Truthfully, there is no perfect BBQ.

However, in my past few years as a "Certified Judge" for the Memphis In May sanctioned BBQ cooking contests, I've been honored to taste the closest thing to perfect BBQ on the planet!"

"Some of the best BBQ cooks in the world have shared a few of their secrets. It's been up to me to try to figure out the rest."

"I'd like to share some of these secrets on this page. If you follow these suggestions, you may not cook perfect BBQ, but you'll be close enough."

There's a lot of room for personal opinion here. For me, the Big Green Egg is absolutely the best backyard BBQ cooker, bar none. Cooking great BBQ requires a first class cooker, and the Big Green Egg is it.

The Big Green Egg has 2 key advantages over other cookers:

 

Consistent oven temperature control makes it easy to cook "low and slow" for long periods of time.

 

The heavy ceramic shell locks in the moisture resulting in a succulent BBQ product.

A lot of beginning BBQ cooks focus too much on the sauce for their BBQ products. I believe the rub is the more important ingredient. That's because it's cooked into the meat and, if the rub's doing its job properly, it'll complimentthe taste of the meat and blend well with the meat, the sauce, and the smoke flavors.

I've developed my own rub from a special blend of spices. You should try some of the commercial rubs on the market, and after you've experimented with them, then develop your own blend.

Put your priorities on the cooker, the rub, and the cooking procedures described below. After these elements are working well for you, then come up with a sauce you like.

Until you develop a sauce that's all your own, use any commercially available brand. For pulled pork, there are a lot of good ones, both catsup-based and mustard-based, to choose from. Just remember, with pulled pork, it's always best to serve the sauce on the side, rather than on the BBQ itself.

For ribs, I recommend that you add a little sweetener to the store-bought sauce, for a slightly spicy-sweet flavor. I use either honey or pure maple syrup as a sweetener for my rib sauces. Just heat the store-bought sauce in a sauce pan and mix in the sweetener on a 5 parts sauce to 1 part sweetener basis. And don't forget to sauce the ribs after you remove them from the cooker. If you sauce them on the cooker, sugar in the sauce will blacken quickly.

Flavor wise, with BBQ pork your goal is somewhat similar to that of a fine wine -- a nice blend of complimentary flavors. With pork BBQ, you want a complimentary blend of the meat, the rub, the sauce, and smoke flavors. If you smoke your BBQ too much, or if you use a wood or bark that produces a sharp flavor, you might upset this delicate balance.

The best way to accomplish the delicate balance of flavors you want is to use natural lump charcoal (Big Green Egg markets its own brand) that burns clean. Clean-burning lump charcoal will give some natural smoke flavor all by itself. You should supplement this natural smoke flavor by adding 3 to 5 chunks (almost the size of a tennis ball) of a dry hardwood to provide the best smoke flavor. I like Pig Nut Hickory the best -- it provides a mellow flavor that is not too sharp. But any good Hickory or Oak chunks will do just fine. By all means, don't use liquid fire starters -- they leave a slight petroleum taste.

For best results, add the wood chunks to the fire about 10 minutes or so after the charcoal starts to burn. And be sure to let the white wood smoke die down substantially before adding the meat to the cooker. The white smoke that appears initially will leave a bitter taste. You'll get the desired smoke flavor if you let the white smoke die down some.

Actually, with BBQ pork, it's not so much a recipe as a cooking procedure. The cooking procedures listed below link to .pdf files that you can print for easy use. I've developed these procedures by trial and error, and they work great. You're welcome to try them if you like.