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I haven't been around the vwbb much these days, but I'm still cooking on my wsms harder than ever. Due to a cancellation of a local contest, my comp schedule went down to only one this year, so I talked a local chef/restaurant owner, whom I've developed a friendship with over the years, into...

I dig octopus, but sourcing them can be tricky. I usually pick one up when in Chinatown NYC, as they usually have frozen 5 pounders somewhere. But if you've ever cooked a 5 lb octopus, you know it looses a ton of water weight and ends up pretty meager. Tried of playing around with little guys...

I cooked my first brisket exactly 7 years ago. It was a practice for a comp a month later. I went hot and fast, and it was good. I did the same thing at the KCBS comp and ended up 5th out of 50, and was pretty proud. After 19 contests, brisket turns out to be one of our stronger categories with...

Our recent GC earned us entry to the Royal Ivitational. I'll be on the look out for TVWBB members so be sure to stop by and say hi. And as a Royal rookie, I'll take any advice anyone wants to offer

I finally switched cameras after putting up with my hobbled rebel t2i for far too long. My wife got me a Sony alpha a6000 for my bday and photography suddenly became fun again. It's also time to think about competitions, so I broke out a new injection that I purchased at the KC Bbq Store...

Ever since I first heard about them last year, I've been kind of obsessed with the idea of a ramen burger. Not long after, I successfully made a ramen "bun," but the entire burger never came to fruition until last night. To make a "bun," I cooked some ramen and packed it into a two deli...

A group of friends and I decided to do a little collaborative cooking and make a brisket banh mi. I contributed the brisket and followed the recipe out of the Fatty Cue/Crab cookbook: Eat With Your Hands. The recipe in the book is called "Fatty Brisket" and had an interesting mix of SE Asian...

I've been itching to fire up my oven, as it spent all of the polar vortex in my garage. Here's a shot of what it looked like last July. It's considerably more rusty now. I'm still playing around with my fuel configuration. This time I used a wsm ring to bank the coals around the outside of...

For my birthday, my wife surprised me with an Anova immersion circulator, which was a big upgrade over my previous set up which was a large electric food warmer with a PID controller. The Anova is way fast, more consistent, and takes up less counter space when running. It pains me to think that...

I'll admit to being a little obsessed with lamb ribs after first trying some at Jack Stack in KC this past winter. My first shot at some racks of my own, came last weekend when we took a little road trip to Cleveland and found some at the West side market. The bill for the two came in under $9...

If you've ever bought a piece of belly at an Asian market, you might have recognized some ribs hidden in it. This gave me the idea to try making some monster ribs. I ordered a whole belly that was skin-on and bone-in and squared out the ribs, the rest became bacon. I did this once before, but...

Hello all, it's been a while! About a month ago, we hosted our third winter bbq party to support our competition efforts. Basically we cook a ton of food and ask that people bring donations of things we use during contests like: paper towels, aluminum foil, garbage bags, paper plates, etc...

I've been going pretty hard, all summer, with my pizza oven (see this link for more information http://tvwbb.com/showthread.php?42892-Custom-Steel-Pizza-Oven ) My last run I invited some friends over, and assigned each person a task. One friend brought some scratch, sour dough for the crust...

We were bringing food for about 30 for a work picnic for my wife's office. Decided on a combo of pit beef and spare ribs. I split an 18 lb chuck roll and ran it on my 18", while I loaded up the 22" with nine racks of spares. Everything had to be reheated the next day so ribs were chilled in...

My wife and I have been haunted by memories of ribs from a place called Talk of the Town lolo in Grand Case, St Martin. We were there twice in two years, but that was a long time ago. An internet search came up empty, so I made up a recipe based on foggy memories and what I thought might work. I...

I've been toying around with some different pizza oven set ups on my 22" kettle and had limited success. The key problem has always been how to get the top brown in the same amount of time as the bottom. I was inspired by an article where they authors combined a kettle pizza ring, a stone on the...

As I was mentally preparing for a comp (basically thinking of ways to be innovative or improve in areas of weakness), I was hung up on a way to get thicker spares. The light bulb went on when I remembered that the belly chunks that I get at an Asian store have ribs still attached. Luckily, I...

I had a pretty successful practice tonight. I tried a new inject and cook timing, and swapped around two different rubs and two different sauce mixtures, ending up with 4 groups, one was my clear favorite

I had a cool meal at a place called Cure in Pittsburgh. Our entree featured a foam sauce that really inspired me. I've had my eye on an ISI whipper for close to a year, and that meal put me over the edge. About a week ago the ISI gourmet hit $72 on Amazon and I pulled the trigger. Over the...

It's been awhile since I cooked some pork butts. Here's a few shots from about 3-4 hours in to about 8, right before I foiled notes: this was probably the first time I cooked a butt without injecting and the pulled product was noticeably drier I used a mop of 50% oil, 50% water, vinegar...