Thursday, October 1, 2015

Cookout with Katie’s Friends and Watching Joaquin…

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imageWell the weather here in North Carolina has taken a turn for the worse but at least we had some fun recently at Katie’s house. Katie has a new boyfriend and a lot of her friends were wanting to meet him. Her friends were also wanting to meet her nomadic parents who travel all over the USA.  So she set up a party at her house and bought a bunch of ribs.

Now Katie doesn’t know how to cook ribs but knew that I did so her master plan was to buy a bunch of ribs and have me cook them up. Fortunately Katie has a large gas grill which would do the trick but a smoker would have been much better. I have learned how to convert my Coleman propane grill into a smoker so I planned to do something similar to her gas grill.

imageThe day before the party Sharon and I drove down to her house to spend the weekend. Once we got there I got out my favorite homemade rub and spread the spice blend all over the six racks of ribs. After they were completely rubbed down I covered them up with plastic wrap and put them back in the  refrigerator overnight. The next day around lunchtime I unwrapped the ribs and placed them bone side down on the grill.

She has a four burner grill so I lit only one burner and placed to “smoke bombs” over the lit burner. The smoke bombs are tin foil pouches filled with pieces of mesquite wood that have been soaked overnight in water. The pouches have holes poked all through the top to let smoke escape to impart the mesquite smoke flavor on the ribs. Then I closed the lid to make sure the temperature never got above the 250-275F range.

imageSix hours later we had some pretty tasty and lightly smoked ribs that fell right off the bone when we were eating them. Katie’s boyfriend, Brooks, was grilling some chicken wings while I was fixing the ribs. All of Katie’s friends brought sides so there was enough food to feed an army!

The party was success and a great time. It was good getting to know Katie’s boyfriend while we were grilling. It was also fun getting to meet all of her friends. We have heard a lot about each of them over the last few years so it was finally nice to put faces with names. Katie has a nice network of friends and her new boyfriend seems to be quite a good fit for Katie.

We had planned to leave on Tuesday but there was lots of rain in the forecast. So we have added a more days here and will watch the weather. It looks like hurricane Joaquin may play havoc with our current plans but we will sit tight and re-evaluate that day by day…

10 comments:

  1. What a great way to meet Katie's friends. Glad you had a great day for the BBQ.

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  2. That looks like a great time and awesome looking ribs.
    Best to sit tight for a while and keep an eye on that storm front, we have had to do that a few times over the years.

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  3. I'm drooling and I don't even like ribs. I think I can smell them all the way down here in Vero. Stay as far inland until Saturday or Sunday. It will get better. Oops, gotta clean up the drool on the screen.

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    1. Saved by the very front that drenched you originally. Go figure

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    2. and so it appears, now all we need to do is figure out where we can go that won't be under water...

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  4. My mouth was watering with those ribs. Sometimes I've put those "smoke bombs" on my grill too. It makes a difference in the taste for sure and so good.

    Time to take cover with that rain coming. We had it all going up the east coast this spring. Now you're bringing it back down. Glad it's not forecast for Florida.

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  5. Better batten down the hatches! I would have liked to taste a couple of those ribs.

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  6. Next time we meet up I'll buy the ribs and we can have a lesson on cooking the ribs on the grill. I like fall off the bone tender ribs. That looked like a very yummy picnic:) How neat to meet Katie's friends and boyfriend! Hope you don't get too much rain. Stay safe:)

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  7. My mouth is watering... sounds delicious. Visits with daughters are always the best. Enjoy and try and stay dry.
    Ingrid@ LiveLaughRV.net

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