Revolutionary Stuff

I’ve got a great friend down yonder in Texas land. His name is Michael Farmer and he runs a company called KA-Ranch BBQ Company. I got hooked up with him a couple years ago when he offered to send me some rub samples. The package arrived and he had included a handful of Texan style recipes and a tshirt! His products made a great impression on me and I enjoyed the stuff he sent me (except I never could get that XL shirt to shrink enough to really fit me. 🙂

Since I started publishing StoryQue, I asked Michael if he’d like to contribute to the magazine. We had sort of lost track of each other, but he was eager to help with the magazine. In the February issue, we published his Dr Pepper Brisket Recipe and in the upcoming March issue, we’re running the story behind his new “David’s Overall Rib Rub” and step by step instructions on how to smoke ribs for beginners.

Michael was kind enough to send me another package of goodies and it arrived today Priority Mail. Everything was packed very well with styrofoam peanuts and bubble wrap. He gave me a pint of Fort Worth Rib and Brisket Sauce, a one pound bag of David’s Overall Rib Rub, a glass shaker each of Wild Willy’s No 1derful Rub and Trail-Dust (these two didn’t have labels yet).

(more…)

The biggest challenge with an offset smoker is keeping the paint on and around the firebox looking good. The heat in the firebox is intense and it takes regular maintenance to keep the firebox from rusting. And if your firebox metal is thin, the problem will be even worse than if you have a Meadow Creek Smoker or other heavy duty smoker.

Meadow Creek’s insulation upgrade for their smoker fireboxes has been a great success. The insulation keeps more heat inside the smoker, which keeps the paint nicer on the outside and drastically reduces the amount of charcoal and wood it takes to cook.

Turns out, there is something even more—something beyond this fancy-pants double-wall insulated firebox—you can add to a Meadow Creek smoker trailer to make it even more durable and maintenance free. As is often the case, we can blame this idea (a good kind of blame) on Tom from Smoke’n Dudes.

(more…)

I have been tempted to rename the Meadow Creek Pig Roaster series, because it confuses some people who don’t know how they work. For instance, a common question goes something like this: Can a Meadow Creek Pig Roaster cook low and slow? The answer is yes, you absolutely can.

Meadow Creek has been building pig roasters since 1980. They were first designed to cook a whole pig, and they certainly do a great job cooking pigs. There is really no easier way to roast a pig than on a Meadow Creek Pig Roaster.

However, they are also a fantastic choice for about any kind of meat you want to cook low and slow. The PR60 and PR72 have lots of room and they make it easy to crank out barbecue perfection. Or you can add a grill pan and grill tons of burgers and steaks. So these cookers are extremely versatile.

(more…)

A couple weeks ago, we had a lot of fun cooking for Open House at Cold Springs Garden Center, the other company Marlin owns with my Dad. The event lasted two days, Friday and Saturday. We served homemade donuts and coffee in the mornings. Around 10:30 we started giving away grilled sausage sandwiches and barbecue samples.

In this post, I want to share some of the memories from those two days and entice you with ribs, wings, chicken, and Amish-made sausage from Lancaster County, PA.

We grilled the sausages on a BBQ42 Chicken Cooker. For samples, we grilled party wings with the sausage and smoked ribs (how growling delicious!) and split chicken breasts on my Meadow Creek SQ36 Smoker.

(more…)

Last week Meadow Creek had their annual dealer meeting and Open House. Marlin and I always make sure we’re there for the dealer meeting and at least part of the open house.

It was absolutely great being there again. I came home with some new inspiration, as well as confirmations of things I need to be doing to sell more Meadow Creek equipment. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t promote schemes that trick people into buying our smokers and grills. I’ll leave that for the schematic tricksters who are content with forcing people to make decisions.

My goal is to educate the people in my market and help them achieve their goals. One of those goals is to grill chicken for events, such as fund-raisers, auctions, open houses, weddings, etc. Not just grill chicken, but chicken that is perfect from head to toe. Fully cooked on the bone, but not dried out on the surface. Cooked uniformly from east to west, north to south. Not just perfect chicken, but huge amounts of it.

Does this sound like your dream? Meadow Creek chicken cookers make it easy as pie to grill perfect chicken for hundreds. It was fun to see it done again last week.

(more…)

I have an SQ36 Smoker for my own personal use. The SQ36 is great for cooking in the back yard, front yard, side yard, or on the porch roof. I love it. I can pull it out onto the grass, fire it up, and have a nice little time smoking with the boys.

But someday, when I “get big”, I would really like to have a TS250 smoker on a trailer. It would have a BBQ42 chicken cooker mounted to the front. The chicken cooker would be insulated so I could grill more than twice as much meat with the same amount of charcoal. The firebox on the smoker would be insulated too. The paint outside the firebox would stay nice a lot longer with less maintenance because I invested in a double wall and insulation.

(more…)