Two Smokin Guys in Havasu

Two Smokin Guys made their debut in competition BBQ when they competed in their first competition at the  KCBS sponsored Music Brews and BBQ competition. I'm pleased to announce that we're headed back to compete in the January 2013 competition. This event is one of the big ones. Come out and support us, or just come out and have a good time.

The Start Of A Smoker

I just got home today from buying a 55 gallon drum. It's time to build my first UDS and I'm going to walk you through everything I do. I was lucky enough to find a food grade drum that did not have the liner in it. Unfortunately it had a lot of rust on the inside that needed to be cleaned out first. After a lot of sand paper and several hand cramps I got most of it out. My hands were angry with me so I decided to take a break. I had a lot of tumble weeds that I needed to do something about so I decided to throw them in the drum and I fired it up. I had a bunch of smaller mesquite branches that I wasn't planning on using to smoke with so I burnt those too. As you can see the paint came off from the bottom. I was actually hoping for this because I don't plan on leaving it black.

Homemade Smoked Paprika

Paprika
Paprika usually comes from bell peppers. The flavor of most paprika I've found in stores is slim to none, so I decided to try and make my own. This of course meant that it was going to be smoked paprika. After a quick trip to the store I had three red bell peppers ready to be made into a nice smoky paprika to use in BBQ rubs, etc. I rinsed the peppers and then sliced them up getting them ready to throw out on the smoker.

Jack Daniels Charcoal

Jack Daniels holds a special place in my heart when it comes to BBQ. It’s no surprise that I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try out their charcoal when I saw it at the store the other day. I didn’t go home right away and smoke anything so I felt like a little kid around Christmas time trying to figure out what’s in the bag.

Maverick Redi Chek Smoker Thermometer

If you’re into bbq and smoking then chances are you’ve heard of or already have one of these thermometers. If not, read on to find out if this is a Smokin’ product.

Contents
1 – Remote Transmitter
1 – Receiver
1 – Meat thermometer probe
1 – Smoker probe
1 – Grill clip for smoker prong
4 – AAA Batteries

Root Beer BBQ Sauce

Bad News
To start off I have to report that unfortunately we could not find Hanks Root Beer anywhere in Phoenix. We used to get it at BevMo or AJ’s Fine Foods. The only thing we found was diet Hanks. In my opinion that’s just not root beer.  The good news is that we had other options. We decided to use another one of my favorites: Berghoff Root Beer. Berghoff is another rich flavored brew.

The Setup
1 – 12 fl oz Berghoff Root Beer
Magical ingredients to sauté
Magical base ingredients
Making our sauce is done in two stages. We sauté some of the ingredients and at the same time we mix up the base. After the sauté is done we add the base to the sauté.

Paul Bunyan's Fire Wood

Are you interested in smoking, but you just don't know where to get good wood at a price that doesn't break the bank? Paul Bunyan's Fire Wood is the place you're looking for. It's sad that wood to smoke with can sometimes be hard to find, but for those that live in Phoenix Arizona you're in luck. Sure you could spend $20 for a 5 lb bag of wood, but what about $20 for 1.2 cu. feet of wood! Now that's a good price. Paul Bunyan's Fire Wood is located in Guadalupe AZ just outside Tempe Arizona.

BBQ Competition

There is a competition in Mesa this weekend at the superstition springs mall parking lot. We'll be judging at the competition. If you've never been to a BBQ competition I highly recommend going. The event starts Friday night with a concert and a few other activities. The actual competition will be on Saturday.

You get two tickets with your admission into the event which you can use to sample meat from any of the BBQ teams participating in the peoples choice competition. Of course you can always purchase more tickets. If I were you I would definitely plan on it because competition BBQ makes what you eat at a restaurant taste like cardboard.

Hopefully I'll see y'all out there and we can all enjoy some good Q.

Rudy's is coming to AZ!

If you've ever had the pleasure of eating at Rudy's BBQ you'll understand why I'm so excited. Rudy's BBQ is coming to Chandler Arizona! Rudy's is a no frills place to get BBQ and they're a gas station too.

Contributions

We'll be contributing good recipes as we find them to this area, but if you've come across one that you enjoy feel free to send it to us via e-mail and we'll give it a try. If it's a good one you can count on finding it posted here for everyone to see.

More News

At some point I will have the hang of Blogger. I was using WordPress which is leaps and bounds ahead of what you can do with Blogger, but Blogger is free.
At least now I've figured out how to set things up with tabs that filter out categories/labels. I think this is going to do the job. At some point I'll update the theme to look a little more like what the original web site looked like.

Bringing it back online

Smokin' Reviews took some time off to switch to a dedicated server. I'll be working on migrating the old posts over if I can ever find out where they were backed up to. If not then we'll just start fresh.