Smoke on the Water

Or in the water, rather.

(Soundtrack for this post)

Two days ago my new grill arrived. Today, the new side firebox/smoker showed up. We immediately assembled each. After many serious glances at one another, my roommates and I decided it was time - Time for genius. Time for glory. Time for wings.

Luckily, I had just defrosted the ultra-family-value-pack of wings I had in the freezer. We were prepared to pursue poultry perfection. Chicken: check. Charcoal (hardwood, lump): check. Chunks of oak for making the smoke: check. BBQ Rub, Beans, Corn on the Cob: check, check, check on the check.

KER-CRASH-MA-RUMBLE!

Thunderstorm. Son of a bitch. If it has only one flaw (and it's yet to be determined that this is one), it is that my grill is an outside-only tool. Or, rather, it was one. Until now...

Like a swat team storming a bank full of hostages, the roommates and I burst forth into a fiery blaze of efficiency and mirth. Yeah, that's right. Mirth. We were so damned mirthful, you might expect that we had whistled while we worked. Whistling is for lesser beings. We just thought about whistling so hard that it lit the charcoal in the chimney starter. Then, just because we're so good at mind-whistling, we put it out and lit it again - all with our mind-whistles.

I mind-whistled some charcoal into readiness. R and G brought the grill around to the front of the house and threw open the garage door. I began prepping the wings, covering them with the BBQ Rub as generously as Santa on December sixth. That's his birthday. Look it up.

G rigged the garage with an array of masterfully placed fans (I guess, in this scenario, he's the guy in the van running intel and saying things like "I just need twenty more seconds to get into the mainframe... blasted firewall proxy USB mouse-click webcrawler!"). The smoke was kept out of the garage by this.

R cleaned a pot we didn't end up using for the beans (because we effing baked those emeffers). That's right, we're so good at this that we do extra work while we work.

I placed the wings on the grill. We drank beers. We loved them.

We waited about an hour.

On went the corn, wrapped in foil with butter and a secret seasoning G refers to secretly as "black pepper" - sounds mysterious, and despite my begging, he refuses to tell me what's in it. The beans went into the oven, with a generous layer of BBQ Rub forming a layer on top.

We waited another half hour or so. We drank more beers. We loved them again/still.

When the time came, we all stood in a moment of silence as we smelled the oaky, smokey goodness of the grill. We opened the lid and were offered a sample of the smoke-filled air. We graciously accepted, because badasses are gracious. We made heaping plates of food, and ate them. Hard.

Thunderstorm - Vanquished.

For all you serious folks who are interested in recipes:

Chicken:

1 Mega-Value Pack of chicken wings
Enough BBQ Rub to cover the hell out of them

Directions: Cover the hell out of the chicken wings with the BBQ Rub. Put them in a smoker over indirect heat (aim for 225) for an hour and fifteen minutes. We went longer for safety, about an hour and a half. Can't be too careful on a first run. We used oak and it was super-smokey. Next time I'll likely use half oak, half apple, and consider some herbage as well.

Beans:

1 Can of Maple Cured Bush's (Cheating. Don't care.)
Enough BBQ Rub to liberally cover the hell out of the top of the beans.

Directions: Preheat oven to 400 degrees (Fahrenheit. This is a BBQ post. Celsius is un-American). Put the beans in a casserole dish. Ours was square. It's hip to be square. Liberally cover the hell out of the top of the beans with BBQ rub. Bake for 45 minutes or until wings are done, whichever is longer.

Corn:

6 ears of corn
Aluminum foil
Butter
"black pepper"

Directions: Remove husk and silk from corn. put in a packet made from aluminum foil along with butter and "black pepper." Cook on grill above charcoal for the final 30 minutes of wing-cooking. If necessary, finish in bean oven.

Beer:

1 Beer

Directions: Open the beer. Drink the beer. Repeat.