With A Side Of Jack Daniels Please. . .

Cooking competitions are tough enough, but add the name Jack Daniels to it and you've got a whole 'nother level of predicamentation. I'm making up words again.

Gary, Leslie, Brain (Brian actually, but I always type Brain, so from now on, it's Brain) and the gang of BBQ pirates known as Ubon's were invited to cook in the Jack Daniel's 20th Annual Barbecue Invitational held in beautimus Lynchburg, Tennessee.

78 teams from across the nation were invited for the BBQ extravaganza, all with a state championship under their belts . Our home state of Mississippi was represented by two teams, Ubon's out of Yazoo City and Natural Born Grillers from Olive Branch.

Brain and the gang are very well known for their specialty, which is whole hog cookery, but in this competition, the items are pork shoulder, ribs, brisket and chicken. If you ease over to Ubon's website, you can catch a glimpse of the seven or eight trophies they've won over the years. Actually it's more like 100 and 8 trophies plus or minus 50 or 60. Or as my old man likes to quantify large numbers: a bunch!

I've been in my fair share of cooking competitions, but mostly chef vs. other chef dabber-doos which are kinda the same, but not really. There is the preparation, the planning. The travel, possibly. The worry and the minute to minute dilemmas that invariably crop up. The unpredictable malfunction, the screw-up and the occasional destruction of something, whether it be food, machine, or person. Add to this mano a mano competing style, several hundred more cooks and helpers, then mix in about 72 hours worth of hardcore drinking and you've got the grim potential for monumental screw-ups!

But not with Gary, Leslie and Brain at the helm of the fire pit. Even with all the drinking, all the carryin' on, all the hijinks during the long hours of manning a slow-cooking dead animal, they've got the moxie, the wherewithal and the what-have-you to keep it between the charcoal briquettes and somehow, someway, somewhere they won 2ND PLACE PORK!!! (Thanks for the correction Linda! Somebody 'round here cain't read!)



*scratching head*

I guess they simply known 'dey bidness.

Congratulations to Team Ubon's for another great turnout! Good job!

Oh and one other item. . .Ubon's also won Grand Champion 2 weeks ago in Cleveland, Mississippi at Octoberfest, but you can read all about that over at Linder and Cudi's place.

At Cleveland (photo stolen from Linder's blog):

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Beep, Beep, Beep. . .B-Beep, Beep, Beep. . .

. . .please remain clam! BBQ competition news ahead!

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A Quick Recipe. . .

This weekend I cooked some chicken.

Why?

Well, because I had a freezer full of leg and thigh sections and I needed to make room for my bottle of Jagermeister and I knew that my folks with the Ubon's BBQ team needed some telepathic spirituality as they competed up in Whiskeyville at the Jack Daniel's World Championship Invitational. I'm working on getting the results as we speak, from the piggie's mouth of course.

Anyway, I had some chicken and I didn't want to put the full-on, kung-fu barbeque sauce on the bird, so I went with a lighter glaze instead. Here is the recipe for 8 leg/thigh pieces:

1 cup kectup, (Hunt's, not Heinz)
1/2 cup white rum (thankfully Beatrice isn't a lush like me and left me half a bottle)
1/2 cup lime juice (leftover from key lime pie recipe)
1/2 cup Mississippi clover honey
1/4 cup olive oil
1 red onion, coarsely chopped
5 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp. ground chipotle pepper
2 Tbsp. Hungarian paprika
1 Tbsp. medium heat curry powder
salt and pepper, to taste

Mix all ingredients well, except for ketchup and add to chicken. Marinate for as long as you like, but at least 6 hours. Fire up your grill and have your mesquite chunks handy for some good smoke. Drain the marinade from the chicken well and reserve and as the chicken cooks, whisk in the ketchup into the marinade. Be careful with the fire. The marinade has plenty of sugar and will burn easily. Use medium indirect heat or medium-low direct heat if grill space is an issue.

When the chicken is about half-cooked, about 30 minutes or so, begin basting with the reserved marinade. The fire should be low enough that flare-ups shouldn't be an issue. Continue basting every so often until you are out of juice and in about 30 more minutes, you should be removing beautifully grilled, smoked and glazed chicken.

Serve with some homemade mac and cheese, black eyed peas and cornbread. Double yum!

Sorry that there is no picture, I think the Jagermeister had something to do with that. So instead, I'll provide you with a picture illustrating what life with Barack Obama as president will look like:


Empty.

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Monday Morning Good News. . .

. . .for a change.

I saw Brian from Ubon's BBQ cooking team this weekend. I stopped by his house with Beatrice on Friday night to have a bite to eat, chit-chat and to catch a glimpse at a hog he was cooking for his son's fraternity. I've been sworn to secrecy over what I saw and a chef's word is his word, so don't be coming to me mining for answers!

Brian told me that he and his compatroits with Ubon's have been invited to the Jack Daniel's 20th Annual Barbecue Invitational!!!! You might be saying, yeah so what, it's just another BBQ contest. Possibly. Until you recognize that this in an INVITATION ONLY event, so just over 60 teams from across the world will compete. And they are ALL winners.

Good luck Brian, Leslie, Gary and everyone else on the team! I have plenty of faith that y'all will bring home a trophy to a proud consti. . .constiuenc. . .to the people who love you most!!

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