BBQ Thoughts: Pig Roasting in the Big City

Everything is in motion. There's no turning back now. Last night Kevin Lincoln of the New York BBQ Lover's Meetup Group and Ned Berke of Sheepshead Bites and I your humble blogger drove up to Norwalk Connecticut and borrowed an Ed Wilson Ed Mitchell designed, not to be confused, as I had just done, with the esteemed Connecticut based pitmaster Ed Wilson, constructed by Wilmington Grills pig roaster from Nancee and Greg of Purple Turtle Catering Company, one of Connecticut's best catering companies and award winning barbecue chefs, in order prepare for the bacchanalian orgy of food and drink that will be served this Saturday in a private yard in Sheepshead Bay Brooklyn.

Scott Smith, pitmaster extraordinaire of New York City's premiere barbecue joint RUB has ordered the 60lb or so sacrifice of pork for me that will be roasted and smoked by us and I'll be picking it up Friday.

Now the work falls on my shoulders. How will I prepare said hog? Will it be injected? Rubbed? Cooked skin up or down? Butterflied? Stupefied? Testified? Will we be doing a pig picking where all you need is a beer in one hand and a fork in the other? Or will the pig be removed from its fiery grates and its body parts carved up into more, shall we say "acceptable" presentation serving pieces for the less squeamish?

I got some thinking to do as this will be my first pig cooking done solo. Well, not really solo as I will be turning to the ever talented Kevin Lincoln for assistance and RUB's Matt Fisher for his chefly advice and counsel.

Pray for good weather. Pray for sanity. Pray for properly cooked swine. As the bible says...

"There were burnt offerings in abundance, together with the fat of the fellowship offerings and the drink offerings that accompanied the burnt offerings. So the service of the temple of the LORD was reestablished."

Now I don't know about re-establishing the temple, but a good time is guaranteed for all.

Photo of the pig roast above courtesy of A Brooklyn Life, whom I've never met and from whom I stole this picture and whose blog I enjoy even if it is so focused on the hipster side of the borough ignoring its heart, but am inviting to this pig roast nonetheless.

PS. Do you think I got enough links into one post?

The Big Apple BBQ Block Party

My daughter and I attended the block party on Sunday. We met up with Nancee and Greg from Purple Turtle Caterering (easily one of the best caterers in Connecticut, if you're looking) and braved the outrageous crowds to get some pretty mediocre food. There's just no way that these BBQ champions can serve 10,000 plates a day and it still be good.

Here's my daughter with the legendary Mike Mills from the 17th Street Bar and Grill, who's ribs were the best BBQ we had all day.

Meet the Iowa Pork Princesses who got their hands on the Pickled Pig...

Ray Lampe, aka Dr. BBQ, was giving a demo of this tropical pork chop sandwich. Pretty good stuff, actually this was the best meat of the day even if it wasn't barbecue, and it's always great to see the good Dr.
The crowds were outrageous, but that's par for the course. I don't think the crowds reached the 150,000 projected, but it was very tight.

Even the squirrels were into BBQ yesterday. I didn't know that they ate meat.

Be sure to check out Smoke In Da' Eye for some outstanding videos and interviews with the pit masters from Friday night. Great stuff Clint!

Purple Turtles Everywhere!

Lookie here! My buddies the Purple Turtles got some well deserved press. If you're anywhere near their home base of Norwalk CT and need barbecue, be sure to give these folks a call. They're one of the best caterers in Connecticut!

Greg Hunter and Nancee Gell

Cranking the heat on the competition

By ALEXANDER SOULE

From The Farifield County Business Journal

When it came time this month to go the extra yard in sweltering 100-degree heat in Yardley, Pa., Nancee Gell and Greg Hunter wilted at the prospect of firing up a second grill for the crowd pleaser – a caramelized, crispy crust for their barbecued chicken hot off the primary burners.

That spared the spouses an extra few moments of blistering work, but Gell suspects it cost their Purple Turtle competition team any shot at being named best in show at the BBQ on the Farm contest that weekend. No matter: These days they have more than enough trophies to fill their trailer – not to mention grills and smokers at their Norwalk home.

The summer barbecue competition season is in full swing in the Northeast, and on weekends Gell and Hunter lift their tongs to duel teams from throughout the region and nation, both weekend warriors and professional chefs.

By day, Gell is an integrated systems specialist at Security Specialists, a Stamford-based security installer, while Hunter is a paralegal for a commercial collection agency in White Plains, N.Y. The couple stumbled onto the competitive scene nearly a decade ago, after checking out a New Hampshire competition out of curiosity.

“This guy was cooking by himself, and someone suggested to us since we were wandering around we might as well give him a hand,” Gell recalled. “And we did.”

“That guy” was Gary Howard, whose Liquid Smoke and Smoke Ring teams have won awards at the World Barbecue Championship Cooking Contest held annually in – where else? – Memphis, Tenn. (If you guessed Kansas City, you were close – the recognized sanctioning authority for most competitions is the Kansas City Barbeque Society. )

Howard would mentor not just Gell, but also Ed Wilson, owner of Wilson’s Holy Smoke BBQ in Fairfield and secretary of the National Barbecue Association Inc.

Purple Turtle is one of at least two outfits in Fairfield County that regularly enter such competitions, along with the Yankee BBQ Boys, which lists a New Fairfield home base. Both teams belong to the New England Barbecue Society, a Plymouth, Mass.-based organization that sponsors a barbecue “mentor” program to allow beginners to learn from smoke-seasoned veterans like Howard or Wilson.

Wilson is fresh off cooking 1.5 tons – yes, tons – of barbecue at the annual Big Apple Barbecue Block Party this month in New York City. He said Gell’s and Hunter’s trial-by-fire story is not unusual in competitive rings.

“We’re all kind of in this pot together,” Wilson said. “You can tag along and get your feet wet.”

The New England competition season gets an early start at the annual Freeze Your Butt Off BBQ Competition, held at the start of March in Maynard, Mass., followed by the annual Snowshoe Challenge in Abington, Mass. at the end of the month.

Not until June do things really get cooking, however. Grillin’ on the Bay was held three weeks ago in Brooklyn, N.Y.; this past weekend, Merrimack, N.H., was host to Rock ’N RibFest and the New Hampshire state barbecue championships. Independence Day weekend, grillers will converge in Lake Placid, N.Y., for the I Love Barbeque Festival; later that month they will head to the Albany, N.Y., area for the Troy (N.Y.) Pig Out, and to New Paltz, N.Y., in August for the Hudson Valley RibFest.

At that point, a New England champion will have already been crowned at the Harpoon New England Championship, scheduled for July 25-27 in Windsor, Vt. Purple Turtle more than held its own at the 2007 Harpoon championship, placing in the top five.

High gas prices have had a perhaps unexpected impact on competitions – rather than encourage people to stay home, it has encouraged organizers to winnow down the number of competitions, which has more contestants showing up at the remaining contests.

Fuel prices are not helping things – Gell and Hunter already spend thousands of dollars annually competing – but on the bright side the competitions often award cash prizes. In taking home gold at Lake Placid’s I Love Barbeque Festival last year, Purple Turtle also took home a $1,000 grand prize as well as nearly that much more for making the medal stand in various subcategories.

The national championship in Memphis awarded $90,000 in prizes.

Gell says if there is a secret sauce to winning, it is producing high-level results week after week – and perhaps getting to know the tastes of individual judges, at least at regional contests.

“Our biggest thing is consistency – when you get the chefs who compete and the restaurant owners, they tend to be much more consistent,” she said. “Even though most of us are chili heads, you keep it on the mild side. If you cook it too hot you are going to lose.”

Life on the Road

This is from the The Norwalk Advocate. It's about my friends Nancee and Greg at Purple Turtle Catering. Enjoy.

Couple on way to courtly cook-off
By Jamie DeLoma
Special Correspondent

July 6, 2007

NORWALK - By the time the smoke cleared last weekend at the I Love Barbeque Festival in Lake Placid, N.Y., Nancee Gell and Greg Hunter knew they were hot.

Beating three dozen teams spanning the continent from Florida to Vancouver, the Norwalk-based Purple Turtle Catering Company emerged with the grand championship crown, a check for $1,500 and the New York state title. They are now eligible to compete in the annual American Royal Barbecue Festival in October in Kansas City, Mo.

"There were a lot of great teams out there, and it's really special to win this festival," Hunter said.

The Norwalk teammates have not always been the barbecue aficionados they are now.

"I grew up eating burned chicken and undercooked steaks," Gell said. "I learned about barbecuing in the mid '70s, but it wasn't until we got involved with the New England Barbecue Society about seven years ago that it has become an obsession."

She said the grilling also helps to relieve the day-to-day anxiety in her job as a security specialist in Stamford.

"It's a tremendous stress reliever," Gell said. "It really lets you focus on your food, creating an artistic and good product and not let you worry about what's going on at the office or have to worry about little Johnny."

She said the competitions, which have been popular in the South and Midwest for decades but only now are growing in the Northeast, encourages participants to bring their families. Gell said she has seen people get married at the contests.

"The competition circuit is really growing leaps and bounds," said Don McCullough, executive vice president of the National Barbecue Association in Austin, Texas. "It really grew in popularity after 9/11 when people didn't want to go on expensive vacations anymore."

He said the competition has grown quickly in the Northeast over the past three or four years.

"Barbecue is coming out of nowhere," McCullough said. "It's becoming a pretty popular pastime."

Jeff Esau of Stamford, who owns Jeff's Cuisine in Norwalk, won the first international barbecue competition in Montego Bay, Jamaica, five years ago.

"Barbecuing is a process," Esau said. "It started here in America. It's an American form of art, just like the jazz and the blues."

Esau, who calls himself a barbecue historian, said the first barbecue restaurant was established in the 1840s in North Carolina. Since then, the style of cooking has grown in popularity with the advent of the Weber grill in the early 1900s and growth in their popularity in the 1950s.

"Barbecuing really took off in the 1970s, and now it's just exploded," he said. "In the South, barbecuing has always been part of life. In the Northeast, people really want to try something different. It's the hottest cuisine out there now."

Competitions are generally by category, usually beef, chicken, fish, pork and ribs and can span from January through November. Many of the contests raise money for charities as well.

Garry Howard, who is now retired and living in Puerto Rico, mentored Gell and Hunter for three years beginning in 2000 before they began competing on their own in 2003 and mentoring others.

"He really gave us a lot," Hunter said. "We are just basically giving back what we got from him."

Since then, the married Norwalk couple won about a half-dozen grilling and barbecuing competitions and finished second or third in several dozen others.

"We travel all around the country going to these contests," she said. "The camaraderie of the grilling, barbecuing community is something that can't even be described. It's like a big fraternity if you will. We get together, cook together, eat together and laugh together. Some weeks, I win; some weeks, you win."

BBQ Equipment: Charbroil Double Door Smoker and Grill

I'm back from an OK weekend. I hope you guys had a good one.

First up, I want to congratulate my friends Nancy and Greg from Purple Turtle Caterers for winning the I Love BBQ Festival in Lake Placid, NY this weekend. Great job guys! Congrats also to my buddies over at I Smell Smoke for taking an unusual second place; I Smell Smoke wins so often it must have come as a real shocker!

For me, I wound up having to work on Saturday, but on Sunday I raided my garage and took out and reassembled my Charbroil Double Door Smoker and Grill. (Yeah the name STILL sucks)

The fine folks over at Charbroil sent this offset smoker to us back for the Paul Kirk Pit Master's Class in October, but due to various shipping issues, it came too late for the class. After a brief stop at RUB, the smoker meandered its way to my garage in Brooklyn where it sat until this weekend.

Here's some info from Charbroil on the grill itself:

• Double door access reduces smoke and heat loss


• Center Door Stop removes providing full access to cooking chamber


• Cast iron porcelain-coated cooking grates for even heat distribution


• 738 sq. in. total cooking surface area in cooking chamber and firebox


• Removable Ash Drawer simplifies clean-up


• Firebox door with damper provides access and heat control


• Removable front shelf and lower storage rack


• Chrome-plated spring-style handles


• Cast iron wheels with rubber tread


• Top-mounted smoke stack tumbles flavorizing smoke within the firebox


• Heavy-gauge steel construction for years of reliable cooking performance


• Bonus Veggie Rack and Water Marinade Pan included!

My game plan was to smoke a couple of racks of ribs, but after seasoning the grill with vegetable oil and doing a test burn, I discovered that my ribs were still frozen solid. Damn. I could get around this, but that would mean eating very late. Then the wife called and said we needed to travel to the end of Long Island and retrieve the daughter. Double damn. I was really looking forward to finally using this beast.

Oh well, I did grill up some chicken on the Weber Kettle for dinner. You'll have to wait a few more days for the ribs and the review of the Charbroil Double Door Smoker and Grill. Talk to you later.