What's for lunch?

BenTenn said:
Really never heard of Jim n Nicks? Wow
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Looks like it's a chain and there's not one near me, and I guess nobody I know has ever eaten there and thought enough of it to mention it while I've been around. I'd never heard of it before.
 
Vercingetorix said:
Looks like it's a chain and there's not one near me, and I guess nobody I know has ever eaten there and thought enough of it to mention it while I've been around. I'd never heard of it before.
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Everyone i know likes it except me. Based on that alone, you would probably like it.
 
BenTenn said:
Everyone i know likes it except me. Based on that alone, you would probably like it.
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Ha, that's probably true.

Looks like there's one within 10 miles of where Mrs Verc works. She's worked there for 15 years, so she's been to just about every restaurant within driving distance for lunch many times over the years with various coworkers. Says she's never heard of it either.
 
Vercingetorix said:
Ha, that's probably true.

Looks like there's one within 10 miles of where Mrs Verc works. She's worked there for 15 years, so she's been to just about every restaurant within driving distance for lunch many times over the years with various coworkers. Says she's never heard of it either.
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What location is it? It may be the bad one I was talking about, ha.
 
LotteryPick said:
What location is it? It may be the bad one I was talking about, ha.
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Smyrna, Georgia. I'm not saying it's bad or anything; I've just saying that somehow I've never heard of it. And I'm a serious fan of smoked dead pig, so I'm sort of horrified.
 
Vercingetorix said:
Smyrna, Georgia. I'm not saying it's bad or anything; I've just saying that somehow I've never heard of it. And I'm a serious fan of smoked dead pig, so I'm sort of horrified.
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Yeah, that's the place I wasn't impressed with.

Me and a bunch of guys that work at JNN went to the Braves opener last season and that's where we stopped by to grab a bite. For whatever reason, it wasn't as good as we were used to.

I wouldn't go to that one.
 
Apparently no one goes to that one, because Mrs Verc works with a bunch of good old boys and I would have thought she's been to every barbecue place within half an hour of her office.
 
Barbecue isn't a process that scales well to a chain, where consistency is of paramount importance. You can open 500 pizza restaurants and teach teenagers how to make your pizza the way you want pretty easily because mozzarella cheese melts the same everywhere. Barbecue's totally different. I'm a semi-serious, occasional barbecuer, and there are a ton of variables that I'm always fighting every time. The weather matters. The wind matters. Different chunks of meat cook differently. Charcoal doesn't always burn the same. I've been doing it for 15 years and I still feel like I'm no good at it. I have no idea how even a single-store operation like Ridgewood just bangs it out as consistently as they do. Can't imagine how you could scale that to a chain without reducing it to a formula that eliminates much of what makes barbecue special to begin with.
 
Speaking of which, it's almost time for the spring barbecue here at Verc Manor. I build the fire after happy hour on Friday; I throw the pork shoulder on the smoker about 9 pm; I stay up all night drinking beer. It makes me feel amazing in a Scotty-drinking-whiskey-outside-in-his-robe sort of way, and the barbecue I end up with is always really good, but I never feel like I have any idea what the hell I'm doing.
 
(Trying to word this in a way to keep the perverted minds from calling it homo)

I want to start smoking meats, not real sure where to start though. Guess it is best to just trial and error it? Do you prefer using boston butts or briskets or other? Any preference for wood?
 
Scotty's Flat Top said:
(Trying to word this in a way to keep the perverted minds from calling it homo)

I want to start smoking meats, not real sure where to start though. Guess it is best to just trial and error it? Do you prefer using boston butts or briskets or other? Any preference for wood?
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Just start, simple as that. As Verc said, there are so many different variables that will come into play that anybody trying to tell you the "right" way to do it is more than likely going to be wrong. There are techniques that can be universal but how you prepare it, what temp you smoke at, the type of sauce (if you sauce) is going to be your own preference so someone else's opinion really isn't going to mean all that much. For instance, your two questions, do you like beef or pork more? I've had some amazing brisket before but I'll take smoked pig 99 times out of 100 so I'd always go with the whole picnic but that probably isn't true of everybody. Wood is the same way, with pork there is some value to using different types of fruit wood but I just like consistency (or as close to consistent as can be expected) so I pretty much stick with hickory every time. But meet 5 different bbq-ers and you'll get 5 different answers to which wood to use and they'll all swear that theirs is the best.
 
Scotty's Flat Top said:
(Trying to word this in a way to keep the perverted minds from calling it homo)

I want to start smoking meats, not real sure where to start though. Guess it is best to just trial and error it? Do you prefer using boston butts or briskets or other? Any preference for wood?
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You need a smoker. You can spend as much money as you want here, obviously. I have the Weber Smokey Mountain bullet-shaped smoker; it does the job. There are probably ways to jury-rig a standard Weber kettle grill. Alton Brown built a smoker out of a ceramic flower pot on an old episode of Good Eats.

You need a method to start out with. Something like this. I own the cookbook that page mentions; it's a good one.

I'm no expert; I only do this two or three times a year. But everything that comes off my smoker is delicious and it's a lot of fun. It's the closest thing a grown man gets to a legitimate reason to stay up all night drinking beer.
 
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