ATTN: Tailgaters - How would you like to be a published author?

fried turkey FTW!

… to do a regular tailgating / cooking feature here at RBR.

I’m curious how everyone else does their Bama Bombs. I typically go with soaking cherries in Southern Comfort for a couple of days, and then just eating them straight off toothpicks. I’ve thought about soaking them in Bacardi 151 or Moonshine and then lighting them on fire before tossing them in a Coke or Dr. Pepper, but that sounds silly. I know some folks swear by soaking them in vodka for a whole month, but that seems silly too. I too think we should do a regular tailgating/cooking feature. I’m (ashamedly) not planning on coming to Tuscaloosa for the A Day game, as I have tickets to see the Flaming Lips here in Nashville that night, but I’m having some friends over and smoking some ribs during the broadcast.

Make this with dove breasts or quail. Marinate them in red wine and garlic with a small amount of balsamic vinegar for 6 hours or so (too long = mushy). Thread them onto a skewer and roast them fast over the coals. Make some beurre hotel de maitre D ahead of time and brush that on imediately after removing, eat hot. You can also drop fresh rosemary in your marinade.

Goose breast sliced into thick lengths wrapped around hot peppers and marinated in terriyaki, wrapped in bacon and grilled is pretty fine as well.

Have your butcher butterfly and trim a leg of lamb. Inspect it when you bring it home and trim off any excess fat.

Make a marinade of equal parts red wine and olive oil (about 1 cup each), and add to this a little balsamic vinegar (too much and your meat will be mushy). Prior to mixing the wine and oil, dissolve some salt in the wine—it won’t dissolve in oil. Add fresh garlic and fresh thyme and rosemary to the marinade. Marinade the lamb for 4-8 hours. Broil it on a hot grill—flat, opened, if you wrap it up it takes a long time to cook. Cook it to about medium rare, hot red center. You can cut this in strips and skewer it and roast it to make it a true finger food but it’s impossible to cook it truly med rare that way.Perhaps my favorite grilled food after wet smoked salmon.

You can do the same marinade and butterfly nice two bone rack of lamb chops. Don’t over-marinade them. Stuff the chops with gorgonzola and grill them fast on a hot grill.

These are so good you’ll slap your mama.

This is to distinguish it from the 24 hour dry smoking technique of the Scots.

Marinate half a salmon (skin on!!!!) in some Paul Newman’s Ginger sesame dressing. Alternatively you can mix some dry ginger, soy sauce, olive oil and garlic up and coat it in that. I usually add a little soy sauce and oilive oil to the dressing but it’s great as is.

Get a grill you can cover and throw copious amount of hickory chunks on it just prior to placing your half a salom on the grill. Best to spray some grilling pam on the grill and on the skin of teh salmon, otehrwise the fish skin really sticks to the grill.

Yo don’t want this grill as hot. You want fewer and evenly distributed coals so the wood smoke has time to penetrate the flesh. You cna lift er up and brush some marinade on it if you like occassionally, usually no need, it’s mostly smoky flavored any old ways.

Also, buy farm raised Salmon—you’re going to smoke it after all.

This is fantastic fare and eats extremely well coald with horseradish and sour cream as a condiment.

Without the skin on it will stick to the grill like hard gum on your shoe.

Ingredients

1 10 lb bag of (thawed, use can put them under running water in a bucket for 1 hour outta do it.) chicken wings
1 12 oz bottle Fanks Redhot
1 5 oz bottle Tabasco
1 stick of unsalted butter (never ever buy salted butter or chocolate milk, it’s a dirty dairy secret they dont want you ta know… but un-salted and add your own salt, or regular and add your own chocolate. trust me)
  
Preparation
 1. get you a deep fryer w/ at least 1 1/2 gallons of oil, heated to 350 degrees. (the smaller the volume of oil, the smaller you’ll want your batches of wings to be. a good rule of thumb is 1 dozen per 1 1/2 gallons of oil.)
 2. pat dry the wings. make sure they dont have excess water, blood, protein water, drippin off em, and drop em in the fryer for 4-6 minutes. dont constantly pick them up/check on em. let them cook. you can shake the basket if you want, but be careful. overloading the basket will cause stickage and shaking wont fix that, so dont overload it.
3. in a large steel mixing bowl add a Tablespoon or two of butter, a buncha Franiks, and Tabasco to taste. let the bowl hang out next to the grill or fryer so it gets warm and the butter melts.
4 add the hot, crspy, freshly fried wangs to the delicious sauce, stir, toss, and swirl em thil they are covered up in goodness.
5 enjoy delicious chicken every Iron Bowl Day.

pork is so easy and amazingly good. there’s almost no combination of spices or methods to cook it that dont work out well. probably one of the easiest ways though, is to marinate a bunch of pork chops on somthin, and grill em up, a bunch at a time. this reciepe works with pretty much any kind of pork chop from your beautiful boneless center cut pork loin, to your fatty ass bone in, end cut pork loin. my rule of thumb has always been whatever is on a sale at a decent butcher shop is perfect. especially if your cooking for lots of people, fattier cuts are cheaper so you can; A. buy more and feed more people, and B. they have extra fat, which gives you extra wiggle room on the grill of you get a bit distracted by the days festivities, or the jefferson pilot broadcast of south carolina vs. kentucky…

marinade 1: honey and mustard. no sh*t.
1 big ol bottle of mustard, the better quality, the better off. yellow “FMV” brand will work, though realistically, Grey Poupon is best. (seriously though, you may wanna try dry yellow mustard before using FMV yellow come to think of it. that stuff is mostly just white distilled vinegar and food coloring) if you got some halfway decent spicy brown mustard, or even the fancy horsraddish style kind w/ the pig on it, you’re even better off.
1 bottle of honey/agave nectar… here quality helps, but cheap is fine too. if you happen to have agave nectar this works well too, but you will need to use more of it than if you were using straigh honey. (for those of you unaware of agave nectar. its basicaly a sweet substance made from Agave plant hearts. (they make Tequila outta distilled agave syrup. this is un-distilled nectar) Agave nectar metabolizes very well w/ humans, so it’s a FANTASTIC glucose substitute. e.g. if your grandpa who never pays attention to his diabeties would just start using this, he wouldn’t know the difference and he’d be making grandma and his doctor a lot happier.
1 shot of Kentucky Bourbon (this isn’t necesarry at all. but if you wanna bring the real flava, dont bring no stinkin ass tennesse or canadian, and especially scotch or irish “whisky”. use a fine Kentucky Bourbon like Makers, or even Old Forrester or Old Grand Dad.
1bottle of extra lite (not extra virgin, thats the exact opposite of what we need here) olive oil
1 or 2 bunches of fresh herbs. in order of preference, Taragon, chervil, chives, parsley, marjoram.

preparation.
 in a giant mixing bowl the morning of the game (we dont want them in this marinade for more than 12 hours tops) or possibly night before, mix in 2 cups of mustard to 1 cup of honey (if using agave nectar use approx 1 1/2 cups). then finely chop to hell the fresh herbs, add them in along with several cranks on the black pepper mill (no salt in this marinade), add in the shot or two or bourbon, and just 1 or 2 ounces of extra lite olive oil. stir and taste. whats it tatse like? awesome? you bet your ass. now drop the poke chops in there 4 at a time, get em all smothered n covered, take em out and put em large Ziploc bags, then into the cooler. repeat til all your chops are covered in a thin to medium thickness, yellow paste. the enzymes in the mustard will start breakin down the connective tissue of the pork in minutes. these really only need about 1 to 2 hours of time before you’ll notice great effects from the marinade… grill em, and if you want, serve em with a couple pieces of grilled citrus for garnish, or even with grilled peaches and apricots fer eatin… either way, i hope you get to eat some delicious pork every september. killin hogs in the fall is what we do down in BAMA.

This is my wife’s recipe…she makes the best tater salad.

6 medium yukon gold potatoes, chopped and boiled until tender. 1 medium onion, 4 hard boiled eggs, 4 celery stalks and 2 large dill pickles, chopped. Mix together 1 teaspoon celery seed, 1 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon pepper, 1/2 cup mayo, 1/4 cup yellow mustard and 1 tablespoon pickle juice. Add potatoes, onion, eggs, celery and pickles to mixture, stir gently. Chill at least 2 hours before serving. Add a handful of chopped parsley just before serving (optional).

and keep the recipes coming…