Dr. BBQ's Big-Time Barbecue Cookbook: A Real Barbecue Champion Brings the Tasty Recipes and Juicy Stories of the Barbecue Circuit to Your Backyard

Preface

A Bit of Barbecue Background

I’m often asked how I got started in barbecue, so it seems like the right place to begin my first book. The truth is that I signed up for my first cooking class as a sophomore in high school because it seemed like a good way to slack off and I figured there would be a lot of chicks in the class. Turns out both were true. I think Miss Perkins would be very surprised at how things have turned out for me. I was surprised to find out that I did have an interest in what was going on in the kitchen. I learned to cook a crab quiche and an apple pie that I made many times. Sadly, I don’t have either recipe anymore.

After high school I joined the family trucking business and that, combined with the excessive lifestyle of a young man in the 1970s, kept me pretty much out of the kitchen. But in 1982, my friend Bruce Romanek signed us up for the first Annual Mike Royko Ribfest being held in Grant Park in downtown Chicago. Bruce just intended to go for the party, but, as long as we were going, I figured I could probably cook some pretty good ribs. Well, I did cook some mighty fine ribs on a borrowed kettle grill, and we had a great time along with about four hundred other teams. That first Ribfest sparked my interest in barbecue. I bought a kettle grill for home and began cooking ribs on a regular basis. It seemed that I had found my calling in life: barbecue. I realized that it was more than just some smoky ribs. It was a bunch of fun people hanging out in a nice park while cooking and having some beers. And, I fit right in.

The next year I had my friend Scott Barrett build a grill for me out of a metal barrel. Scott worked at the place where I got my trucks fixed, The Berwyn Lubritory. You can’t make this stuff up. It was a typical fifty-five-gallon drum. First he cut it open and then we welded legs on that were made out of automobile exhaust pipe. We fixed up a grid for cooking and painted it red. This type of grill is a time-honored tradition and you see them everywhere. I had the pleasure of cooking on a couple of them last year at the Jamaican Barbecue Championship in Montego Bay. You put charcoal in the bottom of a grill like this. For slow cooking the charcoal all goes on one end while the meat stays on the other end.

A couple of years later my barrel grill burned out from all the use, and it was time for an upgrade. My buddy Scott has built me all kinds of crazy things over the years, so as usual I went to him again. He had an old truck-side toolbox in the backyard that was in bad shape. It had stood on end for years and the one end was rusted out. Never fear; Scott can fix anything. He welded and cut and once again went with his favorite legs made out of exhaust pipe. Before I knew it he had made me another beautiful red rib cooker. It was a direct setup, so I had to use aluminum foil as a barrier, but it looked totally cool and I could cook twenty-two slabs of ribs at a time.

Needless to say, my barbecue addiction was in full swing. The Royko Ribfest morphed into the Chicago Tribune Ribfest and grew to seven hundred teams. We continued to compete, and while we never won anything, I was getting better and better at cooking barbecue.

In 1991, the Tribune announced that there would be no more Ribfest. The organizing had changed hands a few times and it seemed nobody wanted to handle the logistics. But in reality it had grown to be a big event with unattended fires burning everywhere, food being handed out with no regard to the health department, and lots of unauthorized drinking. Sounds like a party to me, but bureaucracy apparently won out. Almost like it was meant to be, I soon found out about the first ever Kansas City Barbecue Society (KCBS) Illinois State Barbecue Championship. The event would be about a half hour from my house and would be hosted by Jim Burns. Jim was an early participant on the barbecue circuit and he decided to host a cookoff at his restaurant. He is surely on a short list of people that I thank for helping me to get started in barbecue. I signed up immediately and was told that there would be four categories to compete in: poultry, ribs, pork loin, and beef brisket. I decided to cook my favorite dish, injected smoked turkey, in the poultry category. I didn’t realize I was supposed to cook in all four categories if I wanted to be the Grand Champion, but it really didn’t matter. I won third place with my turkey, and I was as proud as I could be. I convinced a couple of friends to join me in a team the following year. Scott Barrett, John Petitti, and I became the Bonesmokers, a name coined by John that I still use for fun and business. While the other guys had growing families to attend to, I got more and more involved in barbecue. I started traveling to cookoffs by myself. I bought a new van to carry my barbecue stuff around and applied for a vanity license plate. One of my requests was Dr. BBQ. Well, that’s the one I got and I have been using that name ever since. It didn’t seem like that big a deal at the time, but I now have the Florida Dr. BBQ plate and my Web site is www.drbbq.com.

Dr. BBQ’S Top 5 Barbecue Cookoffs

1. Amazin’ Blazin’ in Lebanon, Tennessee

2. Pigfest in Lakeland, Florida

3. Jack Daniel’s World Championship Invitational Barbecue in Lynchburg, Tennessee

4. Illinois State Championship in Shannon, Illinois

5. The American Royal in Kansas City, Missouri

In 1994, I attended the first ever Michigan State Barbecue Championship and became the Grand Champion. They gave me a check for $1,000 and I was thrilled. There was no trophy at all, though, so I had a copy of the check framed and I am sure glad I did that all these years later. I now have a back room full of trophies, plaques, and ribbons from all over the country, but it would be complete without that first Grand Champion plaque.

After winning that first championship I was honored with an invitation to the American Royal Invitational, where I got a fifth-place ribbon in the sausage category. What a thrill! All of these awards just fed my hunger to do more and more of this. So I got some cash together and bought a real barbecue pit, one that I could tow around on a trailer.

I was still working in the family business, so barbecue just remained a hobby that I was fanatical about until the end of 2000, when my twenty-five-year trucking career came to an end. It had just run its course and it was time to move on. I was thrilled at the chance to pursue my dream job in midlife. I had a wristwatch tattooed on my arm that said 5:01 to signify quitting time, put my house up for sale, and moved to Florida. You see, barbecue isn’t real popular in Chicago during the winter.

My successful history as a competition cook opened many doors for me. I’ve cooked in hundreds of cookoffs and won hundreds of awards. I have never won any award that can be called a World Championship, but I have been in the World Championship top five more times than you can count on one hand and in the top ten more than you can count on both. I’m very honest about my awards, as I think all competitors should be. I’m also not anywhere near done yet. I’m still winning regularly and still have that World Championship goal.

Since my career change, I’ve operated a roadside barbecue stand, done some catering, sold barbecue at some of the premier vending events around the country, sold barbecue sauce and seasoning, demonstrated grills at stores and trade shows, found some sponsors, taught some barbecue classes, and even written some articles and columns about barbecue.

Writing was just a lark. One day I was talking to Bruce Ring about his new magazine, The BBQer, and I offered to write an Ask Dr. BBQ column. A couple years later when Bruce left the magazine my friend Mary suggested I contact Dave DeWitt about hosting my column in Fiery Foods & BBQ. I did and Dave was interested so I moved over. Since then The BBQer has been saved and has now teamed up with Fiery Foods & BBQ. This has all served me well in preparing to write this book. I have made many lifelong friends in the barbecue world and it has been a great life’s path. I thank them all—those that I have named and those that I have not.

So now it’s time to share my knowledge, gained over more than twenty years of cooking barbecue. So, pop a top and let’s go cook!

The story of barbecue is the story of America:

Settlers arrive on great unspoiled continent,

discover wondrous riches, set them

on fire, and eat them.

—Vince Staten

Rubbing Me the Right Way

Rubs, Marinades, Mops, and Sauces to Give Your Barbecue That Championship Flavor

Getting Started

I’ve looked at a lot of barbecue books and almost all of them start out with a boring chapter about equipment, tools, and charcoal. I’m not going to do it that way. I will address the equipment and tools as I go along, relative to the dish and the cooking technique being used. I am, however, going to spend a little time here telling you about my feelings about some taboo barbecue subjects. You see, there is great controversy in the barbecue world about where the progress should stop. Predictably, the different camps are content that it stops wherever they are standing.

For example, some people think that you should only cook a whole hog in a pit made out of concrete blocks. That’s Traditional Barbecue, they say. Some even argue about whether a piece of corrugated steel should be allowed as a cover. Then there is the camp that says you should only use an offset firebox big ol’ hunk of steel cooker. That’s Traditional Barbecue, they say. Some guys only cook in a hole in the ground. That’s Traditional Barbecue, they say.

My friends with the Big Green Egg will tell you that theirs is the best cooker out there. That type of equipment has been in use for three thousand years. That’s Traditional Barbecue, they say. But of course we all know that the real original and absolutely Traditional Barbecue was cooked over an open fire as a caveman made antelope kabobs.

There is a whole group that takes great pride in having giant cookers, and another group that takes great pride in cooking great barbecue on the smallest cookers. There’s a big debate over meats: pig vs. cow vs. mutton vs. cabrito. And one over woods: mesquite vs. hickory vs. oak vs. apple vs. pecan vs. cherry.

Then there is the multifaceted argument about fuels. Here is a list of the stances:

• Logs only! No charcoal ever in my cooker!

• Natural lump charcoal is the best! Nothing else works!

• Brand X Natural Lump is much better than the others!

• No logs! They must be burned down to coals first! (Isn’t that the same fuel as the guys