NFL Kickoff Mixed Grill

This is absolutely my favorite time of the year. I love the transition to cooler weather and with that the deluge of football! The first weekend is always the best as the slate is clean and the competition is high. This Sunday was no exception as there were so much good football to watch and it started with what will surely be a great season. To make things even better, I was able to combine two of my favorite passions: BBQ and Football! My good friends at The Organic Butcher of McLean had a great spread to choose from for my weekend cook. As it is so often with me, I had a hard time deciding what to cook for this post so I selected several things to grill and share with you. If you live in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area run, do not walk,  to the Organic Butcher! This place will soon become your favorite destination for all of your grilling needs! Now sit back, grab an ice cold All Day IPA, and enjoy this post for NFL Kickoff Mixed Grill.

NFL Kickoff Mixed Grill

The custom sausage they make at The Organic Butcher is so good. For this cook I picked their wild boar and bacon sausage.

The best way to cook a perfect sausage is to braise them first then sear them on the grill. In this way, the inside and out of the sausage cook evenly and most importantly stay moist. For the braising liquid I used 3 session IPA’s, 1 yellow onion (sliced), and 2 tablespoons of stone ground mustard. To braise the sausage I preheated my large Big Green Egg to 350° measured at the dome and placed the pan with ingredients right on top of the grilling surface cooking directly over the lit coals. This took about 20 minutes for the sausages to come up to temp.

When the sausages measured 140° with a digital thermometer I pulled them out of the braise and topped them off on the grill direct while the red cabbage was cooking.

I served these sausages with some stone ground mustard, BBQ red cabbage, and grilled vegetables. The perfect balance of this sausage between the gaminess of the wild boar and the fattiness of the bacon was perfect. I could have eaten several more of these delicious sausages!

Smoked BBQ Chicken Wings

The next item of my “mixed grill” featured a new BBQ sauce I wanted to try: Bone Doctors’ Original Barbeque Sauce from Charlottesville, VA. The unique blend of ingredients gives this BBQ sauce a great balance between sweet and savory. This made for a perfect finishing sauce for the smoked wings I cooked next.

I picked up some organic chicken wings to smoke. These wings were smaller than the usual wings I cook because they were not filled with all the crap big commercial chicken producers put in their product. What these wings lacked in size they made up for in flavor as they were some of the best tasting wings I have ever had. I smoked them at 300° for an hour, tossed in the Bone Doctors’ Barbecue sauce, and then topped them off direct to get a nice char. The combination of smoke and sauce helped produce amazing wings!

I hope your favorite NFL team won this past weekend. Mine has yet to play so I guess I will need to extend this party one more night!

I am heading to France tomorrow for a 10 day tour through French wine country. Not much to do with BBQ or football but wanted you to know why the content over the next two weeks will take a sudden shift. I am taking my camera and laptop with me on this trip and will blog as I go which is new for me. Wish me luck and enjoy the travel posts!