Superbowl cooking

Sunday’s Superbowl brought about our first Superbowl party.  Now  I admit, I go a bit nuts when I have people over for something like this, and this was no different…  I just can’t get a bag of pizza rolls and serve them.

Coming off a weekend where I got my judging certification, I wanted to
put some of what I learned to use, so I knew I was going to make ribs
(see my Rib Test post).   Here’s a pic of the 6 slabs I used, trimmed to St. Louis ribs.  I used a rub made up of 5 parts cane sugar, 3 parts kosher salt, 1 part chili powder, and 1 part a mixture of cayenne pepper, garlic and onion powders, oregano, black pepper and thyme. 

The results were very good, I thought, though the wind made the ribs take longer to cook (this was ok since I was so busy otherwise)..

The
ribs are shown here on the smoker, and the chamber was full, but not
too full.  Two slabs were done 3-2-3 (should have been 1 at the end,
but they took longer), two were done with only one hour in foil, and 2
with no foil.  My favorite were the no foil ribs; they were tender and
juicy, but with better exterior texture.  I served them with Bourbecue
sauce (recipe will come later).

Along with the ribs, I did chips.  I had never deepfried anything
before, so I thought I’d try it, and I got a V-slicer to cut very thin
slices, and I cut up four sweet potatoes very thinly.  I did about 6-10
chips at a time, and learned that I really can use a non-deepfry pan
for this, as the volume of oil isn’t as critical as the surface area,
and I could do more at a time with more surface area.  After chips were
done, I placed them on a cookie sheet with a grid cooling rack above it
and salted them.  I’d heard not to use paper towels as the extra oil
doesn’t drain well that way.  Along with the sweet potato chips, I
fried wontons, then sprinkled them with blackened seasoning and
powdered sugar.  Sounds odd, but tastes GREAT!  After cooling just a
bit, I moved the chips all over to paper towels until I was done, and
the paper towels had hardly any oil on them when I finally moved them
all to plastic bags, so the chips really don’t soak up much oil, like
when you open a bag of store-bought chips.

I
also made what I call my version of Pit Beef.  I took a round tip roast
and coated it with a blackberry chipotle paste, then indirectly grilled
to 120 degrees.  I sliced it on my new slicer, and served with very
good rolls and sour cream horseradish sauce.  Yum!

The last to be made were smo-fried wings.  I partially fried about 30 wings in the deep fryer, then
took half and coated with the blackened seasoning I used on the
wontons.  The other half, I put Crystal hot sauce all over, both sets
in aluminum foil pans. 
placed them on the grill with indirect heat and pecan wood until the wings got to 165 degrees.

I have to admit that Sunday was a LOT of work.  In a lot of ways, it
was more work than a barbecue competition because the frying took quite
a while, and it had to be constantly attended.  The chips probably took
over three hours on their own.  But it was worth it, as everything
really turned out well, and the people at my party enjoyed it.  Next
time, I’d just spread out the work and do the chips the day before