Brisket and ‘Texas Twinkies’ best sellers at Smokin Bones BBQ
Eddie Stuckey opened his Smokin Bones BBQ trailer last year on the Far East Side and did well, especially selling brisket and something he calls Texas Twinkies.
The Twinkies are jalapeno poppers with the seeds removed and then filled with cream cheese, cheddar cheese and brisket, and wrapped in bacon.
He said he got the idea from a restaurant in Florida and adapted it. “We’re barbecue. Everybody loves the brisket. So, I added the brisket in there and the cheddar cheese came later.”
A twist on jalapeno poppers, Eddie Stuckey guts the seeds out of the peppers for his “Texas Twinkies,” fills them with cream cheese, cheddar cheese and brisket, and wraps them in bacon.
Stuckey, 29, said when his Facebook followers shared his post about the Texas Twinkies, lots of people came to try them at the food cart he opened in July in front of Chimney & Fireplace Works, a business he co-owns at 43 S. Stoughton Road, near Milwaukee Street.
He got the food cart last April, and began by doing catering, using a base kitchen nearby at Gaylord Catering.
With COVID-19 putting an end to events, Stuckey decided to keep the cart in one spot.
He’s waiting on a new point-of-sale system and plans to reopen the cart by the second week of May.
“Everybody loves the beans,” said Stuckey, adding that he has one customer who comes almost every day to get the beans that he makes with red pepper, onion, brown sugar and his homemade Kansas City-style barbecue sauce with ketchup and vinegar.
Stuckey, who grew up in Beloit and moved to Monona nine years ago, started experimenting with barbecue in 2014 when he found a smoker outside a bar he operated in the town of Richmond, between Whitewater and Delavan.
He started playing around with the smoker, serving ribs and pulled pork at the bar.
He didn’t renew his lease for the Richmond House Pub after a year, he said, because of its remote location.
In 2017, Stuckey got injured in a grease fire at his Monona home and spent a month in intensive care and underwent six surgeries on his right hand.
Stuckey said his hand is still uncomfortable some days, especially when it’s dry out, but he was able to go back to smoking meat and catering events.
As for the cart, it’s gone better than Stuckey expected. “People really loved the food and word of mouth really got around fast.”
After he made a Facebook post, someone shared news of his cart on Nextdoor, the neighborhood social media platform, and business took off, he said. Because his location gets a lot of traffic, drivers spot him and circle back to the frontage road, he said.
When Stuckey owned the Richmond House, he introduced specials that included ribs and pulled pork. Stuckey was a chimney sweep with no professional experience cooking or running a bar or grill, but said his mother has a management background. “So, anything I really needed to know, I would ask her.”
Eddie Stuckey expects to reopen his Smokin Bones BBQ trailer by the second week of May. He parks it in front of Chimney & Fireplace Works, a business he co-owns at 43 S. Stoughton Road.
On his website, Stuckey writes that Smokin Bones BBQ can put together a simple meal for a dozen people, but can also “manage a buffet for a crowd of hundreds (or thousands).”
Stuckey said when he caters big events, he’s able to call on his friend who runs Papa’s BBQ trailer on Broadway in Monona to help him with extra smoker space.
He’s not sure if he could really serve “thousands,” he said, laughing. “But I would definitely try to pull it off if it ever happened.”
