Happy New Year!

Hello bloggers!

I want to apologize for not covering Christmas and New Years. Betty and I have both been sick. I had pneumonia and ran a temp from Nov 01 till Dec 23. I went through 3 rounds of antibiotics before my temp broke Dec 23. I am still coughing a lot but feel much better. We hope that you all had a Merry Christmas and are looking forward to a happy New Year.

What I want to know is, are you interested in having a series of how to make real Pro Grade Bar-B-Q?

There are no places that put that much time and effort into Bar-B-Q to sell, that I know of. I feel that I am qualified to teach you what you need to know to be competitive and the talk of the town of everyone that eats your BBQ. We will start from scratch and go all the way to the table.

I feel that I am qualified to do this because I have been Bar-B-Qing for 67 years. Have owned BBQ restaurants , catered BBQ , I am pit master for My Lil’ Red Barn Bar-B-Q Cooking team, A certified Judge for Kansas City Bar-B-Q- Society and The Memphis Bar-B-Q Network. I judged this year from Memphis to Maryland and was selected to judge the World Championship event at the Jack Daniels Distillery in Lynchburg, TN, which is the best of the best. We had 14 foreign teams there. If there are enough people interested in it I will be glad to do it. What I would like for you to do is to tell everyone that you know that would be interested in this to drop a note to foodsofthesouthland at comcast dot net. About everyone likes to do ribs and chicken so we will start with them then go to Boston butts and whole shoulders and beef briskets and finally, whole hogs. Let us know!

Jack's Bar-B-Q Sauce Recipe

Hello everyone!

I have been as busy as a Downey woodpecker on an oak tree trying to get my cooker ready to travel, because I will be gone most of April. I am a certified judge for Kansas City Bar-B-Q society and the Memphis Bar-B-Q Network. I will be in Jackson, GA on April 3rd & 4th, cooking in Maynardville , TN on the 10th & 11th, Salisbury, MD on the 17th & 18th and Southaven , MS on the 24th & 25th. Then I’m on to Mountain Home, AR on May 1 & 2, Pulaski, TN on the 8th & 9th and cooking in Servile, TN on the 15th & 16th. Then I get 2 weekends off!
Here is a really good and easy BBQ sauce recipe that my brother used for years. He would not tell it to anyone. Then out of the clear blue sky, he said here I am giving you my sauce recipe. You could have knocked me over with a feather. When I read it, I told him that I should have known that it was easy if he could make it. I got his permission to let it out. So hear ‘tis.

1 Cup apple cider vinegar
1 Cup Catsup
1/2 Cup Sorghum molasses
1/2 Cup brown sugar
2 Tablespoons garlic salt
1 Tablespoon Bell pepper
The recipe calls for 2 Tablespoons of hot red pepper flakes

This is Jack’s recipe down to here. And after that it’s mine.

But I think it makes it too HOT, so I leave out the hot pepper.

I add:
2 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon of dry mustard

Throw it all in a sauce pan and bring to a boil then turn down and let it simmer for 20 minutes. STIR, STIR, STIR! Don’t let it burn. A double boiler would be great!!

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.