Great Eats and Drinks

[customsteve01]

Houston BBQ Cookoff

Well tonight is my Friday night at work, and Im on vacation for the next 12 days.

Going to have a rough next week while on vacation. Every year I cook with one of the teams in the above mentioned cook-off. We go down Wednesday to get everything fired up and start cooking Brisket, Sausage, Ribs, and Yard bird. We will stay down there until Sunday morning, only going to one of the guys houses on Friday for showers (I just cant make it all 4 days without one). The one really hard part is for us cooks all the food and drinks are free. Last year just our team cooked over 3000 lbs of meat (yes three thousand) and we were just one team out of 250 or so.

One of the other hard parts is while the cook-off is open to the public Thursday thru Saturday there will be somewhere around 183,000 people attending. Any of you that are from Texas or have been around Texas you will understand when I say the women are dressed to the T. OMG the Rocky Mountain Jeans and all are just a sight to see.

I will try and think of all my new friends on the forum and have a drink for each of you while Im slaving away cooking, eating and drinking all this next weekend. Going to see if this soon to be grandpa can still hang with the Big Dogs.

Hey Thebes you can send down the twins if you want, we will show them some real Texas hospitality.

Steve

[TBrennan]

There's no good BBQ west of the Sabine and damned little west of Memphis. Including Kansas(gag)City.

Folks in Texas are hospitable sure enough. But everytime I saw one of those pathetic BBQ briskets I wanted to have a good corned-beef sandwich and a latki at Manny's.

Two weeks in Texas and the only really good meal was a Chinese (!??!) joint in Kerrville.

Lubys is OK though, that tells you something.

[customsteve01]

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On 2/19/2005 7:46:04 PM TBrennan wrote:

There's no good BBQ west of the Sabine and damned little west of Memphis. Including Kansas(gag)City.

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I bet you like that vinagar (yuk) stuff they try and pass off and even call BBQ. and the pork stuff they have to cover up with cole slaw so people can eat it on a sandwich.

I couldn't believe what they try to pass off as BBQ in Virginia. Most people up there don't even know what a Brisket is......................

[IndyKlipschFan]

oh my....

Wish you could send some extra up here... Making me hungry!!!

[thebes]

Well the Twins and I are partial to a vinegar based sauce, but I'm always up for something new. So what's your basic sauce recipe, and you have to include at least one of the so-called, super-duper, extra secret secrets, barbecuers are always going on about.

If it sounds good enough The Twins and I might just ramble on down south from Old Virginy and show you longhorns how to pack it away.

Bye the bye, the best barbeque I ever had was from a roadside stand in New Jersey of all places. Really wierd ain't it.

[customsteve01]

Thebes,

The recipe for what we use is pretty secret. A few years back Sammy (he owns the grill) and Jim started experimenting with dry rubs, they came up with a recipe and since then they have had it mass produced by a company called Zacks. I know there is brown sugar, chili powder, dry mustards and all kinds of other things. The neat thing is that anyone with the recipe number can order it but it doesn't give away the recipe other than ingredients.

A few years ago we took home 1st place with our chicken over about 200 other entrants.

Every year we have a couple of guys from New Orleans come and cook up gumbo one night and Jambalaya the next. They have a 40 gallon cast iron pot and when finished it is filled to the rim.

Last year the Gumbo and Jambalaya was gone in a little over an hour.

The food is great but the party is a awesome also.

On another note how do the 5.2s sound on a tube amp???

[m00n]

customsteve01.... I don't like you. I really really don't like you.

Just kidding. But you do know how to really torture someone don't you. if I lived within driving distance, I'd be there in a heart beat. Oregon has no good BBQ places that I know of. However, there was a guy at work that used to compete, he was from Texas and was very much into brisket. He and a buddy came up with their own sauce that was very good. I've never learned how to slow cook anything yet. I have a new branfels smoker, but never used it as such.

Every year I tell myself that I'm going to figure out how to do it. Some good beer, a nice hot day, get drunk and make some good meat. Sounds like an enjoyable day to me.

[garymd]

Well Steve, here's one easterner who's with you Texans all the way on the BBQ front. Can't stand the crap they put on BBQ around here and down south. Nothing like a good brisket, hold the vinegar!

[m00n]

Damn you customsteve01.... Now I can't stop thinking about this. So, if I wanted to go cook some brisket or what ever that was going to take some 8 hours too cook about how much wood would I need? I'm thinking about apple. I hear that apple makes for a good smoke. There is an apple orchard on my way to work, they have a nice setup, I'm sure that I could stop by there and get some prunings for free of a cheep price.

[customsteve01]

m00n its hard to say how much wood. It would depend on how dry it is and the size of the logs. Yuo want to be able to keep your smoker at about 220 degrees for 6 to 8 hours. don't get it ant hotter than that. you want to go till the meat is around 180 in the center.

I have been searching for a picture of a pit like we use but I cant find anything very close. Ours is a tandum axle gooseneck trailer that is covered and has the fire box in the back along with two smoker towers, then on the front half is a grill/smoker (depends on how the air lovers are open). On the front is a stainless steel table with shelves. Its a pretty awesome rig. We can cook 60 briskets at a time.

I will post some pictures this week when I am at home.

[Joe Shmoe]

Yea, thanks.... making me hungry also! This summer I plan to get a decent grill & do some cookin. I'm starting to get cabin fever here I think.

mOOn, do you have a "Famous Daves" restaurant or something like that? We had one open up here last year & it was really quite good. They serve BBQ everything... very good!

[m00n]

No famous daves. We have some bbq places like Busters, but something tells me that they don't hold a candle to what you get in the REAL BBQ areas of the states. The northwest is

VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY

VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY

VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY

Lame when it comes to cooking. I miss being down in Mississippi. Oh, the Cajun cooking was sooooo good. I miss the crawdads most of all.

[TBrennan]

I ate at a Famous Daves in Madison. OK for Wisconsin.

What's amazing is how used to mediocrity people have become, to the point where the sheeplike sons of *****es actually prefer the lousy to the good. Such as when people in a town like Chicago with a zillion good restaurants still get food from Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Chilis, Outback Steakhouse and other such purveyors of the oversalted proudly below average.

People like that, rubes who wait in line to eat in chain restaurants, should be put down both as a favor to themselves and for the future advancement of the species.

[thebes]

Steve I kinda figuredd it would be a secret-type thing. That's cool. I just use one of the water smokers and usually finish off whatever I'm cooking in the oven for the last 15 minutes to 1/2 hour to make it hotter and bleed a little mroe grease out of the meat. What I have noticed is that things like whole chicken and turkey breasts taste so much better the next day after the flavors have melded.

Now to the 5.2's and tube amps. I run the 5.2's as a dual setup, one for HT using my mid-fi Denon 2803 receiver. I also have another set of wires running into the kg which go a Conrad Johnson pre, The Marantz 8b and a Rega turntable and an older once very high end Yammie cd player. Until recently I was running the 2 Channel setup with a Scott 299. I also use th eDenon from time to time for 2 Channel using my Pioneer 563 multi-player dvd or through the aforementioned yammie.

I like the Denon, which has excellent clarity and a very nice soundstage, but I like the tube amps better. Why? Fatigue. From what I have learned here most SS has distortion, most of which we can't actually perceive but it shows up in fatigue. Over time the music starts to become to be perceived as harsher and brighter and you start turnnig down the sound a litle. I'm generalizing because of the differences in brands, price points, hookups etc.

Having said that some music does sound better in SS, some the same, but mostly the greatest amount of pleasure is with the tubes. I should also add that I usually play my music flat and I like clarity and punch not warm and fuzzy.

Good example when I moved the Scott downstairs (kg 3.5's) after lucking out on the Marantz, I put on some Nightwish,a real impact piece of music and I noticed immediately that particular cd sounded much better with a refurbed Setton SS I was using. On other cd's the Scott was the same or much, much better. I should also add that this is Craig re-worked Scott and probably sounds better then the day it came out of the factory. I've also got a Fisher 500c that hasn't been rebuilt and at present is a little too forward then some of my SS stuff. Go figure.

Finally I have accumulated a variety of 60's 70's amps/receivers over the last year and swap them out all the time just for fun. See my thread "Shoutout (or Shootout) at the Klispch Coral" for my review of these.

Probably more then you ever wanted to know, so I'll end it here with only one more comment. I love my KG 3.5's to death. If you don't have a large room, and/or on a limited budget, grab up a pair of these. Pound for Pound, size for size, they are the best speaker ever made. My 5.2's will go out the door before these do.

[arthurs]

If you've never been, the Houston BBQ Cookoff is almost worth scheduling a vacation around to go and just soak up the eats, drinks and the good times. The themes of some of the teams and areas and the general good spirit of the event are awesome. I'm not a BBQ expert, but some of what these folks cook up is like hearing a great system, you just can't believe what you're tasting. I try to find my way down there every year for this event. Go Steve Go!

[Daddy Dee]

Steve,

Man, you guys are going to be working like heck. Last year I got an invitation to work as a gopher on a competition team at Memphis in May. Couldn't get off, but it's a great time.

I've got a Dave Klose cooker out back. Cooks good, too. IMO he's the best welder I've run across.

You Texas guys and brisket, though. I've never known what to make of it. It's just too darn hard to cook. Especially when you can slow cook a nice pork shoulder. Now that's living.

Good luck to you at Houston!

[laurenc319]

hi,

I or my rib loven buddies can't cook them any better then this place .... the best there is, east or west of the Mississippi. They got a great cook book. Order it ... you will be pleased.

see here

http://www.dinosaurbarbque.com/

BTW great blues in addition to the ribs. It all started in Syracuse, NY.

Larry Citro

[white_shadow]

My friend and I are entering Modesto's KCBS in May. Its a regional qualifier for bigger events. This will be our very first event so we just want the experience. It's not rocket science, so we'll be able to figure it out, but I don't want to put our expectations to high. But if all things go well, I think we should be competitive for first. I work as a chef full time supporting myself through an electrical engineering degree so I know way too much about food. Anyways we've come up with 7 or so sauces that we have to narrow down.

Were doing brisket, pork shoulder, and ribs.

We've noticed that alot of BBQers overwhelm their meat. That is you can't really taste the meat, just the sauce, the rub, or it tastes like a cigarette butt (to smokey and bitter, covered up by sugar).

BBQ usually is comprised of a rub for flavoring or a tomato based BBQ sauce. Were going away from this tradition, for the most part.

Here a a sampling of our sauces.

1) Veal demi-glace based with sweet 100 tomato water.

2) Real mexican mole (not the americanized crap), modified to be a sauce.

3) Sweet miso and sesame

4) Caremelized maui onion and stonefruit sauce

Thats just a basic description, it lacks other ingredients, it doesn't describe completely how you make the sauce or how you integrate it into the product. But you might notice how different the sauces are from the norm, but they pair well with smoked meat.

[Grateful11]

There's only one BBQ capital of the world. Lexington, NC BBQ has been served to presidents and leaders all over the world.

http://www.barbecuefestival.com/

Check the history section.

Grateful11

[thebes]

Hey Larry I got that cookbook for Christmas. I'm orginally from Syracuse. This joint was started by a bunch of bikers and is very Texas influenced barbeque. The place is a riot and they jam blues bands into a teeny place between the booths and you have to wait for the band to take a break so you can get out of your seat. It's a great cookbook with simple recipes.