are planning their food list for Superbowl Sunday. I, too, am among this crowd. Unlike last weekend, this coming weekend is relatively un-planned. In my freezer are the two briskets and two pork shoulders I bought a couple of weeks ago. On Saturday AM, I'm planning on cooking them up, although they're to be used at a later date.

I've been batting around ideas for a meal theme with Mr. Muleskinner. We've decided that we like the idea of a meal made of mostly appetizers.

For Sunday, I'm going to do up the following:

Atomic Buffalo Turds (commonly known as ABT's). As crude as the name is, this is a rockin' finger food. ABT's consist of Jalapeños stuffed with goat cheese (and possibly pulled pork), wrapped in bacon and smoked.

Smoked Chipoltle Deviled Eggs. While I'm cooking the big meats, I'll throw a dozen or so eggs on the top shelf and smoke them. Once they're cooked through, we'll make them into deviled eggs. Instead of mustard and mayo though, I mix in chipotle peppers and hot sauce with may and pipe that into the halved eggs.

Something else. I'm not sure what else I want to do. Marinated steak tips come to mind. Or perhaps some sort of shrimpy thing for those who eat shrimp.

In addition, I'll likely have some smoked almonds added to the mix.

This will be a fun weekend. I have to work much of Saturday, but I can do it from home and will be able to tend my pit while doing work. I intend to pay far better attention to what I'm doing than I did last weekend!

After all that cooking and eating, I understand that there'll be a football game. My team of choice, the New York Jets, had no chance of seeing a superbowl this season. And my adopted NFC team, the Packers were bumped out by the Giants. So, my choice at this point is clear. I'm rooting for history to be made.

Go PATS! 19-0!

C.

Not paying attention

2008-01-29T10:08:00.000-08:00

This past weekend was most definitely not about food.

I DID actually cook food. But I didn't really put my heart into it, and it showed. I cooked up a Jambalaya on Saturday that ended up being kind of mushy because I put the rice in to early. And, I had to mix tomato paste in at the last minute because I had forgotten to put it in. On Sunday, I fried up some boneless pork chops, but put them on too early so they were really dry and I put too much rice in my side dish making it bland.

Obviously, I was focused on other things. We had a good friend over for gaming on Saturday and as the gamemaster I had other things to think about beyond food. And on Sunday we had to rush out of the house just after dinner because we had tickets to see the young English blues band "Back Door Slam". They were fantastic, by the way. If you dig blues, go buy their CD. I'm a good guitar player. If I actually practiced, I could probably be as good as their guitarist Danny Knowles. The thing is though, I'm 37. He's 20. At the same age he is now, I was still just fumbling around on the guitar. This kid has the makings of a guitar hero.

But, that's not the point of this post. My two mediocre dinners served as a good reminder that no matter how good at cooking I think I am, I still need to pay attention to what I'm doing.

It was a great reminder that you really DO get out what you put in.

C.

Conference Championship Weekend

2008-01-22T08:45:00.000-08:00

This weekend was a busy one, in fact, I wound up being too busy to take the time for cooking brisket and pork shoulder. The four big hunks of meat are now waiting for me to pull them from the freezer at a later date.

The tempo of the weekend did not interfere with my prep for Muleskinner's conference championship party. Five racks of ribs spent about five hours in my pit before we left home. Between the two games I pulled them out of the hot box and finished them on his Weber, getting a nice, finished glaze on them. They were very well received.

I just adore getting together with friends. I have, entirely by accident, surrounded myself with other foodees. In addition to Muleskinner and his lovely wife Ms. T, we were joined by other friends and the Duxbury half of Howling Hog Barbecue, so the food was copious and top notch. Muleskinner smoked a chicken and let it sit in Big Bob Gibson's white sauce for 11 hours prior to eating. The Mamer brought down a hearty spicy chili. There were salads and sandwiches and desserts! Oh My!

It was a great feast. Plus, there were a couple of football games on, too. I was rooting for old man Farve and the storied Packers, but the Giants played a solid game. Only Chargers fans were kidding themselves if they thought New England was going to lose that game. Being a Jets fan, I had no team to root for, so I was planning on taking the Pack in the event that they made it past the Giants. Now, though, my choice is clear. I'm rooting for the Pats to make some football history. 19-0 would be pretty darned impressive. After that, it's time for someone else (like the Jets, for example) to have a chance!

This coming weekend looks to be without any barbecuing. We've got company coming on Saturday and we're going to see "Back Door Slam" in concert on Sunday night. I think I'll do the big meats the weekend of the Superbowl.

Until then - keep on smoking.

Chris

Next!

2008-01-16T08:37:00.000-08:00

This coming weekend I'll be barbecuing again!

This particular cook has been on my calendar for a while, because I'm bringing ribs to Muleskinner's NFL Conference Championship party. The best football games of the year have been the focus of this annual party for a number of years now, and it brings out some positively fantastic food.

In addition to the ribs, I realized last night that I'm (gasp!) out of pulled pork. So, I put in a call to a local store near where I work and have two Boston butts en route to me for pick up on Friday. Late Saturday afternoon or evening, I'll spark up the pit and begin the long process of cooking my butts. The ribs will join the butts in the morning on Sunday and will be ready and raring for the party that afternoon!

Expect a post about my continuing adventures some time next week. Until then, keep smoking!

C.

Cookin' in the cold

2008-01-16T07:22:00.001-08:00

A cold morning in VT.

Last weekend, as I implied in a previous post, I dedicated a day to cooking barbecue. It's fun to justify it as "practice" even though I'm really just doing it because cooking makes me happier that many other things I could do. I realized this morning, as I was attempting to bring my brain to life with a massive cup of coffee that the pace of life many of us keep is frightening. We work five days a week, for most of the day. We come home try to be with our families and take care of those things that are important to us. We get up the next day and do the same thing. This is why I cook, and why I cook barbecue. No matter how you try, you simply cannot rush through the cooking of a pork butt or brisket. They require long, slow cooking and regular attention to bring out their best qualities. In short, barbecue makes me slow down.

The view down my valley, crisp and clear.

When I woke up Sunday morning, I was greeted by a cold, crisp morning. In the silence that hangs in my valley on an early morning, I puttered happily about, getting my pit up to temp and rubbing my butts.

Naked butts

Cooking butts

The buts, being the largest piece of meat, went on early and spent a good part of their day without company in my pit. However, early in the afternoon I added several companions to smoke along with it. I threw in three racks of St. Louis-style ribs and a whole chicken.

St, Louis-style ribs rubbed with my new Green Mountain Rib Rub.

I cooked the ribs for about five hours, probably an hour longer than would have been appropriate for a KCBS competition. If you look closely at the image of the finished products (two images below), the meat is pulling back from the bone a bit too much, a sign that they're overdone. However, what is overdone by the rules established under KCBS and what I actually like are not always the same thing. I like the meat on my ribs to come off the bone easily. And these ribs were perfect.

Finishing the ribs.

Once they came off the pit, I moved them over to my grill for the finishing touches. My sauce caramelizes nicely and adds a great color to the racks. I'm very much looking forward to seeing how my rib methods shake out in a competition.

Finished ribs, ready to eat.

One rack of ribs and the chicken were eaten for dinner on Sunday night. The other two racks were frozen and stored as a test to see how they will handle being re-heated.

I cannot begin to tell you how much I'm already looking forward to this summer. Barbecue has taken a prominent place in my life and I'm very grateful that it acts as a way to slow me down and bring me down to earth. With life as hectic as it is, it sure is nice to savor the smoke and fire for at least a little while.

Be well,

Chris

Soup, it does a body good.

2008-01-15T18:04:00.000-08:00

A recent source of fun and amusement (insert sarcasm here) in my life was the discovery that I have several food allergies. These allergies, it appears, have been responsible for some health issues I've head since I was in my twenties.

I'm allergic to Gluten and Cow's milk. This makes eating out a challenge and definitely forces me to know what I'm eating. Needless to say, during the holiday, it becomes even more difficult to avoid either type of food.

The long and the short of it is that a week after the holidays, I found myself at home, feeling like garbage. When lunch rolled around, hunger began to prod me to life a bit. I wanted hot, and hearty. With some brisket in the fridge, I whipped up exactly that.

Soups are one of my favorite foods. They can be made with the simplest ingredients or the most complicated and be an amazing experience to eat. The key to me, to making a good soup, is the stock. Stock makes up the bulk of whatever soup you're making. If your stock is bland, you'll have to work too hard to compensate for it, which might result in an over-spiced bowl of soup.

We often have our own chickens in the freezer. Farmer girl processes them onsite, so they aren't butchered, they're whole. No matter how we cook with the bird, there's a carcass left over. Throw the bones of a chicken or turkey into a large pot, toss in an onion or two, garlic and other veggie pieces, and then let it simmer for a good 12 hours on your stove and you've got it! They key, of course is all that time. It takes a fair bit of time to make a good stock, but it is really worth it.

In my case, I often have smoked stock on hand. Doing barbecue, all of my meats are smoked to some extent, and that flavor carries over to chicken or beef stock. During my sick day, I used smoked beef stock to make a darned good beef vegetable soup. I have to admit that since I was a child, my idea of good beef veggie soup was Campbell's. As a result, the style of my soup tends similar flavors.

I use a mix of root veggies: Potatoes, cut into quarter inch cubes, Carrots, cut into small cubes, several onions, chopped and garlic, also chopped. In addition, I usually add celery into the mix. I season the soup with salt and pepper and other flavors depending on whether I'm trying for an ethic feel (spanish, for example). But for the traditional style, I always make sure there's been some molasses added to it and some tomato paste. Those two elements are essential if you were a Campbell's fan!

The result of my bleary-eyed efforts, was a thick, rich full tasting stew with hints of smoke and a deep flavor. It sure made me feel good.

C.

What's Cookin' This Weekend?

2008-01-11T08:08:00.000-08:00

The stars are aligning for me to have time to do some practice cooking this weekend. Sunday appears to be an open day and with my TV being off at the moment (they want to get paid for it?) I can't watch football, so what am I to do?

Barbecue!

I've got two pork shoulders waiting for me at a store near where I work. As an aside, this will be an interesting test because I've had some issues in the past with my current butcher and this store has the potential to be my primary meat source. I started getting my ribs through them after my butcher hosed me hard with ribs that were an embarrassment to sell.

I also have a whole chicken and a number of ribs in the freezer, so I suspect that Sunday will be an early morning with me popping two pork shoulders, a chicken and four racks of St. Louis-style ribs into the BWS.

I wasn't too happy with my last batch of shoulders, so I intend to spend a bit more time working on them throughout the day. As much time as I've spent trying to make my ribs top notch, I absolutely must not neglect the big meats. I don't want my scores in brisket and pork shoulder to take a hit because the shoulder in particular has been (at the very least) consistent (14th-12th place). I'll probably use up the last of my brine on the shoulders.

In addition to blogging about my Sunday, I've got another recipe to show off - beef brisket soup!

Until this weekend...

Chris

2007: A Barbecue Year in Pictures

2008-01-03T07:46:00.000-08:00

In celebration of 2007, here's a photo album of our barbecue experiences from last season. Enjoy!

Christmas Bounty

2008-01-01T11:29:00.001-08:00

As always, Christmas in the Howlin' Hog Barbecue household was a generous event. We are truly blessed by our families and their generosity. In particular, I am blessed by their continued support of my barbecue habit! The two biggest gifts I got, which came from Farmer Girl and my Mom, were the new Barbecue Guru Digi Q II (a direct vent controller for my pit) and a Thermapen. What great new toys!

I used the thermapen a bunch of times this weekend and finally felt like I had a tool that would allow me to consistently make a good steak. For New Year's Eve, I cooked up chicken and ribs, this time using the Digi Q II (it didn't arrive before Christmas) to run the pit.

But, the two big toys pictured above weren't the only things that will help me fuel my passion for barbecue. My father got a lift jack that I can put on our homemade trailer making it easier to move around and lock in place. Grampy and his lady were both kind enough to donate funds to my barbecue account. This donation will no doubt help me buy more meat in the coming weeks. And Farmer Girl's mother bought a Seal-A-Meal, not knowing that I had recently purchased the Cabela's vacuum sealer. She was a bit dissapointed, but I realized as I looked at the package that having a smaller, more portable vacuum sealer on site at a barbecue competition will be really handy. So, the unit got put into storage for the upcoming season.

And lastly, the wife, myself and son all have 0 degree sleeping bags to keep us cozy and warm as we cook through the night.

I am grateful to have such a wonderful group of family and friends. Thank you all for your generosity.

Happy New Year!

Chris

Cookin' for the Holidays - Day 2

2008-01-01T11:25:00.000-08:00

The pork shoulders went into the pit on Sunday, rubbed with spicy goodness. They stayed on all day while we worked on the rest of our Christmas projects. Here's the lone action shot I remembered to get.

I've been working on ribs so much as of late that I had forgotten some of the steps to cooking shoulders. It was good to do a refresher. I'm going to have to cook some more in the next few weeks.

Happy Holidays!

Chris

Cookin' For the Holidays - Day 1

2008-01-01T10:53:00.000-08:00

My wife and I are trying to make a concerted effort to "buy local" this holiday. Most of the gifts we handed out were either purchased locally or made buy us. As my part in our campaign to keep things either personal or local, I did a whole lot of cooking over the 22nd and 23rd. I spent two days with the BWS chugging away. I cooked six pork shoulders, eight briskets and a couple of batches of smoked almonds. In addition, I whipped up batches of a bunch of my spice rubs and sauces.

Saturday was brisket day. The night before, I trimmed the briskets from whole packers to flats which I prefer to cook. I kept as much of the points as possible because they make such great burnt ends.

Early Saturday morning, I started the pit and then prepped the raw meat

Once all the meat was prepped, it went into the BWS and I went about my day. Here's a beautiful sight...

Fifteen hours later, here's what came out...

Using my Cabela's vacuum sealer I packaged up the meaty goodness for friends and family. Dig the cool labels my wife made!

Stay tuned for photos from Day 2

C

Coming Soon to a Blog Near You

2007-12-17T11:10:00.000-08:00

Ok, I've been blog-slacking again, I admit it. But, Christmas vacation starts soon and there's a few things that I'm sure will get blogged about. In the next couple of weeks, I'm going to do the following:

Friday-Sunday (12/21-12/23) - I'll be cooking for nearly two days straight. On Wednesday, I'm picking up a case of St. Louis-style ribs from a local market. On Thursday I pick up eight 8-10lb. briskets and six 8-10lb pork shoulders from my local butcher (the butcher hosed me on ribs a while back, so I now buy them from Mac's Market). On Friday evening, I'll be cranking up the Backwoods Smoker and cooking all of the shoulders and briskets, plus a bunch of ribs in advance of the holiday.

Last year I gave out packages of barbecue and they were so well received that I'm giving more out! In preparation for this big cook, I bought a new commercial strength vacuum sealer. I've gone through two different models that are more appropriate for home use in the past year. As nice as seal-a-meal's are, they just can't handle the stress of sucking and sealing as much meat as I cook. So, I ordered a CG-15 Vacuum Sealer from Cabela's. I plan to post a review of it some time next week.

In addition to the review, I'll try to take the time to get some pictures of my big cook so ya'll can drool before Christmas, and some of you can see what'll be under your tree from me. You know who you are.

Hopefully I'll also be able to blog about the stuff I get for Christmas. As you can see by my previous post, I'm looking for Santa to think barbecue this holiday.

Until then, be well and stay warm!

Chris

What a barbecue obsessed man wants for Christmas

2007-11-29T13:22:00.000-08:00

I've always been a guy who loves giving and getting gifts for Christmas. My mother and I were pretty poor when I was a young kid, but she always made sure there was good stuff under the tree for her future barbecuer.

This year my focus is on tools that will make me barbecue better, or at least more comfortable. Here's what's on my list...

Sleeping bags - after two events in a row that were unseasonably cold, Farmer Girl and I decided that it was time for our family to get new sleeping bags. I picture us all stuffed in our sacks with hot drinks as we unwrap the rest of our gifts.

Headlamps - I actually have one already, that I stole from Farmer Girl's uncle with his permission, but I figured that all of us needed them.

BBQ Guru DigiQ II - This is the big one for me. If I get this, everything else will be gravy. Shotgun Fred and his crew at thebbqguru.com have released a new power draft system. For those of you who don't know, I use one of their older models (the BBQ Guru) to regulate the airflow into my pit. It's a tool like this that allows me to step away from my smoker for up to four hours at a time without worrying if the temp is going to go awry. When we were at Harpoon, Shotgun Fred was cooking two booths down from us. In the middle of the night, I wandered over to his pit and talked about the new model with him. As you can imagine, the white bearded salesman had me hooked after about two seconds. The new unit is smaller and more durable, plus it offers quite a number of features that make it a much improved unit. I want it. Do you hear me Farmer Girl? I want it!

Thermapen - Too many times I've found myself wondering if my multitude of temperature probes were accurate. I get one reading on my Mavericks and a different one on my guru when they're stuck in the same piece of meat. My analog instant-read thermometers are slow, which forces me to leave the pit door open too long. The Thermapen will rescue me from those questions. Although it ain't cheap ($90+), it's hands down the best instant read you can get. It only needs an eighth of an inch penetration to work. It reads a temp in lest than three seconds.

Tent - We were very lucky to have the Mamer and Old Bull's 10X20 tent to use this season. It made us look somewhat professional, and it surely kept us dryer than we'd been the year before. Plus, the larger tent was better able to withstand strong winds. So, when the father of this Mule suggested that he might get some gift certificates to Northern Tool, I told him to go for it. Hopefully, I'll be able to make up the difference and we'll have our own 10X20 to use with Mamer and OB's.

Those are the big things, of course. The rest of the list includes such needs as a new axe, a battery tester and a new weber one-touch gold.

Hopefully Santa will get me a couple of these things. And hopefully Santa will also sling me a little cash to help fill in the gaps. You know Santa loves barbecue. Look at that belly!

Have a happy holiday.

Chris

Whereshebeen?

2007-11-29T13:12:00.001-08:00

That's the question. Where have I been? The season has ended, have I ceased all barbecue? Have I left the building like Elvis on a road trip?

Nope. Howling Hog Barbecue is still here. Until the end of September, we were balls-to-the-wall busy. During August and September, we cooked for three parties and vended professionally at The Animal-Powered Field Days. But, it's nearly December and the season is long over now.

Which means that it's time for me to go into heavy practice mode. And that's what I've been doing. At this point I've focused all of my energies on ribs. As our friends and supporters know, we've had a bear of a time figuring out what the heck KCBS judges are looking for with regard to pork ribs. We've tried everything we could. We've marinated them. We've rubbed them. We've wrapped them in foil. We've done everything except sacrifice a sow under the light of the moon while dancing naked around a fire (really, no pigs were harmed during that naked dancing incident!).

So, with the purchase of a dozen racks of ribs, I have worked my tail off to figure out what makes them tick. I'm now down to two racks left, and by golly, I believe I've got it figured out. My ribs are now consistently getting rave reviews. They have the right spice and the right sauce and they're coming out the same each time I cook them (this is REALLY important when you compete). I'm pretty sure that our scores on ribs will rise dramatically next season.

The only downside to all of this work with ribs is that I've neglected my favorite meats - the big ones! I haven't cooked a pork shoulder or a brisket since September. Good thing Christmas is coming. I just placed an order for six pork shoulders and eight briskets. The weekend before Christmas, I'll be cooking like a madman as I try and prepare loads of freshly cooked barbecue to gift to my friends and family over the holiday.

Boy am I looking forward to it.

Best,

Chris

By Popular Demand: How to smoke eggs

2007-08-20T06:54:00.001-07:00

I've gotten quite a few inquiries about smoking eggs of late, so I thought I'd take a quick moment and fill everyone in on how I do them. Frankly, it's stupidly easy.

One of my unwritten policies of barbecue is to try and make the most of my fire. For example, if I'm cooking a couple pork shoulders on my BWS (which takes 12-15 hours), I'll have a number of empty shelves. To me, empty shelves mean wasted smoke and heat, so whenever possible, I throw something else in the smoker. That's where the eggs are a great thing.

Here's my method:

Take one dozen eggs from the fridge. Put them onto one rack in smoker. Close door. Ignore for at least two hours. Yes, that's it. They go into the smoker uncooked and in their shell. Egg shells are permeable enough to allow the smoke to get into the meat of the egg.

The real key is to keep the temperature steady and avoid spikes. I smoke my meats at 225-235 degrees and that range seems to work really well for the eggs. If I let the temp spike (say to 250 degrees), it can result in an egg that bursts its shell, which is a bit of a pain because it rains shell fragments down on whatever is on the shelves below.

One thing that I've never gaged is exactly how long the eggs should stay on to make the perfect smoked egg. I tend to just leave them in the pit until they look pretty. Sometimes that technique can leave them a bit over-cooked (think hardboiled eggs that have been boiled too long). I figure two hours is about the minimum if you use my temperature range.

One method I have yet to try is to cook them until they're solid, crack the shells and them put them back in. Rumor has it that this'll give you even more smoke flavor.

Like I said, this is really easy. Just keep your temperature low and the eggs away from a direct fire. Good luck, and enjoy!

Chris

Happy birthday to me

2007-08-03T09:03:00.000-07:00

On this day, 37 years ago, a barbecue enthusiast was born. I'm celebrating my day by preparing for our annual birthday bash. Farmer Girl and I have been cleaning the home after weeks of neglect due to barbecue competitions and the like. And what else does a man who loves barbecue do on his birthday? Why, cook some meat, of course!

In the smoker I have two little pork shoulders and two briskets for tomorrow's party. I threw in a rack of beef ribs also (to make beef stock) and two dozen eggs. Later on today, I'll put a chicken in for dinner and perhaps something else.

The new pit layout. I added a folding table next to the BWS for prep.

So far, it's been a great day. One of my brothers is on vacation from his teaching job in Japan. It's mighty nice to see the guy. I've reorganized my pits and the area around where I cook, plus I cut and stacked a bunch of the cherry tree that was dropped off at my house in large logs about a month ago.

August 3rd. It's a good day to have been born.

Peace to you all,

Chris

Howling Hog Barbecue ends their season with a bang!

2007-07-31T07:10:00.000-07:00

Well folks, we’re back from our final barbecue event of the season, the Harpoon Championships of New England Barbecue. We’re pleased to say that it was our best Harpoon ever, and not just because it’s one hell of a good party!

The Harpoon Championships of New England Barbecue takes place at the Harpoon brewery in Windsor, VT. For those of us who are members of the New England Barbecue Society (NEBS), Harpoon is the regional championships and represents the end of the competition year, where the NEBS team of the year is determined. And to those of us who participate in the event, it also represents the biggest and best contest of the season!

The folks who organize and run the Harpoon competition treat the teams with a great deal of respect, and it seems as though many of them have as much fun at the competition as we do. We really appreciate all they do! They are a great part of what makes going to Harpoon so much fun.

Harpoon weekend features two separate competitions. On Saturday, 42 teams participated in the Championships of New England Barbecue. On Sunday, 36 teams opted to compete in the Summer Sizzler Grilling Competition. In addition to all of the barbecue and grilling, teams are vending, the brewery is selling their excellent beer on tap and live bands are cranking out the good tunes. On the whole, the weekend is a lot of fun for all who participate.

Looking down the midway toward the brewery

The weather forecast for this weekend had been quite sketchy, but as it turned out, we managed to get through with only a little rain. No doubt that the event organizers were pleased with the number of attendees. In our location right next to the entrance we saw pretty constant lines on both days as folks came in.

The weather broke and gave us a rainbow over the CT river

Howling Hog Barbecue arrived on Friday just before noon and claimed one of the less popular booths near the entrance. Although teams selling barbecue benefit from being further down the midway, we have found that our dessert products sell well because people see them on their way out. Making money at this event is important to many of us because it really can help defray the costs of the season. Old Bull and Bob the Amish Guy were first to arrive, and I was pleased to find our main tent up and the booth in a partial state of readiness. The layout at Harpoon enables us to back up to the snow fence they put up and unload without having to move our vehicles to another parking space. With the majority of our remaining supplies in my trailer, we were able to completely set up the booth with only the vending area left to be arranged by the ladies when they came later in the evening.

Once the meat was inspected in the afternoon, I focused on getting my larger cuts prepared for cooking over night. I trimmed my brisket and prepped up the pork shoulder. One of the perks of Harpoon (beside the beer), is that they provide the teams with dinner on Friday night. We enjoyed a Mexican-styled dinner put out by iQue, which hit the spot. The brisket and the pork shoulder went on the pit at about 8:00 pm to be cooked between 10-14 hours. Meanwhile, the Old Bull threw on several racks of ribs to be given to our most generous sponsors, “Doctors Without Boundaries”. He took them up to the Docs in the evening with a good sized sponsors’ package. The Docs got ribs, pulled pork, beans, cornbread and dessert. It was much appreciated! It’s our way of showing appreciation for their support of what we do – competition barbecue is an expensive hobby.

The ladies and the Boy arrived in the evening, having worked on vending materials and foods during the day. We finalized the booth setup for vending, and then settled in for an evening of socializing and pit monitoring. As always, my Backwoods Smoker hummed solidly along all night, with only one or two pauses to reload the firebox. Early Saturday, the ribs went on Old Bull’s pit, followed closely by the chicken. At 10:00 the brisket was wrapped and put in a hotbox. Not long after the pork shoulders went in the box too.

A well-cooked pork shoulder

As is the case with most Kansas City Barbecue Society (KCBS) sanctioned events, turn in begins at noon. The timing is as follows: Chicken 12:00, Pork Ribs 12:30, Pork Shoulder or Butt 1:00 and Brisket at 1:30. It makes for a hectic hour and a half. The chicken came out ok, but I was quite concerned that I had left it on the pit a bit too long. One of the samples seemed pretty dry to me.

My chicken submission, a touch too dark for my taste.

The ribs, which we have been working very hard to improve, came out pretty well and looked good going into the box.

Our ribs, some of the best we've done yet.

I felt the most confident about the pork shoulder. It’s been very consistent for me and this time was no different.

Pulled pork. Yum.

I’ve been making some adjustments to my brisket lately, including more trimming and changes to both the rub and the sop. Although I thought it tasted great, I was pretty concerned with how dry it was when I cut it up. I had a very hard time getting it to cut smoothly. Personally, I thought this was my worst turn-in.

The brisket, a touch dry and falling apart a bit at the ends.

After the last turn-in, we pitmasters took a much deserved break, while the ladies and Bob the Amish Guy kept our vending operation running smoothly. At 4:00, we made our way over to the main tent for the awards ceremony. Awards in chicken, ribs and pork shoulder past us by, but we were excited to see so many different teams getting called. There are some very dominant teams in New England, so many of us get excited when other folks win awards. It reminds us that all of us have a shot at winning as long as we keep working at it. Team Howling Hog finally got called in the brisket category. Imagine my surprise when that brisket I was so unhappy with took 5^th place out of the 42 teams who competed!

It turned out that we had several additionally solid scores, coming in 13^th in chicken and 14^th in pulled pork. With those scores our over all rank among the some of the best 42 teams in New England was 16^th! At our first event (Harpoon 2005) we came in second to last. We are very pleased with how far we’ve come in only six barbecue competitions. As team captain, I couldn’t be happier with my fellow teammates. This is a great group of family and friends who love to cook and know how to work well as a team.

One of the high points of the awards ceremony, was finding out who took home the title of Grand Champion. This year, one of our favorite teams, Lunchmeat took home the great big trophy! Congrats to Gary, Sully and all of their crew. Lunchmeat is the type of team that makes those of us who don’t cook or cater professionally believe that we have a chance among all of the teams to win and win big. They’ve been working hard for years and even had to endure an extended period of Grand Reserves (2^nd place)! Congrats to Congratulations Gary, Michelle, Terry and Sully and good luck at the Jack Daniels Invitational and the American Royal competitions!

The extra tall Harpoon Grand Champion's trophy and a free Big Green Egg to go with it. Pitmaster Gary is in the background.

Needless to say, after such a strong showing, Saturday night was full of celebration. We socialized with family and friends who dropped by to see us and enjoy the event. At dinner time we ate grilled flatbread, visited with our neighbors and enjoyed hanging out at our front table. Meanwhile, the ladies practiced for the grilling competition on Sunday, working on their Chef’s Choice submission.

Many family members dropped by to see us. Lots of babies.

Morning came too soon for those of us who had been up late partying. The Old Bull and I stumbled around for a bit trying to figure out what we were doing, and getting things organized for the Sizzler contest and our meat vending day. The event organizers set the submission times back about an hour, they went like this: Chef’s Choice 1:00, Chicken Wings 1:30, Sausage 2:00, Pork Chops 2:30.

The Chef’s Choice category is an opportunity for teams to go hog wild (so to speak). It’s an open category, which means that you can submit absolutely anything. It’s also “open garnish” which means the KCBS garnish limitations of green leaf lettuce and parsley don’t apply. Last season we saw the winning teams putting out high-end restaurant type entrees (lobster tails stuffed with filet minion, for example). Knowing that we’d have a hard time competing with such foods, we decided to use the ladies strong skills at dessert. The only requirement of the Harpoon Chef’s choice category is that you us some sort of Harpoon beer in a sauce. So, the ladies grilled up apple cake with a Harpoon Munich Dark caramel sauce. When the submission left our booth, I had little doubt it would win us an award.

Grilled apple spice cake with a Harpoon Munich Dark caramel sauce.

We realized as we were working on them, that the chicken wings were simply not going to win us any awards. We had gotten a bag of fairly runty wings. When you submit wings for a competition, you want them to be fat, juicy and good looking. Unfortunately, even without Old Bull’s powerfully good sauce, the wings just weren’t big enough to get us a prize.

The wingage. They taste great, but aren't big enough.

The sausage, although wonderfully tasty, really wasn’t enough to compete with the crazy stuff others submit. We’ve realized that we need to get more creative with the type of sausage we use. I’ve seen teams submit stuff as gourmet as lobster sausage!

The sausage.

The pork chops were rubbed with cumin and sugar and then brushed with a bourbon caramel glaze. In hindsight, we should have made the glaze thicker, but it definitely gave the chops some great color.

Maple cumin pork chops with a bourbon caramel glaze.

The afternoon awards ceremony went very much as we expected. We failed to draw awards in either pork chops, wings or sausage. However, when the calls came in for Chef’s Choice, we were hoping to see some sort of ribbon. The success of the day for Howling Hog Barbecue was a first place trophy! Needless to say, the Mamer and Farmer Girl were ecstatic!

The ladies sporting their trophies and the winning smiles!

When all the scores were in, I was thrilled to see us standing in 10^th place amongst the 36 competitors. The most astounding thing about our success was the scores we received for the Chef’s Choice – out of the six cumulative scores, three of them were statistically perfect! I have no doubt that we have never scored so highly in any category ever.

The rest of our day at Harpoon was dedicated to vending and packing. In the end all that was left of our booth was our private porta-potty.

Trust me. This was worth $135.

This was by far our best season yet. After being so successful at Harpoon, it’s hard to not want to sign up for one or two more events for the rest of the season (other teams will be competing well into the fall), but we’ve spent a lot of money and we’ve got other events including two family parties to fill our time. Needless to say we’ll be barbecuing a lot between now and next year. Will we do more events next summer? It’s hard to say, but I would be surprised if we didn’t try to squeeze in at least one more.

As team captain I just have to say thank you to all of my teammates. Old Bull, Farmer Girl, Mame, the Boy and Bob the Amish Guy are a bunch of wonderful people. Without them there is no way we’d be able to do as well as we’ve done in such a short period of time. Here’s to continued success and lots of barbecue!

The best group of friends and family a team captain could ever want.

And lastly, I want to thank those of you who helped us by donating money to our cause. We appreciate the support. You helped make this happen. Thanks very much to Pete and Melissa Fellows, Chuck and Lora Wise, Rhonda Barr, Ken Colby and Suzanne Nothnagle, Rob Hurley and Tara Race and, of course, Doctors Without Boundaries. We look forward to having your support again next season. You can be sure we’ll come up with something new to make it worth your while!

The Howling Hog pit crew with our largest sponsors, Doctors Without boundaries

Thanks,

Chris

Best. Ribs. Ever.

2007-07-08T06:13:00.001-07:00

In my last post, I mentioned a plethora of other treats that were going on my smoker. From that good stuff I made chipoltle smoked deviled eggs and atomic buffalo turds. I also used the time to practice working on the bane of my existence - ribs.

Using feedback from veteran cookers like Billy Bones and Phatboy, I stepped back and tried to simplify my method. I did two racks slightly differently, both with rubs and spritzing with juice, but a few other variations among them. One of the key tips I got from the comments was the internal temp of a pefectly done rib - 185 degrees. I've never taken the time to check the temp of my ribs with a thermometer. I'm sure glad I did this time.

Sexy color, eh?

The first rack out was done perfectly. The meat didn't fall off the bone, but neither did it resist when bitten. As I understand it, this is exactly what the KCBS judges are looking for. The taste was excellent, although to my way of thinking they were a tad sweet. I will probably use a more salty rub in the future. Regardless of that criticism, these were without a doubt my

best. ribs. ever.

Now if only the KCBS judges would think the same thing.

C.

Why I love my wife

2007-07-07T05:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, July 6th, was our 16th wedding anniversary. Most folks would go out and have a fancy meal or go to a show or perhaps even travel to celebrate the event. Us? We stayed home. And what did we do?

We practiced for Harpoon!

And it was my wife's suggestion to do so. This is why I love my wife.

We tried an interesting approach to pork chops with a peach glaze. It was interesting but will require more thought and tinkering. Farmer Girl, however, did a brilliant baked item on the grill that we might try using in the Chef's choice category during the Harpoon grilling competition.

Later on in the evening, I cranked up the pit and stuffed it with eight little pork shoulders. I'm cooking them in advance of a benefit we're vending for next weekend. So far, they seem to be coming along nicely. I wish we had the blog equivalent of smell-o-vision. They smell fantastic.

Next on the smoker are a pair of St. Louis-style pork ribs, each treated a little differently to give me a feel for how I could be cooking better ribs. In addition, I'm throwing some eggs on the top shelf because we're bringing smoked deviled eggs to a party one of our sponsors is holding tonight. And...then there's the Atomic Buffalo Turds. They'll go on after the pork comes off.

And to think...it's only 9:00am!

C.

Howlin' for a good cause

2007-07-05T06:52:00.000-07:00

For those of you who live in our neck of the woods, and would love to sink your teeth into some Howling Hog Barbecue, your opportunity is coming up. Howling Hog Barbecue has volunteered its services in support of the Randolph Area Family Farm Fest, a wonderful festival that celebrates agriculture and agricultural history in Randolph Vermont.

We'll be selling pulled pork, ribs and brisket as well as the traditional sides you find with barbecue. All profits will go to help RAFF pay the bills and keep the festival rolling! Please come out and support this event, and have a little taste o' Howling Hog Barbecue!

Thanks,

Chris

For more information on the event, go to www.raffarms.org.

Editor's Note: Robert from http://Whitetrashbbq.blogspot.com correctly pointed out that I made no mention of when this event is. It takes place on Sunday the 15th at the Vermont Ag Museum site in Randolph Center, VT. See the event link above for details and directions.

2007-07-04T15:48:00.000-07:00

We completed our second competition in two weeks this weekend, and although we came home empty-handed, we are pleased to say we had a wonderful weekend.

The view from the ILBBQF (note the ski jump, lower left)

Although it’s only in only its second year, the Lake Placid I Love Barbecue Festival (ILBBQF) is one of the most well-run competitions I’ve ever seen. It’s a charity event that raises money for the Shipman Youth Center of Lake Placid. Last season’s event only featured 16 teams, but in the past year the events reputation of spoiling the competitors and treating them so very well seems to have gotten out and teams were jumping at the opportunity to get in. In fact, we almost didn’t make it in ourselves, but we were able to ferret our way in with the promise of vending our homemade baked goods.

A three hour ride across Vermont and into the Adirondacks took us to our destination. This was my first time in upstate New York and I have to say that the scenery was breathtaking. The festival itself is set up in the center of the Olympic speed skating ring, right in the village of Lake Placid. When we arrived, we found our spot and began to set up. I think this was the first contest where a 20X20 space was actually 20’X20’ and we were a little concerned that all of our stuff might not fit in it. But, to our surprise, we arranged the most efficient use of space we’ve ever had! Special thanks to the event organizers, particularly my Russian friend Dmitry Feld who gave us a prime corner spot to vend our goods.

The boy, hanging out in our booth.

On Friday night, we participated in the midnight grilling competition, an unsanctioned competition event. There were two categories, grilled chicken and NY Strip steak. We turned in a chicken dish done West Indies style with grilled bananas as an edible garnish, and the strip steaks were crusted with spices, grilled, and garnished with bleu cheese. Neither product resulted in an award, but frankly they did better than we expected they would. We placed 17^th out of a field of 26 (not all competitors opted to compete in the grilling event) with our steak coming in at 17^th and the chicken at 16^th. Considering how little thought was put into either of them, I thought we did reasonably well. The night ended with a fireworks show set up right next to the skating ring. We had front row seats!

The following day was dedicated primarily to vending, and the ladies did a fantastic job. A week of baking in advance of the ILBBQF produced many tasty desserts and snacks including cookies, brownies and chocolate pudding cake. On a whim, we also smoked up three dozen eggs and they turned out to be a real hit! In the afternoon, we participated in the buck-a-rib contest. We failed to estimate the right number of ribs that we’d sell and were sold out in less than ten minutes. No doubt we’ll be bringing three or four times the number of racks that we brought. The lack of ribs for folks to vote on (it was a people’s choice event) left us out of the running for the prize of two round trip tickets on Southwest Airlines to anywhere in the US.

The evening brought us closer to Sunday’s KCBS sanctioned barbecue competition. The weather, which was Lake Placid chilly, turned a bit damp and the skies opened up on us. But, we were happy to find ourselves dry under the tents with few problems caused by the water. Undoubtedly there was some pretty fancy drainage under the ring so the ground stayed nice and dry. The briskets and pork shoulders went on in early evening, and my Backwoods Smoker chugged happily into the night. In the early morning, we put our chicken and ribs on. The day before, during the buck a rib event, the Old Bull and I felt like we really had a breakthrough on the ribs. The bones we produced for folks were by the best I’ve ever done.

And yet the results of the competition didn’t reflect that feeling. The field of teams at Lake Placid included some of the best we’ve ever competed against, and some teams from pretty far away, including CancerSucksChicago.com who have had national success, and Canada’s Barbecue Bob and the “Eh” team. Bob was our neighbor, and a lot of fun. When our time came to submit, we felt pretty darned good about what we’d done. The pulled pork looked and tasted great. The ribs were the best we’ve ever done. The chicken was good; although I had issues with inconsistent size which I think can have an impact on the score. I’ve been re-working my brisket recipe and feel like I’m on the right track.

Alas, our turn-ins had a hard time standing up to the stiff competition. We did acceptably in chicken and pulled pork (coming in 18^th and 14^th respectively out of 36 teams),

Our chicken turn-in, not as pretty as last week.

Pulled pork, nice layout in box, but I forgot one of my secret ingredients when I was prepping!

but we got completely hosed in ribs, coming in dead last.

Ribs - We need to start cooking baby-backs instead, they'll fit in the box better.

The brisket wasn’t quite so low, but came in at 21^st, which isn’t where I thought it would be.

Brisket turn in, nice layout, needed better smoke ring.

Truth be told, I didn’t figure us for a high medal in anything, but would have been pleased with a 6^th or a 5^th place in something. Not this time, but there’ll be a next!

We were pleased to see our neighbor Barbecue Bob take 2^nd in Brisket, but the days success went to Purple Turtle, a veteran team that really knows their stuff.

Barbecue Bob accepting his medal

Congrats to Nancee and her crew! Great Job!

The folks from Purple Turtle celebrating their win!

We wrapped up our night with pizza at a local Italian restaurant and then dragged our exhausted bodies home to Vermont. The high point of the ride home was a spectacular and uniquely shaped rainbow, the likes of which I've never seen.

I had thought I’d be sick of cooking barbecue, but to my surprise I was already planning the next event. We’ll be back to Lake Placid again next year (we’ve already signed on). Special thanks to Dmitry and his entire staff of volunteers for pampering us with generosity and care! You guys are the best!

Our next competition is at the end of this month at the Harpoon Brewery in Windsor, VT, not far from home. Until then, keep on barbecuing and remember to make’em howl for more!

Chris

Tomorrow

2007-07-03T11:56:00.000-07:00

Hi Folks,

The update from Lake Placid should appear some time tomorrow. Until then, have a happy Fourth of July. Grill safely!

Chris

Trials and Tribulations

2007-06-27T06:36:00.000-07:00

We're getting ready for the Lake Placid competition this weekend and we just passed our first hurdle. The truck that Farmer Girl and I were planning to borrow for our gear fell through due to concerns about the insurance. It was nice of Grampy (Farmer Girl's father) to loan it to us this past weekend, but we don't want to risk any insurance issues if we got into an accident.

So, the solution was to drop the $$ to have a trailer hitch put on my Toyota Camry and rent a U-Haul trailer to the tune of about $400. Fortunately, we've had some folks donate money to support our barbecue habit, which will just about cover the cost of the installation and rental.

Although the surprise outlay of cash was hard to handle, in the end it's a good thing. I needed a trailer hitch for other purposes and it appears that Grampy's girlfriend, History Girl, has an old trailer on her property that she's willing to donate to our cause. Grampy seems to think we can get it fixed up before Harpoon, which means that we'll finally have our own transportation!

Yay! Thanks to Grampy and History Girl for helping us out with that, and to the other folks who've donated to our team.

C.

Baaaahhhbecuuue!

2007-06-25T10:40:00.000-07:00

Well folks, we’re back from our first event of the year, and boys are our hogs tired. (insert rim-shot here).

The Merrimack, NH, Rockin’ Rib Fest is in its 5^th year of operation. The bulk of the event is intended to raise money for charities via the Rotary of Nashua, NH. The Ribfest takes place at the Anheuser Busch factory, which offers up their large fields for the event.

I have to say that this festival is a blast. In addition to the barbecue competition, there are a number of other events, including live bands, a stunt air show, karate demonstrations, and massive quantity of kid-friendly activities.

Our purpose for being at the Ribfest, of course, was to participate in the NH State Barbecue Championships. In order to be a “State Championship” you have to be sanctioned by the Governor, and Mr. Lynch was actually on site at one point.

This year’s Merrimack competition had 36 teams, many of which we know and enjoy. One of our favorite teams, Feeding Freindz live close by to the event and were able to reserve us a prime location before we arrived at 2:00 on Friday. Also at the event were the rowdy and always fun team Lunchmeat, the constantly dominant IQue and Dr. Frankenswine, the team that squeaked us for Grand Reserve at Hogstock last August. All in all, it was a great group of highly competitive teams.

Our neighbors, Boneyard Smokers

Unlike Harpoon, the two competitive events, Grilling and Barbecue, take place on Saturday and Sunday respectively. It was nice to not have to load in, set up, and then jump right into a long night of cooking for a barbecue competition like we do in Windsor. With no cooking to be done on Friday night, we were able to casually set up our gear, with the fancy new tent the Old Bull and Mame brought with them being the highlight of our ever improving set up.

Our home for the weekend

On Saturday we were up early, had time to cook breakfast and then we tackled the foods for the grilling competition. The categories for this event were Fish Steak, Beef Steak, Sausage and Grilled Fruit. We had a decent showing, coming in 16^th overall among the 31 teams that competed. No awards came our way in this competition, but we were surprised by an 8^th place finish in Fish Steak and a 6^th place finish in grilled fruit (that’s one shy of a medal).

The ladies did an outstanding job setting up our turn-in boxes, how about that tuna?

Yep, you can grill fruit. And it tastes mighty fine. Lo N' Slo took first prize for bananas, too.

Two teams we’d never met before, Lo N’ Slo BBQ and Boneyard Smokers took the Grand Champion and Grand Reserve trophies home with them. Both teams were husband and wife crews. Sandy and Dave from Boneyard Smokers were really nice folks and made good neighbors, and the folks from Lo N’ Slo stopped by on Friday night for a good chat. One of the best things about these events is the people. They’re just great. Kudos to them for taking the big trophies! Another high-five should go to our buddies at Feeding Friendz – they came in at 7^th place overall in the grilling event!

Joe from the Rotary was a joy to work with. And he was the funniest awards presenter I've ever seen.

After the awards ceremony on Saturday, we leapt into the big cook-off, the barbecue competition. My brisket and pork shoulder went on a little earlier than usual due to the exceptionally large cuts I was given from my butcher. The chicken and ribs, requiring much shorter times to cook, go on the morning of the competition itself.

The barbecue competition (or Baaahbeecuee! As team Lunchmeat bellowed at regular intervals to a resounding call and response from other teams) is why I’m competing. I love to cook low and slow as they say. Cooking brisket and pork shoulder all night long is a beautiful thing, particularly when there are 35 more folks doing the same thing around you! When the sun rose early on Sunday morning, we had made it successfully through the night with the only problem being that it was 43 degrees and most of us froze our butts off! But the meat just kept on a-cookin’. Gotta love those insulated Backwoods Smokers. Nothing quite like them.

Two Backwoods Smokers chugging away.
Dig the low tech fan Old Bull is using on his little smoker (left).

We started the chicken and ribs in the AM and pulled the big meats not long after that. With the ladies helping us with our turn-in boxes (as they did on Saturday), everything was done on time and went out looking the best they could have. Of all the stuff I cooked, I felt the strongest about the chicken. The pork, although tasty, seemed a bit over cooked and as always, I struggled with my brisket being a little dry. I thought the Old Bull really came through with some of the best ribs he’d ever done.

The afternoon awards ceremony held a surprise and some disappointment for us. I tend to give the chicken the least amount of thought. I don’t like to eat chicken thighs much myself, tending toward breasts (we’re talking about chicken, right?). So, I just do them because I want to do all of the meats. Imagine my surprise when we took 3^rd place for chicken!

The chicken. It looked prize worthy when it came out!

I have to say that it looked darned fine when we turned it in. Alas, we suffered our biggest disappointment with the ribs. We were nearly dead last in that category and it has all of us just dumbfounded.

Our rib turn-in.

They seemed awfully good to me. It goes to show that we still have a lot to learn about exactly what they’re looking for. Methinks it’s time to take a KCBS judging course! We did ok in pulled pork, coming in 13^th out of the 36 competitors, and not as well in brisket with a 21^st place showing.

Our brisket turn-in.

The pork turn-in. See? It looks a bit mushy.
I cooked it too long, dang it.

Given the amount of practice done on brisket, pork shoulder and ribs, I would have liked to see higher scores. But, this is how this goes. Sometimes you win and sometimes you don’t, and the fact that we still came away from this event with a trophy means that we’re doing something right!

I just have to say that it is an absolute joy to have the opportunity to cook competitively with my wife, son and our aunt and uncle. The pleasure I get from working so well with our family makes the effort worthwhile. We make a hell of a good team, and I expect that we’ll continue to have fun and cook howlingly good barbecue for years to come! Thanks as always to Farmer Girl, The Boy, Old Bull and Mame for making this a wonderful family effort. Thanks to our friends who've helped make this possible! And, last but not least, thanks to all the folks in Merrimack who ran this competition so well!

What a weekend. We're all beat, some of us are sick from the insanely cold nights, but we've got another trophy on the wall!

The boy, convalescing on our couch today. All the excitement of the competition, plus late nights and a Saturday full of rides and games got him sick. We're convinced that he'll pull through.

Next weekend we’ll be at Lake Placid New York’s “I love barbecue festival”. Until then, keep howlin!

Chris

Our trophy enjoying a moment with our chickens.

Competition Update

2007-04-30T13:10:00.000-07:00

I just received confirmation that we've gotten into the Lake Placid event listed below. We're very excited. Ironically, it wasn't barbecue that helped us sneak into an already full event - it was our baked goods!

At Harpoon we've always been unique in that we offer baked goods like cookies and cakes in addition to the pulled pork and brisket. I'm glad that strategy has paid off. New York here we come!

On another note, I'll have an update from this weekend's barbecue and related party as soon as I have a free evening, which should be Wednesday.

Until then...cook it slow and low.

Chris

Nightque

2007-04-27T22:10:00.000-07:00

This is a late night post. Or should I say "early morning"?

One of my favorite things about barbecue is being outside in the middle of the night. This is my first big cook since mid-winter. I've got eight or nine guys coming over for an evening of barbecue, cigars and Texas Hold'em. And I suppose there'll be a drink or two.

But right now, it's mild outside. Down the valley from my house hundreds of peepers are just going to town. I love this time of year. It's too early for bugs but not too early to be smoking meat.

Peace be with ya'll.

Chris

And so it begins

2007-04-24T08:30:00.001-07:00

The new barbecue season is upon us. Team Howling Hog was finally able to get our schedules to mesh, and we held a team meeting over grilled flank steak and grilled sweet potatoes.

This season we're ramping up our participation in the events in our region. We'll be competing in a total of six events at three locations, provided we can still get into the events at this point. The events we'll be at are:

Event: Rockin' Rib Fest - N.H. State Barbecue Championships in Merrimack, NH
Dates: The event takes place on June 23 and 24.
Competition: 6/23 - NEBS Grilling competition, 6/24 - NEBS barbecue competition
Event: I Love Barbecue Festival in Lake Placid, NY
Dates: The event takes place on June 29-July 1..
Competition: 6/29 - NEBS Midnight Grilling Competition, 7/1 - NEBS barbecue competition
Event: Harpoon Championships of New England Barbecue in Windsor, VT
Dates: The event takes place on July 28th-29th.
Competition: 7/28 - NEBS barbecue competition, 7/29 - NEBS grilling competition

We're looking forward to an exciting new barbecue season and several new events. In the next couple of weeks, there'll be more information posted here at our new site, including an opportunity for the Howling Hog faithful to become sponsors of their favorite barbecue team. Competitive barbecue isn't cheap, and we aren't rich, so we're trying to find ways that we can help subsidize our competitive barbecue addiction. More to come on that.

Until my next post, be well and always cook with fire.

Chris

Where art thou o barbecue?

2007-02-08T13:23:00.000-08:00

As ya'll can tell, things in the land of Howling Hogs have been a bit slow lately. The holidays, the family events and a few bouts of a flu-like virus have kept this pitmaster away from his pit. And, to be honest, the drop in temperature has made the idea of cooking out doors unappealing. I had three racks of ribs waiting for the smoker on Superbowl sunday and they never got touched. I couldn't bring myself to go through the routine after a week of being out sick.

But, the stores of barbecue in my freezer have run out and the thought of loading up my BWS with pounds of pork and beef is starting to make my heart quicken. Every time I open my wood stove and get a whiff of something like cherry or oak, I get a far away look in my eyes and dream of brisket and pork shoulder.

So, fear not dear readers - there will be que. My son's birthday is next friday, and we're planning the usual family "come spoil our child" party. All of the grandparents and some cousins and aunts and uncles will be descending on our house on the 17th and they expect to be served some barbecue. And, of course, it's been requested by the junior member of the team. After all it's his birthday!

On the 16th, I'll be filling the smoker with pork shoulder and brisket. Not sure how much yet, but a bunch. On the 17th, I'll do it again, cooking some old chickens from the freezer and those three racks of ribs. So, you can count on seeing more of me in the next week.

Until then, don't let the snow cover your grill.

C.

Don't forget to step outside the box.

2007-01-08T13:28:00.000-08:00

Since I entered into the world of competitive barbecue, I've discovered that I tend to always cook as though I'm competing. In some ways this is good. I'm always trying to make my barbecue the best I can. I'm very aware of timing and appearance. But I've also realized that there are some downsides to this approach.

When I cook KCBS style for the New England judges, I make everything red and sweet, even if it's not my preference. If I did well using a particular method of cooking (as I did with my pork shoulder in Warren, NH), I tend to stick with that method. While it's good to be sure my methods are consistent when competing, I've realized that it stunts my experimentation.

I find myself needing to remember that I learned how to cook by experimenting. Sure, I had some food service experience and lots of cooks to watch when I was a kid, but there is nothing as important to a cook than trying new ideas and recipes. I have a number of barbecue cookbooks that have never been used. Why? Because I forget to try the new stuff!

This weekend, while cooking for the Rookie, I tried a wing Rub out of Paul Kirk's "Championship Barbecue" cookbook. It's a great book, and I have used it a lot - but not for the recipes. I've used it constantly for the excellent temperature charts in the first chapter. To date, I think I'd only made one recipe out of the book, a watermelon salsa (which was absolutely fantastic).

The wing rub was supposed to be sweet and spicy, and it lived up to the name. It had some interesting things in it like Ginger and Mace (I made mine without the mace because that's not an ingredient I ever have). I'm really glad I did it, because the wings were wonderful. It was a good reminder that there's so much more for me to learn and so much farther to take my barbecue.

So, during this offseason I'm going to endeavor to cook some things I wouldn't ordinarily cook. I'm going to expand my horizons a bit and make use of some of my more unused cookbooks. Perhaps it'll give me an edge during the next competitive barbecue season!

Cheers!

C.

A break in the weather

2007-01-08T12:42:00.000-08:00

New England is knee deep in some pretty darned strange weather right now. There's virtually no snow. In fact, as if I look out the front door right now, it's raining and my thermostat is sitting at about 40 degrees. In Vermont, we should be heading into deep winter. For those of you who are from the South and feel that deep winter is anything below 50 degrees, let me give you some perspective - In January and February it is not uncommon for temperature to dip substantially below zero Fahrenheit, like to minus 20! So, needless to say, when I sparked my smoker up yesterday and looked at a thermostat sitting in the sun and saw nearly 70 degrees, I was quite shocked.

One of my buddies, hereby dubbed "the rookie", is hosting a few parties over the next couple of weekends. He's been dabbling in barbecue since he got a shiny new Webber (the best all-around grill you could ever own). But, it's nearly impossible to cook a 16 pound Turkey in a standard sized Webber, so he asked if I'd help him out by being his pitmaster. As you can imagine, dear reader, I was willing and able to help him out.

We play poker with the rookie and his lovely wife semi-regularly on fridays, so I picked up his bird then. I brined the turkey (which was raised on our farm, by the way) on Saturday night and by the time he arrived on Sunday, I was preparing to build a fire in my pit and had the bird coming to room temperature. With him the Rookie brought two more pork roasts and a small rack of ribs. The turkey and the roasts were for his parties, but the ribs were for our eating pleasure while we watched Sunday's NFL Wildcard games.

In addition to the food for the Rookie, I also tried my hand at smoking something new - nuts! Farmer Girl had purchased a large quantity of cashews for Christmas to try her hand at roasting them. So, I filled an aluminum pie plate with them, tossed about a teaspoon of olive oil with them and put them on the top shelf with our ribs. The next floor down on my grill had a pair of pork roasts and a small chicken. At the bottom, occupying several rack spaces was our pretty bird.

With the weather so mild, I only had to fill the pit with Wicked Good Charcoal once. the unit puffed away all day with only the usual interruptions for basting, temp checking, and nut turning. As we expected, all came out great. The Turkey was done in no time because of the brining. The ribs came out during half-time of the Jets/Pats game, and I grilled a few chicken wings to go with them. I sent the Rookie home with his pork roasts wrapped in foil and instructed him to put them in the oven until they reached the requisite 195-205 for pulling.

All in all, it was a very good day. The weather was sunny and springlike and I was cookin' meat. The only downside is that my beloved Jets lost to the powerful Patriots, but given that nobody expected them to be anything but the AFC's whipping boy, I'm pretty happy with how far they went.

Peace,

C.

What a slacker, eh?

2007-01-04T10:12:00.000-08:00

Where the heck have I been? Why haven't I posted anything recently? Have I forsaken the fabulous art of barbecue?

Well, if you're asking these questions, the answer is:

1.Around.
2.Because I'm a slacker.
3.Don't talk crazy.

With the rush to get work finalized be for vacation, and the usual chaos before Christmas I never made time for my fair readers. Sorry about that! But, let me assure you that there has been barbecue. (apologies for the lack of pictures)

In fact, two days before Christmas, I cooked the largest quantity of meat I've ever cooked at one time. I cooked up four pork shoulders and two briskets at the same time! I sure do love my Backwoods Smoker.

For New Year's eve, I threw in three small chickens and four racks of St. Louis-style ribs.

The food and family during vacation was at its best, making this one of the finest holidays I can remember in quite a while. I hope everyone can say the same.

Peace, love and barbecue to everyone!

Keep smokin'

Chris

Surprise!

2006-12-11T08:06:00.000-08:00

This weekend was a lot of fun!

When the Old Bull and I went south to buy my Backwoods Smoker from our NE distributer, Seabrisket, he fell in love with the little "patio" smoker those folks use. That's where I hatched the idea to buy him one.

So, with the help of his wife Mame and many family and friends, we pooled the dough to buy a "patio" smoker for him for his birthday at the end of November. It didn't quite come together in time, but this weekend it did.

On Saturday me and two buddies drove the two hours south to Seabrook, NH, to meet up with Rick Surrette and his wife DJ so we could purchase the new pit. As always, Rick and DJ were a blast to visit with! It was an easy road trip with a good lunch and a lot of laughs.

The week prior, Mame and I had exchanged a furious flurry of emails about how we could present the pit to the Old Man. Fortunately, I was able to schedule an afternoon of watching football with my #2 pit man because his usual work commitments had evaporated. At the same time, we were able to arrange for most of the contributers to mysteriously appear at casa de Old Bull and Mame just in time for the ceremony.

While he was occupied with the guests, I was able to bring the little pit onto his deck (near the grilling pavilion). I covered it with a sleeping bag and asked everyone to come out on the deck. Then, without any more suspense, I asked the Old Man to unveil the unit himself. As he peeled back the cover, there were repeated exclamations of "NO WAY!" . Followed by fist pumping and I'm pretty sure there was some dancing in there too!

It was a complete success! The Old Bull couldn't have been more surprised. Check out the pictures...

Revealing the smoker!

Doin' the bull dance. Feeling the flow.

Checking the doors and kicking the tires.

Admiring his new baby.

Thanks so much to the family and friends who contributed to pulling this coup off! It was a dandy surprise and I couldn't have made it possible without everyone's help!

Congrats, Old Bull. Time to dial it in.

C.

Wow! Go New England Barbecue!

2006-12-06T06:56:00.000-08:00

I just happened to be on the Wicked Good Charcoal site pricing out a future purchase of charcoal, and saw that two of our fine New England Barbecue teams have placed very well at the American Royal competition.

The Royal is a HUGE event, with two contests, an invitational and an open.

A round of applause should go to the Harpoon team, IQUE for their 4th overall placement at the invitational - which had a total of 87 teams! Team I Smell Smoke also placed well at 15th.

In the Open, the I Smell Smoke folks took 4th overall out of a field of - get this - 486 teams!

Congratulations to two of New England's finest teams! Way to show those Southerners that we know what we're doing up here!

C.

Weekend Barbecue!

2006-10-13T10:33:00.000-07:00

As much as the New England barbecue season will be winding down, I won't stop barbecuing. In fact, it's highly likely that I'll be outside in January trying to get the ice of my BBQ guru fan!

This weekend, though, there should be no ice or snow in our future (we don't live in Buffalo!). Instead, there'll be the sweet smell of cherry, beef and pork. My supply of smoked meat has been running low, so I'm taking some time this weekend to fill the freezer up again. I'll be cooking two briskets and two pork shoulders overnight on Saturday. It's good for me to run my pit at night to keep in shape for the competition season next summer.

In addition to the shoulders and the briskets, I'll probably try to squeeze a chicken or two into the Backwoods smoker. And some eggs. And possibly one of my dogs. And my old cat. No, the cat's too old and would probably be tough. Plus, he might eat the chicken. Ok, ok, there's no cat or dog being barbecued, but nevertheless - My rule of thumb is "don't waste grill space".

My only regret is that I ran out of Wicked Good Charcoal a while ago and haven't had the opportunity to order any. So, I'm stuck with two bags of another brand which I feel is very sub par. I'll have to make due with it though, and hopefully I can order some from Lee Ann in Maine soone enough.

The weather is going to be pretty decent this weekend, so I'll be sure to take pictures.

Enjoy the fall!

C.

(no cats or dogs were harmed in the writing of this message.)

The season winds down

2006-10-04T13:42:00.000-07:00

The New England barbecue season is winding its way down. The days of constant barbecueing and grilling are being replaced by hot dishes cooked in the stove. I love to cook fall foods. Chili, stews, soups and various "hot dishes" (pronounced hutdish if you're from the midwest) are something I'm extremely fond of.

But, that doesn't mean that cooking over fire is over for the year. In fact, I was looking at my neglected Backwoods Smoker thinking that I had better plan for a weekend of brisket and pork shoulder before I lose my mind. And now that I've got a well insulated smoker, I see myself cooking the big meats deep into the winter.

This weekend, a bunch of family and friends are heading to the Hog's family cottage for one final weekend on the coast of Maine. With my father and stepmother there for the fun, there'll be a total of nine of us - all of us hardcore foodees. The Old Bull and Mamer will be there, so team Howling Hog will be well represented. We spent a good part of today emailing eachother about what foods we're going to be cooking. We're all looking forward to it.

There's nothing in this world like food, family and friends. I'm grateful to have a herd of people around me who love to do what I do.

So, even though the barbecue season is coming to an end, I don't see it. I'll plan a few full day barbecue sessions over the next six months. To be sure, there'll be less than during the summer, but you can expect a brisket and a pork shoulder out of me every now and then. And, of course, there's always a way to bring food cooked over fire into your kitchen. I'll grill my stew meat before I throw it in the stew pot to give it that smoky flavor that just can't be beat. I'll smoke a chicken or turkey for whatever dishes we want to use it for.

And, of course, there's holidays and parties. We're already planning to host Thanskgiving. I see a big piece of beef and a turkey to give thanks for! Then there's the NFL playoff party with the MuleSkinner and the Superbowl party at my place. And the Boy's birthday in February.

It's good to know that even when the season ends - it doesn't really end. It just gets cozier in the house.

Peace,

C.

Thanks!

2006-08-29T13:04:00.000-07:00

I want to thank all of our good friends and family who've been patting me on the back and congratulating us for our success in Warren. At the same time, I think it's only fair that I send out a couple of "thank you's" to those who've really helped us have fun cooking the cue'.

Thanks to the Royal Butcher in Braintree, VT, for providing most of my meats and giving me a darned good deal on them. Thanks also goes to Michael Whalen and his family for the spectacular looking lettuce that Farmer Girl bought from him for both our competitions (nothing beats fresh food, folks!). Thanks also go to two barbecue teams - Feeding Friendz for being great friendly people who welcomed me into Harpoon two years ago, and Seabrisket for suggesting team Howling Hog give Warren a try.

We've only just touched on the tip of the iceberg in the world of competition barbecue and its great to know that we've got friends and supporters out there!

Thanks,

Chris

Hogstock 2006 Results

2006-08-28T07:41:00.000-07:00

This weekend Team Howling Hog attended the 2nd annual Hogstock barbecue competition in Warren, NH. It was a very successful event!

On Friday morning, I was joined by my son, Old Bull and Farmer Girl where we packed up a Toyota pickup and a Honda Civic and took off to Warren. Warren is a pretty little town about 30 minutes East of Fairlee, VT over the Connecticut River. We were set up on their town green which very pretty. Graced with a traditional town gazebo, the green was surrounded by classic old buildings and even a decommissioned missile!

This contest is still in its infancy when compared to an event like Harpoon, but the number of teams that participate has increased. Word has it that there were only six teams competing last year, compared to the fifteen in attendance this year. Compliments should go out to Vito’s son who held the competition together while his dad is in the hospital. I felt the event was VERY well managed, with the noted exception of the late meat inspection – no fault of the organizers.

The nice thing about Hogstock when compared to the Harpoon event is that it’s a one-day event, and competitors can’t vend. All vending is done by locals to benefit various organizations. The lack of vending meant that we didn’t need a full compliment of team members to handle things. Mamer had been struggling with a bad cold and the Brewer with his family because his father is ill (best wishes from your teammates, Beer Man).

One of the cool things about competition barbecue is the wide variety of people who compete. People who compete come from all walks of life and do everything from professional catering to writing. But we all come together for the same reason, love of barbecue! In attendance at Hogstock were some pretty heavy hitters; IQue (the Harpoon team), Dr. Frankenswine, Purple Turtle, Barebones Barbecue, Flaming Hog Barbecue and our friends Feeding Friendz were there, so we knew the competition would be good. Compared to some of the teams, we’re pretty low-rent. Check out our transport vehicle, loaded to capacity.

We competed in the four KCBS categories (chicken, ribs, pork butt and brisket) and a fifth, wide open category – venison. The night went well, with little sleep, but much fun and lots of good smells. The night before the competition is one of my favorite times during the competition. Old Bull and I always take a walk around to see who’s up and about. It’s a really neat thing. It’s dark and there’s the sweet smell of smoke in the air. Things are quiet because people are either asleep or working on their meats. It’s a good time to stop by a booth for a chat with some of the competitors. We spent quite a bit of time with one of the folks from Fairlee, VT’s Barebones Barbecue, I think his name was Justin but I tend to lose people’s names pretty easily. As always, sleep was minimal. The Old Bull and I were up for a few hours around 3:00Am, caught another hour or so of sleep and began the day officially at 6:00am.

As KCBS rules stipulate, the food goes off in half hour increments. We begin the turn-ins with chicken. At harpoon, my chicken had showed some pretty solid improvement. But, I made a mistake during the prep process at Hogstock – I over rubbed it. The end product was too dark and the spice flavor was overpowering. In the end, the scores supported my opinion.

Ribs were next, and they looked great. But, another mistake was made on them as well. With all of the foods, I try to make sure that the whole team weighs in on picking out the best of the products we’ve cooked. It was only discovered after the fact that we sent out some ribs that weren’t as well done. I also worked too hard to send the judges two ribs each. If I hadn’t, we wouldn’t have sent the underdone ribs out.

The pork came up to bat next, and in the end, it was one of the best looking meats that got submitted. Like my brisket, the pork shoulder is essentially finished well before I need to deliver it to the judges. This gives me more time to fuss over presentation.

This is my "dang this is hot!" face.

I spent about twenty minutes with Farmer Girl making sure things looked and tasted good before it went out, and the results looked excellent. But, my biggest gains were made in the method of cooking, not the presentation. At Harpoon, pork shoulder was my biggest disappointment. I only went up a couple of points from the previous year and have felt befuddled as to why I was scoring so low. So, for the past month I’ve been working on pork shoulder and giving a lot of thought to how I would approach it at Hogstock. As I’ll reveal later, the changes I made were apparently the right ones.

Brisket has become my most solid and reliable competitive product. I have a method that I feel is solid and good flavorings as well. I was not as confident in the brisket at Hogstock as I was with the brisket at Harpoon. Although completely done, it was a bit dry and I felt that would get me knocked down a few points in the consistency category. I also (again) worked to put too much meat in the box. I should’ve done six slices by went for a dozen which made them too compressed. But, it still looked pretty good.

When we registered for this competition, Farmer Girl was excited to see that there was an additional “open” category for venison. She was gung ho to do it, so I told her to run with it. And boy, did she run. Venison isn’t sanctioned by the KCBS rules, so they allowed us a “chef’s choice” of how to cook it. They also released us from the traditional 9X9 turn in box! Farmer Girl found a fantastic recipe for a venison stew and used her skills as a baker to create bread bowls to serve it in. As you can see from the picture below, it looked fantastic. The stuff on the bread chips is a jam that was made to accompany the stew!

We were mighty efficient with our time after the 2:00 venison turn in, and started breaking things down for the load out. The awards ceremony, which took place in front of the gazebo, started at 3:30. We went through the awards for chicken and ribs without a taste of a trophy. And then came the call for winners in the Pulled Pork category. Once they got into the top three teams, I assumed that I had again tanked in Pulled Pork. Imagine my surprise when I found I had turned in the #1 pulled pork winner! The result was a first place trophy and a check that would cover my meat expense for the weekend. What a rush!

When the awards for Brisket were handed out, Howling Hog Barbecue again got a call – the fourth place trophy found its way to us. No doubt, my feelings about the dryness of the brisket might have cost me a higher placing.

The final award went for the venison. My confidence was high as they read the team names off. I had tasted the dish, it was excellent. I had seen it go out – I didn’t believe anyone could touch the bread bowl presentation. Farmer Girl seemed to have her doubts, but the first place call again went to Howling Hog Barbecue!

So, as you can see, Hogstock was a hell of a good time for Howling Hog Barbecue. We played the game with some very good teams and showed we could keep up. It’s nice to know that folks will take us seriously when they see the name Howling Hog Barbecue. It’s also good to know that this type of competition is wide open. Sure, there are a few teams who are light years ahead of most of us, but we can compete, we can eat and we can have a lot of fun. As always it was great to see the fine folks from Feeding Friendz (they took 3rd in Brisket, by the way – Yay Feeding Friendz!) and it was excellent to get to know our fellow Vermonters at Barebones Barbecue (Go VERMONT!) who also made a fine showing. Here’s to all the competitors, the organizers and the people who showed up for the fun! And most of all, thanks to the Boy, Farmer Girl and the Old Bull for making team Howling Hog a contender.

Hogstock

2006-08-22T12:23:00.000-07:00

This weekend Team Howling Hog will be competing in our second competition of the '06 barbecue season. The NH State Barbecue Championships are taking place in Warren, NH.

We'll be making our way there on Friday and competing at the event on Saturday. This looks to be a much lower key event than the Harpoon Championships. As much as a blast as Harpoon is, the three days of cooking and vending make it a marathon event. Hogstock, on the other hand, will only be the two days and there are fewer teams. Harpoon has 41 teams, Hogstock tops out at 18. There's also no vending at Hogstock as all event proceeds go to benefit the Warren Fire Department.

So, the prep begins. The Old Bull and I have worked on our weaker points - his new recipe for ribs is stellar and I'm hoping to see some improvement in my pork shoulder as well. The chicken and brisket formulas seem to be solid, so I'm not going to change anything.

We're really looking forward to seeing how we stack up to a smaller clutch of teams. I'll report back this weekend with pictures and the results!

Cheers,

Chris

Old Bull's Observations from the Harpoon

2006-07-25T09:40:00.000-07:00

Driving down the interstate to the sixth annual Harpoon Barbeque competition (Harpoon is a Vermont brewery and the competition doubles as the New England Championships, a qualifier for national competition) in a driving rainstorm with my brother in law's grill strapped to the back of the pick-up I was smiling to myself. "I can't see a gawd-danged thing," I thought as a tractor trailer passed. "I really ought to pull over." But, of course I didn't. The rain was among the heaviest I have ever driven in, but it had ebbs and flows like nature tends to do. It was more of a flow than an ebb when I stopped at my nephew's to raid his heating wood pile. I realized, too late, I should have taken off my shirt to stash those pieces of wood into the crevasses of the pick-up load. I was also beginning to realize that I had concentrated on what I needed to cook with but paid very little attention to what I needed to keep myself comfortable. I had packed a handful of clothing, but was certainly under prepared, particularly in footwear. At this point, however, these were only fleeting thoughts. Little did I realize I had already made three critical cooking mistakes. More would follow.

Arriving at the festival site, I was happy to see my Howling Hog teammates right at the entrance; first booth. And they were already pretty well set-up. I backed the truck right in and we started off-loading the grill, (bringing our total to three) a trio of folding tables and the wood. Throughout that process the pit rigs were rolling in: Big rigs; big pits. Pull behind pits. Drivable pits. Well decorated pits. Sponsored pits. It left an impression.

We attended the competitors meeting, got fed the competitors meal, and started the fires. Kick-off. Now the real rain didn't start coming on for quite a while. The Head Hog went down for a nap about - oh I dunno, maybe two am. I hung on until 3:30. And I was worried my rib fire would still be too hot to cook on at dawn's early light. Head Hog got up about a half hour after I went down, which was handy for the marinade flipping which was required. The marinade, by the way, was another mistake. As had been grabbing the heating wood, which was neither quality cooking wood, nor the right size to actually fit into the grill, which wasn't mine in the first place. By 5am, when I got up for good, with roughly 40 minutes of restless sleep, my raging fire was reduced to some decent embers, well below the grate. I could not get another piece of wood to actually rest on the embers. The fire never really did burn with any predictability. And I have never marinaded my ribs before. The game was going badly; At least on my end.

The Head Hog was pretty happy with what he had going. All his fancy temperature thingies were saying the temp had been good all night. He had concerns, yes, but oh so minor when compared to the ribs, which I got in the pit with what should have been an hour and a half to spare. That of course, presumes a reasonable fire, which I did not have, and being unfamiliar with the grill, controlling a difficult fire was simply beyond me. Another dropped pass. Alright, I don't want to dwell on this anymore. I've been beating myself up over the ribs enough. I've been putting it this way: they were the worst ribs I've pulled off a fire in 15 years. We managed to dress 'em up enough to avoid last place. And I certainly wouldn't have expected them to be any better than that. They weren't. Head Hog got 13th in brisket, up from dead last a season ago. Out of 42 teams, the improvement is remarkable, and considering it was just the fifth time he's used his new competition level apparatus it was a particularly good showing. The rains started coming in with regularity to coincide with the opening of the festival to the public. No casual barbeque fan would be coming. Fortunately, there are at least 2,000 more than casual fans, and they slogged in with brightly colored umbrellas and stayed. Covering their beer to prevent dilution and happily finding enough cover to keep the sauce from washing off their ribs.

The rain had peaked during the Saturday evening awards presentation. The bagpipe players had a struggle keeping water from accumulating down their pipes, but it really just made the sound a little more raspy. Our ladies were ankle deep in mud at the vending table and there was whitewater in the little riverettes which coursed across the floor of our booth. It was ugly. My ribs didn't get served to anybody. I was glad to throw them onto an open fire late in the evening and watch them flare up. The process actually enhanced them a great deal, and I ate quite a few that night while consuming way too much sponsor product. Fortunately, they brought us another case of the oatmeal stout about 2am.

Sunday the crowds came in, although I have no doubt Saturday is normally the key day of the event in a non-weather challenged day. It was what they call "sizzler" day, or grilling competition as opposed to the smoking competition. It's not really what the big guys are all about, though some of the restaurant sponsored teams get after it pretty good. I was in charge of the wings and am proud to say earned the team its first ribbon, scoring 10th in the field of 40 or so (I'm assuming most of the teams entered every category). Now I've been cooking wings since the early 70's, since I moved from the Buffalo area and couldn't get a reasonable facsimile of a wing. I know what a wing is suppose to taste like. I saw room for improvement in them. This is good. I have a base line from which to work... unlike the ribs.

That's the short of it. I returned home utterly exhausted, suitably humbled and pissed enough to want to cook ribs at least once a week for the next year.

The Harpoon Championships of New England Barbecue 2006

2006-07-24T18:01:00.000-07:00

Well, it’s over. And all I have to say is “WHEW”! And not a little bit of “WHO-HOO!”

This year’s Harpoon Championships of New England Barbeque was an exceptional experience. For Howling Hog BBQ it was a weekend of great improvement, water, mud, beer and our first award!

Friday

Where to begin? Well, how about the beginning? The “first team” of Howling Hog BBQ (I and my young son) pulled into Harpoon on Friday at 11:15. I admit that I’m a bit confused about exactly when check in is supposed to start, the rules say 12:00 but the dang place was packed when we got there.

However, for us, this wasn’t a bad thing. Last year we were the first booth on the right as you enter the site and we got that spot again. The location of our booth probably isn’t the best for selling meat, as people want to come in and check stuff out before they buy. But we do more than just meat, and as a result, the location benefits us greatly.

This year, part of our success was marked by the fact that I had nearly a full team on hand by the afternoon. Farmer Girl followed her boys shortly after we arrived and we were able to get the tents up and our gear out of the truck by noon. A quick shout-out to Grampy for loaning us his F-250, couldn’t have done this without him! Old Bull and the Mamer arrived in the afternoon after getting a tire repaired on their truck.

Our kitchen was much improved over last season. We’ve invested in equipment and infrastructure (tables, camp kitchen, etc.). We were also MUCH more organized this time around. My competition checklist was circulated through the team members at the beginning of the week, so we had time enough to give it thought and pull anything I missed into the list.

One of the best improvements of our set up was the Cabella’s “camper kitchen” that Farmer Girl got me for Christmas. We liked it so much that we’ve decided we’re going to get another one!

Cooking began in earnest in the evening, of course.

One of the best things about this competition is the friendship and camaraderie. Our neighbors from last season, Feeding Freindz were at Harpoon again this year and it was just great to see them. Rick and D.J. from Seabrisket, who sold me my new baby (the Backwoods Smoker) were present and accounted for.

At about one in the morning on Saturday we were visited by one of the fine fellas from Lunchmeat (who did well in the competition as usual) who came bearing a massive jar of spiked cherries. He and I had a good talk about our mutual interest in Gov’t Mule and the Allman Brothers Band.

Saturday

I’m betting I only got about four hours of sleep on Friday night, in two-hour bursts. This was probably my 5th time doing a full cook on the Backwoods and I’m still trying to get used to it.

The morning was a hustle and bustle, particularly for Farmer Girl and her aunt, Mamer. They were in charge of Vending and did a fantastic job getting our booth set up to look good and handling our customers. This was one of our biggest areas of improvement for the season. The Old Bull and I had worked through the night, particularly on the ribs. My Brisket was done by 10:00, wrapped and set in the hot cooler. The chicken went on at around 9:00, I think.

The weather was not our friend at Harpoon this year. When a tropical storm formed off the coast earlier in the week, I figured it didn’t bode well for our fine event. The forecast went to hell as we got closer to the start. On Saturday, it absolutely dumped. One of my friends from nearby Hartland said that he got more than two inches of rain on Saturday! We were all SOME wet. But not even the grinch could stop barbecue from coming! A dedicated group of folks STILL came out to enjoy the food and the excellent music. And the dedicated competitors kept on smokin’.

At 12:00, I submitted my chicken, and considering that I find it the least interesting meat to compete with, it came out darned well.

At 12:30 the ribs were submitted. No doubt, they were our worst submission, which was due to the classic mistake of doing everything differently than you usually do at home. I had given the ribs over to the old bull, whose ribs have always been better than mine. But, he was using a foreign grill, a rib rack, some odd ribs, and even some mixed woods. That won’t happen again, I’m sure. I bet you next time we compete he’s coming with his own grill, his own wood and his own method of doing them. Go Old Bull!

At 1:00 I pulled my pork. I felt that the product I sent in was quite good and I just loved the sweet and vinegar mustard sauce I put on it.

At 1:30, my most improved product went into the judges. I have worked on my brisket all year, to the point that everyone in my household has been going “brisket again?” But, as you’ll find out later, the improvement is marked.

Needless to say, as soon as the brisket was off to the judges, we hit the beer tent. Harpoon treats its barbecuer’s quite well. I’d be hard pressed to say that we “wanted for beer” at any point this weekend!

The contest results were announced at 4:00.

The usual suspects were dominant, if you’d like to see the results, then you should head on over to the New England BBQ Society’s web site and check them out.

Our Results

I’m pleased to say that we saw improvement in all categories! We placed 21st in Chicken, 40th in Ribs (yes, they were WORSE last year), 34th in Pork Shoulder and best of all for me – 13th in Brisket! My brisket was dead last last year.

The chicken was a surprise. I basically went for red rub and red sauce and tried to make it look pretty. Clearly that worked for me. The poor showing in ribs was no surprise. They’ll be better next year, no doubt. The Pork Shoulder showing was frustrating because I felt it was pretty darned good. Obviously, I need to go back and look at what I’ve been doing, read some books about it and start practicing heavily to improve on my scores. Without a doubt, my biggest personal success was the brisket. To jump from last to three places below 10th was huge for me. I worked doggedly on that gnarly cut of meat and I feel it really worked out.

Why we do this

This event isn’t just about the competition. It’s about a bunch of good folks getting together to do something they love. In my case, it’s also about family. Having my wife, son, aunt and uncle all there to participate and loving it as much as I do makes this such a special event. So, a thanks from this Howlin’ Hog to Farmer Girl, The Boy, Old Bull and Mamer for giving it there all and being ready for more!

Well folks, it’s getting late, I’m still pretty tired, and so I’ll provide you with the good news from Sunday’s Summer Sizzler contest tomorrow!

Keep Smokin’

C.

One more thing: There's a great article in The Valley News, our local paper about the competition and Howling Hog BBQ gets a nod! Check it out here.

The countdown

2006-07-20T11:17:00.000-07:00

Well Folks, it's just one more day until the cooking begins at the Harpoon Championships of New England Barbecue!

My team has been fully organized, my trucking arranged and the pack list organized. As we speak, Farmer Girl is baking for her end of the event, the vending. Old Bull and the Mamer are coming down from up north to join us and The Brewer will be arriving on Saturday morning to pitch in. Regrettably, The Chef had to bail on this year's event because his wife had a heart attack last friday. Fortunately, she survived and is out of the hospital. Clearly it's time for two of my favorite people to knock off the smoking! Our best to them as she heals up and gets back into action!

The truck is getting packed tonight, the last minute sauces and rubs are being pulled together and the meat gets picked up tomorrow morning. Then we're off to Windsor to get a booth, load in and set up!

I'll have pictures and comments for ya'll on Monday, which I sensibly took off from work this year. Wish us luck!

Best,

Chris

And so it begins

2006-07-05T06:34:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy few weeks and all signs point to things getting busier before the end of the month. I've been a bit edgy lately and only just realized what my deal was - I'm getting nervous about the Barbecue Competition!

The big event is just over two weeks away and there's a lot to think about. And the thing is - it's pretty much my deal. To be sure, I've got a team of friends and family who'll be there to give me a hand, but in the end - it's all up to me. This is my food, my contest and thusly my show to run.

I've started to buy stuff for the event. Next week I'm ordering all of my meat, and as usual I'm not quite sure how it's going to get paid for! I've replaced our broken tents, purchased storage containers, buss bins and tools for the contest. The weekend before the event I'll be pulling together all of my spice rubs (I'll be selling them at the site as well) and sauces. Plus, of course, I'll be trying to get one final nighttime practice run in.

This is my second year in the contest. I have a much better feel for what's expected of me and what the pace will be like. I'm pretty confident that what I produce will put me somewhere in the middle of the pack, which would be a great improvement over second-to-last. But, I'm nervous about it nonetheless.

It's funny but I don't remember being this nervous last year. This is probably because I didn't know what to expect. This year I do, and I think I'm ready, but there are a million things to consider and I'm responsible for almost all of them. Plus, I need to be prepared to tell my teammates what I need from them. Lots to do. Not much time. But, I think I'm well on my way and I'm looking forward to it. I know my food is better than last year. Now all I can do is organize, prepare and practice. The rest of it will fall into place.

Cheers,

Chris

Father's Day BBQ

2006-06-22T07:51:00.000-07:00

Hi Folks,

Just a short, boring, pictureless blurb. I hosted the second of an annual tradition this past Sunday - the Father's Day Barbecue!

Unlike many of you who only have one, perhaps two father-type figures in your life, I'm blessed with bunches. I have the good old hereditary father, a step-father, a father-in-law and a bunch of uncles who I bond with. I'm a lucky guy.

Knowing how lucky I am to have so many father figures that I cherish and enjoy, I figured that there's no better way to say "thanks for being part of my life" than a big, fat, barbecue!

So, after I got home from a gig on Saturday night, I sparked up my new baby (see post below) and put on nearly 22# of meat. A beef brisket and a pork shoulder were the meats of the day.

The timing of things forced me to speed up the last two hours of cooking by transferring my meat, foil wrapped, into the oven, but it all came out swimmingly. Alas, I had left my camera at work, so I've got no tasty pictures to show y'all.

But I can assure you - the food was spectacular. Kudos to Farmer Girl for the deviled eggs, baked beans and corn bread. And to our roommate’s mom for the excellent potato salad.

I hope everyone had as great a father's day as I did. Next up for me is some sort of father's day celebration my wife and son want to give me. I'm hogging all their fun with this barbecue, so they're going to do something for me this Sunday as a make-up for not getting to do anything for me on the actual holiday. Truth be told though, just having my family there and getting help from my wife was gift enough!

Cheers,

Chris

Say Hello to My Little Friend!

2006-06-02T07:09:00.000-07:00

Well folks, I have finally moved up in the world of smokers! A week ago today, me and fellow HHBBQ Teamster Old Bull made the 2.5 hour trek down to Newburyport Mass to see a man about a smoker, a "Backwoods Smoker" to be precise.

I met my first Backwoods Smoker (BWS) at the Harpoon competition last year. My neighbors, Feeding Freindz, were running two "Party" model BWS's and when I got a good look at them, I was smitten. An insulated smoker with good capacity for under $100? How could I not be taken by such a thing?

So, I've been saving my comp-time for the past three months and finally had enough saved up to cash it out and go meet up with the New England BWS distributers, Rick and D.J. Surrette. Rick and D.J. run the BBQ team "Seabrisket". They now their shit, and have the trophies to show for it. In fact, if you look at this year's Memphis in May results (if you don't know, this is one of the biggest events in the BBQ world - over 200 teams compete), you'll see that they placed #2 in the Tomato-based sauce category. They also were pleased with their 15th place finish in beef brisket - no small feat against nearly 250 teams!

Rick and D.J. are clearly good people, and they treated me and the Old Bull quite well. We got the opportunity to take a look at their BWS setup. They use four of the smallest BWS available, the "Patio" model. One for each type of meat in the competition. Their setup is quite cool. I think the Old Bull has found a smoker that he'd like to buy!

From Rick and D.J. I bought the BWS "Party" model and the "BBQ Guru", a thermostat/fan attachment that will regulate the draft on a BWS (and other smokers as well) automatically. The total price was just over $1000, the most I've ever spent on equipment for Barbecue! I have to tell you, though - it was worth every penny.

Here's a pic of me and my new unit:

I didn't have the time to use the smoker until Memorial Day. I threw an 11lb. Brisket into it, two dozen eggs and an 8lb turkey.

With the Guru running and the well insulated BWS keeping the heat in, I have to tell you that I didn't know what to do with myself! I'm used to having to ride herd on the temperature in my old smokers. This one, though - not so much. I kept a steady temp for at least six hours before I had to even consider adding more charcoal. I think it could go longer.

So, to wrap things up - if you're in New England and you're looking for a new smoker but don't want to pay $2500 for a tow-behind your truck type of smoker, I couldn't recommend buying a BWS from the folks at Seabrisket more. They're selling them as a favor to those of us who dig this sort of thing. I urge you to take advantage of what they're offering!

Keep Smokin'

Mule

BBQ by the light of the Firefly

2006-05-22T06:53:00.000-07:00

We held our very first "Themed" party this weekend. Ordinarily, we just have parties that center around eating food and hanging out. But my wife and I are a pair of robust geeks and when we find something we like, we do like to celebrate it.

Enter the short lived sci-fi-western-drama "Firefly". This show, given an early death sentence by the brilliant minds at FOX was the third series from writer/producer/director mastermind Joss Whedon. My wife's family introduced us to the Joss Whedon verse about a year ago. We've been through all of the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel" series and just loved them. But "Firefly" is what really won my heart. The show has humor, action, drama and deep, well written characters. Once you start watching it, it's hard to stop.

So we invited about 10 friends and family who were all fans of "Firefly" to come to our place on Saturday and have a "Firefly Shindig" with us. There was "firefly jeopardy", some costumes and themed food. The back-story for "Firefly" mixes American and Chinese cultures, so we asked everyone to bring food from either culture. As always, we were not disappointed by our guests!

I smoked an 11lb. pork shoulder and an 8lb turkey as my part of the food. I managed to whip up a fantastic mustard sauce for the pork (I'm a fan of the Carolina mustard sauce) that I think I can replicate. I pulled the turkey and served it in Big Bob Gibson's white sauce. Farmer Girl did up a bunch of deviled eggs in three styles - regular, wasabi ginger and chipoltle. Others brought a couple of Chinese pasta dishes and The Old Bull made fried wontons.

The weather has been pretty darned funky lately, so we set up our 12'X12' tent in front of our garage, put two sidewalls up and arranged my camp kitchen and another folding table with a gas stove on it for cooking. In the garage, we used a computer projector, projector screen, laptop and a small surround sound setup to create a "movie theatre" feel. Everyone gorged themselves on good food and drink, we played a bit o' jeopardy and voted on our favorite episodes. We didn't make it through the whole list because it was getting late and cold, but it was quite a good time.

I'm sure we'll do it again.

Cheers,

Mule

Bye, bye, money!

2006-05-11T10:34:00.000-07:00

The barbecue season has definitely and without question begun. I say this not because of the wonderful food I 'cued two weekends ago, but because I have begun spending money in preparation for the Harpoon Championships already.

Today I placed an order with Cabella's for a new 12'X 12' EZ-Up tent (our old one was destroyed by wind during a thunderstorm) and a Coleman camp stove. Last year I really found that I needed some sort of tabletop stove to cook ingredients and most importantly - to make coffee!

I also sent an email to Seabrisket BBQ, the New England rep for Backwoods Smokers. I have been saving my comp time since February, and I should have enough to finally purchase the grill I've wanted for the past year.

I'm going to buy one of their "Party" models with a BBQ Guru attachment on it. From their web site:

"The Party Unit has six (6) shelves that are 15 1/2" by 16 1/2" in size. This unit cooks between 225 to 250 degrees on approximately 8-9 pounds of charcoal and wood for flavoring. The Party Unit will maintain this heat for 6-7 hours...Handling Capacity: 85 lbs. Boston Butt or 15 Slabs of St. Louis Style Ribs...Cooking Surface Area: 11 sq. ft"

I had the fortune to meet the folks who compete as "Feeding Freindz" at Harpoon last season, and they were using two of these units. They look solid and the added capacity will be excellent. But, the main reason I'm going with this grill is the insulation. I've been using cheap smokers since I started learning the art of "slow and low" cooking. These units are thin single-walled steel and in a breeze I struggle to keep them up to temp. I should have no such problems with the insulated Backwoods Smoker. And, of course, the notion of being able to drop half a bag of charcoal and wood pieces into my smoker and leave it alone for hours is quite appealing. I can't do that with my present models.

And helping me extend the time between fire checks will be the BBQ Guru. From the Backwoods Smoker web site:

The guru base unit controls a fan that is connected to your fire box through an induction tube. The base unit reads the temperature you have set for your pit, then calculates how much air to blow into your fire box to get the heat level in your pit just right. When your pit reaches the desired temp, the guru goes into maintain mode, "puffing" your firebox once every two to three seconds to maintain the right temperature.

Feeding Freindz had these units as well, and aside from one technical problem the night of the competition (which was fixed by Shotgun Fred, creator of the BBQ Guru, who had a nearby booth), they really did the trick.

So, I'm hoping to get a response from Rick at Seabrisket in the next day or so. As soon as I can, I'm going to place this order. Gotta get practicing!

I'm going to be hemorrhaging money for the next month! Ahhh, well. Anything for the 'cue!

Mule

More Eggs

2006-05-08T07:34:00.000-07:00

This weekend was a busy one! From Friday evening through Saturday evening I was able to indulge in some of my more geeky passions (poker, wargaming, tabletop gaming), so there was no time for the slow and low cookfest I had last week.

But, one of the joys at having a number of hours of practice under my belt is that I can now set my grill up and virtually walk away from it for three to four hours and will keep on a nice even burn. It allows me to do projects and still cook. So, while putting up fence around my garden area, I cooked the following:

a 4lb chicken

16 eggs

a small pork loin roast

meatloaf

I cooked this eclectic collection of foods so we'd have some already cooked meats for lunches and dinner this week. The meatloaf was last night's dinner and it was great! If you haven't tried cooking meatloaf on your smoker, you've got to. It takes the traditional dish up to a higher plane.

The key to smoking meatloaf, no matter what you put in it, is that you start it on your smoker in either a loaf pan, or on a small sheet pan. Thus far, I've used loaf pans, but I suspect a sheet pan might allow for the meat to have a better smoke flavor if its sides aren't covered (as they are in a loaf pan). Once the meatloaf has cooked enough to hold its form, you take it out of the pan or off the sheet and put it directly on the grill and continue to smoke it. This ensures that all areas of the meat get smoked.

That's it for this weekend's activity.

Cheers,

Mule

In which I tell you about the eggs

2006-05-02T10:32:00.000-07:00

WhitetrashBBQ asked me to tell ya'll a bit more about these smoked eggs (pictured in the post below). Well, to be honest, they couldn't be an easier thing to smoke.

I learned about smoking eggs about five years back, before I even understood the difference between grilling and smoking. One of Farmer Girl's relatives had simply stuck a couple on his smoker, and they came out wonderfully. Not long after that I gave them a shot, but because I hadn't yet learned how to control my heat, they cracked and were pretty much destroyed. Since then, I've learned how to make things cook slow and low, and why it needs to be done that way.

As I said in my last post, I don't believe in wasting grill space. I have my charcoal shipped from Maine which makes it a bit expensive, so I figure I need to get my money's worth out of each burn. With that massive brisket on the old ProGriller, I didn't have room for a chicken or anything that large. But the eggs! They fit around the edges just fine.

Cooking them on the smoker is a snap. As long as you're cooking below 250 degrees, they shouldn't crack. I choose to put them as far away from the firebox as I can, just to eliminate any chance of cracking. After that, I just leave them on the grill. There's probably an exact amount of time to cook them, but since I've just started doing it, I can't tell you what it is. Mine were a bit over done, but since they were going to be made into deviled eggs, it didn't matter much to me.

My wife whipped up some deviled eggs out of the smoked eggs and they were great. But, I felt they needed to be a bit more interesting, so last night I came up with this recipie for Mule's Smoke and Fire Deviled Eggs. I didn't measure any of the ingredients, so you'll have to do it all to taste.

Mule's Smoke and Fire Deviled Eggs

Ingredients:

12 Smoked Eggs
Mayonnaise (about 1 cup, I think)
2 Chipolte Peppers in Adobo Sauce
1/2 cup of finely diced red onions

Preparation:

Peel your eggs, rinse and cut in half lengthwise. Scoop out the yoke and mix it in a bowl with the mayo. Dice red onions very fine. Dice chipotle peppers. Mix mayo and egg until smooth, then add the diced chipotle pepper and red onions. Mix again. Refill the space in each 1/2 egg that had a yoke in it with the mixture. Sprinkle with your favorite red seasoning - I used my Triple Chile Rub.

Depending on your tolerance for heat, clean out the seeds from the chipotle peppers or if you like it hot, add four or five more of them.

These went like wildfire last night when I served them to my wife and our roomate. Try them out and let me know what you think!

Thanks,

C.

Game On!

2006-05-01T10:02:00.000-07:00

Well folks, I can tell you that up here in Vermont, Barbecue season has officially opened for Howling Hog BBQ. This weekend marked the first sunny and warm weekend we've had this spring, and I wasn't going to let it slip by without cooking up a huge volume of meat!

I invited family and friends over for a sunday BBQ to help take care of my soon to be created "meat problem" (my friends always seem to be willing to pitch in when it comes to dealing with an overabundance of BBQ!).

Last Wednesday I stocked up on charcoal. I ordered 66lbs of Wicked Good Charcoal from Maine, and as always it arrived within two days. Thanks to Lee Ann for the great customer service.

I also called my butcher looking for a pork shoulder - something I hadn't had in quite a while as I've been working on brisket of late. Darned my luck, he was out of pork shoulder. But he had brisket, and that would certainly do. He asked me what size cut I was looking for and I mistakenly told him I didn't care. That got me this:

Yes folks, that's 13 freakin' POUNDS of beefy goodness. My, my, my.

So, on Saturday afternoon (I've taken to cooking the day before a get together to allow me more time with guests and less time in front of the stove) I sparked up my grill and got to cooking. Now, I've begun to make it a policy that there should be very little "open real estate" on my grill when I'm smoking a big cut of meat. Charcoal and wood are too expensive, and things can always be frozen for later use.

As you can imagine, my big honkin' brisket took up a fair bit of my grill, but it still left room for some eggs. I'd seen one of Farmer Girl's relatives smoke eggs in the past, and decided I'd give it a shot. They came out great and made some rippin' smoked deviled eggs.

I cooked from 2:00pm on Saturday until about 12:00 midnight. Since I wasn't competing, I saw no reason to pull an all nighter, so the brisket got wrapped in foil and I put it in the fridge.

On Sunday morning I pulled the meat out and popped it in the oven at 220 degrees. Then I re-lit my grill and put one of our homegrown Turkeys on it. This sucker weighed in at 10lbs:

I stuffed the bird with a few onions, a garlic bulb, rosemary, sage and some apples, all to add a bit of flavor and moisture to it. To fill the unused grill area, I put a bunch of country-style pork spare ribs on it. Those will get used at a later date.

When it came time to serve the meal, I unwrapped my briskets (I cut the brisket in half to help speed the cooking process) and here's the joy I saw:

It came out perfectly! The color was really great - note the killer smoke ring. The crust was nice and black, but not burnt. Needless to say it was well received. I pulled one of the turkey breasts and served it in Big Bob Gibson's white sauce. I also made black beans and rice, veggie hobo packs with sweet potato, zuccini and summer squash and, of course my wife's smoked deviled eggs! It was a good feed.

Aside from being excited to be back into barbecue season again, I'm particularly thrilled about the consistancy of what was once my hardest meat to cook. My brisket has been good every time I've made it since last season. There's no way I'm placing last in Brisket at the Harpoon Championships this season. Mark my words.

Hope all of you had the opportunity to cook something good and have your favorite drink.

Cheers!

C.

And so it begins

2006-04-20T07:07:00.000-07:00

I got a tag from WhiteTrashBBQ down in the big city reminding me that spring is here and it's time to start cooking over fire again. And boy is he right!

I've been thinking about barbecue quite a bit lately, in part because of the improved weather, but more because I just registered team Howling Hog BBQ for my one and only competition event. We'll be making our second visit to the Harpoon Championships of New England Barbecue on the 22nd and 23rd of July.

This event is the largest event in New England. Last year 39 teams competed. This year, they've had so many additional interested teams, that they had to make things first come, first served, with regard to registration. A special thanks to fellow teammates "The Brewer" and "The Old Bull" for putting some extra cash in the pool to help me cover the sudden and immediate need to register!

Last year was our first year competing and our scores showed it. Overall we came in 38th out of 39 teams. This year, we aim to make a noted improvement in those scores, and I suspect we will. Last year, I didn't have any help on the night before competition. Most of my crew couldn't make it until saturday, and the Old Bull was out with shoulder surgery. This year, I should have a full group of teamates in the pit. I suspect that "The Chef", the Old Bull and Farmer Girl will all be there for the overnight on Friday. This makes me feel great for a couple of reasons:

First, it means that last year got everyone on the team excited and they're ready to really have another go at it.

Second, it means I don't have to cook alone!

Being the only one in the pit on the night before our competition was pretty lousy. Aside from being a bit lonely (my neigbors, Feeding Friendz, were just great though), being the only one who tends the pit left me pretty exhausted the next day. As the crew chief, I probably won't turn the pitmastering over to anyone for long, but three or four uninterrupted hours of sleep would be pretty nice.

The team is definately ready to improve on last years results. The Chef called me in mid-January with a new recipe for a barbecue sauce. The Old Bull and The Brewer made their donations to the cause, and Farmer Girl and I have been talking about what we're selling and what new equipment we have to buy between now and July.

So, while work has been keeping me just crazy, I expect I'll be posting some practice results on the blog in the future. Next weeks paycheck should give me the extra cash to buy a shipment of charcoal from Lee Ann and Larry at Wicked Good Charcoal. Plus, a coworker just hooked me up with a couple of buckets of red oak scraps. It all points to the beginning of barbecue season!

So, spark up the grill folks, it starts now!

Best,

Mule

No Cue Here

2006-03-16T10:32:00.000-08:00

Hi Folks,

Not much 'Cue happening up here in Vermont. I've been mighty busy at work (project deadlines) and the rest of life (family, water heater installation, wiring, etc.) is taking up a bunch of my time. Rest assured that I'll be back with more tales of BBQ goodness in the coming weeks.

I'm hoping that by the end of the month I'll have the cash saved up to sign up for the New England BBQ Society's "hands on competition BBQ class" scheduled for early May.

Until I can post again - Smoke good 'cue!

Mule

Brisket Success!

2006-02-21T09:09:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I last posted. Things at work have been balls to the wall, and to be honest, I've been posting a bit more at my other blog: http://mulethoughts.blogspot.com. But, I want to assure you that this doesn't mean I haven't been doin' the Cue!

I'm excited to tell you that I have cooked two Briskets in the past two weeks and I can finally say that I have learned how to cook one of the nastiest cuts of meat with consistency!

My methods are pretty simple. I have taken to rubbing the meat the night before it gets cooked, using my Triple Chile Rub and a few other double secret ingredients. The next day I set up my grill using the Minion Method, get the unit between 230-250 and throw the brisket on.

While I'm not "monitoring the grill" (which involves a chair and usually a beer) I make a "sop" for the meat. My sops usually made of some sort of stock, usually chicken because we make stock every time we eat one of our own birds. I also use a tomato product, either ketchup or juice depending on what's available. I add some sweeteners like Karo Syrup or Maple Syrup and some more of those double secret ingredients!

Midway through the day, I begin basting the meat liberally with it about once an hour. This helps add fat to the cooking process, which is particularly good because it seems that most butchers are getting a bit carried away with how much of the fat cap they cut off.

The key to my success has been patience. I've learned that I simply HAVE to wait until the brisket reaches about 195-200 degrees before it gets pulled off the grill and wrapped in foil. BBQ Baron Paul Kirk recommends that your brisket be around 205 degrees when it's done. This temp has worked well for me. My recent successes have all been tender and tasty - and tenderness is awfully hard to come by with this cut of beef.

I'll try to get back into the groove of posting in a bit.

Cheers!

Chris