How to Keep Things Interesting During Your Backyard Cooks
These days, barbecue enthusiasts are ordering from restaurants a lot less and eating at home a lot more. As the weeks of sheltering-in-place continue to drag on, it’s easy to get stuck in a rut and continue doing what is familiar when cooking in the backyard.
Though at first, it might seem appealing to stick with what you’re good at, here are a few tips to help you switch things up and keep things interesting for your next backyard cook.
I recently smoked a whole duck and was blown away with the delicious results.
Try Some New Proteins
Instead of reaching for familiar and traditional barbecue cuts, try preparing some new proteins during your next cook. If you’ve mastered ribs, chicken, and brisket, you might try smoking duck, tri-tip, or another protein. Additionally, as the coronavirus has recently forced closures of a number of meat processing facilities and shortages are expected, becoming adept at preparing a variety of different proteins may become particularly advantageous.
This smoked mac-and-cheese with panko breadcrumbs is a family favorite.
The Smoker Is for More than Just Meat
While meat is often the focus of the meal for most barbecue fanatics, remember you can use your smoker or grill for preparing a variety of different dishes. Smoke makes a delicious ingredient to sides, such as beans or mac-and-cheese. You can make grilled veggies and fruits and even dessert dishes, such as cobbler as well.
Trying new fuels and combinations of smoke woods can add interesting flavors to your backyard barbecue.
Experiment with New Fuels and Smoke Woods
There are endless possibilities for fuels for backyard cooks, from lump charcoal and briquettes to pellets and logs of smoke woods. Try a new fuel source for your next cook and see how it works for you. Additionally, you can try using a new mix of pellets or smoke woods for unique and interesting flavor combinations.
While everyone is stuck at home together, why not involve the family in your next cook?
Involve the Family
A lot of barbecue pitmasters enjoy the quiet and solitude of tending the fire. But as we continue to hunker down and shelter-in-place with our families, now might be a good time to involve them in the cooking process. Show them what it is that you like to do and it may spark an interest they did not even know was there.
I hope you take advantage of this time to branch out and switch things up during your next cook in the backyard!
Ryan Cooper (BBQ Tourist)
Co-Founder, The Smoke Sheet
Here are the top recent barbecue news stories from around the country:
The Kansas City Barbeque Society is currently offering discounts on lifetime memberships.
The Kansas City Barbeque Society is celebrating National BBQ Month early by offering a large discount on both individual and family lifetime memberships. The first 50 new annual members will also get a copy of the Kansas City Barbeque Society Cookbook.
Texas Monthly’s Daniel Vaughn reports that Pody’s BBQ, located in a Texas oil town, is struggling but “relying on lessons learned from the past to help weather the pandemic.”
The Houston Chronicle’s J.C. Reid writes that Fainmous BBQ is “one of Houston barbecue’s most unlikely success stories.” The husband-and-wife operation has survived multiple floods, a health scare, and now the coronavirus pandemic.
Columnist D.G. Martin recently wrote about the process of revising a book on the best North Carolina roadside eateries including barbecue joints. But to his dismay, his new revision has been marked by uncertainty as many joints in NC have gone out of business or are likely to go out of business this year. He also spoke with writer John Shelton Reed about the scary state of things for NC restaurants.
Grace Meat + Three, a popular Southern restaurant in St. Louis, has opened a second walk-up operation serving barbecue. The new Grace Backyard BBQ will feature items such as pork ribs, pulled pork, smoked chicken, and sides.
The fine folks at Barbecue Bros have written a great guide to mail-order barbecue in North and South Carolina, which includes favorites such as Lewis Barbecue.
One of the biggest names in the New York barbecue scene, Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, has decided to stop using third-party apps like GrubHub and DoorDash after a “very rocky weekend.” Not only do the apps take a large cut of the sale, but they also appear to be overloaded as of late, owner John Stage said. Dinosaur is now developing its own delivery app so it can deliver food directly to customers.
Houston barbecue hotshot Blood Bros. BBQ will receive a $10,000 grant from Kingsford as part of the charcoal maker’s pledge to help American barbecue joints through the coronavirus pandemic, the Houston Chronicle reports.
In a sad bit of news, Carter Brothers — a popular barbecue restaurant in High Point, North Carolina — has closed permanently due to the coronavirus pandemic.
For those stuck at home and wanting to take a stab at some baked beans, Parade Magazine has compiled a list of 25 good BBQ baked beans recipes.
It’s rare to see barbecue openings these days, but two recent openings caught our eye:
Portland’s Smokehouse Tavern closed in late 2018 but it is reopening in May with barbecue for takeout and delivery.
A farmers market stand in the Washington, D.C. area that sells Texas-style brisket, pulled pork, and other tasty bites has just opened a standalone restaurant for carryout in Riverdale Park. 2Fifty Texas BBQ’s owners come to the D.C. area by way of El Salvador, but they love Texas BBQ and that’s what they are selling.
Here are BBQ shows, podcasts, or books you should check out this week:
Evan LeRoy of LeRoy & Lewis Barbecue may be one of the most innovative pitmasters in Austin.
Watch: Why Leroy & Lewis is the Most Unique Barbecue in Austin — Eater
At LeRoy & Lewis barbecue truck in Austin, chefs and owners Evan LeRoy and Sawyer Lewis use different cuts of meat to stand out among the many barbecue trucks in Texas. Think confit beef cheeks, smoky brisket burgers, salty bacon ribs, and even a number of vegetarian dishes, like smoked eggplant parm and cauliflower burnt ends. In this episode of Smoke Point from Eater, we learn why Leroy & Lewis might just be the most unique barbecue joint in Austin. Watch here.
Listen: Catching Up with Daniel Vaughn of Texas Monthly — The BBQ Beat Podcast
In this episode of The BBQ Beat Podcast, host Kevin Sandridge chats with Texas Monthly’s noteworthy barbecue editor, Daniel Vaughn. They discuss Daniel’s friendship with the late Anthony Bourdain, underrated restaurants that deserve more press, the impact of Texas Monthly’s reviews on barbecue joints, and the style of Texas barbecue Daniel feels may become lost. They also talk about what it was like for Daniel to work with Sam Jones on the book Whole Hog BBQ. Listen here.
Read: Texas Q: 100 Recipes for the Very Best Barbecue from the Lone Star State, All Smoke-Cooked to Perfection — by Cheryl Alters Jamison
Cheryl Alters Jamison, co-author with her late husband Bill of the definitive Texas Home Cooking and the original bible for backyard smoke-cooking, Smoke & Spice, knows her brisket backward and forwards and offers several delectable recipes in this exciting book. Cheryl also knows that there's more to Texas barbecue than brisket. Among the more than 100 recipes in these pages, you will find loads of ideas for other cuts of beef, as well as for chicken, pork, lamb, fish and other seafood, and vegetables, each infused — via rubs and mops and sauces and spices — with robust, distinctive Texas flavors. Buy it here.
If you’re up for a marathon cook of a huge cut of meat, try this recipe for BBQ Beef Shoulder from Ballistic BBQ.
BBQ Beef Shoulder — Ballistic BBQ
For this week’s Recipe of the Week, we’re going old school with a recipe for BBQ beef shoulder from Greg Mrvich of Ballistic BBQ. Beef shoulder costs less per pound than brisket and serves a lot more people. It is a huge cut of beef that cooks up super tender and favorable, but because the average beef shoulder weighs in at 20 pounds, this cook is done low and slow over a period of 24-hours. View the recipe here.
In light of the constantly changing coronavirus crisis, we will be leaving this section blank for a little bit. Many events you know and love have been postponed. We’ll be updating the events section on our website with the most up-to-date information as we have it.
See the full Smoke Sheet events calendar online here.
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