I’m always on the lookout for a better way to clean my grill grates, having gone through a fair amount of different grill brushes over the year. While Grill Fighter was not on my radar, they recently reached out to me to test their brush and give an honest review, and the timing worked out for me to put it through its paces between my normal grilling and the pig roast I held in mid-October.
The Grill Fighter is a new type of grill brush that utilizes welded stainless steel chainmail with a square edge that wraps around a heat resistant silicon sponge. There’s also a heavy duty serrated edge, giving you another way to scrape gunk and food from a grill. You can use it dry or with a little water, which creates a steaming effect to clean your grill grates.
Earlier this year, it was named the best overall grill brush by Bon Appetit, who cited the flexibility of the brush as a big plus. Another pro is built in bottle opener in the handle and the fact that the entire brush is dishwasher safe.
One con from the review mentioned is that there is no replacement parts so if the brush happens to break, you will have to replace the entire brush. Though I can’t seeing this being an issue based on the build quality. I’ve used it multiple times over the past few weeks on the grates of my Weber gas grill and between that and cleaning the diamond grates of the BQ Grills pig cooker, I would not expect this brush to fail anytime soon.
At this point, I would never buy a wire bristle grill brush due to the numerous safety recalls and horror stories with bristles accidentally getting swallowed. I would also never buy a Grill Rescue brush, which I previously reviewed in an old post from 2022 and that post continues to get comments with complaints of people that haven’t received a brush that was ordered and Grill Rescue customer support has ghosted them.
If you’re in the market for a new grill brush for yourself or for a gift, you could do a lot worse than checking out the Grill Fighter Grill Brush. Check out the Grill Brush’s website and buy on Amazon
Monk: As an elder millennial raised on Bill Simmons liveblogs in the early 2000’s, it’s hard to believe I haven’t done one myself on Barbecue Bros. What better reason to remedy that than to document my third whole hog cook, which I recently did in mid-October. And here we go…
9/29
Place an order for a 130 pound pig from Frontier Meats out of Waxhaw. They’ve been in business since 1975 and I’ve used them each of the now 3 times that I’ve cooked a pig. From my research, they have the best price per pound in the Charlotte area and their pigs are fresh and never frozen. They will butterfly and can remove the feet and head if you want. Highly recommend them.
10/10
Call Frontier Meats back and up the pig to 150 pounds because whoa, the guest list is now up to 340 total guests.
10/16
9:57 AM – Get a half cord of firewood delivered to the site where I’m cooking the pig. In terms of firewood, I’ve been happy with Quick’s Firewood out of Monroe for the three times I’ve cooked pigs as well as the times I’ve gotten firewood delivered for my fire pit. Plus, they deliver for free. T-minus 30 hours until the Pig Roast.
3:00 PM – Pick up the pig cooker from my neighbor Lawrence and set it up at my neighborhood pool. Lawrence has graciously allowed me to use it for no charge the past two years. It’s a beautiful BQ Grills trailer that he recently got repainted so it looks brand spanking new. He regularly lends out to his friends and local Boy Scout troops for their annual barbecue fundraisers, so I count myself fortunate to have access to a legit pig cooker.
Word on the street he may be restarting his Fire of Coals blog and web store later this year, so keep an eye out for that so you can support him. I’ve used his rubs in the past and I even bought my current burn barrel from him (which is how I first met him).
4:30 PM – Pick up the pig from Frontier, which is about a 50 minute drive on a Friday afternoon from my house in South Charlotte.
6:50 PM – Start the fire in the burn barrel on a toasty 80 degree night. My wife and youngest show up shortly after and then friends of the blog Z and Dabo arrive to hang out an hour or so later. The cook officially begins.
8:00 PM – With Mrs. Monk and two buddies, get the pig from the back of my wife’s SUV on to a tailgate table and then flip onto the grill. Quite impressive when you consider the various ailments between myself, Z, and Dabo (tennis elbow, bum shoulder, burnt hand).
8:20 PM – I shovel the first of many coals into the bottom chamber of the grill. The tunes and beers are flowing as more friends of the blog start to arrive. Matty Ice arrives and brings with him 4 bottles of very nice bottles of bourbon.
11:00 PM – A golf cart with more neighbors arrive just as the Appalachian State football game ends (W over Coastal Carolina) and all of a sudden we’ve got 15-20 of us hanging out by the pig. I now begin to worry that a nearby neighbor who likes to complain about noise will call the cops on us. Thankfully, my worries never materialize.
10/17
1:00 AM – People start to filter out but a few still remain to keep the party going. Whispers of late night Door Dashing begin.
1:30 AM – Z pulls the trigger on a McDonald’s order, reminiscent of last year’s 3 AM order. We eagerly anticipate our burgers…
2:00 AM – The McDonald’s arrives but immediately something is amiss. Two of our Big Macs have a combined one burger patty and we are missing a Cheeseburger. Epic fail by McDonald’s but don’t worry, Z is able to get a full refund.
2:45 AM – Z is the second to last to depart, leaving just me and Dabo. Dabo somehow convinces me to have one more beer before he is to leave.
3:20 AM – Dabo has departed and I climb into a sleeping bag on a camping mat in the back of my car to get a little nap before I add more coals. I add wood to the burn barrel and set an alarm.
4:30 AM – The overnight rain has started and I wake up to add more coals to the pig. I throw a few more logs into the burn barrel and head back to sleep.
5:30 AM – Rain continues and rinse/repeat with the coals and wood.
6:30 AM – I wake up to find that an angel has left me a Gatorade and bottle of water. That angel turns out to be Handsome Russell who checked on me at 6am and decided to let me sleep. However, the fire in the burn barrel is almost completely extinguished because of the rain, so I get to work to get the fire restarted. With a faint flicker amongst the wood, I decide to run to the nearby Harris Teeter to get a bag of charcoal and some fire starter.
6:45 AM – I return to find that the burn barrel has roared to life in my brief absence. We are so back!
7:30 AM – Handsome Russell arrives with a couple of clutch McDonald’s biscuits. I happily accept them. The rain is just about done and I get back to work.
8:30 AM – Tennis buddy Wally brings me some coffee and Bojangles and I count myself fortunate to have such nice people in my life. Here’s a few photos he snapped:
9:00 AM – But wait, there’s more! Friend of the blog Brafford comes to give me a chance to take a shower and also sleep in my own bed for a few hours. I get a couple of hours of sleep before I return right before noon to continue. Big ups to Brafford.
12:00 – 4:00 PM – I continue cooking the pig while starting to set up for the party, with the help of various folks.
4:05 PM – The pig is served until it runs out a little more than 2 hours later. People seem to be enjoying it along with the beautiful fall weather that came in on the back of the overnight storm as well as the 90’s and 2000’s jams from the cover band I hired for the party – 90’s Kids/Y2K Kids.
7:15 – 8:30 PM – Break down the party with the help of many others and head home.
8:45 PM – A celebratory glass of bourbon is in order.
9:30 PM – Crash for the next 12 hours and then finish cleaning and returning the trailer.
As always, there are lessons learned each time I cook another pig and this time was no different. I can’t wait to run it back next year!
It’s that time of year again: I’m going to be cooking for roughly 350 people in my neighborhood for the Annual Pig Roast. I’m going to run back the same approach as last year, from the smoker to the hog to the catered sides. And this year, I’m going to try and finally get the skin crispy. Wish me luck…
Monk: Last month, I cooked my second whole hog for my neighborhood swim club event to close out the season. In case you missed my post leading up to it, here’s a link to refresh your memory on what I thought I would do differently for this hog cook:
Utilizing our patented 5 hogs scale, I’ll rate how well I changed up each thing for hog #2 and total it up at the end. Let’s see how I did:
Thing #1: I’m going to use a pig cooker (a BQ Grill, specifically) Verdict: 5 hogs
I’m fortunate that a neighbor 1) owned a BQ Grill pig cooker and 2) let me borrow it for free. And boy, was I glad that I had that instead of having to haul the cinder blocks to and from the swim club parking lot. There isn’t a super steep learning curve to the BQ coming from a cinder block pit and the BQ drew a lot of positive attention from the crowd. I can’t wait to borrow it again.
Thing #2: I will get a bunch of wood coals going before I start the cook Verdict: 3 hogs
That same neighbor who let me borrow the pig cooker is the one who I bought a burn barrel from several years back. I finally got a chance to use that burn barrel and built up a good base of coals for about an hour plus starting at 10pm that Friday night before I finally put them into the cooker. I did a decent job with this part but found myself without coals at times and having to play catch up. Once again, I went through a half cord of wood and then some.
Thing #3: I’m going to crisp up the skin and chop it into the pork Verdict: 0 hogs
I said earlier there wasn’t a steep learning curve to the BQ Grill but I really should have said “other than the deflector plate.” I had a vague understanding of how removing it would crisp up the skin at the end but no real sense of how mechanically to do that considering how heavy and hot it was. I will have to do more research ahead of time next time but for this time around I made a business decision not to mess with it in case I messed up the pig right before the party start time.
Thing #4: I’ll probably throw some pork butts on (just in case) Verdict: 4 hogs
I got a little bit bigger pig this time around – 157 pounds vs 126 pounds – but was also feeding a much larger crowd (~350 vs 100). I ended up only grabbing two extra pork butts but the crowd ate every last bit of the pork that was available, with only a half full gallon Ziploc bag remaining after the party.
Thing #5: I will try the head this time Verdict: 5 hogs
I most certainly tried (and started) the cheeks from the head and absolutely found them to be extremely tender and flavorful. From this point on, I will definitely not be wasting the head.
Thing #6: I will not waste any pig this time around Verdict: 5 hogs
As a reminder, last time close to a quarter of the pig fell onto the ground of the cinder block pit due to carelessness on my part, although I was able to salvage most of what fell. Thankfully, that did not happen this time around but next time I will use the grated screen next time so I could cook the pork butts on that instead of resting in the cavity of the pig. The consistency of the butts didn’t quite come out the way I wanted.
Thing #7: I’m going to recruit a crew to not only help out but enjoy the cook Verdict: 4 hogs
I had a crew of folks hanging out for the start of the pig cook with a couple of guys even making it until about 3am and helping me flip the pig before they went to their respective homes. And not only did they help flip the pig but they came through in the clutch with a late night McDonald’s order of cheeseburgers. Then, in the morning, my neighbor came back out for an hour or two to see where he could be of help. And then, of course, I have to mention the guys helping me serve the crowd.
Final Tally: 26 hogs (out of a possibly 35)
The main thing for next time is figuring out the best way to crisp up the pork skin. The pig turned out amazing but that will be next level for me. Until next time!
Monk: My dad spent 3 years at Eastern Carolina University in the early 1970’s before transferring back home to Raleigh to finish up his studies. His last time there was approximately 4 years before Bill McLawhorn set up a barbecue restaurant in a former grocery store on the edge of town. Nearly 52 years later on a Saturday morning in mid April, I was happy to introduce him to the majesty of B’s Barbecue.
Of course, I’m no expert when it comes to B’s, having been for the first time just four years ago. But knowing his tastes when it comes to barbecue I knew he’d be a big fan. Him and my mom were coming from an overnight stop in Wilson and we were staying a mile down the road for a gymnastics meet so I told him to meet me there at 8:30 Saturday morning to put us in good shape for the line that would eventually form. Turns out that put us first in line by a good 10-15 minutes before anyone else started showing up.
Dad put me in charge of the order for everyone (including a couple of pounds to bring back west) and we took it back to the lobby of our hotel to eat a good old fashioned eastern Carolina barbecue breakfast.
But not before I snapped a few photos in the smokehouse, which I didn’t do last time but the guys were more than happy to let me do. I get the feeling that this isn’t a unique request by visitors.
My dad was rather taken by the barbecue and ate it up, with some contented sighs along the way. It was every bit as good as I recalled and I was happy I was able to introduce it to him. I don’t know how much longer the McLawhorn daughters will keep the business running as they have since their dad retired early 2000’s but I hope to get another time or two in myself. Truly a 5 hog meal.
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