 And when I was setting up my cookers at home, I kind of worked backwards. So you kind of think, you know, well, what do I like to cook? What do I like to eat? Work backwards from there to optimize your setup for that. And I really like doing, I like doing grilled chicken and smoked ribs. The way we do ribs and chicken here is we'll use that Piedmont sauce, which is a mix of the ketchup and the vinegar. But when you cook it right, it really glazes up and makes a real sweet, real tangy product. You're listening to Barbell Logic, brought to you by Barbell Logic Online Coaching, where each week we take a systematic walk through strength training and the refining power of voluntary hardship. You're listening to the Barbell Logic podcast. I am here this morning with my good buddy and block coach, Cameron Cox. Welcome to the show, sir. What's going on, Matt? What's going on, y'all? Cameron is in Charleston, South Carolina. And we are here, I want to be very sensitive to the fact that it is tough times in America right now. It's tough times everywhere. It has been a crazy, rough year. And I just want to have a fun show and we're going to talk about barbecue today because barbecue's fun and it brings people together. And my experience with barbecue is it's one of those things that it doesn't matter what your background is or what your demographic is or I love that barbecue brings communities together. And that doesn't mean that barbecue can save the world. It's not the point of the show. The point of the show is that barbecue's fun and it's not stressful. It's not supposed to be stressful. If it is, you're doing it wrong. And I love it because I got a Carolina boy and for those of you guys that don't know I was raised in Memphis. And the one thing that we can kind of have fun John about a little bit is the different styles of barbecue across the United States. And so, you know, most people wherever they're from and the barbecue they were raised eating is the barbecue that they think is best. Which is great. I want everybody to think that. I actually don't know that I have a favorite style. I really like all the styles and there are times when I'm in the mood for all of them but I don't want to get ahead of myself. Again, thanks for being on the show. You are a barbecue aficionado. You're not a pro chef. You just love to barbecue. Well, I spent several years cooking professionally. I never made it. I never made it to full blown chef but I would say I'm not a pit master but I'm at least a staff sergeant. I love it. So yeah, I cook professionally for several years. My family works in the restaurant business. I have an uncle who was a chef. I have cousins that work in restaurants. So I went to UNC Wilmington and got my degree and basically Parks and Rec because they had a little bit of a hospitality focus in that. So after college I went and cooked in restaurants for several years before getting into coaching. So I got a little bit of background and experience. Yeah. What, you're from your Carolina boy, born and raised your whole life. You've always been in Carolina. So I'm from Charlotte. My dad and his family, the Cox family are from outside of Charlotte and Union County. They can trace their family farming roots in North Carolina back to the 1700s. Wow. And then my mom, she's from the mountains of North Carolina. So a lot of folks from Charlotte, like kids my age or people my age now, their parents moved from other places for work and for banking and things like that. But I'm some of the few that are like from there but from there, from there. Yeah, multi-generational from there. So let's start with like with Carolina style barbecue. What makes Carolina style barbecue different than some of the other styles? Memphis style, Texas style, Kansas City style barbecue. What are some of the things that sort of make Carolina barbecue stand out as Carolina? Well, the thing about barbecue is it's very, it's very regional and it was a food born out of necessity. Right? So people use what they had in North Carolina and in the Carolinas, literally hundreds of years ago, they had pigs and then they had to cook it with, you know, depending on the region, you had hickory or you had oak. So the thing here is whole hog barbecue. I have never personally cooked a whole hog but I've talked to plenty of, to some good folks who have. And when you cut out, so you go to the grocery store and you buy a Boston butt or you buy a picnic shoulder or some ribs, they're good cuts but some of them are more leaner than others, some of them are fattier than others. And when you cook the whole hog, you basically have all of that stuff works together and comes together in the different fat contents of the different cuts work together to create one great product. Yeah, I love it. You can imagine the size of a smoker or a grill that you would have to have for a whole hog. It's a pit, that's why that old, like when I think of Carolina barbecue, I think of whole hog pit style barbecue. It's often a, and it may not be literally a big barbecue pit hole in the ground, although it often is. Sometimes it's just a giant, you know, it's that guys that are really into Carolina barbecue also get very creative with their smokers, right? So you see these guys taking these giant 50 gallon drum barrels, cut them in half. Because it has to, whatever it is they're gonna smoke on has to be able to handle an entire hog. An adult pig. That's right. You're not just putting a rack of ribs on the thing. And you know, now everything's popular everywhere but it's not uncommon. Like we've seen a cooker pull behind a trailer. We've seen these things, but you know, you ought to think back several decades ago that may not have been prevalent or very known. Sure. You know, unless you were from that area or unless you had just seen somebody that had done that because the restaurant business hasn't always been what it's been and just things haven't been always been available. My grandfather, my dad's dad, they grew up farming and have been farming in North Carolina for centuries. But my dad told me that his grandfather, he said, I don't know if he was the first one to make one but he had to have been. But my grandfather made out of, you know, whatever they make them out of those big gas tanks. But, you know, cause he knew how to weld and all that stuff, but he took all that stuff, you know, built a smoker, built a cooker and made it into a trailer. And they would go from Monroe outside of Charlotte all the way across town with the pig cooking on the back and they'd take it from NASCAR races. He said the state troopers would pull them over cause they'd smell it and they'd pull them over. Man, what y'all got going on back here? And they were just excited to see it cause back then nobody had seen anything like that. Sure, sure. They don't know if they, you know, if he's like, I don't know if he made it but he had to have been one of the first ones. So one interesting thing is you use the term cooker. Is cooker the typical vernacular in the Carolinas for a smoker or is it kind of used interchangeably? I might, that just might be something for me. Well, I don't know. I would call it, I don't, the short answer, I don't know. They might be, might be a cooker, might be a smoker. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I've heard the term cooker before but I think at least in the Midwest it's typically gonna be called a smoker. And then of course there's all kinds of different smokers and you've got the offset smokers like you see, you know, you'll see in like Texas barbecue a lot of times you've got the kind of the stack smokers which is what I use. You've got the like the big green egg type porcelain type smokers which are almost like cheating, even more so like cheating. You've got the pellet smokers, that's true cheating. It makes great barbecue, it's delicious but there's not a lot of, it's pretty passive. It's not very active barbecue. That's the oven with a little smoke box on it. That's right. And the nicer they get, the more you can just let the computer, the software cook the thing, right? Cause you can just set it to now I wanted it 225 or I wanted it 250 or whatever it is you're smoking and you'd be like, that's it and we're gonna do it for that long. So it's almost like cooking. It's like smoking with a sous vide, like just set the temperature and let the, which I love a sous vide, but I upgraded to a Weber Rocky Mountain. I think it's called a, I think it's called Rocky Mountain Smoker. No, is that right? No, dude. It's kind of like a, it's like an over under type of deal. Yeah, so it's a, and I, and it works great. And it was, I got it on my Amazon a few years ago and it's, it will hold at 225, anywhere from 225 to 275 where I want it. And I can, I can hone it in at one of those 225 or 250 or 285 depending on what I'm smoking. It'll hold for about 10 hours and I don't have to touch the thing. Like once I load it with charcoal and wood. You don't have to feed it? I don't have to feed it. And I was using an offset smoker and the story behind that is my wife offered, we had a family get married in our church a few years ago and kind of a, kind of a lower socioeconomic, economic family and they, and they were trying to figure out the, their reception and the bride's brother was gonna, was gonna, I think smoke meat or barbecue for everybody. And then that fell through like a week before the wedding and they were freaking out. And my wife was like, oh, Matt'll smoke all the meat. And I was like, and then she told me and I was like, how many people are coming? You know, it was like 150 or 200 people. I was like, babe, I have one offsets. I can't, I can't smoke. So, so I put out this all call for everybody in church to bring me all the smokers that they had. And I set them all up in my driveway and opened up my garage doors and had them in my garage. And so then I got to test out all these smokers and this Weber, the guy came and set up the Weber and he's like, I ought to be back in 10 hours. And so we were doing a bunch of pork shoulder, pork butt. By the way, that's what, when you say pork butt, that's actually a pork shoulder. I don't know why it's Boston butt, same thing, right? It's a, those are all interchangeable terms and it's basically what you make pulled pork out of. And so of course we had, I don't have any idea, 40 of those or something that we had bought at Sam's. And he set this thing up and he's like, I ought to be back in 10 hours. And I said, what do I need to do to it? You know, he's like, nothing. I said, what do you mean? He said, nothing, you're done. He's like, it'll be just fine. He's like, I mean, if you want to open it up every once in a while and spritz the pork butt, but outside of that, you don't need to feed it. And I was like, holy. So, you know, then every 40 minutes, I'm loading in post oak. We're in Missouri, so we use a lot of post oak here, which is not a great flavoring wood, but it works real well. And I'm loading post oak in every 40 minutes. And I'm like, this thing sucks. Yeah, I've got an offset smoker. It's a nice one. I've had it for 10 years and it's still rocking and rolling, but it's the same thing. You gotta, it's a lot of work to get it going and keep it going. That's right. That's right. So I change. So the other thing I think about Carolina barbecue for me is the sauce. And if I say this, you're like, not that ain't right. Tell me, it's totally okay. But my perception, I have been, I've traveled certainly all over the United States and I love barbecue. I love it. One of the reasons I love is because it feels like it's the oldest way to cook. You're cooking meat over a fire. You're like from the earliest of humanity had to be doing this, right? Like that's how we cook meat over an open fire. So I just love the different flavors and tastes of like the different regions of the United States. When I think of Carolina barbecue, I think of mustard and vinegar. I think of a vinegary, very vinegary mustardy sauce that's almost used like a mop sauce on that whole hog and pork, right? So whole hog pit barbecue with like a mustard very vinegary pungent mustardy sauce. Is that fair? So Carolina, obviously you've got two Carolinas. Yes. North Carolina is a very unique state because it's got three regions. It's got the coastal region, the Piedmont in the middle and then the mountains to the west. South Carolina is just not as complex but in its barbecue, we'll get back to it in a minute. Eastern North Carolina, that's going to be your vinegar base. So if you go somewhere and you get pulled pork, they're going to serve you, it's basically going to be vinegars and pepper, right? It's going to be some type of vinegar, water, peppers and you know, jazzed up from there. But that's basically it. And that's really great because pulled pork itself has a lot, I mean pork is a fatty meat. All barbecues got fat in it. But what that vinegar sauce does is it helps to cut some of that fat and balance it out without overpowering the taste of the meat. That's right. Then you get into the middle of North Carolina, you got the Piedmont and then you kind of get your sauces that are going to be, have some vinegar and some ketchup. And so they'll kind of a mix between the two. Then the further west you get, the more ketchup in the sauce you get, the thicker and the heavier the sauces I don't get. Okay, that makes sense. And South Carolina is where the mustard comes from. And I didn't know this till this morning. I trained a guy, he used to be the head of the North Carolina Pork Association. So he passed this along. So he knows, he's the man I asked him this morning. He said, well, the, the, and I just figured the South Carolina thing was they just liked mustard or something. So that's what they went with. But actually it's from the German immigrants that that comes from. Huh. So that's how they got mustard in there, barbecue sauce. Cause again, barbecue is very regional. So wherever you came from, and whatever you got, when you get there, that's what your barbecue is going to be. That's right. So just to give a quick overview. And again, if your perception is different, tell me, these are my thoughts about the other major regions in the US just when you're thinking about big picture, a 30,000 foot view, Texas barbecue. And specifically we're talking about South Texas, Austin, Hill country, like that. It's mostly beef and it's salt and pepper. And that's it. Like it's, it's meat. It's, you know, it's beef brisket, beef, ribs, it's, and it's salt and pepper. That's, that's it. Every once in a while, I throw a little bit of paprika in there and it's only for color. It's not like paprika that has hardly any taste. It's just to give it a little bit of red tint, but it's mostly salt and pepper. Kansas City barbecue is very sweet, very molasses, heavy, sweet barbecue sauce. Kansas City barbecue could be beef or pork, but tends to be more pork with very, very sweet, heavy barbecue sauce. I like it. It's my least favorite. I'll tell you this. I, the thing that makes Kansas City, my favorite thing about Kansas City barbecue is they do burnt ends. So they, if you, if you get a brisket, you've got the flat end, the flat side, and you got the point. And the flat is the lean. It's very lean. And there's, there's kind of a fat pocket running between those two, those two muscles. And of course, there's quite a bit of fat around the outside of it. So you trim the big, heavy pieces of it. And then if you cook it low and slow, like you're supposed to in barbecue, that thin layer of fat, as you've trimmed down, it renders down. So part of the, part of the art of cooking something like a brisket is to trim the correct amount of fat off of it. You can't have so much fat that fat never renders down and it just gets like gross and, you know, it's just hard and grisly. But if you trim all the fat off of it, then you don't have any fat to render down and keep the meat moist. What can, what most, what most places do that cook brisket is they just cook a whole brisket and they slice the thing up. In, in Texas, they'll often ask you, you want dry or moist? And what they're asking you is, and so dry, nobody actually likes dry barbecue and it's not actually supposed to be dry, but dry or moist like brisket, dry comes from the flat and moist comes from the point. In Kansas City, they take the, the point that's the fatter portion of it, they cook it often with the entire brisket together, the whole brisket together, then they separate those muscles. They'll often chop that point up into, into like one inch square chunks and put it back on the smoker and double smoke it a second time and then it's called burnt ends. And it's called that because a lot of, it's the end of that end of the brisket and the fatty pieces will drip down and the fire will flame up, you know what I mean? It'll kind of give it this yum, charred taste. And then they, and then they just soak that stuff in heavy molasses barbecue sauce. And then for me, the last place that I really love barbecue is where my love of barbecue came from because it's where I grew up is Memphis. And Memphis is pork ribs with dry rub. Now, again, it'll, that's confusing for people because they'll be like, well, I don't want my ribs dry. Well, nobody wants ribs dry. You don't understand. You go to rendezvous in Memphis, you're talking about eating the best ribs you've ever had in your life. They put a dry rub, lots of paprika and a heavily flavored paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, pepper, and they make this, and they make this rub and they rub it into the meat. That, you know, they pull that silver skin off of the ribs, they rub it into the meat, they put it on the smoker and then they'll use a mop sauce, which is actually very similar to a Carolina vinegary. It's mostly vinegar with a little bit of mustard. Sometimes it's apple cider vinegar, but a lot of times it's just white vinegar and mustard and they'll whip it up and they'll use literally those little baby mops and they'll dip it in there and they'll mop it on the ribs while they're smoking ribs. And so I got my love from Memphis barbecue and specifically from the old original corkies and the old original rendezvous is where I went. But as I've traveled around, I've come to love all types of barbecue. And if I'm honest, I think my favorite's Carolina. I love Carolina pork. I love that tangy vinegary sauce. I love both it. I like it with mustard and without mustard. It kind of depends on the meat, whether I'm eating beef or pork or whatnot. I love it. I just love barbecue. It's good, man. You know, the pulled pork is obviously like the classic product. But my favorite I really like to do, and when I was setting up my cook at my cookers at home, I kind of worked backwards. So you kind of think, you know, well, what do I like to cook? What do I like to eat? Work backwards from there to optimize your setup for that. And I really like doing grilled chicken and smoked ribs. And the difference is when you do pulled pork, you're using that moppy vinegar sauce. But when you do, the way we do ribs and chicken here is we'll use that Piedmont sauce, which is a mix of the ketchup and the vinegar. But when you cook it right, it really glazes up and makes a real sweet, real tangy product. Yeah, so you, I think we can say this, we'll tease it out. So your last name's Cox, Cameron Cox, great name, strong name, right? You've got your logo for your gym and your training, and it's like this, it's this big strong cock. Like the chicken cock, not the, you filthy animals. And so you've got this, and so you've got Cox sauce. That's right. And it's in beta test mode, and I've got to beta test it, and it's freaking amazing. Here's what I love about Cox sauce. And I would, first off, if I didn't like Cox sauce, you wouldn't be on the show, because I'm not gonna lie and say that I like it when I don't. It is the perfect combination of tomato, ketchupy, vinegary, and so it gives it this tangy awesome, and a little bit of sweet, but not like molasses sweet, just a little bit of it. I used it last night, I sent you a picture, I smoked two rabbits last night, and I did the glaze with Cox sauce, and it was so good, it was so good. It's like smoking a chicken, rabbits a lot like chicken, you know, if you do it right. It's a lean meat, you gotta learn how to keep it, you gotta smoke it at the right temperature, you gotta keep it moist so it doesn't dry out, you gotta put the sauce on at the right time, we don't put the sauce on in the beginning cause there's enough sugar in it, it'll burn, right? So you put it on there towards the end so it glazes out awesome, and then you just put a little fresh mop of it, just as I'm taking it off the thing, so there's some kind of delicious wet barbecue sauce on it as well. That's how I do it, is that how you do your chicken? That's how I do it, you know, depending on if you're cooking bone in chicken like you should be, right? Bone in chicken takes about an hour on the grill that last 15, 20 minutes, you start brushing it on. I like to do a double coat cause it'll get you a nice little double glaze on there. But it's good stuff, it's an old recipe, it's my grandpa's recipe, and nobody, and you know, every one of the family has it, but nobody ever makes it cause it's a pain in the butt to make. So my very first memories of having grilled chicken and grilled ribs was with that sauce, before I was too little to even know what was really going on. And every time I would eat grilled chicken or barbecue after that, it was always just a let down or just almost as good, but it was never like that. So once we had to close the gym, we started cooking again. Yeah, that's good. So yeah, so what is your handle on Instagram? Cause you can, you post a lot of this stuff when you're making a new batch of this stuff, you'll do it in your stories, sometimes you'll do it in your main feed. What is your, what's your handle? So my personal account is coach cam 843. And then my business account is Cox Barbell 843. Which one is the one that you do more? I'm sure I follow both and so I see them both, but which one is the one that has the barbecue sauce stuff on it more often? That's my, that's coach cam 843. Okay, coach cam 843. And it's awesome. And you've got all this like, you've got big time giant commercial like vats and pots and stuff now cause you're making a bunch in one shot. And you're actually pushing to try to get this stuff where you can actually produce it and sell it commercially. That's right. So right now your, your friends are beta testing, which is, it's a great thing to beta test. By the way, I'm open to beta testing any foods, whiskey, if you started distillery and you need somebody to take, like any of that stuff, I'm happy to try it and give you a full review cause I do love this stuff. I love what you said though about the chicken. You know, what's interesting is barbecue, the downsides for us as lifters, especially this time of year is we're going over like, nobody wants to be fat. Everybody wants to put on as much muscle as they can. Barbecue is traditionally very fatty meat, right? And barbecue traditionally also doesn't waste any part of the animal. So that we, you kind of eat everything. The thing I love about barbecue chicken and I, and rabbit, but I can't imagine that lots of our listeners are going to be in a smoking rabbit, but is that chicken's pretty lean and you can still get, I mean, it's, it's sort of the best of both worlds. You get the, the awesomeness of smoked meat and how wonderful it is. And you get that beautiful barbecue glaze, but the meat is still pretty lean and it works with your nutrition plan. And so it's not a, you know, you don't have to eat 90 grams of fat because you ate burnt ends, which are delicious and wonderful. But if you do that every day, you're going to be 400 pounds and you're not going to look like the way you want to look. So that that chicken works pretty good. I have, I found this almost on accident. If you take a, you know, normally when you go to the store, you get chicken breast or the bone with skinless and that's, you know, those are those. That's cheating. But those are, those are for, those are for function, not for, not for enjoyment. That's right. It's like by way protein. But you can get whole bone in chicken breasts and you can cook them, you know, indirect and they'll usually take an hour. Sometimes they'll take two, but if you cook them skin side up and just let them go that whole time indirect over the charcoal. So when you take it out and let it cool down a little bit, it'll pull apart like shredded chicken. Yeah. And what happens is that fat renders off from the skin goes through the meat and then falls off. So you've got smoked, pulled, lean chicken. Yeah. That's good. I love it. And it's, it makes your, it makes making gains a lot easier if your food tastes good and you enjoy eating it. Yeah. That's the hard thing with the breast. It's a good way to cook that. But let's be honest, thigh meat, that's where it's at. 100%. That's the best meat on the chicken. 100%. Give me that thigh meat all day long. Actually, it's the same thing with the rabbit I had last night. The rabbit's really got like tenderloin, like a loin, it's actually the loin. So it's like it's erector muscles or the main piece is a meat. And then it really has a tenderloin as well. So like what is the so as? It's always interesting when you chop it up animals. I think about how similar the muscles are to humans. So you've got that main loin, your erectors, you've got the tenderloin, which is your so as muscles and then you've got the, you know, you've got your thigh meat, you've got, you know, it's your hamstrings and your butt and your quads. That's what, you know, that's what it is. And so it's interesting to, so I cut, I try to stay real lean and I gave my wife and I what is essentially the white meat on a rabbit. And I gave my daughters the quarters. So I gave them the both a hind quarter and a front quarter. And so, and they were eating it. Well, I cooked two rabbits. And so I gave, so I still had four quarters left. And I got done eating my white meat and I thought, man, I'm going to try one of these like thigh meat on the, on the rabbit bro. It was so good. It was so, it was, it rabbits weird because it's so much like chicken. It's real lean, but it's got, if it's done right. And you know, ours is, we get ours from like an ethically raised. It's not, they're not wild game rabbit. They're raised in a, in an organic local, you know, it's part of our CSA. Gosh, the meat is sweet all by itself. It's real interesting to eat sweet. Lean rabbit. I was about to say, man, where are you getting these rabbits from? It sounds like you got a good, good supply there. Yeah, we got to hook up. I got to hook up. It's, yeah, we've got a local place here. It's called Green Thicket. Shout out to them. Green Thicket Farms. They deliver to us. So we've been part of CSAs for years. So if you guys don't know what that is, it's a community supported agriculture. What you essentially are doing is, it's like you're buying stock or equity in the, in the farm at the beginning of the season. So at the beginning of the season, you'll pay, you know, depending on what they're bringing several hundred dollars or whatever. And then they deliver, you know, veggies or whatever the CSA delivers. And it's awesome. So you can get fresh local veggies. And we've done that for years. Well, a few years ago we found out there was a CSA and it was like a meat CSA. And it's chicken and eggs and tons of pork and lamb and rabbit. It's never beef. Beef's easy in Missouri. Everybody just buys a side of beef, you know? It's just because there's beef everywhere here. So, so you don't really, you don't, you don't get beef at CSAs because it's, it's weird. Plus everybody fight over the good cuts of meat, you know? So with this, it's awesome. Cause you get, yeah, we get rabbit and lamb and tons of pork, pork sides, pork belly. Again, love smoking that stuff. And I think I've got a way to smoke a lot of that stuff. I'll put that stuff on a grate. You smoke it long enough. I'm interested. I would love to know the nutritional difference in pork side or pork belly or hog jowl that smoked versus one that's fried up in a cast iron skillet. Right. Because so much of the fat comes off that stuff in the smoker, renders down, runs off that you're left with almost lean meat. Now I know it's not actually lean meat. It's not like chicken, you know, it's not chicken breast. But my guess is that it is way leaner than what it is if you fried up a side of bacon in a cast iron skillet. And it's lean enough, you know? It's lean enough. And if you want to eat, you know, if you're like, I want to eat this and it's going to be a little more fat, you can just cut back a little bit of something else and you just balance it right out and you're good to go. That's right. All right. So you've got your sauce that you use at the end. You love that cock sauce and you love that general sort of ketchupy, vinegary, tangy sort of version. And I do too. I love it too. I've been trying, by the way, I've been trying to convince Cameron to take his base version and add mustard to it and make a mustard one and then also do one a spicy version of cock sauce. I want a spicy, a mustard and an original. I still think I'd like the original the best so I'm not saying that because I think it's amazing. There's just times where I want mustard on something. Like I pulled pork, I want mustard on a pulled pork sandwich, a mustardy sort of sauce. Whereas, obviously I wouldn't want it on like the rabbit or the chicken, that would get weird. So I don't want that stuff. Let me ask you this. What are you putting on your meat before it goes out on the grill? Do you put anything on it? Salt and pepper, you got a dry rub you put on that stuff? It's going to be at least salt and pepper. I really like, and it's super easy, it's kind of cheating. I really like the Tony, I don't know how you say this last name, Tony. That's right, Tony's is good. And you can make, you can use just that. I like to kind of spice it up a little bit. If I'm doing low and slow, no direct heat, I'll do like one part Tony's, one part brown sugar and then add, you know, garlic, onion powder, all the paprika, all the regular, all the normal stuff that you would add to a rub. But half Tony's, half sugar, and then have some, just your normal spices on top of that, that makes it pretty good. That combines well with the, with the cock salts. I do similar stuff. I love Tony Chattery's. It's a little spicier than my wife and kids like to eat. And I love spice. I'm like, I'm one of those guys, give me the habanero, man, it's worth it. And I love the flavor of habanero. Like, yes, it will set my face on fire. And I'll eventually be like, man, I'm crying and I can't go pee for four hours because I'm afraid to touch anything below the belt. But it's, I want the spice. But my, I love that Tony Chattery's, but for my wife and kids, I end up doing a similar thing, but I'll use a combination usually of lourries with that, which again is kind of cheating. Lourries just basic seasoning salt. And I'll usually add some of my own onion and garlic. And, you know, the nice thing about lourries is it's got a bunch of paprika in it. So it gives it that red tint, which is nice. I'll put more coarse kosher salt on it because the lourries doesn't have anything coarse. I want some coarse salt on it, maybe a little more pepper. And then I like Stubbs brand dry rub and they've got different, they've got beef, they've got poultry, they've got the different kind. And I really like that for a light dry rub. I don't put much on it if I'm gonna sauce it, right? So if I'm gonna, so whereas if I'm gonna smoke a turkey, which actually would be great with sauce, I just never put sauce on a turkey on Thanksgiving time, I'll do a bigger, I'll do a bigger dry rub on a turkey because a lot of times I don't sauce it. How to sauce it this year? We gotta do cock sauce on the turkey this year. Well, when the coronavirus started popping off and everybody was buying up all the meat in the stores, I happened to go to the store one day and all they had out was a bunch of T-bones and turkeys. So that's what we got. So I got a bunch of T-bones and like three turkeys. So I had never smoked a turkey. I had always done them in the oven. Yeah. That's how my, I was taught to do it. But I did it on the smoker and we just seized it, rubbing it down. Did you like it? Yeah, it was good. Because it's a bigger bird and the meat is a little bit darker and you've got the fat from the skin, the dark meat, the thighs and the legs, it pulls apart just like pork with. Yeah, agreed. It's delicious. The dark meat on the turkey is awesome. And if you take care of the white meat, if you shove some little pats of butter up underneath the breast skin and you can do some fun stuff there and you can keep the breast pretty moist. You can also obviously do injections, which is, I don't do that often. It also feels a little bit light cheating, but it's probably just fine to throw some injectable butter in there. But so little PEDs for the turkey is what it is. It's 100%. You put some sage and some butter in there. That's why I like doing the offset smokers with birds. Because with the offset, you're gonna have the part that's closest to the firebox is hotter. That's right. And then the part further away that's cooler. So you put your dark meat facing the firebox and you put your breast facing away. So the breast stays a little bit cooler, cooks a little bit slower and that's how you even that out. That's good. Do you have any resources that you've used over the years that you would recommend to any of our people like, hey, here's a great place to learn about this stuff? Yeah, I mean, short answer, you can learn to do anything off of YouTube. Yeah, that's right. Part of my story and the cool part of the story of the cock sauce is my mom's dad was the chicken man. He was the expert on cooking and grilling chicken. And that was obviously back before YouTube and stuff existed like that. So my dad learned from watching him and learning from him. So my grandpa passed that to my father and then my dad passed it on to me and that's when I learned. But of course, now you go on and you watch YouTube but all the stuff that we watched in the good YouTube that you read in books was stuff that I had already learned firsthand. That's right. Come and pass down the family. Yeah, that's good. That's good. I have read, again, I'm the same way, like I got into barbecue years ago, there's a guy, his name I think it's Steven Raichline or Raichlin, if you look him up, he's got a bunch of good barbecue. He's got like the barbecue Bible and stuff. And I like it because he does, he, what I like about his stuff is he explores the entire world of barbecue, not just the United States. So you get into like the cool like jerk Caribbean barbecue and you get into like African barbecue or Haitian barbecue. And man, there's some super cool stuff that, you know, Middle Eastern barbecue where they use yogurt or kefir type to marinate the meat. That's another thing that I love. I love marinating chicken meat in yogurt, in Greek yogurt. It's awesome. You do that for like 12 hours and then you hit it with that dry rub. Oh, it makes it so much more moist. So that's a great book to kind of learn about stuff all over the United, the world. I've never heard of doing that, but I'll have to look, I'll have to look into it. Dude, it's a great, and then it just makes it nice for, it's like the tangy lacto fermentation acid that breaks down the meat a little bit and it allows the rub to stay on a little bit better and it just, it works awesome. I love it. So I read his Franklin who's got Franklin's barbecue in Austin which is probably the most famous place in the United States at this point. He has a great YouTube channel and he also has a great book. And the book's cool because he kind of tells his story of, he's not formally training into this stuff. And listen, at this point, even he would tell you, like everybody lines up at Franklin's, I actually think they burned down a couple months ago. I don't know if they're up and running again, but I guess that's a danger when you got all those smokers going is that eventually the place burns down. That's a risk we'll have to take, man. That's right, that's right. So people will line up and wait for five, six, seven hours for barbecue. I don't know that there's any barbecue in the world that I want to stand outside in Austin in 110 degree heat to eat. And he would tell you the same thing, but it's kind of got this cult like following at this point. The guy does know his stuff and he tells, he's got a kind of a great semi-autobiography in there about how he started just cooking for his neighbors and like more neighbors start showing up. And how terrible he was in the beginning and they just kind of figured out brisket. But if you want to learn about very standard Texas barbecue and that's kind of what I like about that standard Texas barbecue is my least favorite barbecue. But I also think it's often, it's sort of like the novice linear progression of barbecue because it's just salt and pepper and you can't hide anything with spices and sauces. You got to learn how to cook the way it's the meat's supposed to be cooked because it's all about the meat. And so it's a very pure form of barbecue. And then from there, once you kind of get the handle on things, then it's fun to start playing around with those dry rubs and those sauces afterwards. And so it's like, I love it. I love going to a barbecue joint, especially Midwest. I don't know how many places are like this outside the Midwest that they will feature. You'll sit down and there will be seven barbecue sauces at your table for all the different regions so that you can get your meat and it'll usually have a dry rub on it. Usually it doesn't have sauce on it when they're smoking it. But then you can try all these different styles so you can figure out, do I like the more sweet molasses? Do I like the more vinegar? Do I like the more mustard? Like, do I like it spicy? And then sometimes you get some really crazy stuff. You get coffee barbecue sauce and blueberry barbecue sauce. And those can be fun to try as well, so. I'm old school. I like the spots, you know, you go in, they got the like, they're on those like Christian country hours. They're only open like Tuesday through Thursday. They open at 11 until they sell out, which is at like 12, 30. That's right. And you know, you go by there once, you go by there again, they're closed. That's right. You know, they're only open these like mysterious hours a few days a week. Yeah, and they look like a dump. The best places look awful. It does, and they got, you know, they'll serve like two meats, two sides in a roll. That's right. And just sell the crap out of it. Or just white bread sometimes. And just crush it, yeah. That's right. You know, whatever, they got like four items on the menu and they're just moving the lines. I love that too. And I've always liked less choice, not more choice for stuff. I think we give people like decision fatigue. Oh, I gotta decide. Like I got, there's nine meats to choose from. And there's 10 sauces and there's 12 sides. Like, hey, listen, figure out what you do awesome. And you do that and stick with that. And then you crush everybody at that thing. That's right. And so that's a good way to do it. Hey, I noticed you cook a lot of beer can chicken. Is that your standard for you? I've actually never cooked a beer can chicken. Oh, I thought you took a picture of that the other day. I've got a good little network. I have a client that I used to train who also is a professional photographer for Netflix. So he's like the man. Nice. He also has, is very pretty good on the grill. And so like anytime he cooked something and then post a picture of it, it's just like great A. So that was there. They were sharing his picture. Right. They took a local, you know, the local thing here in Charleston is like super popular, local this and that, but they did a local brewery with, and then they did that with the beer can chicken. But it turned look tasty. It did look tasty. I've had those before. If I could just, I just need to get the beer more in the breast. My only thing is like, it's not that I, you know, who knows if maybe it steams it up better and I think it does those beer cans. I've never had it. I, I've never done it. I'm sure it's good. I'm sure it tastes good. Agreed. I'm kind of skeptical of any new cooking method. Right. Fire has been mastered. That's right. It's like lifting. You can make amazing progress with just the most basic approach. Anytime something gets, gets kind of fancified, it's like, all right, we'll see. That's right. Yeah, I agree. I agree. That's good. All right, man. I appreciate the conversation. Hey, listen, you guys, it's summer. Go enjoy your family, enjoy your community, cook some barbecue. Next time you cook some barbecue, buy some extra meat and invite the neighbors over. Right? That's it. It's one of the best things to do to bring communities together. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what your demographic is. It doesn't matter what your religious background is. It doesn't matter what your political affiliation is. Everybody loves barbecue, right? Unless your neighbor's a vegan and then, you know, smoke veggies are good too. I like smoking veggies, all right? Throw some onions and some, and some carrots and some asparagus and some squash on there. Summer squash is good on that smoker, but now I love it because barbecue is just a thing that seems to bring communities together. And so, dude, thanks for coming and having a fun conversation with me today. Matt, I appreciate you having me, man. Any day we get to talk about cooking house a good day. That's right. By the way, if you don't know about Cameron Cox, Cameron is, he is probably, well, he definitely has the biggest quads on staff. That's right. He's got the biggest thighs and he has the best mustache. He has what I would explain his goatee. You've got really, it's a giant goatee and giant mustache. It looks like you are in, like, 1885 Kentucky. It's Charleston, man. That's a Charleston look. It is now. I love it. And so, be on the lookout for a cock sauce in the future. We're gonna get that thing up and running. Maybe if you're lucky, you can become friends with Cameron and he'll let you beta test a little bit. But I'm excited to see that out on the market soon, for sure. Yeah, man. Well, Matt, I appreciate you having me on the show. It's been great. Thank you, brother. We'll talk soon. Thank you guys for listening. If you love the show, give us a five-star review. Again, best thing we can do is have great conversations with good people and just enjoy the value in our humanity. Man, everybody has something to bring to the table. I love it. And what better time to have a good conversation with good people than doing it over eating some dirty barbecue ribs or chicken or pulled pork. Thanks for listening and we'll see you in a couple of days.