Fourth of July BBQ.

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.

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).

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.

The rest of my photographs are on Flickr here.

The Hold Steady at the Taste of Randolph Street.

Sunday evening we headed over to the Taste of Randolph Street for some food and The Hold Steady. Despite walking over to the stage about 15 minutes before the show started we managed to get right up to the left of the stage. This of course put us right next to the massive speaker but we could see the stage fine.