Category: Me

  • Alabama Birds with White Sauce

    Alabama Birds with White Sauce

    Part of the fun of being into BBQ has been trying new things. As I’ve mentioned before, when I was growing up “BBQ” was what we called grilling and it MOSTLY consisted of burgers and hot dogs. Very occasionally it would be something else. Lots of lighter fluid and mediocre results. But now I know…

  • Baking Bread for the First Time

    Baking Bread for the First Time

    I’d never made bread before (not counting pizza dough), but I recently got a dutch oven on sale on Woot.com and was looking for some things to make in the device. Then I came across this recipe for No-Knead Dutch Oven Bread. It seemed really simple, so I figured it’d be a great activity to…

  • Pizza on the Weber Kettle

    Pizza on the Weber Kettle

    In the past few years I’ve been moving away from seeing pizza as junk food towards seeing it as another food that is sometimes made with care, skill, and love and sometimes make in a hurry for a buck. I can’t remember the exact timeline and can’t be bothered to search for photo evidence, but…

  • Smoked Chicken

    Smoked Chicken

    Do you know why a lot of people don’t BBQ that often? Because they always make the same thing and that’s boring. So I’ve been going through all the recipes in Meathead’s book (and other sources) to see if anything else is tasty to my palette. This time it was smoked chicken. I cut the…

  • Cooking Kansas City BBQ Sauce

    Cooking Kansas City BBQ Sauce

    I’d tackled all the major BBQ meats. It was time to try and make my own sauce. So I assembled all my ingredients and followed Meathead’s recipe. It’s supposed to be like KC Classic, which I’ve never had. I also went with the secret optional ingredient of Tamarind paste. Then I finished cooking And canned…

  • My First Brisket!

    My First Brisket!

    I had been wanting to do brisket for a very long time, but I couldn’t find anywhere convenient to buy a whole packer brisket. But right before I was convinced I was going to have to go to a butcher, Costco decided to carry them. Yeah, it was 20 lbs, which is ridiculous for what…

  • Second Smoked Pork Shoulder

    Second Smoked Pork Shoulder

    This past winter I smoked a pork shoulder for the first time. I learned some lessons, continued to work on getting better with my kettle, and decided it was time for pulled pork again. I cut the pork shoulder into roughly equal halves. I had three things I wanted to experiment with: Would it cook…

  • Grilled Lamb Gyros

    Grilled Lamb Gyros

    We were debating what to eat. There are a lot of dishes we like, but it’s easy to forget all of them when you’re constantly thinking of the half dozen foods your toddlers eat and the dozen or so foods your preschooler eats. Lamb was on sale at Costco, so I told the wife we…

  • Bacon Cheeseburger

    Bacon Cheeseburger

    I’ve been perfecting my diner style hamburgers (aka quarterpounders) thanks to the tips from Amazingribs.com. But there’s a guy at work I talk to about grilling, BBQ, and smoking. He was telling me about his bacon cheeseburgers. I thought about how I tend not to like bacon cheeseburgers in restaurants. Usually either the bacon or…

  • Grilled Fajitas

    Just using the Weber Kettle mom got me last winter to make some AWESOME fajitas!

  • Leveling up on Grilling

    For a long time we’d been avoiding New York Strip Steak. I’d tried to grill some a long time ago and it just couldn’t hold a candle to a Ribeye. But recently my father-in-law bought a bunch and gave us some so I gave it another shot. I took all I’d learned in the past…

  • Making BBQ for my Employees

    Making BBQ for my Employees

    As a manger, I’m often thinking of ways to show my employees how much I appreciate their hard work. Recently, while watching a Meathead video, I saw his quote at the end that cooking for someone is an act of love. And love is not far off from appreciation so I figured I’d ask my…

  • Annual Self-Portrat 2016

    Annual Self-Portrat 2016

    Every year I do a self-portait to document the passing time and to keep up to date on various studio lighting techniques. Here’s the series I did last year:

  • First Smoked BBQ Pulled Pork

    First Smoked BBQ Pulled Pork

    Long-time readers of my blog will know that while I’ve been working at mastering my grills for a few years now, it was in 2016 that I decided I would take my BBQ to the next level. Back in June I smoked baby back ribs for the first time. Then I realized that I wanted…

  • Breaded Steak Success

    Breaded steak was probably my favorite Cuban food growing up. More than pork shoulder sandwiches and other things my mother made. I often helped her prepare it at home, but never got a chance to cook it as a kid. I’ve tried it a few times since growing up, but it’s hard to get the…