Perfectly cooked lamb racks at Blue Moose Low and Slow Barbecue Class. Photo/Hayley McLarin
Perfectly cooked lamb racks at Blue Moose Low and Slow Barbecue Class. Photo/Hayley McLarin
Hayley McLarin smokes up a storm at Blue Moose's low and slow barbecue classes.
What initially looked like a Hogwarts train smoking away proved a signpost to my meeting point. Or should that be, 'meating point?'
Outside the Birdcage pub, and with cars rushing by on the motorway viaduct overhead, a crowd was growing. Much like groups of women who go clubbing and dance around their handbags, this eclectic group milled in a circle, eyeing up the chillybins in the ring, while shrouded in wafts of fruity wood smoke.
Jason Sattler with the Blue Moose barbecue. Photo/Hayley McLarin
The Blue Moose Barbecue class started with us introducing ourselves and sharing our cooking prowess. Among our 15-strong group were couples whose weekend pastimes included attending barbecue competitions, avid fishers who smoked their catches and wanted to learn more skills, and hipsters who'd just got a new Oklahoma Joe.
Suddenly all eyes were on me, the unaccompanied female, and my rather-pitiful-looking polystyrene container.
Usually declaring yourself a non-smoker would get a high-five, but this group barely raised a smile. Yet boldly I admitted I was a total novice among them, as I always struggle to light my charcoal Weber kettle. In these days of gas barbecues, the protein element is the easy bit: more of my time goes into making salads, setting the table, even boiling a pot of new potatoes. Going all-out might be a butterfly lamb - that someone else has butterflied. Quick. Easy. Done.
But when you're barbecuing American-style, you can throw that theory totally on its head. It takes 18 hours to slow-cook brisket on a smoker. Truly.
Blue Moose is run by US couple Nickie and Jason Sattler, who moved from Dayton, Ohio, three years ago. Both have day jobs: Nickie teaches industry professionals how to tutor and Jason is a software writer.
With 15 years of experience cooking authentic American barbecues, they started doing pop-ups at markets and, unlike the slow burn of their off-set barbecue, they quickly had people wanting them to share their knowledge. So they started showing people just how versatile a low-and-slow smoker can be and they tried out the competition circuit including Meat Stock and Jack Daniels BBQ Championship, but preferred sharing their love of smoking over vying for protein plaudits.
Salmon gets the smoking treatment. Photo/Hayley McLarin
Smoking takes hours, but this class fills that time with plenty of tips, including a crafty way to start my Weber. It teaches you how to get great smoked flavours from a range of barbecues through to grill positioning, timings, and a lot of temperatures thrown into the mix.
What follows is hours of cooking, and hours of eating meat. A lot of meat.
First up, a large piece of beef rump is embalmed in a spicy rub before it starts roasting. While this is doing its thing, we are shown just how easy it is to prepare and cook burger patties. For pure mince, the flavour doesn't come from adding herbs and spices, it's provided courtesy of a combination of fruit and nut wood diligently smouldering away.
These large mounds of beef have a delicately smoky outer and juicy interior. They're served as large burgers oozing out of slider buns – the only accompaniment of the day.
Nickie tells us it's easy to smoke vegetables and cheese but today we are unashamedly carnivores.
There is a little bit of downtime (handy that we are outside a bar and there are plenty of passersby to people-watch) before there are racks of lamb sliced into juicy cutlets. Our demonstration swiftly moves to smoking salmon, half-chickens are hung in a drum smoker and that large piece of rump is hauled out to be carved into steaks before being quickly flash-fried.
But wait, there's more. More than half a dozen halves of smoked chicken are coming out of the drum.
Chicken gets cooked over a smokey firepit. Photo/Hayley McLarin
Our chillybins are starting to look a little forlorn and forsaken, all the tasty morsels devoured. Bringing them wasn't in vain: we were all given a rack of ribs coated in a spicy marinade rub to take home to test our newfound knowledge, along with a booklet filled with cooking times and temperatures for a wide range of cuts, a wood guide, cold-smoking methods and rub recipes.
Other than scoffing, the only hands-on element is packaging up two different spice rubs -both mouth-puckering, tongue-tingling concoctions.
I was starting to crave a raw vegetable and, with only a mere kettle barbecue, elements of the class went right over my head. But those who are interested in low and slow will reap the benefit of quizzing our hosts, from how long decent coals take to be ready, from cooking times to resting times, when to stoke, when to leave sleeping coals lie, what makes a competition entry, and the gadgets you can buy (including a Bluetooth timer).
I have to finish with a confession: Jason was fond of telling us we would have meat as a dessert. Hard to fathom. But those sweet, sticky little nuggets of juicy pork belly were amazing. So good I devoured them before I could even take a photo. Sorry.
Blue Moose Low and Slow Barbecue Class Class duration: 11am-5pm Class type: demonstration Class cost: $120 Skill level: 5/5 To book:bluemoosebarbecue.co.nz
