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BBQ wars


MiniCannuck
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I'm kind of a neutral party. Haven grown up in the midwest BBQ is what you put on your grill--doesn't matter what or how you cook it-- it's the same in Utah where I am now. I still believe that.

 

In terms of what you're all debating where I grew up was was mostly KC style. I like Texas style when I was there.

 

The only type I wasn't impressed with is Memphis and I was sick and I like sauce on ribs (which I'm generally sauceless for everything else).

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I must respectfully disagree with Loim. I have had delicious barbecue from restaurants. I have also had awful meat dishes drowned in brown sugar sauce that thought it was barbecue. Northern Illinois and Michigan in particular have some scaaary BBQ.

 

Texas and Alabama barbecue is usually pretty good, because those who suck at it are generally too ashamed to serve it. Yankees and the northern East Coast don't know any better.

 

I recommend finding a good book on the subject, or finding a master and simply asking them. Anyone who knows barbecue will happily talk your ear off about it.

 

Sadly, so will them what THINKS they know...

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Barbecue, up here, consists mostly of grilling steaks, either with a dry rub, a marinade, and/or a sauce. The typical barbecue sauces are tomato based, though there are many others also readily avaliable of all sorts of flavours and spices. My favourite however is wild salmon with a salt, pepper, and garlic rub slowly cooked all day in a mesh made of cedar sticks, next to a hot fire. Which you can see me and my 'brother' John  prepping for here. This kind of cooking calls for at least a case of beer and a few cigars as well, but that's a matter of preferance really. 

 

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As my buddy here at work would say, that looks FD, Shadowraven (the second letter stands for "delicious"; I'll let you ponder what the first letter stands for on your own...).

 

The funny thing is, unless you let yourself get caught up in the regional purism nonsense, there are very many ways to do BBQ right, and only a very few to do it wrong. And what so many people that don't do it don't realize is, is how incredibly easy (note: this does not equate to fast, just uncomplicated) it is to produce really good 'que. The little things that various pit masters swear by is what makes their particular BBQ theirs, but at the end of the day, it is all about the right amount of heat, some good smoke, and the right amount of time.

 

Everything else, figuratively speaking, is just gravy.

 

~v

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Oh man, it is FD. When it's done, it just falls apart. So moist and tender. Just a little smokey flavour, and now I am slavering for some. Alas, I have a good six months to go before salmon fishing, and it just doesn't work with frozen. Oh well, plenty of smoked salmon in the freezer.

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I must respectfully disagree with the noble and worthy Shakandara.

 

It is correct that there are many ways to do barbecue right. Is also correct that there are many silly regionalisms.

 

There are many, many ways to use smoke, fire, and particularly sugar to render perfectly good dead animal into inedible mess...

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I am led to recall a "barbecue special" I attended at a very nice hotel in northern Illinois. It turned out to be (I think) some sort of meatballs drowned in a sauce of brown sugar, tomato sauce, artificial smoke flavor, and, I think, melted vanilla ice cream.

 

Still on the top five most gawd awful things anyone has seriously offered to me to eat.

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Honestly how I smoke depends on what I'm smoking, who I'm smoking it for, and how long I have.

 

Usually I dry rub overnight. Throw it in the smoker with a wet pan of wood chips. I usually harvest the wood myself as I have easy access to hickory, cherry, and a few others. Hickory gets used most commonly for beef and chicken. Fruit wood for pork.

 

I prefer vinegar and molasses based barbeque sauce. If I'm not making it myself I usually go with Sweet Baby Ray's of some variety.

I use Apple Wood if I want the brisket a little sweeter, otherwise I use mesquite.  If, and I mean if, I  use charcoal I use mesquite lump charcoal not briquets.   

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I think people want to make good BBQ more complicated than it is.  Its just a fatty piece of pork cooked really slow until it is ridiculously tender.  smoke is good for this but you can make damn good bbq in your oven even.  I use salt and fresh ground pepper to season it and then a simple sauce at the end.  Its all about taking the time to cook it low and slow.

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