Episode VI - Party Time! Pork Shoulder & Bare Naked Brisket

The Wife has announced it is time to be more social with the cooker and so we're having our annual summer party. That means multiple opportunities for "Big Bob Gibson". Plans are to try the World Championship Pork Shoulder (page 53) and the other brisket on page 91. The pork requires the vinegar sop mop on page 222 and just for the heck of it I will make the Carolina Mustard Sauce on 228, the Caribbean Mojo Sauce on 236 and the Western Carolina Pig Dip on 224. I have plenty of red sauces already in the frig so I figure these are nice compliments.

I am not aware of the local Wal-Mart carrying a bone in, skin on, full pork shoulder so to step up my game a little I've decided to move up to an authentic Texas butcher for some manly meat. So, yesterday afternoon it was over to Hamm's Custom Meats just off the main square in downtown McKinney TX. Some of the nicest people work in there. I was almost caught by the "no credit cards" rule, but am now the proud owner of 16 pounds of pig.

After dinner last night I whipped up the rub, the injection and the mop. The recipe clearly says to use all the injection, but about halfway through it seemed loaded with fluid coming out of the other holes, so I didn't hit that goal. Also, honestly a little confused with the amount of bone in here. I would've expected more meat, but oh well, it is what it is.

Had a little trouble getting the fire going at the right temp. Almost suffocated it. I think I need one of those Stokers or Guru's to manage the airflow in the bottom. Will have to spend more time investigating that. Anyway, got the thing going about 10:30 last. Goal was to let it cook overnight so I could deal with the mop and such today.

Check it out, here's the shoulder. Smells fantastic. Seemed to cook a little faster than expected. I took it off after 13 hours. Basted 3 times with the mop and internal temp had been around 195 for a couple hours. The blade bone twisted off easily in my hand. I'll let it sit a little then pull it and set it aside till tomorrow morning.

Episode V - How do you make this?

OK, this is unrelated to Big Bob's, but anyone know how to make this sauce? I realize it may seem to expect an answer here (particularly since no one reads this blog), but I am a man of strong faith and convictions. I believe that once something is on the Internet, gets indexed, crawled, archived, etc. that we are stuck with it forever. We'll never be able to truly kill any meme. And someday some robot trawler is going to scan this and it will know the answer. I am just going to have to be patient.

In the meantime, here are the clues:

• It's the best sauce ever for burgers & dogs


• I bought it from some burger joint in New Orleans during Mardi Gras. It was upstairs, just off Bourbon Street (I think). Not too far from that big haunted mansion owned by Nicholas Cage. We went to it right after a ghost tour of the French Quarter. The place specialized in burgers topped with peanut butter & bacon.


• It's real similar to that green Tabasco steak sauce. Must have a lot of the same ingredients.

That's all I know. I'll hopefully have the answer in time to pass the secret on to my grandkids.

Episode IV.b - Plateaus

I complained in III about the temp leveling off. I sort of blamed the thermometer. Well, turned out I just didn't know my chemistry! As MGuerra explained over on the Komodo Kamado forum "As the meat temperature rises, it will hit a plateau and stop rising for quite some time. During this time the fat and tough connective tissue are being broken down and the meat becomes tender. Don't try to short circuit this process. Keep your cooker temperature set and resist the temptation to raise it. Wait out the plateau and let it do its' thing. Eventually all the tough connective tissue will dissolve, tenderizing the meat, and the temp will start rising again."

Mystery solved. (Although the solution, "patience", is a lot harder to implement. Guess I needed another beer....)

Episode IV - Burnt Ends

The only place I can think of seeing burnt ends on a menu is up in Kansas City at Gates BBQ (Incredible food. I used to be able to walk there from my dorm) so when I saw this recipe (page 87) I had to try it.


Not so sure about it though. For one, I think it wasn't "burned" enough. I think it needs a lot of the bark and to be very lean. I think the sauce needs to be more tomato-y too. Maybe that's just me. Jury is still out on this one ....

Episode III - Slow Smoked Beef Brisket

Alrighty up at 8:00 this morning. Wanted the meat on by 9:00. But guess what? When I looked in the pantry yesterday I had seen bouillon, but looking closer this morning it was clearly chicken. Argh! So.... a quick run to Kroger, but I got back on track and the brisket was on by 9:00.

She's a little small (are brisket's female?) but there will only be 3 of us tonight so I wanted the smallest.

Does it seem like the recipe doesn't make enough of the wet rub? Even with the small size of my cut, I couldn't cover the whole thing with the wet, so the fat side got short-changed. The dry rub was an adequate amount, but nothing extra.

My only deviation from the recipe is that I'm using pecan wood instead of hickory. The book doesn't mention a water bowl for moisture, but I decided to spray the drip pan down with Pam and then poured the remains of last nights bottle of wine in it.

Also - I was going to brag about my fancy charcoal. It's this extruded coconut that comes in these perfect briquettes. It's a renewable resource, burns with almost no odor so it doesn't compete with the wood you using for flavor, creates very little ash and burns very long & steady. However, I just started to order more last night and this morning Dennis posted a mail saying he is out. Me and my impeccable timing :-(

10:30 AM - Does it mean anything that a hawk has been circling around? Better than a vulture I suppose. Wish it would get rid of some of these dang rabbits. MG's dog seems to have made friends with them....

Looks like I managed to land right on 225 and it's keeping steady. Thanks in part to a tip from Munger2 (Start just 8 or 10 briquettes and drop them on top of the basket of charcoal. Keeps the fire from getting away from you too quick). I've got the top damper open 1/2 turn and bottom open about an 1/8th of an inch.

6:00 PM - timing not quite right and had to run to the airport to get MG. Trusting my son to pull it off at 6:30 or when the temp hits 190.

Had kind of a weird problem earlier. meat temp leveled off at 147 and stayed there for quite a while. I raised the cooker temp up to about 270, but meat temp fell to 145 after 20 minutes. Then the display started flashing so I switched batteries and maybe that helped. not sure what's going on, hopefully not hurting the meat.

8:00 PM - Check it out. Looks good. Tastes great! My son pulled it off just as instructed. Everything is swell. I noticed that there was a recipe for burnt ends on the previous page, so I am going to try that while I have the fire going.

Episode II

Ok, back to the story....


I fired up the Komodo and began cooking as soon as it arrived (of course). I've managed to make some great steaks (love how it gets hotter than my gasser). Some Worchestershire and Montreal Steak seasoning, sear on both sides for a few minutes and I've got a great medium rare.

However, the turkey was very tender, but a little salty (probably didn't get all the brine off).




The loaf pan chicken came out well. Very tender and moist.



My ribs were very flavorful, however, not as tender as I would've expected. (Yes, I went a little overboard and made 6 different types by varying the rub and the glaze. Hey, I'm an excitable guy). And the baked potatos were a little undercooked.

So what's going on? I am clearly not the grill master that I want to be. The cooking times and temperatures are clearly different from my other smoker and I'm starting to get frustrated. After carefully putting all variables into a spreadsheet, running some regression tests and then some quality meditation time sipping margaritas by the pool (thanks MG) I came to my epiphany.....

.....The one complete success was when I followed Chris Lilly's recipe for the chickens. And so.... now begins my quest. I've gone off to Amazon and purchased his book, Big Bob Gibson's BBQ Book and have it here in my hands. Heck, I've even read the intro. I am clearly ready to go. I will work my way through the book and by the end be a master. Or if not that, then hopefully I'll have received more entertainment value for my $20 than I can shake a stick at.

Those backseat cooks who never hesitate to shout advice from their lounge chair might suggest that I start at the begining, but my analysis indicates that the first chapter is pork and what I have here is clearly a briskit. So this weekend we're heading direct to page 89 and championship beef.

Episode I

I can't move up to master status without a plan. And step one is to move up from an amateur grill.

So, fresh off the boat from Indonesia is my new Komodo Kamado. A first class cooker with a very high WAF (wife acceptance factor).

Why this one? Great reviews from friends (Thanks Munger1 & Munger2), lots of research that showed the quality of both the workmanship and the food that comes out of it, it looks almost like a piece of art on the patio, the Komodo forum http://www.komodokamado.com/was very friendly & helpful and to top it off - I saw Chris Lilly on the Today Show with a great looking blue cooker which he stated was the best he's ever had. MG (the wife) saw it, liked it, and that sealed the deal.

With a cooker like that, I was sure I was now god-like. Ready to take him on in the next BBQ championship. Right? Well, things weren't quite that smooth. More on that to come......