Getting my smoke on.....

Since moving from Eastern NC to Georgia....it's hard (read that impossible) to get the BBQ that I grew up with.

That leaves little options other than cooking it yourself.

My young son was interested in what goes in it....so I let him make the sauce this morning.





I love the flavor of this.....

Sometimes I'll get some pork shoulders or boston butts and smoke them all day over coals....however today we were pushed for time around the house and yeilded to the Crock Pot....so simple.

Here's a pair of butts that we smoked late last year.....we used Byron's Butt Rub in massive amounts as the dry rub....with a good bit of our own sauce injected and as an overnight marinade.



After the all day smoke then you simply pull it apart and drizzle some more sauce over it.....wow.....good eatin'.

I love good pulled port BBQ, but do not like the stuff in your area (Aiken, SC where my mother lives). There is simply too much mustard and I hate mustard. I like a good, sweet BBQ sauce.

Yup...not big on the mustard stuff either...not on BBQ.

Got 'em out of the marinade and ready to dust 'em heavily with Bad Byron's Butt Rub.




Got 'em rubbed down nicely...ready to throw on when the coals are ready.




Coals are getting ready....I like a base of Kingsford along with some hardwood chunks soaked overnight in water. Really smokes well for the initial part of the process.




I like to maintain the grill temp of between 215 and 220 throughout the process.




Ingredients are fairly easy to obtain locally....nothing fancy other than the rub....can be found at grill specialty shops or ordered online.



The sweet BBQ sauce you mentioned is what my family loves...in particular, Famous Dave's. They have some awesome pulled / chopped pork at their chain. I like to think mine comes pretty close.


Looks burned on the outside....trust me...the rub is designed especially for these applications....it forms a crusty barrier that retains all the natural juice of the meet. The rub then breaks up nicely and absorbs the juices to give off an awesome flavor when pulled apart.

Damn that looks delicious!!! I am such a bbq addict if not an aficionado. That sounds food snobby…haha. I know for a fact that is not burnt. That is just the caramelized sugars in the rub. On a large piece of meat, you have to almost over season it on the outside since the surface is such a small percentage of the overall cut of meat. I love a rub on a steak as well, and I hate to see a steak marinated. A lot of people I know are still marinating steaks in Dale's. Just give me beef jerky, cause that's what it turns into anyway.

I love the Carolina sauces. One of the better BBQ joints in my area has about 8 or 10 sauces to choose from. They have a nice house sauce, K.C. style, the aforementioned mustard sauce (not for me), a super hot sauce, etc. But the one I always go for first is their N.C. sauce. It's nice and vinegary with some red and black pepper. It’s a relatively thin and simple sauce that doesn't cover up the taste of good meat.

Most of the BBQ in my area (Knoxville to Bristol) range from mediocre at best to pretty good. I don't like my bbq pre-sauced as this is often a way to cover up inferior and poorly prepared meat. Good pulled bbq doesn't even have to have sauce to taste good. But a great sauce makes it even better. It reminds me of eating steaks out at restaurants. When the waiter/waitress ask if I need steak sauce I always reply "God I hope not".

Great looking food!

P.S. I would like the recipe for that sauce, but I’m sure it’s an ancient Chinese...I mean Tarheel Secret.

Feel free to come to ohio and cook for me, as every food thing you've posted has looked amazing. :mouth watering: hah

Any of you guys posting on this thread know anything about Western NC, Asheville more specifically? We think a lot about relocating there and I'd love to hear about the area from some golf addicts.

I thought I knew good BBQ....I was recently amazed. My wife and I spent a long weekend in Memphis a couple of weeks ago......best ribs I've ever eaten....by far. Jim Neely's Interstate BBQ.....OMG.

Aw, won't y'all please stop torturing this poor northern boy with Carolina bbq, I love East Carolina bbq

Hey dub what's your crock pot recipie?

I've got a nice gas grill (and an old stand by charcoal) but to do smoking justice (and not burn up a tank of LP) you really need a smoker like you've got pictured. Since I wouldn't smoke often I can't see buying a smoker, so a crock pot recipie would be nice...

I've managed to get almost-decent briskets in my medium-sized kettle grill. Of course, I'm from Indiana and now live in CA, which means BBQ is at best a second language, but I've been trying pretty hard to learn how to do it. I've found if I put a large foil pan with water at least 2-3 inches deep in the center of my grill, build a small-to-medium charcoal fire over one of the vents on the edge, and put two-three layers of foil as a heat shield over those coals, and then put a small foil pan full of water directly over the coals, I can cook a brisket for 5-6 hours without it drying out too badly. I throw soaked hardwood chips on the coals every half hour for a while. I actually find it is hard to keep the temp up high enough if I'm not careful, which is a huge breakthrough after scorching a few briskets in a row.

Reminds me I should set aside a Sunday to do this again...

Chief.....the Crock Pot is really handy....especially for us golfers....throw it in there and turn it on low......play 18....come home and your almost ready to grub down.

No precise recipe.....sauce: 1/2 bottle of apple cider vinegear, a dozen or more squirts of hot sauce (Crystal, Texas Pete, etc), two tablespoons of garlic powder, some red pepper flakes, 1/2 teaspoon of liquid smoke (this stuff is key when you are doing it in the crockpot) and a few squirts of lemon juice. Add other items to your liking: soy sauce, etc.


Rub the meat down good with either a good rub or a blackening mix. Publix sells a cajun blackening rub mix in their spice area that is really good.

Meat in the pot....sauce poured around it.


Low temp for 6+ hours.....pulls off the bone easy.

Shred it into a serving dish and ladel out some of the sauce it cooked in to drizzle over it. There are those that will pour other BBQ sauces over it after that.....to each his own.

We love ours with sweet slaw and baked beans. Bush's Smokehouse Pit beans are pretty new.....you have to try them....best canned beans I've ever tried......ever!!!!!!!!

Happy grilling.

We are having Johnsonville brats tonight....gotta get the coals fired up soon. Nothing like golf followed by grill time....nothing.