I Absolutely Smoked Myself Silly With The Boys at Chuds BBQ

Chaps4/20/2021 2:50 PM

This weekend was a little bit of a return to my roots and it felt damn awesome. Here's why:

When I retired from the Marine Corps, I was initially bored out of my mind. I was going back to school part-time and being a part-time stay-at-home dad. When I wasn't in school, I was watching my kids and fucking around on Twitter and youtube. Eventually, I stumbled across a BBQ competition show and decided that I wanted to give it a try. There was a fella on these shows named Myron Mixon and he had a magnetic personality. The way he talked about BBQ made it seem like art. So, I decided I wanted to try my hand at painting some beautiful meats.

My mom bought me a bullet-style smoker. It was a Brinkman and I found all kinds of mods for it. Air intake. Water pans. All kinds of shit. I tinkered and played with that thing until it damn near fell apart. After that, I decided to get a big offset smoker. I fucking loved that thing. I still had a bunch of Marine pals in the area so we would have big cookouts and Id toss some pork butts on for the whole squad.

After a while, my family was tired of eating BBQ damn near every day so we stopped cooking it for a bit except for holidays. I'd still toss on a turkey, pork butt, or some brisket for some nachos whenever company would come over but, by and large, my smoker remained cold for long stretches. Over the years, I sold my offset, got a big green egg, and it just wasn't the same. Big Green Eggs are awesome for flavor and cooking. They really are. But, part of the allure for BBQ is the process of controlling a fire, sitting out by the smoker, and drinking beer while petting your dog and being alone. I missed that.

Recently, I started watching Jordie's video series. He's improved a ton and gives out a shit ton of great information. Jordie connected me with some dudes who live in Austin which is right up the road from me. I looked up their videos and was really impressed with what they were doing and what they were building so I went up there this Sunday to hang out for the day. Not a mistake by any means.

After researching them and seeing that their waitlist for a new pit was nearly a year and sometimes well over a year, I assumed they were in a warehouse. Nope. They are just building awesome shit in a garage- a garage where they also taught me how to weld.

The guys behind the Chud brand arent professionally trained to weld or cook. They learned how to get it done on youtube and trial and error. What they can do now is nothing short of incredible. For instance, in their driveway and the first thing I saw when I pulled up was this monster.

That smoker weighs about 3 thousand pounds. A dude from California ordered it. He's flying to texas, renting a truck, and driving it back home. It was built from an old propane tank and has a fold-down chimney that uses an 8-inch elbow pipe. It's monstrous. You can easily fit 20 pork butts in there at the same time.

While the fellas were welding up my Mini Chud Box Pro, Evan from an incredible food truck was cookin up an insane spread. He made goat chops, pork butts, pork belly, burnt ends, goat ribs, chickens, goat sausage, and brought some BBQ-filled pastries as well. It was an unreal day of food.

Those goat chops were so good. I expected them to be a little tough. Not so. Not so at all.

After spending all day there on Sunday and getting a belly full of the best BBQ in Texas, I got to put some of the finishing touches on a new charcoal chimney that drips sex.

After that, we loaded up my new smoker and Im not posting that video because I look so thin and strong. I dont want this to end up being about me.

Usually the Chud BBQ fellas season the smoker for you but I wanted to do it myself which is what I'll be doing for some of today. While Im doing that, I'll be checking out some of their other videos too because daddy needs to make some beef cheeks like those posted above. They also have a podcast about smokin them meats.