Superbowl Appetizers: BBQ Wings and Jalapeno Poppers
Well, the Superbowl has come and gone again, and we Americans are a little fatter because of it. Regardless of who won, and who lost, or even if you care nothing at all for football, I have come to realize one unbreakable truth concerning Superbowl Sunday – people will eat a lot! And I mean a lot. The latest math, of which you may have heard circulating about your sphere of influence, was something in the neighborhood of 6000 calories per person. Crikies! Them numbers are like three times what most folk ought to consume in day, and more likely than that to send your doctor’s eyes clear to the back of their head. Still, and even so, who are we to tamper with the annual football feast, let alone tug on tradition’s most unruly cape. Here then are a couple of appetizer recipes to get your calorie count up.
Jalapeno Popper (AKA – Atomic Buffalo Turds – ABT)
We love these things. And love is an appropriate word, I think. There is a process in making these. A relationship almost. But it is a sad fact for all the pampering that go into making them, that your guests will in turn only suck them down like so many chicken nuggets and nary seem to appreciate the effort nor the ensemble of flavors conspired there upon their palate. You can never make too many poppers, I’ve learned. They will always be consumed. Every last one of them. They are delicious, people, and I’m sure way too high in calories. Which makes them perfect for Super Bowl Sunday. Here is how to make them Patron of the Pit Style.
Whilst the pit comes up to speed, in a lovely bowl, mix together the following:
- 1 Cup Onion Chive Cream Cheese ( or what ever flavor inspires you)
- 1 Cup Shredded Cheddar Cheese
- 1 teaspoon Garlic Powder
- 1 teaspoon pepper
- pinch or two of salt
This amount is good for around 20 poppers. By slicing your jalapeno in half down their length, you only need 10 of them. So halve them length-wise, and remove the pithy core. Void the pepper with adept strokes of a grapefruit spoon, and if you are a sally-tongued Swede like myself, you would do well to remove all the seeds. That and the cooking process seems to be the trick to taming these peppers down. The signature burn of the jalapeno will be a distant fantasy with these poppers. You need not fear. Assemble as seen in the photo above, lastly swaddling them in a tender bacon wrap held stalwart with toothpicks. The toothpicks are key, lest your poppers “pop” apart during the smoke.
Now before we plop them on the pit, let’s get the chicken wings out of fridge and prep them too. They’re simple to do.
Italian BBQ Chicken Wings
We had a bag of these dudes marinating for about four hours with a bottle of zesty Italian dressing. If you haven’t tried Italian dressing for your marinating needs yet, well you’re missing out. It smells good enough to eat right out of the bag – but don’t, or you’ll be running to the little pit boys room with stunning frequency. You gotta cook em first, sorry. Anyways, then we dusted them over with some home-made all-purpose BBQ rub, and that was that. Time for the pit!
Oh the heady aromas of chicken and bacon and jalapeno and cheese, roasting dignified over a beautiful bed of coals. We used hickory for our smoke wood, and that was a fine choice, but apple would do well here also. Oak or pecan would too. Shoot, it’s all good at the pit. Most folks never think to cook their jalapeno poppers on the BBQ, and let me tell you, they are missing something out of their lives. They are good out of the oven, and that’s all well and fine, but off the pit, kissed by smoke under a beautiful blue-tinted sky, a popper is point-blank out of this world amazing. You will not regret it. And there after, you’ll never do them in the oven again.
Shortly after securing the big lid of the WSM, the smoke tendrils began to curl, signifying that glorious time in a pit jockey’s day where he is at once, and undeniably, in his true splendor. That wonderful slot-of-clock where he has nothing in the world to do, save for drawing a manly beverage from the ice box, and finding someplace appropriate to repair. And with our feet propped up, and our gaze not far from the wafting plumes of aromatic hickory or apple wood, there is little question in our minds, nor upon our tongue, that this is exactly where we wish to be, doing precisely that which is well with our soul. We just love it, and there’s no explaining it past that. We just do. We revel, if you will, in a metaphoric Grandma blanket of contentment, where the wood smoke also rises.
We let everything smoke for an hour or so, nay maybe longer than that, and then dabbed on a generous varnish of Sweet Baby Rays Sweet and Spicy. We just hit the wings with it, but you could do the poppers too, if you pleased. Then we let it smoke some more., just because. After a fashionable exchange of time, and prompted by your pit master instincts, plate up your spoils and serve them unto your guests of honor. They will marvel at the hickory scented feast before them, with a chin dampened by anticipatory drool. It ain’t quite 6000 calories, I don’t reckon, but you will have done your part in the journey, at least. And with the potluck help of other like-mined folks amid your Super Bowl Get-Together, disturbingly, you’ll probably get there. We’ll pray for you. Amen.
No Small Thing: Hickory Smoked Italian Chicken Wings
A thin, blue, hickory smoke curled from the pit, tapering into a cold, blue Minnesota sky. A sky that which rose to infinity, and shortly touched the sun there. That 
beautiful flaming orb patron to the heavens, which at this time of the year, after many months of winter, we will gladly wallow in but one of its golden rays. The breeze is cool too, this late winter day, as I turn up the collar on my old smoking jacket, and admire how the soft, white clouds scatter through the air. And how the friendly Black Capped Chickadees, residents of the pond-side pit, bandy together in the old spruce tree, flirting or keeping house, or doing what ever it is that Chickadees do in trees. A beautiful winter day indeed, one in which to tarry pit side for a while, lovely beverage within reach, and smoke up something good to eat. On the pit today, the quintessential appetizer – hickory smoked BBQ chicken wings. It’s real easy to do to.
A few hours before the wings hit the pit, and whilst favoring a bit of sunlight ebbing in through the kitchen window, we tossed the wings into a gallon-size plastic zip lock bag and promptly dumped in an entire bottle of Italian salad dressing. Turns out this stuff doubles as a fantastic marinade, and is the only reason we can get away with coining these wings – Italian. Anyways, the concoction marinated all morning in the refrigerator, while yours truly may or may not have nodded off in his favorite man chair, whilst PBS cooking shows softly bantered up on the big screen. Good BBQ is never rushed, people. And if marination has spawned on a nap or two, well it only serves your palate the better for it. Be not ashamed! We let these wings soak for about four hours, and quite frankly, they smelled good enough to eat right out of the plastic sack, only we didn’t, because that would be rank folly!
Amid the slanting shafts of an afternoon sun, we populated the grate on the weber smokey mountain heap full of this succulence in poultry, put the lid on, and let the smoker have its way. That is the joy of low and slow, indirect cooking, and especially on pits like the WSM, for you can set the temperature, in this case, 250 degrees, and just let it go with no fear of burning, nor thermal fluctuation. No babysitting. No worries. And let the sweet passage of time and wood smoke gently work the meat unto your highest, most savory ideal.
We pampered the wings in the smoke spa no less than two hours. Two glorious cycles of the hour hand in which to make the acquaintanceship of your favorite chair, fireplace toasty at your feet, and a good narrative in hand. And tho winter’s chill is still with us, the sun burns stalwart, and I can feel its gentle kiss through my window pane. I stretched in my chair like a spoiled house cat, and drew a glance out to the pit. I liked how the wood smoke curled out of the damper in wispy tendrils, and did so without a care in the world. Or wait, maybe that’s me. That is the other joy of low and slow BBQ, in that whilst the cook is on, and the wood smoke poetically rises, the world and its problems seem to dissolve right along with the aromatic smoke itself, into a wild and beautiful sky. The ever-whirling cog of society rotates onward and with out you for a while, and when you consider it some, even if but for a moment, you are quite OK with that. Indeed, it is a high privilege. For you are doing right now precisely that which is well with your soul… Say what ever you will, but that is no small thing. Amen.
Slow Hickory Smoked Italian Chicken Wings. Yet another delicious way to let up on the accelerator pedal of life, under lovely skies, and where the wood smoke also rises. Sauce is optional.
How To Sleep on the Job: Peach Smoked Winglets
Amid the spring thaw, and blustery gales , I touched flame to the chimney of hardwood lump. I love the smell of 
lump charcoal lighting, and the sound of it as it crackles and pops. I am transported all at once back up into the northern tiers of my Minnesota bush lands, back to camp fires past, neath the whispering pines, in the forest hollows, aside babbling streams, at tranquil campsites pitched upon the cold, bones of the earth. Those camp fires of birch and balsam, how their warm light reflects off the faces of camp mates, always make a soul feel more at home there, in a harsh, and barren land. I often reminisce in this way, every time I light the pit here on the patio. I hover my hands over the chimney, relishing the heat there, as the keen northern winds slice with disturbing ease through the city streets, kicking up old tatter along the way. And tho it is cold this April day, the sun is still out, and tweety birds, well they don’t seem to care one way or the other, if it’s cold, or windy, or what sort of charcoal I may be using. And that’s OK. I’m not sharing my supper with them anyways. Speaking of supper, come inside with me won’t you, and let me show you what we have marinating tonight.
On the counter, in a zippered plastic bag we have a good couple handfuls of chicken wings, the kind of wings popular at sports bars and taverns, and places with more big screens than a showplace theater facility. Blessed is the man whose freezer harbors a bag of these wings. In the immortal words of Mary Tyler Moore, it can take an otherwise nothing day and suddenly make it seem all worthwhile. And it has. For we are men. We eat meat. And we are keen for the wing!
The winglets today, before they hit the hot grate, receive a good pampering in a delicious home-made marinade. A salty and sweet affair with a touch of garlic. Here is the recipe for it if you have a hankering.
Sweet Garlic Marinade
- 1/3 cup soy sauce
- 3 table spoons honey
- 3 table spoons maple syrup
- 1 teaspoon garlic salt
- 1 tablespoon sesame oil
Also whilst the coals come to maturity, and the wings marinate, we are soaking some peach wood too. I still prefer the big fist sized chunks, as there is no need to soak those. But if all you have is chips, you make do, and you’ll need to soak them before the cook, less they disintegrate like a 20-year-old pair of underwear whence they hot the coals. Not that I’ve tried that. I was pleased to find some peach wood at the local Cabelas, on one of my monthly forays there. You don’t see that sort of flavor up here in the frozen north too often, and I grabbed it rather by instinct when I saw it. A bit of Floridian essence amid icy winds sounded good today.
Nothing is quite so fine as peach smoke carried in the wind. Do to the high sugar content of the marinade, we went indirect the whole way this cook. Life opposite the hot coals is a good motto to grill by, and will long keep you out of grilling peril. I put the lid on and admired the smoke for a bit, like BBQ people do. I sat down, hunkered into my smoking jacket, and watched the smoke dance off into the stately breezes. And then, rather out of the blue, my left eye lid began to droop. Followed closely by the other. And I pandiculated right there in the chair. Pandiculation. That’s my new word. It means to stretch and yawn at the same time. Turns out I’m really good at pandiculating, and so are a lot of people I know. Anyways, when we brethren of the smoke feel such lethargy brewing, there is of course only one suitable course of action. I promptly went inside and took up residence in the man chair, reclined back to its utter most fancy, and there upon, and with great abandoned, did what sleepy men do when meat is slowly cooking on the grill – I belched and wafted off to sleep. It was lovely.
Most men, we postulate, and some women too I think, are born with an internal meat alarm clock. A meat sense, if you will. Sort of a quantum entanglement deal, where upon we just know when our betrothed meat is ready to eat, or more over, if it is in jeopardy of burning, or being pillaged say, by the neighbor’s dog. It’s a great skill set to have really, whence your aspirations for sleeping on the job come to fruition. BBQ is rigorous work after all, and we should be privy to all the tricks. Anyways, the internal alarm went off and I awoke in my man chair with a gentle yet satisfying graduation, like that of brisket coming to its temperature ideal, whilst resting on the counter top. I wiped the accumulated drool from my left lip pit, as my body rebooted. Golden beams of sunlight washed over my face, as I stretched like a spoiled old house cat in the soft chair. Yes, I pandiculated again. And I knew, as surely as one can know these things I guess, that my meat was done. It was time to eat, and after a fashion, never rushed, we did just that. And the wood smoke tapered in the breeze. Amen.
Peach smoked winglets with a tint of sweet garlic, and the theory of quantum meat entanglement. Man oh man. If you understand one, you probably have the other.
Patrons of the Pit 