Kids' end-of-year school fête

[redbaron]

Somehow word got around that I knew a thing or two about cooking meat, and I got wrangled into becoming master of all things grilled for our kids' school end-of-year fundraiser/Kermesse/fun fair. I've been a few times in the past but was generally unimpressed by the food - factory fries, factory merguez, factory chipolatas and factory jambon grillé (grilled smoked ham) - don't let those links fool you, this stuff was about the lowest quality product you could find, for about $3/pound/5 eur/kg.

Well since I am in control, I decided to change things around a bit. So this year I'm working with our friendly neighborhood butcher, Maxime (whose kids also happen to go to our kids' school) to 'up the steaks' heh and do something better.

Not wanting to freak out the change-averse, we stuck with more or less the same format, but changed the recipes and bumped up the quality.

On the menu:
Bratwurst (following this recipe)
Texas-style hot links (following Bigabyte's recipe)
Pulled pork sammiches (no more crappy grilled ham).

I tested out the pulled pork on some unsuspecting French blue-hairs, who are pretty much the leaders of the anti-change brigade, for this year's Fête des Voisins (Neighborhood block party, basically) and it was like watching hyenas devour an antelope. Every one of them asked when the next one would be cooked, and I just had to photograph the scene of them passing around a bottle of Lillie's Q Carolina Gold like it was the most amazing thing they had ever tasted:

So yesterday I got together with Maxime to churn out 20 kg/45 pounds of hot links and 15 kg/33 pounds of brats. I am envious of his 3,000 euro self-cooling meat grinder mainly because it's about 30 dB quieter than my crappy consumer model.

We went with smaller sheep casings instead of hog, because it's already a lot to change the recipe without also changing the size of the sausages.

Only a small sample of what we've made... going on the smoker on Saturday morning.

More to come...

 

[Titch]

op2:op2:op2:

 

[Mr.OiSat]

Looks good so far.

Greetings from the other side of the Rhine.

 

[CharredApron]

Saweet! You've created a bunch of monsters now!

 

[Stingerhook]

Looking forward to the rest of this story.

 

[IamMadMan]

Thanks for sharing.... Looking forward to the next chapter..

 

[redbaron]

Set to hot smoke the texas links tomorrow and saturday. Will post pics of all that once I get started.

 

[mikemci]

Way to go!! Open that can of worms..:clap: opcorn:

 

[T&S BBQ]

Can't wait to see the ending, I'm so excited when I read a good story. Hope it's got a fantastic ending. Good luck

 

[cowgirl]

Looking great!

 

[redbaron]

Alright, here we go.

Sunday was the big day, but I started will in advance on Friday for hot-smoking the links.

Of course, Friday just happened to be the hottest day of the year so far, clocking in at ~90 degrees.

That didn't stop me from doing six full grates' worth of texas hot links

But it did help me make sure I kept the shutters closed throughout the house (we've got ~4-foot thick walls and thus do not need AC, but we do need to keep the shutters shut otherwise it heats up quite fast)

Smoking all those links took a good four hours, but because of their size, once they were in there they cooked up quite quickly. But it still gave me enough time to clean and oil my new toy:

Saturday rolled around and it was time to prep the shoulders. But I can't help going and picking up a few extras, so my prep table looked like this:

For me and my wife, a nice 500g ribeye, with some good marbling, and a couple chicken/duck/pork/turkey skewers for the kids.

Not yet plated, just off the grill:

And then it was Sunday. I was happy to have pre-smoked the sausages but worried about the shoulders. I neglected to replace the batteries in the PartyQ and there was no juice left in them by the time Sunday 6:30am rolled around. However due to the configuration of my UDS (in other words, holes) the fire didn't actually go out and a quick change of batteries put us back in business. I went over at around 10:30 to see how things were going and teach the guys about the Minion Method - they had started to dump unlit charcoal ontop of lit, and I explained the benefits of doing it the other way around.

Time for service got quite close and I made a quick trip back home to check on the shoulders, which still weren't quite done. I went ahead and took them off at 175 (normally I go to 195) and threw them in a styrofoam cambro. The steam must have helped, because by the time we got back to the school and started pulling, they came off like butta.

The lady in charge had originally asked me to only order 9kg. I ordered 18, because I know what happens when pulled pork is on the menu. We were SLAMMED from the start of service and so I didn't have time to take any pics other than this one, of the
dwindling supply of deliciousness:

Otherwise things went pretty well. We had a long line that moved quickly:

and plenty of fellow dads to help out with fries:

and manning the grill

About an hour and a half after service, this was all that was left:

We managed to burn through the rest of the sausage and ended up selling almost exactly the amount of product we had made.

Afterwards I invited everyone to retire back to my place for mint juleps and cigars. All told, a pretty successful day.

We had a ton of very positive comments and only a few negative or neutral ones, and we'll definitely be doing this again next year. Hopefully I can convince them to let us homebrew (French law says non-profits can brew their own beer and wine if the sales are used to benefit the organization itself).