A BBQ Send-Off

Our son and family, who recently returned from 3 years in Korea, are leaving later today for their new assignment at Fort Knox, Kentucky. For meals while here, Rhett had requested some of the things I’d been blogging about and especially BBQ. I’d planned a couple of other meals, but my ailing got in the way of those, but they still got corn & okra and lamb twice, which are all favorites.

Thanks to a Tylenol Cold and Flu every 4 hours, I was feeling well enough to cook BBQ on Sun/Mon. I prepped a pork butt about noon on Sunday, fired up the smoker at 8pm to a temp of 235*, put the butt on at 9pm and went to bed. I also prepped the chicken and ribs on Sunday, including rubbing the chicken, and we made up some ABT’s and moink balls.

When I got up Monday morning, I poured the juice off of the butt (which was at 175*), raised the pit temp to 250* and put the chicken on – we weren’t eating it for dinner. The chicken was all done by 10am and since it was mostly for others we pulled some and got it all packaged up. This is the container of breasts.


The pan of thighs. I cooked them skin side down and the one in the upper left shows what that side looked like.


This is the pulled chicken.


I removed the butt at noon, pored off the juice, covered in foil and tossed in the cooler to stay warm until we’re ready to pull it for dinner. I put some ABT”s and my first ever moink balls on at 11am to have for lunch and at 1:30, I put a couple of slabs of baby backs on for dinner. For the ABT’s, I used my normal recipe, but for meat, added some chopped rib tips we had in the freezer. The moink balls were made with precooked meatballs, wrapped in bacon, dusted with Billy Bones original rub, and glazed with Tennessee River Cranberry Delight BBQ Sauce when about done.



I'd grown some no heat jalapenos and had them in the freezer, so I decided to make some ABT's from them for the girls - they are the ones with 2 toothpicks.



So the meal plan for the day was:
Breakfast: On your own
Morning snack: Chicken as we pulled it and a test thigh – it was excellent
Lunch: ABT’s and moink balls
Supper: Pulled pork, ribs, mac & cheese and slaw

This is the pork butt before and after Bev worked her magic on it.


The pulled meat has nothing added but the defatted juice that I had collected while it was cooking. It provides so much moisture and good flavor that it really doesn't need any additional BBQ sauce to be delicious.


The ribs before I cut them into individuals.


This is my plate - I added a little Gates Extra Hot Sauce just for the heat.


According to everyone, the BBQ was delicious - my head was still blocked and I tasted very little - but I believe we sent them off with a bang. We used a new mac & cheese recipe that sounded good, but we didn't care for so I won't talk much about it. I'm going to spend a little time with my camera in the near future and find out which of the many settings will take good natural looking pictures (no flash) in low light conditions. I have at least learned that non flash pictures look so much better.

As a final note, I’m sure glad I decided to take some time off from queing this summer – it’s not fun hanging around the smoker when it’s 95* outside.

Have a good day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry