Where I Come From: Tailgating Traditions

I’ll share my recipe here.

Ingredients:
6 pack of beer
Pack of Beer Brats
Jalapeno’s
Habanero Pepper
Bell Peppers (i use red, yellow and green)
Onion
Garlic

The first thing you need is a crock pot and a six pack of beer. As long as it is not light beer it will work (I always use Budweiser or sometimes I’ve done Shiner Bock). Pour all of the beer into the crock pot and turn it on high.

Next, you need to cut up all the veggies and throw them in the pot. After that, throw in the brats and let them cook in the beer and veggies for about three hours. All of the beer and flavors will soak into the skin of the brats.

After they have cooked for three hours, lightly sear them on the grill. Be very careful not to do it to high or leave them on too long as to break the skin. The longest would be 10 mins.

For consumption, you can pull out the cut up veggies and eat them on top of your brat or another favorite is to throw some tin foil on the grill and grill some sauerkraut.

And two words: YUM. MY.

Unfortunately, my gameday brisket recipe was as follows:

1. Get in car.
2. Drive to Rudy’s.
3. Enjoy brisket.
4. Stare at pretty girls in burnt orange.

Great series, by the way. Love the thought you’ve put into it, PB.

You lost me when you said you put it in the oven.

That’s communism.

My brisket rub doesn’t use mustard, but does use garlic powder, onion power, salt, pepper, and preparation involves marinading overnight in beer.

Properly smoked brisket (i.e. no oven used) can hold in a cooler, covered with foil and towels, for up to three hours; I’ve done one in Dallas, drove to College Station, and shared it with people there, and it was delicious.

[/Barbecue Purist]

Although onion power would be cool, that was onion powder in the brisket rub

1 Jalapeno cut down middle remove seeds to taste.
2 cream cheese smeared on inside of Jalapeno
3 little smokey smashed into cream cheese
4 stab it with tooth pic to hold together.

Cook on grill until it looks good while drinking some brew and hating on ou along with step 4 from the above recipe

Marinated tender with acidic juices like OJ and pineapple.

Smells like gameday.

Have no idea why anyone would put a brisket in the oven. Your brisket is falling apart at 195 because that is too hot. Try pulling it off the smoker at 185 and see how you like the results.

Find a brisket 10-12 pounds.
Trim the fat cap down a bunch. Trim almost all fat off of the fatty side. TRUST ME.
Poke the hell outta the entire brisket with a fork
Put in an oven bag with marinade and in a refrigerator for 24 hours.
Marinade:
1 bottle lee & perrins worsteshire
1 bottle tabasco
approx 2 oz lemon juice
12 oz balsamic vinegar
3 tbspns garlic salt
1 can or bottle of beer of your choice
blend together in a blender

Remove from bag and place on the smoker. Discard of marinade and oven bag.
smoke on indirect heat at 225-250 degrees until the internal temperature of the brisket is ~185 degrees (usually 8-10 hours). Pull off the smoker and wrap in foil for at least 30 minutes. Cut against the grain and enjoy.

I can’t get on board with using an oven for anything other than baked goods and even then grilled cookies are totally badass.

Cut them in half and grill the 3-5 minutes depending on heat. Top with melted ice cream, cream friache, or canned whipped cream.

Wrote this in 2000 when tailgating was really getting popular and showing up 8 hours before kick-off wasn’t all that uncommon anymore…things have change a bit since then, but not by much.

Forget the Alamo and “remember the keg taps.” Call it manifest destiny, Texas-Exes independence or what you will, but before every Longhorn football home game, there’s a modern day land rush going on right down the street from DKR.

Tailgaters, not unlike the settlers of yesteryear, are converging on black topped frontiers in the hopes of staking a claim on one of the limited spaces in government parking lots along San Jacinto street. On the way to the game, did you ever wonder how all those people got there? Well before the tents go up, the kegs get tapped and the party gets started, the land must be claimed.

And since the public is not allowed to park in these government lots until after 5pm on Friday nights before games, many eager tailgaters begin to circle the lots in their cars starting around 3pm as government employees vacate the premises unaware that a massive game of musical chairs is being played all around them.

As the 5 o’clock hour nears, the situation intensifies and State Troopers monitor the area to keep the peace. The cars must keep moving because there aren’t any places to park on the surrounding streets. Some tailgaters have gotten smart and bring extra people to jump out of their cars to serve as human cones to reserve spots, but even then, a pack of pledges are still no match for a 1-ton truck and a lead foot.

And just when you think you can’t take it anymore, a bull horn explodes through the air like the cannon that started the Oklahoma land rush of the late 1800’s and cars and people alike fill the parking lots like a shopping mall the day after Christmas.

After talking with some of these puptent pioneers, I learned that over the years the tailgaters have even developed a set of unwritten rules. There’s a hierarchy among them and it’s based mostly on tenure. Supposedly, the longer a tailgater has been setting up a camp in a certain spot, the more right he has to it. Squatters rights I guess.

Some tailgaters work together to keep the status quo, sort of like the Teamsters. If a newcomer claims a space and the people around him don’t recognize him as the guy that’s usually there, his car will most likely get a visit from the neighborhood un-welcoming committee after he leaves for the night. We’re not talking Tony Soprano here, but let’s just say the offending party will find his tires a little short on air when he arrives the next day.

But if you’re thinking that the chances of getting a spot in the lot are about as remote as scoring season tickets between the 20’s, take heart, there’s no need to call Steven Segal to break up this makeshift mob. In the end, Darwin still wins. For there is no honor among thieves and only the most persistent tailgaters will survive. So, next time you
arrive at a tailgate just in time to down a cold one before the game, you might take a second to shake the hand of the guys who reserved the spot and put the tailgate together. You can bet they’ve been there for a while.

with a crock pot brisket. I know, I know, not authentic, blah blah blah, but when you’re in a barbecue desert without access to a smoker or grill you have to make do. Favorite thing to do when the scheduling works out is put a brisket in the pot in the morning, tailgate for the ND home game, go to the game, come back, and watch the Horns at night while eating brisket and drinking Shiner with my Texas alum friends. If ND isn’t playing during the day, I get really fancy and go nuts cooking snacks. Gourmet cooking is my hobby.

Ingredients:
Large Gulf Shrimp, deveined and butterflied
Monterrey Jack cheese, bite-sized chunks
Jalepeños (make sure they are hot ones), big vertical slices
Good bacon (like apple-smoked, butcher-cut)

Prep:
Microwave (!?) bacon layered in paper towels for a minute or two depending on quantity.
Place cheese chunk and jalepeño slice in center of shrimp.
Place shrimp at end of bacon slice and roll it up.
Put 3 or 4 per skewer (metal or water-soaked wood).

Cook:
Wood fire (pecan or mesquite preferably).
Cook on direct heat (turning once) until shrimp are pink and bacon is charred.
~ It will be messy with the cheese – deal with it ~

Serve when cool enough for fingers. Bask in the glow of admiration from family, friends and new friends.

This is like my bible when it comes to smoking my brisket. This consists of smoking the brisket fat side down in a water smoker. Now there’s no marinading or oven use involved but it starts off with mixing dr pepper and extra virgin olive oil in a blender. Use an injector and juice your brisket up with this great concoction. The acid in the dr pepper and the oil help tenderize the meat by breaking down the protein in the beef. Next comes the rub which consists of kosher salt, smoked paprika, chili powder, sugar, garlic salt, onion salt, celery salt and seasoned salt.

Pour some kingsford charcoal (this is the best) in your chimney and then pour it in the smoker without lighting this first batch of charcoal. Next fill your chimney up again and this time light your charcoal. Once all your charcoal is grey pour it on top of the unlit charcoal. Add some wood of your preference after having soaked it for 30 minutes. I prefer pecan and mesquite. Fill your second container with water and lay your brisket fat side down. Close the smoker and get some sleep.

This is the best way bar none to keep a constant temperature in your grill. And that is the most important factor when smoking anything. The minion method, give it a shot, even if you don’t have a water smoker. I guarantee you will have fire that will be hard to extinguish.

I’ve just moved up from bringing sandwiches in a cooler to having an electric griddle (wdding gift) on-site before the game. Likely I’ll be whipping up eggs and bacon for breakfast and fajitas later in the day on game day.

What else can I make on that thing? Grilled cheese? Where are the “Freshman Tailgater” recipes?!?!

I recently bought a smoker, and on my first try did the Minion method. I still found it incredibly difficult to maintain the type of temperature I was looking for during the long duration of cooking.

So I moved to an electric heating element. Basically a stove grill, with a metal plate you can slap the wood on top of. Its easily interchangeable with the coal basket if I’m without an outlet, but wow, the electric was so much nicer to cook (and sleep) with.

My first weekend with the electric element I smoked salmon and brisket – http://picasaweb.google.com/geoffmail.com/SmokingWeekend?feat=directlink

Personally I have nothing against an oven method, however, for my own sanity, I prefer a one stop shop for cooking, or as I did with this brisket, cook and rest. As others have said, as long as it tastes great, I don’t care if its rat meat cooked over bison chips.