I take the easy road

I get lots of questions about how I cook barbecue. The simple answer is I don’t! My ole Hickory barbecue pits do the work. I learned a long time ago that I am too old to stay up all night tending a wood barrel fire to keep a smoker slow cooking a pig. There is always plenty of work to do after the meat is cooked so why wear your self out actually smoking it?

For those of you that don’t know Ole Hickory, based in Cape Girardeau Missouri, makes a wide selection of smokers. I own a CTO model (holds about 150 pounds of meat) and an EL-ED model (on Grillzilla) which holds over 700 pounds of meat. Both smokers do an equal job smoking. The CTO is best for small loads because it’s easy to clean up. The EL-ED is the only way for big loads but takes longer to clean.

The ole Hickory secret is its automatic. You set the temperature, add charcoal or wood, and fifteen hours later you got perfect smoked meat. It even turns itself off and holds the load at a warm temperature. How easy is that?

On the EL-ED I put in about fifteen pounds of Kingsford charcoal, a few sticks of apple wood (when cooking pork for pulled barbecue) and set the thermostat at 225 degrees. A gas burner comes on and starts the charcoal and wood burning. When the temperature hits 225 the gas cuts off the burning wood/charcoal maintains the temperature. Pork only takes in so much smoke so that happens in the first two hours as the apple wood burns. The next twelve to thirteen hours the charcoal supplies most of the heat and some more smoke flavor. The gas will automatically turn on to maintain temperature especially on cold nights.

What comes out is tender, moist, pork with just the right amount of wood smoke. Then the real work starts which is pulling the pork and adding the spices.

Now you might think “Tom you are missing the fun of hanging out with friends and tending the fire”, well actually no, we still do that we just get to bed at a normal time.

Stay tune and I will tell you how the barbecue is perfected on my next post. If you would like to learn more about my new book “How to make $5,000 a month from your driveway” or just have questions about barbecue visit my web site at http://bigtom.org.