{George’s Blog}
Well, Dead End BBQ is entering into the blog
world! This is our first blog of many to come, discussing the art of
barbecue, catering and where ever our journey takes us.
Barbecue has been a passion of mine since I
was 14 in the backyard with my father on a grill. Even though it was
hamburgers and hot dogs, I got the bug. I always gravitated towards a
grill at any party, either to observe or get advice until I felt that I could
command the grill myself. Mostly I considered myself a backyard grill
guy. That was until we started cooking on our Dead End Street.
In February 2000, my wife and I went to dinner
with two other couples on our Dead End Street. That night the Dead End Society
was formed! We decided to smoke a whole hog on Memorial Day
weekend. I contacted a friend of mine and borrowed a smoker big enough to
cook a whole hog. Only two of us had ever cooked a whole hog before and
the other had cooked a goat. We smoked the hog for 20 hours and had about 50
people come over to eat it with us! It was a blast!
The next year I purchased a smoker big enough
to smoke two hogs at the same time. That was my first big smoker; now I have
nine! The second year we got a lot better and by 2002 we decided to enter a
contest in Townsend, TN. We won first place in three categories: Whole Hog, Chicken and Anything
Butt (a KCBS category that judges anything except
for the 4 main meats); we did a chocolate banana dessert! By 2004 we were
the Grand Champions of that event. We thought we were pretty good!
So The Dead End Society went out on the
national circuit and got it handed to us! Our competitors were big time
and we had a lot to learn. Every weekend we would practice the art
of barbecue until we finally got it right in 2007. That was the
year we won the State Championship of Tennessee in Cookeville!
In 2008, we were selected to represent
Tennessee at the Jack
Daniel's World Invitational BBQ Championship in Lynchburg, TN. There were 11,000
teams overall that year and we finished 44th in the world. Our dessert, which
was a vanilla bean, chocolate chunk, swirled with Jack Daniels ice cream,
sandwiched between chocolate chunk chocolate cookies, finished 9th in the world. We finished 12th overall in brisket, 32nd in chicken, and 36th in pork. Our ribs were 66th overall and that was only because
there was too much Jack Daniels in the equation at the time the ribs were
smoked.
After the Jack, we decided to open our first
Dead End BBQ restaurant, which we did in October 2009. We haven’t been
able to do as many contests as we would like, but we will be out there some day
soon!
In the meantime, we have classes every year on
the patio to share our knowledge of barbecue with the community. This year, we
are having two classes. The first is May 16th in Maryville, which is a beginner’s
class and the other on June 20th in
Knoxville, which is a more advanced class. Click here to sign up. Hope to see you soon!
-George
