The Barbecue Diary – part 3

Ricky Ginsburg (former head cook of The Boca Boys)

There are smells that wake a person, even from a deep sleep. The one that always gets me is the smell of caramelizing apple juice in the almost empty water pan of a Backwoods smoker. It’s around 2am when that pungent odor jerks my head off the pillow in the back of the S10 pickup. My night man (my neighbor) is fast asleep, surrounded by empty beer bottles. The thermometer on the cooker door reads 300 degrees and rising, well at least there’s fuel for the fire. Another 15 minutes and there would have been disaster. A fresh bottle of juice and an equal bottle of water and we’re good to go for another 2 hours or so. I head back to the truck for a few more hours of sleep. My night man rolls over and starts snoring.

20 minutes later… remember those air conditioned rest rooms?

20 minutes after that… I’m sitting in the most comfortable canvas chair in Central Florida with a cold bottle of water along with three other cooks that had also planned on sleeping. Tall tales rule the conversation for several hours while the meat in the cookers spreads an ever deepening smell over the cook sites. These are guys that I only see at barbecue contests, 5 maybe 6 times a year, but conversations that had paused 2 months ago pickup as if it were only minutes gone by. That same Cajun music that was playing at the last contest is still pulsating out of someone’s boom box. Every couple of minutes there’s the unmistakable “foosh” as another beer can is popped open. And just to make things interesting one of the cooks will open the lid on their smoker and see if the meat is still there. Sleep is a luxury for most cooks at a contest. It’s one that will elude me for the balance of this one.

Dawn is just an hour away and it’s time to move the ribs from their sea of ice water in the cooler and into the cooker. My assistant is marching back from the air conditioned rest rooms with an air of confidence that only the well rested can claim. Several cook sites down the row someone is frying bacon and eggs. The mixture of the morning dew, soft white smoke from the cookers and the sounds the come from the well-seasoned skillet makes a dawn like this special.

In the cooker the Boston butts are sitting at 165 and will remain that way like the Sphinx for at least several more hours. The brisket, wrapped in foil (forgive me Paul Kirk), is starting to become somewhat edible, we hope. The ribs get a final dusting of our famous (well in our dreams at least) Boca Boys rub and are placed gently on the lower racks of the cooker to begin a six hour journey to perfection. I start a chimney full of lump for the Weber kettle as my assistant preps the chicken, his specialty. We’ve got about an hour to get the chicken into the cooker so there’s no great rush just yet but the pace is starting to quicken.

All around the contest site the activity is ramping up noticeably. The lush, dullness of the nighttime is passing quickly as the excitement of where we are and what we are doing shifts the daytime into first gear. Soon the judges will begin arriving. Soon the reps will be handing out turn-in boxes. Soon this will become a contest.

… to be continued.

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