Year of the Pig

Last weekend was my birthday. Whats 34? That’s a throwaway birthday, but if nothing else, a good day for some ribs. We had some people over to play card games–Canasta, if you can believe that. The day before I bought 4 racks of spare ribs from the supermarket. I trimmed them up, realizing that I have gotten quite a bit better at the trimming, although it is still a little time consuming. I took off the remaining membrane, and some of the pockets of fat. Then when the rain stopped on Saturday afternoon and I was ready to smoke, I took the ribs and brined them in a light salt solution with a ratio of 1/4 cup of salt to 1 quart of water, for 30 minutes. I had read that this would help keep them moist so I thought it was worth a try.

I seasoned the racks based on two recipes from Paul Kirks’ “Championship Barbecue” book, which I like very much. I seasoned two racks with a thick coat of store bought saltless Lemon Pepper, and for the other two racks I chopped up about a tablespoon fresh rosemary and a tablespoon of thyme and ground them together with a head of pressed garlic using a mortar and pestle, til it was a thick garlicly paste. I rubbed the garlic mixture onto the racks. Since it didn’t coat the ribs like the rubs I usually use, I was afraid it wasn’t gonna really impart much flavor. I did my best to really rub the paste into the ribs, and it turns out that the flavor took very well.

I smoked the ribs all told for about five hours, using hickory chunks and some bourbon barrel oak chips. The temperature built up slow, but stayed around 225. About halfway through I turned them over in the rack, and basted them by rubbing butter on them, the more fat the better right?! Here is a picture of them at the halfway point:

After the halfway mark, whenever I opened the smoker (every 30 min or so) I would put a little smear of butter along the top of the racks and I would also spritz them with apple juice to keep them moist.

When the rib meat had drawn back off the tip of the bone by a good quarter inch or so it was time to take them off. I let them sit for about ten minutes and they looked wonderful:

I sliced them up and placed them on a platter to serve. Both recipes proved to be delicious and they were a big hit with everyone, but I especially liked the potent and simple flavor of the garlic and herbs ribs. To be honest, I found them to be the best ribs I had ever made. I wonder if the brining or the butter-basting made the difference, or something else, but I am telling you, these ribs were delicious. I was very happy with the result. These were the best birthday present I could ask for.

As for the ribulation, including that night an subsequent leftovers (yum) I ate ten delicious ribs, bringing the Year of the Pig count to a respectable 133 ribs. And counting. Thank you piggie!

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My diet over the last couple months has had no shortage of pork, but it has been sadly short on ribs. I am trying to make up for that this week.

Above is a crappy photo of meat. Sorry about that. The meat in question however is from the Brooklyn barbecue restaurant, Fette Sau. I have already mentioned this place in several posts, including Squidocto’s preview-review about it, but I had yet to try it for myself…until last weekend!

I arrived in Willimsburg around 10 pm not having had a bite to eat since lunch, and headed straight to Fette Sau. The place was hopping with Saturday night Williamsburg hipster types, and a hoofed it right through them to the counter and ordered up a rack of the baby back ribs which are served by the pound and cost around $25. The friendly young woman dropped my rack on the tray and I promptly picked it up and sat it down on one of the long tables, next to the not-that-funny-LCD-screen fireplace. I sat down excitedly and purposefully with my rack of ribs, ready to thoroughly enjoy them.

I planned to take my time with these ribs and savor them. The first bite was promising. They had a nice texture and solid smoky flavor. I have to say, however, I was disappointed. I mean, don’t get me wrong, they are tasty and enjoyable, but nothing to blow your mind. Also, the meat was a little dry and bland compared to say, Texas Hill Country, who’s ribs will blow your mind. Anyway, I got a little bored with these ribs about halfway through the rack, but nevertheless they made a very satisfying tasty meal for a man in desperate need of some ribs. To be fair, I will definitely come back and give the ribs another try. A trip to Fette Sau is certainly still a good time, the place itself has a real nice fun and low-key atmosphere that I dug.

Now, did someone mention Texas Hill Country? Oh yeah, that was me! I made it out to Texas Hill Country again last night, excited to relive my previous experiences with their wonderful pork spareribs. Could it be that they are really as good as I remember? For that I would be willing to put up with their zoo of Manhattanite customers and their inane seating methods, which are frankly just plain irritating. My friend Jay was playing with a Patsy Cline tribute band called the Poor Man’s Roses in the downstairs level (which typically has a good line up of bands), and my friend Ben and I saddled up to the bar to enjoy some ribs, some rye whisky and some music. The band was very good; they do an excellent job of reproducing the sweet, mellow, soulful music of Patsy Cline. As it got later, the crowd began to thin out and we moved over to a table to watch the band, and they even dedicated a nice version of Bill Monroe’s Blue Moon of Kentucky to yours truly, which was very nice, thanks. So, were the ribs as good as I remembered?? Yes, every bit and more so. God bless Texas Hill Country!

Rock on, I finally get to ribulate again! I think I left off at 108 ribs. Now I add 12 from Fette Sau and 3 from Texas Hill Country, which oddly enough, is about an equivalent amount of meat, bringing the grand total for the Year of the Pig to 123. Thank you piggies one and all, and may your ribs find their way to Texas Hill Country!

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This past Monday, I was getting ready to head out to M Shanghai’s regular monthly gig (every first Monday of the month) at the Rodeo bar, when I checked my email and found that our gig had been cancelled. The Rodeo bar has been having some kind of trouble with a city inspector, and so they had to shut down that night. I read on in my email and found out that the same guy that books the Rodeo Bar also books the new barbecue restaurant that I have been dying to try, Texas Hill Country, and he offered to let us have our show there instead, as long as we “promised not to defect” from the Rodeo bar. I was very excited, and promptly headed out the door, to make sure I got some time before the gig to check out the food, which I have heard very good things about.

In case you haven’t heard, the long awaited Texas Hill Country opened a few weeks ago in New York City, conveniently located for me, only a couple of blocks from the PATH station in Chelsea, on 26th Street. The idea of this place is to duplicate a Lockheart Texas Style barbecue joint in Manhattan. It seems they have spared no expense, even trucking up loads of native Post Oak, which only grows in Texas, for smoking. The space itself lookes great, and still has a nice relaxed atmosphere. The downstairs area, where they have music is a nice big venue filled with long wooden tables, and I thought the sound in the room was quite good too.

I was most excited to learn that Hill Country feeds the bands and picks up all the beer, which is sadly not always the case in New York. They handed me a meal card, which you can take to individul stations or to the bar. You order what you want and they mark it on the card, and you pay when you leave. It seems like their system can get kind of chaotic when they are busy, especially with the seating, but I had no problem. I got in line for the barbecue, which is all served by the pound. The menu includes Brisket, Beef Shoulder, Prime Rib, Beef Ribs, Pork Spare Ribs, Pork Chops, Kreuz Sausage (pronounced “krites”), Market Chicken, and Game Hen. It all looked good I must say, but I ended up sampling the Moist Brisket, the Pork Spare Ribs, the Kreuz Sausage, the Beef Ribs, the Coleslaw, the Deviled Eggs, Baked Beans, and Potato Salad. I was impressed with everything I tasted, except for the Beef rib, which was completely dry and frankly terrible. I have to assume it was a fluke based on the quality of everything else. If it wasn’t free, I would have taken it back for sure. Everything else I had was excellent and above par.

As for the Spare Ribs, absolutely delicious: juicy and firm, smoky with a spicy, chewy exterior and a very attractive red smoke ring all around the meat. They were unreal, and come highly recommended! It may not be pork, but for the record, the brisket and sides were all delicious. I liked the coleslaw very much, and all of the other sides that I didn’t try looked really good too. There is a lot more on the menu I want to try, and I will be back, trust me. Probably many times.

A word about sauce: Don’t drown your food. Their bottled sauce is even called “If You Gotta Have It.” I stuck my finger in some of it and tasted it. It made no impression, but then, I was really concentrating on the barbecue. This style of barbecue is typically sauce-free, and that is how I would recommend trying it!

I sure hope we get to play there again, cause that was a really great night for me: playing music, wonderful (free) food and free drinks, plus a really great atmosphere and very friendly staff. Hill Country might be my new favorite NYC venue to play in, and I could see myself becoming a regular there. I am a defector!

To keep up the count, I had 2 spare ribs at Hill Country, pushing the Year of the Pig count up to 106 ribs. Thanks to all pigs involved!

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A few weeks ago, I got a new smoker because of the sorry inadequacy of my electric smoker. Do not buy one of those. They are lame. If you want a good and still affordable smoker for home use, get the one I got, the Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker, which you should be able to find for around 180 smackers. It comes recommended even by serious Pitmasters, and is capable of kicking out some top notch barbecue. Also, there is a great website obsessively dedicated to its use: The Virtual Weber Bullet which is quite helpful for getting you started and is loaded with clear instructions and lots of pictures. Here is a proud picture of my new Weber Smokey Mountain, happily cohabitating with Phil, the garden gnome:

Over the past two weeks I have fired off the Smokey Mountain a few times to test it out for shorter smoking sessions and have smoked trout and chicken a couple times, with good success. And so it was that yesterday was its maiden voyage for smoking ribs. The night before I had trimmed and generously coated 1 1/2 racks of spare ribs with Magic Dust, covered them with plastic wrap and put them in the fridge. Around 10 am or so I took them out and put them in the rib rack, ready for the smoke.

Then I got the smoker set up and lit a small chimney of charcoal, around 20 briquets. I decided to test out the Virtual Weber Bullet Page’s “Minion Method” which basically means that you start with a small amount of lit briquets on a pile of unlit ones, so that they gradually light the other ones at a slow, long pace, supposedly keeping a very steady, slow burning, low temperature fire.

I have to say compared to my other brief experiences with this smoker so far, this method really made it a breeze to operate at a steady temperature. After lighting a small chimney of charcoal, and loading the coals and meat in the smoker, it was off and running. I tossed 2 or 3 good wet chunks of hickory and a small handful of oak chips on the coals for smoke wood. At the beginning I babysat the smoker and adjusted the bottom vents some, but the temperature quickly stabilized right at what I would think is an ideal temperature of about 220-230 degrees (measured with a candy thermometer at the top vent). And that was that! The ribs were smoking away by around 11 am, and for the next few hours I went about my business. I checked on the smoker every 30 minutes or so, but it needed almost no adjustment, and just kept burning away at the right temperature. After a couple hours, around 1:30, I opened the smoker and turned the racks over in the rib rack and gave them a little spritz of apple juice:

After having the smoker open a while, I noticed that the charcoal did start to flare up from the oxygen, and I had to close the bottom vents all the way to try and keep the temperature down as it flared up, approaching 250. I was expecting to smoke the ribs for around 5-7 hours, so around 3 I opened up the smoker again, to turn them and spritz them again with apple juice. At this point they looked pretty close to done to me so I got my butt in gear making the sauce (see Apple City Barbecue Sauce Recipe from the last post) that I was planning to coat them with for the last 20 or 30 minutes of smoking. This sauce has ground up bacon and apples in it, so that is pretty cool. Everything is better with bacon right? So why not barbecue sauce!? I had cooked up the bacon earlier, and I whipped up the rest of the sauce as fast as I could, and gave the ribs a nice coating to let it set up for a little while. The sauce was quite tasty on its own, trust me, and at that point the ribs had a nice looking coating of Magic Dust that looked even better.

I let them smoke for another 20 or 30 minutes, and then opened up the smoker again. They looked wonderful!

I took them off. I had smoked 1 1/2 racks of trimmed spare ribs on the top grate, and the three large “tip” pieces that I had trimmed off on the bottom grate with some kidney beans.

I let the ribs rest on the cutting board for a little while. It was a lot of meat for me to contemplate since I was home alone with no one to share them with, but this was my first time trying ribs in my new smoker and it was nice to try it without feeling like I needed to feed anyone. I cut up some of the trimmings to put in the beans, and froze the others along with a half rack of ribs, to see how they hold up for freezing…

Of course, I didn’t hesitate to slice off a couple ribs for an early dinner, and sat in the back yard and tried them. My first impression was that they looked perfect to me with a nice solid but not charred outside. The inside showed a nice red smoke ring around the edge of the meat, the first time I have really gotten that in ribs that I have cooked. And how did they taste? Fine. Very, very fine. I was giddy about it really. The meat was juicy and succulent. The sauce and the magic dust rub gave it a nice spicy robust flavor that was delicious and went very well with the juicy, smoky pork flavor of the rib meat. The texture of the rib meat was firm and meaty, but moist and tender and full of flavor. I am sure there are lots of other ways I can learn to cook ribs equally well, but I really don’t know what I could do to make them much better. I just hope I can reproduce these!

These ribs were basically cooked following the “Apple City Barbecue Grand World Championship Ribs” recipe out of the book Peace, Love and Barbecue: Recipes, Secrets, Tall Tales, and Outright Lies from the Legends of Barbecue which I plugged in the last post. I used the rub and sauce from the recipe, but used different smoking methods and hickory and oak rather than apple wood, which I am sure would also be delicious. I think this rub and sauce are a winning combo, but if I had to give most of the credit to one over the other, I would say the Magic Dust is a real winner. Try it out!

As for the rib count for the Year of the Pig, counting what I had the day I cooked them and for leftovers over the next week plus the half rack that I froze, I had another 14 ribs, putting me well over the 3 pig mark at a 102 ribs. And thank you piggy!

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M Shanghai had a gig at Cafe Lena in Saratoga Springs this past weekend and on my way into town I smelled the tell-tale smell of woodsmoke as I passed PJ’s BAR-B-Q. After the gig, I headed straight back to check out PJ’s. I may not be able to say it’s the best barbecue in the world, but that’s fine, this place is a real gem, and worth the stop anytime you are in Saratoga.

PJ’s is a seasonal restaurant open only during the summers in a former A&W Drive-in Restaurant. The Davis family (John PJ, Carolyn and their 2 Kids) opened PJ’s Bar-B-Q in 1984, and the restaurant is a sprawling group of buildings decked out with oddball signs and 1950′s memoribilia, and surrounded by picnic tables. The front area is the kitchen, where the menu board is posted over a window, and you place your order.

Out back, behind the kitchen, are two 20′ charcoal pits where PJ prepares all of the barbecue over charcoal. He says he used 40 tons of briquets in a season! To the right of the kitchen is a funky little dining room plastered with fifties music paraphernalia.

Then, behind the dining room is a spacious yard area with more picnic tables and even a dance floor which was in use by an in-love baby booming couple dancing to the fifties tunes broadcast on the WBBQ airwaves as we sat down to eat our “trifecta” combo platters. That’s right, and I love this part, PJ operates a low power (1-mile radius) AM radio station out of an outbuilding back behind the yard. Looking over the picnic tables we could see doors covered with 1940′s and 50′s radio charts swung open to reveal PJ standing in the small WBBQ studio looking like a king in his castle, queing up some records, and having a fine time of it.

That put me over the edge and all I could think say was, “Wow, this place is awesome!” Looking at the PJs website and his seasonal newsletter the Bar-B-Q Times reveals even more about PJ’s obsession with the 1950′s, check out his “fifties house” shown on HGTV. Also new in 2007, PJ’s is sponsoring Bar-B-Cruise-Ins. If you have a pre-1969 classic car (and as long as you aren’t a burnout) you can call in and reserve a parking space in the lot, and you even get a free BBQ dinner. That rules.

So enough of singing the praises of PJ, how was the Q? We split 2 of the Trifecta combo platters, which had PJ’s “award winning” spare ribs, some beef brisket, and bar-b-q chicken, (served with Cole slaw, curly-Q fries, and a cornbread muffin).

The ribs themselves were good and tasty, but not great and earth shattering. They had nice texture, a little spice, and a charred but flavorful exterior. And yes, I know it isn’t pig, but the chicken was good and respectable too, moist and tasty. Lastly was the brisket, which was not like any brisket I have ever had. It was dry thin slices more akin to jerky than to what I think of as brisket. It was ok, and would probably make a good sandwich, but isn’t really what I think of as barbecue brisket. I wouldn’t say that this was top notch barbecue, being somewhere between barbecue and grilled meat, but it was still good simple enjoyable fare in a very fun, friendly and pleasant atmosphere, that I would come back to visit many times.

Also, while I am not usually much of a soda person (except when I fall victim to a really good ginger ale) I would like to mention that PJ’s has their own loganberry flavored soda, called Crystal Beach which was pretty good, or at least very enjoyable while I was sitting at my picnic table taking PJ’s in.

PJ’s is a great place, make sure to visit if you are in Saratoga in the summer!

**Oh yeah, and I had 2 ribs at PJ’s bringing up the Ribulation for the Year of the Pig to 88 (2 pig, 28…so close to 3!!).

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This past weekend I made my first ever trip to Maine, to attend a wedding in Belfast. Alissa and I jumped at the excuse to get up to Maine, and we had a fantastic weekend enjoying the beautiful Maine coast in mid-June. We were early enough to avoid collision with the Maine tourist hordes, yet we had a beautiful weekend of long, sunny 80 degree days filled with dramatic New England light. Being so close to a National Park, we pushed on a little farther up the coast early on a Friday morning to visit Acadia, and just a couple of miles outside the park, I smelled the smell of burning wood, and turned my head to see an enormous barbecue rig parked on the side of Route 3, in the parking lot of some kind of Church or Tabernacle, right next to the Super Shoes. The sandwich board out front read, “CZY D P1t BBQ” and I knew I couldn’t pass this up. I got a quick OK from Alissa and did a 180, pulling up right next to CZY D’s montrosity of a BBQ pit.

I walked up to CZY D himself and announced that I would be interested in some Ribs. I complimented his rig, and he gave me a quick tour of the smoking chambers loaded with pork shoulders, brisket, ribs, chickens, sausages and BBQ beans. I was kind of in awe of the rig, which was apparently brand new, custom made from somewhere in Texas. He was obviously pretty proud of it. As his first Rib customer of the day, he announced that I would be getting a large (half) rack, which he packed up in a styrofoam box. I was on my way.

It was just before noon and we were again on our way to Acadia, this time with a delicious smell of smoke and ribs filling the cab of the truck. We sped along, headed for the first picnic area of the park, just over the bridge to Mount Desert Island. We got there and pulled into a parking spot. The day was gorgeous with a bright blue sky and we strolled down to the picnic tables looking out toward Frenchman Bay, carrying our box of ribs.

The ribs tasted good, but mainly because we were sitting out at picnic tables in a gorgeous place enjoying the great view and the very pleasant New England weather. The ribs themselves were nothing to write home about. In fact, in other situations, I would call them bad. The meat would barely stay on the bone so that you could hardly seperate the rack into individual ribs without it falling apart into a big meat pile. It was a large meaty rack of spare ribs, including the rib tips. I am fine with the boney and cartilagey rib tips, but these large ribs would probably be difficult to get tender from just smoking. In fact, the very large bones were soft from the cooking like they were boiled forever or pressure cooked. If you weren’t overly careful when biting meat off the bone your teeth could sink right into and through the bone, which when you aren’t expecting the taste of bone in your mouth, is pretty nasty. I would say that the meat itself was actually pretty flavorful, but that didn’t matter much cause the whole rack was drowning in a mass of sweet, sticky barbecue sauce, which was absolutely overwhelming. CZY D has him one fancy rig, but needs some lessons in cooking ribs!

Anyway, I still enjoyed my ribs, sitting there in the sun and planning our day ahead at Acadia, which is a really beautiful National Park. I ate 3 ribs then and one later, watching the sun set from the awesome vantage of Mount Cadillac, making for a total of 86 ribs in the year of the pig. Or, about 2 pigs 26, if you prefer.

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Question: Other than remembering all of our brave military folks of past and present, what is better to do on Memorial Day than barbecue?
Answer: Nothing.

It was going to be my first day home all day for a couple weeks, so it seemed like a good idea to smoke some ribs. That morning, I got out the electric smoker while Alissa prepared the ribs and pulled off the boneside membrane.

She is getting good at that! We again used the mustard slather I had saved from a couple weeks ago (see the Barons Special Sauce from The Ribulator, Entry #17) and coated the ribs liberally with it using a brush. Then I sprinkled the ribs generously on both sides with the spicy Baron’s Cajun Rub (see the recipe in The Ribulator, Entry#18) since last time I made ribs, we all thought the rub could use a little more kick. The smoker was going and I dropped the ribs into the rib rack, again over a bowlful of beans–Pinto and black beans mixed with onion, the rest of the mustard slather, some ketchup and BBQ sauce. I pretty much left them alone for 3 hours, and then took a look, flipped the ribs over in the rack and let them go for another couple hours.

After about 5 hours, they looked pretty done, but I basted them a couple times with some leftover Memphis Basting Sauce (see recipe in The Ribulator, Entry #17) and let them go for another hour. Then, at the end I gave the ribs a light brushing with some left over BBQ sauce, and let that set up for about 15 or 20 minutes. Then, I took the ribs off the smoker and let them rest on the cutting board for about 10 or 15 minutes before slicing them up and taking them in the back yard for dinner.

These ribs were damn good. They were not as smokey as I would ultimately like, but were full of flavor and the rub added a nice assertive kick. I didn’t think that they were that spicy, but by neighbor Pete, who tried a couple, thought they were quite hot. I liked the light BBQ sauce that was only barely present but added a juicy outside and a little sweetness to combat the cajun spice. Overall, very good, I was happy. I had 4. And 2 more for lunch the next day, making my count 80 for the Year of the Pig. Thank you pigs, one and all.

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This was a great weekend for pigs and fun. It was Memorial Day weekend, and the M Shanghai String Band headed up to Cape Cod, for some fun, sun, music, and even ribs. We arrived on Friday afternoon and set up camp at Maurice’s campground, which was perfectly pleasant and also the most expensive campground I have ever stayed in, at $80-92 per night (for 2 adjacent tent sites). Oh well, this is Cape Cod, right? If you don’t got money get lost!

Anyway, some of us left the campsite and headed to the nearest beach to check out the surf and skip some rocks, and just down the road my nostrils were greated with the unmistakably delicious smell of hickory smoke. My stomach rumbled as my head turned to the sight of a nice looking smoker right there on the side of the road, a column of rich smoke rolling down the road from Russ and Marie’s Marconi Beach BBQ Restaurant. Marconi Beach, by the way, is the site of one of Guglielmo Marconi’s wireless radio stations. I was excited and knew that BBQ joint was gonna be on my list of tourist attractions while there on Cape Cod.

The next day, several of us showed up hungry for some Barbecue. Squidocto, Glendon and myself split a full rack of ribs, and I can promise you I was excited after seeing that great looking smoker and smelling that hickory smoke up and down the road. The food arrived on a nice lookin platter, served with small sides of BBQ beans, cole slaw, grilled bread and a baked sweet potato with maple cinnamon butter.

I have to say as soon as the ribs were in front of me, the disappointment was already setting in. They were completely slathered and dripping in sauce. Sometimes I am ok with that, but I wasn’t expecting it here. Then I took my first bite, and was disappointed again by the taste and texture. The ribs themselves were quite bland, the sauce sweet and overpowering. The membrane on the boneside of the ribs was still intact, and although it wasn’t that tough, it looked bad and could have led to some of the blandness by preventing the smoke from penetrating into the ribs. The ribs were overly tender and falling off the bone like they had been boiled, however they did show a smoke ring, but had very little smoke flavor. Lastly, one more criticism was that at least half of the rack were “shiners,” meaning that there was no meat on the bottom of the bone. Not a great cut of ribs. As you can tell I was disappointed. Sometimes its just not smart to expect too much, and set yourself up for such disappointment. That said, I like ribs and it was still a nice lunch. I had 3, making my Year of the Pig count 74.

After lunch we headed to Provincetown, which is a beautiful little New England beach town. We played an afternoon set on the local radio station, WOMR, and then headed to the venue we were playing in that night which interestingly was called THE SQUEALING PIG, or THE PIG for short. I thought that was a good sign. We got a free meal there, and I ordered the “Hog Burger” which was described as “Thick-Cut Smoked Bacon, served with Gorgonzola Cheese and Chipoltle Mayo.” I thought that sounded pretty great, but when it came it was just a beef patty with one sad shrunken piece of weenie bacon. Certainly no hog burger. Again with the disappointment. I forgave them quickly though, cause playing the PIG that night was a great. The show was a blast and we couldn’t have asked for a better night. The staff was great to us, and the audience even better. I can’t wait to go back to the Provincetown PIG. Thanks to all that made it happen!

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I read a review last week from someone’s blog about Northeastern barbecue joints. He went a little ga-ga in his review of the Manhattan restaurant RUB, (see the Ribulator, Entry #15) and as I left work that night, I thought, I am pretty damn lucky to walk by this place everyday on my way home from work. So, I called in a takeout order for some smoked chicken and burnt ends of brisket, which I know (sorry) is not pork. It was so good, that the very next night, I decided to get some takeout ribs, and again I was not disappointed, they are so damn fine. That’s all I have to say.

Those were 4 superb ribs. That makes the current ribulation 71.

(They went great with Fiddleheads too. Get ‘em while you can!)

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I had bought a 1/2 a pork picnic at the supermarket and I decided to smoke that and make pulled pork for dinner on Sunday. I had invited over Corin (Crushinator) and Renee and Matt (our own Squidocto) for a relaxing Sunday evening dinner in the back yard and also found out that my housemate Kat and her friend Matt were planning to make a bunch of food too, including some ribs that they had made before and told me about. Sounded promising!

Neither Alissa nor I had ever cooked a Pork Picnic before, and the night before we had trimmed off the thick layer of skin. Wow that pig skin is a pain. This was a half picnic, weighing in at about 3 pounds. I figured I would just smoke it like a Boston Butt, and it would be fine. I read that it was less fatty than a Boston Butt, so I planned to baste it frequently. We used the same Mustard Slather from the day before, and put together a new rub from the Paul Kirk Book, called the “The Baron’s Cajun Rub” (see below for recipe) because we wanted something a little spicier. We tossed it on the smoker around 10 am. I let the rub set in for a few hours, and then started basting the picnic every 30-45 minutes, with the Memphis Basting Sauce from the previous post.

Meanwhile, Kat and Matt prepared their Ribs (see Ribs-a-la-Kat):

To make a long story short, I smoked that picnic for a good 7 hours and it did not appear to have gotten tender yet. I got out the left over ribs from the day before and heated them up so that we would have dinner, and just let the Picnic smoke on, thinking that my smoker was just too low of a temperature (around 200) and that it was gonna take a long time. We had a fine dinner with swiss chard, bbq beans, coleslaw, corn and ribs. And soon after, Kat and Matt were down with the 2nd course, finishing off their Stout-boiled ribs on the grill and then grilling up some seriously delicious red bell peppers stuffed with hominy and jack cheese and avacado. Nice job Matt! As for the ribs, I thought they were very good. Very tender, but not of the falling off the bone stew meat variety. The sauce was tangy and spicy. It was a good method, definitely worth experimenting with, although I must add, smoking is definitely my favorite way to go so far.

As for the picnic, we continued to smoke it and baste it. It ended up being quite dried out. We still pulled the meat apart and mixed it with the a BBQ sauce from the Paul Kirk book and a little apple sauce. It ended up being good for lunches during the week, but definitely not worth showing off to your friends.

Anyway, another 4 ribs brought me up to 67 ribs. Thanks to all the piggies, near and far!

**The Baron’s Cajun Rub
1/4 cup Cayenne Pepper
1/4 Sweet Hungarian Paprika
2 Tbs Chili Seasoning
2 Tbs Fresh Ground Black Pepper
1 Tsp White Pepper
1 Tsp Dry Mustard (I used Coleman’s)
1 Tsp Ground Thyme
1 Tsp Garlic Powder
1 Tsp Onion Powder
1/2 Tsp Rubbed Sage

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