Hold the pickles!

​The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit weighed in today in the case of a sheriff's deputy who claims severe emotional trauma after two ex-cons working the drive-thru at a Burger King added an extra ingredient during his late-night burger break.

Suspecting the fast-food employees were ex-cons, Washington state Deputy Edward J. Bylsma pulled off the road, removed the burger bun to his Whopper and found a "slimy" white glob of phlegm atop the meat patty.
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ProfessorSalt.com

BBQ judges at the Dana Point BBQ Championships

​The last time we talked BBQ for the New Year's Eve contest at Knott's Splash Mountain, I promised you an inside view of the judges' tent of a sanctioned barbecue contest. This week: a video and a discussion of how competition barbecue is scored, plus information on where you can become a certified barbecue judge in Southern California next month!

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ProfessorSalt.com

Competition-grade spare ribs from Tropical Heat BBQ Team

​Would you guess that Orange County hosts more sanctioned barbecue contests than L.A. County? It's true. We're not talking about unsanctioned "rib burns," either, but legitimate contests with certified judges like you'd find in Kansas City.

To conclude the contest season, the world of competition barbecue dukes it out for a $15,000 purse on December 31 and January 1 at Knott's Soak City in Buena Park.

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Flickr user fritish

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Thanksgiving turkey is one of those traditions you don't mess with - somebody in your family will cut you out of their will if you change the way you cook it. They'll expect the same, oven-roasted bird that's been the done the exact same way in your family since they landed on the Mayflower. But why not buck tradition with a second turkey, cooked outside on the smoker? Here's some ideas for those iconoclasts.

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Photo by Gary Walkup

​You may not know it, but Bigmista's Barbecue is kind of a big deal. Listed on Jonathan Gold's 99 Things to Eat Before You Die 2010, the barbecue competitor-turned-caterer sells at farmers' markets across far-flung parts of LA. It has been geographically inconvenient for us behind the Orange Curtain, but it announced yesterday the company will start vending this Sunday at Long Beach's Old McDonald's Certified Farmers Market. The relatively new, weekly farmers' market is on Spring and Clark from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

That market is just a short distance from Long Beach Airport, which means you can torture your Jet Blue aisle-mates with the smoky aromas of barbecue brisket while they're snacking on little bags of complimentary blue potato chips and secretly hating you.

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ProfessorSalt.com

Beef brisket from Los Alamitos team Inhale BBQ

​Last Friday and Saturday, September 23 - 24, fifty BBQ teams from across the Western states took over the lush lawns of Sea Terrace Park for the inaugural Dana Point BBQ Championship. Top teams featured on TLC's BBQ Pitmasters show such as Big Poppa Smokers, Slap Yo Daddy BBQ and Four Q BBQ lined up with some of the toughest competitors in California for $10,000 in prize money.

Click here to see the photo slide show!
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Courtesy Big Poppa Smokers

​The world of contest barbecue is a tight-knit community full of friends that compete fiercely against each other. Last year, I had the chance to meet and compete against Johnny Trigg, the "Godfather of BBQ," and the crew from Big Poppa Smokers on the set of TLC's BBQ Pitmasters Season 2. Though the TV show gave the impression that competitors don't like each other, we're really brothers in smoke.

Big Poppa sells nothing but top-notch, made-in-USA smokers and grills. Johnny Trigg makes the most beautiful competition spare ribs I've had the honor of tasting. Together, they're giving backyard cooks and established BBQ teams the chance to learn the art of competition BBQ from a legend.
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ProfessorSalt.com

​Last time, we discussed the 55 gallon drum itself and some sources to buy one to build your Ugly Drum Smoker, or UDS. Finding a suitable drum takes some thought and perhaps a bit of driving around.

This week, we'll talk about the next challenge: building a basket to hold your charcoal and wood chunks.  If you can weld, or know someone who does, you can build a welded basket. It not, take the no-weld option below. I'm lucky enough to have some friendly sheet metal fabricators at my workplace (thanks, Dwayne!), so I'll show you his expert handiwork on my basket.

I should also mention the greatest source for tips and tricks for building a UDS: the discussion forum of Bbq-Brethren.com, a free community where I hang out under the nym Professor Salt. Register a username, introduce yourself in the Cattle Call forum, then read through this 500+ page monster thread about UDS builds. Scores of users have posted photos of their drums, some super-basic like mine, others much more complex. You'll find some great ideas to lift and use for your own project.
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ProfessorSalt.com

Almost complete, minus paint job and a few fittings

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In the world of competition barbecue, there's a saying: "It's not the cooker, it's the cook." That means that in a blind tasting, you can't tell if the end result was cooked in a modern commercial-grade smoker, or in an ad hoc, BBQ pit made from a stack of cinder blocks and a sheet of plywood for a lid. It really comes down the the cook's ability to control the heat and smoke inside a cooker.

Today, we'll show you how turn a 55-gallon steel drum into a very rudimentary yet effective home-made smoker called an Ugly Drum Smoker, or UDS for short.
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ProfessorSalt.com

Thus far on Grill Marks series we've talked about ways to use a Weber kettle grill to do some light smoking. In advance of this weekend's OC Barbecue Festival, let's talk today about heavy-duty smokers and the way a particular place in the middle-of-nowhere Texas cooks the best brisket I've eaten at a restaurant. As Grill Marks progresses, we'll ease you into making slow, smoked meats at home.

Snow's BBQ of Lexington Texas, a hole-in -the-wall (open only on Saturday mornings) came out of obscurity in 2008 when Texas Monthly crowned them the "Best BBQ in Texas." Fans of perennially popular restaurants around the state asked, "What? Who? Where the hell is Lexington?" and world-wide fame rained down on this one-stoplight town (population 1,178) where cattle ranchers auction their steer just around the corner from Snow's.
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