I’ve been wanting to follow-up with more pictures of our big barbecue event at the Open House on Mother’s Day weekend. Here are a few more shots to feed your eyes and make your stomach rumble.

I cooked on my SQ36 offset smoker both days of the Open House, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. We smoked bone-in chicken breasts, Italian sausages, pork ribs, and Boston butts and got rave reviews.

So here is a little to make you wish you were here. 🙂  Click a photo to enlarge it.

Please leave a comment to let me know what you think.

Have fun,

Lavern

Recently, one of our customers asked for advice on how to handle pulled pork cooked in advance since Boston butts can take all day to cook. He’s cooking on a Meadow Creek TS120 BBQ Smoker with a BBQ42 Chicken Cooker added to the front. Here are some tips for cooking Boston butts for crowds.

In catering, most of the time it will be very impractical to serve pulled pork fresh off the smoker. Not only would you need to be on-site extremely early, but also you would need to guess how long it will take and try to meet deadlines, which can be terribly stressful with Boston butts.

You can smoke your meat the day before. Pull it, put it into foil pans, and cover it with foil. Make absolutely sure you cool the meat correctly. Then pull your smoker out to the party the next day for show and use it to heat the pork in the foil pans. You can also use your smoker to cook chicken or meats that get done in a few hours if needed.

If you don’t want to use your BBQ smoker to heat the pulled pork, you can heat it at the party in an electric roaster.

You could also experiment with smoking the butts the day before and refrigerating them overnight. The next day put them back on the smoker at the party to heat them and after they reach temp, pull them on-site at the party. This is just a idea. You need to experiment with it before doing it large scale. With this you need to make sure you cool these large chunks of meat properly. I think it could easily be done if you have adequate refrigeration.

We are having a great time today with the SQ36 BBQ Smoker and the PR42 Pig Roaster fired up, cooking 28 pork butts. If you doubt the seriousness, come on over and you’ll see what I mean. Cold Springs Garden Center (parent company of Yoder’s Smoky Mountain Barbecue) is having open house and Mother’s Day celebration Friday and Saturday (May 6 and 7).

On the menu is homemade donuts and coffee in the forenoon, pulled pork sandwiches and BBQ samples around noon. If you drop by tomorrow (Friday) we’ll be cooking more pork butts for the next day. We plan to have the SQ36 Offset Smoker fired both days with chicken, sausage, and pork ribs for samples (until they are consumed). All free, by the way.

If you are close enough and it suits, please do come by. While you’re here, you can check out our fresh load of Meadow Creek inventory, watch the Meadow Creek equipment in action, and the best—fill your belly with authentic southern-style BBQ!

Here are some pictures I shot today to show you what’s happening around here.

Click a photo to enlarge it and start the slideshow.

Leave a comment to let me know what you think.

Have fun,

Lavern Gingerich

We’ve just added some new photo galleries to help you explore these revolutionary barbecue smokers from Meadow Creek.

We’re not done adding photos, but you can browse a separate photo gallery for each cooker in the Barbecue Smokers category.

Here ya go: Barbeque Smoker Photos

Or you can hop over to the smoker pages in my store:

PR36 Barbecue Smoker
SQ36 Offset Barbecue Smoker
TS60 Offset Barbecue Smoker
TS120P Push-Around BBQ Smoker
TS120 Barbecue Smoker Trailer
TS250 Barbecue Smoker Trailer
TS500 Barbecue Smoker Trailer

Also check out the main Barbecue Smokers page.

I have so much other stuff to share with you, like recipes, how tos on grilling and smoking, pics of what we’ve cooked, and a few “good” reasons why you should not buy one of these awesome Meadow Creek cookers from us, ever.

Maybe you are curious what is all to come. Sign up to my email list using the form in the sidebar or subscribe to my RSS feed.

Lavern

Now you can learn how simple it is to grill juicy chicken breasts that attack your taste buds on your first bite. Today’s recipe comes from a special guest and friend, Michael Pitre. He has developed a tasty line of barbecue seasonings under the name Heaven Made Products. Click here to check out his amazing stuff.

Tell him I sent you, and he’ll include a free gift when you order a 16 oz. shaker ($2.50 value).

This recipe shows you how to grill bacon-wrapped, skinless boneless chicken breasts—”Heaven Made” style. These instructions are for using a gas grill, so if you are using charcoal, you’ll just need to know how to fire your grill and the time it takes to cook will vary. But I dare say your bacon-wrapped grilled chicken will be a bit more heavenly yet.  🙂

Enjoy the recipe and have fun!

Lavern Gingerich

In this recipe, we are using boneless, skinless chicken breasts. You can also use thighs or drumsticks. Thaw the meat and bring it to room temperature.

Tip: If your meat comes with skin, leave the skin on for more flavor. I would add an additional minute of cooking on the skin side to crisp the skin and render more of the fat.

Trim excess fat off the meat. This reduces flare ups and the amount of calories in the dish.

Season the chicken with Heaven Made Products Extra Spicy All Purpose Seasoning. This seasoning is a Cajun-based seasoning with extra Cayenne Pepper in it, but this Cayenne Pepper is big on the flavor scale and low on the heat scale like Popeye’s Fried Chicken. Popeye’s uses cayenne pepper to add to the distinct flavor of their Famous Fried Chicken. This seasoning will not burn your mouth.

Next, season the chicken with Heaven Made Products Steak Seasoning. This seasoning has lots of garlic flavor in it along with black pepper, onion, and my famous base ingredient that really helps increase the natural flavors of the dish being cooked.

Above: Heaven Made Products Extra Spicy Seasoning and Steak Seasoning.

Wrap the seasoned chicken in thin cut bacon and secure it with toothpicks that have been soaked in water for at least 10 minutes.

I heat the grill on high for 10 minutes, then turn off all of the burners. Next, I spray a small area of the grill with cooking oil and place a piece of chicken on that spot and repeat till all pieces are on the grill. Once the chicken is on the grill, I turn the burners back on high for one minute to sear the bacon and chicken. Next, I turn the burners down to medium flame to reduce flare-ups.

I use my handy Pam spray lid to prop my grill lid open a crack, so I can watch for flare ups and either blow them out or spray them with water. I cook the chicken for 4-5 minutes on each side. The time it takes to cook your chicken might differ depending on your own grill.

By this time the chicken is looking good. Flip it back over using a pig-tailed meat turner and grill them for another five minutes or until the internal temperature reaches 150-160 degrees F.

Now doesn’t that look good? 🙂  The chicken is done, but still juicy and the bacon is semi-crispy. Sides pictured above are Maple Flavored Baked Beans and Broccoli and Cheese Rice.

(Don’t forget to remove all of the toothpicks before diving into this dish.)

To step it up a notch, top the bacon-wrapped chicken with your favorite cheese right before removing from the grill and give the cheese time to melt. We use Pepper Jack Cheese.

Thanks for reading and God bless!

Michael Pitre
Heaven Made Products

PS. Lavern here again. I’d like to say I’ve used Michael’s rubs and his steak seasoning is simply amazing on grilled chicken. My wife claimed it was some of the best chicken she ever had. And by the way, Michael just told me that he will include a free gift with your order of a 16 oz. shaker if you tell him I sent you.  🙂

Do you have a good barbecue sauce to share? Today I’ve got two exciting outlets for your sauce creations!

2011 Sauces of Honor

Here is your chance to see how your sauce compares with the best of the best. National Barbecue News is hosting their first Sauces of Honor barbecue sauce contest.

Kell of NBBQN says, “This will be the most unique sauce competition in the world.” He says anyone is welcome to enter. The goal of this sauce contest is to honor the best barbecue sauces that accompany different cuts of smoked meat.

If you have a sauce you feel great about, read the rules and fire your sample(s) off to National Barbecue News now.

The deadline to enter is this coming Friday at 5 PM (April 15, 2011).

Download the rules and application. (PDF format)

If you have a slow connection, you might want to right click on the link and choose “Save Link As…” or something like that and save it to your Desktop.

My Barbecue Sauce Recipe Book

Maybe you have a barbecue sauce recipe that you want to share with everyone. Some of my subscribers want to learn how to make amazing barbecue sauces.

I’d like to compile a bunch of BBQ sauce recipes into one big “saucy” recipe book. So I need you, my subscribers and blog readers, to help me out.

Click here to submit your recipe, and it’s very likely I’ll put it in my book. Also, I’ll be sure to send you a copy once it’s done. 🙂

Without the help of my readers, it won’t happen. So I look forward to hearing from you.

Have fun!

Lavern Gingerich

PS. What good is sauce without a good BBQ smoker or grill? Check out Meadow Creek’s revolutionary barbecue cookers and trailers.