The Mind of a Chef (2012) s01e15 Episode Script
Smoke
In this episode, Chef David Chang explores an ingredient that is not edible on its own, but central to making things delicious smoke.
Allen benton shows off his world renowned bacon and ham.
And as you can see, it's a pretty intense smoke that we put on this stuff.
Chang and benton make their versions of red eye gravy.
Here in the South, red eye gravy is a staple.
This served with a little bread is a fantastic snack.
Then it's barbecue in Kansas City.
Kansas City is the barbecue capital of the world.
Texas.
We do it the right way down here.
North Carolina.
We serve everything but the squeal.
Enter The Mind of a Chef.
Delicious.
Smoke is maybe not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of deliciousness.
But in the world of chefs, smoke is often a critical component, not just as a means of cooking, but as a key ingredient that requires years of trial and error plus plenty of burns and scars to master.
The difference between good barbecue and great barbecue rests with the pitmaster's understanding of smoke.
But smokiness extends way beyond barbecue.
It cooks.
It preserves.
It flavors.
It makes magic happen.
For Chang, the flavor of smoke is a key component to his ramen broth, but he finds it from a very un-Japanese source.
In madisonville, Tennessee, benton's smoky Mountain country hams cures up some of the best bacon and ham in the country.
We use Allen benton's bacon in our ramen broth, because it makes everything taste better, because it just has this smoky element that there's no way we would be able to replicate.
I went to school to be a teacher in the '60s.
I was like most young people in the '60s.
I was determined to change the world.
I was actually working as a high school guidance counselor, and I had just gotten my masters degrees.
And they showed me the salary schedule.
And I realized I might have made a poor career choice as far as earning a living.
My family, both sets of grandparents, lived a mile apart in Scott county, Virginia.
It was very isolated, rural country.
They farmed with horses and mules.
They raised everything they ate.
With that background, I knew that I could cure hams and make bacon.
This was actually brought to us by a local farmer.
I realized early on how important it was to use good pork.
I think for most America they've grown up on that crappy bacon.
And yes, it is bacon.
But it's not really bacon.
This is real bacon.
Every bit of bacon we do, this is the way it starts out.
Normally bacon in packing houses is made by injecting it with a brine solution with thousands of little needles.
Ours is made by dry curing.
All that's in this is is salt and brown sugar.
Early in my business days I had a conversation with my father.
I said, "I think I'm going to have to cure these hams quicker in order to compete.
" He sat there for a minute.
And my dad was a pretty wise guy.
And he said, "well, son," he said, "if you play the other guy's game, you always lose.
" He said, "if you make it good enough, people will come.
" All right.
This is the second stage of cure.
This is what I call an equalization cooler.
There's really not a secret to the bacon that I make.
It's been done for centuries by people all over the world.
They hang on this rack typically for ten days in here.
It's a drying process.
This is the final step.
After it's aged and dried a little bit this is where it goes to get the finishing touches.
This is the smokehouse.
As you can see, it's a pretty intense smoke we put on this stuff.
It took a lot of years to get us to this point.
I've spent my whole life in pursuit of that flavor.
And if you don't like smoke, you're not going to like my bacon.
All right.
We're going to throw a little wood on that fire.
We keep our smokehouse going basically 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
We use mostly hickory.
We do use some apple wood.
We actually burn the hickory wood.
We don't use smoulder sawdust.
We actually burn the hickory wood and generate some heat.
It's late in the day, and I'm basically going to load this thing up so it'll have enough wood in there to last all night long.
We want to keep that intense smoke flavor and aroma in our product.
And you have to be meticulous and keep this thing going, and keep that smoke going all the time.
I can have un-Christian thoughts at times if I let my fire go out.
I'm very resistant to change.
This is old school, but it's the way that we've always done it.
When I first tasted Allen benton's bacon, it was one of those experiences where it was like a first time experience.
You're like, "wait a second.
What have I been doing? What have I been eating my whole life? This is the real thing.
" This was just a punch-me-in-the-mouth type of experience.
It's extraordinarily smoky, and it's salty.
It just tastes like what bacon should be.
We're ready to make breakfast.
And we're going to have country ham, red eye gravy, and biscuits.
Everything is high cholesterol.
Nothing is healthy.
This skillet has been in our family for generations, and it's a prized treasure, I can tell you.
You don't want to overcook country ham.
If you overcook it, it gets tough and dry, and doesn't improve at all.
Most chefs do it in the oven, I guess, instead of a frying pan.
But we're traditional hillbillies.
We think you've got to fry everything in the South.
We're going to take this ham up.
I think it's done.
Well, now that we have the ham fried, I'm ready to prepare the red eye gravy.
And it's so simple.
So I want to add just a little bit of brown sugar, a half a cup of coffee.
We're just going to let this cook until we reduce this liquid down about to where it was before I poured that coffee in there.
Of course, here in the South red eye gravy is a staple.
I've heard different stories.
One story was that in a logging camp, a fellow had been imbibing in something they make deep in the hollows here in the Mountain country.
And when he came to work, the cook came in, and he'd been into that jug all night long.
And the foreman of the logging camp looked at him and told him that he wanted him to make gravy as red as his eyes.
And from then on, they dubbed it red eye gravy.
Now, whether that's true or fiction or legend, I have no idea.
But I'm sure those early settlers of this country were making this.
And since food was probably in short supply, this was one way to make it go a long ways to feed a family.
And whether you prefer it on biscuits or grits, it's good.
So it was basically the food, I guess, of poor people.
But what an incredible delicacy it turned out to be.
I used to eat this as a kid when I'd go to diners in Richmond.
And I don't know.
Ham steak with red eye gravy was always like that just sounded awesome to me.
And then when we started to get this beautiful ham from Allen, we were trying to figure out at noodle bar, what do we do? How do we serve this? And I was like, "why don't we make a red eye gravy?" It's really simple.
It's basically a mayonnaise.
So we're going to take two slow poached eggs.
Egg whites and all.
Sherry vinegar.
We're going to add siracha.
We're going to add a little water.
I had been screwing around with trying to make a red eye gravy.
The problem of adding coffee was that you're adding more water.
So I went to the bodega, I think, for whatever reason across the street and I was like, "oh, Folger's crystals, freeze dried coffee.
" This is the concentrated coffee, without any added h20.
So it's really just like a tablespoon of your freeze-dried coffee.
And then you get an immersion blender.
Grapeseed oil.
This served with a little bread is a fantastic snack.
Delicious.
Talking smoke in America means talking barbecue.
And like ramen in Japan, styles of barbecue in America vary from region to region.
Sauce, no sauce, vinegar, sweet or spicy.
The styles are seemingly endless.
But one thing that connects them all is one central ingredient slow smoldering wood and someone who knows how to harness its power.
North Carolina barbecue is known for cooking the whole hog in a pit setting.
That is the traditional way of serving barbeque.
It's been that way for generations and generations.
My name is ed Mitchell.
I'm the pitmaster and co-owner of the pit restaurant in Raleigh, north Carolina.
I cooked my first pig when I was I still use the same techniques that I was taught.
Oh, yeah, that looks good.
We serve everything but the squeal, from the rooter to the tooter, so we make sure you get it all.
We normally put him on here anywhere between 12 or 14 hours.
So whenever you are able to just penetrate it very easy, like so, that means she's good to go, she's ready to go.
Oh, yeah, boy.
Good stuff.
That's what we're talking about.
That's good stuff right there.
Doesn't get any better than that.
Oh, I can smell that stuff.
It smells so good.
Everything is hand chopped.
Now we're going to put a little love to it by adding the ingredients.
Starting here with a little apple cider vinegar.
And your salt.
And as you notice I've got a true accurate measurement here.
That comes from years of experience.
You know, it's like you've been married long enough, you know how your wife feels.
So it kind of goes hand in hand here.
You know the touch.
Here we have our special ingredient, the concoction that I come up with as our secret recipe that gives our distinct taste so that you know you're eating ed Mitchell's type barbeque.
You can't cook barbecue without tasting it.
She's right.
She's ready to be served.
You have a balance between the sweet and the tangy that separates the men from the boys when you taste my barbeque.
No brag, but that's why I'm the best.
We're in Luling Texas, barbeque capital of the world.
We do it the right way down here open pits, good flavor from the wood.
My name's Joe Capello, and I'm the manager here at city market.
And I'm also the pitmaster.
I've been working here at city market I'd say around 44 years.
What makes our barbeque the best is that we put a lot of love into it every day.
Texas barbeque is centered around beef, and no sauce is used in the beef.
You know, it's all flavored with the wood.
We use post oak.
Oak is a good wood.
It gives it good flavor, and it burns at a regular pace.
My name's ray bell.
I've been working here 33 years.
A lot of people ask me what the recipe is.
And I say, "just a little salt and pepper and a lot of love makes it good.
" We don't do a lot of meats.
We do three different meats brisket, ribs and sausage.
And I think when you just do a few items you can get them right.
They're the same every time.
We make sausage fresh every day.
Early this morning they were ground, and then we put them in the stuffer, and then tie them.
And then we transfer them over to the smoker, where they're smoked for about an hour.
It's the same process every morning.
The barbeque here will make the skinny fat and the fat people good looking.
Right now I'm going to flip these ribs over.
They've been cooking since early this morning.
The secret ingredient would probably be the sauce that we put on them after we're done.
It's a mustard based sauce.
And the rest is a family secret.
So maybe guess at it.
I just love to barbeque.
I guess it's in my genes.
But I think the smoke has something to do with it.
Nothing says Kansas City more than barbeque.
You can throw a rock without hitting a barbeque joint.
My name is Doug Worgul.
I'm the director of marketing at Oklahoma Joe's barbeque and catering here in Kansas City.
We're actually in Kansas City, Kansas.
We're on the Kansas side of the state line, in a gas station environment, and we've been here for 15 years.
We serve all the classic Kansas city barbeque entrees ribs, brisket, pulled pork, sausage, burnt ends, Turkey, chicken.
All those barbeque traditions that exist elsewhere in the United States, they all come together here in Kansas City.
And not only do we do it all, frankly, we do it all better than they do.
You know, the process is the same for all barbeque.
It's basically wood and time.
What sets one barbeque joint apart from another is not the way it's cooked.
It's the way it's seasoned.
You know, ours is a mix of salt, sugar, pepper, paprika, other spices.
And then when it's smoked over a long period of time it kind of caramelizes.
And that caramelization really, really sets up that seasoning.
It gives it that extra crunch and that full mouth of flavor profile.
Yes, I need a burnt ends special.
Kansas City's unique contribution to barbeque is burnt ends.
Burnt ends are the crunchy, crusty points of the brisket.
After the brisket is cooked, we slice that point off, put it back in the smoker.
More fat renders out of it.
More fat caramelizes on the crust.
This is Jose.
Jose's our pitmaster.
Pulling burnt ends off right now.
See, more tender.
Okay, so you pinch for tenderness.
And when it's done, we chop that up.
And each little piece of that has some of that burnt crusty edge to it.
And it's a rarity.
It's like finding a pearl in an oyster.
So we like to say that we didn't invent barbeque here in Kansas city, we just perfected it.
Up next, two world renowned chefs in a batting cage.
One gets smoked.
We're here at Louisville Slugger.
I wanted to come to Louisville Slugger.
This is the place where every bat from every major league baseball star over the last almost hundred years has their model.
Whew! Smells like shop class.
Hey, guys.
How you doing? Good seeing you.
Sean Brock.
Chuck Schupp.
Chuck Schupp is the guy you want to know.
He knows everything that is going on in major league baseball.
And he was kind enough to tell us what the major league baseball players are using.
You've got probably 300 different models to pick from here.
If you're an orioles fan, this was Cal Ripkin's bat.
Same thing he always hit with, never changed.
That's actually for Jacoby Ellsbury of the Boston Red Sox.
Really? These bats are for Jason Hayward of the Atlanta Braves.
I feel very privileged holding this.
How many times do you think a player would use a bat? On a good cycle, probably two or three weeks.
They break them, or guys sometimes go, "I'm just done with this.
It doesn't have any more hits in it.
" So Let's go pick out the wood we're going to need for your bats.
Now for the right weights for you, they're going to be 34 inch, about 31 ounces.
So let me run these for you.
Yes! Whoa! Oh! It's like a vending machine.
It is like a vending machine.
Awesome, man.
Now when I watch baseball I'm going to not look at the players I'm going to look at what bats they're playing with.
Beautiful.
We like that.
Let's go get your name put on it.
Oh, that is amazing! That is the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life.
Oh, my! That's even better.
Isn't that nice? So what we're going to do now, guys, is we're going to flame treat the wood.
This to me is the best thing you can do to ash to make it stronger.
And you cook it.
We're going to cook it.
Medium well.
You could use that in the kitchen.
Wrap a steak around that thing.
Bacon.
Bacon wrapped bat.
I love it.
All right.
Look at that.
Right out of the oven.
Oh, it smells great.
It smells great.
All right, guys.
So we got the bats made, the finish, got your name on it.
Now it's time to go to work.
Let's go hit.
Whoever hits more has to drink a bottle of bourbon.
All right, I'm going to win.
I like these bets.
Loser wins, winner wins.
Two.
Three.
Four.
That's it.
Good job.
I cannot do this.
Not looking good for me.
Let's go.
Try to channel my Cal Ripkin.
Still at zero.
I hate you, Sean Brock.
Oh, damn it.
Oh, mother Watch the ball.
He goes for the bunt.
Story of my life.
I disappoint people all the time.
You got to drink a bottle of bourbon.
I was going to do that anyway.
This is the coolest place I've ever been.
Smoke is important.
The world is inarguably a better place because of cooks out there who've mastered its mysterious forces.
So the next time you're enjoying that perfect bite of barbecue or digging into a smoky slice of bacon, be glad we don't live in a smoke free world.
Thank you for smoking.
Allen benton shows off his world renowned bacon and ham.
And as you can see, it's a pretty intense smoke that we put on this stuff.
Chang and benton make their versions of red eye gravy.
Here in the South, red eye gravy is a staple.
This served with a little bread is a fantastic snack.
Then it's barbecue in Kansas City.
Kansas City is the barbecue capital of the world.
Texas.
We do it the right way down here.
North Carolina.
We serve everything but the squeal.
Enter The Mind of a Chef.
Delicious.
Smoke is maybe not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of deliciousness.
But in the world of chefs, smoke is often a critical component, not just as a means of cooking, but as a key ingredient that requires years of trial and error plus plenty of burns and scars to master.
The difference between good barbecue and great barbecue rests with the pitmaster's understanding of smoke.
But smokiness extends way beyond barbecue.
It cooks.
It preserves.
It flavors.
It makes magic happen.
For Chang, the flavor of smoke is a key component to his ramen broth, but he finds it from a very un-Japanese source.
In madisonville, Tennessee, benton's smoky Mountain country hams cures up some of the best bacon and ham in the country.
We use Allen benton's bacon in our ramen broth, because it makes everything taste better, because it just has this smoky element that there's no way we would be able to replicate.
I went to school to be a teacher in the '60s.
I was like most young people in the '60s.
I was determined to change the world.
I was actually working as a high school guidance counselor, and I had just gotten my masters degrees.
And they showed me the salary schedule.
And I realized I might have made a poor career choice as far as earning a living.
My family, both sets of grandparents, lived a mile apart in Scott county, Virginia.
It was very isolated, rural country.
They farmed with horses and mules.
They raised everything they ate.
With that background, I knew that I could cure hams and make bacon.
This was actually brought to us by a local farmer.
I realized early on how important it was to use good pork.
I think for most America they've grown up on that crappy bacon.
And yes, it is bacon.
But it's not really bacon.
This is real bacon.
Every bit of bacon we do, this is the way it starts out.
Normally bacon in packing houses is made by injecting it with a brine solution with thousands of little needles.
Ours is made by dry curing.
All that's in this is is salt and brown sugar.
Early in my business days I had a conversation with my father.
I said, "I think I'm going to have to cure these hams quicker in order to compete.
" He sat there for a minute.
And my dad was a pretty wise guy.
And he said, "well, son," he said, "if you play the other guy's game, you always lose.
" He said, "if you make it good enough, people will come.
" All right.
This is the second stage of cure.
This is what I call an equalization cooler.
There's really not a secret to the bacon that I make.
It's been done for centuries by people all over the world.
They hang on this rack typically for ten days in here.
It's a drying process.
This is the final step.
After it's aged and dried a little bit this is where it goes to get the finishing touches.
This is the smokehouse.
As you can see, it's a pretty intense smoke we put on this stuff.
It took a lot of years to get us to this point.
I've spent my whole life in pursuit of that flavor.
And if you don't like smoke, you're not going to like my bacon.
All right.
We're going to throw a little wood on that fire.
We keep our smokehouse going basically 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
We use mostly hickory.
We do use some apple wood.
We actually burn the hickory wood.
We don't use smoulder sawdust.
We actually burn the hickory wood and generate some heat.
It's late in the day, and I'm basically going to load this thing up so it'll have enough wood in there to last all night long.
We want to keep that intense smoke flavor and aroma in our product.
And you have to be meticulous and keep this thing going, and keep that smoke going all the time.
I can have un-Christian thoughts at times if I let my fire go out.
I'm very resistant to change.
This is old school, but it's the way that we've always done it.
When I first tasted Allen benton's bacon, it was one of those experiences where it was like a first time experience.
You're like, "wait a second.
What have I been doing? What have I been eating my whole life? This is the real thing.
" This was just a punch-me-in-the-mouth type of experience.
It's extraordinarily smoky, and it's salty.
It just tastes like what bacon should be.
We're ready to make breakfast.
And we're going to have country ham, red eye gravy, and biscuits.
Everything is high cholesterol.
Nothing is healthy.
This skillet has been in our family for generations, and it's a prized treasure, I can tell you.
You don't want to overcook country ham.
If you overcook it, it gets tough and dry, and doesn't improve at all.
Most chefs do it in the oven, I guess, instead of a frying pan.
But we're traditional hillbillies.
We think you've got to fry everything in the South.
We're going to take this ham up.
I think it's done.
Well, now that we have the ham fried, I'm ready to prepare the red eye gravy.
And it's so simple.
So I want to add just a little bit of brown sugar, a half a cup of coffee.
We're just going to let this cook until we reduce this liquid down about to where it was before I poured that coffee in there.
Of course, here in the South red eye gravy is a staple.
I've heard different stories.
One story was that in a logging camp, a fellow had been imbibing in something they make deep in the hollows here in the Mountain country.
And when he came to work, the cook came in, and he'd been into that jug all night long.
And the foreman of the logging camp looked at him and told him that he wanted him to make gravy as red as his eyes.
And from then on, they dubbed it red eye gravy.
Now, whether that's true or fiction or legend, I have no idea.
But I'm sure those early settlers of this country were making this.
And since food was probably in short supply, this was one way to make it go a long ways to feed a family.
And whether you prefer it on biscuits or grits, it's good.
So it was basically the food, I guess, of poor people.
But what an incredible delicacy it turned out to be.
I used to eat this as a kid when I'd go to diners in Richmond.
And I don't know.
Ham steak with red eye gravy was always like that just sounded awesome to me.
And then when we started to get this beautiful ham from Allen, we were trying to figure out at noodle bar, what do we do? How do we serve this? And I was like, "why don't we make a red eye gravy?" It's really simple.
It's basically a mayonnaise.
So we're going to take two slow poached eggs.
Egg whites and all.
Sherry vinegar.
We're going to add siracha.
We're going to add a little water.
I had been screwing around with trying to make a red eye gravy.
The problem of adding coffee was that you're adding more water.
So I went to the bodega, I think, for whatever reason across the street and I was like, "oh, Folger's crystals, freeze dried coffee.
" This is the concentrated coffee, without any added h20.
So it's really just like a tablespoon of your freeze-dried coffee.
And then you get an immersion blender.
Grapeseed oil.
This served with a little bread is a fantastic snack.
Delicious.
Talking smoke in America means talking barbecue.
And like ramen in Japan, styles of barbecue in America vary from region to region.
Sauce, no sauce, vinegar, sweet or spicy.
The styles are seemingly endless.
But one thing that connects them all is one central ingredient slow smoldering wood and someone who knows how to harness its power.
North Carolina barbecue is known for cooking the whole hog in a pit setting.
That is the traditional way of serving barbeque.
It's been that way for generations and generations.
My name is ed Mitchell.
I'm the pitmaster and co-owner of the pit restaurant in Raleigh, north Carolina.
I cooked my first pig when I was I still use the same techniques that I was taught.
Oh, yeah, that looks good.
We serve everything but the squeal, from the rooter to the tooter, so we make sure you get it all.
We normally put him on here anywhere between 12 or 14 hours.
So whenever you are able to just penetrate it very easy, like so, that means she's good to go, she's ready to go.
Oh, yeah, boy.
Good stuff.
That's what we're talking about.
That's good stuff right there.
Doesn't get any better than that.
Oh, I can smell that stuff.
It smells so good.
Everything is hand chopped.
Now we're going to put a little love to it by adding the ingredients.
Starting here with a little apple cider vinegar.
And your salt.
And as you notice I've got a true accurate measurement here.
That comes from years of experience.
You know, it's like you've been married long enough, you know how your wife feels.
So it kind of goes hand in hand here.
You know the touch.
Here we have our special ingredient, the concoction that I come up with as our secret recipe that gives our distinct taste so that you know you're eating ed Mitchell's type barbeque.
You can't cook barbecue without tasting it.
She's right.
She's ready to be served.
You have a balance between the sweet and the tangy that separates the men from the boys when you taste my barbeque.
No brag, but that's why I'm the best.
We're in Luling Texas, barbeque capital of the world.
We do it the right way down here open pits, good flavor from the wood.
My name's Joe Capello, and I'm the manager here at city market.
And I'm also the pitmaster.
I've been working here at city market I'd say around 44 years.
What makes our barbeque the best is that we put a lot of love into it every day.
Texas barbeque is centered around beef, and no sauce is used in the beef.
You know, it's all flavored with the wood.
We use post oak.
Oak is a good wood.
It gives it good flavor, and it burns at a regular pace.
My name's ray bell.
I've been working here 33 years.
A lot of people ask me what the recipe is.
And I say, "just a little salt and pepper and a lot of love makes it good.
" We don't do a lot of meats.
We do three different meats brisket, ribs and sausage.
And I think when you just do a few items you can get them right.
They're the same every time.
We make sausage fresh every day.
Early this morning they were ground, and then we put them in the stuffer, and then tie them.
And then we transfer them over to the smoker, where they're smoked for about an hour.
It's the same process every morning.
The barbeque here will make the skinny fat and the fat people good looking.
Right now I'm going to flip these ribs over.
They've been cooking since early this morning.
The secret ingredient would probably be the sauce that we put on them after we're done.
It's a mustard based sauce.
And the rest is a family secret.
So maybe guess at it.
I just love to barbeque.
I guess it's in my genes.
But I think the smoke has something to do with it.
Nothing says Kansas City more than barbeque.
You can throw a rock without hitting a barbeque joint.
My name is Doug Worgul.
I'm the director of marketing at Oklahoma Joe's barbeque and catering here in Kansas City.
We're actually in Kansas City, Kansas.
We're on the Kansas side of the state line, in a gas station environment, and we've been here for 15 years.
We serve all the classic Kansas city barbeque entrees ribs, brisket, pulled pork, sausage, burnt ends, Turkey, chicken.
All those barbeque traditions that exist elsewhere in the United States, they all come together here in Kansas City.
And not only do we do it all, frankly, we do it all better than they do.
You know, the process is the same for all barbeque.
It's basically wood and time.
What sets one barbeque joint apart from another is not the way it's cooked.
It's the way it's seasoned.
You know, ours is a mix of salt, sugar, pepper, paprika, other spices.
And then when it's smoked over a long period of time it kind of caramelizes.
And that caramelization really, really sets up that seasoning.
It gives it that extra crunch and that full mouth of flavor profile.
Yes, I need a burnt ends special.
Kansas City's unique contribution to barbeque is burnt ends.
Burnt ends are the crunchy, crusty points of the brisket.
After the brisket is cooked, we slice that point off, put it back in the smoker.
More fat renders out of it.
More fat caramelizes on the crust.
This is Jose.
Jose's our pitmaster.
Pulling burnt ends off right now.
See, more tender.
Okay, so you pinch for tenderness.
And when it's done, we chop that up.
And each little piece of that has some of that burnt crusty edge to it.
And it's a rarity.
It's like finding a pearl in an oyster.
So we like to say that we didn't invent barbeque here in Kansas city, we just perfected it.
Up next, two world renowned chefs in a batting cage.
One gets smoked.
We're here at Louisville Slugger.
I wanted to come to Louisville Slugger.
This is the place where every bat from every major league baseball star over the last almost hundred years has their model.
Whew! Smells like shop class.
Hey, guys.
How you doing? Good seeing you.
Sean Brock.
Chuck Schupp.
Chuck Schupp is the guy you want to know.
He knows everything that is going on in major league baseball.
And he was kind enough to tell us what the major league baseball players are using.
You've got probably 300 different models to pick from here.
If you're an orioles fan, this was Cal Ripkin's bat.
Same thing he always hit with, never changed.
That's actually for Jacoby Ellsbury of the Boston Red Sox.
Really? These bats are for Jason Hayward of the Atlanta Braves.
I feel very privileged holding this.
How many times do you think a player would use a bat? On a good cycle, probably two or three weeks.
They break them, or guys sometimes go, "I'm just done with this.
It doesn't have any more hits in it.
" So Let's go pick out the wood we're going to need for your bats.
Now for the right weights for you, they're going to be 34 inch, about 31 ounces.
So let me run these for you.
Yes! Whoa! Oh! It's like a vending machine.
It is like a vending machine.
Awesome, man.
Now when I watch baseball I'm going to not look at the players I'm going to look at what bats they're playing with.
Beautiful.
We like that.
Let's go get your name put on it.
Oh, that is amazing! That is the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life.
Oh, my! That's even better.
Isn't that nice? So what we're going to do now, guys, is we're going to flame treat the wood.
This to me is the best thing you can do to ash to make it stronger.
And you cook it.
We're going to cook it.
Medium well.
You could use that in the kitchen.
Wrap a steak around that thing.
Bacon.
Bacon wrapped bat.
I love it.
All right.
Look at that.
Right out of the oven.
Oh, it smells great.
It smells great.
All right, guys.
So we got the bats made, the finish, got your name on it.
Now it's time to go to work.
Let's go hit.
Whoever hits more has to drink a bottle of bourbon.
All right, I'm going to win.
I like these bets.
Loser wins, winner wins.
Two.
Three.
Four.
That's it.
Good job.
I cannot do this.
Not looking good for me.
Let's go.
Try to channel my Cal Ripkin.
Still at zero.
I hate you, Sean Brock.
Oh, damn it.
Oh, mother Watch the ball.
He goes for the bunt.
Story of my life.
I disappoint people all the time.
You got to drink a bottle of bourbon.
I was going to do that anyway.
This is the coolest place I've ever been.
Smoke is important.
The world is inarguably a better place because of cooks out there who've mastered its mysterious forces.
So the next time you're enjoying that perfect bite of barbecue or digging into a smoky slice of bacon, be glad we don't live in a smoke free world.
Thank you for smoking.