What hooked you on BBQ?

[ChiefOsceola]

I'm a total noob to the art of the smoke (though Admin says I'm a full member on here :biggrin. Only joined up here at the beginning of this month. Got to wondering what brought y'all to BBQ. Was it the taste of the food? The satisfaction of spending a Saturday with family & friends out by the smoker? Was it going to a local BBQ festival? What was it?

For me, the obsession started when I first heard about the UDS on another forum, then followed a link here (I lurked until I got my drum this year). Seeing tons of pictures of pure tastiness cooked on something I could build was just too cool. Now that I've built it, each time I cook on it and read more of your threads, the more hooked on BBQ I become. Though perfectly content with my drum at the moment, I can already fill the itch for an offset.

What hooked you?

 

[rw02kr43]

hooked

I'm not really sure. I haven't eaten much bbq in my life. Just had my first ribs last year. and it's been about 14 yrs since any type of beef. But now I have 2 smokers and am building 2 new UDS when it warms up a bit. I love cooking bbq and the flavors are amazing. I have made quite a few chickens and ribs and abts and people seem to love them. Maybe there actually is something I'm somewhat good at. So I guess it's many things that hooked me on it.

Jason

 

[EatRBBQ]

For me it was all the hot women.
I smoke in the driveway for a day then go hit the local grocery stores, the hungry women can't leave me alone.
IMHO it works better than a pork chop necklace.

(Dodging thrown household objects coming from the wife's direction)

OK, being silly, not unusual.

Seriously? In my early 20s I picked up a Brinkman vertical smoker. Cheap, inefficient, burned itself out in one or two seasons, don't even get me started on the crappy charcoal and water pans!
But the first time I cooked on it I got praised for the results.
I enjoyed the praise as much as I enjoyed the challenge of cooking good food on the thing.

Part of the fun was taking a drill to the old Brinkman and trying to improve on it. I think BBQ and grilling brought out the do-it-yourselfer in me and has just evolved.

 

[CmdCtrl]

Love to eat!
Blame it on Alton Brown and his terracotta smoker.

 

[Rover24]

I think college did it for me. First time out of my parents house and I had to cook my own food, so I settled on the cooking style that allowed me to drink a lot of beer and check out the girls at the pool accross from my apartment building.

I don't think that I really got hooked on the art of BBQ until I picked up the Bar-B-Que Bible by Steven Raichlen, and then I don't think that I became truly obsessed until I found this site.

 

[Roger_M]

I did a ton of cooking on my gas grill then i happened upon a char griller offset for $60 on clearance. Loved the food. Something satisfying about cooking with fire.

 

[keale]

KNEE SURGERY!

2 weeks bedrest...just so happens BBQ week was on Food Network, I said to myself, damn, that looks good. Built my own smoker, didn't know what I was doing!!!

 

[Smokin'Ron]

My wife purchased my first offset for a fathers day gift and learning how to use it was a challenge. I'm a Systems Admin by trade and if any of you know us, a challenge creates a demonic person. Up all night until it's right, etc...

Well, my first smoke on this new toy was on a dreary evening in early summer and I just could not get the temps to level. I realized the nice storm breeze was the issue, so being me, @ 3 AM (lightning and all) I was in the back yard moving stuff around to shelter specific wind direction and so on. Well, I was hooked, I knew if smoking 1 dang chiken for tomorrows meal was going to be that difficult, I had plenty of challenges ahead 8).

Oh and the smell of smokey Ron wasn't appealing at first to the wife, but, well you know...

 

[NateOwsley]

I had an unfair advantage, I was born in Owensboro, KY, the self proclaimed bbq capitol of the world. So you could say it was in my blood. Then when we one first place in chicken at our first ever cookoff I was hooked.

 

[bruno]

Beer. Goes great with ribs.

 

[Smokin'Ron]

For me it was all the hot women.
I smoke in the driveway for a day then go hit the local grocery stores, the hungry women can't leave me alone.
IMHO it works better than a pork chop necklace.

Ain't that the truth. I tooks some food in for a pot luck to my wife's office and I had 2 ladies ask me what cologne I was wearing... I don't wear cologne so I assume it was the smoked pork 8).

 

[bigabyte]

I grew up here in KC, so I was pretty familiar with BBQ. When I was a kid, my dad picked up a new-fangled Brinkmann smoker (now known as an ECB) and learned to fight it to make briskets. I ate tons of brisket growing up, it was his favorite to prepare. As soon as he saw the WSM's come out, he switched to get the better control.

After I moved out, I did a lot of grilling, but not real BBQ. When I bought my house in 2003, that Spring my wife and I were at Wally World and she pointed out a Brinkmann Smoke-N-Pit Deluxe offset and suggested I buy it. So I did.

I consulted with my dad about how he did briskets, and started learning to cook on that offset using his methods. Then one day I got an urge to find a BBQ cookbook to learn how to make other things, so I went to the library and found Paul Kirk's Championship BBQ book.

That is probably when I officially became "hooked" on BBQ. That book gave me so many ideas it made my head spin. I had no idea there was so much to learn.

I was interested in more info on the "Mustard Slather" Paul so highly recommended, so I did a Google search, and that was how I found my first online BBQ Forum. After a couple years on that site, I heard about this site and came to check it out. Eventually, this place became the ONLY forum I went to.

 

[dudz]

The food, the praise, the fire, the beer and the UDS got me hooked

 

[1FUNVET]

Beer. Goes great with ribs.

Yep. I gotta agree. :biggrin:

 

[Skidder]

Me it was Daytona Bike Week 1981. I went to a place called Hog Heaven or Hog Haven not to sure cause of the condition I was probably in (not driving) and had my first of many pulled pork sandwiches and I was hooked. And now that I look back it was probably crappy but I didn't know any better. Then it was Brinkman, a Bar-b-Chef, a WSM and a few UDS's, a few contest ect.

 

[BBQ Grail]

I remember it well. At least this part I do...

There was a young, 18 year old boy, born and raised in Southern California who found himself stationed at Fort Hood, Texas in August of 1976. He fell in love with the Outlaw Country Music scene. Particularly Waylon, Willie and the boys.

It was about this time Waylon released the song Luckenbach, Texas. The next Spring a group of 6 young and stupid GIs crowded into a rundown Volkswagon bug and headed out to attend the Mud Dauber Festival in Luckenbach. It was an interesting trip to say the least.

Several of the soldiers entered the "Getting Drunk and Falling Down" contest. A couple of them may have entered by accident. A good time was had by all.

But it was during this trip that I partook of a couple slices of brisket. Cooked in a strange way. I fell in love with brisket right then and there and have been searching for the perfect brisket since then.

A couple more Mud Dauber Festivals, two Willie's Picnics, a Kerrville Music Festival and several of the first Texxas World Music Festivals (Texas Jam) allowed me to continue learning about eating brisket.

And that's how it started.

 

[Lake Dogs]

I remember the moment quite well...

It was the summer of 1985. I was at a strip joint, and this one particular young
woman, while undulating her body and swinging around the pole, seductively drissled
bbq sauce upon her heaving bosom. Then, while looking me
directly in the eye, she slowly, seductively, licked it off . . .

I almost died right there.

I was hooked. I've been a BBQ type-o-guy ever since. Brings a tear to my eye
when I think back on it.

My daughter likes to say: That's how mom and dad met.....

 

[Moose]

This is a great topic.

I started grilling on a gas grill over ten years ago. Food was very good, but not GREAT. Then, about 4 years after that started on a Weber Smoky Joe using smoking chips. I did steaks, tri-tips, and pork tenderloins just about every weekend. I was cranking out better BBQ on that little thing than I ever had in restaurants. THAT's when I was hooked. After that, I graduated to my Kingsford Oval, then it was all over.

For me, sipping an ice cold beer and creating fire and smoke is one of the finest things in life! There's also the fun of experimenting and refining...like mixing different smoking woods, using reverse sears, putting bricks in my friend's Weber Kettle and getting a 4 hour long cook without ever having to open the lid, building my first UDS...stuff like that.

BBQ is like breathing to me. I couldn't live without it.

 

[Bacon_99]

Love to eat!
Blame it on Alton Brown and his terracotta smoker.

Nice - god bless the food network....

As for me - I love meat - had done tons of grilling with charcoal briquettes and had a gasser - but always wanted an egg..... After getting an egg, I'm even more addicted.... Believe it or not though, I got a fair amount of compliments on my chicken that I smoked on a gasser using indirect with chips and foil... Just wanted a real smoker/q for even better results....

Now if only this global warming would kick in and make it warm up here all year round then I could drink my beer outside by the food rather than watching form inside while it snows...lol

 

[cdollar]

Being raised in Fort Worth, I grew up with BBQ. You couldn't throw a rock without hitting a BBQ joint. It was just a part of life. I'm still amazed when I hear adults say they have never bad the stuff. I found early on that for the most part, I liked what I cooked better than what someone else cooked, because I could make it to my taste, so I started trying my hand at BBQ about 45 years ago, and I'm still working on it.

I guess that's what makes it so much fun for me, always trying to get it just a little better, or different.
Kinda like golf, you can learn the basics in a short time, then spend a lifetime trying to perfect it.


Chuck