Dead End BBQ Maryville Wine Dinners

{Dead End Wine Dinners}

     

You’ve got to be thinking…wine and barbecue??? Together???? No way.

Well the team at Dead End BBQ Maryville is pairing our smoked fare with wines from across the world and let me tell you, it’s a match made in heaven.

Each month, General Manager MacLean Bell and Manager Levi Beckelhimer meet up with our local wine distributor to plan for one of the most unique events in the area.

Dead End Maryville’s monthly wine dinners started out showcasing our traditional barbecue and pairing them with the perfect wine that we offered in the restaurant. It was a great way to educate guests on which wines complimented pulled pork best versus sliced brisket.

After 5 months of dinners and featuring every item on the menu, MacLean and Levi took their culinary prowess one step further and went off menu. Since March, they have been cooking up a five course meal, consisting of seasonal foods and smoked meats that will blow your mind. They have even expanded their wine pairing selection.

I attended last night’s dinner, anxious to see what new dishes the team had come up with. The previous wine dinner in April, with the watermelon gazpacho and smoked sausage skewers drizzled with chimmichuri sauce would be pretty hard to top.

The evening started off with a cold, smoked corn and buttermilk soup with pickled peppercorns. It was paired with the Bonterra Sauvignon Blanc which balanced out the intense spiciness of the soup. 

Second Course

The second course was a smoked salmon filet, glazed with our peach moonshine barbecue sauce and served on a mushroom and potato gratin. It was paired with the Zin Phomaniac Lodi Zinfandel.

I was only half way through and I was already starting to get full (mind you, the portions are huge and the wine glasses are filled to the top).

Out came the third course; a plate of beautiful St. Louis style ribs atop parmesan roasted cauliflower. The ribs tasted like they were fresh out of the smoker and were paired with the Filus Malbec from Argentina.

Fourth Course

A palate cleansing melon sorbet was served before the fourth course to prep our taste buds for the awesome dish to come. And honestly, with it being 96 degrees outside, I could have eaten a whole bowl of the sorbet and called it a day.

But I moved forward and graciously accepted the coffee and pepper crusted tenderloin that was set in front of me. The tenderloin was topped with a pineapple chutney and accompanied with fingerling potatoes and snow peas. It was paired with the Natura Carmenere from Chile, which is one of Levi’s favorite wines.

And for the finale, a goat cheese panna cotta served with marinated strawberries. They chose to pair this dessert with the Vilacetinho Vinho Verde, which was light and fresh to round out the dinner.

As usual, I left the dinner in awe and full. I am so lucky to work with such an amazing group of people like MacLean and Levi. They have created an exceptional experience that not only celebrates our style of barbecue, but it shows that barbecue knows no limits. They are always innovating and their hard work shows as every dinner continues to sell out.

If you are interested in receiving email notifications about upcoming dinners, please email Levi Beckelhimer at levi@deadendbbq.com

For more photos from the wine dinner, please check out our instagram and facebook.

Best Wishes & BBQ,

Marlowe Whittaker

Catering Sales Manager

BBQ Throw Down: Winning Pork Belly Recipe

{George’s Pork Belly Recipe}

1. Lightly coat the pork belly with Peanut oil both sides

2. Lightly coat with ground black pepper both sides of the Pork Belly

3. Coat the Pork Belly with Dead End Rib Rub both sides

4. Let the Pork Belly sweat for 2 hours.

5. Place on the smoker for 2 hours at 274 degrees

6. After the 2 hours on the smoker, place some butter, brown sugar and tiger sauce down on a piece of foil then lay the Pork Belly onto the foil then repeat the process on the other side. Tightly wrap the Pork Belly in the foil for 1 hour.          

7. Remove the Pork Belly from the foil and baste both sides and return to the smoker for ½ hour.

8. Remove from the smoker and let rest for ten minutes then slice into small strips about the thickness of a thick piece of bacon.

9. ENJOY!

DEBBQ Meets The Blog World

{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 44^th 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 9^th in the world. We finished 12^th overall in brisket, 32^nd in chicken, and 36^th in pork. Our ribs were 66^th 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 16^th in Maryville, which is a beginner’s class and the other on June 20^th in Knoxville, which is a more advanced class. Click here to sign up. Hope to see you soon!

-George