Introducing: The Kilted Pig!

In honor of my wedding anniversary, I dedicate this blog post to my hubby and personal chef of 4 years and best friend of the last 10 years. Love you, Breezy! 

On Sunday, we hosted a backyard Memorial Day BBQ to kick off summer and introduce John's latest cooking endeavor, competition BBQ. We invited as many friends as our house can hold, unveiled John's steel-baby and announced his BBQ competition team name, The Kilted Pig! 

For the last two weeks, my spouse has been welding, cutting and slaving away into the wee hours of the night, building the structure you see below. One engineer, 700 pounds of steel, countless hours of grinding and careful measurements resulted in a monster of a smoker that produces the best BBQ I've ever had!    

John's first practice run with the new smoker and competition quality 'Q was a HUGE success!! Starting at 11pm the night before our bash, he put on an 18-pound brisket while we toasted to his efforts and successful build. Throughout the night and early hours of the morning he tended to it carefully, watching the temperature and adding charcoal. 

Sunday morning, he added the pork shoulder, ribs, chicken and fatty. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term "fatty" as a reference to some kind of food (rather than what you become after eating it), a "fatty" is a pork tenderloin and peppers rolled up in ground sausage and then wrapped in bacon. The partial-vegetarian in me shutters at the thought, but I've heard its the very best thing a carnivore can put in their mouth.

By Sunday evening, you could smell the deliciousness of spices and hickory from blocks away (per our hungry neighbors). We and 35 of our closest friends enjoyed John's home-made sauces; one sweet, one spicy and one just a bit vinegar-y (my fav) and the assortment of finger-lickin' fare while toasting spritzers and home-brew. Everyone raved about every last bite, but I think the brisket was the winner of the day.

Thanks to everyone who came to our BBQ and chipped in for John's competition banner! A special thanks to John for his motivation and awesome cookin' skills! And thank you in advance to everyone who will support us July 17 in Laramie, WY! I'll post pics of the sanded, painted and named smoker soon and follow up with details on the competition in July!!!