Backwoods Smoker Smoke Signals

20 Years of Smokin’ The competition, here is to 20 more!  There are several changes to the Backwoods lineup in celebration of the 20th anniversary.  First, the Patio model is no longer in production, it as been replaced by the chubby! The Chubby is a cut down party model which gives the backyard cook the flexibility to have a grill and a smoker both.  Check out how Backwoods has gotten a little chubbier!

Second, the Party model now comes standard with gasketed doors, stainless steel latches and a butterfly valve.  Please check here for the new Party pricing and specs.

The Piglet has launched!  This unit is two parties side by side with a door which lifts UP.  Check it out as well.

There is a new Chip off the Ol’ block, and it is the Professional Junior!  This model lets people have the nearly the same cooking area as the Professional model, but is easier to transport around. 

Also to celebrate the 20th anniversary, we are having a contest to give away the very first totally stainless steel Chubby ever produced in the Backwoods shop.  Go to the website for details as well as the user discussion forum to enter!

Users on the website have asked for a picture gallery to allow them to post images of them and their cookers.  This feature is now live on the site, after a few bugs were worked out.

 All REGISTERED users inside the gallery (You will need to register inside the gallery even if you are registered for the user forums) will be allowed to post images and comment on them.  There are some very precise rules posted in the user forums.  Please make note of those.

The new season is rapidly approaching, I know my team is hard at work getting our new trailer ready for competition, wishing you all luck as you prepare!

Well, my wife and I have just pulled back in from Dixie Louisiana after a great weekend of visiting with Mike and other friends down there.

Once a year I go down there to meet with Mike about the website, as well as usually picking up a new smoker.  I picked up a second competitor this weekend with auto water, bringing the total to two for my catering trailer which is in production.

If you ever have a chance to take a trip to pick up the smoker that you have ordered directly from the Backwoods shop, do it.  It really is a great and relaxing time.

Like I said, this was my second time down.  The first time I came down, Mike had arranged for me to talk with the owners of the Country Peacock Bed and Breakfast, which is just 5 minutes down the road from the shop where the Backwoods Smoker is built.  We stayed with them our first year, and were simply amazed at the facility.  We stayed again with them and it is like coming home.  I would highly recommend this place to you all if you are staying down there.  The rates are reasonable and Betty and Bruce Bletz who run the place are good people.  We had the most relaxing time down there.

Seeing the Backwoods shop is also very cool.  I was there seeing a lot of the cookers that have been ordered and are in production, I eyed Mark Lamberts order enviously, it is like being in a toy shop with not enough money!

Mike the Backwoods owner is simply one of the best human beings I have met.  We talked about everything Backwoods and everything else as well.  He has several great guys working for him.  The thing that struck me the most is that Mike literally has sweat hours in every single cooker that is made in the Backwoods shop.  Every single cooker is hand made, and this shop puts out almost 500 units a year.  Very impressive to me.

There are some exciting changes that are going to be implemented in the Backwoods lineup of cookers.  We will be rolling those out on the site within in the next two weeks. Many of you most likely have already heard most of them, but it is exciting nonetheless.

One big part of the new site upgrades is the fact that Backwoods is now entering into it’s 20th year of business.  Mike simply is so grateful when he speaks about the fact that he gets to do what he does for a living.  When asked, he attributes the fact that he is still in business to the huge Backwoods community, and the family atmosphere that we have with the people who use the cookers.

Look for the changes to be posted in the coming weeks.  There will be an opportunity to win a brand new Backwoods Chubby!

Hey there, been awhile since we have had a posting, sorry about the long delay. We are busy making plans for our first competition happening in March at the North Kansas City competition and it took a little longer that expected to aquire our new trailer rig!

I came across this very funny video on askaninja.com about Ninja BBQ. Enjoy it, it’s pretty funny!

Here is the link. 

I just completed a weekend cook of some pork butts on my Backwood’s Competitor with overnight lows around 25 degrees. The entire cook took 11 hours with about 1 hour of actual time watching the smoker and I got a full night sleep. The Backwoods held the temperature at 235-250 with no problems. The two main reasons I love cooking on the Backwoods are its ease of use and the fact that it is a fully insulated smoker.

I live in Iowa where it can get pretty cold in the winter (although temps have been in the 60s this past week) and I used to cook on Weber Smokey Mountains (WSM) and a large 30 inch home made offset smoker. These are good smokers but have one major design problem. They are uninsulated cookers and are dramatically affected by cold weather and wind. The last time that I tried cooking in the winter with the 30 inch offset it was around 20 degrees and I had several cases of pork loins to cook. Typically these take about 2 to 2 1/2 hours to cook but between the full load of raw meat and the 20 degree temperatures it ended up taking 4 hours. I cooked with the gas on high with the charcoal basket loaded full with wood logs. I still couldn’t get the cooker up to temperature. I was fighting the cold and wind for several hours and was only able to make headway when I took an old refrigerator cardboard box and used it to cover the smoke chamber. This helped insulate the smoke chamber and block the wind. The second adjustment was to place several old blankets over the smoke chamber. I ended up babysitting the smoker for the entire 5-6 hour cook. It was not fun.

I also cooked on the WSM during the winter, but it must be a still night or you need to place the smoker in a location protected from the wind. I little bit of wind and you will have problems keeping cooker in temperature. You will still have to baby sit the smoker since it will consume fuel faster than normal and it will also react differently from cooking in the winter.

Contrast this to this weekend’s cook in the BWS Competitor. I spent about a total of 1 hour out of an 11 hour cook. How is the possible? The Backwoods is fully insulated and is one of the best selling points of the smoker. I would highly recommend the BWS to anyone who wants to cook though the winter or someone who wants a smoker which is not affected by wind. For barbeque competitors, the insulated Backwood’s will give you an advantage in bad weather over other competitors who are using WSMs, offsets and other uninsulated cookers. In fact at competitions, I welcome cold weather, rain or strong winds as I have an advantage over WSM cookers or people with uninsulated cookers.

Well, I just rolled back in from driving from Kansas to Orlando for 3 weeks.  We drove with the kids, and it was a much needed rest as we had not been on vacation for almost 2 years.

I did not forget about BBQ however!  I ate as much as I could, since I was in a different region.  I have to say that I was really disappointed with the places we went.  We did not hit anywhere big name, we did not get to stop in Murphysboro like I wanted to, but we did go to a few joints in Haines City and in Orlando as well.

The Florida BBQ scene needs some Backwoods love, if you are a Backwoods cooker in Florida, please open a shop up where I can come eat.  That being said, I was surprised to find the best BBQ in Orlando was in Disney World of all places.  In the Animal Kingdom park, there is a place called the Flame Tree BBQ.  It is strictly counter service, and service chicken and ribs.  Honestly, some of the best counter ribs I have tasted.  They were great!  If you have a chance, and you are the proud owner of a small fortune, stop in there and try them out.  They were tasty, well cooked and ate great.  I won’t say that they were comp quality, but they were a pleasure to sit down to.

Now that we are home, we will get back to the regular posts about the world of BBQ, I think we will focus on winter cooking with the Backwoods in the next post.

My last post was talking about the fact I was cooking for 800, and what the results will be. The event is done, and quite a bit happened!

1.  After I posted on the blog here, I ended up slicing my finger with a sudoku knife, I ended up with three stitches in my finger and quite a bit of pain (I HATE needles, they shot me up so I wouldnt feel pain, kind of defeating the purpose, but hey).  I had a cop buddy of mine in the driveway when I did it, so he took me into the urgent care in his cruiser.  That was a cool experience.

2.  I ended up cooking 30 butts over two days.  The cook went great, just as planned.  Instead of pulling all the pork, I chopped up all the butts using two cleavers, it was much faster, but MUCH messier!  I had pork pieces EVERYWHERE!  Very cool.

3.  Now for the event story.  If you can beleive this, the event organizers got 1000 sanwiches out of the 30 butts, and had 3 butts left over!  I opened a few of their sanwiches to see how much meat was on there, and it wasnt bad at all.  Some were skimpy, but a lot had a fair amount of meat on them.  It was pretty amazing.  This was a church event that had a strict budget.  We fed people for like $.30 a person!

4.  The cook itself took longer, I had never loaded my competitor like that before.  I did 16 butts the first night, 14 the next.  The first night I used Wicked Good Charcoal, the next day I switched over to Royal Oak.  The Royal oak cooked faster than the Wicked Good did.  Wicked Good comes in HUGE pieces, where Royal Oak is smaller.  The Wicked gave an nice even burn, but took much longer to get up to heat.  This was the first time I used it (I watched the IQue team use it during the Royal), I was happy with it and the taste it brought.

5.  People were pleased with the meal!  This was a much different cook for me.  I am usually doing a much smaller catering gig, and they always get my competition level cooking.  I simply before this didn’t know any other way to cook.  I was forced to look at a bulk method this time because of the limited budget I had to work with.  The taste was much different, but was good eating.
6.   For one person this was a REALLY big task.  I will have help next time.  One person, 30 butts, from rub to chopping was 48 hours of intermitent work.  I had figured as much, but wanted to walk through it to have the experience.

7.  I wish I had gotten the auto water in my competitor!

I will have pictures soon, thanks all for the suggestions from the forum people, it really helped.

Evening,

Well, if you have been reading the forums, you may have seen that I am cooking for 800 people this weekend.  I am cooking on a fixed budget from the customer, and am limited to 3 cases of pork butts.  I have to get 26 sandwiches out of each pork butt, which makes for a lean sandwich.  This is going to be interesting cook!

I am doing all of this on one competitor, 16 butts at a time.  The first load is currently in, and starting to get up to hear.  It is Wednesday night, at 11 pm central time.  The event on is on Friday.  I am going to be making comments on here during the cook since it is a long one.  I want to publish the results and get comments from the pros on how it went, and start a dialogue that maybe someone else out there could benefit from.

I am using two gurus, one Pro-comm which is controlling the fan, and tracking three racks of meat.  Then I am using a competitor guru to track the temp at the bottom of the cooker, and another piece of meat.

For wood I am using a straight hickory, and using Wicked Good lump Charcoal.  I am using my rub which is a brown sugar base.  I did no injecting since we are going for volume and not championship here.

I have lit a chimney full of charcoal, and put it into the corner of the fire pan.  The heat is coming up slowly and the smoke is going nicely.  More later.

The Backwoods Smoke Signals newsletter is putting out an open call for authors who would like to take part in this publication on an ongoing basis.  The qualifications are simple: 1.  Love BBQ  2.  Love Backwoods  3.  Be able to create a sentence.

Please contact Ray at ray@backwoods-smoker.com to apply.  We are looking for a few good men and women to spread the love of BBQ all over the internet.

It really has been on my mind lately if it matters in competition what kind of cooker you use. The team that won the American Royal this past year I believe used 5 weber kettles to get the job done. I have wondered since then does it matter what kind of cooking equipment you have.

Like yesterday, I was driving along here in Overland Park, KS, and saw a poor guy with a horizon cooker, in the pouring rain, laying sleeping bags on his cooker to try to keep the heat in. Now, I know his product will be edible, maybe not comp quality, but it will be edible.

What I have come to the conclusion of is that when you get a cooker, you have to decide how much work you want to do while you cook. Man it is really funny when I bring my Backwoods trailer into a comp, or to a catering gig. I love watching people run around and tend to cookers while I sit back and let my Backwoods crank away.

I remember the first comp I did last May, the Oklahoma Joe’s competition at the Kansas Speedway. I did not see any other Backwoods cookers there, and I know I was surrounded by people using offsets, and one group using a MONSTROSITY of a cooker that they had gotten out of the dump. It was as big as a full size car trailer, and I believe it was almost 7 feet tall. During the overnight, my team and I were sitting down playing a game, checking the Guru once in awhile, and letting things cook. The offset users were using the sleeping bag method to keep heat in their cookers, and the poor guy with the huge cooker was simply trying to keep a fire going in the thing.

I was struck by how easy using a Backwoods is once you know what you are doing. It is really amazing. Now I know that there are a bunch of reasons and methods about making meat the best in competition, don’t get me wrong. The question is, do you want to have to work REALLY hard at it, or to set the sucker and forget it.

I personally prefer to set it and watch it do it’s work. I REALLY enjoy sleeping at night. I also enjoy not having to wrap meat, turn it, the whole nine.

I got accused by my boss of being closed minded about other kinds of cookers. I simply shrugged, when you have the best one, why even think about others. He wants to get a Big Green Egg, and while I see nothing wrong with them, I will never cook on one since I have my competitor.

A somewhat random post, but one that I would love to see discussion on.