Boneless Hot Wing Pizza

Everywhere you look the fast food craze now days is boneless wings. Of course they are not wings at all and the only justification for the name is that hot wing sauce is used on them. Chicken nuggets with hot wing sauce would be less misleading and much more accurate in the description, but what do I know. I did some last night using some nice chunks of thigh meat (wonder where those came from) and made pizza with them. Hence – BONELESS HOT WING PIZZA. Used some bleu cheese dressing for sauce and well you can see the rest. Next time it will be regular pizza sauce with a mixture of the bleu cheese and texas pete for a dipping sauce.

Kennesaw, Ga - Pigs n Peaches

Cooking the KCBS BBQ contests on a regular basis is like being a part of a small roving community made up of friends and their various trailers and / or pop up tents, all just having a good ol time cooking outdoors. We sure enjoyed this one and it’s always easier for us to do those closer to home. We had great weather from the time I got there Thursday at about 2pm till Sue and I finished packing up and headed home Sunday morning at 8am, we are early risers 7 days a week. Chatham Artillary took home the Grand Championship and cooked right next to us and I could not help noticing how well organized and confident they were the entire weekend. I was not feeling like someone that would be very good company after the awards Saturday so I had planned to talk with them Sunday before pulling out as they had already said they weren’t leaving till then, but we were a little too fast getting ready to go I guess because they hadn’t got up yet when we left. Congrates Chatham! We will be heading to Lenoir City, Tn in another few weeks searching for the big win. Ya’ll come. See you there.

Once the video begins click at the top of the screen for full size.



Click HERE to view the video production of the contest ogranizer.

Mountain High BBQ Festival - Franklin, NC

We competed in the Mountain High BBQ Festival this weekend and got to spend time with some of the great folks that make up the competition bbq circuit. Our trailer is over 30 ft and like most teams with large trailers you just don’t want to arrive late, so I pulled in at about 2pm Thursday. Setting up our trailer and cookers went real well with our front door and John & Kathy’s of Wild Bunch Butt Burners facing each other and on the other side me, Tarheel Smokers and Joe & Voncile of Smoky Mountain Smokers which were also facing each other. It was plenty ho and I had just finished setting up and showering afterward and had some refreshments when Chad Renfroe from Uncle Chet’s BBQ team stopped by for a visit (he never has told me why he named his team after me but if he keeps beating me as he did this weekend, I'm going to ask for my name back). While talking we both found we both had a few things we needed from the store and we’re hungry too so we hit the store first and then Bojangle’s for a chicken supper. I watched a western that had to be filmed just after the still movie days but it kept me occupied till bedtime. Sue stayed home to keep the office open Friday and since our partners Vern & Helen Ashbrook from Maryville, Tn were coming, she didn’t make the long trip up Saturday either so Thurs night was just me, myself, and I. First thing Friday I loaded some charcoal in the little PK grill to cook breakfast and the plan was a nice “Everything” bagel with thick sliced bacon (pig candy) rubbed with a little brown sugar and red pepper flakes, topped with a fried egg, tomato and mayo and I ain’t bragging but this was one dang good breakfast sandwich and I shared with my neighbors John and Kathy and they seemed to enjoy them as much as I did. Vern & Helen got there Friday around noon and Helen surprised me with a nice pasta salad and chicken salad and both were excellent and in fact it was so good I must have lost all control while eating mine and managed to dump about half my plate full in my lap and had to take a shower and change which I needed to do anyway. I had everything to make 4 pizzas with but just didn’t see the need to cook em with the nice salads Helen brought. The Backwoods Fatboy was unreal good throughout the entire cook and I give it credit for our 2nd in Brisket and a check for 400 dollars. We fired up the Chubby too early and had trouble managing the temp while doing our chicken but the chicken turned out like I thought it should in order to place well but the judges didn’t see it that way. We finished 18th out of 49 in the Overall scoring and the 2nd brisket was our best meat. Can’t wait till Thursday to head out again, this time a little closer to home in Kennesaw, Ga and Sue will be coming Friday night. For someone that makes pictures as much as I do, you would think I could get better pics at these contest but I never seem to. Here’s a few pics of some of the teams I know with the first being Rob “Rub” Bagwell (Swampboy’s) with his new Stump’s rig, BubbaQue, Smokey Mountain Smokers, and BobbyQ's truck with rig behind it. I sat beside the Grand Champion of this event through awards and it was the first time I have had a chance to meet "Tuffy" Stone of Cool Smoke and he and his wife certainly seemed like a nice couple and worthy champions. BobbyQ was Reserve and continues another year with great consistency. Come and see us.

Turkey and Chuck Roast Cooked On The Backwoods Smoker

I did these two 5 lb turkey breast the other day for sandwich meat. The lil Backwoods Chubby had to hold 300 for several hours for the turkey and then it was cranked up to 450 for some cornbread to go with a small chuck roast we had cooking at the same time. You just can’t beat a well made simple design on a cooker that performs the way you want it to all the time. One of the turkey breast is injected with Tony Chatcheres butter & jalapeno marinade and rubbed with Birds N Bones, the other just B n B’s. I didn’t weigh my bounty but it sure seems like a pile of turkey. So cook one day and into fridge, slice next day and back in fridge, vacuum seal next day. Works pretty darn good.

Square Burgers!

This was a little experiment in hamburger making that turned out to be pretty good and will be put to good use in the future. I like to find boneless chuck roast on sale like those we picked up a few days ago to do this with at 1.99 per lb and grind them myself – the meat is so much better and it’s really no trouble and the meat grinders are usually 99 bucks at Northern Tools. You can season the meat as you go or you can season the meat before grinding for an even more flavorful burger. I doubt this square burger making will work near as well with store bought already ground meat as it’s compacted when you get it and what seemed to really help making good even sized burgers for me the other day was the fact the meat was loose and I could evenly spread it on the wax paper before patting down into the big square. The really neat thing here is when you have your burgers ready you can slide them in the freezer on a sheet pan or as I did on a disposable cutting board and freeze them with the wax paper still in place and then place them in freezer bags or better still vac sealed freezer bags. We now have 12 even sized burgers in the freezer ready for the grill.

Easy Spaghetti Dinner

Why would anyone get the least bit excited about a spaghetti dinner you might ask? Well aside from the fact it was darn good, maters is still at their peak for many of us and everyone wants to get the most bang for their buck with the luscious vine ripe, home grown maters the way I think this dish does. Add to that the task of cooking something on a work night that is better than average without breaking your neck and putting it on the table late to boot and that describes why I wanted to tell ya bout this dish. Turkey sausage never tasted so good! I started by removing the sausage from the thinnest casings I ever seen and crumbling into a skillet with a good amount of EVOO and quickly seasoned it with some good poultry rub. I poured the fat off a couple of times to keep it from washing off the rub and I didn’t want it in the finished dish. When the meat had enough browning I added chopped onion and garlic and cooked a few minutes then added two smashed and chopped maters with juice and all. Cooked till the liquid was reduced by about half and added enough jarred sauce to make it as thick as I wanted. We had some whole wheat pasta and added basil and parmesan cheese at the table, served with bread and pesto. Hmmmm

Work and Play

I don’t know why we have weekends for, as they are just another workday. Saturday after getting in my 18 holes, I came home and pulled up two rolls of green beans, plowed and laid off 3 rolls for some purple hull peas. Sue attended “another” shower while I showered and proceeded to burn nearly a whole pound of thick sliced Wrights bacon to a rich deep dark black crisp. It was suppose to be for our BLT supper and I had it all jacked up with brown sugar and red pepper flakes that I had meticulously rubbed on the slices before putting them in the chubby. Me thinks I dozed off and the 45 min I thought was needed turned into 1 hr and 45 min, hence the stiff as a board, black as the ace of spades, and hard as a rock pig candy. Well I was not through with chores around the house and I sure wasn’t about to be denied my pig candy because I had another dish to use it in that I have been thinking about for some time. Yesterday morning after the Antique Road Show and Adrian Rogers preaching we headed to the Wal-Mart for a few items needed in my cook, but stopped on the way at the flea market mainly just for some breakfast. I was blown away when the little Mexican joint there served up our Tortas de Carne Asada after running it through a Pannini Press and it was dang good too. We didn’t buy any fleas or hang around long after inhaling the sammiches. With our list of items for the days cook in hand we headed home for more work before I could start the cook. I hooked up the 50 ft soaker hose and ran it all around the azaleas while Sue put the peas in the rolls I made for her Saturday. Then she mopped the trailer and started cleaning the windows that we stripped some stick on race looking stuff off that was suppose to block the light. While she was doing that I was hauling all the stuff we had taken out of the trailer and stored in the building back to the trailer so she could help organize it better this time as I had it in a mess last time I did it. Now with all the chores done it was finally time to cook and I had a spatchcock chicken and mater pie I just had to fix. I have been seeing a few different versions of mater pies and one I remember seeing was with a mixture of spinach, cheese, bacon, and artichoke hearts. I thought some steamed home grown green beans would be as good as spinach and I believe I was right as my favorite food critic gave it a big thumbs up. Everything turned out wonderful and I didn’t even burn the Pig Candy this time.

I'M A VEGETARIAN TODAY!

If you put a huge emphasis on “today” that statement would be correct. No, I’m not even thinking about never needing a steak knife again or bbq sauce for my pulled pork, but I do enjoy garden fresh home grown vegetables in the summer. In fact I will go one step further and say I enjoy them every bit as much as that seared just right over a charcoal fire Ribeye, or pulled pork with a nice sauce over it. What I’m saying is kinda like my good friend Gary aka “Rawtalent” said recently “good food done right, that’s what it’s all about”. Gary has a wonderful blog Club Eclectia http://clubeclectia.blogspot.com/ that you would enjoy following as I do. The fact that I love garden fresh vegetable however is not what this post is about. I happened to think about my Dad while enjoy the meal last night because he was as close to a vegetarian as you could get and not actually be a full fledged, dyed in the wool veggie nut. He did enjoy fish and seafood including (raw oysters) and bacon, ham, or sausage for breakfast but I don’t think I ever knew of him eating a steak. I kinda think a couple of things along the way explained why he was that way. He grew up during the great depression (not the one we are in now) and I don’t think folks around these parts had a lot of beef of any kind at that time, depression or not. The other thing I think might have brought about his lack of interest in meats was his time spent in the Army during WWII. He arrived in Okinawa one or two days after the fighting had ended and after a few days spent making sure there were no Japanese snipers left doing their dirty deeds, he was assigned to operate a bulldozer. If you guessed the bulldozer work that needed to be done was burying the enemy in mass graves you would be right. I have seen pictures that he brought home with him of the many dead enemy soldiers but I think we can visualize this and I don’t have the pictures now anyway. I really loved my Dad and he taught me some lessons that I have never forgotten. I kinda think boys grow up in all kinds of ways and circumstances and become men of their own choosing. Yes, I know how important parental guidance is especially in the younger years but I have also seen parents that put forth more effort into it than anything else in their life and doing an excellent job of it and yet have those children turn out rotten as all get out. I guess what I’m saying is “Thanks Dad, for teaching me how to enjoy home grown vegetables in the summer and all those other lessons too.”

How High Is The Water Momma?

Cal Thomas is a pretty good conservative columnist and his article today used the Johnny Cash song "How High Is The Water Momma" as an analogy of our most illustrious current president and his wonderous works he has done and continues to do for this country. It is an apt analogy to be sure and if we are going to use it the water is indeed very high. Anyway now you can read the article and hear the song both right here!

Click Here to read the article

Smoked Catfish Tomato Stacks

I did this dish for the Addicted To BBQ forum Summer of 09 Iron Chef contest. Obviously a key part of a cooking contest is missing in this due to it being judged solely by viewing the pictures of the cooks and not being able to taste the cooks. It’s still a pretty fun thing to do and you can easily see that each contestant is serious about the contest and it brings out their creativity and their best work (most of the time). I say most of the time as my entry here is in doubt if you ask me. While it may have been an excellent cook and look decent it seems less than great which I think is what will be needed to win.

I started with Q-Babe’s recipe for smoked catfish dip / spread and combined that with the idea of a fried ripe tomato stack with the catfish spread sandwiched in the middle. The ingredients required by the contest rules were Catfish, Tomatoes, Lemon/Lime, and an optional 4th ingredient, “Boca-Burger”. I find the Boca Burger meat to be plain out nasty and revolting so I came up with a plan to have this optional ingredient to be “optional” when eating the dish. I soaked the veggie burger meat that I had cubed in Fish Sauce for several hours and then basted it with Oyster Sauce when grilling. Panko bread crumbs were used to make the best possible outer crust for the tomatoes and the dish was assembled first then fried. To make sure the catfish spread did not get hot while frying the tomatoes on each side the spread was placed in the freezer a few minutes first. The combination of Q-Babe’s Smoked Catfish Dip and the outstanding panko crust on the home grown ripe tomatoes was a good choice and whether you want to go to the trouble to prepare this the way I have here or not, you absolutely owe it to yourself to make Q-Babe’s Smoked Catfish Dip. We didn’t use it all and a couple of days went by before we took it to work and ate it with crackers for lunch. I believe the cream cheese in the dish took that long to have the full flavor of the smoked fish to take over because I could not believe how good it was and all I could think about was why didn’t we fix more than we did.