I’m not sure exactly how original my creations are but it’s pretty much all I could come up with. Hot Dogs with a Blueberry aioli didn’t exactly make sense so Beanie Weanie seemed to make some sense. As a kid, and even today, I love to slice up a couple (okay, maybe three or four) good hot dogs and after pan frying them toss in a can of pork and beans. Add some spices, some ketchup and a little hot sauce and I’ve got a lunch that warms the innards.

I also wanted to use the cast iron skillet I had just, the day before, lovingly re-seasoned. The whole mixture was cooked in the skillet in the Traeger and turned out pretty darn tasty. This is one of those recipes that would need a little added flavoring with spices to get just right. Or I might use blueberry pie filling instead of blueberry syrup next time. (I just thought of the blueberry pie filling while writing them, I wish I’d thought about sooner because that would have been even better.)

And I did use canned beans this time around. This has been a crazy month, so far, and I just didn’t leave myself enough time to use dried beans. And if I told the truth I don’t think it would have made a lot of difference.

Smoked Blueberry Beanie Weenie

Ingredients

• 2 cans (14 oz) S&W White Kidney Beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 can (14 oz) S&W White Beans
• 3/4 cups Blueberry Syrup
• 1/2 cup tomato ketchup
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ginger
• 2 teaspoons dry mustard
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 4 slices bacon, chopped
• Salt, pepper and hot sauce to taste

Directions:

Pre-heat your smoker to 275 degrees (or oven if you feel you must)

Drain the beans in a mesh strainer. Rinse off all the bean slime and set aside.

Fry the chopped bacon until the fat is rendered. Don’t over cook. You don’t want it crispy. Remove bacon and set aside. Saute the onions until soft. Add all the ingredients and stir to mix well. Use 1/2

Place the bean mixture, in the cast iron skillet in your smoker and cook for about three hours. Add the hot dogs to the top and continue cooking until the hot dogs are warmed, about 30 minutes. Take them out and serve them!

For the dill pickles I decided the best way to handle them, because I was smart enough to not put them in the beans, was to batter and fry them. I had also made up some crappy corn bread (See my request here) and used a little diluted corn bread batter. The fried pickles with some ranch dressing were actually pretty darn tasty.

Additional participants in this month’s Ingredient Challenge include:

Paul Haight of No Excuses BBQ – ENTRY HERE

The No Excuses BBQ website was started in January of 2009 as a way to record the author’s goal of cooking outdoors at least once a week throughout the year and showing the results to the world. Somewhere along the way things got out of control…

Bob Fukushima of Bob’s Brew & Que – ENTRY HERE

Bob started Bob’s Brew and ‘Que in August of 2009 with the intent of sharing his views on food and drink. Originally focused on BBQ and Homebrew, it was inevitable that the influences of his upbringing in the San Francisco Bay Area and it’s wealth of ingredients as well as his heritage as an American of Japanese ancestry would help focus his blog, as it has his approach to food and drink.

Jason Adams of Jason’s BBQ Adventures – ENTRY HERE

Jason’s BBQ Adventures was started in 2007 when Jason fell in love with real BBQ the first time and tried to smoked a pork shoulder and soon after started smoking ribs, brisket, and chicken. After a while he started to experiment with grilling and smoking just about anything and ultimately fell in love with the entire cooking process.

Hanneke Eerden of The Dutchess Cooks – ENTRY HERE

After years of cooking, grilling, baking and reading other people’s blogs, I thought “why not start my own blog??” And I did, in 2010, but already after a short period of time, a blog wasn’t enough, and I started my own website. It’s not my goal to publish or come up with fancy and difficult recipes: just good and delicious food with an international twist! Straight from my plate to yours!

Marc Van Der Wouw of Grill Adventures-ENTRY HERE

Grilladventures by broadcastmarc is started on march of 2010.I started the BBQ thing when I was 30,before that we eat a lot outside.have fun,but when the kids came in our life We start serious cooking.Most of it is realy healthy I think;-)The grill has a special place in my heart,We love to do things outside..Everything I make is an adventure,and sometimes we use the books.We try to grill as much as we can year round.

Chris of Nibble Me This – ENTRY HERE

The Nibble Me This website was created to share Chris’ misadventures in live fire cooking. ”I have no culinary training….I’m just entertaining myself with fire and food”.

And this month we welcome Wilfred Reinke from Oshawa, Canada!

Wilfred Reinke of The Oshawa Ogre – ENTRY HERE

Wilfred is somewhat of a newcomer to the BBQ scene having only done standard grilling for most of his 50 years, He found and became passionate about Low & Slow about 2 years ago. and that passion also morphed into a second hobby which is writing. Oshawa Ogre’s Views News & BBQ’s has been a project that has taken on a life of it’s own and blessed him with many many new friends in the BBQ community on Twitter, facebook and through the blog.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Larry Gaian

…as I drove past Sierra Smokehouse this afternoon  at lunch time I saw something that gave me hope.  First, there was the smoker on a trailer out front, a real live smoker isn’t a guarantee but it’s a good sign.  Second, there were wisps of smoke coming from a fenced off area around back (yes, I looked before I went it).  And third, there were three Placer County Sheriff’s cars in the parking lot.  I’ve come to trust the taste buds of most law enforcement officials.  So I decided this was where I should have lunch today.

Walking into Sierra Smokehouse my optimism continued to soar.  The place smelled like smoky BBQ.  The cashier area had bottles of their sauce for sale, so I knew they were proud of it.  Funny thing is though, the cashier area is as close as I got to their sauce.

Along with some of the traditional BBQ dishes the menu contained a nice selection of salads and sandwiches.  The more traditional BBQ dishes were Texas brisket, pulled pork, St. Louis cut ribs and chicken.  Sides included Sweet Potato Fries, Mac & Cheese, Cole Slaw and Baked Beans.

As I was reading over the menu I heard another good sign!  The lady behind me exclaimed to the waitress, “My parents are from Tennessee and this is the best BBQ sauce I’ve ever had.”  Now I’m always glad to hear people enjoying their food, and it’s especially good to know that having parents from Tennessee makes you a BBQ sauce expert. This just made me even more excited to try their BBQ sauce.

I ordered the Texas brisket, cole slaw and baked beans.  While I was waiting for my lunch to arrive I noticed something I had never seen in a BBQ restaurant anywhere.  There was no sauce on the table.  There wasn’t even sauce in the waitress stations.  No little side table with bottles of sauce.  This, in my mind, didn’t bode well for my brisket.  If there was no sauce to be found anywhere that must mean it was coming on the plate.  Right?  Did this mean I was getting brisket smothered in sauce?

The service was very good and I got my lunch within a couple of minutes.  And much to my surprise there was no BBQ sauce on my plate.  There was no BBQ sauce on my brisket.  Not even a little plastic cup of sauce.  Now I don’t usually sauce my brisket but I sure wanted to taste the sauce, and since I’ve never had to ask for sauce in a BBQ restaurant I decided to see what happened.   You know what happened?  Nothing.

I prefer my brisket sliced and “juicy” with a little of the fat cap left on.  As you can see the brisket came out sort of chopped and sort of chunked.  This is normally a sign of leftover, warmed over brisket.  But since it didn’t have the texture of warmed over brisket I’m not really sure if it was or not.  The brisket had a nice smoke ring, but not much bark.

The brisket had a nice texture and tasted pretty good.  It tasted of smoke, but lacked the typical brisket “rub” flavor.  It’s  obvious they don’t use much seasoning on their brisket.  It’s kind of a shame because if they had seasoned the brisket it would have been pretty good.  Instead I had a plate of brisket with a little plastic container of  au jus.  Yes, you read that right AU JUS.   And because the au jus didn’t have any smoke taste chances are it didn’t come from the brisket juices.

Often times in a BBQ restaurant the beans are one of the biggest disappointment.  Usually when beans are bad it’s because the pitmaster has taken canned beans and tried to doctor them up.  Canned beans can be doctored in a suitable manner but a great deal of care and thought needs to used.  In the case of Sierra Smokehouse the beans weren’t canned, if they were they need a new source for them, because these beans were raw.  I’m not talking al dente, I’m talking crunchy.  There’s no excuse for serving under cooked beans.  The flavor was okay, but they were not edible.

The slaw was just plain boring.  Mayo based with no seasoning.  Just a splash of vinegar would have punched this slaw up to an acceptable level, and some salt wouldn’t have hurt either.  The slaw turned into raisin salad by the time I got to the bottom of the dish.

The sad thing about my lunch at Sierra Smokehouse was that all the food was close to good.  If just a little more detail had been paid to the food it could have been elevated to a nice place.  But it appears to me that they are just going through the motions.  I gather from the comments I heard from the other tables that I was probably the only person in the place that didn’t like the food.  And this fact just re-enforces my theory that most people just don’t understand real BBQ.  Because this wasn’t good BBQ, it wasn’t all bad, but it wasn’t good either.

I have to admit when Char-Broil first contacted me to come out to Memphis In May and do some cooking demonstrations one of the first thoughts I had was that someone was going to pay me to fly out and eat at Interstate Bar-B-Q.

For a BBQ enthusiast there are a select group of “famous” restaurants that are must eat ats.  And for me Interstate Bar-B-Q was high on my list.  And as hard as it is for me to say I’ve got to admit that it may have been one of the biggest BBQ disappointments I’ve ever had.

There are a variety of negative reasons why I don’t eat in BBQ restaurants very often.  And I don’t think Interstate BBQ missed a single reason.  Everything I dislike about most BBQ restaurants was encapulated in one meal.

Go figure…who would have thought that one of America’s most celebrated BBQ establishments was my first Memphis In May disappointment.   Dang, I’m sad writing this.  I so wanted a good BBQ experience and I didn’t get it.

As I am like to do when eating at a BBQ restaurant for the first time I ordered the sample platter.  This was one of the biggest sample platters I’ve ever seen.  It came with chopped pork shoulder, chopped brisket, pork ribs, beef ribs, sausage.  And every bit of it was drenched in bbq sauce.  There was so much bbq sauce on the plate that the plate resembled a little swimming pool of red sauce.  It must have just been ladled over the meat after it had been piled up.

I cannot even begin to describe the disappointment I felt when the plate of luke warm soaking wet meat was sat down in front of me.  Nineteen hundred miles I came to eat at the world famous Interstate Bar-B-Q and I got food that could be purchased at any local, “cook once or twice a week and reheat” BBQ restaurant.

The chopped pork and chopped brisket lacked any flavor outside of the sauce.  I couldn’t taste the smoke at all.  If I had not smelled the smoke when I first walked into the place I would have sworn the meat wasn’t smoked.  The sausage was flavorful and had a nice “bite” to it with the natural casing.

I got two pork ribs and two beef ribs with the sample platter.  The pork ribs were soft, mushy and fall of the bone.  Not the way I like them at all, but probably the way most people want their ribs.  Without a doubt the biggest disappointment of a disappointing meal were the beef ribs.  The beef ribs were not edible at all.  The membrane was not removed and there was not way you could bite into them and the meat was so over cooked you couldn’t even get the meat off the membrane with a knife and fork.

The sides weren’t all the much better.  The beans looked as though they had been kept under a heat lamp for hours in the little white bowls they are served in.  The cole slaw was average at best.

The famous Interstate BBQ spaghetti was tasty, but lacked any real reason to get excited about it.  Over cooked pasta covered in sauce with a little meat isn’t anything to I’d recommend. 

You know you’ve got problems when not one person out of 8 finished their meal.  What do you do when the only thing that tasted like you would expect it to taste like is the plain white bread served with each meal.

Some of the people in our group thought that the reason the food was as bad as it was may have been due to it being the end of the day and everything had been kept in hotel pans all day on a steam table.  Now I don’t know about the steam table, but the food sure had the texture that meat has when it’s been kept “warm” all day.  But even if that was the case doesn’t a restaurant have an obligation to make sure the food served in the evening is the same quality as when they first open?  We paid the same price, we should have gotten the same quality. 

And for the first time ever, we were denied a chance to look at the pits.  I’ve never, ever been told I couldn’t see the pits in a restaurant.  Makes me wonder about things.

So that’s my first Memphis BBQ experience.  I figure it’s going to get better because it certainly can’t get any worse than it was tonight.

When you first walk into Pat’s you know this is a legit BBQ restaurant.  The smell of smoke and meat greets you as soon as you walk in the front door.  It just smells like BBQ.  To many times over the years I’ve walked into BBQ restaurants and there is no indication they serve BBQ.  That’s not the case with Pat’s.  It’s BBQ through and through.  From the pictures on the walls to the picnic tables with buckets of plastic silverware and rolls of paper towels.

I ordered, as did my wife and guests, the three meat combos.  Between the four of us we had most of the meats and sides covered.  I was a little disappointed they were out of the mustard greens I ordered.

Three meat combo. Pork spares, brisket and pulled pork.

Since the sauce was in squeeze bottles on the table I was confident Pat’s would not make the cardinal mistake of a lousy BBQ restaurants, meat that comes to the table sauced.  And sure enough the meat came naked.  No sauce.  The pulled pork was juicy without being mushy from overcooking or warming.  It had a nice flavor in addition to a smoke ring and real honest to goodness “bark” on the meat.

The brisket was good.  It was tender and had a very mild smoke flavor.  Again, a smoke ring and nice bark told me this was really smoked brisket.  I like my brisket a little more fatty than served at Pat’s.  But, the brisket served was far from dry.

Of the three meats the ribs were my least favorite.  Pat’s serves untrimmed, full pork spare ribs.  The flavor was excellent.  Just like everything else the flavor was just meat, seasonings and smoke.  But they were just a tad undercooked.  Not raw, mind you, they just came off the smoker a little to soon.  The meat was a little chewy and didn’t come off the bones as clean as it should.  I’m not a fan of “fall of the bone” overcooked ribs, but on a properly cooked rib the meat should come off the bone with a little tug of the teeth.

Two sauces are served at Pat’s.  Mild and a “Sweet & Hot” sauce.  The “Sweet & Hot” was fantastic.  The sweet hit the front of the tongue immediately while there was just a little heat on the back of the tongue.  Great sauce that complimented all three meats.  The “mild” sauce was very, very mild.  Almost void of flavor.  But that is probably just because of my palate.  My wife and guests enjoyed it.  Oh, and the corn bread was good too!

Cole Slaw and Red Beans & Rice

Close up of the cole slaw

Between us we had cole slaw, red beans & rice, mash potatoes & gravy and bbq beans.  The sides were awesome.  The cole slaw had a great deal of flavor and was not drowned like most slaws in liquid.  The flavor would have been perfect on top of a pulled pork sammie.  The red beans & rice were good, but did lack the kick normally in the dish.  The mash potatoes were fresh and covered with brown gravy that must have been made with brisket drippings.  I don’t normally associate mash potatoes with BBQ but these worked quite nice.  The BBQ Beans had the appearance of “doctored” canned beans but didn’t have the normal mushy consistency canned beans get.  They were flavorful and loaded with meat.

You can follow Pat’s BBQ on Facebook.  Don’t let their Facebook page fool you though.  They are proud of their food, even though the five night a week entertainment seems to get top billing over the food.   You can read more about Pat’s BBQ at www.patsbbq.com.

How good was Pat’s?  Well, I’ve eaten at a lot of BBQ restaurants and I’d only return to a handful.  And Pat’s is one of those I would go back to.

The food was fantastic. You could tell the owners actually had a smoker they used when you walked into the place. The J&R “Oyler” pit was right down front. The owner without hesitation let me take a walk around the pit.

I ordered the “Smoked Meat Plate” which came with tri-trip, brisket and pork collar and two sides. The meat was great. The brisket was tender and moist and done to perfection. It almost melted in your mouth. The pork collar (a different cut of meat I need to check out) was sliced and again was just amazing. The tri-tip was, well tri-tip. Nothing great compared to the other two meats.

For the sides I had beans and cole slaw. The beans had a unique flavor profile. They were good, but trying to guess the spices was challenging. The owner would only confirm that cinnamon was in them when I guessed right. The cole slaw again was unique and very tasty. The vinegar based sauce had a good heat kick at the end, but was not overpowering. My wife had the Memphis style pulled pork sandwich and again it was very good. We ended up sharing both plates.

The most amazing thing was that everything from the side salad to the cole slaw and beans were all from scratch. No bagged lettuce, cabbage or canned beans here, all scratch.

There are not many BBQ restaurants I will go back to more than once. But Yunece 61 will be a regular stop on our evenings out. Check out their website, lots of specials. Including “All You Can Eat” nights during the week.