By Mark Darnell, on August 12th, 2009
 Several years ago, when I moved to lower Alabama I ran into a gifted soul named Dwight Salley, (pictured on the left) known by his friends as “Uncle Dwight” or just plain “UD.” Even back then while we were both working for a tech bubble-burst now defunct telecommunications company, UD was peddling spices and white-labeled hot sauce. Since the little telephone company went bust UD took his show on the road and Big Daddy’s Seasonings for all things became real! Over the past few years UD has been supplying me with seasonings, sauces, rice, and fish fry (some he didn’t even know about — THANKS WEBBY!) and recently we’ve decided to partner up on the web to promote each other. UD is supplying me with recipes and anything new that comes along or, anything I try which brings me to the point of this post – this weekend’s 6lb Boston Butt THOROUGHLY dusted with Big Daddy’s Smokey BBQ Rub.
The pork butt was outstanding – usual method from the other articles; wash the meat let it dry a bit then cover it with rub and slap it in the fridge for 12-24 hours. 10 hours in the box at 240 degrees yielded a perfectly cooked product with a deep flavor penetration I haven’t achieved prior to this smoke. Between my wife and I, a fresh pork butt barely has time to cool before we tear into it. With no additional BBQ sauce added, the flavor from the bark and sweet and salty taste deeper below.
After the initial post-smoke feeding frenzy, if any meat survives the slaughter my wife an I bestow upon it, the remainder of the pulled pork is neatly stuffed into zippy bags, given a generous helping of Pappy’s XXX White Lightenin’ Barbecue Sauce and plopped into the refrigerator to be enjoyed later.
Stay tuned for more updates on grub cooked with UD’s seasonings a new recipes!
By Mark Darnell, on August 1st, 2009
 There are two universal constants with food: it’s hard to beat a cream cheese-stuffed jalapeno and, you can wrap nearly ANYTHING in bacon and it be very tasty. So what do we have here – a cream cheese stuffed bacon-wrapped jalapeno pepper with some sausage! Where can you go wrong with that!
Most recipes I’ve seen for stuffed smoked jalapenos called for just the cream cheese stuffed pepper with bacon however lately I’ve been seeing a lot of recipes adding lit’l smokies smoked sausages which are good however I wanted to kick it up a level and used chorizo sausage instead. Chorizo is a lot messier then the little cocktail weenies but if you’ve got any sense you’ll be wearing prep gloves when handling the peppers anyway so it won’t matter.
Continue reading LA-Style Atomic Buffalo Turds
By Mark Darnell, on July 29th, 2009
 Having the new Publix open close to my house with a killer selection of meats has put the smoker box into high gear. I’ve not been able to find portions of pork shoulder locally that didn’t require the use of a hand truck to get out to the truck and take home. Publix keeps a stock of 3-4 pounders that are perfect and don’t take a day of smoker-watching to complete. This weekend I got lazy and didn’t want to deal with putting the rub together so I bought a pre-made jar of McCormick Grill Mates Pork Rub and basically chunked the shoulder into a gallon zipper bag, poured half the contents of the rub into the bag, shook it around to get a good covering then tossed the whole mess into the refrigerator for 24 hours. I was pretty much out of everything, even down to half a bag of cherry wood chips so I tried the pre-mixed rub and I have to say, it was great. When I figure out the name of the product I’ll let you know!.
I put the shoulder into the smoker at around 9:30am Sunday morning and ran the box a little hotter than I’ve done before – I tried to keep it at a level 250 degrees for the entire smoke. By noon I had 30 Atomic Buffalo Turds wrapped and tossed into the smoker for their redemption as well. The other significant change I made in this cook was not wrapping the butt in aluminum foil for the last couple of hours. The end result was a perfectly cooked chunk of meat with a great seasoning bark on all sides. My only complaint was it needing just a tad more of a bite – I’ll add a tad of chipotle powder to the rub the next time I try this. The ABTs were ready around 3:30pm, the shoulder was where it needed to be at about 5. I let the internal temperature of the shoulder get up to 210 degrees which worried be but it turned out better than ever regardless.
Continue reading Butt smokin’ – trying a different recipe
By Mark Darnell, on June 22nd, 2009
 I have to admit… of all the breakfast foods I’ve ever eaten, the omelette is by far my all-time favorite. Even my wannabe Huevos con Chorizo recipe takes a back seat to the almighty omelette! I don’t [yet] have a nice flat-top on which to cook these delightful dishes so I’ve had to attempt mastery of the art of flipping two and three egg omelettes in a nice little non-stick pan – the second greatest invention on earth in terms of food, second only to ketchup in a squeeze bottle! I like making these for myself or family and friends however when the opportunity presents itself to flip these lovelies for a crowd, I jump all over it. Last month at our annual Memorial Day beach party I put on a spread of ‘build your own’ parts for made-to-order omelettes for a crowd of around 20 people. I browned Jimmy Dean sausage, fried a couple pounds of bacon, sauteed onions and mushrooms, then went to town chopping raw red and white onions, bell peppers, mushrooms, cilantro, roma tomatoes, and jalepeno peppers. This fiasco was merely a dress rehearsal for the big show later this year where I’ll have a team cooking up short order “breakfast for dinner” meals for a crowd of 200!
Putting all of this together at the party a few weeks ago made me think of an omelette cooking method that had to have been the craziest thing I’ve ever heard – a BOILED omelette? It’s a cheeseless creation passed to me by a friend that requires only a pot of boiling water and some sandwich ziplock baggies. Boiled omelettes work the same way as the flat top or pan versions, the only difference is that you drop your favorite ingredients into the ziplock baggy, pour in two whisked eggs, zip-seal the baggy and drop it in the boiling water for two minutes. Fish your omelette out of the boiling water with tongs, or a net, maybe and let it cool enough to be handled then turn the baggy inside-out to serve. For those of you that can’t endure an omelette without cheese [meaning you're like me] just sprinkle some shreds on it and enjoy.
This method is a lot of fun for just a few people or a whole crowd and as a bonus, kids seem to love it as much as the grownups! It’s a perfect tailgating dish(just keep the little ones away from the boiling water!)
By Mark Darnell, on June 6th, 2009
 Lower Alabama Leisure has moved it’s websites to Surpass Hosting. While the move is currently in progress for all subdomains, galleries, and guests, the core domain is now fully on the hosted platform. Why am I doing this? I have to admit, I’m giving up some liberties by moving these sites from a server I own however It’s totally worth it to give the backend of the server to people who provide hosting solutions for a living. All maintenance, upgrades, and anything else outside keeping the website content up to date is the responsibility of Surpass Hosting. This company has great pricing and offers a lot of bang for the buck.
By Mark Darnell, on April 26th, 2009
 This is a pretty simple recipe but it has several moving parts however, it’s easily done in the course of a day, it can be served for dinner if started around 9am. This is another method I’ve learned under the guidance of Daniel Powell who mastered this process long before me trying it –it works well with spare ribs but is MUCH easier with back ribs; both to prepare and to eat.
Start off by cleaning the slabs and chopping into sections of 3-5 ribs each. Any pork marinade will work if you want to soak them overnight however sliding them into the smoker naked (the ribs, not YOU) will work just fine. A good 3-4 hours at 225 degrees will get you through the first stage of this cook.
The next stage is where the fun begins – get ready to get messy. Pull the ribs off the smoker and find a table where you can layout sheets of aluminum foil. Use my killer BBQ sauce to coat the top and bottom of each section, stacking them 3-4 high and double or triple wrapping in aluminum foil. When you’ve finished making all your little foil stacks, slide them all back into the smoker for another 2-3 hours at around 200 degrees. Since the food is now wrapped in foil you will not need to worry about rotating wood chips for the smoke, you’ll be using the smoker as a low-heat oven the rest of the way in.
Pull the foil stacks out of the smoker and let them cool, still wrapped for an hour then serve. When you unwrap you will not be able to pickup the ribs by the bone, they will be tender to the point of falling off the bone and will have an unbelievable taste.
Continue reading Smoked Pork Ribs
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