Right away I can think of three reasons you thought that you had "really good food": (1) You've never been to Memphis! (2) BBQ is so good that even done poorl

Right away I can think of three reasons you thought that you had "really good food": (1) You've never been to Memphis! (2) BBQ is so good that even done poorly, it's darned good. (3) Actually (secret, don't tell the others) BBQ, at least the Memphis kind that I know, is not very difficult to do well! Why is it so good? Well, it's warm, soft, and moist (succulent) and is big on salt, black and/or hot red pepper, sweet, sour, fat, smoke, and the Malliard reaction. So, it hits really hard on nearly all the elements as in: Gray Kunz and Peter Kaminsky, 'The Elements of Taste'. For the secret, one of the pillars has been explained by some food chemistry -- keep the proteins in the meat fibers below 185 F. Do most of the cooking with the meat at about 160 F for melting the collagen. Then you do have food safety. Overheat the meat fibers with the proteins, and they will shrink, get rid of their water, and become not good. The long cooking times at relatively low temperatures are to melt the collagen without overheating and, thus, ruining the proteins. Supposedly the proteins are always tender; only the collagen is tough. So, melt out the collagen without ruining the proteins. The melted collagen helps make the meat moist and succulent. I don't know about beef brisket BBQ -- it's a Texas thing. I was in Texas only once, did have some of their beef BBQ, and it was good. But I don't know how they do it. On that trip to Texas, the story went that some early immigrants were German butchers, and they worked out how to BBQ brisket, no doubt, as a way to have people able to like that cut of meat. For ribs, which I also don't know about, maybe the smoke plays a really important role, e.g., for a smoke ring. But for Memphis BBQ, picnic pork shoulder, I long suspected that all the smoke was mostly just advertising smoke to attract downwind customers and, really, not very important to the final meat as served. One reason is that about half the shoulder was still covered by the skin. Another reason was that for the rest of the meat, the ratio of surface area exposed to the smoke to meat volume was relatively small. Another big secret (definitely don't tell anyone this one!): Actually, get a good oven thermometer and carefully adjust your oven to hold about 220 F. Not much higher than 220 F and maybe a little lower (don't want the meat to get over 185 F). Get a roasting pan and a roasting rack. Put a picnic pork shoulder, say, skin side down, on the rack, with a dry rub on the exposed meat surface if you want, although I doubt that it will contribute to the final product as served, place it in the oven with a meat thermometer deep in the meat but not next to a bone (that might give a misleading reading). Cook to an internal temperature of 185 F, maybe a little less, not much more, for maybe 16 hours. Will get a lot of fat and melted collagen in the bottom of the roasting pan. Place on a cutting board, remove the skin, remove the meat from the bones (the arm bone and the shoulder joint), remove as much fat as you wish, and coarsely chop the rest. Add favorite red BBQ sauce, likely one with smoke flavor. Place, likely with some salt and hot sauce, on a white bread bun and top with a simple white coleslaw. It's good. Refrigerate what's left; it reheats well in a microwave oven. For the coleslaw, my quick guess at what Memphis has been doing is to take a head of ordinary green cabbage, quarter it by cutting through the root, and cut out the solid, stiff stem parts. Thinly slice the rest. Add ordinary Ranch dressing and mix. Done. Last time I bought about 9 pounds of cabbage and used 127 ounces of shredded cabbage and 13.2 cups of dressing. Might cut that back to, say, 12 cups. Got eight quarts. No doubt Memphis was not using Ranch dressing, but with my guess the results are not too far off. I got the Ranch dressing idea from the back of a package of shredded cabbage for coleslaw. So, here I've described hated ersatz oven-Q. It's also surprisingly good. For doing BBQ, picnic pork shoulder is forgiving, from all I've seen much easier than beef or chicken. Should get good results if even roughly follow what I outlined. Even with pork, the shoulder is likely much more forgiving than ribs. I have no desire to return to Memphis! If my business does well and I retire, I want to go to, say, New Hampshire, enjoy challenging the winters with a 4 wheel drive car with a lot of road clearance and big, aggressive snow tires, attend operas, concerts, and lectures on mathematical physics in Boston, feast on New England seafood and maybe French, Italian, German, and Chinese food, and, maybe, sometimes BBQ a pork shoulder! Memphis? Naw. For the business, as of yesterday, I got all the planned software running. That was a good day. I have a few revisions in mind and then on to my critical review, alpha and beta test, version 1.0, and going live!