Where the Heck Have You Been?

Where the heck have you been??

If you are a follower of the J2 BBQ blog, you have probably quit trying to find us digitally and resorted to looking for us on the side of milk cartons, or possibly even on the wall at the post office.  Rest assured, we realize that it only took us a year to release the second segment of the J2 BBQ commentary.  The timing of this second release depends on your point of reference.  For example, if you are a fan of the Kansas City Chiefs before 2020, then you had almost 50 years between Super Bowls, but if you were a fan of today’s Kansas City Chiefs, you have 3 Super Bowls in 4 years.

Regardless, it’s been a busy time for J2 and we promise to pick up the cadence in 2022.  For a quick refresh, our premise in starting our J2 blog was to follow the progress (assuming some existed) of two absolute rookies in the business of smokers, BBQ and all things associated.  Keep in mind, the native environment for both J’s is the office, well that was before J Fiske retired…now his native environment is the Bar FF ranch.  

So, let’s talk about the busy 2021 for J2 BBQ as we had quite a few “gigs” over the last 12-13 months and even....had some good results as we concentrated our efforts on a few meats.  In particular, J Fiske has really mastered his pulled pork (more on that later) and I focused, primarily, on brisket in 2021.  Some of our key events:

In June, J Sussman did a large brisket for a retirement party for one of Aspire Eventing’s horses.  While I don’t know the translation of human years to horse years, this horse, Kosse made it past age 30, with a very “active” lifestyle right up to the end.  For this party, I bought a 9lb brisket and used the rub pictured below (courtesy of Exceptional Equestrian, a great store in Ocala, FL).  I did the “classic” brisket approach of i) smoking the brisket to 160 degrees internal temp at 225 degrees on the Traeger, then ii) putting in foil with apple cider/Worcestershire sprayed all over the brisket, iii) placing back on the smoker until internal temp was 204, then resting it for 45m.  The results were fantastic – possibly my best brisket to that date.  In fact, there were no leftovers from the party, which is particularly interesting as the group of guests wouldn’t be characterized as “big eaters.”

Our next “gig” was a circa 4th of July party at the Bar FF Ranch that also included a special guest – the Yoda of Smoking, Eric Flint (and his family).  At this point, JFiske and I would like to thank Smoking Yoda for all of his advice, assistance, participation, feedback and “break fix.”   You should think of Eric as a technical consultant in the same way that Yoda was a technical consultant to Luke Skywalker.  Though, J Fiske and I might be the lowest ranked pupils at the Jedi academy.  

Nevertheless, JFiske and Smoking Yoda (“SY”) did an amazing pulled pork (will let them discuss the recipe), while I did country style pork ribs.  Country style pork ribs are actually probably closest in form factor to beef ribs (larger amounts of meat on the bone, etc).  For the country style ribs, I actually used the Squeal Rub (picture below), along with a glaze that was mustard, Worcestershire and apple cider (a derivative of the brisket mop sauce).  The process was: smoke ribs @185 for 3hours, foil for 2 and then glaze with sauce, put directly on smoker for 30-60 minutes, then rest them for 30 (thanks, SY on that one).  Interestingly…these turned out pretty well.

It should be noted that there were two additional brisket gigs in Q42020.  The first was actually the smoking (using the above process and rub) of two different briskets during the Thanksgiving weekend.  One was a “store bought” brisket, the other came from the local Troupe Land & Cattle Co.  Needless to say, in the blind taste test, the local brisket was a clear winner based on texture and flavor.  And, yes, I did do a brisket just after Thanksgiving.

At this point, we had a heckuva lot more momentum in going into December than the Broncos have had in almost any month since about 2015, so it was time for one last gig – Aspire Eventing’s holiday party.  I guess that we got invited back, based on the brisket in June, or maybe because J2 is a sponsor of Aspire Evening.  Anyway, for whatever the reason was, we had another gig.  JFiske provided the aforementioned pulled pork, while I did a brisket.  The feedback from the 60+ guests was quite positive, so we might have a few more gigs in 2022.

Since this post is already at the Tl;dr stage (look that term up, if you’re not familiar), we are going to discuss our 2022 Super Bowl Party in a future post.  

All in all, 2021 was a year of progress.  We certainly improved the overall quality of our product – not to say there were not any mishaps or bad outcomes – it’s just that we actually had a better winning percentage than either the Broncos or Rockies last year (or the years before).