You now have hot dogs under your belt and if you’re really good, hamburgers too. Hamburgers should really be a whole how to lesson in themselves if you have never made them. Since every BSA Scout I ever taught how to cook knows how to make a hamburger correctly, you might as well learn too. Let’s see how the year goes and I will try to fit that in soon, before the summer really gets going.

It’s party time and backyard BBQ season is upon us. When I think party, I think of wings! Summer is a good time for BBQed wings or BBQed chicken legs. Both of these I think go great with my version of a honey barbeque buffalo sauce.

Prepare the chicken wings; chicken wings may have to be prepped before they can be cooked depending on where you get them. Sometimes the wings come whole and you have to separate the “drumett”, from the “winngett” and discard the wing tip. I do this by carefully working my chef knife between the joints of the chicken wing and cut through the cartilage separating them. Chicken wings can be a lot of work, but just as Mussels are difficult to clean, they are both well worth all the effort in the end.

Once prepped I toss my wings in a bit of oil and spices before grilling them.

INGREDIENTS:

Purdue Chicken wings cut into wing and drumetts

          (Frozen wings can be substituted for fresh)

1 tablespoons olive or vegetable oil

½ cup Frank’s Red Hot Sauce

Half stick butter

¼ cup Sweet Baby Ray’s honey barbeque sauce

½ cup Marie’s Blue Cheese salad dressing

1 tablespoon Cholula Hot Sauce

Baby Carrots and Celery sticks

Spices:

Paprika

Onion powder

Garlic powder

Salt and pepper

DIRECTIONS:

Heat gas grill for 10 minutes or until charcoal coals are gray. In a large bowl, place wings and coat with oil. Sprinkle with spices and toss with oil until wings are evenly coated. Place on grill and cook until golden brown and crispy. While wings are on grill, keeping warm on low, make the sauce. Melt butter in a small saucepan. Add Frank’s red-hot sauce, Sweet Baby Ray’s Barbeque sauce, and Cholula to the melted butter and heat on low until warm.  Do not boil. Pour sauce over wings to cover and toss in a large bowl.

Serve with baby carrots, carrot sticks, celery sticks, Marie’s blue cheese dressing or ranch dressing.

NOTES: do not use oil with frozen wings. I like this method (bbq) of cooking the wings because the whole house does not smell like grease and fried food because it’s done on the barbeque.

You can replace the wings with chicken legs or thighs. They just take longer to cook!

Sauce

1 cup Frank’s red hot sauce

½ stick salted butter

2 – 4 tablespoons Sweet Bay Ray’s original BBQ sauce

1 tablespoon original Cholula hot sauce

1 tablespoon honey (optional)

In a small pot add: Frank’s red hot sauce, butter, BBQ sauce, Cholula sauce, and honey. Heat buffalo wing sauce until all the butter is melted and sauce just begins to simmer. Don’t over heat the sauce.

Serve with:  Marie’s blue cheese dressing, celery sticks and carrot sticks.

Match with: Sam Adams – Larger, Oktoberfest or Porch Rocker

May 26, 2021

            When George Forman was asked what his favorite food was, he always replied, “Cheese Burgers”! He even said that after he was a millionaire and could eat anything or anywhere he wanted.  No wonder it was HIS name on the George Forman grill! I even owned one myself and used it when I lived in a small apartment with no real kitchen. It worked great too! Thank you Mr. Forman, for all those wonderful cheeseburgers back then.

            Today, I own a huge outdoor propane gas grill to make my hamburgers, plus a few other types of outdoor grills. However, cheeseburgers cooked on the charcoal grill are still the best of all, maybe even as much as George Forman grill. I love all kinds of homemade hamburgers.  Rarely (pun intended), I even eat them out at restaurants too. 

I think the best burgers are still the ones I make at home. Today, we will discuss how to make the recipe HOMEMADE HAMBURGERS.

Any BSA Scout that I have supervised cooking hamburgers still remembers some of my tips or tricks of cooking them just right (I hope!). When you are out in the middle of the woods with a big group of Scouts, always cook the hamburgers to 160ºF. I never ran the risk of anyone getting sick from an undercooked burger. The trick was NOT to overcook them. A hamburger that is too well done is inedible to me.  At home, I cook all my hamburgers to order. If you want your burger rare, then that is your business. If you order it rare, then rare you will get.  Rare by the way is warm and red in the middle. The hamburger reaches an internal temperature of 130ºF on an instant thermometer. I like my burger medium-rare myself, or 135º, medium is 145º, medium-well is 155º and well is 160º. Any meat will continue to cook for 10 minutes as it sits after pulling off the fire. If you are not directly handing someone a burger right off the grill to eat, always then UNDER cook it by 5 or 10 degrees and it will cook as it sits. Then, it will be done perfectly when they come up to get it and sit back down.  

The trick to me is timing and a meat thermometer. I own a wonderful instant read meat thermometer. (See the gadget list). Back in the woods with the Scouts, we would cook frozen hamburgers on a grill. I would tell the Scouts, “watch the top of the burger but don’t touch it. First, you will see it deforest. Still, don’t touch it. Then when you see the blood start to rise up to the surface, NOW you can flip it over! Cook it until the same thing happens on the other side. When you see the burger beading up, then add cheese. As soon as the cheese is melted, THEN move it to a bun. It usually took two or three young scouts all working together to keep the hamburger line moving along smoothly so everyone ate all at the same time and the food was hot. The hamburgers were never dried out or over cooked using this method and they were always all eaten. Even the adults actually enjoyed them!  

At home, I rarely use frozen burgers, unless it is one of my BIG office parties where there is SO much food that you don’t know what to eat next anyhow. This is when I buy the BIG 1/3 of a pound frozen hamburgers. I can actually get those cook to order at least. I buy mine from a local butcher who makes them fresh then freezes them.  

I remember with great fondness my twenties and camping in the woods. All those frozen hamburgers we ate during a four day long Memorial weekend. They were yummy. That was with thirty other twenty something’s with a lot of beer to wash those burgers down. Boy we went through a LOT of burgers, chicken, and beer that weekend!

Until tomorrow be happy, stay healthy and eat well!

The Drunken Chef (Russ)