ManNight 2009 – The Food

ManNight would not be ManNight without memorable food.  Mike was the genesis behind a lot of the ideas this year.  As a fellow griller and beef connoisseur, Mike suggested steaks and fried chicken.  We rounded out the evening with a grilled rainbow trout, grilled potatoes, and the most glorious onion loaf.

Grilling for 10 can provide its own set of obstacles.  Fortunately, they were all rendered moot with all of the help I had.

For the steak, I picked up a 15 pond slab of beef ribeye.  At a little more than $5 a pound, it was a great deal to butcher our own steaks.  Just the sight of this thing set a few people into a tizzy.  Each steak was about one pound and an inch and a half thick. 

The steaks were grilled on the 26.  Originally I thought I might recruit everyone to grill their own, but ended up changing my  mind.  The charcoal worked great with such a large amount of meat, because the flare-ups from these super fat laden steaks would have been trouble over gas.  On the charcoal, a quick cover of the lid to reduce the oxygen intake and voila, flame no more.

The rainbow trout was grilled the same as in WOTG #124, so I won’t go over it again here.

When Mike suggested Fried Chicken, he clued me into a recipe from an episode of Good Eat’s.  We always include some kind of frying on ManNight.  Once again because it’s…well you get the picture. 

I picked up two fryer chickens and butchered them into pieces.  The chicken pieces then soaked in buttermilk for about 10 hours.  After seasoning, the pieces were dredged in flour and grilled in a cast iron skillet.  Absolutely succulent.  I have never made fried chicken before and I can guarantee I will have it again.  For the record, I used lard as our grease.  I love lard.

The other winner of the night was the onion loaf.  Essentially, the loaf is a bunch of battered onion rings pressed into the bottom of a fry basket.  When done, you flip the loaf upside down onto a serving platter and pull the rings apart a fork.  Fried heaven.  I used this recipe.  With 10 mouths to feed, I cut up 14 onions.  We made 2 giant loafs and by the end of dinner, they were both gone.

Dinner was paired with everything from homebrew to some wine Gregg brought by.  The food was great and the company was even better.