Hello from South Jersey!
It's hard to say where my BBQ journey started. Did it stem from camping with friends and family and at Boy Scouts and cooking 75% of our meals over the coal bed or in the Dutch oven from the fire we had the night before? Visiting my moms parents and my aunts and uncles in the foothills of North Carolina and dining at various mom and pop BBQ joints every other night? Or was it my dads side of the family tradition of cooking plank shad in front of an open fire at his grandparents and at the gun club every April? What ever the reason may be, looking back on those memories is what got me interested in BBQ and smoking. Growing older and longing for those tastes and memories to come back, I started visiting so called "BBQ" restaurants as often as I could. Sadly for places such as Famous Daves, Fat Jacks, and Applebees with their cheap bbq sauce dumped on top of over cooked pork loin and boiled ribs wasn't cutting it for me. After years of disappointment, I went to the old saying "if you want something done right, you're better off doing it yourself". I got my first smoker from a friend of mine 3 summers ago after he saw me looking on Craigs List looking for a cheap bullet smoker. He told me to stop looking because he had an offset cooker just sitting under a cover against his shed that hasn't seen the light of day in years and he was tired of looking at it. So for the price of a rack of ribs once I got proficient with my cooking, I had a smoker. After a little bit of soap, water and elbow grease to clean out the leaves, cobwebs and charcoal that had been sitting for who knows how long, I was ready to give it a seasoning run and cook. It was an interesting first experience. It didn't hold heat worth a damn, leaked like crazy, but I stuck it out and made it work. My little 5lb pork butt took every bit of 10+ hours to cook because I couldn't hold a temp for more than 10 minutes, but once it was done, it was the best pulled pork I had in a VERY long time. Fast forward to now; I have since upgraded my smoker to something that works a little bit better and have gotten MUCH better with my cooking. My favorite things to cook (mostly because I do well cooking them) are pork butts and ribs. Still have a long way to go, but I love learning new techniques every day. I'm constantly on amazingribs.com when I'm not outside or in the kitchen cooking, just reading articles and recipes to learn everything I can about cooking. Glad to be here, and thanks to Meathead for such an awesome website and book.
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Welcome to the Pit! -
Welcome from Indiana... knowledge on dutch oven and open coal cooking is more than welcome... we look forward to having you around and sharing with you and learning from you.Comment
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its been a while since I've cooked on the Dutch oven, but I'm trying to re-learn again. best meal I've ever had was Dutch oven stew, and peach cobbler and apple crisp with the Boy Scouts -
Pitmaster134 , there is just something about a meal cooked over open fire... including in a dutch oven... almost seems like a dying art that a few people are desperately trying to learn while they can. -
Amen to that! I have our old cast iron set that was bestowed on me. I just need to go get it
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Welcome to the pit. What part of south jersey? Just might have ya meet up sometime. I'm in the Berlin area of south jerseyComment
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Welcome to The Pit Pitmaster134! Great intro! Thanks for joining up with us. What are you cooking on now?
Since this is your first post, please check out our homework assignment post for new members, it contains a few how-tos and please-dos. This will help you learn your way around so you can get the best experience from our forum.
Also, it's very important that you:- Give us an email address you actually use. You can set or change your email on file with us by clicking your name in the upper-right, then User Settings, then the Notifications tab.
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Hope to hear & see more from you!
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Welcome to the pit, enjoy the Wikipedia of BBQ.Comment
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Pitmaster134, Welcome to The Pit! You are Now Enrolled in the BBQ Univ.! Attendance and Participation are Mandarory!
Eat Well and Prosper! From a Backyard Cremator in Fargo ND, DanComment
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Welcome to the Pit! There is a lot of enjoyment in pork butts and ribs!Comment
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