1^st Annual Tri-Cities BBQ Contest – September 23, 2005

Here it is, the first BBQ contest.  Who would have guessed it would be the start of Hot Grill on Grill Action.  After digging up the pictures and looking at the date it’s hard to believe that what seemed like just yesterday was over 6 years ago.

My wife Tasha had helped me get set up that morning for what was a going to be a one day event.  She later returned for awards and to help clean up, but from raw meat to turn-ins it was all me.  The categories were ribs, chicken and Tri-Tip.  I felt pretty confident going into this event even though the Tri-Tip category was new to me.  I had spent several weeks getting my Tri-Tip right.  I had purchased several nice big Tri-Tip roasts from the local butcher and mixed up a few dry rub options and ate well for a few weekends in a row (I love Tri-Tip).  Getting the roasts done the way I wanted them was the real trick that I had to figure out.  There’s a fine line between just right and overdone and with such a small relatively lean piece of meat that window is pretty small.  I knew what I was going to use on my spare ribs and had my chicken process just where I wanted it.  Regardless, I practiced both a couple of times to make sure.

What I do remember is how stressed out I was to be going at this alone.  Why was this so stressful?  It’s supposed to be fun right?  Afterall, it was a georgeous 65 degree day and I was finally competing, something that I’d wanted to do for several years.  One can never be too prepared for a contest.

I had spent the whole night prior to the event loading up everything I thought I would need.  One of the things I find humorous about looking at these pictures is the lack of equipment and gear that I had.  It’s funny to think that this simple one day event had me stressed out so much.  I can recall pacing around in my garage and going through my totes numerous times making sure I wasn’t forgetting anything.  As most of us know, you’re going to forget something almost every time going into a contest.

After arrival on site it didn’t take long to figure out that this was clearly a first annual event.  Now don’t get me wrong, I was just as unprepared as the contest reps for this event but I had anticipated working with a group of reps that could provide a bit of guidance.  This certainly added to the stress levels especially since the only person present that knew what to do was the county health inspector which for whatever reason was brought in to assist.  Don’t get me wrong, food safety is surely important but this guy was a HUGE pain in the pork shoulder!

My set up was simple, two tables an 8’ x 8’ canopy an 18” WSM and a Weber Kettle.

I had prepared 12 boneless chicken thighs, 2 racks of ribs and 2 Tri-Tip Roasts.  The kettle and WSM both ran flawlessly.  I cooked the ribs on the WSM and had also started the Tri-Tip there to get a bit of smoke on it.  I had cooked the chicken on the kettle.  After the chicken was done I moved the Tri-Tip over to the kettle to get a sear on the outside.

Did I mention that the meat was provided?  Upon entering the contest I was excited to not have to pick up the meat from the store.  Unfortunately when I picked up my meat from the reps I was handed partially frozen chicken thighs, two racks of Baby Back ribs with one rack having broken bones in it and two really small Tri-Tip Roasts.  In an effort to thaw out my chicken I left it sitting out on the table in its package which sparked the interest of the health inspector.  This guy was comical.  I simply explained that they were being left out to thaw a bit before cooking them which he wasn’t having.  At this point I decided to request new chicken and figured I’d go for some new ribs as well hoping to get some that didn’t have any broken bones.  Having received neither I continued along my process of thawing the chicken which really chaffed the health inspector.  He began to pick on me by asking where my hot water was and threatened that if I didn’t have hot water in the next 30 minutes I was going to be asked to leave the contest.  I ignored this request after having taken a quick glance around to see if anyone else had hot water on site which only one team did.  Also, I had no way to heat water?  I surely wasn’t giving up my cooking space to heat water, I was there to compete.  When the inspector came back 30 minutes later to no hot water he was furious.  Just as I was going to point out the fact that I wasn’t the only one without hot water the neighboring team had overheard the previous conversations and had put a pot of water on his firebox for “us to share”.  Ahh, the camaraderie of BBQ cooks runs deep!  This had satisfied this point with the inspector but the chicken was still a problem.  I threw the chicken in the cooler to satisfy him until he left then took it back out and placed in my tote with my BBQ supplies.

After the Chicken and Rib categories were complete I thought I was going to “own” this little event.  Everything had gone as planned with these categories and were done to my liking.  Then came the Tri-Tip.  The roasts that they had provided were much smaller than those that I had practiced with.  I remember throwing one of them that was a bit bigger on 30 minutes earlier than the smaller of the two.  This attempt to get them done properly gained me nothing.  I should have put them both on at the same time in hopes that one would be done perfectly.  Both came out over cooked and I knew that this was not my day for Tri-Tip.  This just goes back to practice and in this case the lack thereof.  You can never practice too much for these things.

There were 11 teams consisting of competitors from the local casinos, the police, fire department and radio personalities.  Overall, I came in 7^th with the local DJ coming in first followed by one of the casino teams.  This was a great event and a memory that will last forever.  Most importantly to me, it was the birth of who we are and what we represent today.  Hot Grill on Grill Action!!

So, you love pizza – who doesn’t?  Well, I think if you follow the guts of this recipe and use your own favorite ingredients, you can make yourself a pizza that beats anything you can get at any chain, local or brick oven joint in your area.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1 tablespoon yeast
• 1 cup hot water
• 2 cups marinara sauce
• 1 whole chicken breast
• 1 package of pepperoni (we use turkey)
• 1 whole red bell pepper
• 1 whole tomato
• 1/4 red onion
• 1 whole ball of fresh mozzorella cheese
• some parmesan cheese and crushed red pepper to top your pizza when done if you want it

Directions:

Make your dough about 5 hours before you want to start cooking. 

Here’s how: 

• Combine yeast, sugar and warm water in a glass measuring cup.  Mix gently and let sit at least 5 minutes until yeast activates.
• In a large bowl, add all the flour and using a spoon, form a ‘bowl’ of flour to pour the yeast mixture into. 
• Once the yeast mixture is ready, pour it onto the flour and mix. 
• Cover with a towel and let rest on the counter for 5 hours or more until it rises into a large pile of dough. (note: you can rest this in the fridge overnight if you prefer.)
• After the 5 hours, begin kneading the dough with your hands, adding flour as needed so it doesn’t stick.
• I broke this mixture into 2 equal parts for two pizzas   

• Prep two ‘trays’ to begin forming your pizza crust.  I used these plastic plates and sprinkled corn meal and a little bit of flour on them so the dough doesn’t stick.  In the pick with my hand, you can get a idea for the size of the plate 

• At this point, it’s time to preheat your grill.  Preheat the grill so it’s about as hot as you can get it.  My gas grill hits about 550 degrees and I like it that way.  It needs to be plenty hot as the crust will go directly onto the grate.  If it isn’t pre-heated enough, the crust will ‘melt’ into the grill and won’t firm up properly.

• Then begin spreading the dough onto the trays so they are completely covered, like so: 

• Next, brush each crust with olive oil until completely covered.  This is critical so the crust doesn’t stick to the grate on the grill

• Now you are ready to start grilling your pizza crust!  It is a two step process.  You’ll first grill the side you just oiled up, then you’ll be topping that grilled side with all the goodies you want.  Once you have it all topped, you will grill the other side with the ingredients on it.  Technically, you could do this process hours before you’re ready to top the crust – so if you are planning a dinner party and want everyone to have their own crust, you could make up all the crust to just past this next step and then let everyone top their own pie and grill them up two at a time, or however many fit on your cooker

• You are going to need to oil the other side of this crust while it is cooking the previously oiled side.  When you toss the crust on, this will be your only chance to do so because it’ll be flipped back over onto the plate.  I prep my grill and bring everything out so it’s ready.  Notice the bowl of oil and brush waiting on the right hand side before I put the crust on.  Be prepared!  These things cook quickly!

• Open your grill and then very quickly in one smooth motion, flip the plate upside down onto the grill, carefully removing the plate so the crust doesn’t come off with it (it might stick..just be careful and take your time removing). 

•  Then oil the side that is up and close the lid. 

• While the crust is cooking, sprinkle some more corn meal onto your plates so the newly oiled side doesn’t stick when you return them to the plate.

• Cook the crust for 3 – 4 minutes – TOPS – just until the crust begins to lose it’s flexibility and is easily moved around on the grill with a spatula.  The sign to look for is that the top of the crust will begin bubbling.  That means it’s almost done.  Pry a spatually under there and look at the bottom until it is done like it shows in the pictures below.  When you get it to this point, carefully flip the crust again and return it to the plates like so:

• Now you are ready to top!  I used (1) ground chicken breast, which I ground up in a food processor so I know it’s fresh, then seasoned with italian seasoning and cooked in a skillet, turkey pepperoni, red bell pepper, sauteed red onion, chopped fresh roma tomatos, a marinara sauce I like and sliced fresh mozzerella cheese.  Here are some pics of the ingredients and prep.

•  Now you can top your crust with whatever you like!

• Now that you have a ‘grill ready’ pie – let’s go back to your grill and finish these up!  Again, it should still be as hot as you can get it – right around 550 degrees.  Carefully slide them off the plate and grill for another 4 – 7 minutes or until the bottom crust looks just like the top did when you took it off.  Another sign is that your pizza should be very stiff.  This way you know it will slice up and can be handled without flopping around.  The key is to get the crust extremely crispy on the top and bottom and using this method, it will be very chewy, moist and soft in the middle.  Keep the lid closed as much as you can for the 4 – 7 minutes so the ingredients on top cook up and the cheese melts completely.

•  After you feel like they are done, you are ready to eat!  Transfer them to a cutting board of some type and slice away and enjoy!  I think the rest of the post – the pics speak for themselves.

                                                                         Best of luck with your Pizza cooking!

Here is a recipe I made with some smoked chicken that turned out awesome!  It was my first crack at homemade tamales….and though it was mildly time consuming – it was well worth it.

Here are the ingredients:

• 6 cups Corn Mesa Mix
• 6 cups Chicken or Beef broth (match with meat selection; chicken broth for pork)
• 1/2 cup corn oil
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 – 3 lbs of smoked chicken, brisket or pork! (you could also use 2 store bought cooked roaster chickens for simplicity sake – a local store in Omaha, SuperSaver, sells them smoked)
• 2 cans salsa; I personally use homemade from the garden – but a good mexican salsa works well.  Tomatoes, cilantro and jalepeno would be all you need.
• 1 bag corn husks

Instructions

• Soak the corn husks in warm water until soft.
• Blend with an electric mixer Mesa corn mix for tamales, corn oil, salt, baking powder and the chicken broth to obtain a consistent mixture.

• Shred the meat selection (this is chicken) and marinate in the salsa for 60 minutes in the fridge

• Spread masa evenly over corn husks, and spread a spoonful of marinated chicken on top of the masa.

• Place the tamales in a steamer (or in my case a steamer pot, which I’ll cover with another pot as a lid!) and cook tamales for 45-60 minutes.

• Check every 20 minutes.The tamales are cooked when they separate easily from the corn husk.  It may take longer than I specify depending on how often you open the lid and the type of steamer!
• Let them cool quite a bit before eating – they get better with time and can be reheated in the microwave perfectly!

I like to top them off with a Mexican Chile Gravy recipe I came up with.  I highly recommend it!

Ingredients

• 1 TBSP Butter (you can add more of this up to 1/4 cup for even more rich flavor, but I like to keep the calories out)
• 4 TBSP flour
• 1/2 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons powdered garlic
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon dried Mexican oregano
• 2 tablespoons chili powder
• 2 cups chicken broth

Directions

• Take about 1/4 cup of the chicken broth and whisk the flour into it, slowly.  Creating a smooth paste.  (Hint:  This trick works well for any gravy and avoids the clumps flour can create!)
• Heat all the other ingredients to a mild boil and whisk in the flour paste you made above. 
• Whisk constantly until the gravy is the thickness you desire, over low to medium heat – about 10 minutes.
• You can add or subtract the flour to your liking – totally up to you!
• Use this gravy on top of your tamales and enjoy!

Hope you enjoy!

I was performing some searches online to find the finished cook weight of an average whole chicken and it became very frustrating when I couldn’t find ANYTHING!

I have a general idea – but wanted other opinions.  After no luck, I decided to cook 6 birds and get the average.  With that – I decided it would be valuable to post a general overview of all the meats we’ve cooked, provide their finished yield and our estimate tools for serving a party, catering an event or otherwise.

We follow this general rule when estimating costs and quantities for providing smoked meats to a party, event or otherwise.  We always prefer to have leftovers available, whether it is for a client or our own personal party – so we estimate conservatively. Some folks like to figure differently based on how many meats, sides, etc are being served and that is probably a good idea. You’ll just want to use your own judgement in that regard – if you know a ton of other food is going to be served – just scale it back!  These estimates are basically “worst case” scenario…meaning…you’ll have lots of STUFFED people!

To calculate how much food we need for any event – we estimate that (1) pound of total finished product will feed (2.6) people. As an example – for a party of (26), you would need 10lbs of finished product – regardless of how many meats. A more complex calculation would be – if you were to have a party for (100) – you’ll need to take (100) and divide by (2.6), which gets you to roughly 38lbs of finished product needed, rounded to the nearest whole number.  This could be split, as an example, into 10bls of brisket, 10 lbs of pulled pork, 10lbs of pulled chicken and 8lbs of sliced pork loin….or any combination that gets you to the total of 38 and remember – this is FINISHED weight/yield…not starting weight of the product.

All meats have a starting weight – which is the weight at purchase on the label - and a finished weight – which is cooked weight after moisture loss, bones, fat, trimming, etc.  I want to throw out a disclaimer:  This is not an exact science!  It is only an average.  There are several unpredictable variables such as the distributor pumping a pork butt with lots of juice before packaging or larger bones or just a generally more fatty piece that ususal.  These estimates are intended to avoid situations like this because they are conservative and on the high end….they have had yet to fail us (if having leftovers is no issue to you!). 

Here are our findings, over a long period of time, averaged, for finished weight calculation on several meats.  As we cook more – we’ll add to this list so bookmark the post!

For each item below – take the total starting weight (from the package) and multiply it by the percentage.  This will give you a good estimate for what the trimmed, finished and cooked product weight will be:

• Brisket: 43%
• Pork Butt: 50%
• Pork Loin: 65%
• Whole Roaster Chicken (4 – 7lbs): 34%
• Whole Turkey: 50%

In addition to these, we often are asked to provide other meats that are less of a poundage calculation and more of a quantity.  Though it varies by order – these are generally our rules:

• Pork or Beef Ribs:  2 people per rack if this is the only meat item, otherwise 3 people per rack
• Featherbones:  1 person per uncooked lb if this is the only meat item, otherwise 2 people per pound
• Chicken Pieces (any):  2.5 pieces per person if this is the only meat item, otherwise 1.5 per person
• Sausage: This is never our main meat item, but as an accessory we figure about 4 people per lb of uncooked sausage, sliced into bite sized chunks

Stay tuned to the post!  It will be added to as often as we cook new meats!

-HGOGA

Pulled chicken is one of the most delicious smoked meats you’re going to get your taste buds on. It’s also one of the healthiest. It is far superior to grilling chicken. It requires more patience as it takes on average 3-4 hours to do, not counting prep time. The end product is the most juicy, succulent, and tasty chicken you will ever eat. It is well worth the wait. Today, I am going to demonstrate just how easy it is to make pulled chicken from a whole chicken (using techniques bestowed upon me by the Chicken King of the Midwest, pitmaster Matt Frampton, a fellow author on this site.

The first thing you need to do is butterfly the chicken. For this, go to Matt’s Post entitled “how to butterfly a chicken.” You will be doing yourself a disservice not to start here:

http://www.bbqrevolution.com/how-to-butterfly-a-chicken/

 Rig: The Weber Silver One Touch Kettle Grill.

Ingredients:

-1 whole chicken

-1 cup apple juice

-4 tbsp salted butter

-Spray bottle

-Your favorite chicken rub

First, you’ll need to set the kettle grill to operate in smoke mode. To do this, use charcoal separates to hold charcoal one a small portion of 1 side of the grill. Add a small bed of coals ant then add a few chunks of your favorite wood on top (apple and/or hickory are good choices). Use a charcoal starter to get a few coals lit and place them un top off the unlit coals. Now we’re smoking!

use a charcoal separater, add only a few chuncks of smoke wood

Note: chicken can be smoked at a wide range of temperatures (225 to 350). For this cook, I will cook around 250-275.

Step 1: Butterfly the chicken.

Step 2. Melt the 4 tbsp of butter and combine with the 1 cup of apple juice. This will be our injection. Pump the bird full if this injection. Just get the needle under the skin, you will see the bird swell up as the skin holds in the inject.

Step 3: Add your rub to the chicken. Season both sides of chicken. For this cook, I am using garlic salt and McCormick’s Smoke house pepper seasoning. Cover the skin in the rub.

Kettle is set up, birds are seasoned, let's BBQ!

Step 4: Add your bird to the smoker. Do not place any part of the bird directly over the coals. If you do, you are not going to smoke your chicken, you’re going to be grilling it.

Step 5. Every hour into the cook spray the bird with apple juice. This will help retain moisture as well as add some sweetener to flavor.

spray with apple juice every hour for moisture and for a natural sweetener

Step 6. Once the bird is cooked to 175 (in the breast area), remove the bird and let it rest for 15 minutes. You can also take the temp in the drum/leg area, where the meat is also thick.

step 7. Carefully remove the skin. Use can use a knife and cut out the skin.  Try to keep the skin in as few pieces as possibe. This chunks of skin will become your “dirty rags” in step 9.

Step 8. Grab the legs and pull off the body. Repeat on the wings. Pull the meat off the chicken bones  into bite size chucks. You can separate the dark meat (leg area) and white meat (breast area) if desired. The picture in step 9 shows the dark meat on the left and white on the right.

step 9.  Time to use the dirty rag technique. Remember the skin that you seasoned at the beginning of the cook and subsequently removed in step 7?  That’s your “dirty rag.” Our chicken expert Matt coined this soon to be buzz word on the BBQ circuit. Take the skin you removed, mix it and the chicken together repeatedly . You will see that the chicken meat now looks freckled with the seasoning from the skin. Continue this until you have ragged all the meat. Make sure to remove the rags(skin) from the pulled chicken.

Mix the pulled chicken with the rags and you will be left with seasoned pulled chicken!

Step 10: Enjoy the feast!!! 

The best part is the leftovers can be used for anything from smoked chicken enchiladas to smoked chicken lasagna… you name it.

Long story short here, there are tons of recipes for smoked chicken and I will post some of them I have used. In the end, however, I feel that butterflying the chicken serves many purposes that benefit the cook. The bird cooks more quickly, it allows easier access for injecting and seasoning to all areas of the bird and it makes the cutting / pulling process after cook MUCH easier, since all the sections are nicely laid out as you’ll see below.

For this cook, I started with 2 whole birds from Bag n Save in Omaha. I placed them in foil pans because I hate messes and even more..I hate clean up.  This allows me to toss the pans when I’m done.  They are your basic Tyson whole chicken come just like this:

From here, you’ll need to open up the chickens from the package and wash them as much as you can at this point.  It might be slightly frozen still…which is OK.  Just run some cool water to wash and it will begin to soften up for handling.  You’ll want to place the chicken wings up with the legs pointed right at your belly.

Once you have it situated, you will remove the backbone.  Start by cutting with some kitchen shears as close to the backbone as possible so you don’t waste too much meat and cut all the way down to the neck.  You can see how I started this here:

Continue cutting down the backbone and then repeat on the other side.  Once you have both cuts complete, you can start to pull away the chicken halves and remove the backbone completely.  It’s nice to get this out as it’s a tough bone to work around when pulling / slicing and really only holds trivial, low quality meat anyway.

Now pull the backbone out and set it aside, like so:

Now is the time to clean out all the guts and other material that looks nasty out of here.  You can see….this doesn’t look very tasty:

At this point, we want to start getting the bird flattened out so it sits nicely on the smoker or grill.  Simply grab both sides of the bird and pull them apart gently until you feel the breast bone begin to break….just enough to get it opened up nice and wide.  After we wash it – we’ll flatten it out from the top side.  Once you have it opened up – run the entire bird under cold water using your hands and fingers to clean out all the guts and odd looking pieces as well as any “spur” type feeling material that’s in here.  This is the best time to get all this out of here and will make your finishing steps much easier so you don’t have to pick through it later.  Don’t hesitate to use a knife or scissors during this process.  Whatever you need.

Once it’s all washed up, check it out.  It should look like this:

Now you are set to make it sit flat and pretty up the way you want it to lay in the smoker.  I like to have mine skin side up…so I finagle it until I have the positioning I like in the smoker…just to make sure it’ll go that way once it’s seasoned up and ready to cook.  You want to keep the wings and legs tucked in as much as possible, while also allowing for as much of the skin and meat to get hit with smoke.  It’s a fine balance between keeping in moisture and giving it smoke.

Flattened out, it should look like this:

Now you’re all set!!  Season that bad boy up, inject it, whatever you want to do to it to make it delicious.

Like I said – I like mine skin side up while smoking so I put it in the smoker and leave it alone the entire cook..just as you see it directly above.  This allows for the most smoke to hit the meat and allows for the skin to get a nice color and all those seasonings you put on top to run into the meat…as well as the fat from the skin…which will break down during the cooking process.

Good luck – hope this helps!

First, I purchased two (2) family packs of Tyson chicken thighs from my local Bag N Save grocery store.  I laid them all out on the counter and trimmed and prepped them as normal, cutting off all the excess skin, fat and weird bones and veins and stuff like that.  Basically, anything I wouldn’t want to eat.

I then marinaded the chicken for 2 hours in my normal chicken marinade in a 1 gallon zipper bag.

It consists of:

• 1 Cup Buttermilk
• 2 tablespoons of Ranch Dressing Mix
• 4 tablespoons of the Spicy BBQ Chicken Rub (I always use the rub I plan to use for the chicken for this ingredient)

After the marinade, I preheated the oven to 350 and removed the chicken thighs from the bag, letting all the excess drip back into the bag and placed them skin down in a large foil roaster pan.

I generously coated the meat side of the thighs with the Spicy BBQ Chicken Rub and patted them down.

Then, the thighs were flipped over to skin side up.

Here’s the new technique I’m trying:
Generously coat the skin of each thigh with Real Kraft Mayo, leaving a nice solid Mayo base.  Then coat the tops of the thighs with the rub, pat it in with your hands and wrap the skin around the sides of the thigh (using the bone as the center line) for nice little packages.  Here’s what they looked like in the pan before cooking:

To try to make up for not cooking in the smoker, I placed a smaller roasting pan in the oven with about 3/4″ of water and 20 or so drops of liquid smoke.

I cooked the thighs for 30 minutes at this temperature and this is what they looked like after that time.  You can see that the Mayo actually does appear to be doing something WONDERFUL to the skin.  They look great!!!  Oddly enough…they also look “smoked”…..

After the first 30 minutes, I lowered the temp to 225 and let some of the heat out of the oven to take it down to that temp more quickly, with the intention of cooking them from somewhere between 2.5 and 3.5 more hours at this temp.

Here’s the progress after another 60 mintues (90 total):

Again, I decided to take a quick look at the thighs, to see how progress is going.  They have now been cooking for 2.5 hrs total, the first 30 at 350 degrees and the last 2 hrs at 225.  I stuck a quick read thermo in the biggest thigh and it’s right at 173.  I think I’ll be safe to cook them at 225 for another 30 minutes – then I’m going to drain the juices from the pan and replace it with my favorite BBQ Sauce recipe.  Here’s what they look like now.

After an additional 30 minutes (3 hrs total, with the first 30 minutes at 350 and the last 2.5 hrs at 225) I pulled half of the thighs out and transferred the rest to a smaller pan and sauced them.

Take a look at the way the unsauced thighs bit!  Only the skin that I bit came with it.  I must say – the skin is about as good as I’ve had and the rub made the chicken taste extrodinary.  Maybe a bit too much thyme – but really good nonetheless.

Here’s a look at the thighs in the pan w/sauce

The sauced ones, in my opinion turned out even better.  The bite was the same, but the flavor profile was a bit more tasty.  I think these could be a winner.

Well….there you have it.  All in all I can say that these are probably the best overall competition quality thighs I have ever cooked.  If I can get the smoker to cook consistently at these temps, the turn out should be even better with real smoke.  I’m glad I did this, because to avoid the mess – I used a pan the entire time.  Had I tried this on the smoker, I would have put them direclty on a grate.  I am 100% convinced that these things stewing in their own juices, rub and the broken down mayo was what made the meat taste so good.

The buttermilk marinade, mayo application and cook temps did something very magical to the skin.  You can see it in the pics above.  Every single piece of chicken turned out exactly the same.  My wife took a piece and with a fork cut off a piece of the thigh to eat…skin and all.  A fork!!!  Cooked low and slow – this is almost unbelievable…but true.

Give it a shot and post your results!

1/4 cup of each of the following

• Paprika
• Seasoned Salt
• Raw Sugar

2 Tablespoons

• Crushed Red Pepper Flakes

1 tablespoon of

• Nutmeg
• Sage
• Black Pepper
• Cayenne
• Ranch Dressing Mix

Mix all ingredients in a coffee grinder and add one broken up Bay Leaf.  Pulse ingredients until it is blended well – but not until it is powdery.  Careful!  It’s a fine line!!!

Store in an air tight container until ready for use.  This is great on chicken…and I’m sure on ribs as well.  I’ll post my findings if I ever try it on ribs.

Here’s the finished product:

Ingredients

• 2 – packages (the 5 – 6 link) of your favorite Brats or Italian sausages (I use Hot Italian)
• 2 – sticks of unsalted butter, cut into small squares
• 2 - bottles of Warsteiner (or any dark beer works such as Negra Modelo)
• 1 – can store bought sauerkraut
• 10 – 12 Hoagie buns
• 1 – bottle Spicy mustard

Basic Directions

• Put butter and beer into large stock pot on the stove, medium – high heat
• Heat until butter melts completely
• Add sausages to stock pot
• Increase heat until you have a rapid boil
• In the meantime, prepare a grill for high heat, direct cooking
• Cook until most (if not all) liquid is gone without burning the sausages (probably 30 minutes or more)
• Remove sausages from stock pot
• Grill sausages 1 – 2 minutes per side to add a grilled look and taste
• Be careful and watch the sausages…all that butter and beer will make them burn quickly!!!
• Serve on soft hoagies with spicy mustard and sauerkraut or your favorite toppings and a bottle of Negra Modelo

Ingredients

• 2 family packs Tyson chicken wings (Sam’s or Costco)
• Pepper Blend Hot Sauce (Recipe: http://www.bbqrevolution.com/2009/08/30/pepper-blend-hot-sauce/)
• 2 cups Buttermilk
• 4 tbls Hidden Valley Ranch Seasoning Mix
• 2 tsp of fresh ground black pepper

Directions

• Combine pepper blend hot sauce, buttermilk, black pepper and ranch seasoning in a 2.5 gallon zip lock bag (or use (2) – 1 gallon bags and split the ingredients between the two).
• Mix sauces and seasonings well.
• Add wings to bag and ensure all air is removed from bag when closing
• Place bag flat on shelf in refrigerator, making sure wings are covered in sauce blend
• Allow to marinade at least 4 hrs, but not longer than 10 hrs
• Move wings from ziplock bag directly to grill or smoker and cook at 300 degrees for approximately 3.5 hrs or until done
• For extra heat - toss wings in a large bowl with lid in pepper blend hot sauce after cooking is complete