Overslept last night (despite the iPhone alarm I set) and woke up around 1 am. Not a problem: got the brisket out of the smoker, double-wrapped it, put it in the oven (at 200°) and went to bed.

Got up this morning at 6 am. Cleaned out the smoker’s firebox completely; the coals are on a grate, and I had been shoveling out ash from time to time, but this let me get everything cleared out. Likewise, replaced all the aluminum drip pans in the smoker itself with fresh clean pans. Lit a new set of coals in a chimney, then pulled the last smoking items — three bone-in turkey breasts and a leg of lamb — from the ice chest where they had been marinading since…Thursday night? Friday morning? I don’t remember.

I marinaded two of the turkey breasts in white wine with fresh basil and various poultry-type seasonings (sage, marjoram, rosemary, salt, pepper); the other turkey breast I marinaded in the same brisket marinade I on the brisket. All three turkey breasts have thick peppered bacon strips fastened via toothpicks as a way to help keep them moist early on; I will remove the bacon towards the end to allow the skin to brown and to help get the internal temperature up. The leg of lamb I marinaded in red wine, fresh chopped onions, fresh basil, garlic, salt, pepper, and olive oil; I’ve actually saved some of the marinade to baste it with while it’s smoking. They’re all on the grill now:

Right about now — the morning of — is when I start worrying that no one will show up. Sandra, my sweet wife, tends to worry the opposite: that everyone will show up. But we always get a great turnout, and Sandra always has a wonderful time once the first person walks through the front door.  ..bruce w..

Last batch of brisket has been in smoking since about 3 pm this afternoon; I plan to take it out around 11 pm and put it in the oven. At that point, I’ll let the smoker rest until early tomorrow morning, when I’ll start on the three turkey breasts and the leg of lamb. Sandra and I also got the downstairs set up (folding tables, folding chairs).

I have no photos to reflect the progress made as of this evening, so I’ll just stick in a gratuitous cute dog photo above.  ..bruce w..

Bit of a short night. I was up until nearly 1 am tending to the brisket, then got up at 4 am to add more coals and move the briskets around a bit, then got up at 6 am to take the briskets out of the smoker. Here they are:

I double-wrapped each one in heavy duty foil, then stuck them in the oven at 180°, where they’ll cook until tomorrow afternoon. Actually, I may pull them out of the oven early tomorrow afternoon and stick them in an insulated cooler, so as to free up the oven for other uses. Also, I’ve made arrangements with a friend from church who lives nearby to use her oven for some of the briskets, since I can’t fit ten foil-wrapped briskets into our double ovens. ..bruce w..

Answer: Thursday night. I lit the first batch of coals in the smoker roughly an hour ago and will be putting the first batch of brisket in shortly. Of course, with five minutes of my lighting the coals, it started raining, but the rain has been generally light. Also, I have a welding blanket (new purchase) to help keep the heat in the smoker overnight. This first batch of brisket will cook the longest, so I’m starting with the largest/thickest briskets.

Here’s one fresh out of the marinade:

After patting both sides off, I apply a dry rub to both sides:

And here are the first three briskets, starting their long journey to 4 pm (MDT) on Saturday:

Since I’m going to be up for a while, I’m going to start the turkey and lamb marinading.  ..bruce w..

Got up this morning while it was still cool and worked on cleaning up the smoker and the grill a bit. Now I have to get some degreaser to clean up the deck where I was cleaning the grills (and, frankly, to finish up portions of the grills). Ran out and did some more shopping; my current count is now something over 500 bottles and cans of soda (over 600, if you throw in our personal soda stash in the pantry). It’s going to be near 90 on Saturday, and I suspect we’re going to get somewhere around 150 people, so I probably need a bit more soda.

The brisket is still marinading; I haven’t decided yet whether to start smoking it late tonight or very early tomorrow morning. I bought a lot more hot dogs than I usually do, because we’ve run out at the last few VLSBs; they’re very popular with the kids. I bought Sandra six large bouquets of flowers (from Costco and Sam’s Club), so she could make her own flower arrangements; she’s having great fun doing so, as you can see:

Bought three frozen bone-in turkey breasts and one leg of lamb, all to be smoked on Saturday. I considered trying to do pulled pork (and may yet).  Meanwhile, the dogs are all excited and helping as much as they can:

..bruce w..

It’s Wednesday afternoon, just over 75 hours before the VLSB (Very Large Scale Barbecue) is scheduled to start. I went out this morning over to Sam’s Club to buy 50 or so lbs of brisket and ended up getting nearly 70 lbs instead — ten (10-) briskets in all. I like Sam’s Club because their 5- to 8-lb brisket cuts have a nice balance between meat and fat (smaller cuts tend to be too lean, while the larger cuts are too fatty). I’m now in the process of putting the briskets into marinade to, well, marinade. I use John Henry’s Texas Brisket Marinade (I buy 2 to 4 gallons at a time, mail-order).

I typically put 2 to 4 briskets into a Ziploc 10-gallon “big bag” along with roughly 1/2 gallon of marinade, squeeze most of the air out, seal it, and then put that bag inside of another 10-gallon big bag. I’ll been turning these bags over several times during the next two days, so there is an opportunity to leak, the bag will leak.

All the marinading briskets will be kept in my (aging) teak ice chest, a wonderful Father’s Day gift Sandra bought me several years ago while we lived in DC. I’ll keep it well-stocked with ice and will turn the bags over 2-3 times a day.

By the way, if the colors in the photos above are a bit blue and washed out, it’s because I still had my Nikon D-5000 in “Sunset” mode — something I didn’t realize until I had finished things up, moved the photos to my computer, and looked at them. On the other hand, it does take pretty sunset photos in that mode:

I’ll probably post this and some other sunset photos as wallpaper next week. After the VLSB.  ..bruce w..

Sandra and I are doing one of our semi-annual Very Large Scale Barbecues on Saturday, August 21st. Any regular ASIP reader who is interested in attending, just drop me a line, and I’ll give you details. ..bruce w..

As noted below, we’re having one of our Very Large Scale BBQs tomorrow (Saturday). I got up this morning at 0545 and fired up the smoker. While (as you can see) I use lump charcoal and soaked wood to do the actual smoking, I unapologetically started the fire in the firebox with MatchLight charcoal and charcoal lighter fluid — it’s not easy starting a fire in the dark at 6200 feet above sea level and 18° F.

Here are the 5 briskets (~40 lbs total) that I’ll smoke today:

They’ve been marinading since Wednesday morning in John Henry’s Texas brisket marinade (which I usually buy 2 to 3 gallons at a time). I gently blotted them off, then applied (surprise!) John Henry’s Texas brisket dry rub. Three of the briskets are smoking right now; I’ll smoke the other two later today. All five will get double-wrapped in heavy foil and stuck in the oven at 180° until they’re served tomorrow afternoon.

I’m also smoking some elk steaks (marinading in a mix of brisket marinade and red wine), three bone-in turkey breasts (white wine, fresh basil, various herbs, and a cinnamon stick), and a leg of lamb (red wine, onion, garlic, basil, olive oil, salt, pepper).  Grilling will include chicken (boneless breasts, cut lengthwise, marinated in chipotle Tabasco sauce), hamburgers, hot dogs (as always, Hebrew National), and some veggies (asparagus, small sweet peppers, a few portabello mushrooms).

I had planned to smoke the elk steaks this afternoon with the remaining two briskets, but when I took them out of the marinade this morning, they turned out to be smaller than I expected (they were frozen together when I started marinading them two days ago). I don’t want to dry them out — particularly since they’re pretty lean to begin with — so I may smoke them for a little while just before the BBQ tomorrow and then finish them off on the grill. Right now, they’re back in their marinade.

More later.  ..bruce w..

UPDATED 02/02/2010

OK, things got a bit too hectic to ever really update things. The BBQ was a success — we had probably 120+ people attend, and almost all of the food was eaten (we were left with maybe 5 lbs of cooked hamburgers and some unopened packs of hot dogs). The elk steaks and the tabasco chicken vanished very quickly, but even I was surprised when I carved up the last of the five briskets as things were winding down a bit, put it out on the serving table — and then saw that it was completely gone about a half hour later. Great fun, though Sandra and I were pretty exhausted the next day.  ..bfw..

• Friday, 6 am to 2 pm: smoked 4 briskets, which I then double-wrapped in foil and put into a 180-degree oven (until Saturday afternoon).
• Friday, 2 pm to 9 pm: smoked 2 briskets and three elk roasts (ditto foil and oven).
• Friday, 10 pm to Saturday 5 am: smoked two legs of lamb, a (small) pork tenderloin, and one more elk roast (ditto foil and oven).
• Saturday, 5 am to 2 pm: smoked three bone-in turkey breasts, which I then put into roasting bags and put into a 120-degree oven to keep warm.

I carved up the brisket, elk, and port starting around 2 pm, put them into foil pans covered foil, and stuck them in a 120-degree oven. I held off carving the legs of lamb and the turkey until just before 4 pm.  Everything turned out well except the lamb — it was (IMHO) overcooked.

At 4:15, nobody had shown up yet (4 pm was the announced starting time), the sky was getting increasingly overcast with rain clearly to the west, and I was worried if anyone would show up. Then people started showing up, and pretty soon we were packed. I’m not sure what the final count was, but I suspect it was over 120; we ran out of name tags (150) and large serving plates (150).

It actually started raining around 5 pm, so I had to move the grill and smoker (which I had set up to use as a second grill) under the deck canopy. But the rain didn’t seem to hurt attendance, and it cooled the temperature down quite a bit. The rain itself was sporadic, coming and going through the evening, though it was pretty steady (and a bit heavy) when everyone started leaving.

Almost all the smoked meat got eaten (I set aside some brisket and turkey for Sandra and me), and I grilled up about 60 hamburgers and the same number of hot dogs before demand began to slacken (there were only a few of each left over). Everyone seemed to have a great time; the kids especially loved all the various bottled sodas.

In all, a success. ..bruce w..