Yesterday I kicked off my summer officially by throwing what
I hope to be the first of many outdoor cookouts. I hadn’t actually decided to
do it until Friday when I was at work and the urge to grill hit me. I feel very
comfortable in the command of a cooking fire. A few weeks back I had seen maybe
a commercial or something at a Twins game about a Juicy Lucy stuffed with
pulled pork, and I knew then that I would make one far superior.
It all started a few days ago with a pork roast I had
intended to use for lunch meat. I began the roasting process on Tuesday night
by chopping the appropriate vegetables and adding a little stock to a roasting
pan. I seared the roast in my new cast-iron skillet until it was browned, and I
added it to the mirepoix. Four hours later I took it out to chill. When I came
home from work on Wednesday, I skimmed the fat off the top and continued to
roast after flipping the meat. I repeated this process on Thursday, and by
Friday the bone had fallen out of its own free will. I let the meat rest for
about an hour and began to pull it apart. When it was all finely shredded, I
added my homemade barbecue sauce and mixed it thoroughly. I let the mixture sit
overnight in a sealed container to allow the flavors to marry, and it was done.
That was only the beginning.
Making a Juicy Lucy properly is no easy task. You don’t want
the middle to fall out, so it is necessary to take some time and handle with
care. You make a ball, toss it back and forth in your hands to knock all of the
air pockets out, and make a crater. You add your fillings, in this case, BBQ
pork and white cheddar. Next you carefully bring the edges up and around the
fillings until the whole thing looks like some horribly prolapsed……. Er, I mean
it doesn’t look very appealing. And that’s when you add a little Band-Aid of
beef on top and seal it all with a thin layer of water. Just dip your hand in a
bowl of water and that’s plenty. Smooth out the edges, and voila! It takes
anywhere from 2-3 minutes to make one, and I made roughly 26 of them with a
little help from my roommate Mason at the end. The burgers alone consisted of
15 pounds of ground beef, a seven-pound pork butt (not actually from the butt
but named after a container they used to be stored in.), and four pounds of
cheese. We literally had enough to feed a small army. An extraordinarily small
army from an unusually small country, or possibly Canada.
Oh I made two flavors of chicken, as well.
All we needed now was hungry people. I didn’t actually
expect to go through all of the food, but I’d rather be 20 over than one short.
Mason and I watched the Twins win their first game of the season, or at least
that’s how it felt, and the first guest arrived, my aunt Connie. Slowly, but
surely (and please do call me Shirley), people began to trickle in, and the
grilling began.
One of my favorite things about grilling is how the smoke
takes over the entire neighborhood. You could see and smell it for miles away.
Another favorite is the gathering of people, sharing their lives with each other
sometimes for the first and only time. I remember back to a year ago, being
stuck inside the walls of a prison boot camp, or outside those walls undertaking
tedious tasks and not actually being able to enjoy the weather, and sometimes
not even being allowed to talk to one another at all. What a difference a year
makes. Yesterday I had the freedom to do what I wanted to do, and I did it. I
think I’ll do something similar every weekend this summer and see what I can
get started. You’re all invited.
