From: Neon John <johngd@bellsouth.net> Subject: Cookin' Pig Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 22:36:09 EST Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel Erich Coiner wrote: > Neon John wrote: > The > > distastefulness of that experience was one of the key motivators for > > me to sell the company, retire and start cooking pig and bending > > glass for spending money. > > John, > > Would you care to comment on some of your BBQing techniques and recipes? > > To keep this on topic, I took my Weber on an RV trip and slow cooked a > pork shoulder. 12 hours at 225F, man was that good eatin' Sure. I cook Alabama style which is, I'm told, similar to one of the North Carolina styles. Boston Butt pork shoulder cooked on an open pit over a hickory fire. No rubs, no sauces, no glop. Just the magic of hickory smoke. Properly cooked pork will have a dark outer layer followed by a bright red smoke-impregnated layer and white on the inside. The meat will be sweat and smoky without any sauce. I like a little bit of thin vinegar based sauce applied at serving time. This area won't eat that kind of sauce so I make a tomato-based sauce that we serve in the restaurant. Never pre-applied to the meat. Whatever sauce that is desired is properly applied at eatin' time! Burning conditions are critical. For the proper flavor, the hickory must burn with an open flame and the meat must be over the fire so the fat can drip and burn. The popular smoker pits that burn the fire in a separate chamber don't do it right. The fire is too smothered, making the smoke bitter and the fat can't burn. The Brinkman-style smokers don't work very well either. They are so short that by the time the fire catches enough to burn with a flame, the meat gets burnt. The smoke issuing from the pit should have a blue tint to it. If the smoke is white, the fire is smothered and is making bitter meat. My pit is homemade and is about the size of a large dumpster. It holds about 800 lbs of butts. The meat sits about 4 feet above the fire. Draft is controllable to regulate the heat without smothering the fire. I shoot for a chamber temperature of 300-350 degrees which cooks butts from frozen in about 10-12 hours. I find that cooking from frozen gives much better results than cooking fresh. There is less weight loss and the meat is juicier. I postulate that the outside gets seared and sealed before the inside is thawed so it can lose its moisture. For small batch cooking, such as for a family get-together, I use a small homemade pit made from an open-top 55 gallon drum. The drum sits upright. A thin layer of castable refractory in the bottom holds the heat and lets the fire burn at the right temperature. Two Weber grill grates are suspended so that two layers of meat can be cooked. The top layer has the meat almost in contact with the lid, with the lower layer almost touching the top layer. A 2" hole in the top serves as a flue and an approx 4" X 12 inch door with a lid is cut in the bottom for fueling and draft control. Again, this pit should be run in the 300-350 deg range. properly made, it is self-regulating. Just put the hickory in and cook. this size pit will cook from 1 to about 10 butts. I'm not sure how to get something like this on an RV (though I do trailer it to special events) and I can't imagine any way to make the pit smaller and still get the right taste. Hmmm. Well, Now that I have everyone nice and hungry, I suggest that John G's would make a wonderful destination for an RV caravan :-) Just a couple of miles off I-75 at exit 20 north of Chattanooga with plenty of parking for big rigs. We're just a few miles from the Smoky Mountains and Ocoee where they had the 96 Olympic whitewater competition. Y'all come! John -- John De Armond johngdSPAMNOT@bellsouth.net http://neonjohn.4mg.com Neon John's Custom Neon John G's BBQ Restaurant and USDA Prime Steakhouse Cleveland, TN "Bendin' Glass 'n Passin' Gas" From: Neon John <johngd@bellsouth.net> Subject: Re: Cookin' Pig Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 16:55:06 EST Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel HHamp5246 wrote: > > In article <382CDD43.67A28685@bellsouth.net>, Neon John <johngd@bellsouth.net> > writes: > > > I cook Alabama style which is, I'm told, similar to one of > >the North Carolina styles. Boston Butt pork shoulder cooked on an > >open pit over a hickory fire. No rubs, no sauces, no glop. Just > >the magic of hickory smoke. > > A question...when I was first married(the first time) we lived for a time in a > smalll west Tennessee town...McKenzie. > > There was a BBQ place there...sold pork sandwiches. Yummy....... white > "pulled" meat with no BBQ sauce...but optional to put a few drops of something > hot... I mean <<<HOT>>> It looked almost clear, reddish color with some specks > in it. Three drops on a white pork sandwich and you were on fire..... > > What was that stuff? That sounds like Alabama-style thin sauce. The most basic vinegar sauce is vinegar and chili powder and a little salad oil. Most of us embellish a bit. That probably had some Cayenne pepper in it. I'm well known in this area for my hot sauces. they come in three levels. Hot, REALLY hot and DEATH. My hot sauce is my regular BBQ sauce with pureed Habinero peppers (world's hottest) added. My next level, called Nuclear Nightmare, is pureed habinero peppers with a little garlic and some added oleo-capsasin resin. My death sauce is nothing more than an oil solution of oleo-capsasin resin. No taste, just pure heat. This has about the same concentration of capsasin as police pepper spray but I use edible oil as the solvent. I sell an amazing amount of Death Sauce. I *think* people buy it for practical joke purposes but I also see people actually put it on the food. Amazing! I just wish I had been videoing all the responses :-) You should have seen the guy whose "friends" put some in his chewing tobacco! From what I can tell, Memphis-style BBQ is quite similar to Alabama-style. Memphis is so far away that it is more like another state to us east tennesseeans. Only been there a couple of times. Loved the 'Que. John -- John De Armond johngdSPAMNOT@bellsouth.net http://neonjohn.4mg.com Neon John's Custom Neon Cleveland, TN "Bendin' Glass 'n Passin' Gas" From: Neon John <johngd@bellsouth.net> Subject: Re: Cookin' Pig Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 17:01:32 EST Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel petrox wrote: > Vinegar based sauce? Hmmm! Tell me more. > > Ahh, I mean.... I carry malt vinegar in the MH. Would that be > OK?. What other supplies would I need? Are they available at > Camping World or Walmart? Never tried malt vinegar but what the hey? I use plain old white vinegar and chili powder and a bit of oil. A touch of Cayenne pepper gives it some heat and just a touch of ground celery seed gives it that savory flavor. Boil it just a moment to free up all the spices and it's done. A touch of Mrs Dash is also nice. I don't have any measurements. I just mix til it tastes right. With alabama-style BBQ, you also need sweet slaw. You'll need a head of cabbage, a cup of sugar and a cup of vinegar. Shred the cabbage like for cole slaw. Add the sugar and vinegar, mix, refrigerate and allow to sit for a couple of hours. Doesn't taste very good by itself but on a sandwich, ohhhlala!! John -- John De Armond johngdSPAMNOT@bellsouth.net http://neonjohn.4mg.com Neon John's Custom Neon Cleveland, TN "Bendin' Glass 'n Passin' Gas" |