I’m Dan Whittaker. Friends know me as Elky but I’m also now known as The Smokin’ Elk!
So how did The Smokin’ Elk come about? Through a pure love and addiction to the flame! Like most, I’d been ‘BBQing’ for many years, or at least I thought that’s what I was doing. Grilling the usual sausages, burgers and pre-marinated butcher packs on a gas BBQ, beer in hand, everything was right with the world. But then I started watching programmes like Man vs Food. Seeing Adam Richman tucking in to smoked ribs, pulled pork, brisket – I just had to sample this! So I started researching how to smoke my own food. This lead me to my first smoker purchase – a Weber Smokey Mountain. I finally pulled the trigger and couldn’t wait to get started.
The first cook? A smoked beer can chicken. I’ve seen beer can chicken on TV, it looked the business. I had friends over for a BBQ and this was the star of the show. The main event! I got the briquettes lit in the smoker and added my wood chunks. About 8 of them! Yep – my first ever smoked food and it was a total disaster. My guests tried to be polite – ‘mmm, you can definitely taste the smoke’ was pretty much the theme!
So after that disaster, I was keen to learn, keen to improve and keen to taste smoked meat how it should be, not cremated or tasting like it was cooked in a car exhaust! I looked online for resources, eventually coming across my biggest resource to date – the CountryWoodSmoke group on Facebook. I joined the group and then watched as my timeline would fill up with pictures of delicious food, all cooked outdoors on various BBQs. A whole new world opened up to me and I couldn’t wait to explore! I bought myself a Weber MasterTouch to complement the WSM and a Weber Spirit Gas grill. My techniques started to improve. The more I questioned, the more answers I got. The more I learnt, the better my cooks were. I was starting to turn out really good food, completely different to BBQ fare that I’d been used to. I was becoming addicted to cooking over fire!
Of course, as with most addictions they can spiral! I wasn’t happy with just my WSM, MasterTouch and Spirit. I sold the Spirit and replaced it with a Kamado Joe Classic. Wow – I fell in love with this beast of an all-rounder! I started doing overnight cooks – 15 hour smoked briskets, pork butts etc. I was finally starting to see what Adam Richman was so happy about when eating delicious smoked meats! Next up, I got myself a Big Joe because bigger is better right? This was then followed by a Thuros tabletop grill – ok maybe size doesn’t matter!
This shiny little grill became one of my favourite grills, perfect for midweek meals for me and the wife, being able to cook at the table while swigging beer in the sun – perfect! Since then, there have been numerous changes to the grill line-up but it now consists of a Weber Summit Charcoal, Weber Mastertouch, Weber Go Anywhere, Kamado Joe Classic, Big Joe, Thuros T1, Thuros B2, Joystove, Ooni Pro, a Kadai Fire Bowl and a huge new braai recently added to the ‘Live Fire Zone’. As my collection grew, I decided they needed a home so last year I decided to build a shack, complete with bar & Sky Sports of course!
So how did The Smokin’ Elk come about? Well I started posting a few food pics on my Facebook page and people seemed to really like them. A few suggested setting up an Instagram account so after a while, I set one up but didn’t really use it that often – I didn’t really know how! Then I decided I wanted to push myself and set myself a challenge of cooking outdoors as much as possible. In 2018, I targeted myself to do 200 outdoor cooks. This gave me a reason to start using Instagram – to keep on top of the challenge and to show people each of the cooks. It really started to take off and by the end of 2018, I’d completed the challenge and had amassed nearly 2000 followers which I was amazed with! Wanting to push myself further, I came up with my current challenge which is to cook a dish from every country in the world, all cooked outdoors over fire. That’s 195 countries in a year! Since starting the challenge, I’ve seen a couple of blogs online where people attempt to cook a dish from every country but not within a year and not cooked outdoors – I’d like to think that maybe I’m the first person to attempt this!
I’m now in the final month of the challenge so how has it gone? Great! I’m down to the last few countries and have loved (almost) every minute of it! I now have nearly 6000 people interested in what I’m doing, crazy! It’s been good to really push myself and I’m learning so many new flavours and techniques. Make no mistake – it’s been a lot of hard work and very time consuming but I love it. From researching the recipes (I have a spread sheet with every country in, what dish I’m going to cook, what meat is in the dish etc) to then finding the ingredients, prepping the dish or dishes depending on the country and then cooking it right and hoping it all comes together. I like to try and add my own little stamp on most of the dishes of course. A perfect example of this is Japan – I made Tonkotsu Ramen. Tonkotsu is made with pork broth – pigs trotters, ears and various other pigs bones. These are boiled for around 12 hours, until you’ve extracted every bit of flavour, every bit of gelatine, every bit of marrow from those bones. The result is a creamy coloured pork broth that is out of this world. I’d cooked a suckling pig a couple of days previous to this. This was my dish for the Philippines – lechon. I saved the carcass and used this for my Tonkotsu broth. I broke it down in to smaller pieces and then boiled it for 12 hours and the result was just perfect! It looked how it should, it was like jelly when cooled and when I put the final ramen bowl together, it was a bowl of pure joy!
The thing I like about Instagram is that I get a lot of interaction from others in the BBQ community or people that are keen to learn and find out more. I try to answer any questions I get and I really enjoy the interactive side of things. With the support of some fantastic brands, I was able to run some great competitions over the summer months where anyone could join in with my challenge. I would pick a country and then everyone had a few weeks to cook a dish related to that country. The beauty of it was that the dish had to be cooked outside. People really embraced it, some getting the whole family involved in prepping and cooking their dishes. I was really chuffed with how well it went and it was great to be able to offer some amazing prizes including Joy Stoves, Herb Fed Poultry hampers, Thuros grills and even giving away a brand new Kamado Joe grill! I plan on doing some more competitions next year so keep your eyes peeled.
So whats in store for next year? I haven’t set myself a challenge for 2020 – I’m looking forward to being able to cook what I want, when I want and putting in to practice a lot of what I’ve learnt this year. One things for sure, there will still be plenty of cooking over fire! I’ve also recently started a new YouTube channel which I’m aiming to grow in 2020. I’ll be producing a weekly video on all things ‘fire cooking’ so head on over to my channel and hit subscribe to follow my exploits. Who knows, maybe I’ll run some YouTube related competitions as well!
Well that’s it from me, I hope I haven’t bored you all with my journey! You can find me on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and now YouTube - @thesmokinelk. Give me a follow to see whats in store for 2020!
The Smokin’ Elk
The Smokin' Elk
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Here at UK BBQ Mag we love to focus on the personalities within the growing UK BBQ Scene, there are many who work hard to help grow and promote UK BBQ, through Social Media and events they attend, and we love hearing their stories, to hopefully inspire others. BBQ Bill Gardner interviews one such guy...