This is how Kenny Lorenz, the owner of HEK Yeah BBQ in Phoenix, Arizona, starts his day.

This is a BBQ joint and so some things only happen when they do, such as arriving to start prepping. Once the ball gets rolling the situation of what’s dealt with is fluid, though there’s an urgency to everything. The black cabinet of greasy horrors where things get smoked has to be fired up and the wood that will be part of the process is selected.

Oak and pecan are what’s on hand right now. If apple is around it will find its way into the mix too. With the wood now burning and the propane warming the main box to about 250 degrees, it’s time to start prepping the meat that will enter the smoker.

Somewhere prior to today the spice rub was mixed up, pounds of the stuff. Starting with a five-gallon bucket large measures of spice are joining the mix. While in India this might be just one more masala, here in BBQ land the rub is part of the secret that imparts some of the unique characteristics of the finished grub. While I won’t be sharing the exact blend, I can share with you that Kenny throws in brown sugar, salt, pepper, garlic, onion, paprika, and chili powder.

In between Kenny has to make the rounds as half of everyone who comes to the restaurant knows him. Being an owner with front-of-the-house skills creates a dilemma for the operation as things may not always run as smoothly as everyone would like. With Kenny sitting down with customers, friends, and extended family it’s inevitable that the task he was working on will end up suffering in neglect until the conversations wrap up.

Around this time the BBQ sauces are probably being introduced to someone in the dining room. Kenny makes his own sauces in-house and recently has been giving serious consideration to bringing them out for shoppers in the Phoenix area. Right now though it’s only available right here at HEK Yeah. What’s in the sauce you might ask? It’s a mix of tomato puree, salt, black and white pepper, cayenne pepper (though not in the sweet sauce while ghost chili is added to the Ghost sauce) cumin, paprika, chili powder, celery seed, onion powder, dark brown sugar, molasses, Worcestershire sauce, butter, green chili, cider vinegar, Franks Red Hot sauce, and lemon juice. Cook it up and you have some BBQ sauce whose exact recipe is only known to Kenny.

The smoking box is quickly filling with sausages and ribs before he adds pork shoulder butts. Then it’s time to get serious about the meat that brings people back and again and again, including Caroline and I for our weekly indulgence: the Mighty Brisket.

Trimming the brisket is essential. He starts by removing the deckle which is a hard and dense piece of fat that will never cook or add any value to the final product. Next up is trimming the fat cap to about half an inch. On the fatty end of the brisket is where you’ll find the “point,” this gets sliced off for making burnt ends. Once trimmed, he coats and massages the meat with olive oil which helps the spice mix adhere to the brisket.

For these 20-pound slabs of prime brisket the rub changes. Previous experiments proved unsuccessful and his BBQ rub just didn’t produce what Kenny was looking for and so now the spice mix is a much more simple coating of salt, pepper, and garlic. Into the smoker they go for 15-18 hours, dependent upon the weight of the brisket. When the meats don’t find their way out of the kitchen quick enough, Kenny can find himself here well after midnight checking on the internal temperature of the brisket. Good thing he lives nearby.

At 185 degrees at the center of the brisket, it’s time to remove it from the smoker. Slice into it and start serving it up. If only we could coordinate all of our visits to when he’s pulling a brisket out we’d be in perpetual meat heaven.

This is the pork shoulder butt I mentioned above being generously dusted with Kenny’s BBQ rub.

After coming out of the smoker there’s still some baking that is required that will draw off an incredible amount of liquid. Prior to going into the oven, the shoulder is covered in brown sugar that contributes to the drippings so after the pork is pulled not only will be smokey but will also have a good hint of sweetness.

Back at the smoker, the pork ribs are starting to develop a crust and the fat will continue to render off the ribs until that moment when Kenny brings them into the kitchen for serving to us customers. HEK Yeah also serves up pulled chicken and a number of sides, but you get the idea of the process and what meats are served here.

The front of the house is a subdued low-budget place in a nondescript strip mall on the edge of a sketchy part of town. While it would fit in anywhere in Los Angeles and be the place people line up for, HEK Yeah is not a franchise, doesn’t look like one, and the fact is that many people in Phoenix seems averse to driving more than half-a-dozen miles to get food so as of this writing it’s still incredibly easy to get a table. Now if Kenny has everything on hand that’s another question.

There are times where for some strange quirk of the universe there are runs on brisket or a catering that was simply too profitable creates the situation that you might not get what you want here. I’ve made it a habit to call first and ask for exactly what I want. Matter of fact this particular evening Kenny is indulging Caroline and me with a smoked prime rib after I asked for something special. Probably due to the neighborhood, many customers here are sensitive to the price of things and on the rare occasion there are beef ribs on the menu, they somehow and sadly DON’T sell out. This is beyond my imagination as they are perfect, but at $20 a pound including the bone I’ve heard customers ask if they could buy a portion without the bone.

Mom & Pop restaurants become rarer and rarer in our city with the majority desiring bland conformity over diversity and flavors they aren’t accustomed to from factory-made foods. HEK Yeah BBQ can at times seem a bit random and chaotic, they won’t have a Michelin Star on the door any time soon, but when it comes to tasty honest to goodness BBQ Kenny is right up there with places only found in Texas, North Carolina, and Georgia.

Finally, the last image above was tonight’s dinner of prime rib with asparagus. I honestly do not know of one other restaurant in all of Arizona that truly smokes a prime rib bringing it to a perfect 135 degrees. Served up with garlicky asparagus and all the Atomic horseradish we wanted. This was the perfect close to a day hanging out with Kenny on 4/20 at HEK Yeah BBQ. You can find him Tuesday through Sunday at 15044 N. Cave Creek Rd in Phoenix, Arizona, and on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HekYeahBbq/.

Not even a month ago I converted nearly 10 pounds (4.5kg) of ginger into fermented ginger. My thought back on February 25th was that I was making enough to last a year, but here we are not even 30 days later and we have already used more than half of what I had prepared. Today I was able to recruit Caroline to help peel the ginger while I went to work slicing it into thin pieces roughly the size of matchsticks.

It’s now two hours later from when we started and while all 10 pounds of fresh ginger has been peeled, I’m not even halfway through slicing it. Even if I wanted to be satisfied with only dealing with half of it today, I can’t because I need to get this finished and put it into jars. The next tough part of the process is pressing the water out of the salted ginger, rinsing, and squeezing until I’m ready to let it sit out overnight in lime juice and more salt before placing it in jars and covering it in oil. Such is the work required for enjoying one of life’s rare luxuries.

What a process this has been. This past weekend I bought more than 10 pounds of ginger (4.5kg) and by the time I was done preparing it I had reduced it to less than 6 pounds or 2.7kg. After peeling I had to slice it into very thin matchsticks and apply a generous amount of salt. I kneaded this for a short while and removed a large amount of water. Rinsed the ginger, salted it again, kneaded some more, drained, rinsed, and pressed as much water out of as I could before working through this procedure a third and fourth time. I finally added a cup (240ml) of lime juice and about 2 tablespoons of salt to the shredded ginger.

From there I transferred the spicy concoction into a couple of quart jars with loose-fitting lids that I  let sit overnight. Peeling this much ginger took me nearly 2 hours and slicing it took about 4 more, maybe 5. Pressing about a half gallon or about 1.7 liters of water from the ginger required about another hour. By shopping for the ginger at our local Chinese store I was able to buy the 10 pounds for only $11.50 or about €10.

After it sat overnight I had to squeeze as much fluid as I could out of the pickling ginger, place it in a clean jar, pat it down, cover it in peanut oil, and store it in the fridge. While it took about 10 hours between purchasing and preparation the luxury of being able to indulge in this delicacy cannot be understated.

This week we’ll be testing our homemade pickled ginger in the Burmese salad known as “Gin Thoke.” The last time we had this amazing salad was at Little Rangoon in Scottsdale, but sadly that restaurant is no longer here. Matter of fact there’s not a Burmese restaurant to be found in Arizona.

Two people working doesn’t allow a lot of time for the luxury of enjoying freshly prepared meals at home. While there is plenty one can do regarding food convenience, there is little we can afford to invest time-wise in the more intricate and extraordinary meals we could be indulging in. For example, this photo from nearly 10 years ago is from when I was learning how to prepare Burmese dishes at the now-closed restaurant called Little Rangoon in Scottsdale. The owner allowed me into her kitchen and shared with me how to make many of my favorites. For a time following the closure of that incredible place, I diligently made my laphet thoke (pickled green tea salad), jackfruit curry, and spinach with bamboo shoots that come with a smell that can clear a kitchen.

Recently as I’ve been able to recapture more of my time I tried catching up with my writing, scanning in old photos from slides and other materials to rid Caroline and me of stored stuff, and other things, but I have to admit that I’ve gotten rusty. Structuring our time when we have an abundance of it takes discipline and practice, sometimes we simply need reminders of what’s important. So it was just this past Friday when a friend and I visited a favorite Korean BBQ called Hodori out in Mesa, as we were driving along we passed Mekong Market and I made a note to return on our way out of Hodori. We wandered around nearly an hour as memories came flooding in about things I’d not thought about for years. I picked up half a dozen various fresh mushrooms to make an old favorite, then I spotted some great-looking lotus root and thought Caroline would love a bit of that in the coming week.

When I returned home and put away my treasures, I got to thinking about my old Burmese favorites. Mind you that 10 years ago it was nearly impossible to find fermented green tea but lucky for us the owner of Little Rangoon gave us an entire quart along with a quart of shredded pickled ginger and a few packages of frozen shredded green mango so we could continue making Burmese thokes (salads) after she closed up shop. Googling the ingredients now I have a few choices. First off though I’d need some other ingredients and decided I wanted to check out Lee Lee International Supermarket in Mesa, to see if they were still open. After over half a dozen years not visiting them I was greatly relieved that they are still in business – I do not take that for granted here in Arizona. Turns out that Lee Lee carries small jars of pickled green tea although at $10 for 11 ounces it is on the pricey side. I broke out my old notebook with recipes from the time I hung out at Little Rangoon and scoured my photo directories for the images I had taken while preparing dishes to refresh my memory.

Earlier today I made a visit to the other branch of Lee Lee here in Arizona to pick up some other essentials along with 10 pounds of onions and a bunch of cilantro so I could prepare a curry base. Burmese curry is not like Thai, Japanese, Indian, or any other curry. These big differences between curries have always been a thorn in my side when I hear people exclaim that they don’t like curry, I’m always curious about which kind? Of course, they could probably be more honest about things and just blurt out that they don’t like trying new things and be done with it, but then they might come across as being small-minded. I cooked up my onions today with the cilantro and paprika (used just for coloring) and now have a gallon of the base that will be used for pork belly, jackfruit, fish, and maybe even some mango, coconut, squash, and shrimp curry.

Back to my original point about time. I still need to fetch some Thai green chilies, roast red chili flakes, make paprika/chili oil, cook us some sambal oelek to reduce it, and finally, wait on Amazon to send me the ingredients I couldn’t get locally. When the days arrive when I’ll prepare these dishes there is some fine chopping of various ingredients I’ll have to tend to, make fresh steamed brown rice, and then assemble things. It’s not so time-consuming as to compare to the effort that goes into a Thanksgiving dinner, but it’s also something that is not as quick as simply heating something up, calling in Uber for delivery, or going out.

During the coming months not only will I indulge Caroline and me with the fiery flavors of Burma/Myanmar, but I’ve picked up some green and red Szechuan peppercorns with the numbing characteristic that makes this pepper combo so intriguing, so we can try making Szechuan style water boiled fish here at home. I also bought a bottle of pomegranate molasses for Fesenjan which is a Persian chicken and walnut stew. I’ve been bored with S.A.D. – the Standard American Diet for a long time, which makes going out to eat a chore. Because the citizens of Phoenix enjoy their food bland and Americanized we are left with little choice but to make a better effort at home. With that said there is still a Chinese place or two that are worth the effort, but Thai food is sketchy and requires us to visit L.A. for something a bit more real. San Francisco and L.A. are our only choices for Burmese, while the best Italian food I’ve ever had can only belong to Andreoli Italian Grocer and the hands of Giovanni Scorzo.

In the photo: Broad bean salad in front, on its right are Thai chilies in fish sauce, above that is laphet thoke (pickled green tea salad), and top left is brown rice. This meal was enjoyed at Little Rangoon back in 2010.