Barbecue for 1,000

It's not every day a girl gets to play with 600 pounds of meat and a smoker the size of a Humvee.

I'm going to back up for a second and tell you this: Every year at work — and this is a food company, mind you — we've eaten the same thing.

Burgers, dogs, chips and watermelon.

Not this year. This year, we were going to eat corn on the cob, saucy ribs, salmon grilled on cedar planks and pulled pork barbecue. Real barbecue. On a real smoker.

But for 1,000 people, one needs a lot of meat and a really big smoker, and as you may have noticed... those aren't available at every corner bodega.

Thus, the quest for real barbecue at our picnic wasn't looking good until someone noticed that Harry's Water Taxi Beach just happens to host a really big smoker.


You're going to need a lot of wood...

The game was on. We needed supplies. A lot of supplies. This turned into an Excel Spreadsheet. A thousand hungry people is nothing you want to tinker with. Details needed to be decided. Among other things, my boss (initiator and executor of this wild scheme) demanded:

200 lb Pork Butts
75 lb Pork Shoulder
50 lb Pork Ribs
40 lb Pork Belly
250 Packages of Potato Rolls
10 gallons of Barbecue Mop
2 Mops
1 Quart Kosher Salt
1 First Aid Kit...

And that's just a sampling. Simply planning out and gathering up the supply list was a monster proposition.


21 dry-aged steaks. You've gotta have snacks while you work.


Let yourself go... low and slow, that is the tempo.

The night arrived, the crew assembled, the supplies were delivered, the fire was lit, and... I'll just let you watch the extremely condensed version of our 12+ hour smoking party in this quick video.



And was it good? Was it worth it? Oh, yes. Best. Company picnic. Ever.

But you don't need 500 pounds of meat and a smoker of epic proportions to make good barbecue.

In my estimation, what you really need is a manageable smoker, a nice pork butt, a bunch of wood, a lot of free time and Paul Kirk's awesome barbecue book, full of recipes for barbecue mops, rubs, sauces and more. Kirk is the man.

Meanwhile, if you want yet more barbecue madness, you can see the full photo set at Flickr.

Cheers,