We cooked just over 1,400 lbs of pork yesterday for chopped bbq. We took them up to 180* and then tossed them in heavy duty plastic lined coolers to rest overnight. The morning crew got in around 5:30 or 6am and started tossing the butts in a buffalo chopper. It took 8 people constantly feeding it to keep the chopper in continuous use. Then they started assembling plates for takeout and making hush puppies. It was a very cool and rewarding experience. I feel like I made a few dozen new friends over the last couple days! :biggrin:
Now on to the pics!
Getting set up Thursday morning. Our smoker is on the right while Joey and Cliff's is on the left.
A closer look at Joey and Cliff's custom built Klose. This thing is a 4 ton monster offset. It can hold just short of double of what we can do with our RF.
Ain't that the truth! :biggrin:
And the meat arrives! 1,400+ lbs of delicious pig. The wholesaler is gracious enough to leave the truck onsite with the refer running so the masons can use it as cold storage.
David and his rotisserie arrive while we are stacking cases of boston butt in front of the smokers.
We got 8 cases of boston butt on our RF. Each case averages about 70 lbs so you are looking 560 lbs of pork loaded into our smoker. Just after we got the meat loaded, Joey issued a spare rib throwdown that we were completely caught by surprise. Gary ended up running back to my house to get the spices so we could have a chance. Joey is a two time Masonic Grand Champion winner while David is also a Masonic Grand Champion. Since we have yet to compete, I asked them both to tell me how much money their smoker had earned them in the last year. From there the trash talking just got worse. :biggrin:
They prepared the 2nd largest hall (they had 4 plus a dining room) for Friday's guests.
Believe it or not, the rib throwdown was a 3 way tie. Each pitmaster got to choose a judge and oddly enough the ones we chose all voted for us. Go figure. ;o)
Although I think if we had had a no-boil mac and cheese throwdown, we would have mopped up the floor with them.
One member's wife brought some home made banana pudding for us to have as dessert for last night's pitmaster dinner. Truth be told, her dish probably kicked all of our asses.
And then at the asscrack of dawn today, the masons began to assemble to chop the pork and put together the takeout plates. We didn't finish cooking until 12:30 the night before so I didn't get there until about 10am. They had all the pork chopped and were keeping it warm in the Klose and a propane pig cooker converted into an oven. They were assembling take out tray #400 when I snapped this pic.
Invaluable tip #1574, lay old cardboard on the floor to absorb all the grease that is going to come from all of this delicious food.
I am gonna title this one "pit road". The rotisserie is on the left with our RF next. The converted pig cooker on the right with the Klose right next to it.
The hush puppie fryer doing its thing.
Their hush puppies were pretty tasty. I would like to try that same mix with some cheddar and jalapeño added to the mix.
They actually have a machine to drop the perfect amount of batter into the fryer.
And this is where things got busy and I stopped taking pics. We had a great time and I hope they invite us to participate again when they do this in the spring. :biggrin:
