Over the three-day Holiday weekend, there wasn’t a Weber worth it’s weight in charcoal that didn’t have it’s fifteen minutes of fiery fame. From grilling lobster tail out on the pier in Maine, to drowning pulled pork sandwiches with BBQ sauce in the Carolinas, to smoking a Texas-sized slab of ribs on the ranch in Austin, to bathing brats in beer and onions in a Milwaukee backyard, to smoking chipotle spiced salmon against a saguaro background in Santa Fe. Wherever you were, whatever it was, it was all bad-ass barbecue.
do i make you hungry, baby? do i? yeah, baby, yeah!
Could there be any better way to celebrate America’s birthday than with a party surrounding glowing red grates, white-hot coals, and electric blue flames? America is barbecue – a cooking style that can’t really be traced back to any one culture – just one giant grill that can represent cuisines from every micro-region within America as well as cultures from all over the world – galbee, carnitas, chicken teriyaki, souvlaki, kebab.
when it's all said and done, you only need beef and bun
And here in southern California, LA to be exact, and Hermosa Beach if you want to googlemap it, we did a west coast beach barbecue the best way possible. Well, at least for this playa hater ;) Laid back, on a sunny deck (actually, June gloom hit us in July this year), several hundred feet away from the sand, but with a full view of miles of ocean.
Good ol’ fashioned, all-American ‘cue was burgers and brats on white buns washed down with Bud Light. Okay, I think it was actually Amstel Light, but I just couldn’t resist the alliteration. Just beef and bread, maybe a slice of cheese, but not a thread of vegetable fiber in sight – hey, what do you expect when it’s mostly dudes anyway? Dudes. ;) Glittery pasta salad, with an entire separate Tupperware of un-onion (d’wall don’t eat onions I’ve found). Chips right out of a bag that’s been torn open, guacamole, jalapeno Jack cheese, crackers, and of course, what party is ever complete without celery sticks and Ranch?!?!
That’s what we had in Hermosa Beach on the 4th. All-American. All-Awesome. Happy Birthday America! And we even sang around a birthday cake that had been airbrushed red, white and blue. America! F**k, yeah!
And that concludes my Holiday Weekend BBQ Blowout. Three barbecues “at the beach” and I didn’t have to touch sand once :)
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