Finally broke down and signed up on Twitter.  Follow me at http://twitter.com/PlowboysBBQ.

This dish was inspired by Rick Stein’s recipe. A co-worker who lives on and operates a small family farm, offered me some fresh ground lamb. The lamb was organic and free range. It was wonderfully fresh, flavorful, and tender. Kefta is known throughout the Middle East as spiced meatballs. The meatballs, tomatoes and onion were baked in a Tagine at 250 for a two hours. The meatballs were browned first. The onion was sauteed in olive oil before adding.
Meatballs
1 pound ground lamb
1 T Panko bread crumbs
1 t cumin
1 t Hungarian paprika (Spicier than the Spanish or California variety)
salt and pepper to taste

Sauce
2 cans diced tomatoes
1 t cumin
1 t Hungarian Paprika
salt and pepper to taste

The dish was served on garlic toast with a poached egg.

Growing up in NW Iowa and SE South Dakota, barbecue meant something very different to me than it does now. BBQ was Kingsford charcoal, a Weber kettle grill, and some kind of grilled meat slathered in BBQ sauce, which I can still smell burning over the coals. I remember my father’s red Weber kettle in the backyard. It was the summer before kindergarten. At that age, a kettle is about as tall as you are or taller. Wondering if it was hot, I touched it with a couple of knuckles on my right hand. Though a little faded over the years and a few more wrinkles, I still have the scar today. Maybe that’s where the fascination and obsession comes from. Maybe I was branded by that red kettle grill almost four decades ago.

My two boys, on the other hand, are surrounded by the stuff. One of their first words was Bah Bah Que. Smoked chicken, pork, or brisket was some of the very first solid foods they’d had. They both request daddy’s barbecued chicken when asked what they want to eat for dinner. I have pictures of them sitting in 30″ Oklahoma Joe off set cookers, turkey fryers, pots, pans, and now the new Big Green Egg. Even our Christmas card featured a family picture taken after we won Grand Champion at a contest in the fall. Its a part of their lives just like brushing their teeth, going to school, or our dog, Amy.

Michael, soon to be 4, got to come to several BBQ contests this year including the American Royal. Just like dad, he has his own set of BBQ friends like “The Girls” (daughters of my BBQ friend Andy). He’s got his own “pig tail” and meat thermometer. Whenever I’m tending the cooker at home, he has to have a pair of food service gloves on, just like I do. Whenever we buy something and he’s not quite sure what it is, he’ll ask if its for barbecue. Its the very first of January and he’s already asking when the first BBQ contest is. Michael is almost as anxious for the competition season to start as I am.

Christian, age 2 1/2, has had an infatuation with pigs since he could talk. Pig was literally one of his very first words. For quite a while, every animal said Oink. Well, it wasn’t oink, it was a very throaty, nasally snort… I just don’t know how to spell it. In the following picture, Christian is posing with a Traeger Lil Pig and Phil from Smoking Guns BBQ.

As I was taking the boys to pre-school one day this summer, we past a local BBQ joint. We’ve passed this restaurant everyday for at least a year to and from school. Christian spots the logo on the sign and shouts, “Pig!” Quietly, Michael says, “That’s a BBQ pig.”

When two boys under four years old know the difference between a pig and a BBQ pig, they are truly “Growing up BBQ”.

While smoking up a case of pork butts, I came across a very small butt of only 3-4 lbs.  Perfect size for an experiment.  Its been nearly eight years since my honeymoon in Jamaica.  Haven’t had a good rum drink or jerk pork since.  My jerked butt started with some Dizzy Pig Jamaican Fire rub.  After a nine hour smoke, I wrapped the but in foil and added a bottle of Busha Browne’s Spice Jerk Sauce.  Put the wrapped but back in the pit and continue cooking until it reached an internal temperature in the upper 190’s.  That took about another 2-3 hours.

The butt sat in a Cambro hot box for about 6 hours with some other hot pork.  Came out still above 165 degrees.  Those Cambro’s are wonderful to have around.  All three of mine are very used, but cheap, from eBay.   Back to the jerk pork, I pulled it all in a half aluminum pan, reserved the juices left in the foil and placed the juice in the freezer.  This is a quick way to separate most of the fat from the juices.  After skimming off the fat, I added the natural juices back to the pork and placed back on the smoker for another 60-90 minutes.  The result was jerky, smokey, but not too spicy.  A worthy experiment.

While camping a couple weekends ago, I captured some great stills of the campfire with my digital camera. The first picture is a normal shot. My camera has a “manual” setting which is 1/800 and F4.0.

PlowboysBBQ.com is growing. From September 2006 until May 31, visits to the site has grown from about 50 per week to over 330. My hope was to reach 300 weekly visits by the end of May. Two thirds of the visits come from search engines, mostly Google.

Thanks to everyone who stops in to see what’s happening at PlowboysBBQ.com.

45 Teams

2nd Place Chicken
2nd Place Pork
8th Overall

The setting was the Basswoods RV Park outside of Platte City, MO. The weather was beautiful with starry skies each night. The heated pool was busy and the fish were biting in the stocked ponds. What a wonderful setting for getting the family together for the weekend and a BBQ contest.

I cooked alone this weekend as Randy was getting ready for his daughter Megan’s upcoming graduation. The entries were chicken, pork ribs, pork, and brisket. All of my meats were cooked on two Traeger 075’s. The little pellet cookers did a great job on both the big meats as well as the ribs and chicken.

The chicken scored the highest with a 170 out of 180 possible. I never tried the chicken, but the tenderness scores were all 9’s, the highest possible from each judge. The pork was the best I ever made. I don’t think I can get a pork butt any better than that.

Two calls, both for 2nd place made for a very gratifying contest. But taking my son to the pool and watching both boys have so much fun camping made the weekend even better.

For more great recipes, reviews and stories related to grilling and barbecue, check out GetYourGrillOn.net.  I’m a regular writer there, but so are many other great grillers and BBQ’ers.

GetYourGrillOn.net is part of the Well Fed Network.  The Well Fed Network is looking for writers who can contribute occasional articles.

My brother in law, good friend, and BBQ buddy Randy turns 50 today. We celebrated by going out for dinner with Randy’s friend Greg and all our wives. Audrey, Michael, Christian and I gave Randy two chef coats and a gratan slicing knife.

In late December, I started using the Google Analytics service to see where everyone was visiting from and what they were interested in. It is interesting and very gratifying to know that so many people visit this site and return often. You can often see hits to the site from the same parts of the country implying the same repeat user: Casper, WY; Salt Lake City, UT; Higginsville, MO; Broolklyn, NY; Keller, TX; and all across the world. Visitors from 44 states included Alaska and Hawaii.

International visitors found Plowboys BBQ in January….

Canada
Puerto Rico
Finland - Helsinki
Australia - Ashfield, Perth
UK - Redding, Redbridge
Germany
France - Alsace
Japan - Saitama
New Zealand

Traffic Stats
Total Vistors - 616
New Visits - 69.32%
Repeat Visits - 30.68%

New Visitors to the Site - 96.83%

Referring Sites
BBQ-Brethren.com - 29.17%
Other - 20.13%
Direct - 19.48%
Google - 13.47%
GetYourGrillOn.net - 8.77%
WoodworkingTalk.com - 8.44%
PaddlingPigs.com - 2.92%

Top Pages
Home Page - 504
Products Page - 99
About - 31
Recipies-Cooking/Rubs - 28
Competitions - 24