About Me ................ and What I Want to Accomplish

"You had better find something to do otherwise you are going to drive me crazy!"

These were the words I heard from my wife a few short weeks after completing a large (and exhausting) exam for work. Hello, my name is Kyle Luetters and on the day she said that to me, I found my first smoker on Craigslist.

It was a Masterbuilt Vertical Unit with propane supplying the fuel. $50 seemed like a steal so I got in touch with the fella that had posted the box and arranged a time to go take a look. Much to my luck, he lived nearby and had only used it a handful of times. Twenty minutes later, we loaded up the box into my truck along with a spare tank, two bags of wood and a whole lot of anticipation.

The family........ if you can't tell, we're die hard Kansas City Chiefs fans.

I'm not quite sure what drew me to smoking meat. I enjoy good BBQ as much as anyway but I think the challenge of perfecting all of the variables that go along with this science was the true tipping point. Getting the temps just right, the seasonings done correctly, to inject or not to inject, etc. etc. A world of possibilities was open to a fella that has a bent towards extreme focus and far too much in the way of perfectionist tendencies. Needless to say, my wife said I needed to find a hobby and I found one........ and then some.

The first few smokes weren't terrible........... but weren't great successes (and a special thank you to my in-laws for being test subjects) but, gradually, I began to find great resources (Malcolm Reed's How to BBQ Right being the chief one) to help me along and, slowly but surely, my finished cuts began to turn into anticipated events.

I gave everything a try............... ribs, chicken legs, whole turkeys and so forth. I (and my family) have a soft spot for briskets. Boy, the first time we "nailed" burnt ends was a happy, happy, HAPPY Day in our home. Speaking of we, I do a lot of this with my wife, a fitness coach and lover of all things healthy. We have followed a "mostly"paleo diet since our wedding a few years ago. We began to notice that, while awesome tasting, most of the recipes we found were heavy on butter, sugar and so forth. We thought, "what would it be like if we tried to make these paleo?" As Barney Stinson would say, "CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!" Hence, we cooked up the name of this blog.

I decided to start this blog for a few reasons:

1. To document this process and how we came up with the things we did.
2. To hopefully meet other enthusiasts that could help us out along the way with technique and ideas. I want to get better and compete in competitions some day.
3. To keep a record of where we came from so that one day, we can laugh at how little we knew.

My smokers on the far left, beer cooler in the middle & fire
pit on the right

I have a pair of smokers now. The Masterbuilt is still around and has been lovingly named, "Ole Faithful." A routine trip to Home Depot yielded a short RiverGrille water smoker for all of $19 so that is the next pit I am trying to learn.

We'll start posting recipes and cooks that we attempt. We'll do our best to document them thoroughly. If you have any ideas for us, questions or tips, please shoot them into the comments on the post OR to k.luetters@gmail.com.

Thanks for stopping by and hope to hear from you soon!