Barbecue is good for us.

Oh how I love my wife Tamar. She bought me a brand new smoking rig for Christmas. I’m so happy I could cry. It’s the Char-Broil Silver Smoker – smoker, bbq, and grill. What a beast. This thing is made of solid cast iron – it weighs a ton. It seems very well put together – very robust fittings, ceramic coated cooking grates. The legs seem a bit wobbly considering how heavy it is, but we’ll see. Note that there should be a shelf on the front of it, but we decided to water seal the planks first because Tamar read some complains about mold and rot. The key feature here is the offset firebox. Basically, light a fire in the smaller chamber on the left, add wood chunks, and fill the smoker chamber with meaty goodness. The indirect heat is just what you want, and the chimney on the opposite side draws smoke through past the meat. Of course, I could just light a fire in the main chamber and grill normally. And did I mention this thing is BIG? I could fit 3 or 4 giant briskets, maybe 10 racks of ribs, a whole pig, 3 turkeys, a giant salmon, the largest block of tofu ever made. You name it. I’m giddy.

So, of course I had to try it out. As Tamar reminded me, becoming a great smoker is mostly about getting in tune with your equipment, so I didn’t have high expectations for the first time. I bought a nice, meaty rack of gourmet back ribs from Ver Brugge for the occasion. I gave ‘em a dry rub, sat ‘em in there for about 3 hours under mesquite smoke. Every now and then I spritz’d them with a special recipe made mostly from Worstershire sauce. While cooking I had the joy of opening the smoker chamber to spritz my ribs, only to find that I couldn’t actually see the ribs because the smoke was so thick. YES!

Anyway, they turned out amazing. Tamar thinks the best tasting ribs I’ve ever made. Very smoky, tender and juicy. I could have left them on for another hour or two – the meatiest part of the rack in the middle was not as tender as the ends. I also should have trimmed the fat a bit better. I like to leave a good amount of fat on – it’s what makes the meat juicy and tender, and imparts a ton of flavor. If you smoke it right, a lot of the fat should render off. But there was a big thick layer of it along one part of the ribs, and I should have trimmed it. Oh well.

Unfortunately, the smoker doesn’t come with a thermometer for the main chamber – it’s an added accessory for $9.99. Well worth the price, I think. I had to call Char-Broil directly to mail order it, but it wasn’t a hassle.

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We drove up to Eugene, Oregon over the July 4th holiday earlier this month to spend time with my brother-in-law Darren and his wife Christine. Their hospitality is always fine, but this time, Darren had just gotten a new smoker so we basically put some mesquite smoke on anything that wasn’t nailed down.

This is a really nice smoker to work with. The whole thing is heavy cast iron, retains heat very well. Light a batch of coals in the bottom tray, and they’ll last for at least 4 hours. We added soaked mesquite wood chunks every now and then. The really brilliant part of this smoker design is the heavy cast iron water tray that slides in just above the fire. Fill it with water (and later on beer, wine, etc.) and it’ll temper the heat perfectly for the racks above. The lowest rack stays at a near perfect 250 degrees, while the two above average 225 and 200 respectively. Of course, after hours of collecting drippings, the liquid that’s left in the pan also makes for an ideal sauce base.

Check out the smoke ring on this beautiful tri-tip that Darren smoked. One interesting thing Darren does – he sears the steak on the grill for a few minutes before putting it in the smoker. I think this is a good idea for beef especially, since it helps to seal in the juices. When I do a pork shoulder, I like to keep the fire at 350 or so for the first 30 minutes, which accomplishes a similar thing – crusty brown outside to seal juices.

A few days later we smoked again, this time pork ribs and a lamb shoulder. The ribs were quite good – nicely smokey, very tender. We got them from Darren and Christine’s friend Cooper who runs a pig farm. This pork is so tender, flavorful, and nicely marbled. Check out Cooper’s operation, Sweet Briar Farms – you can order all kinds of pork products over the web. If you live around Eugene, also keep an eye out for them at local farmers markets.

The lamb shoulder was interesting. (unfortunately, no pictures) We rubbed it with salt, pepper, a little cumin. Then we cut little slits in the meat and shoved about 20 garlic gloves in there. We smoked it for about 6 hours, which wasn’t quite enough, but it shredded nicely and made some tasty, tasty sandwiches. The smoking tempered that gamey lamb flavor, but it was still there. Very interesting.

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In preparation for the 1st Annual “The Other White Meat” Pig Roast and BBQ Sauce Contest Jamboree, Andrew, MJ, and I have been doing quite a lot of research into how to build our own pig roaster. We still haven’t come up with a final design, but there’s lots to share, so I thought I’d do a round-up of some of the problems and decisions we’ve faced.

Rentals

First, the bad news. Depending on where you live, you will probably have a difficult time finding a place to rent you a rotisserie that will handle more than 30 or 40lbs. Larger ones that are meant for pig roasting (and other big meats) often come on trailers and will set you back a mint. The places we found wanted us to pay about $60 to rent a large grill for the day, and $55 more for a motorized rotisserie which wouldn’t come close to handling our pig. So, guess we’ll have to roll our own.

Wooden Box: La Caja China

As far as we can tell, there are three primary ways to cook a 100lb pig (give or take) outdoors: rotisserie, butterfly, and wooden box. The first two share more in common than the last, so I’ll get that one out of the way first. Traditional Cuban roast pig is sopemtimes cooked in a wooden “China Box”, or La Caja China. Here’s a nice Washington Post piece about it. At lacajachina.com you’ll find some overly expensive devices for sale, but they’ll give you the flavor of the method. You basically put the pig in a big plywood box that’s lined with aluminum, add charcoal, and 6-8 hours later you have a perfect roast pig. At first this seemed like a good route for us – anyone can build a damn wooden box, right? Maybe, but the magic isn’t in the box, it’s in the delicate ballet of adding charcoal in certain amounts at certain times. When you buy the $300+ box you get the instructions for free. But, trial and error with 100lb pig and hungry pork-lovers is not a good game. Pass.

Wood and Metal?

Regardless of the cooking method you choose, the question of where to put the fire is more or less the same. A 100lb pig will be somewhere between 3.5 and 5 feet long, and with the legs probably 2 to 2.5 feet wide. So, the Weber isn’t gonna cut it. Neither, unfortunately, will the large grills that are common in many parks, including the East Bay park where we’ll be BBQin’. And the park rangers don’t take too kindly to people digging BBQ pits at their picnic sites, so that’s out. Want to build your own? Sounds good, but during the dry season, the park rangers consider that a ‘fire hazard’ or some such thing. Nuts. But still, we did bunch of planning before we found that out, so here’s some thoughts.

At first we were thinking about building a wooden structure a lot like the one you see above. (And dressing up like that awesome dude in top hat and tails…) Basically, a rectangle on legs to hold a metal container for the fire, trusses for the rotisserie (or whatever) and a reflector on one side. But, the trouble begins right away. What to put the coals in? Originally we thought about cutting a standard 55 gallon drum in half. But a 55 gallon drum is 24″ in diameter and 34″ high. Too narrow *and* too short. No dice on any other type of metal tub at either Urban Ore or Alco Metal. You might have better luck in your neighborhood. Plus, the dudes in the picture obviously went with all metal for the tub and tubing, a much better choice considering all that… fire. But we’re short on welding equipment. If you’re not, then go for it.

Build a Cinderblock Firepit

Then we hit upon a better idea: cinderblocks. Modular and easily transported. Fire resistant, heat absorbing. Andrew worked out a nice little plan. 5 blocks wide and 5 blocks long for a solid floor. Then 4 block-high walls on each side. That’s 25 blocks for the floor, 20 blocks for each of the long sides, and 12 for each of the short sides for a total of 89 blocks. At about $1.25 per block, it’s not cheap, but it’s cheaper than any alternatives and completely reusable. Also, folks seem to give these things away for free on Craigslist all the time.

Andrew also had the idea to make up a wooden ‘fork’ to fit through the block-holes on both of the short sides. The vertical 2×4 wood pieces will add some stability, and the cross piece would give us a nice piece of level lumber to lay things on. What comes next depends on whether you’re going to rotisserie or butterfly.

Homemade Rotisserie

Starting from scratch, this is a daunting project. No spit, no meat forks. No handle for manual turning. No gears, belts, or motors to rotate mechanically. Worse, no power at the picnic site to run a motor. Someday we’d like to build one of these, and when we do we’ve got some ideas on how to do it, but that’s for another post.

Butterfly Roasting

This is more doable. The butcher will cut the pig in half (or almost in half) for you, right down the middle. You lose the benefits of roasting whole, but it’s much more manageable. Basically, the only trick to cooking the pig butterfly style is that you have to flip the damn thing partway through. When the pig starts to cook, it’s going to start to fall apart, so we need to use some metal gratings to keep it together. Enter the nice guys at Alco Metal in San Leandro, from whom we bought a 4 foot by 8 foot piece of what’s called ‘expanded metal’. (See, e.g., this site.) Basically it looks like the grating on a grill, with the holes between the thin bars of metal shaped like diamonds. Ours has 1/2 inch diamonds, I think. Anything between 1/4 inch and 3/4 inch would work. Important: it’s got to be stainless steel or it’s not food safe. We’ve heard that many folks will use regular steel for the grating and don’t die because of it, but it’s not a good idea. We got ours whole and paid about $4.00 /lb for it. It’s a big sheet, so it ends up being almost $100, but it’s worth it. Home depot will sell you smaller sized pieces if you have a very small pig. Note that all of this stuff will need to be scrubbed within an inch of its life to get all the grease and grime off.

Then what? Well, we also went to Home Depot and bought a few feet of bare copper wire (also food safe). When we get the pig, we sandwich it between the metal grating (which we cut in half with a Dremel Tool), and wire the two gratings together with cut pieces of the copper wire. Bingo, pig sandwich! Then when it’s time to flip over, we just get a few people, grab it with oven mits, and do some kind of elaborate flipping maneuver.

Whew! That’s a lot of info. I’m sure there’ll be more tips after the fact, but I’ll stop now.

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Here’s a few tidbits we’ve learned about ordering a whole pig from your local butcher.

1. Find a good butcher. Calling around we found that prices varied somewhat, and quality (I’m sure) as well. If you live in the East Bay, order from Ver Brugge. Ask for Jerry – he’s the nicest guy. He tells me their pig supplier is a small farm in Canada that’s ‘as close to organic as you can get.’
2. Make sure you are ordering (and paying) for the dressed weight of the pig, not the live weight. Dressed weight is the weight after the pig has been completely prepared for your consumption. You can guess what live weight is.
3. Depending on who you ask and how big a pig you get, plan on 1 to 1 1/2 pounds of carcass per person. That’ll turn out to be in the ballpark of 1/2 lb of meat per person.
4. Our pig is costing us in the neighborhood of $2.80 per pound. Remember that cleaning and preparation is built into that cost, and it’s not small chore. The butcher has to take out the guts and (more annoyingly), since the skin will be left on make sure that it is completely clean and smooth. Often this will require them to actually get out the Bic and shave the damn thing.
5. Ask your butcher to cut off the feet no matter how you cook the pig. We’re doing butterfly style instead of rotisserie, so we’ve also asked them to cut the breast bone for us and take the head off. Strictly speaking, you don’t have to take the head off for butterfly, but for a variety of reasons (including the gross-out factor), we’ve opted to do it. You’ll only lose 5ish pounds of meat by cutting off the head. The part I’m really sad about losing, though, is those cheeks. Pork cheeks are heaven.

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Just in time for our first annual pig pickin’, you can order your very own “Barbecue is good for us” T-shirt (or baby T, or halter top, etc.) in a variety of colors from our online store. Delivered straight to your door, and with a 30-day money-back guarantee. You can also find our logo-wear on aprons, cutting boards, and mouse pads.

You know you want to see and be seen in your very own angry pig T-shirt!

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Once again, Judd’s pimped-out Weber grill delivers some delicious BBQ. This time, he smoked some pork ribs and whipped up a tasty Kansas City-style sauce:

He packed them less densely than last time, when we learned that too many ribs plus too little room for air to circulate equals raw pork, even after six to eight hours over hickory chips. This time, they came out nice and flavorful, though they could have been a bit more tender. These certainly weren’t tough, but the meat wasn’t falling off the bone, either.

Want to know whether your ribs were smoked, as they should be, or boiled, as some cooks do to save time at the expense of flavor? Look for the telltale pink edging along the outside of the meat. Smoking creates it; boiling doesn’t. You can see it on Judd’s ribs here:

Want to know more about smoking meat? Check out this Lexington Collection guide; it focuses on pork shoulders rather than ribs, but the principles are the same. If you’ve got a grill, you can smoke meat at home with some hickory chips and a little patience (and maybe some inexpensive grill modifications like Judd’s). The hardcore among you might consider commercial or homegrown dedicated smoking devices, but those aren’t necessary unless you’re serving a large crowd. You can smoke some delicious pig without a lot of investment. In summary:

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I just thought I’d upload a picture of my homemade BBQ rig. I flattened out a 4″ stovepipe, then I used the inside of the Weber itself as a mold and hammered it into shape. Finally, I drilled two holes and fastened the two ends together with machine screws. Total cost: about $5. Works great.

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