A Little Update!

Well Halloween has come and gone. I guess we will need to start on the turkeys and all the trimmings next. I am going to work up a complete menu from start to finish. But that is to come later. I am going to talk about the past for a while.

I had one of the best weeks of my life last week. As you know I have been working on my new cooker for months. Well it is finally finished, and I was able to use it. Then, I found out how much help I was going to need, which is hard to find, at least help that is dependable. When we start, the competitions are all over the country, from Texas to Kansas, Kentucky to Virginia, Vermont to North Carolina, South Carolina to Florida, Georgia to Mississippi, and then back to Tennessee. These are 5 or 6 day trips and my people can’t get off that much. So I am taking up JUDGING.

This past week I went to a training session for the MEMPHIS BAR-B-Q NETWORK in Bolivar, TN on Friday, Oct 31st, and judged the cook off on Saturday, November 1st, which I really enjoyed doing. To say nothing that it was my 80th birthday.

After the cook off Betty and I went on down to Memphis, and stayed with my brother and sister-in-law for a couple of days. I had three first cousins to come and visit. Boy did we swap some tall tails! But the thing that bothered me was that they were from 1 ½ to 3 years older than I am, and all of them had a hard time walking. I am really blessed and plan on staying active. I had a lady ask if I thought that Bar-B-Q was healthy with all that grease in it. I tried to explain to her that if you cook a pork shoulder right, you will render all the grease out of it, not to mention it takes 18 hours to do. She said that there was nothing that was worth cooking for 18 hours. I told her that I started Bar-B-Q’ing when I was 14 and had been eating it and working ever since. She said you are lucky and walked off. I could not help but think, not lucky but BLESSED! This is enough history, so I will stop and get to work on our Thanksgiving special.

Thanks May GOD Bless You and Yours

Dave

The Lil' Red Barn in the making!

Below, you'll find pictures of The Lil' Red Barn in the making...

This is the main smoker with 2 in. of boiler-type insulation
and polished stainless steel

This is the fire box for main smoker with opening to add wood chunks, and a charcoal feeder that will (hopefully) burn for 13 1/2 hrs @ 230 df without having to open and add any charcoal.

This is a rough opening to add wood chunks without opening the door. Once the fire is going, the front will be covered with a insulated panel.

This is an old wood stove that will be the fire box for small smoker. It will also be insulated.

The back side of main smoker and fire box.

A look inside the main smoker. It is large enough for a whole hog. We have 2 remote thermometers with 2 prongs each that can be read from a 100 ft away and 4 regular thermometers that read air temp coming in and going out of both of the air chambers.

And for a yummy preview... Above is real West Tennessee Bar-B-Q being made on our old smoker.

Intro

Welcome to my blog built to feature my newest adventure and all that goes with it, competition bar-b-q'ing! Here is where you'll find lots of updates and information, as well as a few recipes and pictures, that are solely about my long-lived hobby of bar-b-q'ing.

Stay tuned for pictures of the Competition Bar-B-Q Pit I'm building!

But before that -- Here's a little something I wrote up to introduce myself --

I am David (Dave) Franks, Author, Pit Master and Flunky!!!

This is my first time at bloggin’. For all of you that have been getting our newsletter, a lot of this will be sour grapes. But the new ones might get something out of it. I was born in Whitehaven, Tennessee. That is now part of Memphis. I went to Whitehaven School; the grammar and high schools were all together. My Grandmother was the first teacher hired there. My Grandfather was the first doctor there, and my great uncle was the first dentist. I started cooking (helping) when I was 4 or 5. The biggest thing that I did was bring in the wood, keep the fire going, and the stirring. We raised, canned, dried and cured a lot of meat by using sugar, salt, red pepper, black pepper and smoking. We would sit around the fire and listen to the battery radio and shell corn to take to the grist mill the next day on the back of our mule to make meal. We would take butter and eggs to the country store and they would credit us for them. Then, when we needed some things, they would debit our account.

When I was growing up, there were only three Bar-B-Q joints in the Memphis area that I can remember. The one in Memphis is where I got my eating sauce recipe from, the one down at Bullfrog Corner, Mississippi is where my basting sauce recipe came from. I learned how to Bar-B-Q at J.C. Harbin's while working for him because he was our sponsor for the Doc Hollom River race. We would swim 5 or 10 miles down the Mississippi river. As most of you know, I have a cookbook out, Foods of the Southland, with over 250 good Southern recipes.

We are putting our Lil' Red Barn Bar-B-Q sauce on the market real soon. We plan on getting into competitive Bar-B-Q’ing next year. I am building a new pair of smokers that are trailer mounted and enclosed in a Lil' Red Barn.