Primal's ponderings: Primaldata Grill Enthusiast

This year I was honored to be asked if I would cook the meat for my family reunion, my eyes being bigger than my grill of course I said yes. After a few words in reminder from my mother and a one of my aunts it was decided I would just do the chicken. Now I must confess me and cooking chicken for my relatives and extended family always comes with a running inside the family joke, as my cousin Mack put it so perfectly "I don't know why you cook something and expect it to be here when you get back". Now I will confess my "famous" chicken is actually a family undertaking, yes I decide how hot the fire is, how many wood chips will be thrown in to each batch, and when I will pull it off but the spices as well as the spice combination is usually decided by my mother. The sauce that is usually added most times is added by Ero Kitsune, yes he has other skills besides just forcing me to sit through bad movies or coming up with catchy derogatory titles for movies, sometimes I will do it(but I will usually be dead tired by the time sauce making commences so usually his sauce is better than mine), this year it was handled by dad since Kitsune was the only brother who decided to work today(I have an excuse I was on the grill, Lank not so much unless you count Infamous 2 as some holy undertaking).

After buying my first batch of supplies my mother started marinating the chicken for me while I cleaned my grill, as not to fight over space I grabbed a large Tupperware bowl, put some soap in it, grabbed my grill brush, and decided to do the cleaning outside. a few passes of the brush to remove any leftover grease and or schmutz off each grate and a quick blast with the hose and 25 minutes later I was done. Now while I don't use all of my father's "Country Boy Grilling techniques"(my father was born and raised in AR), I do subscribe to the cover your grates in foil and pop holes through it technique. It still lets the smoke through, controls some of the flame ups,(some not all not claiming this is some holy grail of flame maintenance), and it cuts down on the amount of cleaning I have to do later. The only caveat is that I don't get the grill marks most people who just touch the food straight to the grate get, there is still minor stickage as well but no where near as bad as straight metal on flesh. This year was also a new medium for me: leg quarters. Usually I make chicken breasts and we pound them out flat so that they cook faster, but since I was cooking all of the chicken and not just trying to win the barbecue contest we decided the leg quarters would allow for more for everyone while maximizing cooking space.

So I threw my grates in after getting the fire started and covered my top rack with foil, I do this so that the food on the top can get smoke while the others are on the flames and I just move whatever is on the "hot spot" up, so that it doesn't burn while everything else keeps cooking, and move them down. I have found that this keeps the drying down ensuring everything remains hot and juicy. Oh and if you look to the bottom left corner you will see my tool of temporary insanity. I use that long metal fork to poke the coals to help me make sure the fire is burning at the right temperature. Yes I know, "metal transfers heat" that is correct but it also doesn't warp as much in fire so as long as I don't leave it in the fire I can use it quiet deftly(not to say that I have NEVER dropped it in the heat, it always fun getting it out when I do). My grill ready, my game plan set in mind I went after my first batch chicken this was going to be a fun day. Kitsune going to work did mean that food transport as well as chip packet creating would all be on me, but I have had to do it before and for this event I would definitely do it. I started with Mesquite and Hickory chips I always mix them together I just like the flavor produced(shrug), my technique is to soak them in water for a few minutes to keep them from burning immediately, put a handful or two into a sheet of foil and then fold it up into a little packet. I poke holes in the packet once I get outside and throw them into the fire.

The first interesting thing about leg quarters(basically the leg/drumstick and thigh are still connected) is the fact that the skin was still on them. Chicken sticking is nothing new to me, but fighting with the skin would be an all day battle, one that I would win some minor victories on but that I would not win the day. The second interesting thing was the "movement" of said chicken as you attempted to flip it, now usually I use this long handed metal spatula to flip my food over this time I stuck with the tongs. It punctured the skin as the cooking process got further along(that was my lesson one with leg quarters), but it did provide some insurance that I wasn't feeding vital pieces of chicken to the ground. That I was able to fit 16 pieces each batch of leg quarters onto the grill made my job a whole lot easier, I didn't have to rush to make sure time didn't become a factor and I could allow each round of chicken to get as much access to smoke as possible. Smoke saturation is definitely a BBQ Holy Grail, making sure that every piece of meat has that hearty, slow cooked, juicy, fall off the bone quality many an eyebrow has been singed, hand burned, and lung blackened trying to hit that perfect mark.

My preferred "racks on foiled up" temperature is between 200-250 degrees, to me the coals are nice and white, the grill has good smoke circling through it, and my cooking surface is hot without cooking the food too fast. Yes I still have to fight flame ups(some crushed ice usually helps with this just throw it along the sides of each grate and if you need to onto some of the exposed holes), fire is fire and it just loves dripping fat. And if nobody every told you skin tends to hold a lot of fat to be dripped onto the flames. When the second set of supplies came through I now had Cherry, Hickory, and Mesquite wood chips to work with. I never really like the Apple wood, for some reason the flavoring is too subtle and never soaked into the food I would cook with them on the flames. My fire hot, my packets ready to be thrown into the flames it was time for me to fight with the skin of the chicken, it tore, it tore often. As I admitted because I used the tongs and not the spatula if I gripped the chicken in the middle that was the begining of the end of the skin. That would cause a break right in the center and it would either tear off not long after or pool up around the front of the back. Even my last batch of chicken where I had become more adept at flipping the chicken at the leg instead of in the middle of the thigh still had a few pieces where the skin broke. I also had to flip the chicken a little more often that I usually like, that way I could take my time in peeling each piece of and thus not just tear the skin off outright(yup I learned that little fact with the first batch, there is no band-aid option you must go slowly).

I started cleaning the grill at about 8 am, so getting done at 4:30ish wasn't too bad, plus the official events didn't start til 7 pm so I would still have time to clean myself up(none to rest, but enough time to wash the soot, smokey smell, and anything else splashed on myself while cooking) and look presentable. Oh by the way I added a new scar to the collection, dead center of my forehead when I headbutted the contraption that holds our garden hose. I was trying to turn it off and leaned straight in to do it, I don't know if it was fatigue from cooking in the 100 degree heat(by the way I think I earned my official grill enthusiast badge with that one, BBQing in 100 degree heat, rookies and hobbyists don't do that), not paying attention or what I just know that I bent down like I had done a dozen times, felt a striking pain, and heard my glasses clatter to the ground. As the blood pattern on my towel only had this weird crescent shape I knew my skull wasn't split open(and thus I would not be getting a phone call from a bunch of women who share my last name asking me why I didn't immediately go to the hospital) but I felt the blood flowing out of it and the sweat mixing with it was annoying for the 5 minutes or so before it scabbed over. I guess I escaped having the "OMG were you trying to kill yourself" comment because I had a towel over my head for most of the time I was cooking so while it looked bad nobody saw it. I find it Ironic that my mother noticed it while it was light out and Kitsune only noticed it while the sky was dark(don't ask me I can't explain it), I think as I am well known for getting scarred up everybody else just assumed it was something I already had anyway.

Dad made the BBQ sauce this time and per special request from me mixed in some of my Buffalo Chicken sauce into a small batch off to the side. Since the last batch of chicken was still on the grill I decided to add the spicy sauce to that it would allow the sauce to sink in as well as get smokey and I would have one less batch to fight with in the pan. It also allowed for more elbow room in the kitchen as mom cut the quarters into legs and thighs, mom wanted me to put one batch back onto the grill to let the sauce get some smoke on a non spicy offering thus the picture below of it broken up already. And looking at how much space it takes up as thighs and legs vs how much it took up whole I'm like wow, because I cooked all that chicken and it seemed to be so compact and ordered the first time around. After I took the cut up chicken off the grilled we covered it all in foil, sat it in the car and drove to the reunion, Dad figured if I dropped them off I could come to the reunion after my shower without making anyone else wait, it was a good plan.

Before we left Lank decided he was hungry(like me he hadn't eaten all day, funny I'm sitting in front of pan fulls of food and I ate nothing) and got himself a couple of pieces of the spicy bbq chicken, sang it's praises and went back to Infamous 2. I helped put the chicken in the car as well as take it in when we got there figuring: I have 3 pans of chicken, all broken up into thighs and legs, I SHOULD get a piece of the spicy chicken by the time I get back. WHY I thought that is beyond me, hell I even stuck that pan at the very back(the last batch was the smallest batch so it was easy for me to find, I guess it was easy for everybody to find) hoping they would eat the milder batches first. So I went home, showered, and came back to hear the praises of my now gone spicy bbq chicken. Something told me to make another batch of spicy sauce but mom's gentle words of "having done enough and everybody isn't going to want spicy bbq anyway" was so soothing to my tired body that I went along with it(one of these days I will recount the "Let the boy live" family joke), thus Karmicly speaking I guess I got what I deserved, I tried to hide the chicken I wanted, didn't get a piece before I left, and expected it to be there when I got back. I'm glad everybody enjoyed it though, as I have only been Bbqing for about 4 or 5 years now the fact that people love my offerings so much is appreciated. Next year I'll just remember to make it all spicy and damn the torpedoes because at least that way I won't have to worry about what I will or won't get.

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