Meeting Doug from Griddle Cook

SPEAKER_05 0:28

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 uh first, let's get this intro going. Let's get it started.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Time to fire up that grill. From smoke pork to smash burger, outdoor cooking just tastes better. This is the Okie Smoking Podcast. And here's your host, John Barry.

SPEAKER_05 1:06

All right, well, here we go. Uh welcome in. We got Doug here. And 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, uh, Midwest City, Oklahoma. You're in St. Louis, Missouri, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:19

Yep, that is correct.

SPEAKER_05 1:20

Yeah, and uh 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_03 1:27

Uh same. We had some flooding. Uh and it's today 80 degrees out, so real nice. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:34

Yeah, real nice. We had uh we have a creek behind us and 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 uh the entire tables and everything is just flowing through. Yeah. So this last week. You're uh Doug from Griddle, Cook, Eat and More. Uh, got a YouTube channel out. Uh what made you decide to start filming and uh cooking? What got you into the uh big YouTube?

SPEAKER_03 2:06

Uh well I always cooked, uh came from a big restaurant background. I worked in restaurants for a long time. Um so I love cooking and griddling and all that stuff. And I'm probably for two years I contemplated on doing the channel. I have this old video, I haven't even played it yet that I made. This is kind of fun, a funny video I made. And I was but I never got around to starting to get it going and getting the channel going. So I may play that, put that video up there one day. But originally I was gonna call my channel It Is What It Is Cooking. So once I decided to do it, uh I got on there and uh someone else had that channel name. And it was really funny as I watched their video and they're doing a Blackstone video. So then that's why I changed it to on the fly I had to come up with the new names. Griddle Cookie More. There it is. The longest channel name.

SPEAKER_05 3:00

You automatically answered my question. I actually had on here uh where'd the griddle uh cookieat more come from?

SPEAKER_03 3:05

Yeah, so it's kind of on the fly. I'm like, man, what should I name this thing?

SPEAKER_05 3:10

Right. So I've uh do you have any uh favorite video that you made or anything?

SPEAKER_03 3:14

Um if you go way back, my pork tenderloin video, this is probably my fifth video I made. I did uh uh like up in Iowa, are you familiar with the giant pork tenderloin sandwiches? Yes. Yeah, so up in that area, which um 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 my favorite one of my favorites, you know, things I made.

SPEAKER_02 3:44

I think I was like watching some of your videos, and I like the um the long John Silver.

SPEAKER_03 3:49

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:52

I was like, ooh, we need to make the which I just got to eat.

SPEAKER_03 3:56

Yeah, yeah, oh yeah. Do you guys have Long John Silvers in your area?

SPEAKER_02 4:00

We do, but it's gross here.

SPEAKER_03 4:03

Like I'm from originally from California and it tastes so much better out that we're not sure where it started at, but most of them closed up around us in the St. Louis area. But uh over the weekend for Easter, I went to my mother-in-law's and she lives um 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_02 4:29

Here our Long John is connected to AW.

SPEAKER_03 4:33

Yeah, we used to have that.

SPEAKER_02 4:35

It's gross here, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:37

It's not very very good. Yeah, the the one we had by at that where I live at, it was an AW Longjon combo, but yeah, they've all cleared out. No more long johns left. Some Caft and D's, but those are mainly in the hood, so yeah, and I think it may be closed now.

SPEAKER_05 4:57

And uh but I we agree with you, both agree with you, and we like the chicken better than the fish. You know, those 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.

SPEAKER_03 5:14

Yeah, it seems like in more in small towns now where you find them.

SPEAKER_05 5:19

Right.

SPEAKER_03 5:19

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 uh Arthur Treacher's.

SPEAKER_04 5:36

I haven't had that.

SPEAKER_03 5:37

Anybody have those? That was like a similar to Long John's, it was a chain from the East Coast, and then uh similar deal, you know, just battered dip fish and chicken and stuff. So it was good. Real good.

SPEAKER_05 5:50

But that was a me and the guys are going on a fishing trip, uh, what is it, May 10th? And we take a uh we got a lake close by, Lake Texoma. It's a big lake, it kind of borders it's Texoma because half part of it's in Oklahoma, part of it's in Texas. And uh we're getting a guide, and six of us are going out there, and we went there about two years ago and caught sixty fish. Nice striper fishing. So you think and last year it was colder, and hopefully we do better. We caught like we went twice, caught like 30 fish last year instead of 60. So hopefully that's a good thing. How big of stripers did you get? Pretty good.

SPEAKER_03 6:26

How big how big of them were you were they?

SPEAKER_05 6:29

A variety of sizes. We had them small, we had some medium, nothing, nothing major.

SPEAKER_03 6:34

Nothing massive, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 6:36

Yeah, nothing too major.

SPEAKER_03 6:38

There's a lake down uh Missouri, Arkansas area called uh Bolshoals Lake. Have you ever heard of that lake?

SPEAKER_05 6:44

Uh no.

SPEAKER_03 6:46

That's where all the the state record stripers are caught, like in Missouri. So there it's I think it's like 52 or 53 pounds is the record for a striper. Big big bass.

YouTube Origins and Channel Growth

SPEAKER_05 6:59

Also, we checked out your what was that other video we looked at? The uh we we saw the snake, the snake video. We watched that earlier today. We've been watching a lot of your short videos. You do a lot of pretty good shorts. Yeah, I haven't done a whole lot. I've been trying to do more lately. 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 uh that snake. That's pretty cool. When you cook that, uh 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 hood? When you oh you make uh ribs?

SPEAKER_03 7:31

Yeah, because it's got that diffuser you put on top. Yeah. But it makes it easy to do the snake like with uh lump charcoal. I mean, typically you'd use the briquettes where you can make go around real nice and you know, like two rows and then stack one on top. But there you just dump it, just dump the charcoal in there and just dump it in there. Yep, spread it around and let it go. So that's uh a guy on Facebook sells this.

SPEAKER_05 7:57

Yeah, uh what's that called? It's the uh smoke pit. The snake pit. The snake pit. The snake pit, yeah. Yep. He said that was your ugly drum smoker. That's the other thing I was gonna think about. That's the last video.

SPEAKER_03 8:10

I like it. I've used it well, see, that was the first time I used it in that video, and then I smoked a turkey breast in it. I think a bone-in turkey breast in it. And it's just awesome. So yeah, that port that you made, just it looked really, really good. Juicy. Yeah. So it was a guy with my last job, and actually a friend of mine I've known before that I worked with them, but him and his his one of his brothers got made one, and they're him and his 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 can buy all the stuff if you get a drum, you can get all that stuff for it, but yeah.

SPEAKER_05 8:53

Yeah, I was looking at that and I was sitting here saying, and I spent this money on this. I got the a pit barrel, and you got that homemade, just made scratch. Right, just some it's pretty cool that barrel like that.

SPEAKER_03 9:05

So a funny story about that is uh my wife's always on me because I got too many grills and stuff. So I had this Weber uh uh Genesis, old Weber Genesis about like 15 years ago, whatever. Once I got my griddle, which was 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, uh untouched. And I'm like, so I'm like, I said, yeah, I'm gonna give it to the guy at work wants it. Yeah, I'm gonna give it to him. He's gonna get one of his kids needs a griddle or something like that. But she didn't know I was trading it in for the, I was trading them for the uh his pit bear or his uh ugly drum. So anyway, 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. I normally I have it, I I bought a base for it from V Or so I could roll it around. And I usually keep it on the side of a 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, Whoa, like, what's this? Like, yeah. I said I traded that Weber for that. She's like, I'm getting rid of something.

SPEAKER_05 10:15

I need to get rid of something and bring something right back.

SPEAKER_02 10:18

That's why I was like, you have too much stuff out there.

SPEAKER_05 10:21

Yeah, I I do. I got I got too much. I actually got rid of some stuff, but like kind of like you, I always bring something back in.

SPEAKER_03 10:27

Yeah, I bring more in than I get rid of.

SPEAKER_05 10:30

But you you also do a lot of indoor cooks on that V Board, don't you? Vore, yeah. Yeah, we were she was asking that. She says she you've done a bunch of those indoor that's something I'm actually looking about getting is uh one of those. And uh we were watching your pizza video. What was it, that grilled cheese pizza? Oh yeah, yeah. And that that turned out really, really good, didn't it?

SPEAKER_03 10:49

Oh my god, that's like almost it's almost like eating a pan pizza from pizza. Right. That's pretty close. It was wild. 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?

unknown 11:33

Right.

SPEAKER_03 11:33

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.

SPEAKER_05 11:44

Kind of more like calzone or something like that.

SPEAKER_03 11:47

Yeah. So yeah, it worked out good. It was tasty. Because I love, you know, if I go to pizza, I'd like their meat lovers pan of pizza.

SPEAKER_05 11:55

Yeah. How do you normally come up with your ideals like that? Are you just have to a lot of times I will just be sitting here and I'll be saying, let's uh I'll just come up with an ideal, and next thing you know, 20 minutes later, I'm let's let's make this, let's cook this, let's do this video, and and we're just kind of uh do you do some spur-of-the-moment things like that?

Restaurant Industry and Celebrity Encounters

SPEAKER_03 12:14

Or 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 man, I should do this. I I don't know. I just come up with some off the wall stuff. Now the off-wall stuff it's good, but it's it's not good for views normally. Yeah. But if you do something trendy, you know, then get a lot more views on your videos. It's still fun to do. Yeah, it's just a crazy stuff. Kind of crazy. But I like to do a lot of uh remakes of stuff, uh, of stuff in other areas that I'm I can't go to, so you know, or I could, or eventually may make it there one day, but rec recreating. Like, for example, there's a sandwich uh in New York that I just seen some TikToks on, and it's uh at this pizza place, it's chicken cutlets, vodka sauce, pesto sauce, and then uh um 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 uh fresh uh simolina roll. So the biggest issue is finding the bread that because as I got older, I'm more of a bread snob now. 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 gonna learn how to bake some of this bread. I've never baked bread in my life, so I'm thinking I'm gonna try making these simolina rolls. Because you always hear about if you watch any TikToks, like in Jersey and New York, they're always like, oh, the Simolina, got me a fresh simolina 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 a problem. I always got something going on. Don't we all?

SPEAKER_05 14:10

Yeah. I 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 put all the ingredients in and hit a button. Yeah. And it just makes it. Yeah, you were saying you like to create things. I also you did a video a while back actually saying this one uh from a cruise line.

SPEAKER_03 14:27

What was that? Uh okay, it's a Royal Caribbean. Uh they have a they have their own little island. So if you're on a cruise, it's called the Coco Kay. And then they have these snack shacks, they call them. And then I don't know how I got started, but when I was searching, when we're doing research for the cruise, I've watching all these vlogs and stuff that people go in there, and they're like, you gotta get the secret sandwich. And it's just uh they have a chicken sandwich there, and then they this you tell them I want a secret sandwich, then they put mozzarella cheese sticks on it. I mean, that's all it is. But it's good. Yeah, yeah. So it's her chicken sandwich, and they put cheese sticks on top. But so in the cruise world, I guess in the vlogs, it's like the secret sandwich. That's pretty funny. That's all are you going on that cruise again? Oh, we will. Um, yeah, we'll probably do another room.

SPEAKER_05 15:20

It's we're on the carnival cruise, that'll be later this year.

SPEAKER_02 15:23

That'll be our second cruise.

SPEAKER_03 15:24

Yeah, we're going to Yeah, that's I've only been on one. That was that Royal Caribbean one, but we may do Carnival the next time.

SPEAKER_02 15:32

Yeah, we're doing Carnival. It's out of Galveston, Texas.

SPEAKER_05 15:35

Yeah, we leave out of Galveston, Texas, and uh I think we got Cozumel Costa Maya and I forget.

SPEAKER_03 15:43

Because Carnival's got their own little island too, don't they?

SPEAKER_01 15:46

Tropical. Right?

SPEAKER_03 15:47

Right. Yeah, I think Carnival's got an island on some of their cruises. We would went on the white cruise, but we liked it, so Yeah, we didn't. It's a good time.

SPEAKER_02 16:05

At first I was like, no, I don't want to go in the w the water area.

SPEAKER_03 16:10

But then I it rained like four of the seven days. Yeah, but still it was fun.

SPEAKER_02 16:16

It rained on us like one day, right? Like just dripping.

SPEAKER_05 16:19

Yeah, it we had we did have a rain day for sure. Yeah. Nothing massive, but nice little rain shower.

SPEAKER_03 16:25

Ours went to St. Martin and um what was the other place at the other stop. But anyways, but both those days it rained the whole time.

SPEAKER_05 16:33

Yeah, they have the uh what's that that burger, the guy's burger? Oh yeah, that's a yeah, a carnival thing. Guy Ferry. Yeah. Yeah, we had his burgers on there. That's pretty good. Yeah, he also has a a barbecue, you know, he had brisket. Uh, but it's only a limited time and you gotta get there quick, and if you don't get it, yeah, you're out.

SPEAKER_03 16:55

So it's all everything was good, the food was good on it and everything. On the car, I think it's the Carnival Horizon. They have a he's got a barbecue place on there too. A s a separate restaurant. I forgot what they call it.

SPEAKER_05 17:07

Yeah, we were on the uh dream for about six days.

SPEAKER_03 17:10

Yeah, yeah, that's it's crazy.

SPEAKER_05 17:12

So do you prefer gridding or do you smoke smoke a lot too, kind of since you got that drum? Is that or is griddle been more of your thing?

SPEAKER_03 17:19

Uh I mean I'm starting to smoke more now than I used to. Uh but yeah, griddle and the griddle and 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_05 17:36

I I like the pellet smoker. A lot of people tell me it's not real smoking, but it's it's kind of the lazy way. But I just you flip the switch and you let it go.

SPEAKER_03 17:46

I know, it's easy.

SPEAKER_05 17:48

It's real easy.

SPEAKER_03 17:49

Yeah. And I mean you don't get this good smoke flavor out of it. It's smoking like in a you know, with a real fire.

SPEAKER_05 17:55

Yeah, you don't get quite the bark, you know, if you cook it like in it. And that drum, I heard you say you're gonna do a brisket in it. Yeah, thank you. That that's gonna I bet that's gonna make a a real massive bark with that flame coming right up on it. Yeah. So that that'll be the next cook, I think, on it.

SPEAKER_02 18:12

Have you ever made anything that was like didn't turn out good on it?

SPEAKER_03 18:16

Oh, on what? Which one?

SPEAKER_02 18:18

On the griddle.

SPEAKER_03 18:19

Um video wise? Nothing I hated. I well I haven't even posted it yet, but I I made uh pad tie. Well I didn't use the grill. I used this big plow disc, but that one didn't. It was decent, but it didn't turn out like I wanted it to. But uh I'm trying to think griddle-wise, whatever. Any major fails? Um yeah, screwed up. No, no, no, not a whole lot. And how long have you been doing the YouTube? Uh I started in uh toward what was it? August maybe or something of uh 21.

SPEAKER_05 18:55

Uh five years maybe.

SPEAKER_03 18:57

Yeah, four years. Yeah. I should have jumped, I should have got on it sooner.

SPEAKER_05 19:02

Did it start rolling right away, or do you take some did it take a while to kind of oh it took a while.

SPEAKER_03 19:06

It took probably two years to get to a thousand subs.

unknown 19:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:10

And then uh after I got that, then next year it grew pretty fast. And I was hoping to be like at 5,000 subs, but then it 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 time frame.

SPEAKER_05 19:34

Yeah, I've been noticing mine's been picking up, but kind of like you said, I got right under a thousand. I was sitting at what like nine seventy-five, 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 and it it never moved, and it actually would go it, and then finally it started moving.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

Then once it hit a thousand, but I said the the taco, the hamburger taco is the one that started gurising it, right?

SPEAKER_05 19:58

Well that yeah, that was her ideal and uh she came up with smashed tacos. You ever done that? Oh, with the tortilla? Yeah. And I guess we hit it just at the right time. I don't know, she's watching, she saw a bunch of thousands. And she said, let's do that. So we put that out there, and and that one, I think we had like 200 subscribers in a month just from that one video. And never seen nothing like it before or after, but and that was really good. I really like that. Yeah. You know, putting at first you kind of think you're putting the meat right on that tortilla, and 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 it turned out really good.

SPEAKER_03 20:44

She put it and smashed the tortilla on top of it.

SPEAKER_05 20:47

Yes, that's what yeah, that's what we did. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 20:49

Some people take, I've seen you take your tortilla, so you 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_05 21:11

Yeah, I don't know how many comments we had. That you're doing it wrong. That's gross.

SPEAKER_03 21:16

Now, did you use the way through that? Now, when I made I did that video, I used corn tortillas. 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'd call it a crunchy shell, ground beef, lettuce, cheese, and and sauce, potato sauce, you know. Like I ate tacos growing up, so that was my idea behind it. So I used the corn tortilla, smashed it. Then I I then I folded it in half and cooked it a little bit to crispen up the shell. And then I put my uh you know, cheese and whatever, the toppings in it. It was good. It was good, but yeah, I that video did real well because I was you know a little bit after it got popular. And then uh my best videos are like review videos of griddles and stuff, or do at least you know, watches or views on it.

SPEAKER_05 22:12

People I think they tend to search for uh when I look at a review or uh uh you know, trying to get an opinion on something maybe before they buy it, and and and those get a quite a few. I kind of got the same thing where uh uh I think more than the food videos, I have uh maybe a repair or just cleaning a sensor on the on a pit ball, someone's having issues with it or how to do something and those just steadily get get a quite a few quite a few views.

Griddle Cooking and Equipment Reviews

SPEAKER_03 22:40

I have this old uh video, it's uh 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 twenty five, fifty views a day. They don't even make it anymore. People still watch it as friends. And it may be because I put the title of that was uh Loco versus Blackstone. Blackstone's the key for reviews. People obsessed with the Blackstone. It's the popular name.

SPEAKER_05 23:09

Yeah, Blackstone and a lot of minor pit boss.

SPEAKER_03 23:13

Yeah, and I would I would say Pit Boss is the Blackstone of the of the uh 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 kick it kicks its ass, you know.

SPEAKER_05 23:30

Absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:31

Kicks, yeah. So I bought uh uh Blackstone came out with a 20-inch camping griddle. They sell in the camping section at Walmart last year. And uh real cool. It's like like a suitcase, it's got a handle on it, the cover comes, you clamp the cover on it. It's maybe like oh you can see on my thing, but look at the 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, you know, it's steadily going. That's my best. It's my best investment. Because I've made a I've paid for paid for that like 10 times over with the revenue off. I made five videos with it. I've made a about a thousand dollars off of it. That's cool. Yeah. Can't beat that. And then I bought uh so then 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 uh just a basic 36-inch one they sell at Walmart with the hardcover. Actually, the old one didn't even have a hardcover, that's before they started including them. And then I bought a newer one last year uh because I was gonna get rid of the old one and use the new one. So I decided to do a uh a comparison: the omnivore versus the old school griddle top. And that was the 60,000 B2 burners and the uh the new ones are 38,000. So weighing, so I weighed both tops. The new tops, like 45 pounds, and the old ones are 60, so it's like 15 pounds lighter, and the new one warps every anytime I cook on high, the the one corner always pops up, always goes back down, but it's just kind of funny. But that video right there made me 350 bucks, so it paid my for my 297 dollar blackstone.

SPEAKER_05 25:22

Yeah, I could see them compare because I now that you mention that I do that a lot. I'll be looking for something and want to compare it even for this podcast as some equipment. You know, what about uh roadie versus you know like a monocaster? Uh-huh. Sit there and watch the videos on it, so people grilling kind of do the same thing, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_03 25:41

Yeah, yeah, so those videos are great because the people keep watching them.

SPEAKER_05 25:45

What's your favorite thing you cook on the griddle? What's your go-to pleasure?

SPEAKER_03 25:51

Smash burgers, probably.

SPEAKER_05 25:53

What's that? Smash burger, smash burgers, yeah. Cheesesteaks, all of cheesesteaks. Um yeah, that's 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 uh that's the only way she really likes it. Throw some onions on it, kind of like an onion, Oklahoma onion smoke.

SPEAKER_03 26:15

Yeah, those are good. And I also like uh I love grilled sourdough, like you butter grill it. So I like making sandwiches with that and burgers with that, like Frisco Melt. Or just a couple videos I got. Actually, my second video was uh Denny's deli dinger that I ever made a long time ago. That was the three that was like a club sandwich, but basically they put it on butter butter-grilled sourdough, triple stack. It was like my go-to sandwich back when we were out at the bars all night. We go to Denny's at you know, four three or four in the morning.

SPEAKER_05 26:50

Sounds sounds like fun.

SPEAKER_03 26:52

But they got rid of it. All the great stuff I had they got rid of. Makes me mad. I said we have a yeah, Denny's done, you know, just the whole going out and it's just not like it it was anymore.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

Right?

SPEAKER_03 27:08

Denny's Harley's. I mean, I think they're getting ready to close stores. But back then, did most gennies 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. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

SPEAKER_05 27:32

Hey y'all, it's John from the Oki Smoking Podcast.

SPEAKER_02 27:36

And I'm Dolores.

SPEAKER_05 27:38

We wanted to tell you real quick about something we've been loving in the kitchen lately, the once-for-all meat slicer.

SPEAKER_02 27:45

This slicer was a game changer. You guys, it's perfect for slicing that deep jerky, thin cuts of carne assaw.

SPEAKER_05 27:52

But what I really love is it's a feast for making smash burgers. You can slice and grind your own meat fresh and fast.

SPEAKER_02 28:01

We even put together a video and a website so you can go to it to see it in action. Just head to okysmoking.com slash slicer. That's o-i-s, m-o-k-in.com slash s l i c E R. For the details and links if you want to grab one yourself.

SPEAKER_05 28:23

That's Okie Smoking.com slash Slicer. Go check it out. Yeah, you said you were originally in the restaurant industry and uh that got you into cooking on YouTube. You're no longer in the restaurant industry outside of YouTube.

SPEAKER_03 28:41

Uh-uh.

SPEAKER_05 28:42

Got out of that.

SPEAKER_03 28:43

Yeah, went a more normal schedule. When I was younger, it was fun.

SPEAKER_02 28:48

Where'd you work?

SPEAKER_03 28:50

Um, all kinds of places. Uh I started out at this breast little private restaurant by me that they opened up. It was cool. We did it's just a like a bar and grill, but did we did a few nicer things, had some good steaks and fish and stir fry. That's a you know, good broad venue. Work there. Um and then from there I went to a uh pretty nice, uh, 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 then each all the celebrities would stay there. And the connoisseurs of the hotel is we were their number one pick. So met a lot of big sports people.

SPEAKER_05 29:34

What's the uh the biggest celebrity you ever met there? Anybody? Let's see here.

SPEAKER_03 29:38

Well, the be like a lot, 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 who else I met. I don't know, it was a variety of people, the band cranberries, just different people, a lot of local sports people, they all went there. So like we cooked one time, we cooked for uh the Dallas Stars were in town playing the blues, St. Louis Blues, and then uh we we were close on Sunday, but they went uh Brett Hull, who played for the Blues back then, I guess told them about us, about the restaurant, because that we were one of his favorite restaurants. So we opened up Sunday and cooked for the whole team for the Dallas Stars. That was cool. Private cook, basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's pretty cool. I had some buddies that worked uh uh Morton 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 had to pay for dinner. So they would 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? And oh, you're about$15,000 now. Oh no, that ain't good, we gotta get that higher. So then uh they had this bottle of cognac that went for like$2,000, and they had to call corporate to figure out what if they could sell it or not, and they sold the bottle of cognac for two granules, so they ended up getting it to like with tip with something like$23,000. And they only drank half the bottle of cognac, so my buddies took the cognac. Pretty funny.

SPEAKER_05 31:31

Yeah, so I know I've heard of uh some of them uh 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 five thousand, eight thousand dollar, just one shot.

unknown 31:45

You know.

Spicy Food Adventures and Challenges

SPEAKER_05 31:46

Oh wow, yeah. Crazy. Yeah, it's insane. Yeah, there's some big money. Big money in the restaurant. What are you your next cook plan on that uh ugly drum smoker? Uh probably the brisket, I think. You gotta do the whole brisket? Yeah, yeah. The only way to do it. Yeah, now with a pit barrel, you can hang it in there. Yeah, but you're gonna put it on the grate, or do you have some way to hang stuff? No, I'll I'll put it on the grate. Put it on the grate. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:14

Yeah, because you can it's 22 inches, so you can fit a you know, I've smoked uh 15-pound briskets on the Weber. And then I used a slow and sear, so and I have room to keep it off, you know, off to the one side. So this I had the whole tie, I don't have to worry about it, I can just center it, you know, since the fire is.

SPEAKER_05 32:34

I know when I was cooking on that uh pit roll, I had this happen, which I actually got a video of where 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 fell right into the coals, right there, and I'm sitting in and I couldn't reach down, flames are coming up, yeah. And I had to I had to go in and get some gloves and some tongs and try to get that thing out of there, but I I got it out of there. Were you filming it? Yes, uh I didn't at the time I didn't have the film where you 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, fall straight into straight into it. I've had that happen, and then another time on fire. Oh yes.

SPEAKER_02 33:26

Oh, it was Thanksgiving too.

SPEAKER_05 33:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:28

Oh, I I haven't done that.

SPEAKER_05 33:31

I mean our backyard was like it it uh was a little scary at for a moment. So I had the the pit barrel out on the the grass, and uh 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 a fence it was going toward, I have a house is going toward, and uh someone got a fire extinguisher, and I'm just water hose and spraying that thing down. Uh well we got it out, and all it was was just above the grass and the heat of it, that there was a drought. Yes, everything was dry.

SPEAKER_03 34:16

Oh, so well that just happened about a month ago. Uh 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 the one thing down the block.

SPEAKER_05 34:40

Yeah, that may be during, I know what was it last month we had some of the wind, the strongest winds I've ever seen. And it was just non-stop. You wouldn't want to grill on those days, I promise you.

SPEAKER_03 34:50

No, and this guy's grilling on a super windy day. You know, you know.

SPEAKER_05 34:54

Right now we've had so much rain, so we're safe again. But yeah, that that was something that caught the yard on fire that day.

SPEAKER_03 35:01

Yeah. Yeah, now we're in a good raining season.

SPEAKER_05 35:04

Yeah, yeah, it's raining.

SPEAKER_02 35:06

It's rained too much over here, though.

SPEAKER_05 35:08

Yeah, you 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 gonna bring hail, storms, it's a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 35:18

It's an all-day rain. Well, uh, this time of year, yeah. So yeah. All day rain, and then a warm front moves in, then you get thunderstorms.

SPEAKER_04 35:27

Yeah, and tornadoes.

SPEAKER_05 35:28

Yeah, that's a mess. That's a mess. Now you because I like to do a lot of spicy stuff. You do mention uh in the spicy uh world.

SPEAKER_03 35:35

A little bit, but I'm not super into like burning the crap out of me.

SPEAKER_05 35:39

Yeah, like I I don't know why I I do, but uh I I kind of I got some uh you've seen them in that last video, but we've got some peppers growing and stuff, maybe some spicy stuff. But what I want to do is put on the blackstone, I want to put some noodles. And uh you ever had Mongolian barbecue?

SPEAKER_04 35:54

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_05 35:56

And uh I'll probably do a video on that, but I'm gonna put the noodles out, put the vegetables out, and then I got some real hot sauce, you know, kind of to rein. Yeah. Put that out there.

SPEAKER_03 36:05

I remember one 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, oh yeah, I'll eat a habanero. So he brings one in one day, and I eat the whole thing, and that killed me.

SPEAKER_05 36:20

It's like a three-day ordeal. Do it right. Hot at the throat day one, hot at the stomach day two, and it comes out warm too. Yeah. Oh man, it was the middle of summer.

SPEAKER_02 36:31

He's a done the one chip challenge. Ate that.

SPEAKER_03 36:36

Oh, the one chip, yeah. There's a funny video of uh some news channel was doing it, and the one of the uh women anchors, she ended up throwing up on live air. They all did it. 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 tried that.

SPEAKER_05 36:55

That was one of the worst things I ever done. Oh my gosh. Yeah. It it goes from your ears to your head to your stomach. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:04

He even went to ice cream and it was still wasn't helping.

SPEAKER_03 37:09

Yeah, I don't mess with that hot. Yeah, I don't mess. I mean, I'll make a little spice, but yeah, I'm not trying to kill.

SPEAKER_05 37:14

Yeah. Yeah, I've I've got the ghost pepper.

SPEAKER_01 37:17

I will never do that.

unknown 37:18

Uh uh.

SPEAKER_05 37:19

The Carolina Reapers. Have you eaten them before? Yes. Oh, okay. Yeah, we were uh there there's a place here in Oklahoma. I don't know if y'all y'all might. You ever heard of the the garage burgers and beer? They've kind of expand expanded. It started in Oklahoma. I think they moved to Arkansas, Kansas, a few places. Yeah, does it look is it like green?

SPEAKER_03 37:39

Green. Is the building kind of green or?

SPEAKER_05 37:41

No, I think it's red. Red, maybe? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:44

And it's it kind of looked like a shop, look like garage doors? Yes. I think I know what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_05 37:50

Yeah, it it started here, but uh we were there and uh inside there drinking some some beers, they have a bar there, and they have pretty good burgers. And uh we had some of them peppers and we're eating them. And we all had to buddy of mine were like, Do you have any milk back there? So instead of drinking beer, they were bringing us glasses of milk at the bar. So then they're trying to cool that down, and uh it was pretty bad. We all ate one of them just right there in front of them. The the bartenders just thought it was funny. Oh, we'll bring you more beer if you have another one or more uh milk, and uh we we stopped.

SPEAKER_03 38:24

There's some guy on YouTube I was watching for a while, and I think he owned a restaurant, but he would eat those all these peppers. He would send them like the hottest peppers, and he'd just chow that thing down. Oh yeah, it's pretty hot. Like oh hell no, that'd kill me. I mean, I guess you'd get used to it.

SPEAKER_05 38:40

Yeah, I mean, I don't know how you could get as you some of the guys you'll see, they'll put a pepper and a pepper and a pepper and sauce and all that. I I don't go quite that extreme. Uh but I but I definitely will do some some hot stuff, no doubt.

SPEAKER_03 38:55

Do you like hot sauces? Do you look for the crazy hot hot sauces? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:59

Well, he makes his own hot sauce, and we're the guinea pigs.

SPEAKER_03 39:03

Oh.

SPEAKER_02 39:04

Hey, like give us a spoon here, try this.

SPEAKER_05 39:09

The only way to test it is with a spoon, you know? Yeah.

BBQ Techniques and Competition Cooking

SPEAKER_03 39:13

Yeah, so like uh in 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 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 dealership, but this car dealership I used to work at, and he made a big old pot of chili, and he just put one drop of that sauce in there. That's all he did to spice it. And then and now it's that burned the shit out of you. It was that hot. 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 when I make. I mean, I'll do like a buffalo style something or this or that, you know, with some Frank's red hot, you know.

SPEAKER_05 40:05

Yeah, I'll make Frank's Red Hot for sure. Yeah, but I've got uh some bulldack, you know. I don't know if you've ever heard of that. Uh-huh. And uh I got some of that two times hot, and you just throw that on there, and you put it on ramen noodles and stuff, it'll it'll get you going.

SPEAKER_02 40:22

I haven't air tasted it yet.

SPEAKER_05 40:24

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?

SPEAKER_03 40:31

Oh, as far as my channel or um no, a bunch of crazy ideas, but nothing's planned yet. Crazy notes. Yeah, not not sure what I'm gonna do next. Or a lot of times it's on a whim when I'm making a video. Or I'll have a moment and I'll try to do something.

SPEAKER_05 40:49

That's how it is with us. We did uh uh some ribs over the weekend on Easter. Yeah, and uh cut up a pineapple and and I've seen that.

SPEAKER_03 40:59

I didn't watch the full video yet. I saw your uh uh I was gonna ask you about that. How'd that turn out? I watched a short on it.

SPEAKER_05 41:08

Uh yeah, it turned out. I was telling her, I th it it's gotta be one of the top three ribs I've ever done, to be honest. Did you use uh just spare ribs or those are just some St. Louis? Okay. And uh I just seasoned uh the the pineapple with uh we had about two or three different seasonings on there. I used some uh Cosmos, just standard seasonings, put some honey on it, seasoned the ribs the same way, 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's a long cook, over six hours. I just did basically a 321 standard three hours straight on, wrapped it in foil, uh then went ahead and uh unwrapped it for another hour. And the bin, I don't know what your opinion is on it, and there's there's different views on it, but you could just pull the bone right out. Some people uh don't like it that way.

SPEAKER_03 42:06

No, they like it kind of right before that, you know. It's got a little flex, but yeah, not well.

SPEAKER_05 42:12

Well, I took the uh the KCBS class uh you know for the judging competition to 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 uh book says that they they don't have. Which the Rib Association I don't know if you ever go into j uh food cook-offs or anything. Uh the Rib Association seems to be uh kind of making a leap because they don't have the standardized. As a matter of fact, if you go and cook uh for the Rib Association, they don't want certified judges. Or KCBS does want certified judges. So they're more like, come on in, uh you're the person eating the food and we want your opinion. We don't want someone that's been schooled and and told this is how it's gotta be because they feel like it kind of uh defeats the purpose of judging because you're you 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 uh I uh this is I like this one better, but KCBS says, Oh, for this reason, you know, I've got a dock a point. So I see a lot uh they've actually been losing members of the KCBS, so the Rib Association, which uh probab we're probably going to one here in Oklahoma next month. Uh uh I'm gonna go judge one of them there. Uh it's gonna 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 and 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 and perform. Oh do a cook, yeah. I've never done that either. Go out there and actually be part of a team. You know, not myself, but you get you a team out there and go ahead and cook and become on the team. Yeah, that would be fun to do. Yeah, I think that'd be pretty cool.

SPEAKER_03 44:18

Yeah, I've never done that before. So yeah, I was just on this Reddit post about the 321 and everybody debating. Yeah, I feel like that's too long. Too long to cook the ribs. I've never done the three, two, one, but I just kind of throw them on and go. I'm like you're I want 'em.

SPEAKER_05 44:38

Honestly, I throw 'em on. Uh this is actually probably the first time I I kinda said I'm gonna 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_03 44:52

Yeah, we I like uh the party riffs. I've done the party ribs twice now. I I kinda really like those.

SPEAKER_05 44:59

Yeah. We watched that. I've never tried that. That looks pretty darn good. It cooks faster.

SPEAKER_03 45:06

Was that pretty tender like that? Yeah. And same thing, you can cook it, you know, to get it super tender however you want, but I could like it tender, but like to have a little bite to it, you know.

SPEAKER_05 45:16

Basically just like cooking some wings.

SPEAKER_04 45:19

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_05 45:20

Brilliant. So Yeah, we're gonna I'm gonna have to give that a try for sure.

SPEAKER_03 45:26

Do you do the zero to four hundred method on the pellet grill? Have you tried that?

SPEAKER_05 45:31

I did. I have a video, I did it I don't know, a couple months ago or 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, 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, uh cranked the temperature up to 400 degrees. I think we flipped them maybe halfway through or something. Uh and that's it. Might have put some uh barbecue sauce on them and uh turned out I have to I think they were the ones that you tossed at the hot stuff. I might have. I might have.

SPEAKER_02 46:18

There's a lot of stuff that I can't eat that he he made.

Keto Cooking and Final Thoughts

SPEAKER_05 46:21

Yeah, so she she is on keto. She does a lot of keto. I don't know if you if you watch any of the videos, but she will a lot of times uh sometimes I'll cheat and I'm like, why did I do that? So we have like if we were to do smash tacos, she would have her own little keto taco uh corn tortilla that she would cook with it. Oh yeah, you get to like the little uh zero carb ones, the mission. Keto buns and the keto bread. And another thing which I really like is uh pork skins, pork rinds. Oh yeah. And that's basically zero carbs. So yeah, yeah. Instead of chips and queso, you just have pork rinds and queso. And and that that's really good.

SPEAKER_03 47:05

Yeah, I've seen people do like pork rind nachos and stuff. They'd be good at barbecue, like with a pulled pork and stuff.

unknown 47:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 47:15

Yeah, so she's always counting the carbs on everything we do and keeping keeping tabs on that.

SPEAKER_03 47:22

I gotta have some carbs.

SPEAKER_02 47:24

Well, believe it or not, I used to weigh 248 pounds.

SPEAKER_03 47:28

But it works. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:31

It does.

SPEAKER_03 47:32

It works for sure.

SPEAKER_02 47:34

Every once in a while I'll get off a keto, you know.

unknown 47:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:37

Give myself a break.

SPEAKER_03 47:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:39

But you see, what do you do then?

SPEAKER_05 47:41

Just yeah, yeah, 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 gonna I'm gonna be strict until this date. And then and then I'm all out, and we're gonna I'm just gonna let loose. So Yeah, yeah, you have to keep your sanity. That's how she'll like to do that.

SPEAKER_02 48:02

I especially with his cooking, I'm like, oh my god, it looks so good. But he puts like sweet stuff in it, and I can't.

SPEAKER_05 48:09

Yeah, sure. Well, I do appreciate you joining us today. Anything else you'd like to mention? No, really. I'm easy. Easy going. Yeah. So no promotions. No promotions, no social medias, no no products you're trying to make or get rich on. Anything else? No, not yet. Well, I appreciate your time. We're approaching an hour, so we'll go ahead and uh let me just go ahead and uh 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. Uh, be sure and check him out. We will put a link in the show notes uh below and in the description below uh so you'll be able to uh connect with him.

SPEAKER_00 48:59

Thank you for listening to the Oakie Smoking 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, OkieSmoking.com, and on YouTube and other social media platforms. Until next time, keep firing up that grill.

SPEAKER_05 49:30

There's a brand new feature available on the Oakie Smoking Podcast. And it involves you. That's right. Send me and Dolores a text. And it's never been easier. Simply scroll down to the show notes description and you'll see where it says. Send John and Dolores a text message, click it, talk to us. You're probably using your phone anyway, so do it now. Can't wait to hear from you.