Game Day BBQ

The competition heats up this week on and off the sports field as the country gears up for Super Bowl Sunday. Earlier this week, as the temperate dropped in Charlotte, the Boy Scouts of Sardis Presbyterian Church were burning down hickory wood in barrels to shovel fiery coals into their 32 concrete block BBQ pits for what may be one of the largest game day outdoor wood fired pork BBQ fundraisers left in the south. I stopped by their site on Thursday and scout leader Michael Olert walked me by the mountain of hickory wood, past the row of flaming burn barrels and into the maze of block pits while he explained their old school process to me. Thursday afternoon at 4:00 pm they seasoned the meat with salt and white pepper, loaded about 24 pork roasts to a pit before a line of boys carried shovels of fiery coals from fire barrels down the sandy maze paths between the 32 concrete block pits that resembled a small town. After the scouts spread a layer of glowing red-hot coals under the meat, they covered the structure with a metal sheet of steel on top and placed a smaller sheet of steel over the side opening. Lastly, they wrote the time in chalk on the large metal top covering before moving on the next pit. This slow roasting process of shoveling hot coals from burn barrels continued through Thursday evening, Thursday night and throughout the day Friday until the first batch of about 6,000 pounds roasted for about 14 hours and the second batch of about 3,500 pounds roasted about 12 hours. In addition to slow roasting, chopping and packaging pork BBQ, the scouts cooked their vinegar sauce recipe in 20-gallon pots and prepared sides of baked beans and coleslaw. I made sure to purchase a few of the 1,200 quarts of Brunswick stew they cooked in December and froze for Super Bowl weekend. If you know of a great fundraiser in your community leave me a comment or email me.

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