We found a Groupon for the Whack It On the Barbie class at the Queen Victoria Market, so we decided to give it a shot. For the non-Australians, "barbie" is short for barbeque, The class was run by Ryan, who was an incredible chef and he knew a lot about American BBQ. So when Americans say BBQ, they refer to the style of cooking, and not the equipment used to cook it, which they'd refer to as whatever type it is: grill, smoker, etc.
In the picture below, there's a grill on the right, and two smokers. The one on the far left weights over 300kg!
We started off making a marinade for some chicken wings.
Lemon zest, dill, lemon juice and olive oil rubbed into the chicken and left to marinate for about 15 minutes. Ryan says you can prepare this marinade ahead of time, but don't put in the lemon juice until 15 minutes before you're about to cook it, otherwise the citric acid will impact the texture of the chicken.
Then he covered a bit on using various things for smoking. I don't know if I should write up everything he said, as that would be depriving him of his class, but one of the interesting things I found out was about the colour of the smoke. The "good" smoke should be clear, or a very faint blue. It's really hard to see from this photo, but there is smoke coming out of the pipe.
His basic rule of thumb is that if the smoke is unpleasant to be around, then it's going to add an unpleasant flavour to your meat.
His assistant grilled the chicken wings while we took a tour of the meat building in the Queen Victoria Market.
We learned about some of the things to look for in cuts of meat, and why a porterhouse steak can differ wildly in price between two vendors. He also talked about how cows in America are much larger because Australians are more health-conscious and favour leaner meats. Unfortunately, this means it's harder to find good cuts of meat for barbequeing, and you need to find specialty growers. Ryan gets his meat from a vendor at the QVM who sources it from Tasmania. Even then, it's much smaller than one you'd be able to find in the US.
On our return, the meats were done. The chicken wings were cooked there, but the two of them had prepared the other meats earlier in the day, as some had been smoked for over 6 hours by the time we got there. That's an early start!
Now for the best part of the trip, eating!
Chicken wings:
I think these were my favourite out of them all. Skin was a little crispy, and the meat inside still juicy.
Pulled pork on a slice of white bread:
Ryan prefers to use pork neck for his pulled pork, as the price is good and you still get great texture and flavour. This was really nice. He cooked it with his homemade BBQ sauce, which I thought was a bit overpowering, but having the white bread really helped with that and made it delicious. It was amazing watching him pull the pork apart with just a fork and so little effort.
Italian sausage (I forgot the name T_T):
This one was really overpowering, which is why we got such a small piece. He also said this is not something you want to reheat and eat as it just tastes gross after that. I thought it was OK; nice, but not something I'd want to eat a lot of.
Next was lamb neck fillets, smoked with rosemary and I think he said honey??? Also a bit strong, but delicious!
Last was beef ribs.
My second favourite. He said beef is a pretty strong flavour on its own, so it doesn't need anything other than salt and pepper, and it worked! It was so soft and tender, just fell apart so easily.
We also got to enjoy a couple of beers while we were there. I passed, but MrFodder liked the lager.
Overall, the class wasn't a hands-on cooking class, which we weren't really sure about, but figured it wouldn't be given how long it takes to cook some of these things. It was advertised as a 2-hour class, but was barely finishing up after over 2.5 hours. We learnt a lot, and the chef was happy to answer any questions. I'd definitely recommend it. It's about 1.5 hours until you get to the eating part, but it's worth the wait!
The tour of the market was nice. It was pretty busy as it was the day before Easter Sunday, but we got to look at some good quality meats.
Oh, he has a store there as well, where you can buy some things for helping out your BBQs. One of the things he sells is a smoker box, which you can fill with wood chips and leave in your BBQ while you're cooking, to add some of that smokey flavour without having a dedicated smoker.
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