Smoke Ring Forum Member Organizes
BBQ Cook for 1500 Katrina Evacuees

Once again, the barbecue community has come forward when called upon. Last Monday we received an email from Terry Adair who is working at Camp Gruber in Coweta, OK where 1500-2000 hurricane Katrina evacuees are being housed. She said they had nothing but MRE's to eat. She was looking for a contact to find barbecue cooks who would be willing to come and do a barbecue cookout for the evacuees. I posted her request on The Smoke Ring forum. Five hours later, forum member Russ Garrett, SmokinOkie, had already contacted Terry and volunteered to organize the whole thing.

On Saturday, Sep 10 , the group organized by Russ cooked lunch for 1500+ evacuees and volunteers. The following report was posted on the forum today by Mike of the Smokedelics BBQ team that also participated in the cookout.

We were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to cook lunch yesterday for around 1500 evacuees and volunteers at Camp Gruber.

Russ Garrett(Smokin' Okie) did a miraculous job of pulling this cook together. He got around 1500 lbs. of meat donated by The Oklahoma Beef Council, The Oklahoma Pork Council, Schwans, as well as a few others. He got an FE 750 loaned to him by Cookshack to cook meat. Rub was donated by Cookshack and Hasty Bake. Sauce was donated by Head Country. The cooks were Russ on the FE, Darcy Hicks from Ring of Fire BBQ team on a big J R, and me on my Kingfisher Kooker. The prep/slicing/saucing/wrapping crew was Merl and Carol Whitebrook(KCBS Reps), Robert and Keri Cathey(PSO Hotwire BBQ team), Twila Garrett(Mrs. Smokin' Okie), Jeff Hughes(no comp team yet, but provided some awesome food for us), Don Hood(novice bbq'r, and very handy with a knife), Terry Adair(the Blue Star mom that planted the seed for this cook), as well as several other Blue Star moms. I apologize if I've failed to mention anyone here.

We started Friday night about 6:00p.m. prepping and seasoning 66 briskets. We loaded up the FE with 60 of them and put the rest on my Kingfisher and turned 'em loose. Around 6:00 a.m. we prepped and rubbed 50 whole pork loins and loaded the J R, again with the rest going on my Kingfisher. We started 50 lbs. of cajun sausage at around 9:30. At this point we had all 3 smokers loaded w/ around 1200 lbs of meat!

We started pulling briskets around 8:30. They were sliced/chopped, panned and put back in the FE to hold for pick- up by The Red Cross at 11:00. As soon as the briskets were processed, we pulled the loins and started the process again. Sausage was pulled and sliced around 10:45. The Red Cross vans were loaded with all the brisket, pork loin, and sausage around 11:15 for delivery to the 3 kitchens serving lunch. Sides that were served were macaroni salad and baked beans.

We had a request from the kitchen staff to see if we could smoke some chicken quarters for them for another meal. Russ agreed and asked that they be delivered after we got some of the meat off the smokers. Lo and behold, around noon they delivered about 540 lbs of FROZEN chicken quarters to be smoked. Again the FE and the JR were stuffed to the doors with frozen chicken quarters, which smoked about 2.5 hrs.

All in all it was a great time, a lot of work, and very gratifying to see a group of people come together to cook Q for those that needed to have their spirits lifted. I had the opportunity to make some new friends, and got to learn a few things from a couple of real good cooks. All of the group did a tremendous job of not only getting the food ready to serve, but cleaning up afterwards as well. I encourage everyone to find a way to help out just a little bit, if not for the Hurricane Katrina effort, then for those in your area who may need a little extra help.

Finally, a tip of the cap to Russ Garrett for putting this whole thing together in a matter of a few days. Between getting the meat donated, finding volunteers and working through the logistics of getting us all on the same page, it was truly an extraordinary effort!

Mike
The Smokedelics BBQ Team

Thanks to everyone who participated. I can't imagine how much it was appreciated by the evacuees after almost two weeks of eating MRE's. Special thanks to Russ who pulled the whole thing together.

Garry
The Smoke Ring

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