Category Archives: Cookouts

Thanksgiving 2009.

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This year Julie and I once again stayed in Chicago for Thanksgiving.  We had some friends over and fried a turkey.  As you can tell be the photograph above we’ve pushed our luck by going with a 13.9 lb turkey.  This was by far the most dangerous frying attempt we’ve ever made.  It took several tense minutes of easing the turkey into the oil to keep the pot from over flowing.  Moving forward we will stick to a 10-12 lb turkey (and I won’t wear flip flops during the frying process).

All of the food turned out great and a good time was had by all.

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Side notes:
* The aftermath:
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** Previous turkey frying: New Years 2008 & New Years 2009.
*** At least it didn’t end this way:  Columbus Dispatch – Turkey fryer ignites, spoiling family’s holiday.
**** Everything I know about deep frying I learned from Jack & Eddie.

Fourth of July BBQ.

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Yesterday was our second annual Fourth of July BBQ and once again I spent the better part of the day smoking ribs.  This year we changed things up a little bit.  We didn’t use nearly as much rub (Dinosaur BBQ’s Cajun Foreplay Spice Rub) and we also smoked the ribs for a longer time (6.5 hours).  This made a huge difference in my opinion.  The ribs were much more tender and the taste from the rub wasn’t over the top.  When the ribs were done smoking I put them in foil and covered them with Dinosaur BBQ’s Sensuous Slathering Sauce and then threw them back on the grill for about another hour.  For table side sauce we tried some new stuff from Rufus Teague which was great.

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Despite raining the entire day the weather let up around 7pm which was perfect.  We had a good showing and we might have finished off the bottle of Singleton.  A good time was had by all.

Beer Can Chicken (2nd Attempt).

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Yesterday I made my second attempt at a Beer Can Chicken.  This time instead of a masonry jar I used a beer can chicken roasting rack.  I like to believe this made all the difference.  I used a ‘Kickin’ Chicken’ rub, about 6oz. of Brooklyn Lager and I basted the chicken with butter, oil and some more beer.  The whole chicken took a little over 2 hours on a weber charcoal grill.  I think it could have gone another 15 minutes to make the skin more crisp but we’ll have to wait for football season to test that hypothesis.

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The rest of my photographs are on Flickr here.