Bacon Redux

So Sunday the pork belly went on the smoker. Many of the recipes I've seen call for running a cool smoker for bacon, around 160 F. At its peak I think mine was at 200 and by the time I took the bacon off it was running around 125 F. For fuel I used several pieces of apple wood and one chimney of charcoal. Instead of my usual fire basket, which is usually elevated a bit to let the ash fall, I had the fuel in an old aluminum roasting pan at the very bottom of the smoker and the pork belly was up on the top rack, putting it as far from the heat as possible. I left it on the smoker for about 3 1/2 hours.

After removing the bacon from the smoker, you will be tempted to cut into the bacon, fry some up and taste it. Go ahead. But then put it on a rack and let it cool. After cooling for an hour or two, put it in a plastic bag and set it in the fridge for a few hours. This really helps set the meat up and makes it much much easier to cut.

You may notice that the bacon above doesn't have that deep read or mahogany color you are used to seeing in bacon you get from the store. The main cause of that is that I did not use any nitrites or nitrates at all in curing the bacon. You can use any of a number of curing salts that contain those ingredients to get that color if you so desire. I won't comment on whether or not they cause cancer, because I'm too damn lazy to do the research.

So now I have roughly ten pounds of bacon. Five of it has been cut up. The other five is still whole. All of it is going to our family Thanksgiving gathering. I'm sure we'll figure out what to do with it.

Also, the rendered pork fat came out great. After it was done rendering I drained it then let it sit in the fridge. Some was used for cooking eggs over the past couple of days, and then I felt like making biscuits, so the rest of it went into the biscuits in the place of the margarine or shortening most recipes call for. It was a good move.

Bringing Home The Bacon

I am taking my first step at home smoked bacon. A 10.78 pound pork belly is in the fridge, curing. In the fridge Wednesday evening, on the smoker Sunday afternoon. I cut the belly in half and trimmed off a good amount of the rind and fat.

The cure is 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup kosher salt and a few turns on the pepper grinder. I mixed this by hand, covered the pork belly generously, put it into a storage zip bag and it's in the fridge.

The amount of fat I had left from trimming was a lot, so I am rendering it on the stove top in a sauce pan. About 1/4 cup of water went over the fat after putting it in the pan. It is on low heat. I'll let you all know how it comes out.

Smokin' For The Homeless

I want to take a short break from competition recipes and such to talk for a minute about something I did last Friday for the second time and plan on doing in the future as many times as money and circumstances permit.

I go to church with the people that run Hearts Community Service. One of the activities they engage in is feeding the hungry in Ann Arbor. To help out I've smoked pork shoulder and brisket for them on a couple of occasions. Here are some of the reasons I help out in this way in particular.

1. I like to cook. Anybody that has known me for more than about 30 seconds knows this.
2. It's cheap. I get pork shoulder for $1.79 per pound sale. The regular price for brisket at GFS is less than $3.00 per pound. You can't even buy decent bologna for that little.
3. My employer is very generous with allowing its employees to work at home, which means I can get up early, fire up the smoker, get the meat on, get 8 or 9 hours of work in and then take the meat off the smoker and get it ready.
4. It is a very visible way I can show my kids the importance of giving back, helping the less fortunate, etc. Talking about all of these things is one thing. Tangible examples are quite another. Actions speaking louder than words and such, I suppose.
5. Barbecue lends itself to cooking large amounts of food at a time and, sadly, there are plenty of hungry people out there.

There are plenty of people that help out with assembling the sandwiches and getting the food where it needs to be. This part of the prep is, to me, a very small part in a much larger effort. But I know it's a part I can do well, so I pitch in when I can.

I felt particularly inspired to share this because, after the idiocy in France that transpired last Friday, November 13, 2015 and the subsequent turning away of Syrian refugees in various states in this country, a lot of the complaints and support for this knee-jerk reaction were along the line of "Why don't we worry about OUR homeless and OUR veterans and OUR poor first!". I cannot help but wonder how much these people that are complaining have actually done to help anybody. If you are truly concerned, I would strongly encourage you to change that phrasing from "Why don't we" to "Why don't I". What can I do today, maybe right now, to help out somebody less fortunate? Maybe if more people were worried about what "I" could do instead of what "we" or "they" could do, there would be a lot less people out there in desperate need.

God Bless.

Competition Ribs

The ribs placed 2nd in their category. They were the one thing coming off the smoker that I taste tested and knew would do well. My wife said they were the best thing I've ever pulled off that smoker.

Of all the meats to prep after check-in, I did the ribs last. They were the only thing to not get any sort of brine, so they were the easiest to prepare. Before I go into gritty detail, here is a rundown of the food and associated rub and sauce

The ribs: 3 racks of baby back ribs.

The rub: After doing a lot of reading, most competition bbq seems to prefer sweeter tasting sauces and rubs, whereas I normally like things more savory and spicy. I also read that a lot of competitors tend to use store bought rubs as their base and then proceed to doctor them to get the flavor profile they want. To this end, I got the local grocery store's Kansas City Steak Rub, took about 1/3 of the rub out of the container and replaced it with brown sugar. I used this rub on the pork and the chicken.

The sauce: I really, really like the Brownwood Farms Cherry BBQ sauce. It has great flavor and is a nice change from your normal Kansas City style sauce that most people are familiar with. For the sauce I did something similar to the rub. I started with this sauce, mixed in about an equal part apple cider vinegar, then added brown sugar to taste. Equal parts sauce and vinegar was a little too tangy in my opinion. Adding sugar back in helped. When the mix was right I simmered this on the stove top for about an hour. This was all prepared Thursday night before the competition. After it was done cooking I let it cool down then put it in a container in the fridge and packed it up in the cooler Friday morning. As with the rub, this sauce was used on everything but the beef. Brownwood farms is located in Traverse City, MI. They make great sauces.

To prepare the ribs, I hit them with a generous amount of rub, wrapped them in foil and then put them in the cooler. Most people recommend trying to remove the membrane from the bottom side of the ribs. I attempted to do this in the manner I saw in many, many youtube videos. I failed miserably, so rather than hack the back sides of the ribs into an unrecognizable mess, I left them alone. The membrane on these ribs was super thin. I don't know if that cost me first place or not.

The ribs sat in the cooler from when I seasoned them in the middle of the afternoon on Friday until they went onto the smoker at about 6 AM Saturday morning. Ribs were the first meat to be turned in. Lots and lots of people recommend the 3-2-1 method of cooking. It is widely recommended because it works. So when the ribs first went on they got another light sprinkle of rub, then went directly on the smoker. At about 9 am they got taken off, lightly sauced, wrapped in foil and then put back on the smoker for about 2 hours. Right around 11 they got unwrapped, sauced, then put back on the smoker. They were sauced at 11:15 and 11:30. Each time they wee sauced they just had a thin layer of sauce brushed on.

At about 11:45 they were pulled off, cut, boxed. There were seven judges so seven pieces of meat were required to be turned in. In order to get the seven thickest, meatiest pieces I needed all 3 racks. The ribs that were turned in all came from the front third of their respective racks, where the meat on the back of the rib was thickest. I tried for seven pieces that were as close to the same size as possible so they looked uniform in the box. Each rib was hit on all sides with a thin layer of sauce. Before shutting the box they were hit with a spritz of apple juice from a spray bottle to give them a hint of sweetness and a nice sheen.

The smoker was running between 250 and 275 the entire time the ribs were on. They were tender, juicy and not overdone. Most people like their ribs falling off the bone tender, but for a competition that is considered overdone. You want to be able to take a bite of the ribs and have the bite come off easily but still have enough texture so the bite mark remains and the rest of the meat stays on the bone.

That's it for the ribs. A little bit of work and a whole lot of patience turns out some tasty, tasty eats.

Competition Equipment

This is part 2 of my competition follow up. If you would like, you can read Part 1.

There is a wide variety of equipment you need to compete in a barbecue competition. If you do a little digging online you can see many people have compiled lists of what they think is necessary for competition equipment. I'll go over what I had and comment on what would have been better and what I'll do next time. This will only cover hardware and tools. Rubs, sauces, brines, etc. I will talk about when I get to the cooking portion of these blog entries.

Smoker/Pit

Obviously you need something to cook in. If you have seen any competitions on TV you will note that a wide variety of cooking vessels have been used. If you price out some of the pits you can buy you can see that it is easy to spend thousands of dollars on a barbecue pit. In my first competition I competed against some of these rigs. All I had were two upright drum smokers. I was a bit worried, but it would appear my worries were unfounded as I placed second overall and placed in the top 3 in 2 of the four categories. I had heard and read that people had cooked award winning barbecue in upright drums. After doing this I can believe them. I have no reason to believe I'll be cooking on anything else anytime soon. I wouldn't rule it out, as I have a friend that is interested in perhaps building a more complex smoker, and I would like something with more cooking space, but the drums can do the job. Of all the equipment I've got, this is the least of my worries. I know my drums and how to cook on them. You can cook on almost anything as long as you can keep the temperature reasonably consistent.

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One thing that would have been good to have to move the smokers would have been a hand truck.

Knives

I ended up using two knives regularly, my large chef's knife for cutting meat and a boning kinfe I got from Costco for trimming the meat. Please, please, please make sure you have good quality knives and make sure they are sharp. Some people recommend bringing a knife sharpener. I just made sure to sharpen mine the night before the competition started.

One thing I will for sure bring next time is a knife box.of some sort. I had the knives wrapped well and tied up for transport, but this was a pain to deal with while cooking. I will either build or buy a block or box.

Tongs 

I brought three sets of tongs with me. I think I ended up using all 3 at some point. It is hard to have too many of these. Both short and long handled tongs are handy. I had 2 long and one short set. At the very least I would have one of each.

Cutting Boards

I had three cutting boards. I wish I had more. Next time I will end up bringing six. Make sure all of them are large. In some cases just putting the cutting board away after using it will be easier to deal with than trying to constantly clean the cutting board. This was especially true when separating the brisket point from the flat to make burnt ends. It was such a mess that cleaning it with the supplied I had would have been impossible. That cutting board got the big stuff scraped off and then was put in a bag to be taken home to be cleaned where hot water and soap were plentiful.

Mixing Bowls and Whisks

I had one mixing bowl and whisk to mix up batches of sauce in case I didn't make enough at home. I didn't make enough at home. I was glad I had them.

Spray Bottle

You will need a spray bottle. Mine was full of apple juice to put a little sheet and a touch of extra flavor on all of the meat after it was boxed. The one exception to this was the brisket. The brisket just got another thin layer of sauce.

Aluminum Foil

I brought two full large rolls of heavy duty Reynold's Wrap. I would strongly suggest NOT skimping on the foil. Get the good stuff and bring lots of it. Two full rolls was about right. I only went through most of one roll, but having the second roll there meant I didn't need to think twice about using the foil where needed.

Foil Pans

I had 6 x 8, 9 x 10 and 12 x 20 pans. I think I had about 8 of each. This was a good amount. As with the foil, I went home with most of what I brought, but they don't take up much room and they are extremely handy to have for holding meat for marinades, or during prep for boxing, or putting one out to keep your knives and utensils in so they aren't sitting out on the table.

The ribs were too large for any of the plastic bags I had, so they got seasoned, wrapped, put in 12 x 20 pan then wrapped again then put in the cooler when they were getting prepped for cooking.

Bring lots of pans.

Plastic Bags

I had sandwich, quart, gallon and 2.5 gallon bags. I also brought some oven and slow cooker bags as well. The oven roasting and slow cooker bags turned out to be handy for holding the brisket while it was marinading. The brisket was too large for a 2.5 gallon zip bag. As with the foil and pans, plan on bringing a lot of these.

In addition to the bags for holding food I had quite a few grocery store plastic bags for carrying things and for dealing with trash. 

Latex Gloves

 We had two boxes of these, for medium and large hands. We got the powder free gloves. The boxes we got had 100 each. We didn't go through too many of them. I imagine the boxes we got will last quite a while.

Tables

I had 2 tables and 3rd brought in later. Next time I will shoot for four tables. All large and all with adjustable height. I had the tables as close to counter height as I could get. You will be hunched over a lot cutting, saucing and boxing food for a couple of hours. Doing this at a normal table height would end up killing my back after 3 hours.

Charcoal

I brought 2 bags, needed to run home and get a third. The third was only necessary to start a chimney of charcoal in the middle of the day Saturday for finishing off the burnt ends. I will definitely bring 3 big bags of charcoal next time.

Place to Sleep

I was fortunate to be able to borrow a camper. My original plan was to just sleep in the car, which I could have done, but the camper was so much nicer. Had I not had the camper I would have opted for the car over a tent given how cold it got that night. That being said, if you own a camper or have access to one, go with the camper.

Cleaning Supplies

I brought a jug of water, some dish soap, two rolls of paper towel, some cloth towels and two containers of disinfecting wipes. You will be doing a LOT of cleaning as you go. For the knives, as I was going, they got rinsed, wiped off, hit with a disinfecting wipe, then rinsed again. Soap and water was very necessary for washing hands. We did not have access to hot water while cooking and I did not have a camp stove with me to heat up water for washing, so everything got washed and then hit with a disinfecting wipe then rinsed. No access to hot water is also why I treated my cutting boards as one use items. Without hot water you are not going to be able to do a good job cleaning up all that sauce and fat. It is simply not possible.

Next time I think I will bring my camp stove so I can boil some water for cleaning.

Water

I had a 2.5 gallon water jug plus bottled water to drink. In addition to cleaning and drinking, having water handy to put out the charcoal after the competition was done was handy. I just ended up emptying some coolers on the still smoldering coals after I emptied the smokers.

Alarm Clock

I used my cell phone. You will need an alarm clock for getting up to check temps and getting food prepared and cooked. Unless you just want to stay up all night. Since I entered all four categories I was up and down a lot. The pork shoulder went on at about 11, then the brisket just after midnight. I then slept until about 3:30 to get up and check temperature on the smokers. All was good so I got back to sleep by 3:35. Then I was up at 5:30 to get the ribs ready and on the smoker. By the time the ribs were on it was a bit after six and it didn't make sense to go back to bed as I had planned to be up by 7 to get the chicken prepared. This obviously would not have been possible without an alarm clock. Had I really, really trusted my smokers I could have just slept from about 12:30 to 5:30. Personally I will always get up and check the temperatures.

My First BBQ Competition Is Done

I'm going to do a series of posts about my first BBQ competition, starting with a little bit of a retrospective. Next will be equipment. I'll detail what I had, what would have been better and in a perfect world what I would have had. And then recipes. This one will read like a FAQ. Lots of people had questions about it, so let's go.

How did you do?

I placed 3rd in chicken, 2nd in ribs and 2nd overall for the Grand Champion. I was 1 point behind the grand champion, so overall I was proud of my performance. The worst category for me, surprisingly, was pork shoulder. I think I may have phoned it in a bit on that one since I cook so many.

Are you going to do it again?

Definitely. It was exhausting, but also a lot of fun.

I tried several of the other briskets there. Yours was the best. How did you not win?

I have no idea. I just cooked the best food I could.

What time did you get there?

Check-in started Friday at noon. I was there by about 1:30 and my meat was inspected shortly after I got set up. Prep work (rubs, marinades, trimming, etc.) was done after inspection. The prep work took quite a bit of time, probably about 4 hours. Then dinner, then the cook's meeting at 8:00 pm. The charcoal chimney for the pork shoulder was started just after 10:00 pm and the pork shoulders were on by 10:30. Brisket on around midnight, sleep from about 1 to 3:30. Get up and check temp on the smokers. Back to bed until 5:30. Get up and get the ribs ready. Ribs on by 6. At that point, it didn't make sense to go back to bed, so I was up for the day from that point on. The chicken went on about 9:00 AM.

Wow. That sounds like a lot of work!

It was, but the real work didn't start until about 11:00 am. Turn-in times for the meats were ribs at 12:00, chicken at 12:30, pork at 1:00 and brisket at 1:30. From 11:00 to 1:30 it was non-stop prep the boxes, get the meat off, box the meat, then start all over again. I had two people helping prep the boxes and packaging them up and my son, who acted as a gopher for getting things, removing trash, etc. I was able to do the finishing touches on the meat, review the boxes to make sure they looked good (honestly they looked a ton better than anything I could have done) and watch the clock. Everybody was hustling the whole time.

Those people over there have some really cool looking smokers. What are you cooking on?

I cooked on two upright drum smokers, one I built and one I borrowed from a friend. Hence the team name Mike & The Magic Trashcan. The name is an ode to some comments my lovely and talented wife made about my smoker before and after the first pork shoulder came out of it.

That covers the most asked questions I've received. Following are a few thoughts about the competition in general. These reflect my opinion.

You are NOT doing this for the money.

Only first place in each category got paid, along with the grand champion. The payout for  the grand champion was $600 dollars. Each category paid $350. I likely cooked the least amount of food of any of the competitors and I spent roughly $200 overall on the meat I cooked, plus the $200 entry fee. I would have made money had I won the grand championship, but not a lot. The people next to me had 10 pork shoulders, 5 briskets and roughly 30 racks of ribs on their smokers. If they won everything they entered I'm not sure they are making any money off the ordeal. Factor in the amount of hard work, equipment, time off from work and lack of sleep and it is easy to see this is not something anybody was doing for the money.

So why do this?

Because you can is the simplest answer. I've wanted to do this for a while. I've heard from friends and family how good my barbecue is. I was curious to see what a group of impartial judges would think. Also, quite simply, I like to cook. I get to play with knives and fire and food makes people happy, so just about everybody wins. Also, you get to meet some interesting people along the way that share the same passion you do.

Have some help

I was gong solo Friday night cooking for a variety of reasons. On the plus side, I know I got more sleep than the rest of the competition did. On the minus side, it is lonely at 3:30 am. But the cook time company I would say is a nice to have. Most of the other competitors used it as a time to hang out, have some drinks and talk. When it comes time to box up the meat, help is a MUST. I cannot imagine being able to prep the boxes, get the meat in and dressed, keep track of the clock, get the finishing touches on the next round's entry and keep something resembling an organized work area going without any help. I think one head cook with three helpers is about perfect. I had two people boxing and one person who was basically an errand boy. I think this worked out about as well as it could have. Less people would have worked, but it would have been a giant struggle. More and I feel people would have been tripping over each other.

Talk to the competition

Most of the people competing are there to have a good time. Walk around from site to site and get to know the competition a little bit. I didn't do nearly enough of that and that may be my one regret from the competition. Part of that was because I was flying solo and had to tend to my meat and fire and part of it was nerves since it was my first time competing in one of these. Everybody there was very friendly.

How many inappropriate meat jokes were there?

LOTS.