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Since we started our blog we have been talking about quality blue smoke and how that’s the best seasoning that you can use on BBQ. In addition to that we need to also talk about rubs and their role in BBQ. What constitutes a rub and why is it so important?

First, rubs include, but are not limited to sugar, salt, black pepper and other assorted ingredients. A good general start to a good BBQ rub would be 2 parts brown sugar, 2 parts kosher salt, 1 part black pepper, 1 part chili powder and then you would round it out with a few of the following: garlic powder, cumin, thyme oregano, etc. Typically people make different rubs for beef, pork and poultry to better suit the different taste profiles. We have a different spice rub for all of our meats at Saddleback. We have a more savory rub for our brisket. A more sweet and spicy rub for pork. We have an all around rub for our chicken. We know there are lots of good commercial rubs out there, but in order to get the results in flavor and to create a great bark – we need to create our own.

Second, why are rubs so important to everything we do in BBQ? Well rubs have a direct effect on the creation of bark, the dark crispy outer coating on our briskets and pork shoulders. Think of toasting bread and its effect on not only the taste of the bread, but also the texture. Some see the dark, crispy outer coating and think it must be burnt. Oh no, that’s where the rub comes into creating that magical sensation of sweet, salty, crispy goodness. It makes any pitmaster die a little inside when someone cuts off what they think must only be burnt. With a good rub you also help attract good smoke onto your BBQ. The coarseness of our salt, sugar and black pepper help to “catch” the very fine particles in blue smoke. That’s why our BBQ will have that dark brown (almost black) color and you know that we have done our job right.

We will go into more depth on our rubs when we break down our meats and how we smoke each of them. Each one needs its own rub to not only help season the meat, but to also help create that great bark that we all love.

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Did you know that we have our own garden? We have a garden plot down the street that we planted tomatoes, jalapenos, habaneros, pickling cucumbers and fresh herbs to use at the restaurant. Through the REO Town Garden Program we have a double plot lined up for next year. To take advantage of all of the new space, we are going to add collard greens, asparagus, tomatillos and potatoes. Also, we buy some of our produce from a local urban farmer to put the best and freshest produce on our menu. You can’t get better produce that you grow yourself or hyper local and let ripen on the vine instead of on a truck shipped in from outside of our great state.

Ever heard the term Scratch Kitchen? For us that means we start with basic ingredients and transform them into something special (No pre-made items here). Everything from our rubs, bbq sauces and sides are all made from scratch. Some items are a labor of love, like collard greens that take hours to perfect. Or in other cases we just feel that we can make something better than what’s offered commercially. For example, the spice rubs that we use on our meats.

We only source the best cuts of meat for our bbq. For example, we only use Certified Angus Beef or CAB for our briskets. Only the top 10% of Choice Beef makes the grade for CAB. These animals have room to graze, eat a diverse diet, and are better treated animals. You can really tell the difference in the quality of fat on CAB briskets. Fat on a commodity brisket is hard as a rock. Fat on a CAB brisket is nice and soft and is able to render down after 12+ hours in our smokers. Sure, we have tried different grades like Prime, Wagyu and Kobe briskets, but for us the comparison did not justify the price we would have to pay. By using CAB briskets, we feel that we are offering the best quality at a more reasonable price.

We don’t have microwaves or use freezers in our daily operations. Sure it would be easier to heat up things in a microwave or freeze something to use it later. Except this does not keep with our ethics about producing the best, freshest, quality food for you. Just like how we smoke our meats, low and slow with real wood fires, we make all of our food from scratch with the ingredients that we even grow ourselves.

If it was easy, everyone would do it. Sure we could do it the easy way and sleep more and have cheaper prices, but we want to deliver only the best possible bbq for you: Craft BBQ.

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At Saddleback, Craft BBQ all starts with the type of smoker that we use. We use a completely wood fired reverse flow smoker to get the best results. In order to get the best smoke possible to give you the best tasting food we have to burn all wood (no gas fired smokers here). Sure, it would be easier and we would sleep more if we used a gas fired smoker, but we think an all wood smoker offers our customers the best possible BBQ flavor.

What is a Reverse Flow Smoker?

Smokers are pretty primitive designs. You have a fire box to provide heat to cook your food and the smoke stack helps by pulling the heat and smoke across your food to flavor it. Where the fire box and smoke stack are located in relation to each other defines what type of smoker it is. With an offset smoker the stack is on the opposite side of the fire box and is offset to the fire box. On a reverse flow the fire box and stack are on the same side. The smoke travels down the length of the cooking chamber and then reverses and leaves the stack on the same side as the fire box. Why do we like the reverse flow? Well since the air is going down and then back it makes the temp in the cooking chamber more even. Also, we are able to add on another cooking chamber to the back of the main chamber directly above the fire box to cook on. Since we are limited by space to cook all of our proteins the extra space is very important.

What is the importance of all wood fired smokers in providing the best BBQ?

Great question. The best, most powerful seasoning for BBQ is smoke. Rubs are important and we will explain those in another blog, but they pale in comparison to good quality smoke. Smoke is made up of quite a few different chemicals, but what mostly flavors your food are the kinds that you can’t see with the naked eye. So the smoke that you can barely see, with just a slight blue tint, is what we are after. In order to get that type of smoke you need to have fires that have enough oxygen and are burning pretty efficiently. Air flow for us is of the most importance. We have actually lengthened our smoke stacks on our smokers so that they pull more air. We never, ever, use dampers to limit the flow of oxygen to our fires. Since our fires burn efficiently, with enough oxygen, we get that blue smoke we are after. Blue smoke has all the complexity that we know and love without the acrid, bitter after taste that you get with fires that burn inefficiently and have a distinctive white look to them.

If this was easy everyone would do it. We spend lots of time staring at fires and trying to predict what fires are going to do. We have to be able to keep our temps extremely consistent (225°f) for hours and hours. It takes dedication and patience to pull this off, but we believe (very strongly) that this is the only way to get you the best BBQ available. Craft BBQ.

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Looking back on it, when we were searching for a location to open a BBQ restaurant more than a year ago it is now apparent that REO Town chose us, not the other way around. With its long proud history, we felt like REO Town provided a neighborhood with a soul and personality all her own. An area of town that offered more than just a storefront. REO Town is considered the birthplace of the commercial car market. More than one hundred years ago Ransom Eli Olds opened the REO Motor Car Company right in this very neighborhood. REO Town has experienced the ups and downs of the auto industry, as many of our Michigan communities have, but the neighborhood has persevered and become stronger because of these struggles. The long complicated history has made REO Town and its residents stronger, more diverse, more creative and more artistic. REO Town is a community with its own character that is shaped by its many challenges and many more opportunities.

When we opened Saddleback BBQ, we wanted to offer more than just a typical BBQ restaurant. We wanted to create premium Craft BBQ. Craft BBQ is rooted in our nation’s rich BBQ history, but with a twist that is all our own. Like REO Town, we respect our proud history and pay homage to it, but we also try to push our craft forward with new and creative updates that are happening all the time. Many of these updates are based on the feedback from people like you, our loyal customers.

A little BBQ History (The way we see it)

In the BBQ world there are 4 major regions that have contributed to making BBQ what it is today.

• Texas, with its German/Czech influence and abundance of cattle have contributed the classic salt and pepper brisket.

• Memphis, with it’s dry rubbed pork ribs have set a standard all her own.

• Kansas City brought a sweet, tomato, molasses bbq sauce to the party.

• The Carolina’s “Respect the Pig” mantra have contributed whole hog BBQ. Since they can’t agree on what sauce they like – they have also contributed a vinegary tomato spiced sauce and a classic mustard based sauce as well.

We at Saddleback have been greatly influenced by them all and now we have set off on our own path.

Saddleback’s Take on BBQ
We don’t do things the easy way. Like our forefathers, we only use all wood fires to cook all of our meats. That way we are only getting the best smoke to flavor our food. Why is that important? Because wood smoke is the best spice that you can use to flavor BBQ. With the sweet complex flavor you can only get from true wood fired smokers, we feel that’s the only way to BBQ. We could make it easier on ourselves, and sleep more, but we wanted to offer more for our BBQ.

Craft BBQ at Saddleback is about attention to detail. This includes: The choice of wood (a cherry hickory blend), the meat we use (Certified CAB briskets) and all of our side dishes are made from scratch. We believe this attention to detail provides our customers a truly special and unique experience. There are no short cuts. Our BBQ takes hours to make with constant attention to even the most mundane detail.

In our future blog posts we will go into more detail about our smokers and our whole “BBQ” process. We will also talk about our choice of smokers and why we have selected the wood that we use. We will also give an explanation of our sauces and the history of how they came about. Look for Craft BBQ 101 coming soon. If you have any questions that you would like us to cover, please let us know!

Thank you for your interest in Saddleback BBQ. We couldn’t do it without you.

• Matt Gillett, Brad Broughman and the Saddleback Team

*Disclaimer: This is how we see BBQ, but there are no right-or-wrong answers in BBQ. It all comes down to what you like and what tastes best to you. By no means are we saying that our way is the only way. This is just how we see BBQ and we look forward to hearing from you!

We’ve heard complaints from several people that they have missed our Facebook updates or that our emails are being delivered to the “promotions” section of Gmail. We put together this quick tutorial to teach you how to fix it so that you can keep updated on special events, news, menu changes and discounts!

Here’s how to make sure you see our updates on Facebook:

1. Go to the Saddleback BBQ Facebook Page

2. Click on the “Like” button at the top and select “Posts in News Feed”

4. Select “See First”

Bonus: If you’d like to receive notifications about our updates so you don’t miss anything, click on the Notifications Tab and choose which events you’d like to be notified of.

Not seeing our Emails?

If you are having trouble receiving our emails in Gmail, they could be going to the “Spam” or “Promotions” folder. Here is how to fix that. Go to your Spam folder select the email and click “Not Spam”. If our email is ending up in your “Promotions” folder, select the email and choose “Not Promotions”. If you’re having trouble finding the “Promotions” folder it could be located under “Categories” in the left hand menu.

That’s all there is to it! We hope this helps. If you have any questions feel free to email us using the About Us page.