Weekend Cook (pic heavy): Drunken Salami, Burnt Ends, Brisket Chili, Drumsticks, Mititei

avibug

Big cooking weekend.  I donated a BBQ dinner as an auction item for the school fundraiser.  Hosted the auction winners (i.e, the friends I pressured into paying for dinner at my house) yesterday, and wanted to put out a spread.

Smoked an 11 lb brisket and another 3 lb point.  The small point and the point of the large brisket were served as burnt ends (not pictured).  Just threw them in a pan with some sauce.  The rest of the brisket went for chili.  Served a bunch, and then sent everyone home with a mason jar of extra chili.   Chili recipe here.  





The drunken salami is a hasselback-sliced salami marinated with a sweet jam based marinade, which is spiked with brandy or bourbon (I used benedictine).  Recipe here.  



For the chicken drumsticks, I used Yardbird rub. Seasoned the night before and left uncovered in fridge to dry skin.  Mopped with a combination of red wine vinegar, beer and more Yardbird rub.  Then brushed with sauce to finish.  The below pick was before the sauce went on.  



Also, for the first time tried making mititei.  This is traditional Romanian grill / street food.  Like a very garlicky meatball.  Use to have it at family barbecues growing up.  Traditional recipe calls for mixing beef and pork.  I just used beef.  Recipe below, and you can Google "mititei" for some variations.  

2 lbs ground meat.  
1 teaspoon each of baking powder, salt and pepper
1/2    teaspoon each of ground thyme, cumin, allspice  
8-12 cloves garlic, minced very small
1/2 cup of meat broth (I used chicken) 
Mix everything very well, refrigerate for 2 hours to overnight. 
Roll mixture into tube shapes. Or meatballs.   
I grilled raised direct at around 350-400. 



I also made cornbread, using this recipe to which I added a bit of maple syrup and a sprinkling of Pineapple Head rub before cooking.  


 

Didn't get pictures, but grilled two eggplants on the gasser and then mixed the roast eggplant with lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper and paprika (so, almost baba ganoush but without the tehina owing to a guest's food allergy).  And made this cucumber salad, which was really easy, and a nice balance for the spicy chili and garlicky mititei.  

HendersonTRKing

That salami is da bomb.  It's at the top of my list.  

Black_Badger

Man, this all looks really great! Thanks for an excellent post and congrats on what I'm sure was an amazing time. This one is bookmarked for sure!

Cheers -
B_B

SmokingPiney

Looks amazing! How long did you cook the mititei?

SmokeyPitt

Wow so many great recipes in one post and it all looks excellent.  Thanks for sharing.

Theophan

I've made Serbian cevapi a few times, haven't tried mititei, but cooked some commercial ones I found frozen in an international food store and they were delicious.

The Balkan sausages that I've seen were skinless, but formed more in the shape and size of breakfast sausages, finger-size, than meatballs.  I'm curious, were the ones you grew up with more round like that, and did they taste a lot like this recipe?  It sounds really good!

There was a Romanian family in my (Orthodox) church and everybody LOVED the food the matriarch of the family used to cook and bring.  Wow that stuff was good!  Usually a mixed casserole with meat, vegetables and home-made sauerkraut, or, usually, cabbage not quite soured as much as sauerkraut.  Wonderful stuff.  Her son had a Big Green Egg and loved it, and brought some BBQ he made for a fundraiser, once, but I missed it and didn't get to taste any.

Legume

Fantastic post.  I'm going to steal all of this, maybe try to hasselback a venison summer sausage I have with blackberry/bourbon.

avibug

@SmokingPiney the mititei were probably on for about 30.  I cooked to temp, so I wasn't too focused on the time.  I probably could have pulled them a bit earlier than I did.  

Thatgrimguy

Now that's a cook!! Everything looks EGGCELLENT!

saluki2007

Holy crap dude.  Bookmarking for later use.  Can't wait to make that salami.