Martin's Dixieland BBQ Joint opening blog

Ga-dang........don't even know what I'm doing with this here blog, but a good buddy suggested I do it so here it is...

My wife and I are opening a bbq joint in Nolensville, TN in about six weeks. The cooker was ordered this past week, poured some concrete yesterday, graphic artist is in full swing; too much going on to list. I'm excited, but I'd be lying if I told you I wasnt scared at all...my ass is sinched up so tight you couldn't pull a greased string through it right now.
Why am I doing this? Was it a lifelong dream? Yes. But that is not enough to do something stupid like open up a business with a 80% failure rate. The fact is, I have been living around Nashville (with couple of short stints in Charlotte & Memphis) for going on thirteen years and have yet to have truly good bbq around the Nashville area (no offense to those affiliated with local places). I feel there is a need for real deal BBQ around here! Sure there are some places I'll go to when I get the need for some bbq, but it is never as good as the joints I cut my teeth on in places like Henderson & Lexington Tennessee; not even close! What makes those places so much better? Keep reading...

I have been cooking barbecue for a long time (close to twenty years). I polished my skills cooking whole hog in a small town in West Tennessee called Henderson. In Henderson, they cook whole hog only; in cinder block pits at very low temps (200*). Most places either cook it too high, not long enough, or (God forbid) with electricity, etc. Some cook it once or twice a week, freeze it and warm it up with a water & vinegar solution to add moisture back to it. Some people do that same process, and instead of the water & vinegar they mix it all up with sauce to cover it up. If you ever, EVER eat bbq that is already mixed with sauce...I guarantee your ass one of the following...either;
A) that meat is older than you would care to know and saucing it up is the only way to hide that
..........OR.............
B) they dont know how to cook, know this and need to cover it up in hopes that you don't figure it out!

Some even cook their meat in an oven and pass it off as bbq. That is unforgivable! You either want to cook barbecue or you dont; there ain't NO middle ground! So if you are going to do it, then do it right or don't do it at all. Have some damn pride and give credit to the long time-honored traditions of the method of barbecue by cooking your meat in line with tradition.
The traditions start with good meat, temperature, time, real wood and LOVE, baby! Let me start with the last one; you dont get into the bbq business to get rich. If you do it will show in the meat. You have to love it to do it. You got to have some passion for it. Are there folks who have made a lot of money out there without the love and barbecue only? Of course. But more often than not, they loved it and the money found them. Am I hoping the money finds me? You damn right. But if it doesn't, I still will have had a good time. The meat I'll be serving is all natural. These hogs (and cows) are not raised by some mass meat packer (such as IBP) pumping them up with steroids, pesticides etc... The meat I'll be serving is raised by hog farmers, chicken farmers and cattle farmers. Did you know these plants serve chicken crap to the cows & hogs and serve dead cows and hogs to the chickens? Think I'm kidding you? Pick up a copy of "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History" by Michael Pollan. Take a glance through that and you'll start thinking twice about buying industrial meat. I feel we all have a responsibility to our own bodies to know what we are putting in them and we also have a responsibility to support small to medium sized farmers, no matter if you are some fat country boy or some skinny hippie vegetarian. Those traditions continue with the process of barbecue itself, which means slow and low! I will be cooking whole shoulders and whole briskets. I will be cooking my meat between 210* and 225* for 20-22 hours.....EVERY NIGHT! None of this cooking once or twice a week and serving you crap with sauce slaw and a bun. When you eat my bbq it will be fresh. You will know that the sandwiches, ribs, chicken, whatever you are eating was being cooked all night long while you were asleep. It will have been cooked with a combination of seasoned hickory wood, oak and apple. The sauces will be made fresh in-house and are my recipes. These are recipes I've been tinkering with for well over a decade in my own kitchen and spending a lot of nights drinking cold beer around a pit with guys like Bryan Chandler, John McCall, Michael Blankinship, Eric Lamb, Chris Harris, Russ Wallace, Tracy Jarrell, Russ Hickey and Burt Williams. The slaw, beans, rubs...everything is my recipe. This joint will excel or fail dependant on my cooking style and recipes.
I plan on blogging daily if time permits. I am going to be pretty open and very blunt with my blog. You will read the exitement, the fear, the good and bad decisions I make, and eventually whether or not this joint succeeds or not. For those of you who one day consider opening a joint of your own, this should be a pretty good place for you to see the good, the bad, and the ugly. Talk to you tomorrow, y'all be good and give thanks to the good Lord above.