Who or what turned you on to real BBQ?

[Bob C Cue]

I remember as a kid my dad would use a rotisserie to barbecue chicken over charcoal....

....thing was, we didn't have a lot of money back then, and it was a manual rotisserie. He'd sit in the backyard with his shirt off, drinking beer, and manually rotating the rotisserie. He'd be well lubricated by the time supper was ready but man, that chicken was always absolutely amazing.

I knew right there and then that if it that important to him that he'd sit outside and churn a rotisserie for a couple of hours, then it had to be worth learning.

Great story and great memories. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Yan can Cook]

Had some low and slow pulled pork at a relatives... and I had to figure out how to make my own. Man I couldn't believe how tender and smokey it was. The bark was unbelievable.

 

[Mr.OiSat]

Honestly nothing did....IMO I'm just drawn to meat and fire. The rest was an evolution.

Ditto, I always liked to grill over a nice wood fire, one day I saw some bbq on tv and loved the way the meat looked. So I started some research, found this place here and of course had to build a UDS...

 

[Ron_L]

I guess it's time for me to chime in.

I've been a griller for years but really hadn't gotten into BBQ until we went to a gathering at my wife's bosses house. Her husband cooked competitions and made some of the best ribs I've ever eaten. That got me into researching barbecue online and I found the Brethren and it was all downhill from there. :becky:

That was around 2004 and I've been a member ever since. I have learned so much from the guys here and have made many great friends.

I started cooking competitions with Parrothead and MrB1984 (Bob) shortly after that. We did three or four comps a year until Parrothead got too busy with his business and Bob was killed in a car wreck. In 2008 my wife and I started cooking as Captain Ron's Brew-n-Que. We've been cooking as a team ever since and really enjoy the camaraderie of competition barbecue, But the backyard is always going to be my home.

 

[shagnasty]

Grew up in Georgia. Distinctly remember my parents taking my family to Indian Springs state park in the summers. We would always stop by Fresh Air BBQ in Jackson for bbq before we headed home. The smell of that place was heavenly. Now almost 50 years later I can still smell that hickory burning... a lasting memory and the start of my obsession.

 

[Bamabuzzard]

My late grandfather. During football season I'd go over there to watch football games with him and we'd get up early in the morning. Go to the grocery store, buy our "stuff", come back and prepare it. Get the smoker going and by the we did all of that the first round of football games would be coming on. By the end of the day (when your prime games were coming on) our bbq would be ready. I always loved how he did things. He passed away and I didn't have that anymore. So I thought I'd honor him in keeping the tradition alive and plus I loved it.

 

[Dabaras]

I thought I was doing BBQ with a gas grill and burgers/chicken/steak/fish. I spent a weekend watching BBQ Pitmasters and had to try it, so I bought an Akorn a couple of weeks later. Never looked back.

 

[Bob C Cue]

My late grandfather. During football season I'd go over there to watch football games with him and we'd get up early in the morning. Go to the grocery store, buy our "stuff", come back and prepare it. Get the smoker going and by the we did all of that the first round of football games would be coming on. By the end of the day (when your prime games were coming on) our bbq would be ready. I always loved how he did things. He passed away and I didn't have that anymore. So I thought I'd honor him in keeping the tradition alive and plus I loved it.

Another great story among many in this thread. BBQ, friends and family... that's what it's all about.

 

[Thingfish]

My family never cooked real barbeque but I grew up loving eastern NC barbeque. We moved to Florida and couldn't really get that any more. I suffered for many years, but after college I lived near a restaurant an old guy ran, a very clean hole in the wall (if that makes sense). I would save up for a take-out order every once in a while, but I was moving from rental to rental too much to buy my own grill/smoker. One of my good friends became a home owner and bought an small offset smoker. His food was hit or miss, but that inspired me to try to do better than he could. I started out with a Weber OTS and slowly found out just what it was capable of. I managed to cook good pulled pork, but everything else needed improvement. I found this site and am slowly upping my game. I passed my friend long ago, but now that we both have PBCs the competition is heating up again!

 

[sbramm]

i have always had an interest in, at least what was called BBQ, since i was a kid.

as a kid, BBQ was mostly grilling and smelled like lighter fluid. ever so often pop would through a turkey on his 60's portable kitchen and do an offset cook and chuck those wet hickory chips on the coals that were sitting in the bowl of water nearby. it was heavenly!

as i got older, i wan't to do "something" but didn't know what or how. then my grandma's breast cancer presented with metastasis and we knew her time was short. she loved smoked duck so i made sure she had it whenever i could, using a ECB electric. she loved it right up until she died and i loved cooking it.

so the next logical step, was to figure out exactly what i was doing right or wrong.

time, effort, reading and messing up put me here. real fire came and here i am still, putting in time, effort, reading and messing up!

 

[Smokin' Greene]

My Dad always fired up a grill on the weekends. It was a smoker that my granddad built for him, but he really just grilled on it. He would fill it full of charcoal and mesquite wood. Then he would pour gasoline on it and throw a match at it. I loved it! (I thought for years it was the only way to start a fire.) He would let it burn down to coals and then cook. If the fire wouldn't take after the first gas lighting, he would cut the top off his beer can and fill it full of gas and throw it on while running in the other direction, great times for a teenage boy. Later on in life he would just get out the cutting torch and put on the rosebud and light it that way. He has come around to a chimney now. Low and Slow cooking came from the in-laws. All great cooks, and I had to learn to stay in the family (ha). Now, I am addicted to this site it stays up on my computer 24/7. I have learned a lot from everyone here and I am thankful. I do miss the 10' flames coming out of the old mans pit! :-D

 

[scott1459]

For me it was the early BBQ Pit Boys videos on youtube.

That's where I learned the Banked Indirect heat method on a kettle, which gave me way more control over my cooks. Before that, I was a complete newb who spread the coals all the way across the charcoal grate, and frequently burned my food.

The Pit Boys took me from total newb to level 2 in just a couple videos. I've been obsessed ever since.

YEP! me too!!

 

[Toekneemac]

For me, it was, don't laugh, but a Cameron stovetop smoker. I don't know why exactly, but I bought one. It sat around and I never used it. My uncle one day said he has one and makes good ribs with it. I was young and living with my parents still, and decided to make ribs in it one day. They came out as tender as steaming can make them, and my family thought they were the best ever.

I asked how they made ribs, as we didn't have them much at all. They said they boiled them and threw them on the grill. I received so much kudos from my family over those ribs, that the seed of BBQ were planted.

For my wedding gift, years later, my brother in law gave me a brinkman vertical smoker he received from collecting Marlboro Miles, lol. I tooled around with that thing for a while when I found a Bar-b-Chef offset for $100 on Craigslist in near mint condition, used only once or twice.

I still use the stovetop smoker, especially in the winter or if I am not up for a long burn. We like our ribs "al dente" and falling off the bone (pork and beef) so why not? It's still better than boiling them.

 

[SPRfree]

A cheap vertical water smoker (Brinkman?) that I saw at Home Depot years (and I mean years ago) sitting on the sales floor and I said "what's this". Bought it for $50 bucks and not looked back.