What do you do when some competition BBQ fanatics come to visit and want to go out to eat?  Do you take the safe route and suggest a good non BBQ establishment or do you go for broke and try a BBQ restaurant.  Well that was my dilemma today.  John and Rhana McGee, from Wine Country Q in Duvall, Washington were on their yearly trip to the Napa wine country and I always try to make it over and have a meal with them when they visit.  John and Rhana were the 2011 Pacific Northwest BBQ Association Team of the Year.  They are two of the finest people I know and they know BBQ.  Along for the ride was my buddy @Sirporkalot who knows a thing or two about BBQ himself.  There was a lot pressure on this restaurant choice.

But…

I knew BarBersQ in Napa was a good choice.  I’d eaten there once before and was very impressed.  I mean how stupid would it have been to suggest an unknown BBQ restaurant.  It was a chance I just couldn’t take.  BarBersQ is probably the most unusual BBQ restaurant I’ve ever eaten at.  It’s also one of the best.  It’s unusual because it’s what can only be described as an upscale restaurant.  It’s not upscale in the white table-cloth sort of way, even though they save some really nice white paper napkins, it’s just got that Napa upscale kind of look and feel.  The restaurant has a fantastic atmosphere and the service is first-rate.

BarBersQ website describes their cuisine this way:

American Heritage Cooking featuring authentic Memphis style barbeque. The BarBersQ menu follows seasonal direction, embracing and fostering our close relationships with Napa and Sonoma Valley purveyors, farms, gardens, dairies and wineries; ‘the people and places of the Napa Valley’. Our menu offers the casual diner organic and sustainable local products; grass-fed beef, free range poultry raised on vegetarian diets, food free of antibiotics and hormones. We use local vegetables, fruit and herbs which are fresh from the garden to your table at BarBersQ, often the same day from our own Napa gardens. –BarbersQ

We started our meal with a couple of appetizers. We had some wonderful deep-fried Boudin Sausage balls with a Creole Mustard remoulade (left).  Boudin is not a spicy sausage, but it had enough flavor to not be overpowered by the creole mustard.  These were some tasty appetizers and were a great way to start a good meal with good friends.

We also had some spicy chicken wings.  What I liked most about the wings was the “smoke fried” wing method I like to use is also used by BarBersQ.  The wings are smoked on their Old Hickory pit using cherry wood for a couple of hours.  After a good smoke they are flash fried and then glazed with a Tabasco and honey mixture that was perfect.  The heat was nice, not overpowering and the honey added just the right amount of sweetness.

The sides were fantastic.  One of my favorite BBQ side dishes are greens.  The collard greens with ham hocks at BarBersQ are flavorful.  They’re cooked to perfection, not soggy or mushy, with just the right about of texture.  All they needed was a little vinegar pepper hot sauce to splash on them.  The cornbread is made from a course ground cornmeal from a local Northern California gristmill.  It’s about as good as cornbread gets.

Because @Sirporkalot and I have hearty appetites we split the “Taste of Q for Two” combo meal.  This is one big plate of meat.  Brisket, pulled pork, sausage, chicken and baby back ribs all cooked  about as good as you can get. It was almost cooked to perfect…almost.  Normally, when BBQ comes to the table already sauced I expect to get bad Q.  Not the case here.  Even though the brisket and pulled pork comes with sauce it’s not ladled on, resulting in soaked meat.  My thought was that the sauce was added more as a garnish than anything else.  It’s actually done in a way that compliments the meat and doesn’t take over the flavor profile.

Look…let me cut right to the chase.  This is some fantastic BBQ.  The pulled pork had flavor and wasn’t mushy at all.  The brisket was tender, moist and tasted like beef instead of all seasonings.  The chicken was, simply, amazing.  I can’t believe how good this chicken was.  Normally chicken that has spent a couple of hours on a smoker ends up with a gummy texture to the skin.  Not at BarBersQ, they achieved the long sought after and rarely achieved “bite through” skin.  The sausage may have been the best meat on the plate.   The sausage comes from Caggiano Sausage Company in Petaluma, California and has a serious buttery flavor that just melts in your mouth.  I’ve got to find a local source for this sausage.

The ribs were the “almost” to perfection part of the meal.  The ribs are prepared in the traditional Memphis style.  BarBersQ has not fallen prey to the “fall off the bone tender” cooking methods that many restaurants have.  These baby backs are tender, come off the bone with just a little tug of the teeth, just as they should.  They are seasoned well and just lightly glazed.  The only problem was the membrane wasn’t removed.  Not sure why our ribs had the membrane since our server said they normally remove them.  Fortunately the membranes were bite through and didn’t take away from the overall enjoyment of the meal.

John ordered the roasted vinegar chicken with brussels sprouts and white rice.  His meal was also just as good as everything else.  Yes, @SirPorkalot and I ate our food and some of John’s.  The sauce on the vinegar chicken was a beautiful reduction full of flavor and actually very little flavor or tang of vinegar.

(Rhana ate a salad…I didn’t take a picture of it…)

If you want some great BBQ when you’re in the Napa Valley this is the place to go.  It’s a little pricy for a BBQ restaurant, but not for a good Napa restaurant.  I don’t get the chance, very often, to recommend a BBQ restaurant but in the case of BarBersQ I get to do just that.  Eat at this restaurant…

BarBersQ is located at 3900 D Bel Aire Plaza. Napa California 94558.

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Shirley J is a Utah based food company that develops and sells quality “no fail, just add water” food products.  I’m not sure about any of the other food products but the BBQ sauce rocks.  I love this stuff and no one is more surprised than I am.  The first time around I followed the directions and mixed the powder 50/50 with water.  I can’t wait to do some experiments by mixing with other liquids.  Fruit juices, tomato based products and the possibilities with Asian flavors is endless.

“Shirley J BBQ Sauce is as simple as it is savory. Just add water, and use with meat or vegetables, as a rub or marinade and on burgers and fries. Sugar and spice and flavor to your liking, or serve the BBQ sauce as-is; Shirley J always promises a no-fuss process.

Shirley J BBQ Sauce can be mixed as an ingredient or dressed as a condiment. Try our flavor varieties below!”

The sauce comes in powdered form mixed 50/50 with water.  Not really sure what is in the powder but the combination of spices and flavorings is excellent and should match up with just about any seasoning, spices or rubs you might use on your BBQ.

When I first mixed the powder in thee water I was a little concerned with how thin it was, but as it heated on the stove it thickened right up into a perfect consistency.

It would be easy to thin this up add some honey or marmalade to give you a nice glaze for just about anything.  The sauce mix comes in 12 oz and 48 oz sizes and I think at least the small one is worth the investment for a try.

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The “Hog Heaven”is labeled as competition rub.  Don’t let that designation scare you off.  If you get a chance to try them I think you’ll be happy…even if you’re just cooking in your backyard.  Just an added note to all rub makers:  Drop the “competition” label off your packaging if you want to sell to the wider backyarder market.  It’s just a guess, but I think you’re losing market share with the competition designation.  Lot’s of people win with “non competition” rubs.

The first thing you’ll notice, about “Hog Heaven”, is that for a rub it’s loaded with much more herbs than I normally expect to see in this type of rub.  I love the herbal flavors mixed with the more tradition rub ingredients.  One thing to remember when using this rub!  It comes packaged in a mylar bag type of package (which I prefer) but you’ve got to mix the rub up.  The herbs have a tendency to settle at the top of the package and if you don’t mix them up you’ll get a load of herbs without the other ingredients.  This shouldn’t be much a problem because you should always shake and/or mix your rubs before applying anyway.

I try to test most of the rubs I receive on pork ribs, this gives me a good basis for comparison between the various rubs.  So first up was “Hog Heaven” and since it’s called a rib rub I figured there wasn’t much sense in changing my normal pattern.  I gave a couple racks of pork ribs, trimmed to St. Louis cut a good dose of the rub.

You’ll notice in the picture the nice layer of herbs mixed with the other rub ingredients.  In the end this will give you a nice flavor to your ribs.  Although I did lightly sauce the ribs I think they would be perfectly good with no sauce at all.  I’d give them a try naked to see how you like them before saucing.  And I think a sauce less on the sweet side would match this rub very well.

I also tried “Hog Heaven” on some grilled chicken.  And I let me tell you!  This is an outstanding rub for chicken.  I didn’t smoke the chicken, which would be the more traditional way with a rub.  I grilled it instead.  No sauce…just rub and some heat.  It was fantastic.  I think I actually prefer this on chicken.  And I can already tell, even though I didn’t try it, that it would compliment fish too.

If you are using this rub on any meat and planning to use a direct heat cooking method make sure you monitor your heat.  Different ingredients in different rubs and seasonings burn at different temperatures.  The herbs in this rub will burn quicker than most rub ingredients (because they’re herbs) so just watch you food and keep the temperature in a moderate range and you’ll be just fine.

The “Raging Bull” beef rub is closer to a traditional rub than the “Hog Heaven,” but it has some different flavor profiles than most beef rubs out there.  One main ingredient, which I’m not going to share, is used in some great steak recipes in some of the best steak houses, so you aren’t going to go wrong.  But be warned it isn’t want you might expect.  If you look at the rub to the right you might be able to pick out some of the ingredients that are a little different.

I don’t know for sure what Steve had in mind for this rub, probably brisket, but I used a chuck roast for my test run.  And it worked fantastic.  Nice bark and more importantly a very nice flavor that just made the beef flavor in the roast jump.  I really like this rub.  It will go on my list of rubs I purchase.

Above you can see the rub when it was first applied to the chuck roast (Left) and then after a couple hours in the smoke(right).  The bark started to form almost immediately.  What was fantastic about this was the flavor of the bark really added to the overall flavor of the meat after I pulled it.

We used the pulled beef in some very nice tacos. (which I forgot to take pictures of).

You can purchase both these rubs from Great Lakes BBQ Supply and I suggest you do.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Larry Gaian

After a exchanging a few tweets the offer was made to send me some product to try out.  And a few days later a bottle of Willie’s Hog Dust appeared in my mailbox.

One of the traits that perplexes me about rub makers is the tendency to sometimes use animals in the title of their product.  Let’s use Willie’s Hog Dust as an example.  If I saw this on the shelf I’d think it was only good for pork.  And that would be a shame because it’s great on beef.

I checked out Willie’s website and it mentioned using it on steaks.  So I thought let’s give it a good test and I smoked up a rack of center cut, beef back ribs.  And let me tell you, those were some fine beef ribs.

The first thing I noticed when I opened the “hog dust” was how fine the rub had been ground.  It may be the finest grind I’ve ever seen in a BBQ rub.  I wasn’t quite sure what this would mean when it actually came to using the rub, but I soon learned.

It’s hard to tell from the picture, because there is no frame of reference, but Willie’s Hog Dust makes rubbin down your meat easier.  I never thought I would consider that to be an andvantage when buying a rub, but I think it is.

The reason it’s called “rub” is because the expectation is you’re going to rub the seasoning into the meat.  With a lot of rubs it takes some effort and maybe extra rub to get all the meat covered and the seasonings worked into the meat.  With Willie’s Hog Dust it really did require less effort to get good coverage on the meat.  When you’re only doing one or two racks of ribs or pork butts this might not seem like a big deal, but if you’re prepping large amounts of meat this is a huge benefit.

The flavor of this rub is fantastic.  It has a slight “peppery” overall flavor that compliments the meat without covering the “meat” taste.  I really like this rub and can see how it would be great on a variety of meats, not just pork and beef.

Willie’s Hog Dust is all natural.  While it’s not sodium free it does contain less salt than most rubs.  It’s also MSG and Gluten free, both of which  are rare in the BBQ rub industry.

The beef ribs tasted amazing and I ate them without any sauce at all. Finding a rub that allows you to eat your ribs without sauce is a good thing.

Visit their website for more information and where to purchase it.

St. Louis style ribs are prepared by removing the cartilage from the “top” of each rib rack.  If you go to a BBQ restaurant and order “rib tips” this is where they’ve come from.  Some meat processors sell these “rib tips” by the case.  It can be an economical way to serve ribs to large groups.

When you trim lots of racks of ribs you end up with quite a few freezer bags full of trimmings.  One of the most common questions asked on BBQ forums is “what do you do with your rib trimmings?  There’s a lot of different techniques/recipes for rib trimmings.  Here’s one of the ways we utilize rib trimmings at are house. (Click each picture to enlarge.)

Place all your rib trimmings in the crockpot.

Add a can of green enchilada sauce and cook until tender

Shred the pork. Make sure you discard all fat and cartilage

After straining the liquid and removing the fat reduce on the stove.

Reduce the liquid from the crockpot down to a thick "syrup" consistency.

Add the reduced liquid back to the shredded pork and mix well.

Take your uncooked tortillas and poke holes all over them.

Place your tortilla over a small bowl and bake at 400 degrees until brown

Now you've got a bowl. Fill it with the pork and all the fixings.

**I use Tortilla Land uncooked tortillas.  These tortillas can be purchased at Costco and provide a great fresh tortilla that compliments your food.

***The rib tips were in the crock pot on low for about 8 hours.  Make sure you get all the fat drained out of the meat.  One great way of removing the fat is to cook the meat the day before and put the liquid in the refrigerator, after it cools.  The fat will congeal on top and you can easily remove it.

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