Who likes To BBQ?

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San Antonio, TX
Spring has sprung here! I haven't done nearly as much outdoor cooking since moving to SA due to health issues, but that's fixin' to change!


Here's my trailer mounted BBQ pit. It's an original Oklahoma Joe Chuckwagon built in 1991. It's 24" diameter and walls are 0.25" thick steel.



I've extensively modded it. I changed the top stack to a removable flanged design so I can park it in my garage.




I added a second easily removable cooking grate in the horizontal cook chamber.




I have a fire grate made of round bar that will probably outlive me.




I added two thermometers and installed large dial face industrial quality thermometers for my over 50 eyes.




I designed and installed my own custom diffuser plate that keeps the location temperature variation to 20°F or less in the horizontal cooking chamber.




I use this for charity / church BBQ's and large family events like my wife's great uncle's 90th birthday party family reunion. I paid for my own ServSafe Manager level training and certification to be certified to do charity / church BBQ's.

The vertical section runs 75°F - 100°F lower than the horizontal chamber so I use that for a warm holding section, also good for keeping a cooked pan of beans warm while infusing them with smoke flavor. There's hanging bars for smoking homemade sausages buy I?'ve never messed with making my own smoked cured meats.

 
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What time should we all show up for dinner?
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You have a serious BBQer. You have a beautiful home, excellent landscape, and a dream garage!!! Enjoy yourself!!!
 
Originally Posted By: Kool1
You have a serious BBQer. You have a beautiful home, excellent landscape, and a dream garage!!! Enjoy yourself!!!


Thank you, that was our prior residence in Findlay, OH. Too many neighbors for my tastes and was only on 0.5 acre lot, but it was what the wife wanted at the time.

Our current residence has only 2 real neighbors and backs up to a working 700 acre cattle ranch, but is in SA city limits so has municipal utilities and trash service. It's more xeriscaped / semi-wild which really appeals to my wife who likes photographing plants & wildlife, and has lots of wild chili pequin plants for me! Kinda the best of both worlds. It's in a HOA but it's pretty toothless. The president of the HOA is one of my 2 neighbors, the other is a criminal defense attorney, both like the BBQ I share with them occasionally!
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Originally Posted By: Trav
I assume you use this commercially? What the menu?


No, I don't want the liability hassle. No one has ever gotten sick from my cooking (for good reason - I eat it too after all!) but in our litiginous society there are those who will make such a claim just to get some sort of settlement to make them go away. My insurance agent says if I take any money, or even have someone else supply the meat at no charge, they consider that to be doing business - even poor financial sense business - and my homeowner's and personal umbrella policies would not cover it. So I'd have to get business insurance and still deal with the hassle of even false claims. If I cook for a church or charity I cook on their property and am covered by their insurance. No claims - who thinks a humble church or charity has deep pockets and will likely have a judge or jury find in their favor on a bogus claim?

When I do this for church or charity I pay for the meat with their funds on their credit card then make a matching cash donation unless someone else insists on making the equivalent cash donations. Family wouldn't sue me, at least the ones I cook for. I donate the fuel. Regardless of pit size, I use 100% hardwood charcoal for base heat and wood for flavor and supplemental heat.

I had an offer of sponsorship on the professional BBQ competition circuit from a national brand charcoal company, but while I was trying to form a team, they were bought out by one of the two biggest names in the charcoal business and the brand was discontinued (shut out the competition). That brand has seen a recent limited resurrection but there's no one associated with the group that offered me sponsorship. That big company did sponsor a friend of mine in East Texas that wins lots of comps in the East Texas & Louisiana area, and got enough points (but not enough funding) to cook in the Jack Daniels Invitational!

Just as well. In competitions they do extreme stuff for the judges' tastes looking for that one-bite win. I just have fun as a backyard / driveway / church parking lot cook.
 
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Originally Posted By: aquariuscsm
What time should we all show up for dinner?
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How far away from the SA Far North Side do you live? It'd be nice to meet a fellow BITOGer face to face.
 
Originally Posted By: blupupher
Good looking pit. Nice range of options, and the middle rack in the main cooker is a must, but why a full top rack?


Double the capacity for beef briskets, chicken, pork shoulders, ribs, jerk pork, etc.

I've had over 100 lbs pork shoulder at a time in there. Chicken quarters take up a lot of space for their weight. I can fit most of a 40 lb case of chicken quarters in one go using both rack levels.

Only reason to take out the top racks really IMO is to do a whole hog which I've never done and I'm not really interested in.
 
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Originally Posted By: Chris142
I try. I'm pretty bad,always a surprise or disappointment.


Happy to try to help long distance on tips & techniques.

I never learned how to do pork ribs worth mentioning until I moved to Louisiana at one point in my career.
 
Originally Posted By: Trav
What the menu?


Typically beef brisket is my go-to but charity events it's typically pork shoulder and chicken quarters for budget-conscious organizations. Pork ribs, both spare ribs and baby backs (pork loin back ribs). I can put 8 racks of full untrimmed spare ribs in there at a time (40 lbs)

Similar on my patio rigs (in smaller quantities), but add in whole chickens and turkeys, My signature family holiday dinner dish is a scroll cut pork loin, brined, then stuffed with fruit (reconstituted dried cherries), goat cheese, and nut (walnut or pecan) stuffing, rolled & tied, then smoke-roasted using wild cherry wood for flavor and served with a semi-tart cherry sauce on top to taste.

My backyard patio grill is for steaks, seafood, real fajitas (the correct cut of skirt steak), and vegetables.
 
So what are the catalyst pellets in the T-piece to the left...there ARE catalyst pellets there aren't there ?
 
Cheers from Katy. Nice looking rig. And I love me some brisket.
 
Nice setup! I'd love to try your brisket sometime, crave that stuff.

One of my great misses from my time in TX that I still regret involved a small family BBQ operation that was maybe two hours away from Dallas. Read about it in the Morning News right after I moved to TX, think the place was only open Friday night through Saturday night and would often have waits of over an hour despite being in a very remote location. Believe the article said they started slow cooking on Mondays for the following weekend and the brisket in particular would end up just melt in your mouth.
Told a buddy about it and after maybe a year or two we had a totally open weekend and decided to make the drive. Went to find the clipped article and it was not where I expected...I have moved and it must have gotten lost in the jumble. This was pre-internet, so we had to real way to look it up.
I'm still mad about that!!
 
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