Wedding DIY: BBQ Sauce Favors!

For our wedding favors, we wanted to do something fun, something 'us', and something guests wouldn't throw away the next day {i.e. food}. So we immediately thought of doing a canned BBQ sauce after I saw a similar concept on Pinterest.

Our final product - Sweet & Tangy Version

So we set off on an adventure to find the perfect barbeque sauce and discovered that we actually wanted to make 2 sauces- the Bride's sauce {sweet & tangy} and the Groom's sauce {mustard based}.

We found this great recipe for a 14 spice dry rub along with the sweet and tangy BBQ sauce over on The Yummy Life. Greg's a fan of the mustard based sauces, so he found this one on Just a Pinch. We made a small test batch, and they were both perfect!

We must of our ingredients from Costco since you could buy in bulk, and then got the spices fresh from the Farmer's Market. We didn't take many pictures during the cooking process, well, because it was really really messy, and cooking that much of anything isn't pretty!

After a full day of cooking and canning, we got them all laid out on the dining room table, and then waited for the cans to cool so we could see if they were all successfully canned. I think it was 2 that failed, so we put those two them in the fridge for us to enjoy. But hey, 2 out of 140 isn't bad in my opinion.

We did all of this in June 2013, because we knew the canned BBQ sauce would last for at least a year, so that would give our guests plenty of time to use it, and we didn't want to wait to long and stress ourselves out at the last minute. Though we did wait until September to put together the spice packets that we attached to the BBQ, since we knew that would harden much quicker.

If you are familiar with canning, you know that the ring on top is really only important during the canning process and you can actually take that off once the jar is successfully canned. So once I was ready to package the BBQ's to give out, I cut out square of fabric to put under the ring for a cute look and tied everything together with a small business card with the name of the sauce and some twine. Just to be extra fancy, the tags match the wedding invitations!




I also made this little chalkboard sign to go with the favors, but I'm guessing the wedding coordinator decided not to put it out, since it's missing from all of the pictures. But oh well.... it all still looked great!

Brinkmann Smoker

America

Nutmeg loves smokers

Since my freshman year at Georgia Tech I have been interested in the awesomeness that is good southern BBQ. Growing up in Rochester, NY there was only 2 good BBQ joints, Sticky Lips and Dinosaur BBQ.  The abundance of truly great BBQ I encountered south of the Mason Dixon line blew my mind. I could not get enough of the numerous styles and sauces that each region had to offer. Being a northern boy I was always content with a hot grill and a few white or red hots cooking away. I had no idea about smoking and the concept of low and slow. As the years at Tech passed I grew more indoctrinated and intoxicated with southern culture and style . It is true what they say, things just move a little slower down here and the same can be said for the cooking.

So when I finally graduated with my degree and bought my first place I knew that if I ever wanted to throw a beast party in Atlanta I needed to learn how to make great BBQ. Doing some quick research online I found that the inexpensive Brinkmann smokers found at Home Depot and Lowes make great beginner set ups. The charcoal ECB, El Cheapo Brinkmann, as it is affectionately called has an almost cult following and there are a ton of resources online for modifications that will make it perform like a $400 professional model. I considered going charcoal but I decided that I would simply get more use out of an electric model and to me this equated to more opportunities to make BBQ. So after reading a few online reviews I went ahead and got a Brinkmann Electric Gourmet. I deemed it a good compromise between ease of use, quality, and price.

As soon as I arrived home I immediately cracked open a cold one and began assembling it. The smoker was very easy to put together and took about 40 minutes including time spent wrangling kitties that were in the way. I went ahead and plugged it in without wood chips or meat for 2 hours per the instructions to ensure that all residue and paint fumes are burned off.

The next day at the Dekalb Farmers Market we purchased a beautiful Berkshire Pork butt with intentions of producing some awesome pulled pork for my first smoke. We also got some sweet corn and decided to try and make a smoked cream corn which was inspired by our favorite BBQ joint, DBA BBQ. As soon as we arrived home, I rubbed down the butt and put it in the smoker on the middle rack at about 9:30pm anticipating a 12 hour smoke time. I used Hickory chunks for flavor and placed the corn on the top rack, anticipating about a 3 hour smoke time. Unfortunately I did not think to take pictures of the butt or corn before the smoker or on it (Still a blogging newbie) so you will have to just live with a shots of the finished sandwich. I will be posting about my latest foray with chicken wings and smoked cream corn round #2 ASAP. I will also begin to compile and include recipes in the future. Stay thirsty my friends.

Home made pulled pork on a toasted bun.  A tasty treat.