#6 - Insights from a BBQ Pitmaster

Moderator: 0:01

Welcome to the Empowering Healthy Business podcast, the podcast for small business owners. Your host, Cal Wilder, has built and sold businesses of his own. And he has helped hundreds of other small businesses, whether it is improving sales, profitability, and cash flow, building a sustainable, scalable and saleable business, reducing your stress level, achieving work life balance, or improving physical and emotional fitness. Cal and his guests are here to help you run a healthier business, and in turn, have a healthier life.

Cal Wilder: 0:35

Welcome, everybody, to this episode of empowering healthy business, you know, most of our episodes are more or less straight business. But for a lot of us, it's really important that we engage our mind in some hobbies and activities outside of work. You know, some people are wired to just focus their entire career on one job and not have hobbies, you know, somebody like Warren Buffett, at Berkshire Hathaway comes to mind. Most of us just aren't wired that way. We need to have something that we can be engaged with, and work our mind on outside of our time of our day jobs. And so today's episode is gonna be about one of those things, which has really captivated me for the last few years. And that's the topic of barbecue. And, you know, most of us when we think about barbecue, we think about having a barbecue, right? Throwing some hamburgers and hotdogs on the grill, having a couple of friends over, maybe you're feeling fancy, put on a steak. But today we're going to talk about a different kind of barbecue grill and rocking about making barbecue or cooking barbecue. And I was really fortunate to be introduced to today's guest, Bill Gillespie, who's at least a two time national championship barbecue pitmaster. And he's going to help us understand all about real barbecue today and what that means. So welcome, Bill. We're glad to have Thank you. Thank

Bill Gillespie: 1:53

you happy happy to be on the show. Looking looking forward to talking some barbecue with you.

Cal Wilder: 2:00

So can you help us understand you know, as we get started here, what's the difference between what we're talking about today with barbecue versus throwing some hamburgers hot dog on steaks?

Bill Gillespie: 2:09

Yeah, so if you're just doing some like grilling, like hot dogs, hamburgers, steaks, like chicken wings, stuff like that. It's it's more of a hot and fast kind of you just sort of searing it off. Versus the the barbecue. It's more of a low and slow process. Like, you know, your larger cuts of beef, meat, pork shoulder beef brisket. It's a tougher cut. So it needs it needs that longer time to sort of render down all that fat that's in there and make it a nice tender cut of meat at the end.

Cal Wilder: 2:48

So how long are we talking about here?

Bill Gillespie: 2:50

You know, I mean, anywhere like low and slow you're looking at it could be eight hours up to 18 hours. You know, it depends on the size of the piece of meat you cook in the temperature you're cooking at. You know all those variables. But yeah, generally it's a it's a long process.

Cal Wilder: 3:10

Right? I remember the first time I tried to cook one of those cuts of meat. Several years back, I had some beef short ribs and braising them and liquid not smoking them. And I you know, I had them, you know, simmering away for about three hours or so. And that's our longer it's probably like, four times as long as I've ever cooked anything my whole life. Right, right. And these things have to be done by now. I didn't take for sure. I didn't know what I was doing. But I took them out a lot when I sat down to eat them for dinner. And they were still super tough. I mean, three hours, not nearly long enough for those things. Yeah, you

Bill Gillespie: 3:45

figure something like that, you know, especially brazen and what we'd be done, but it takes it's almost as long as you know, doing a brisket, it could be I'm thinking at least six to eight hours. You know, I personally like to get a little smoke on mine. You know, maybe three hours and then wrap them in some foil with some some beef stock and some other things like you know, onions and garlic and just let it braise along for another few more hours. So yeah, at least at least six to eight hours probably.

Cal Wilder: 4:19

Yeah. And so you mentioned a couple of cuts of meat here. But what are the typical, you know, types of need that lend themselves to barbecue and like the cuts of me and the names of these cuts of folks who are looking to go picks up.

Bill Gillespie: 4:36

So yeah, so pork shoulder. You can do a whole shoulder you can do this. There's two parts you actually have the Boston bot and then the picnic. Those together create the whole shoulder so either one of those is fine for low and slow cooking. You have the beef brisket. And that's there's two parts to that there's the flat where you get your slices from, and then the point which is a more fattier piece, and that takes a little bit longer to cook to render out all that fat. But, you know, those are the typical, I call them faux burnt ends because they're not like real burnt ends or the actual, the ends of the edges of the brisket that get a little crunchy and charred from the long process of cooking. So what we do in competition is we, we do that I call them like, you know, the fake burn downs where you get them from a point, it's a more fattier cut. So that let that lends itself to a really nice, nice piece when it's cooked properly.

Cal Wilder: 5:50

And so we're talking about cuts here, they're like on the low end, like five or six pounds, right?

Bill Gillespie: 5:55

Correct. Yeah, even like, like a chuck roast, you can get a chuck roast. You know, and that that's great for like shredded beef sandwiches. Again, you can you can smoke that you can braise it. It's again, it's just like a tough kind of meat that lends itself very well to low and slow cooking.

Cal Wilder: 6:18

Okay. So, you know, most of us have, you know, used to cook it on a propane gas grill. And I remember, you know, my father, when I was a little kid, he used a little charcoal once, but those are very different pieces of equipment than you typically barbecue on. So what are the different equipment options when it comes to a barbecue?

Bill Gillespie: 6:37

Yeah, I mean, you got charcoal, you've got pellets, you've got electric smokers, gas smokers. I, I've got, I've got a few of the charcoal grills and smokers. I do have a pellet grill that I like to use. Yeah, I mean, there's there's a ton of options out there. You know, to get yourself started.

Cal Wilder: 7:03

What's a good starter equipment for somebody who's just first getting into barbecue.

Bill Gillespie: 7:08

So for for the money and for the product? It's I Weber Smokey Mountain. I think an 18 inch Weber Smokey Mountain is somewhere around like three 350 the larger size is like four 450 I think. And for the price, I mean you can it's it's an awesome, that's what I kind of started out with. And they're a great, great I still use it in competition too. But they're a great little smoker to get going with it.

Cal Wilder: 7:46

Yeah, I kind of alternate between a couple different smokers but if I'm doing one of those long smokes like I'm doing it overnight, yeah. Like to get my sleep so I don't want to stay up all night tending a smoker. So I pull out the electric smoke.

Bill Gillespie: 8:00

Yeah, that's yeah, there's nothing wrong with that, you know, you can even get you can, you can set up that Weber Smokey Mountain to cook all night and not have to babysit it. You know, there's ways where you can adjust the, the dampers down and allow a little bit of airflow and it regulates, I mean, once you get that thing, set it set, you know, it just kind of hums along. And you can go in and get yourself a good eight hours sleep and come back in the morning, you know, and refuel and you'll be fine.

Cal Wilder: 8:33

And what kind of temperature are we aiming for? Um,

Bill Gillespie: 8:37

you know, it's, it varies. If you're going to go do an overnight cook, I suggest somewhere between 225 and 250. And you can certainly go hotter if you're pressed for time, you know, you can go like 300 to 325. But yeah, for an overnight cook, I suggest to 25 to 250

Cal Wilder: 9:02

I've got a little bit of reading about folks who are advocating a hotter and faster barbecue and how to use a brisket for example, how they advocate managing the brisket to get it done in you know, four or five, six hours instead of you know, eight to 16 hours. How do they do that?

Bill Gillespie: 9:21

So yeah, so the brisket is made up of two parts the flat and the point point being a little more fatty. So what they end up doing is they separate the two pieces, and they they make them into a smaller piece and they cook them individually. So you can you can actually get you can get it done a lot faster. You know by cooking them individually and then you know with the help of either a butcher paper or aluminum foil. Once you get it to a certain color or a certain internal temperature. You know 165 degrees is when you can you can wrap them They call it the Texas crutch, it sort of helps speeds up that that process of finishing. And it also allows you to add more flavor. Like you can put a little bit of beef stock in there any kind of like a marinade or something like a Stubbs beef marinade, and give yourself a little bit more flavor.

Cal Wilder: 10:53

And, you know, smoke is a big part of barbecue. So why do we smoke? What kind of you know, how does that work? What kind of wood works best? Yeah, so

Bill Gillespie: 11:02

So smoking was a way of helping to preserve food back in the day. And now it's, you know, it adds that that other layer of flavor you know, I like to use you know, I'm from the Northeast up here in Boston, so Applewood, sugar maple, anything that's that I can get locally.

Cal Wilder: 11:30

Any kind of hardwood, right. Yep, I

Bill Gillespie: 11:32

know. Yeah. No pine or anything like that. You know, I've dabbled with it all. You know, down in Texas as post oak and mesquite, you know, up this way, some fruit wood, you can pair wood, you can use grape wood, peach wood, any of the fruit Woods is great, hickory, oak, all that stuff, you know, it's and, and you don't need a lot. A lot of people when they first start out, they tend to just pile it on and, and what happens is you get a bitter, kind of a nasty taste to it. And that's, that's not always pleasant. So a little can go a long way. So I only use like when I say if I'm cooking a 15 pound brisket, I may use two small chunks like two, two by two, two inch by two inch chunks of wood. And that's all personally that's all you really need.

Cal Wilder: 12:29

Yeah, it's interesting. You mentioned that bill, because I go back and forth. Sometimes I just get tired of smoke, and I just want to take the meat. Yeah, that's the smoke. It's fine. We'll go from like, a good amount of smoke to like no smoke and back and forth. Yeah. Like,

Bill Gillespie: 12:45

yeah, and especially with some of this charcoal that's out there to the lung charcoal, which is basically wood that's been pre burned. So it's already wood. See, if you don't need to add too much, you're still going to get a smoke flavor from it. So if that's something you're looking to do that that's an option as well.

Cal Wilder: 13:07

Right. So you've you've been doing competitions for a number of years. Now. How did you get into competition.

Bill Gillespie: 13:15

So I, I was working for a place a couple of guys were in the barbecue. They found a couple of contests in the area and invited me to go one time, this was back in 2005. So I went to my first contest down down in Cape Cod. And there was there was five categories. That was the four, four main categories that we do all the time, which is chicken, pork, ribs, pork shoulder and beef brisket. Those are the four categories. I do whatever the contest, and then they they introduced the fifth category, it was kind of like a Chef's Choice. And the theme at the time for that particular one was anything with cranberries. So I did a I did a grilled salmon with a cranberry glaze on it. And I got a fourth place with it my very first contest so that that was kind of the hook right there. I loved what the whole weekend was about and getting your name called to the stage was was awesome. So that was that was that kind of got me hooked.

Cal Wilder: 14:22

Right. And then you went to a new one, right? One of the biggest it's a big tournament in Kansas City, right? I think I saw this on TV a few years ago. The Royal Invitational or what's it called?

Bill Gillespie: 14:35

Yeah, the American Royal Invitational BBQ contest. So there's two they have an invitational and then they have an open. It's the same weekend. So it's just two separate days. So the Invitational you have to have won a Grand championship throughout the year to get invited. The open is open to anybody. So they get about 175 teams for the Invitational and over 500 teams for the for the open. And so the Invitational is all champions that that are competing against each other and we won that in 2014.

Cal Wilder: 15:15

That's great. Congratulations. Thank you. So how does it work? When you show up for one of these tournaments, you literally arrive with your smoker and your meat in the cooler and really much for women and you cook

Bill Gillespie: 15:27

Yeah, so you know you can you show up with everything. In, you know, your cookers, you meet all your supplies, you can't touch, you can't season the meat until you get there. You can, you can trim it get it trimmed down to however you want, but you can't season until it goes through, you know, a meat inspection. And that's just to keep everybody kind of on the same, you know, same page or, you know, same. What's the word I'm looking for? Is just to keep everybody equal, right. And so yeah, so once you meet and gets inspected, you can you can season it, do whatever you want to it. And then that's usually done on a Saturday and then turned into or on a Sunday. And the four separate times and you turn them in, they give you a white, kind of a takeout box and you put in your however many pieces you put in you turn it into the judges and then you wait for them to either love it or hate it.

Cal Wilder: 16:30

So you cook it up and then you choose your best pieces and you put it in the box or judges Yeah,

Bill Gillespie: 16:35

pretty much. That's it.

Cal Wilder: 16:38

What what happens to all the leftovers?

Bill Gillespie: 16:42

So the guys I work with love it after a contest. I bring home all my all the leftovers and they eat like kings for the week, you know? Yeah, I mean, I tend to hold on to the brisket. I love brisket. So I tend to hold on to it and just make a bunch of different dishes with I love making brisket hash, or brisket chili or make a panini out of it or something like that. But yeah.

Cal Wilder: 17:14

So have you seen that newer show American barbecue showdown or something like that? Yeah. How realistic Do you think that is?

Bill Gillespie: 17:24

Is that the will Michael Simon? Or a different one?

Cal Wilder: 17:28

If they have, you know, like, eight, eight or so people who start and somebody leaves every episode and

Bill Gillespie: 17:34

they Oh, yeah, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think a lot of it is. I've never been on one of those. So I think a lot of it's scripted. I mean, it's good entertainment. Right. You know, it's like, it's I really can't speak from experience because I haven't been on. So.

Cal Wilder: 17:59

Yeah, it's really gets people interested.

Bill Gillespie: 18:02

Yeah, it does. It does. There is a show out there. Put on by Michael Simon barbecue USA, where he goes to different events. And, you know, kind of shows exactly what's going on in the competition. I mean, that's definitely you know, that's, that's real that's going on exactly how we shown it. So.

Cal Wilder: 18:25

Cool. So getting back to cooking, we talked a little about equipment. A little bit about cuts of meat and smoke. But let's talk a little bit more about you know, seasoning and sauces. Sure. What's the deal with those?

Bill Gillespie: 18:43

Um, yeah, I mean, there's god, there's hundreds, probably 1000s of different seasonings out there. I have a line of seasonings and sauces myself. And yeah, it's fun to play around with the one the different ones that are out there. Some people swear by just the salt and pepper. You know, others go crazy. And they put they can put like four or five different seasoning blends on their meats. It's all really personal taste. You know? But there's a ton of stuff out there. That it's all good.

Cal Wilder: 19:25

What, what kind of seasoning do you make? So I make

Bill Gillespie: 19:29

I get I have three seasonings. I have a new one that just came out. We're calling it the perfect storm. It's a buttery Chipotle rub. So it's kind of a salt pepper garlic based. And then you know I add other ingredients to it. It's really good on on beef. I have an all purpose rub. That's great on everything. I put it on, you know, popcorn Sam and chicken, vegetables and then I have another one that's it's called My rib rub that I use for pork and and ribs and stuff like that. You can use it on on other stuff as well.

Cal Wilder: 20:08

What's the difference between the seasoning you put on pork versus beef?

Bill Gillespie: 20:13

Beef tends to be a little bit more salty, a little more garlic. It can the beef can handle more of that salty flavor. For pork. I mean, growing up I always thought pork was sweet. You know, pork, pork and applesauce right? You know Just but yeah, I mean it's a little bit more more sweeter I think for pork.

Cal Wilder: 20:38

Okay, and then when you take it off the grill or the smoker and you go to eat it what kind of sauce do

Bill Gillespie: 20:45

you put on it? I my sauce that I have is a kind of a sweet and tangy sauce. This vinegar sauce is this mustard sauce is this sweet Kansas City style sauces. I mean it's again it comes down to personal taste i for for brisket. I like to have a little bit of mustard sauce or like a thin vinegar sauce on the side if I want. chicken and pork tend to lend to a more sweeter sauce.

Cal Wilder: 21:18

I am partial to a mustard bass.

Bill Gillespie: 21:21

Yeah, that's one of my favorites.

Cal Wilder: 21:23

I found the recipe on the internet. Yeah, we've been using the last four or five years but it's great. It's like a South Carolina German immigrant mustard based.

Bill Gillespie: 21:33

Awesome. Yeah. And I will say I do like a mustard sauce on polpark as well. So it's not just a sweet sauce for pork. I mean, it's it's like I said, it's all it's all subjective. It's all what your tastes like, you know, you might like vinegar sauce on your pork. I mean, me I like it all I just it's hard for me to decide which one I want. So I I tend to have three or four different sauces just sitting there is like in each bite, I go to a different sauce, you know?

Cal Wilder: 22:02

Yeah. And I've learned flavors are very regional. And so what they like and what St Louis is different than the Carolinas versus Texas. So I went to college in North Carolina and my very first introduction to barbecue was my fraternity every year would have an event at a baseball game. They pull up this trailer with a whole hog barbecued on there. And then you know pick out meat from the height of the of the hog and it was awesome. The you know 10 years later, I hadn't done anything like that before and I've started remembering back to how great that tasted and how interesting variance that was. But talk to us a little bit about the different regional preferences for barbecue.

Bill Gillespie: 22:49

Um, you know, up this way it tends to be a little bit like Kansas City. It's kind of like that sweet heat. You know down in Carolina, you get the mustard base, the vinegar base stuff you know Memphis is more of a dry rub Teina you know no sauce. Texas is a little bit to salt pepper. You know? I mean it depends I mean it's it's everywhere you know, I mean it's it's really starting to to sort of integrate like it's not how do I say it? Yeah, they have each region has their their core kind of bass but I think the other flavors are starting to integrate into these regions as well.

Cal Wilder: 23:40

Yeah, I think like a lot of things in the world these days. It's becoming a melting pot. It is.

Bill Gillespie: 23:45

Yeah, yeah.

Cal Wilder: 23:49

So let's say I'm trying to get into barbecue I think you told us you like the Weber Grill is a good smoker. I've got myself a nice, you know, 10 pound kind of meat. I'm ready to smoke. How do I go preparing to put that on the smoker? What do I do with the meat to get prepared? What do I do with a smoker to get prepared,

Bill Gillespie: 24:12

you know, so for the smoker itself, you want to get it ready to go, you want to get your charcoal in there. If it's a water smoker, you want to throw water in the paint, just get it ready, get the calls going. So while you're while it's heating up, you can you can prepare your meat you know, you can inject it with like say if you're doing a brisket, you can inject it with like a beef broth or they have these commercial beef injections out there that you can use. You don't have to inject it you know, you can just put a you can just put the dry rub on it, let it sit for an hour and then throw it on the smoker once it's up to 10

Cal Wilder: 24:55

What does the ingestion do?

Bill Gillespie: 24:57

It adds a flavor to the inside of it. It's some of them are some of them have like phosphates and other stuff in there. So the it helps to keep the the meat the integrity of the meat you know from drying out and stuff like that. I don't necessarily know I don't think it's necessary for home use more for competition. I mean, you can certainly use it at home if you like you know give it a try and see but for me at home I usually don't inject I just I very rarely I don't trim a lot of the fat off of off of my, by the cuts of meat that I use at home because like I said that that fat is flavor helps to protect the piece of meat keeps it juicy. I think if you do it right, you really don't need to use all those other other stuff.

Cal Wilder: 25:52

Right? You can always cut the fat off later if you don't want it. Yeah, yeah. Alright, so you got the meat. And it's usually pretty fatty meat due to the nature of cuts that lend themselves to barbecue. Some folks will say, you know, smoke it with the fat side down. So I'm gonna save smoker with the fat side up. Yep, what philosophy

Bill Gillespie: 26:13

so that it depends on the cooker you have. So the the Weber Smokey Mountain, the heat source is coming from the bottom. And it's going to hit the bottom of the meat. So on that I like to cook it meat fat side down. So that fat kind of protects that meat from getting charred. This other cookers, I have a couple of cabinet style, smokers the the heat sources still on the bottom, but everything kind of comes up from the sides and down over the top. So I'll I'll flip it and I'll cook fat side up on those cooker. So it's all about protecting the meat, you know, you kind of think of that fat, it's also so the fast doing two things, it's protecting the meat and it's also keeping keeping it juicy and tender.

Cal Wilder: 27:04

Okay. And then some folks will use you know, a cooking paper or aluminum foil, what are the is Warren barbecue, and when would you use those.

Bill Gillespie: 27:17

So you're you're looking, so if you're going to use FOIL or butcher paper, you know, you're looking to speed up that finishing process on the on, you're trying to speed up the cooking process. The foil is gonna act as like kind of like your braising it, you know, so you might lose some of your bark where the butcher paper allows it to breathe a little better. So you'll you'll keep that bark more intact. It just depends on the end product that you're looking for. I mean, I use both put your paper and foil you know, it's again, it's just personal. Personal preference. Some people don't even use it, some people just it goes from from from start to finish. And it just stays in that smoker and you know, they're perfectly happy with that, you know and result.

Cal Wilder: 28:16

Right? And that bark refers to the crispy outside layer that currently smoke right?

Bill Gillespie: 28:21

Yep, yeah, it's a combination of that smoke the heat the rub you using a more sugary rub is gonna it's gonna build a little bit more you and you have to be careful with that because you don't want that sugar those sugars to burn. It get gets to crusty and so you have to be real careful on on the temp you cook and add in what rubs you use, okay?

Cal Wilder: 28:47

And then what what temperature are you aiming for unless you're doing the smoke.

Bill Gillespie: 28:52

So for an overnight I like to do to 25 to 250. And that allows that gives you plenty of time, it allows the meat to do its thing to, to render out not all the fat but a render out some of that fat to help to tend to rise the kind of meat,

Cal Wilder: 29:12

right, because you're entering the fat and the connective tissue meaning you know, the tendons and everything are all kind of melting lack of a better word, or a tender kind of meat. That's the opposite of what you first put on the grill. Right?

Bill Gillespie: 29:28

Exactly. Yeah. And with that, so you have that long process that it's doing that. And on the flip side, if you decide I know we talked earlier about doing hot and fast. By doing it hot and fast, you can actually bring the internal temperature of the meat higher. So if you were doing a brisket, low and slow, you're probably looking at around 200 to like two or three internal temperature. If you're going hot and fast, you can get as high as you know 215 And the reason is, is you don't have as much time to render out all that fat. So you have to bring that internal temperature up for that fat to render if that makes sense.

Cal Wilder: 30:15

Okay let me take the meat off the grill. Some folks will say you know it's best to eat it and then when it's hot and tasty right off the smoker and then others will say you've got to let it settle you So, I'm like, what happens, then

Bill Gillespie: 30:34

yeah, you have to let us settle. So you take it off. If you've wrapped it, you want to kind of vent it for about 10 minutes just to steam it down to stop the cooking process. So you do that for 10 to 15 minutes, and then rest it, you can throw it in an empty cooler, and just let it sit there for an hour for two hours, you just kind of want it to settle down and just sort of relax. And, and because if you cut it right away, all that juice that's in there, it's just going to come pouring out. And you're going to end up with a dry piece of meat. So you should really should let it rest.

Cal Wilder: 31:15

Right, because the heat will then kind of distribute evenly throughout the meat, you know, initially right here, it's going to be can be hotter on the outside and cooler on the inside. Yeah. Even produces distributed throughout the distribution throughout the

Bill Gillespie: 31:30

country. It's kind of like when you you know, you grill on a steak, right? So you grilling the steak over high heat. The steak is done, you take it off, you set it on the plate, and you let it sit for five to 10 minutes just to let it do its thing. So it sort of has a chance to relax. So it's kind of the same, same idea. Yeah.

Cal Wilder: 31:51

What do you see as some of the challenges for first time barbecue errors or mistakes that people can avoid?

Bill Gillespie: 31:56

Yeah, so over smoking, that's one constantly opening and closing the smoker. Every time you open open that cookie, you're adding time to the to the cook. Just you know, keep that door shut, let it do its thing. You can you can always put a meat probe in it and monitor the internal temperature. So when you get to that certain temp that you want, you can pull it out and wrap it but yeah, over smoking and opening and closing the smoker door.

Cal Wilder: 32:31

Right, right. And what are some of the easiest things for people that barbecue for the first time? Well, it's hard to screw up.

Bill Gillespie: 32:40

Oh, what's hard to screw up? Probably a pork shoulder. Yeah, those are very forgiving. You know, you can just you put that thing in, let it go. And when it's done, all you do is you pop that bone right out and if it comes out with nothing on it, you know you're done. So those I think a pork by that's probably the the easiest thing to cook for for a new timer, you know?

Cal Wilder: 33:08

And what are some of the most challenging cuts or styles to barbecue probably

Bill Gillespie: 33:14

brisket just because of the two the two cuts of you know, the flatten the point, trying to get it so because you know, you can bring the point up a little higher internal temp because of that insert that more fat content. So it's trying to, to get both done at the same time. Kind of like when you do a turkey at Thanksgiving, you know, your white meats at 160 degrees and you dark meat to the 180. So it's kind of like that.

Cal Wilder: 33:43

Right? Right. If you've done a whole hog

Bill Gillespie: 33:47

I have Yeah, yeah. To

Cal Wilder: 33:51

go, you know, shoulders, the body, the torso, the legs.

Bill Gillespie: 33:56

Yeah, in my opinion, that's the only way you should eat pork is whole hog. It's just awesome. The whole experience is fun. You know,

Cal Wilder: 34:04

how long does that take?

Bill Gillespie: 34:06

Again, it can. It can be anywhere from 24 hours is as quick as you know, like 48 hours with depends on the temperature you're cooking at. So I got a story about that one. So, Memphis in May. I don't know if you've probably heard of it. It's a huge two World Championship down in Memphis. And they go down, they have this ribs, pork shoulder and whole hog. And not this year, last year's winner cooked on a huge one of those huge drum smokers. And they had I think they were like 200 pound hogs or 250 pound hogs. They cooked them in eight hours. And they ended up winning Memphis in May and where everybody is cooking minimum, probably 16 hours to 24 hours on their hogs. They did it in eighth. So and they cooked at a hotter temperature. So it can certainly be done. You know, it just takes practice and learn it's basically learning your equipment.

Cal Wilder: 35:14

How do they get it done so quickly.

Bill Gillespie: 35:16

So it's a it's kind of a direct heat. So it's think of like a 55 gallon drum. So they make smokers out of those. So you heat sources on the bottom and there's technically a deflector plate on there, so he kind of breaks up the heat. And that's that's kind of how they did it. Okay.

Cal Wilder: 35:37

Yeah. So, for listeners, direct heat would refer to have the meat you know, directly over the heat source getting, you know, direct radiation of heat. And then indirect would mean having the meat separate from the heat source. So it may be that he may be bouncing around inside the container, but not directly focused on the meat, right?

Bill Gillespie: 35:58

Yep, yep. And you can do that on on a charcoal grill, you can go direct or indirect. If you put the coals on one side of the grill, and you cook the meat on the other side. That'd be like the cooler side. So that's considered indirect.

Cal Wilder: 36:12

So funny story, that barbecue showdown show I mentioned earlier, their second season came out recently, and one of the episodes had them cooking on junkyard appliances, like refrigerators, filing cabinets. Deep Freeze freezers, like figuring out how to manage the direct and indirect heat. It says, right,

Bill Gillespie: 36:37

yeah, yeah, you know, it's funny, I've seen I've seen people competing on those, you know, one guy one year had a filing cabinet that he converted into a smoker, you know, and it works. It's, you can use you can you know, I've seen Alton Brown use a one of those, those terracotta pots. As a smoker, he set it up, you know, it's just, yeah, you can make you can turn anything into a smoker. Really? Yeah, yeah.

Cal Wilder: 37:08

So you've started a business around this with seasoning and sauces. What What, what, what got into the business world side of it?

Bill Gillespie: 37:17

Um, well, I got sick of buying everybody else's product. And I so I figured out let me see if I can develop a couple things. And, and yeah, I've got three, three dry rub seasonings, and a barbecue sauce.

Cal Wilder: 37:33

And what's your gray belt? I'm sorry. What is your brand? Oh,

Bill Gillespie: 37:37

it's smoking hogs barbecue. So it's s m OKINHOGGZ. BBQ?

Cal Wilder: 37:48

Can you sell those online? or can people of course,

Bill Gillespie: 37:51

yeah, you can. You can go to my website, which is smoking hogs.com. My rubs are available through Ace Hardware. They're on Amazon. If you just search it, you know you'll you'll find it. Yeah,

Cal Wilder: 38:11

so I gotta ask you since I run an accounting business, Spark books I get asked you, how's your account? How have you found the accounting side of being in business?

Bill Gillespie: 38:19

Oh, boy. Yeah, that's fun. Thank God, I hired an accountant. I give him all my receipts and all my all my reports. And yeah, thank God, I don't have to do that.

Cal Wilder: 38:36

So this has been great. Is there anything else you want to share before we wrap up this episode?

Bill Gillespie: 38:41

Um, you know, I mean, there's a ton of information out there. For people that are looking to get into barbecue. You know, the internet is just full of information. I mean, I've written four cookbooks. And so they're all available on Amazon. And it's, they're mostly based off of the Weber Smokey Mountain. But you can certainly take those techniques and those recipes and apply them to any you can, you know, you can apply him to cook an inside and your oven if you want it to, you know, I think they transfer well. But yeah, I mean, just learn as much as you can. Like I said, there's a ton of information out there. You know, it's not like 20 years ago when I started competing. And there was only a couple of forums and whatnot, but everybody is, is offering information. So it's out there for you to find

Cal Wilder: 39:38

is there one of your books that you would recommend above the others for beginner barbecue, there's

Bill Gillespie: 39:42

probably my first one. Its secrets to smoking on the web or Smoky Mountain. And it goes, it goes through everything on that, you know, there's four different sections on cooking low and slow, cooking hot and fast, a combination of the two setting it up like a grill. And then my last book is hot and fast on the web or Smoky Mountain.

Cal Wilder: 40:10

Right. Well, I've really enjoyed speaking with you bill and learning more about barbecue, certainly something that I'm going to continue to experiment with and try to learn and get better at but I really appreciate you being here and sharing your insights with the audience here and we'll keep our eye out for for you and your products in the stores and on top. competitions bill. Best of luck.

Bill Gillespie: 40:33

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate you having me on the show and had some fun today.

Cal Wilder: 40:38

Reference show notes and find other episodes on EmpoweringHealthyBusiness.com. If you would like to have a one on one discussion with me, or possibly engaged SmartBooks to help with your business, you can reach me at Cal@EmpoweringHealthyBusiness.com or message me on LinkedIn where I am easy to find. Until next time, this is Empowering Healthy Business, the podcast for small business owners signing off.