Category: BBQ

It’s a long way from the beginning of the new season but inspired by a new barbecue book I received for Christmas, I decided to give some thought about the events of the coming year. I checked out all of my equipment and decided to rid myself of anything that was past its best. The rest I placed in an all purpose toolbox consisting of knives, tongs, spatulas, aprons, gloves, hand cream, gas firelighters and other assorted sundries that I have found over the years to be useful. All my tools are now in one place and should I be asked to cook for some one at their place I merely have to pick up one tool box and everything I need, will be close to hand and easy to transport.

I then looked at my ageing grill and realised I had had the best years out of it and it was no longer up to my standards for the industrial use I put it to every year. It was time to order a new one.  Trawling the net to find bargains and end of year clearances produced a Billy Oh four burner gas grill in stainless steel for less than the cost of my old grill. Out came the credit card and it was despatched within hours. I also decided to go back to my roots and buy a decent charcoal powered kettle barbecue. Again trawling for clearance bargains I found a large Webber Kettle drum at an amazingly low price. I know I have said in the past that I would not use charcoal again because it was not as eco friendly as gas but there is no denying that some foods do taste better for being cooked over hot coals as opposed to either butane or propane. Pictures of both appliances are in the barbies/equipment gallery.

During discussions and correspondence from Ted Magnum who is at the moment in Argentina, he expanded upon the virtues of an Argentinean barbecue called a parilla. Consequently a parilla will be built at the home of The Beast and we are currently in the process of persuading Little Miss Sunshine and The Beancounter that it would be a wonderful idea if they built one too as not only would it be practical but it would add value to their homes. A picture of a typical Argentine parilla can be found in the barbies/equipment gallery.

This coming year I hope to find new recipes and new ways of cooking. I am also going to cook two identical items on both gas and charcoal grills for the definitive taste test. I also made the decision that Ghastanbury would no longer be held at Château Ghastanbury and would in future be a roaming event rather like Creamfields. As yet I do not know where the first one will take place but after lively discussions with some of the massive and I am confident that a venue will be found by June 21^st.  

^{Here’s to 2008}

It is definitely the end of the season and I have not done anything since Halloween; however plans are being made for next year as I write. Ted Magnum is in Argentina exploring all sorts of cooking methods and The Saint informed me of one guys successful bid to organise the biggest barbecue in the world. He has successfully spit roasted a 550 KG camel, that is approximately 1237 pounds of meat. Check this…….  http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5g97RVAf9zrJbF8Udsl_ub5kzd6jA

All of a sudden I feel inadequate. To make matter worse I found this on a website. This is just amazing and how could any one who is really into barbecues not be impressed with this beast of a machine?  Listen girls, forget aftershave and socks this year, get your man one of these for Xmas, you know its what he wants alongside a decent train set and his own pub!!http://www.bbqreport.com/archives/barbecue/2005/08/06/the-worlds-largest-smoker/
I just gotta have one of those!!!!

The new season is four months away at least and I am praying that the weather is better than this year. More news as it happens

Well at long last the day arrived; Tedstock was to actually take place! The events of the weekend had been preceded by a flurry of activity going back as far as March when designs for the spit began to near fruition. Timber and combustible material had been gathered for weeks and the spit and fire pit were now actually on site. Ted had cleared the garden area and the place was looking as pristine as it was possible to have it. The perishable shopping had been bought the day before and in the case of charcoal and beers, stocked up and added to several weeks prior. After a long day organising and cleaning cooking facilities and setting up tents, it was time to relax with a beer or two and a small campfire before the organised mayhem of the event itself. The relaxing became quite serious and it was only when I was rudely awoken by Ted in the morning that I realised just how seriously we had relaxed. Two bottles of bourbon had had been consumed between the pair of us but according to Ted it was mainly me who did the most damage to the offending bottles. I crawled out of my tent shook the sleep from my eyes, cleaned my teeth and headed off to our friendly butchers to pick up the side of pork. It had been decided some time ago that we were not going to attempt to roast a whole pig as we didn’t think we could get enough people there to eat it all.

When I arrived back at the “festival” site, the pig was prepared, given a Kansas City recipe dry rub and secured onto the spit and hoisted above the coals that Ted had prepared while I was away at the butchers. We were now in business. Months of planning was actually taking place. One of the things we had to do was modify the fire box and it was extended to over 5 foot long to accommodate the length of the carcass and extra holes were drilled into the base for more air flow. After around three hours we even decided to alter the height of the spit stands and we ground off at least 6 inches with an angle grinder to get the pig closer to the heat. Charcoal does not give out as much heat as dry timber and the smoke it produces does not taste as nice as good aged and dried wood, however my main concern was in making the fire too hot and the meat would be scorched on the outside and raw in the middle. The biggest lesson I have learned from this episode was air flow is crucial to obtaining the correct heat and you need a combination of charcoal and timber to cook properly. Too much timber produces too much smoke and really pisses of the neighbours and charcoal alone does not produce enough heat to cook thoroughly. It may be fine if you are going to bury your pig in a pit with hot coals below and above it as in Hawaiian style but we wanted to do a traditional English spit roast and that means over open flames. Six hours after cooking began I made a baste out of cider, Cajun seasoning and olive oil and coated the pig every 20 minutes for the next two hours when I reckoned the meat was cooked.

It came off the spit and was left to draw its own juices back into the meat for a further 30 minutes and then the crackling was taken off and the meat was sliced. 80 per cent of the meat was cooked and around 20 per cent was still pink so the pink bits were wrapped in silver foil and tossed back onto the hot coals. I do believe it was because of the choice to use charcoal instead of timber that caused the meat to be undercooked. The charcoal did not produce enough heat and had the pig of been any lower to the coals then the outside would have been scorched and the inside completely raw. Combined with the potato wedges I had cooked in baking trays resting on hot coals there was plenty of food for all that had turned up. At around 8pm we all adjourned to the bonfire that Ted had prepared in the morning and sat round,    a what, was by Ted’s standards a massive fire and had a brew or two.

Was it a success? Well I have learned a lot from this season and no one has complained at any of the cooking, indeed most people have come back to at least one of the spit roasts and some people have attended all of them.  I think this is the end of the season for 2007 and I don’t expect to be making any more entries into the BBQ blog until next year. It has been a steep learning curve with a lot of fun along the way. Due to the vagaries of the British weather, the spit roasts will never be a spur of the moment thing, they take a lot of planning and meat has to be ordered well in advance and once it’s bought it has to be used. It is not like throwing a burger onto a grill and ringing your friends up to come along. That said I do look forward to next year and whatever culinary challenges that may come accompany it.

The Prequel, ahhh. The prequel!  Well my friendly and ever so helpful butcher managed to obtain a magnificent specimen of a lamb for me weighing in at around 40 pounds weight. I needn’t have worried about foot and mouth and livestock not being able to travel, this guy did me proud and came up with the goods. In fact he was so helpful about storage, cooking and carving advice; I am going to give him a plug. You can find him at Carr lane nurseries on the Meols Stretch on the Wirral, go through the nursery and into the courtyard and you will find him there, Tell him Smokehouse sent you.

Onto the day itself, as usual I was up early stoking the flames aided by my neighbour Roger Moore. No, he does not look like Roger Moore, but he is a true saint and I could not have done what I did without his help and unstinting support and eagerness. RM and me loaded up the firebox and spent an hour getting the coals to glow and adding wood to build up a nice heat. (Tip don’t add green or wet wood to the coals, they don’t light and make a lot of smoke, sorry neighbours.) The said Beast ( we could not decide if it was larry or Loretta) was skewered and heaved onto the spit supports and turned 15 degrees every ten minutes. We even used a mobile phone to give us an alarm call every ten minutes while we chopped wood and generally got covered in smoke coughed our lungs up. While us two were slaving away over hot coals TB sorted out the salads and accompaniments.  Four hours in and I started to baste the beast although that may be an unfortunate turn of phrase as THE BEAST turned up several hours later. No I basted the slowly turning lamb with a mixture of mustard powder, fresh mint and rosemary combined with water and boiled up until it became thick and gloopy enough to stay on the surface of the animal. Six hours later and the job was done.  

It was time to carve and relax with drinks and lots of them! This job I left to BC and her cousin the Fire engine who also sorted out the salads between them plus a huge tray of roasted potatoes. The potatoes were roasted in a mixture of garlic granules and dried mixed herbs and cooked in Beef dripping. Special mention goes to these as most people who have sampled them marvel at the taste and then ask what the crunchy bits are on the outside of them. I can tell you it’s the dried herbs that have swelled with the beef dripping and then roasted into crunchy bits and are stuck to the outside of the potatoes. Another source of pride for me personally was that I was able to cut fresh herbs from the garden such as mint and rosemary and fetch cucumbers from the greenhouse.

As the usual suspects turned up and drinks flowed it was deemed a culinary success of epic proportions. Due to the immense heat of the fire pit and the more than welcome sunshine, I had lost a lot of fluids in perspiration and I did what I could to re-hydrate. This amounted to 10 cans of Strong bow and a full bottle of Bourbon before hitting the gin by which time THE BEAST, his mad brother and me were in fine form and full of joviality (not to mention sprits, literally) as the heavens opened and we all adjourned indoors.

Apart from a wonderful day cooking and drinking the highlight was a ritual sacrifice of some one who had not heard of Robert Johnson. TB’s daughter had brought along her boyfriend who was into music. After much quizzing of his tastes and knowledge we discovered that he had never heard of the founder of modern music, a certain Mr Robert Johnson. We made him sit and watch the greatest film of all time, Crossroads, starring Ralph Macchio and Joe Seneca and then asked him questions about it afterwards. Whether through nerves or sheer terror about being quizzed by his girlfriend’s father, his even madder brother and a machete wielding pit master who believes that Robert Johnson is the one and only true King (Elvis fans take note, Elvis was a mere pretender) the poor lad stuttered and clammed up. What is certain is he won’t forget who Robert was and what he did and how important he was to the field of modern Rock ‘n’ Roll (or as our Japanes chums call it Lock N Loll), for the rest of his life.

As the day turned to night and then into early morning and the guests slowly left for home, it was agreed the event had been a complete success and Tedstock which is only a few days away has a lot to live up to. However, I am sure that the prequel can be bettered both in terms of culinary refinement and spirit and I can say I have not looked forward to an event with so much fervour for a long time. Roll on Tedstock, and in the immortal words of Wille Brown aka Blind Dog Fulton and Smokehouse Brown, "bring it on I say, let the lightning boy do his magic"!!!

After a long summer of rain, Tedstock has been postponed until we have confirmation about the weather and his garden dries out. In the meantime I have decided to run a prequel to the official bash this coming weekend when I will try and spit roast a lamb. I have the facilities for people to take cover in case it rains and Ted doesn’t. As I said the weather has been truly appalling and it has been the worst summer I can ever remember but finally the sun is here. You can imagine my shock as I walked into the butchers to order a whole lamb only to be told that foot and mouth has broken out in the UK and the movement of animals has been banned. This means that there may not be any animals available for the prequel. I wont know until the last minute whether the butcher can obtain a whole carcass for me.

Coupled with the bad weather and now this latest episode the whole season looks set to be a complete disaster and there is not much of it left. You could not make this up! More news as it happens.

I woke up the following morning with a pounding head. I really should not have hit the bourbon the night before but I had. It was only due to the efforts of the Bean counter that I managed to get up at all! I forced myself to stagger into the garden for 7am, splash several large bottles of lighter fluid over the three sections of charcoal that required it and tossed several matches onto each pile.  So far so good I thought until I saw the clouds of smoke reaching for the skies. I could not do anything about that except hope that no one was up that early in the morning and I ran back into the house and got showered and changed. By the time I was back outside, the smoke, well most of it any way, had subsided and it was now merely very smoky and not such a health hazard.  As I said earlier the goat was in two sections and I could not merely run the spit through its arse and out of its mouth and pin it along the way. The problem of the spit was solved by placing one side of the goat on a table, putting the spit along its length and skewering it with long stainless steel pins and then placing the other half on top of the pins and forcing it down til the two sides met and wrapping butchers twine around the animal to keep it in place

Two hours later and it was all smouldering nicely. Mercifully it was damp and not the sort of weather that you hang washing out in. By 9-30am I had the goat on the spit, the lamb, beef and pork in the long Rumo smoker and the ribs in the upright Brinkman. The traveller, in the spirit of the occasion and theme bought out some confederate flags and we draped these around the cooking section and opened up the beers. We spent most of the morning running back and forth between a gazebo to keep dry from the frequent showers and back to the fires to stoke them up not forgetting to turn the spit every 10 minutes or so. The traveller and my bro looked after the spit while I concentrated on looking after the Rumo and chopping wood while my neighbour, (God bless him for his patience) looked after the small brinkman. It was a round 4pm that the first of the guests arrived and although the meat in the smokers was cooked the goat was at least two hours away. I think if it had of been a sunnier and less windy day then it would have cooked faster.

One of the overwhelming comments from most of the guests was that you could smell meat cooking from several hundred yards away. Again I have to thank my neighbours for putting up with me. To most people’s surprise the goat tasted lovely. It was quite stringy and tasted stronger than lamb but not as strong as beef. I had marinated it in a mixture of lime juice, chilli, cinnamon, brown sugar, maple syrup and some cayenne pepper which gave it a kick. The animal took over 10 ten hours to cook through and what bits were not finished we hacked them off and wrapped them in tin foil and threw them in the ashes of the fire pit. I had used somewhere along the lines of 20, 5 kilo bags of charcoal and a lot of logs. Nearly all of the meat went with little going to waste and still people asked for sausages and burgers. It was time to turn to my old faithfull grill and Commander Riker stepped up to the plate and grilled like a seasoned pro. Most people had left by around 10pm and I managed to allow myself to be led to bed somewhere around 1am. I think all of them had a good time, my mum certainly did and as usual her birthday had gone with a swing somewhat different to any of her friends, then again none of them have a son like me! All in all this years Ghastanbury was a success.

It’s been a busy old time of late, there has been a lot of sorting out to do and an awful lot of planning. A few days ago my brother came to stay, the new smoker arrived, modifications were made to the existing fire pit and a dead goat arrived in the back of little Miss Sunshine’s car. This was all in one day, oh and my mate the Traveller arrived for the weekend. So where to start?

 

The day I heard that goat was being delivered to my house, no one least of all me knew whether it would be walking into the house or carried in. There was the faint possibility that it would be walking around my garden for a few days munching flowers and all and sundry before I managed to bring myself to dispatch it. It was with some sense of relief that when it did arrive it was in two bags and had been butchered and skinned and guttered. There was no head on it but it still had its hooves attached. As I said it was in two bags, I should have said it was in two pieces, it had been cleaved completely down the middle of its backbone. This gave me a problem, how was I going to fix it onto a spit and secondly it was rather larger than I had anticipated, it must have weighed 60 pounds so where was I going to store it hygienically? Also, how do you marinate something so big?

By the day of my mums birthday which has become known as Ghastanbury (cos its held at the same time as Glastonbury, get it?) I had managed to overcome all of these problems with some help from my friends. A dry rub was mixed up and the goat was coated, placed in several large bags and stored in a garden shed packed with ice and tins of very cold beer. I had also defrosted 6 pieces of beef brisket, one leg of lamb and a rolled pork shoulder and given them all the same treatment. I managed to fill the two smokers with charcoal and fill the new fire pit with the same. The plan was that early in the morning I would be able to pour fire lighter fluid over all of the charcoal, throw some matches at it and then stand back until it glowed, place the meat in situ and then sit back and drink beer till the guests arrived. All in all Friday the 22^nd was hectic but it went smoothly. I finally got to bed at around one am dreaming of the great plan.

After a great day cooking, It all started to go pear shaped at around eight pm. The food had gone well, everyone was really into the swing of things, it was raining but we did not care however the bourbon had run out! BBB (Big Bad Brad) had stayed sober and offered to take me to the off licence to buy another bottle and so dressed and looking a complete twat I jumped into the car and marched into the off licence. No one said anything but I sorta knew that the counter assistants were dying to laugh but to their credit they didn’t. Armed with a full bottle of Jim Beam I arrived back at the barbie and proceeded to call everyone a poof who would not take a swig. Surprisingly enough most did and the bottle ran out in an alarmingly short space of time. It was now time to open a bottle of Whisky and I had by this time forgotten that I hated whisky but it was a southern theme as I think the photos in the gallery show. By 11 pm The beast started throwing up in the drain and then washed his mouth out with a hose pipe and continued drinking. “That’s why they call him the beast” one wag commented. The fire was raging and the last thing I remember was trying to shove a heavy log onto the dying embers. It would appear that was around midnight. Apparently I fell over, (I have the bruises to prove it) and some one decided to put me to bed.

Legend has it that the party ended at around 3-30am. I got up at 9-30 am to get something to drink and took in the devastation around me. Ted was asleep on the couch, Little miss sunshine’s’ daughter was asleep on the couch in another room and the fire from the night before was still smouldering. The garden lights were still on and the garden itself resembled something from Vietnam that had been hit by a napalm strike. I have no idea what happened between me passing out and the final guest going home. I only knew I could not walk and every muscle I had ached and my brain hurt. There was only one thing for it, I went back to bed. It would only be a matter of time before some of my neighbours either banged on my door or pulled me in the street to complain about the smoke and the noise. One thing is for sure, spit roasting is not hard if you put enough preparation into it but you really cannot do it properly in a suburban garden with neighbours close by. The smoke is horrendous, the aftermath of the fire is something that can only be put right with a lot of time and you need around a ton of timber which is what we went through plus around 40 Kgs of charcoal.

I cant wait for the Rumo smoker to arrive, hopefully that will cause a lot less damage than a spit and be more neighbour friendly.

What a weekend! I picked up the pork on Friday gone and it was a bit of a shock as I had never actually handled such a large piece of meat before. It was huge and this only weighed 30 pounds. Anyway I made a dry rub mix called “Sweet Southern Pork Rub” containing sugar, black pepper, paprika, dry mustard and cayenne and rubbed it well into the flesh of the meat. I then placed it into a large bag and shoved it into the fridge. The following day I went to see Ted Magnum and we managed to finish the spit and the stands. After leaving Ted’s with the spit in the back of my car I unloaded and assembled the spit and built a fire pit of breeze blocks stacked upon each and interlocking. The Pit was two breeze blocks wide, three breeze blocks long and four breeze blocks high. After giving the meat another coat of rub and putting it back in the fridge it was almost time for bed.

The following morning I got up at seven am and took the meat out of the fridge to reach room temperature and then set about lighting the fire pit. This is where my problems started. It was going to be a long day and it was only early morning! It was raining and I knew that with the amount of rain that was falling I had no chance of lighting the fire pit. I hacked off a small amount of meat and managed to fit it into the oven while I sat and thought about what I was going to do. The answer was simple, put a cover over the fire pit! But.. Where do you get one at eight am in the morning? I had to wait until 10 am till the shops were open and buy a cheap gazebo to cover the pit. Buying a cheap gazebo was not easy as everyone had sold out of the really cheap ones and I ended up paying 25 pounds for one. After getting that home and assembling it I set about lighting the pit. I really can’t understand how forest fires occur. I used around 15 fire lighting cubes and a litre of fire lighting fluid to get 20 Kgs of charcoal and some dry logs to ignite and burn evenly.

Some two hours later my pit was roaring nicely and ready to take the meat. It was now around 12 noon and the meat had been cooking in the oven for 2.5 hours. I took it out and tried to get the spit through a section of the meat. It was about this time I discovered that to spit roast anything you really need something with a cavity so you can see where to place the rods through the meat and through the spit to secure it into place. With a hollow piece of meat you see what you are doing and where to push the rods through. With a solid lump you can’t, its all guesswork even with a steel rule which I used to try and guestimate the holes. Needless to say I eventually managed to secure the meat so it would not slip on the spit as it was turned and therefore cook evenly all over. It was now around 12-30 and it was only due to the help from the Bean counter that I managed to place the meat over hot flames at all. This job really cannot be done by one person alone. It takes team work. It was about this time that I rang Ted magnum to ask him where he was and he said he would be there shortly, he had a hangover!

I now realised that although it was raining it was not raining heavily enough to stop the canvas gazebo from become dangerously hot and so in the rain I stood there with a hose pipe directing water over a smouldering canvas canopy to cool it down and thus prevent it from bursting into flames. Ted arrived at around 1pm and the pair of us started to cook in earnest. For an hour or two it all went well. The canopy was cool, the fire was hot and the meat smelt heavenly. The  I realised that some sections of the meat were cooked so well that the rods holding it onto the spit were cutting through it and that as I turned the spit, the meat just hung there heavy end down. It was time to take the meat off the spit and place it onto a grill of sorts and cook it over the flames only turning it occasionally. Ted and me managed to fashion a grill from old bits of metal I had lying around and the meat was transferred to the grill. At this point I opened a bottle of bourbon (big mistake) and started to slather the meat with a Vinegar mop to stop it from drying it out. The vinegar mop was made from cider vinegar, black pepper, coarse salt, mustard powder, brown sugar, molasses, Tabasco sauce and hot red pepper flakes. It looked disgusting but smelt divine and tasted wonderful. After several shots of Bourbon it seemed like a good idea to test out the new branding iron I had and consequently Ted and me branded several sections of a large cut of meat. (see gallery for photos)

At around 4-30, just about the same time we had finished the bourbon off by, the meat thermometer reckoned that the meat was cooked and we took it off the flames and left it on a large plate to draw back some of the juices that were now oozing out the spots that were not seared with the branding iron. At around five pm the first of our guests arrived. By six pm I had a garden full and the meat was carved and served and compliments to the chef flowed along with lashing of home made apple sauce that the bean counter had been busy preparing while Ted and me did manly things like drink and make fire. So far it had been a great day……..

To be continued!

After my last post my email inbox bulged. A few said they thought the idea of spit roast goat was disgusting, a whole lot more said they wanted to try it. I guess some people are just fickle. Over the last week I have been really busy and the greenhouse I said I was going to leave fallow has been filled with summer vegetables and salad stuff. I hope to be able to pick stuff out of the greenhouse and use it as it is needed when I am cooking outside. I have done this quite successfully in the past with my herb garden and fresh herbs during the summer months have never been an issue for me.

Included in the bulging mail box was a letter from the people I had ordered the Brinkman Cimarron from informing that they no longer dealt with Brinkman owing to “quality issues” and they could not fulfil my order. They could however supply a substitute from a German company called Rumo and it would only cost me around 550 pounds more. This was considerably more than I was prepared to pay but I could not find another UK importer of the Cimarron model I wanted. They did agree to knock 250 pounds of the price for the inconvenience and I eventually decided I had no options if I wanted a decent off set smoker for this year. The total cost of the smoker including delivery is now 1200 pounds. Feeling battered in the pocket I counted up how much I have spent so far this year on BBQ stuff. It’s a lot more than I thought………..

I went to see the Beast on Monday evening gone and returned with a full boot load of cut logs from his garden. The next evening he turned up at mine with another load. I made a few trips to the fabricators shop to collect the final pieces for the home made spit and as they were not finished or as in one case made incorrectly I hope to have them in place for tomorrow morning. I called in to see Ted Magnum with what bits I had and discussed the project so far. Ted has done a magnificent job with welding drilling and painting. Unlike me Ted has a tendency to over engineer and he should really be working for Mercedes, whereas I like things to just work and not overly worry about the odd 1/16 of an inch here and there. On that note I would like to add that both he and I speak different languages. He is obsessed with millimetres and as I try telling him I still work in Imperial. Metric was not invented when I went to school!  Aesthetics are a secondary consideration. In general I like things to look as Heath Robinson as possible so people can see things have been home made and time has been spent making things fit and do a job they were never intended to do in the first place. This to me is half the fun of making the spit. Ted like’s his engineering to look as though it has just come out a showroom and he gets as much fun out of making things as perfect as possible.

Tomorrow I should also take delivery of a lump of pig weighing around 30 pounds in weight both Ted and myself are hoping the spit will be ready on time which means finished for Saturday night. I am also taking delivery of 40 or so breeze blocks with which to build the fire pit over which the spit will stand. No amount of descriptive text would do what we intend to build any justice so I will post some photos in the gallery of the finished article some time next week. Hopefully I am now up to date and will let you all know what the meat is like when I go to the butchers tomorrow afternoon