The Gas Grill Review and Gas Grill Rating Guide - Helping you choose the Best Gas Grill

An Interview With Curt McAdams

Creator Of Bucky's Barbecue & Bread

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I recently had the chance to have an interview with Curt McAdams, the person behind Bucky McOinkums BBQ (aka Bucky's Barbecue & Bread). If you're looking for a great food related blog to follow, you won't find much better.

One of the interesting things about Curt is that he doesn't simply focus on barbecue tips all the time. You'll see him make mouth watering leftover dishes (he calls them Bonus Round) as well. The pictures he takes are at a professional level, and he even teaches the art of taking food photos on his site (look for Food Photo 101). You'll see what I mean when you check out his blog at blog.buckymcoinkumsbbq.com.

I'm not going to waste anymore time yappin'. Here we go!

Gas Grill Review: First, do you make your living cooking? If not, you sure know how to make a good presentation. Some of the pictures of leftovers got me salivating. I also noted that you have a section on how to take photos of food. Where did this passion come from?

Curt McAdams: First, thanks for the compliments! I don't make my living from cooking. I make some hobby money by giving local cooking classes, and I get some ad money on my blog. It's not much, but it's enough to feed some money into keeping the blog going and helping out with barbecue competition expenses.

I saw a term on twitter.com I liked for leftovers (and I apologize that I can't credit the person, as I don't remember who posted it): Bonus Round. I like that better than 'leftovers'.

I started the blog out of wanting to help new barbecue competitors figure out what was going on, but it quickly got to be more, as I like to do a lot of other cooking, too. As I did the blog and read other blogs, I noticed I kept going back to the blogs that were well written and, especially, had great photos, so I wanted to get better at it. Nika Boyce, of http://www.nikas-culinaria.com, had photos I really liked, and she agreed to help me out. I still have a lot to learn, but I'm getting better at it, I think. It comes out of my fine arts background... I started out in architecture, before ending up in IT, so cooking and photography both give me an outlet for some creativity.

Getting into the best online community for bbq that I've found, the BBQ Brethren, has pushed me more and more, as the people on there really know what they're doing, and I feel I have to keep upping my game just to keep up!

Gas Grill Review: Based on the fact that you compete in KCBS competitions, I'm guessing you're into Kansas City style BBQ. Can you tell us a little bit about that style for those who don't know?

Curt McAdams: I actually am not a BBQ style snob at all. I know people that say the only real BBQ is (fill in whatever style they grew up with). For me, in Ohio, BBQ is an imported food, though it's getting better here, so I can like all styles. The Kansas City BBQ Society isn't about one style over another, and judging will vary according to the part of the country that competitions are in. It's just that the only competitions around me are KCBS, so that's what we do.

However, I think I'd say Kansas City Style BBQ is a blend of Texas and North Carolina, but with predominate use of sweet, spicy sauces that are tomato based. While brisket is Texas, burnt ends are perfected in Kansas City, and bbq gets no better than that!

Gas Grill Review: From your blog, it's pretty obvious that your talents and interests go well beyond barbecue. I noticed you have an interest in artisanal breads. Can you tell us what that is, and what captured your interest in it?

Curt McAdams: I like a pretty wide variety of foods, but I think my interest in breads is similar to my interest in barbecue. Both are long processes that start with simple ingredients to produce something better than the ingredients themselves. It's the process that makes the end product. Where bbq has to be treated right on a smoker, kept at low temperatures with the right smoke added, bread has a feel to it where the yeast, water and flour work together, along with the right heat and steam, to produce something great.

I use the word 'artisanal' because it was the most pretentious way I could come up with for saying that I like to do things from scratch, using traditional methods.

Gas Grill Review: I noticed you have a Big Green Egg. I'm very close to getting one myself (or a primo). First, why are they so much better than more traditional smokers? Second, is the grilling capability good enough that we can get rid of our gassers?

Curt McAdams: I have an XL Big Green Egg, which is almost double the space the Large has. That's the reason I got the XL. I know a lot of people on the BBQ circuit that use BGEs, and I had wanted one for a while. I find the XL work great for me, though I'm told the Large is even easier to work with for temperature control.

They're better for a variety of reasons. One is that they can smoke for hours on one load of charcoal with almost no interaction. This means I can go to sleep while my food cooks, and I don't have to keep checking on the fire! Another is that they are fantastic grills, too. I'm sure there are reasons to keep another grill around, but I haven't used another grill at home since the day I got my BGE.

Gas Grill Review: Do you use any special gadgetry, like the BBQGuru, to help you maintain constant cooking temperatures? Would you recommend anything like that to newbies or do gadgets get too complicated?

Gas Grill Review: You had a great post on "basic barbecue." Can you tell us about some of your more imaginative, or exotic, attempts at barbecue?

Curt McAdams: I think the basics are important, just like the use of gadgets. Know the foundation before moving away from it. Learn classical music so you can understand jazz, that sort of thing.

For me, basic barbecue is still the key to barbecue, but I also like to use the process of smoking food to change dishes that don't usually get to play with fire and smoke. I've done steak au poivre, which is typically pan seared steak with a cream/peppercorn sauce. To smoke it up a bit, I did the sauce in a pan, but, since it needs the fond, or left over bits, of the steak, I got some really cheap, thin cuts of beef to pan sear. The steaks themselves were done over a wood fire, so we got a bit of smoke and fire in a dish that would typically be done on a stove top. Another thing I've done is smoke Roma tomatoes, only to find they were inedible because they took in so much smoke. However, I tried chopping them up and adding them to sauces and found it's a great way to add smoke flavor without using liquid smoke. They also make the best mayo in the world!

I get a kick out of taking typical kitchen processes and figuring out how to do them over live smoke and fire. Some work, some don't... But more work than not.

Gas Grill Review: When does the 2009 competition season start for you and where will we see you once it starts?

Curt McAdams: We're not big time competitors, so we don't do 20 or more competitions in a year. Mark Peebles, my teammate, is busy as a realtor and worship pastor, and he's in the process of trying to start up a BBQ restaurant he hopes does well. I'm busy working and pushing some other interests.

So we decided that we mainly want to stay within 3 or 4 hours for competitions. Add to that the fact that Ohio has gone from 1 competition 2 years ago to 4 this year, we're going to do at least 3 of those, maybe add one in Indiana, and that's about it. Fairbanks, IN, near Terre Haute, will see either Mark or Mark and me in June, followed the next week with Trotwood, OH (Dayton).

In July, we'll be in Kettering (Dayton again), which is as well run a competition as I've seen. August is Mark's anniversary, and his wife won't let him compete in Madison, IN, but my wife and I will probably judge, or at least go visit and have fun. And September will see us in Jim Dandy's competition in Cincinnati, OH. Nelsonville in October is still up in the air, but we'll judge if we don't compete there.

We're doing steadily better, and we got a great compliment last year... One of the organizers at a comp realized we don't compete very often, but said we're still getting walks (that means you get called up for an award), even up against teams that compete almost every weekend. We've gotten awards in every category, but now we have to string more than one or two together, trying to get a Grand Champion!

One of the key things we try to do at competitions is to give an opportunity for someone new to get involved, so we're always willing to bring along someone that's new to help us out at a competition. If that brings a new person to barbecue, that's a good thing.

Oh, and one more event I forgot to mention... My church is putting on the 2nd annual Pretty Good BBQ in Dayton, Ohio, in May. I started this last year, and had guys come all the way from Wisconsin to do nothing more than have fun, cook 500 lbs of meat, and give it away to the neighborhood. This year, we're hoping to double the amount of food we give away, and we have cooks coming back from Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio (of course), and all the way from Nebraska, just to serve people. It's a great way to reach people and a great way to have a fun hobby do something to show God's love to people that might not get that another way.

Thanks for the opportunity to 'talk' with you, Mike!

Curt McAdams

What a great interview. It's always fun to read other perspectives on barbecue. It's how we learn.

Don't forget to check out Curt's excellent blog at http://blog.buckymcoinkumsbbq.com and subscribe to his RSS feed to get his updates as they happen.

Check out Curt's review of the XL Big Green Egg