Okie Smokin
BBQ Blunders and Blackstone Tales? The Okie Smokin' Podcast serves up laughter, lip-smacking recipes, and outdoor adventures - all sizzling hot. Join John and Dolores from their backyard studio in Oklahoma as they explore the wild side of grilling, from smoky surprises to lakeside feasts. You'll be hooked in no time!
Okie Smokin
Grilling Wisdom with Doug from Griddle Cook, Eat and More
Send John & Dolores a Text Message.
Doug from Griddle Cook, Eat and More joins us to share his journey from restaurant industry professional to YouTube cooking content creator, discussing everything from viral video success to backyard cooking mishaps.
Doug's YouTube Channel
• Started YouTube channel in 2021 after contemplating it for two years
• Originally planned to name his channel "It Is What It Is, Cooking" before settling on Griddle Cook, Eat and More
• Took about two years to reach 1,000 subscribers before growth accelerated
• Equipment reviews consistently outperform recipe videos for views and revenue
• His review of a Blackstone camping griddle has generated approximately $1,000 in revenue
• Favorite recipes include Iowa-style pork tenderloin sandwich and Long John Silver's recreations
• Shared stories of cooking for celebrities like Wayne Gretzky and the Dallas Stars hockey team at a high-end restaurant
• Discussed the challenges of balancing equipment collections with storage space
• Recounted mishaps including pork butt falling into coals and yard fires from cooking equipment
• Smash burgers and cheesesteaks named as favorite griddle foods
• Planning to smoke a whole brisket on his ugly drum smoker soon
• Compared experiences with ultra-spicy food challenges and hot sauces
- Fanpage: Leave a voicemail for us and we might play it on a future episode!
- Okie Smokin YouTube Channel - Our YouTube channel where we regularly post cooking videos and other content.
- Video Podcast - Playlist of all our video podcast episodes on YouTube.
All right, y'all. Well, we got a good one. Today. I'm sitting here with Doug from Griddle Cook, eat and More, who has an awesome YouTube channel. We're going to be talking some barbecue, maybe a few stories or two. Who knows where it's going to go? But first let's get this intro going. Let's get it started.
Speaker 2:Time to fire up that grill. From smoked pork to smash burgers, outdoor cooking just tastes better. This is the Okie Smokin' Podcast, and here's your host, John Barry.
Speaker 1:All right, well, here we go, welcome in. We got Doug here. Now. When we typically start our podcast, we a lot of times just check in with the local. We're right here in Oklahoma City, midwest City, oklahoma. You're in St Louis Missouri right, yep, that is correct. Yeah, and we usually kind of give a weather report. It's been sunshine. We had a lot of floods this last week. How's your weather been going?
Speaker 3:Same. We had some flooding Today, 80 degrees out, real nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, real nice. We have a creek behind us and we walk it and we went walking yesterday and up by the picnic tables and stuff. There's debris all along it because the water went above the entire tables and everything is just flowing through.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's been great weather, but let's go ahead and uh, introduce you. You're uh doug from griddle, cook, eat and more. I got a youtube channel out. Uh, what made you decide to start filming and cooking? What got you into the big youtube?
Speaker 3:oh, I always cooked. Uh came from a big restaurant background. I worked in restaurants for a long time, so I loved cooking and griddling and all that stuff and probably for two years I contemplated on doing a channel. I have this old video I haven't even played it yet that I made. This is kind of a funny video I made, but I never got around to starting to getting it going and getting the channel going. So I may put that video up there one day. But originally I was going to call my channel it Is what it Is, Cooking. So once I decided to do it I got on there and someone else had that channel name and it was really funny. I watched their video and they were doing the Blackstone videos. So then that's why I changed it On the fly. I had to come up with the new names Griddle, Cookie, Moore. There it is, the longest channel name.
Speaker 1:You automatically answered my question I actually had on here. Where'd the Griddle Cookie Moore come from?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it's kind of on the fly. I'm like man, what should I name this thing?
Speaker 1:Right, do you have any favorite video that you've made, or anything?
Speaker 3:If you go way back, my pork tenderloin video, this is probably my fifth video I made. I did like up in Iowa, are you familiar with the giant pork tenderloin sandwiches? Yes, yeah. So up in that area which I worked at a restaurant a long time ago, we made them there. I always liked them. So and still to today, after like 200 plus videos like cooking, you know recipe videos or whatever, that's still one of my favorites. You know things I made.
Speaker 5:I think I was like watching some of your videos and I liked the Long John Silver.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, that was good.
Speaker 5:I was like, ooh, we need to make that.
Speaker 3:Which I just got to eat. I like the crispies. Yeah, yeah, oh yeah. Do you guys have Long John Silvers in your area? We?
Speaker 5:do, but it's gross here. Yeah. Like. I'm originally from California and it tastes so much better that way.
Speaker 3:I'm not sure where it started at, but most of them closed up around us in the St Louis area. But over the weekend for Easter we went to my mother-in-law's in Shiloh's upper part of Missouri, and in this town we drive through they have a Long John's, so we stopped there for lunch on Friday. So that's the only time I ever get it, you know.
Speaker 5:Here our Long John is connected to A&W.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we used to have that it's gross here. Yeah, it's not very, very good the the one we had by it that where I live at it was an a and w long john combo. But yeah, they've all cleared out. No more long johns. Left some captain d's, but those are mainly in the hood.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think it may be closed now, but we agree with you both agree with you and we like the chicken better than the fish. We used to always go in there and get the chicken combo, but we did have some. That was pretty good. But, like you said, most of them's closed up and the ones that are left just aren't aren't all that great yeah, it seems like it's more in small towns now where you find them right.
Speaker 3:There's several small towns outside of the, you know, st louis area that have them still and they do good there. But yeah, it's good stuff. I'm not a fish eater so that's why I always got the chicken. You know, growing up I remember going there and if you go way back, I don't know if you guys ever had arthur treacher's I haven't had that anybody have those.
Speaker 3:That was like a similar to long johns. It was a chain from the east coast and then, uh, similar deal, you know, just battered it fish and chicken and stuff, so it was good real good, but I'm going on a back when I was me and the guys are going on a fishing trip what is it?
Speaker 1:May 10th? And we take a. We've got a lake close by Lake Texoma. It's a big lake. It kind of borders it's Texoma because part of it's in Oklahoma, part of it's in Texas and we're getting a guide and six of us are going out there and we went there about two years ago and caught 60 fish nice striper fishing.
Speaker 1:So we'll be doing that, and last year and last year it was colder and hopefully we do better. We caught like we went twice like 30 fish last year instead of 60, so hopefully, how big is striper pretty?
Speaker 3:good, how big, how big of them were.
Speaker 1:You were the a variety of sizes. We we had them small, we had some medium, nothing major, nothing massive, yet yeah, nothing too major.
Speaker 3:There's a lake down in the Missouri-Arkansas area called Bull Shoals Lake. Have you ever heard of that lake?
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 3:That's where all the state record stripers are caught, like in Missouri. So I think it's like 52 or 53 pounds is the record for a striper big, big bass also we checked out your.
Speaker 1:What was that other video? We looked at the. Uh, we saw the snake the snake video. We watched that earlier today. We've been watching a lot of your short videos. You did a lot of pretty good shorts. Yeah, I've done a whole.
Speaker 3:I've been trying to do more lately. Yeah, you've been doing a lot of those. There was, you did a lot of pretty good shorts. Yeah, I've been trying to do more lately.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you've been doing a lot of those. There was one other I can't remember what it was now. I thought I wrote it down but that snake, that's pretty cool. When you cooked that, did you notice on like the side of the charcoal it was a lot hotter or anything, or do you think it was pretty even throughout the whole cook you can put your ribs on it. Oh, you make them ribs. Yeah, because it's got that diffuser you put on top.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but it makes it easy to do the snake, like with lump charcoal. I mean, typically you'd use some briquettes where you can go around real nice and you know like two rows and then stack one on top, but there you just dump the charcoal in there. Just dump it in there. Yeah, spread it around and let it go.
Speaker 1:That's a guy on Facebook sells this. Yeah, what's that called? It's the smoke pit, the snake pit, the snake pit the snake pit yeah. Yep. That was your ugly drum smoker. That's the other thing I was going to talk about. How do you like that?
Speaker 3:I like it. I've used it. Well see, that was the first time I used it in a video. And then I smoked a turkey breast in it. I took a bone-in turkey breast in it and it was awesome, yeah, that pork butt you made.
Speaker 1:it looked really really good.
Speaker 3:Juicy. Yeah, so there's a guy at my last job and actually a friend of mine I've known before that I worked with him, but him and his one of his brothers got made one and him and a couple other brothers all make them now. So completely homemade everything. I mean they made their own basket for it, charcoal basket. They didn't buy no parts from like the, you know, because you buy all the stuff. If you get a drum, you get all that stuff for it.
Speaker 1:But yeah, yeah, I was looking at that and I was sitting here saying, and I spent this money on this, I got a pit barrel and you got that homemade just made from scratch. It's pretty cool that barrel like that.
Speaker 3:So a funny story about that is my wife's always on me because I got too many grills. So I had this Weber Genesis old Weber Genesis, about like 15 years ago, whatever, once I got my griddle which I got my first griddle, I think in 2011, but kind of slowly stopped using it. That Genesis probably sat for eight years at least untouched and I'm like. So I said, yeah, I'm going to give it to the guy at work wants it, I'm going to give it to him. He's one of his kids, he eats a grill or something like that. But she didn't know I was trading it in. I was trading him for his ugly drum. So she didn't know I had that ugly drum. It was down in our garage for a while, whatever. So I put it up outside Normally drum. It was down in our garage for a while, whatever. So I put it up outside. I normally I had.
Speaker 3:I bought a bass for it from vivor so I could roll it around and I usually keep it on the side of the shed where you can't see it. And one day I left it out, like right out the back door, and she went out there and she's like what's this like? Yeah, I said I traded that, the weber for that. She's saying I'm getting rid of something. I need to get rid of something and bring something right. What's this? I'm like yeah, I traded the Weber for that. She's saying I'm getting rid of something.
Speaker 1:I need to get rid of something and bring something right back. That's why.
Speaker 5:I tell him you have too much stuff out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do, I got too much. I actually got rid of some stuff, but kind of like you, I always bring something back in.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I bring more in than.
Speaker 1:I get rid of. You also do a lot of indoor cooks on that, vivor, don't you? Vivor? Yeah, yeah, she was asking that. She says you've done a bunch of those indoor. That's something I'm actually looking about. Getting is one of those. And we were watching your pizza video. What was it that grilled cheese pizza? Oh yeah, yeah. And that turned out really really good, didn't it?
Speaker 3:Oh, my God really good, didn't it? Oh my god, it's like almost. It's almost like eating a pan pizza for pizza. That's pretty close. This is wow turned out, you know, better than expected. I mean I figured it'd be good. I mean can't go wrong with the stuff I put on there, but you know how close would it be? Because I'm like, well, I want bread, I need something poofy. So that's why I used french bread and flipped it upside down to give me more of that pan experience, I guess, a pan being a thicker, thicker crust, you know kind of more like calzone or something like that so, yeah, it worked out good.
Speaker 3:It's tasty because I love. You know, if I got a pizza, I like their meat lovers pan pizza yeah, how do you normally come up with your ideals like that?
Speaker 1:are you just at this? A lot of times I will just be sitting here and I'll be saying I'll just come up with an ideal and next thing you know, 20 minutes later let's make this, let's cook this, let's do this video. And we're just kind of do you do some spur of the moment things like that? Oh yeah, no.
Speaker 3:And I think of a lot of good stuff, but I don't write it down. So, no, and I think of a lot of good stuff but I don't write it down, so I forget a lot of my ideas. I'll just see something and it'll make me think, oh, that should do this. I don't know. I've come up with some off-the-wall stuff Now. The off-the-wall stuff it's good, but it's not good for views normally. Yeah, but if you do something trendy, you know, then you get a lot more views on your videos. It's still fun to do. Yeah, it's just crazy stuff. A lot of my videos are like that kind of crazy, but I like to do a lot of remakes of stuff, of stuff in other areas that.
Speaker 3:I can't go to. So you know, or I could or eventually may make it there one day. But recreating like for example, there's a sandwich in New York that I've just seen some TikToks on and it's this pizza place. It's chicken cutlets, vodka sauce, pesto sauce and then God, what's the cheese called? It's like fresh mozzarella, but then it's got like a creamier version in the middle, burrata, and then on this fresh semolina roll.
Speaker 3:So the biggest issue is finding the bread, because as I got older, I'm more of a bread snob. Now it's like bread's very important to me when I'm making something. Back when I was in my 20s, working in restaurants or was doing crazy stuff, I could care less about the bread, you know, but now it's all about the bread. So I'm like now I'm going to learn how to bake some of this bread. I've never baked bread in my life, so I think I'm going to try making these semolina rolls, because you always hear about it. If you watch any TikToks, like in Jersey and New York, they're always like oh, the semolina. I got me a fresh semolina roll and you know it's like. So that's good, but that's my next plan One of these days when I got time. I'm a busy guy. That's the problem. I always got something going on, don't we all?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like baking bread. Well, I don't really bake bread. I guess you would say I do it the lazy way. I got a machine. You put all the ingredients and hit a button, yeah, and it just makes it. Yeah, you were saying you like to create things. Also, you did a video a while back. Actually seeing this one, uh, from a cruise line what was that?
Speaker 3:uh, okay, so royal caribbean. Uh, they have a. They have their own little island. So if you're on a cruise, it's called the coco k and then they have these snack shacks they call, and then I don't know how it got started. But when I was searching, when we were doing research for the cruise, I was watching all these vlogs and stuff of people going there and they're like you've got to get the secret sandwich and it's just, they have a chicken sandwich there and then you tell them it's a secret sandwich and they put mozzarella cheese sticks on it.
Speaker 1:I mean that's all it is, but it's good.
Speaker 3:Mozzarella cheese sticks, yeah, yeah, so it's their chicken sandwich and they put mozzarella cheese sticks on top. But in the cruise world, I guess in the vlogs it's like the secret sandwich, but it's pretty funny, that's all.
Speaker 1:Are you going on that cruise again?
Speaker 3:We will. Yeah, we'll probably do another one.
Speaker 1:We've got one coming up soon.
Speaker 5:We're on the Carnival cruise. That'll be later this year. Yeah, that'll be our second cruise. Yeah, we're going. Yeah, I've only been on one.
Speaker 3:That was that Royal Caribbean one, but we may do Carnival the next time. Yeah, we're doing Carnival.
Speaker 5:It's out of Galveston.
Speaker 1:Texas. Yeah, we leave out of Galveston, texas and I think we got Cozumel, costa Maya, and I forget.
Speaker 3:Because Carnival's got their own little island too, don't they Something tropical?
Speaker 5:right.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, I think Carnival's got an island on some of their cruises, their own private island. You stop by or in some of them. I'm not sure where it's at, but it's pretty cool. Yeah, definitely, we went on the white cruise, but we liked it, so yeah, we did too it was a good time.
Speaker 5:At first I was like no, I don't want to go in the water area but then I it rained like four of the seven days yeah but still it was fun. It rained on us like one day right, Like just dripping.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we did have a rain day, for sure. Yeah, nothing massive, but nice little rain shower.
Speaker 3:Ours went to St Martin. And what was the other place? The other stop. But anyways, both those days it rained the whole time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they have the what's that burger? The Guy's.
Speaker 3:Burger yeah that's a caramel thing.
Speaker 1:Guy Ferry. Yeah, yeah, that's a carnival thing. Guy Ferry yeah, we had his burgers on there. That's pretty good. Yeah, he also has a barbecue. He had brisket. But it's only a limited time and you've got to get there quick and if you don't get it, yeah you're out. Everything was good, the food was good on it and everything.
Speaker 3:I think it's a carnival horizon. He's got a barbecue place. Everything was good, the food was good on it and everything On the carnival. I think it's the Carnival Horizon. He's got a barbecue place on there too, A separate restaurant. I forgot what they call it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we were on the Dream for about six days. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. So do you prefer griddling or do you smoke a lot, too kind of, since you got that drum or has griddle?
Speaker 3:been more of your thing. I mean, I'm starting to smoke more now than I used to. But yeah, griddle, I probably do griddle mostly, but I don't know. I've been doing a lot of smoking, so I got a pellet smoker now and, you know, done some stuff on that.
Speaker 1:I like the pellet smoker. A lot of people tell me it's not real smoking, but it's kind of the lazy way. But you flip the switch and you let it go.
Speaker 3:I know it's easy, it's real easy. Yeah, I mean, you don't get this good smoke flavor out of it. No, smoking like with a real fire.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you don't get quite the bark if you cook it like in it and that drum. I heard you say you're going to do a brisket in it. Yeah, that's going to. I bet that's going to make a real massive bark with that flame coming right up on it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that'll be the next cook, I think on it.
Speaker 5:Have you ever made anything that was that didn't turn out good on it?
Speaker 3:Oh on what? Which one? The brutal? Oh on what? The griddle, video-wise, nothing I hated. Well, I haven't even posted it yet, but I made Pad Thai. Well, I didn't even use the griddle, I used this big cloud disk. That one didn't. It was decent but it didn't turn out like I wanted it to. But I'm trying to think griddle-wise, whatever Any major fails. Yeah, not on no video-wise, huh, no, not. I think griddle wise, whatever Any major fails yeah, screwed.
Speaker 1:I don't know Video wise. No not a whole lot, and how long have you been doing the YouTube?
Speaker 3:I started in uh toward what was it?
Speaker 1:August maybe, or something of a 21, five years maybe, yeah, not quite yeah, I should jump I.
Speaker 3:Five years maybe, yeah, not quite yeah I should have jumped, I should have got on it sooner.
Speaker 1:Did it start growing right away, or did it take a while to kind of kick off? Oh, it took a while.
Speaker 3:It took probably two years to get to 1,000 subs. Yeah. And then after I got that, then next year it grew pretty fast and I was hoping to be like at 5,000 subs but then last October my channel just slowly, it just like crashed, slowed down. It was weird. I mean, my views were like half the views and starting to pick back up now, but it's very different from the year before in that timeframe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've been noticing mine's been picking up, but, kind of like you said, I got right under 1,000. I was sitting at what like 9 and it was. It was like you were at the stall of a brisket. Yeah, it just got there and it just stayed there and you're like it. It never moved and it actually would go and then finally started moving then once it hit a thousand the taco.
Speaker 1:The hamburger taco was the one that started rising right well, yeah, that was her idea and she'd come up with smashed tacos. You ever done that.
Speaker 3:Oh, with the tortilla.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh, yeah, and I guess we hit it just at the right time. I don't know she was watching.
Speaker 5:She saw a bunch of videos on it. Yeah, I was watching like TikTok and YouTube and stuff.
Speaker 1:And she said let's do that. So we put that out there and that one. I think we had like 200 subscribers in a month just from that one video. I've never seen nothing like it before or after, but and that was really good. I really liked that. Yeah, at first you kind of think you're putting the meat right on that tortilla because I smashed it right on there. It's almost like you kind of get a raw meat going on there and then it cooks through it, but it turned out really good.
Speaker 3:Did you put it and smash the tortilla on top of it?
Speaker 1:Yes, that's what we did, yep Some people take.
Speaker 3:I've seen you take your tortilla, so you get a bowl of your meat, ground beef and you season it raw and then you spread it on the tortillas and fold them over and then you just cook them up you know flipping it back and forth and it cooks, ends up cooking the meat inside. You know that makes like crispy tacos with the meat in there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know how many comments we had that you're doing it wrong.
Speaker 3:That's gross now, did you use? Now, when I made, I did that video, I used corn tortillas and I think I'm the only one that used corn tortillas to make it. It's like everybody uses flour, but I used because I was like I want to make it like a your standard, uh, american taco. I call it a crunchy shell ground beef, lettuce, cheese and sauce, a potato sauce. You know like I eat tacos growing up, so that was my idea behind it. So I used a corn tortilla, smashed it, then I folded it in half and cooked it a little bit to crisp up the shell and then I put my you know cheese and whatever the toppings in it. It was good. It was good. But, yeah, that video did real well because that was, you know, a little bit after it got popular. My best videos are like review videos of griddles and stuff, or at least you know, know, watches or people I think they tend to search for.
Speaker 1:I want to look at a review or you know, trying to get an opinion on something, maybe before they buy it and and, and those get it quite a few. I kind of got the same thing where, uh, I think, more than the food videos, I have maybe a repair or just cleaning a sensor on a pit boss Someone's having issues with it or how to do something, and those just steadily get quite a few views.
Speaker 3:I have this old video. It's a Loco griddle that I had and it's the first one that came out first gen and they're on like the third or fourth gen and this thing still gets like 25 50 views a day. They don't even make it anymore. People still watch it as fast and maybe because I put the title of that was uh, loco versus blackstone. Blackstone's the key for views people obsess with the blacks.
Speaker 1:It's a popular name yeah, blackstone and a lot of mine are Pit Boss.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I would say Pit Boss is the Blackstone of the pellet world. That's like the most recognizable one, because I've done reviews on different griddles and Blackstone ones or anything. Blackstone and it kicks its ass. You know, absolutely, yeah, yeah. So I bought Blackstone stone and it kicks its ass. You know absolutely, yeah, kicks, yeah. So I bought, uh, uh, blackstone came out the 20 inch camping griddle they sell in the camping section at walmart last year and uh, real cool, it's like like a suitcase.
Speaker 3:It's got a handle on it. The cover comes. You clamp the cover on it. It's maybe like oh, you can see my thing, I'm looking wrong thing maybe like that tall, this wide and it's real compact. It's a cool griddle. That thing's almost 80,000 views on it. It's steadily going, it's my best investment because I've paid for that like 10 times over, with the revenue off. I made five videos with it. I made about $1,000 off of it. That's cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Can't beat that. And then I bought a. So you know I'm always thinking all right, what videos can I do to help generate some revenue to cover the cost of the grill? Well, I have an older Blackstone and then just a basic 36-inch one they sell at Walmart with a hardcover. Actually, the old one didn't even have a hardcover. That was before they started including them. And then I bought a newer one last year because I was going to get rid of the old one and use the new one. So I decided to do a comparison the Omnivore versus the old-school griddle top, and that was the 60,000 BTU burners and the new ones are 38,000. So I weighed both tops. The new top's like 45 pounds and the old ones are 60. So it's like 15 pounds lighter and the new one warps. Any time I cook on high. The one corner always pops up, always goes back down, but it's kind of funny. But that video right there just made me 350 bucks.
Speaker 1:So I paid my for my 297 blackstone yeah, I could see them, because I and now that you mentioned that I do that a lot I'll be looking for something and want to compare it, even for this podcast. That's some equipment. You know what about a roadie versus you know a mono caster? Sit there and watch the videos on it, so people grill them kind of do the same thing, I'm sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, those videos are great because people keep watching them.
Speaker 1:What's your favorite thing you cook on the griddle. What's your go-to pleasure?
Speaker 3:Smash burgers probably. What's your go-to pleasure Smash burgers probably. What's that? Smash burgers, smash burgers, yeah, cheesesteaks. I love cheesesteaks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's Dolores' too. A while back she used to always want them smoked, you know, big fat juicy burger, and then we got a smash burger and that's the only way she really likes it. Throw some onions on it, kind of like an onion Oklahoma onion smash burger yeah those are good.
Speaker 3:And also like I love grilled sourdough like you, butter grill it, so I like making sandwiches with that, burgers with that, like Frisco melt, or just a couple videos I got. Actually, my second video was Denny's Deli Dinger that I ever made a long time ago. That was like a club sandwich, but basically they put it on butter grilled sourdough triple stack. It was like my go-to sandwich back when we were out at the bars all night We'd go to Denny's at 3 or 4 in the morning Sounds like fun.
Speaker 3:But they got rid of it. All the great stuff I had they got rid of Makes me mad. We have a Denny I said we have a Denny yeah, denny's Just the whole going out. It's just not like it was anymore.
Speaker 5:Right.
Speaker 3:Denny's Harley's, I think they're getting ready to close stores, but back then most Denny's made more money on the overnight shift than they did the day shift. They'd be packed overnight. It's crazy, but it's just wild how the times have changed, especially in the restaurant industry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you said you were originally in the restaurant industry and that got you into cooking on YouTube. You're no longer in the restaurant industry outside of YouTube. Uh-uh, got out of that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I wanted a more normal schedule. When I was younger it was fun.
Speaker 5:Where'd you work?
Speaker 3:All kinds of places. I started out at this little private restaurant by me that they opened up. It was cool. It was like a bar and grill but we did a few nicer things. We had some good steaks and fish and stir fry. It was a good broad menu Worked there and then from there I went to a pretty nice well-known Italian restaurant in this area in St Louis and that was cool working there because I got to meet a lot of celebrities, because we were right by this Ritz-Carlton and all the celebrities would stay there and the connoisseurs of the hotel. We were their number one pick. So I met a lot of big sports people.
Speaker 1:What's the biggest celebrity you ever met there? Anybody? Let's see here.
Speaker 3:Well, a lot of music. People like Sammy Hagar, sports people. Wayne Gretzky, hockey, hockey player. A lot of big baseball Cranberries I'm trying to think who else I met, I don't know. A variety of people. The band Cranberries, different people, the band Cranberries, yeah, different people. A lot of local sports people. They all went there. So, like we cooked one time we cooked for the Dallas Stars were in town playing the blues, san Luis Blues, and then we were closed on Sunday but they went. Brett Hull, who played for the Blues back then, I guess, told them about us, about the restaurant, because we were one of his favorite restaurants. So we opened up Sunday and cooked for the whole team, for the Dallas Stars. It was cool.
Speaker 1:Private cook. Basically, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 3:I had some buddies that worked at Morton's Steakhouse, which is a nice chain, high-end steakhouse, and they had I forgot which team it was, but they had a team come in there and their ritual was the rookies had to pay for dinner. So they would try to jack the bill up as high as possible. So they bought every live lobster there. They got all these steaks and then my two buddies were the servers for it and they're like oh, where are we at? How much we at? No, you're about $15,000 now. Oh, no, that ain't good, we got to get that higher. So then they had this bottle of cognac that went for like $2,000. And they had to call a corporate to figure out if they could sell it or not. And they sold the bottle of cognac for two grand. So they ended up getting it with tip for something like $23,000. And they only drank half the bottle of cognac. So my buddies took the cognac. Pretty funny.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know I've heard of some of them. We're over here close to Texas and the Dallas Cowboys. They say they'll go out and buy. There's some restaurants and things that'll just have a shot, you know, like a $5,000, $8,000, just one shot. Oh wow, yeah Crazy, yeah, it's insane.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's some big money, Big money in the restaurant.
Speaker 1:What is your next cook plan on that ugly drum smoker Probably the brisket, I think. You're going to do the whole brisket? Yeah, yeah, the only way to do it? With the pit barrel. You can hang it in there. Yeah, but are you going to put it on the grate or do you have some way to hang stuff?
Speaker 3:No, I'll put it on the grate. Put it on the grate, yeah, yeah, because it's 22 inches. See, you can put it. You know, I've smoked 15-pound briskets on the Weber and I used to slow and sear and I had room to keep it off to the one side. So this I had the whole time I didn't have to worry about it, I could just center it. Yeah, it's like that ideal.
Speaker 1:I know not to worry about it. You just center it. You know, since the fire's ideal.
Speaker 5:I know, when I was cooking on that uh pit barrel, I had this happen once. I actually got a video of where.
Speaker 1:Remember when the when it fell in it? Oh yeah, we had it. We had it, had a pork butt that I had it hanging hanging in there and when I went to grab it it was. I let it get to about 175 degrees. I pull up. As soon as I pull up, it just no right into the coals right there and I'm sitting there and I couldn't reach down. Flames are coming up and I had to go in and get some gloves and some tongs and try to get that thing out of there. But I got it out of there. Were you filming it? Yes, I didn't. At the time I didn't have the film where you could see exactly, but one of my videos out there shows it and could see exactly. But there is a one of my videos out there shows it and I'm going up and I got that on film where, when I went up, you just saw, just yeah, falls right into, straight into it.
Speaker 5:I've had that happen and then another time turned into the caveman, oh yes, that was thanksgiving too, yeah well, I haven't done that yeah, no, I mean our backyard was.
Speaker 1:It was a little scary for a moment. So I had the pit barrel out on the grass and we were just inside and I happened to look out there and I noticed around the you know, you had this big circle around the barrel and it was all black where it had been burning. So it was just going like this and the flames were going up. I have a swimming pool. It was going toward I have, and the flames were going up. I have a swimming pool. It was going toward. I have a fence. It was going toward I have a house. It was going toward, and someone got a fire extinguisher and I'm water hose and spraying that thing down. Well, we got it out and all it was was just above the grass and the heat of it. But there was a drought. Yes, everything was dry.
Speaker 3:Oh well, that just happened about a month ago we had a day, a Saturday, it was warm but it was super windy and everything was dry and this guy barbecued and caught the grass on fire. It ended up catching 10 homes on fire, Turned into a four-alarm fire. It just kept spreading and catching houses on fire down the block yeah, that may be during.
Speaker 1:I know a lot. What was it? Last month? We had some of the wind strongest winds I've ever seen and it was just non-stop. You wouldn't want to grill on those days, I promise you no, and this guy's grilling on a super windy day. Right now we've had so much rain so we're safe again, but yeah, that was something that caught the yard on fire that day.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:now we're in a good raining season yeah, yeah, it's rain, I don't know it's rained too much over here, though. Yeah, you can never get a happy medium, you know, just give me a rain, shower water. The grass bring out the sun. It either floods, it's got rain, hail, storms.
Speaker 3:It's an all-day rain, but this time of year, yeah, so all-day rain and then a warm front moves in. Then you get thunderstorms.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and tornadoes.
Speaker 1:Yeah it's a mess Now because I like to do a lot of spicy stuff. Do you do much in the spicy world?
Speaker 3:as well A little bit, but I'm not super into burning the crap out of me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know why I do, but I kind of I got some. You've seen them in that last video. We've got some peppers growing and stuff making, some spicy stuff, but what I want to do is put on the blackstone. I want to put some noodles. You ever had Mongolian barbecue. Uh-huh. I'll probably do a video on that, but I'm going to put the noodles out, put the vegetables out, and then I get some real hot sauce, you know, kind of Korean. Yeah, Put that out there.
Speaker 3:Hi bro, A long time ago in one of the restaurants I worked at, our produce guy that sells the produce dared me to eat a habanero. So I'll eat a habanero. So I'll eat a habanero. So he brings one in one day and I eat the whole thing and that killed me.
Speaker 1:It's like a three-day ordeal, you're right Hot at the throat day one, hot at the stomach, day two.
Speaker 3:And it comes out warm too. Yeah, oh man it was the middle of summer, he's done the one-chip challenge Ate that. Oh, done the one chip challenge ate that on the one chip. Yeah, there's a funny video of a some news channel was doing it the one of the women anchors. She ended up throwing up on live air. They all did, it was like five of them. They're all sitting at the news desk and she's throwing up, starts throwing up I've never that.
Speaker 1:That was one of the worst things I've ever done. Oh my gosh, it goes from your ears to your head, to your stomach. Yeah.
Speaker 5:The milk wasn't doing it. He even went to ice cream and it still wasn't helping.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't mess with that. Yeah, I don't mess. I mean I'll make a little spice, but yeah, I'm not trying to kill. Yeah, I don't mess.
Speaker 1:I mean I'll make a little spice, but yeah, I'm not trying to kill. Yeah, yeah, I've got the ghost pepper.
Speaker 5:Crazy. I will never do that.
Speaker 1:The Carolina Reapers. Have you eaten them before? Yes, oh God, yeah, we were. There's a place here in Oklahoma I don't know if y'all Y'all, might you ever heard of the garage burgers and beer? They've kind of expanded. It started in Oklahoma, I think they moved to Arkansas, kansas, a few places.
Speaker 3:Yeah, does it look? Is it like green Green? Is the building kind of green?
Speaker 1:No, I think it's red, red maybe. Yeah, does it kind of look like a?
Speaker 3:shop like garage stores. Yes, I think I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it started here. But we were there and started here. But we were there and inside there drinking some beers at a bar there and they had pretty good burgers and we had some of them peppers, and we were eating them and we all had a buddy of mine. We were like, do you have any milk back there? So instead of drinking beer, they were bringing us glasses of milk at the bar, sitting there trying to cool that down, and it was pretty bad. We all ate one of them, just right there in front of them. The bartenders just thought it was funny oh, we'll bring you more beer if you have another one or more milk. And we stopped.
Speaker 3:There's some guy on YouTube I was watching for a while. I think he owned a restaurant but he would eat all these peppers. He would send them like the hottest peppers. He'd just chow that thing down. People would send him like the hottest peppers and he'd just chow that thing down. Oh yeah, that's pretty hot. Like oh hell, no, kill me. I mean I guess he'd get used to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I don't know how you could get used to it. Some of the guys you'll see they'll put a pepper in a pepper in a pepper in sauce and all that. I don't go quite that extreme, but I definitely will do some hot stuff.
Speaker 3:no doubt Do you like hot sauces. Do you look for the crazy hot sauces?
Speaker 5:Yeah, Well, he makes his own hot sauce, and we're the guinea pigs.
Speaker 3:Oh.
Speaker 5:He like gives a spoon here, try this.
Speaker 3:You're on your own.
Speaker 1:The only way to test it is with a spoon, you know, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so, like in Br branson, missouri, we go there sometimes and they had this hot sauce shop in this little shopping district area in branson and this guy I worked with previously he was way into hot stuff like that, so the bottle of sauce I bought it was like at the time it was rated the third hottest in the world, I guess. So we always have a chili cook-off at our jet at this dealership. But this car dealership I used to work at and he made a big old pot of chili. He just put one drop of that sauce in there. That's all he did to spice it and that and that was that burned the idea. It was that hot. It was crazy. Just one drop, I mean the potency of that, not for me, it was crazy, just the one drop, I mean the potency of that, not for me. I'll go with, yeah, not a whole lot of spice. I mean I'll do like a buffalo style something or this or that, you know, with some Frank's Red Hot.
Speaker 1:You know, yeah, I like Frank's Red Hot. For sure I got some Bulldack, you know. I don't know if you've ever heard of that. Uh-huh. And I got you know I don't know if you've ever heard of that uh and I got some of that two times hot and you just throw that on there and you put it on ramen noodles and stuff.
Speaker 3:It'll get you going I haven't ever tasted it yet something else, yeah, something a little less hot, for sure, yeah so anything else uh coming up on you uh in here in the near future oh, as far as my channel, no, a bunch of crazy ideas but nothing's planned, yet Nothing crazy nothing planned I'm going to do a brisket. Yeah, not sure what I'm going to do next. A lot of times it's on a whim when I'm making a video or I'll have a moment. I'll try to do something.
Speaker 1:That's how it is with us. We did some ribs over the weekend on Easter yeah pineapple, and cut up a pineapple.
Speaker 3:I've seen that I didn't watch the full video yet I saw your. I was going to ask you about that. How did that turn out? I watched the short on it, yeah it turned out.
Speaker 1:I was telling her it's got to be one of the top three ribs I've ever done. To be honest, did you use the spare ribs? Those were just some St Louis, okay, and I just seasoned the pineapple with. We had about two or three different seasonings on there. I used some Cosmos, just standard seasonings, put some honey on it, seasoned the ribs the same way. I added some brown sugar, wrapped it around it and then just standard seasoning, put some honey on it, Seasoned the ribs the same way. I added some brown sugar, wrapped it around it and then just cooked it. I put it on the Weber Smoky Mountain for about I think we cooked that, for it was a long cook over six hours. I just did basically a three, two, one standard three hours straight on, wrapped it in foil, then went ahead and unwrapped it for another hour and the bin. I don't know what your opinion is on it. There's different views on it, but you could just pull the bone right out Some people don't like it that way.
Speaker 3:No, they like it kind of right before that.
Speaker 1:It's got a little flex, but yeah yeah, I took the, uh, the kcbs class, uh, you know, for the judging competition where, because I'm an official judge and if it falls off the bone you're supposed to mark a point from it and that's overcooked. But I I don't. I think most people kind of agree more on the tenderness than what the official book says that they have, which the Rib Association. I don't know if you ever go into food cook-offs or anything. The Rib Association seems to be kind of making a leap because they don't have the standardized.
Speaker 1:As a matter of fact, if you go and cook for the Rib Association, they don't want certified judges. Or KCBS does want certified judges. So they're more like come on in, you're the person eating the food and we want your opinion. We don't want someone that's been schooled and told this is how it's got to be, because they feel like it kind of defeats the purpose of judging, because you've kind of got a manual to go by and you're looking at that more because you know you'd be sitting there saying, well, I like this one better, but KCBS says, oh, for this reason, you know, I've got to dock a point. So I see a lot, they've actually been losing members of the kcbs. So the rib association, which we're probably going to one here in oklahoma next month, uh, I'm going to go judge one of them there. It's going to be pretty cool. Yeah, go out there and eat. Eat some, uh, ribs. Take you a little ice chest, you get it, and some of them you don't eat you just wrap up.
Speaker 1:You can throw, throw beneath you if you want and have some leftovers when you come home. So that's always fun stuff. Yeah, I haven't ever done a cook, that's another thing I want to do is actually go out there and perform.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've never done that either.
Speaker 1:Go out there and actually be part of a team, not myself, but you get your team out there and go ahead and cook and become on the team.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that would be fun to do. Yeah, I think that'd be pretty cool. Yeah, I've never done that before. Yeah, I was just on this Reddit post about the 3-2-1 and everybody debating. I feel like that's too long, too long to cook the ribs. I've never done the 3-2-1, but I just kind of throw them on and go.
Speaker 1:Sorry, I want them. Honestly. I throw them on. This is actually probably the first time I kind of said I'm going to do it this way, but a lot of times the problem is I put the stuff on, then we get hungry and I'm like it's good enough.
Speaker 3:That's how I like the party ribs. I've done the party ribs twice now. I kind of really like those yeah, we watched that.
Speaker 1:I've never tried that. That looks pretty darn good and it cooks faster. Was that pretty tender like that yeah?
Speaker 3:and same thing. You can cook it, you know, to get it super tender however you want, but I like it tender, but I like to have a little bite to it.
Speaker 1:you know, basically just like cooking some wings. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:Brilliant.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm going to have to give that a try for sure Do you do the 0 to 400 method on the pellet grill. Have you tried that on the wings? I did. I have a video. I did a, I don't know a couple months ago and maybe and I did it because you're the one I watched do it. So, yeah, and I did it. On the pit boss, I can't remember what kind of wing wings did. You said wings, right, yeah?
Speaker 1:wings yeah, yeah, we uh did those and those turned out really good. I can't remember how I did it, but yeah, I just seasoned it up, put them on cold, cranked the temperature up to 400 degrees, I think we flipped them maybe halfway through or something, and that's it. Might have put some barbecue sauce on them and it turned out heck. I think they were.
Speaker 5:Is that the ones that you tossed with the hot?
Speaker 1:stuff I might have.
Speaker 5:There's a lot of stuff that I can't eat, that he makes, so she is.
Speaker 1:She does a lot of keto. I don't know if you watch any of the videos, but she will a lot of times.
Speaker 5:Sometimes I'll cheat and I'm like why did I do that?
Speaker 1:So we have like, if we were to do smash tacos, she would have her own little keto tacos corn tortilla that she would cook with it.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, you get to like the little zero carb ones, the keto buns and the keto bread.
Speaker 1:And another thing which I really like is pork skins, pork rinds oh yeah, and that's rinds oh yeah, and that's basically zero carbs oh yeah, yeah, instead of chips and queso. You just have pork rinds and queso and that's really good.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've seen people do like pork, rind nachos and stuff. They'd be good at barbecue, like with a pool of pork and stuff. Yeah, they'd be good at barbecue, like with a pool of pork and stuff, yeah, and the pork rinds.
Speaker 1:Yeah, heck, yeah, yeah. So she's always counting the carbs on everything we do and keeping tabs on that.
Speaker 5:I've got to have some carbs. Well even our night, I used to weigh 248 pounds. It works. Yeah, it does.
Speaker 3:It works yeah.
Speaker 5:It does.
Speaker 3:It works for sure.
Speaker 5:Every once in a while I'll get off of keto, you know give myself a break.
Speaker 3:Yeah. What do you do? Then, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And then when we go, like, on our cruise, she'll do a week of no keto. Or when we go on vacation or something, she'll do the whole. You know, I'm going to be strict until this date and then I'm all out, I'm just going to let loose.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you got to keep your sanity, that's how she'll like to do that Especially with his cooking.
Speaker 5:I'm like, oh, my God, that looks so good, but he puts like sweet stuff in it. Yeah sure.
Speaker 1:Well, I do appreciate you joining us today. Anything else you'd like to mention? No, really, I'm easy, easy going. Yeah, no promotions, no promotions, no social medias, no products. You're trying to get rich on Anything else? No, not yet. Well, I appreciate your time. We're approaching an hour, so we'll go ahead and let me just go ahead and tell everybody I appreciate you jumping in. This was Doug from Griddle Cook, eat and More on YouTube has tons and tons of videos out there. Be sure and check him out. We will put a link in the show notes below and in the description below so you'll be able to connect with him.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening to the Okie Smokin' podcast. Episodes drop every Monday. Don't forget to follow this podcast or you might miss out on some delicious creations. You can also find us on our website, okiesmokincom, and on YouTube and other social media platforms. Until next time, keep firing up that grill.
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