I worked for a small and tight-knit company (~12 people) that decided to celebrate the hiring of a new president after a very long search with a dinner at his house. The company would cover all the food costs, but some employees were cooking and bringing the different dishes. There were a number of unusually good cooks in the company so there was some big talk and reputations on the line when planning the menu.

I had been getting really into American BBQ at the time which was still a novelty in Canada (“BBQ” is typically used here as a synonym for “backyard grilling” – while in parts of the US it’s a distinct cuisine of slow cooked smoked meats). I had agreed to smoke a whole Beef Brisket (which was an amazing opportunity since the company was covering the meat, and that’s not something I could normally afford to cook).

Beef Brisket is kind of a signature dish of BBQ as it’s an extremely large, dense, beef cut – so is delicious, flavourful, and tender when cooked properly, but tough and unappealing when it’s not. It also takes an extremely long time to smoke (>18 hours is not uncommon so usually has to be started the night prior).

The night before the potluck a huge unexpected storm blew in out of nowhere so all night it was pouring rain, hail, and extremely windy. These are not good conditions for mainting an even temperature in a thin steel drum with a small charcoal fire. I was up much of the night trying to make constant adjustments and makeshift shelters, but still couldn’t get consistent temperatures. The next day with the party hours away nothing was close to being cooked.

(Protip for aspiring BBQ chefs: This is the point where what you *should* do is bring your meat inside, and just finish roasting it in an oven in a nice dry kitchen. Works great and you still keep most of the smoke flavour. I was not that smart).

So now, I’m outside on my townhouse deck – storm still raging – trying to stoke a *much bigger fire* than a smoker is meant for to speed roast the brisket. Every time I open the smoker to stoke the fire a huge amount of water gets dumped in – cooling everything off and causing billowing clouds of steam and smoke to go everywhere and get ash over everything. I persevere.

When the meat is finally to “this will have to do, I’m already 2 hours late” temperature – I try to lift it out of the smoker with plastic oven mitts. In the rain. Of course I drop it immediately back into the smoker, landing it directly in the coals, and knocking over a drip pan full of hot rendered fat and water that caused a massive fireball. Somehow I managed to find some tongs or something, and somehow get the brisket out and into a pan without burning my deck down.

“That was stupid, I’m really lucky I wasn’t burned” I thought to myself at the time, as I brought in the burned chunk of meat. Then I walked it into my kitchen and noticed the really strong smell of burned human hair.

Anyway, all this is to explain why I showed up at house of my brand new boss, hours late, soaked, cold, looking like I hadn’t slept, and missing a chunk of my hair and most of one eyebrow.

The Brisket however was *delicious*, I’m not sure I’ve ever cooked a better one, and I am absolutely never going to replicate the cooking method.