Mostly Semantics

So round abouts 2 months past I says to Vermonstrous I says “hey Vermonstrous, ‘member last spring when we made ourselves a meat-smoker just like god hisself intended? And how we smoked us up a whole mess o’ pig and holy shit when are we doing it again?” Well, the natural time for smoking meats came and passed and, though you wouldn’t know it from reading our blog, we did, in fact, smoke meats aplenty. We’re not very good bloggers. We are, however, excellent makers of all things bbq. There are pictures, so even though it’s a few weeks late (writing collaboratively is substantially more difficult than you might imagine), we thought we’d share.

The real question was not so much what, but how much. Pulled pork is my favorite, but some people don’t dig on swine, so in addition to our two 8 lb boston butts (oddly, that’s a pig shoulder) we also acquired (from some ridiculously overpriced purveyor of meats, last time we go local) a 7 pound beef brisket. Those Discordians in the audience will applaud our total flesh tonnage, while those more lingual-minded conspiracy theorists may note the 4 ‘B’s involved. Pirates fans? I dunno.

We had pretty much covered the same routine last year, though to be honest we had some difficulty remembering what all to cook. Despite the proximity to KC in which I spent my formative years, I have since moved beyond the sweet tomato-y sauce of my birth to embrace what I understand as ‘true’ southern bbq - pulled pork, served with your standard-issue creamy slaw and the crucial Carolina-style hot-ass vinegar sauce, on some cheap white bread. The Slaw Hog. An American original. Just the words make my mouth water. Beats the shit out of a BLT, Colbert. So I take responsibility for those items, as well as for the baked beans a la Flay, a returning champion from last year, leaving Hector Elizondo making appetizers and V on the potato salad, and desserts aplenty (her specialty). Despite all this, and knowing that we invariably make too much food, we felt like there was something missing. We felt like there could be at least one more thing that would tie it all together. Drawing on my favorite side at the area’s only reputable supplier of real bbq I suggested some sort of cucumber salad. When V passed this gem of a recipe along I knew we were on the right track. CUCUMBER!? WATERMELON!?!? HOISIN!?!?! Good christ I’m hungry.

In her typically grandiose fashion, V was all-out and all over the dessert menu before I even arrived for preparation of the savories. In addition to some amazing Krispy-kreme bread pudding (h/t to CV for the donut supply) that was a returning champion from last year, she decided to make homemade ice cream sandwiches. For one she made homemade mint-chip using her own home-grown mint, resulting in the most delightfully minty ice cream I believe anyone has ever tasted. Combined with the homemade oreo-style cookies, sweet jesus was dessert ever taken care of.

The pork we prepped more or less as the great culinerd god above ordained, I went hunting somewhat further afield for a suitable brisket recipe. Both were smoked, low and slow, for untold numbers of hours spent, well, smoking, as well as watching movies and the like. The pre-party is almost always superior to the party I find, but perhaps it’s because I hate people (not you though, reader who also attended the party in question! you I love!). The beans were readied and left on low in the oven for overnight cooking, with the salads and such left for preparation the next morning (prior, of course, to guests’ arrival.)

Fast forward to the brutal 9am wake-up call (all the more brutal when you consider that this could not have been more than six hours past our departure from Chez Vermonstrous) with the even more brutal telephone conversation. V: “How long were the beans supposed to be in?” Me: “Ten to twelve hours.” “Well, it’s been 8 and they’re burnt.”

BALLS!

BBQ without baked beans? But we’re trying to make a TRADITIONAL AMERICAN BBQ. Dammit, I come from America, and in America we eat goddamned baked beans with our BBQ. The beans were beyond fixing, but we got some canned replacement beans and accomplished something approximating the real thing by just gussying them up with the ‘bean goop’ etc from the recipe. I made some cole slaw and my shit was doooo-oone for the day. 11 am I cracked my first of untold numbers of beers for the day, the remainder of which was more satisfying than I can adequately describe. I would advise you to smoke yourself some meat and do basically all of the other things we did if you were sadly unable to attend the event in question and would like to approximate the experience yourself. Consider this a how-to.

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