Myron Mixon’s BBQ School
When I decided to retire, I had already set a bucket list of items I wanted to do when I retired. I wanted to shoot a big Axis, I wanted to overspend on a Disney trip more fancy than normal, I wanted to go on an Alaskan cruise, update this blog and finish my book, and I also wanted to go to Myron Mixon‘s barbecue cooking school. This post is about that class/trip. I love cooking outside and hanging out with my friends and family cooking out. We watch football and cookout, go to the Deer Lease and cookout, have a birthday cookout, any occasion. Well, I love the show “BBQ Pit Masters”. It’s about barbecue cooks who are given certain things to cook, and then they’re judged by famous Pit Masters. When the show first started, it followed certain guys at barbecue competitions. And went through the whole process. I loved watching it, then it went to famous guys being judges, and judging other Pitmasters. One guy that I really liked was a guy named Myron Mixon. So I started researching and looking at barbecue cook schools. I didn’t want to go to help me with barbecue contest. I just wanted to go and meet Myron Mixon and learn some barbecue. Main thing was to just enjoy the experience. Well after Retirement me and Tres looked it up. Got on his website and bought tickets to go during spring break. His website is www.myronmixon.com and that’s how we signed up. So it was set. We flew into Atlanta and rented a car. We drove to Unadilla, Georgia. That is where he lives and where the school took place. He is actually the mayor there. I found it interesting because it was a very small town. Tres had found an Airbnb for us to stay in. It was a cool little round house in the woods. It was about 20 minutes from his house. The Friday you get there you go to his house for a social. It was cool, he’s there and welcomes you and it’s just in his backyard under a pavilion. There are only about 50 people that can be in the class so it was a small group. He discusses what we will be doing that weekend. What time to be there in the morning and what to bring. He passed out notebooks, aprons and he had kegs of beer to drink. We all talked and mingled and he provided a fried catfish dinner with all the fixings. He even had some homemade peach moonshine for everyone to try. That lasted until about eight or nine. We could already tell he was a character. He has great sayings and kept us all in stitches. He told us all the instructions and what was going to happen that next couple of days. He told us what we needed to do and gave us all a notebook to write everything on. One thing he said was “you need to ask questions that’s why you paid $895“. So he went on and told us to be there in the morning at 7:30. We left and me and Tres both were excited about the weekend. He was funny and we couldn’t wait to see what comes up the next day. The next day we showed up and it was cold. We sat at the table, kinda upfront. Two other guys sat there. One was from North Carolina and he was a farmer. I can’t remember what the other guy did but his trip was a gift from his kids. Anyway, Myron comes out and talks about the day the guys that work for him, including his son and his brother, and do all the prepping he calls his black shirts. They bring out a whole hog. He goes over the entire process of preparing the hog. From injecting, to wrapping, and what temp you want. He even told us what to put in the injection. I was writing all this down feverishly. We couldn’t take videos, but we could take pictures and he showed us the entire process. I have never and I don’t think I will ever smoke a whole hog but it was cool to see. He finished and they put it on a huge pit. He showed us how to make his injections and said “I’m giving you a damn science lesson on freezing injections“. Then he started showing us how to prep ribs and a tri-tip and I think beef ribs. We then went to another area and he had all these meats laid out on the tables. We got in groups of four and we started prepping the meat. The education was awesome. Once your table was done, they put them all in smokers. there was a ton of meat. We went back to the our tables and he started doing cupcake chicken. That is chicken thighs cooked in a cupcake tin. He made that way famous. Then he prepped pork shoulder, and a brisket. After that we went to our group table and did it ourselves and did drumsticks too. I remember thinking “what is he gonna do with all this meat“. When all of that was done we put them on the pit. There was at least 50 briskets. As those smoked, we watched him get a turkey ready. He told us so many funny stories and kept us entertained. Someone ask him about using“hot rub“. He said “yes cause I’m a professional, you dumbasses would screw it up where we couldn’t eat it“. At the end of the day he took the meat we prepped and serve them up with pinto beans and potato salad for our dinner. We also had peach cobbler that he made after we finished we visited with him a while then he said there are bags of meat that we would take with us. There were a ton of bags and they were delicious. We went back to our nice little cabin, hung out and talked about the day. The next morning was early and our last day. This day he would prep food boxes as if you were in a barbecue contest. Then he took the whole hog off, and that was the last thing of the weekend. We tasted the smoked turkey, then went and tasted the whole hog. They were both awesome. After that, we all said our goodbyes, bought some of his books and rubs and sauces. He was not like he was on TV. On TV he comes across as a total jerk but was also always pretty funny. But at his cook school he was very cordial and welcoming. I didn’t feel like it was fake. He was sarcastic, but in a really funny way. One last thing he said that I thought was funny was when a guy ask if he was always so sarcastic and was that to build character? He said “making fun of people isn’t building character, it’s just funny as shit”. That statement says it all. Overall, the trip was amazing. For this to be one of my five Retirement bucket list things it was so worth it. To the point of I want to go do it again. But it was great. We met Myron, he sat and talked to us and we learned a lot about barbecue cooking. The main thing though was just the experience of it all.
Y’all be safe out there!!!!