OK it's over

Well the BBQ is over, but I am still recovering.  I decided to document the experience so I have to finish that, plus there are so many good pics that came from everyone, so let me start off where I left off:

Saturday Morning:
So I awoke first thing in the morning and fired up the smoker.  It was easy to get it to the desired 225 degrees and with the water pan steaming, I added a mixture of mesquite and hickory to the smoke box.  We are getting ready to put the 2 8 lb pork butts in.  I stick to using only a little mesquite and then mostly hickory with the pork.  Mesquite is definitely the choice in Texas, and everything is smoked in it heavily at traditional BBQ joints.  Mesquite, however, can have a very acrid smoke and it is easy to overpower everything.  The hickory os powerful, but it is more bold than acrid and can be used generously. 

The dry rub I put on it the evening before has become a gooey coating, perfect for BBQing.  Once the smoke is rising, the pork goes in and I begin cleaning the house.  Having a cat sux because there is hair everywhere....and I do mean everywhere.  I did a preliminary cleaning the weekend before and it still amazes me. 

It's about 2 hours in now and I need to begin basting the pork.  I use a mixture of water, apple cider vinegar and bourbon, plus spices like pepper, pepper flakes, cayenne and salt.  You have to use the salt.  It pulls the everything into the meat, and without it your BBQ will be flavorless. 

12 pm - I get the call at noon that the crawfish have been delivered to my parents house out on Long Island.  It takes me another 2 hours to even leave my house.  Unfortunately, I don't actually have an address and Fedex usually has their head up their ass in the field where I live, so to be on the safe side, I have them delivered to an actual address.  Hence the roadtrip.  I baste the pork, add more wood and head out.  This gives me a chance to pick up more cigars, a few items I forgot form the grocery store and to just sit down outside of my house for a minute.

People give me angry stares as I bob and weave through the Memorial Day shopping crowd at the grocery store.  Sorry folks, I am in a rush unlike yourselves who want to read every ingredient on a jar of applesauce, park your cart in the middle of an aisle or haggle over the 10 cent coupon that you swear isn't expired. 

I get to my parent's house and finally get the crawfish.  They ship in a big styrofoam box and I swear that Fedex drop kicks them every year.  They are leaking all over the place and I have to mitigate this with some garbage bags.  Ever get crawfish juice in your car?....you don't want to.

I make it back home and immediately start processing the crawfish.  THye have to be kept alive for 24 hours, so I hose them off vigorously and put the sack in a fridge covered in newspaper.  It keeps them in a stgate of suspended animation for a while and reduces their metabolic needs.  Ok back home to check on the pork and process the rest of the stuff.

I've been away so I need to check on the smoker.  Add more water, which keeps the humidity up.  Anyone who has ever taken a class on weather will learn about water and pressure systems moving from high to low pressures.  Same in a smoker...you want the water to stay in the meat and not move out into the dry air of the smoker.  So to mitigate that, you add tons of steam to raise the humidity.  More wood and then back in the kitchen. 

Ahhhhhh....time to do the fatties.  For those of you not familiar wiht this BBQ lingo, fatties are a roll made from some sort of ground meat, stuffed with your choice of whatever (I have even seen one stuffed with White Castle sliders), wrapped in more meat and then smoked.  Today we are doing 3 types:  the southwest, the italian and the polish/german.  The southwest is JD sausage with chipotle and jalapeno peppers, bbq sausce, onion and cheddar cheese.  Polish/german is JD sausage, stuffed with kielbasa, muenster cheese, sauerkraut  and mustard.  Both of these were bacon wrapped.  Now for the crowning jewel:  the italian - Italian sausage meat stuffed with cappicola, mortadella, salami, mozzerella cheese and slathered with pesto.  To keep with the italian theme, I used pancetta instead of bacon.  It was beautiful.  Off to the fridge with you guys till tomorrow.

Using the bag method to roll out the sausage..so worth it.

The southwest beginning it's roll

The bacon weave

The beginning of the italian

The seond half of the italian

and....the pancetta

OK I am not nearly done but I have to get some breakfast.  I'll continue more later.  Drool over the pics. 

One more day closer

So I spent most of the day prepping the appetizers and I just threw the dry rub on the pork.  Lots of folks calling excited about the weekend.  I am beat already, but I'm glad that I'm getting some of this stuff done in advance so I can enjoy the day when it finally comes.  Enjoy the pics.  Crawfish coming tomorrow morning. 

Checking the roux with the penny test.  Should be the same color.

Crawfish stuffing almost done

Fried pickles getting breaded

First of the jalapenos being stuffed

'Penos are done

Beginning the pork. 

Pork is done

Little beer for me and a little for the pork.

Shopping complete

Ok so almost 8 hours of food shopping all over Long Island has lead me to an overstuffed fridge, a Popeye's chicken dinner and a desire to pass out on the couch.  Over 50 lbs of meat plus everything else.  The brisket was only 13 lbs, but I liked it a lot more than the 17lb one.  If you haven't ever been to a Western Beef (and you love meat) you need to get your ass to one.  Half of the store is a walk in refrigerator full of huge cuts of meat.  They will also custom trim anything for you as well.  It was like I had died and gone to heaven.

The guy at Costco hooked me up with a really big pack of the pork butt and it looks extra fatty.  It's not even 8 am on Friday and I am already prepping the crawfish tails to begin stuffing the jalapenos and pre-breading the pickles.  Both have to be frozen to fry properly.  This also really helps reduce my workload the day of the BBQ, since I can just grab everything out of the freezer and throw it in the deep fryer. 

I am not looking forward to the rest of the housework to be completed today, but if I can get it all done, then tomorrow is just relaxing and beginning the smoking process. 

A week out...

Ok so it's a little over a week away and I am tying up the last of the home improvements:  Outdoor speakers, putting up the pool, finishing deck addons.  I have been searching for recipes for a few things and combining a few recipes to get my desired results.  I can't wait and am praying for sunshine with all this rain we have been having.  I am going to be blogging the experience this year and adding pics to the whole thing.  I figured that it would give me something to do while everything was cooking and also allow people to see what was going on as we were getting ready for the party.  Hope to see you all there...otherwise you can see what you missed.