BBQ Judging the Guam Contractors Association 21st Annual Family Day 2013 Picnic and BBQ Contest.

Every year the Guam Contrator's Association hosts a big beach gathering for all of it's members. It's held at Ypao Beach Park, in Tumon Bay. It's one humongous BBQ. They also put on a no holds barred mini BBQ competition. This year it was chicken and ribs and you could garnish however you like. I love this type of competition because all the creativity comes out. You'll see what I mean when you check out the photos.

For the second year in a row, I was invited to judge the BBQ competition. It was a blast. What I like about it is that it is a small competition so the judging doesn't take long to complete and I get to sample some fantastic island style flavors.

Take a look for yourselves....

It was a whole beach park full of pavilions, canopies and BBQ!!! — at Ypao Beach, Tumon Bay, Guam.

Grilling the chicken on a stainless grill. Nice!!

The Watts crew having too much fun!!!

I thought this portable pig roaster was cool. The fire is raised and lowered by a car jack that you can see at the bottom of the photo. The fire drums are supported by the frame that is balanced and welded to the top of the car jack.

Don't have a stainless steel rod for the pig, use a long threaded bolt like this one. I like the way the legs are supported and secured on the metal supports. Nice!!

Roasting and rolling the whole hog. How much fun is this???

Limtiacos on the grill!!! You go guys!!!

The Perez Bros crew posing for the Master Photog Ed San Nicolas...

Photographer Ed San Nicolas says the shoot is over, now it's time to chow with the Perez Bros crew...

The grills come in all shapes and sizes...

Pork spare ribs coming right up!!!

BBQing the beef shortribs...

Master grillers in action. Old gas tank and stainless grill!!!

Outside of the big GCA Family Day Picnic 2013, life still goes on at the beach!!!

There is plenty of room to ride, walk, stroll....whatever you want to do, in Tumon Bay...

The storm surf was crashing the reefs.... That's Two Lover's Point in the background!!!

OK guys, cough up coin...beer run!!!

Judging Chicken...

The Judges...

Kaz Endo, Jason Datuin, and Rueben Olivas

Working it!!!

Working it harder!!!

Photographer Ed San Nicolas...

Judging Ribs...

So colorful!!!

And the winners were......who cares!!! It was all about having family fun, getting together with your friends, BBQing and spending the day at the beach!!  And, And, And...

Everyone was a winner on this day!! Even me..Burp!!

Want to give a special shout-out to Mr. Mark Cruz, Sales Manager for Mid-Pac Far East who helped coordinate the BBQ competition and Judging logistics. He also ate most of the chicken and rib samples too. I just had to say it OKAY!!!

Until next time...

Kahlua Shredded Pork Tacos!!

Who doesn't like tacos!!!! We love them. They are so easy to make. As a matter of fact a taco is just another way to eat leftovers. So you can make them out of anything you have. Not too complicated all all. One of my favorites though, is the Kahlua shredded pork taco. Here's one way we do it...

Here is the shredded boneless pork butt, Kahlua style. Though I prefer to cook my meat in the outside smoker low and slow, it's rainy season on Guam so I cooked this using a crock pot on the high setting for 4 hours. I rubbed the butt roast down on all sides with coarse sea salt and about 2 teaspoons of Liquid Smoke. Then I added 1 cup of water. 4 hours later is was time for shredding.

Home made re-fried beans. We use a pressure cooker for this. Saves a few hours of cooking. We used 2 bags of pinto beans, cleaned and washed, into the pressure cooker with 2 tablespoons of veggie oil. The oil helps suppress the excess gas from the beans. Fill the cooker to the halfway line with water and cook away following the instructions that came with your pressure cooker for beans. I use 12 minutes of cooking after the little pressure cap starts rocking. When the pressure cap starts to rock back and forth from the steam, you turn down the heat until it slows it's rock and that is when you start your cooking time. I turned off the heat after the 12 minutes and let it cool down.

To fry the beans, in a fry skillet, I use my saved bacon grease, add the cooked pinto beans to this and mash them while I cook. I use a mash potato masher to do this. I then add a little of the water from the pinto bean pot until I get the consistency that I like.

  

Mexican rice. For this I used 3 cups of rice. In a deep-sided skillet I add about 2-3 tablespoons of oil, add the rice and very lightly brown it. Just when I see that it is just starting to brown, I add about 3-4 cloves of minced garlic. Put in 1 1/2 cans of tomato sauce (8 oz. can) and same amount of water. Add in one tomato chopped and bring to a boil on high heat. Once brought to a boil, stir for about 1 minute and turn down heat to low and allow to simmer and steam, covered, just like making white rice. Stir occasionally. Will finish cooking in about 20-30 minutes. Turn off heat.

Salsa, the key to any good Mexican food. My salsa, Mama's Salsa, is quite unique and very flavorful. The recipe for this salsa will be coming out in my BBQ Guam cookbook due to be released, if all works out as planned, in 2014 just before Father's Day.

So here we have our complete meal. Mexican rice, re-fried beans, shredded Kahlua Pork, and Mama's Salsa. Not in the photo are the corn tortillas and shredded Jack/Cheddar cheese.

My plate consists of Shredded Kahlua Pork taco (pork on bottom, salsa, topped with cilantro and shredded Jack/Cheddar cheese), Mexican rice, re-fried beans and a little lettuce for salad...

This taco is going down!!! I ate 3 before I realized that I had not touched my beans and rice. So I ate one more taco and then polished off the beans and rice!!!

But as I mentioned before I do prefer to BBQ my meat in my pit, low and slow. Length of time depends on the thickness of your meat. But cook until you can flake the meat with a fork. You get that great smokey flavor. But using the slow cooker, crock pot, or your oven will still yield a great tasting meat for your tacos. You all know at first bite....it's all Good!!!

Until next time...

BBQ'd Sriracha Chicken and Grilled Veggies

After a long hiatus from this blog, I'm back. I have been very busy with my photography. You can see some of my work on my Megashot site:

http://ruebenolivas.megashot.net/photostream. 

I have also been busy BBQing as usual. Oh and I retired from the Guam Fire Department. I figured after almost 40 years total in Public Safety it was time to pull the plug. It's been awesome to say the least.

Lupe and I just returned from a 40 day road trip to the States (we live on Guam of course) and we went from Santa Maria, Calif., my hometown, cross-country and back. We did a little cooking and BBQing along the way with family and friends. We had way too much fun but we ain't complaining. So now that we are starting to settle in I figured it was time to get with my food blogging again. So here we go.....

Was longing for some BBQ'd chicken so I BBQ'd some Sriracha Chicken along with eggplants and green onions. This was a new concoction that I tried out for the chicken and it was awesome!!!

First I rubbed the chicken down with Puerto Rican Pig Powder. I obtained this recipe from Steven Raichlen's book "Barbeque Bible, Sauces, Rubs, and Marinades. It has over 200 recipes and they are fantastic. Steven Raichlen is known world-wide as the BBQ Guru. Google him and you will see what I mean. This is a must have book if you are a BBQ fanatic like me. 

http://barbecuebible.com/

Here is the rub recipe:

Puerto Rican Pig Powder

From Steven Raichlen’s Sauces, Rubs, and Marinades book (page 42)

Very spicy rub. Will put some zing into your BBQ.

1/2 cup kosher or coarse salt

2 tablespoons ground white pepper

2 tablespoons ground black pepper

2 tablespoons dried parsley

1 1/2 tablespoons ground cumin

1 tablespoon dried oregano

1 tablespoon garlic powder

1 tablespoon onion powder

Put the chicken on the grill over a wood fire. Love the flavor of real wood. Everyone has their favorite, but quite honestly, it's all good!!

As you can see I BBQ'd the chicken in the half piece so I used a wok cover over the top of the chicken to help cook the chicken faster and keep it moist. Almost like a mini-Weber.

At the very end of the cooking, I brush on the Sriracha Chilli Sauce "Salsa Picante" by Foco. Great flavor and compliments the rub perfectly.

Then I BBQ'd the eggplant right on the coals. It doesn't take long this way and it makes it super easy to peel the skin off. 

We then slide these eggplants in a lemon finadenne. Finadenne is a must have sauce on the table of any Guam family. Kinda like salsa in a Mexican household. This will definitely make your mouth water.

Here is a step by step for the finadenne:

http://bbqguam.blogspot.com/2011/04/lemon-finadene-guam-bbq-dipping-sauce.html

And lastly I grilled the green onions which are one of my favorites. Grilling green onions really brings out their natural sweetness. So I brushed on a little olive oil and sprinkled a little of my seasoning to spice it up a tad. 

This was a super tasty meal. The spicy chicken dusted in the Pig Powder with the Sriracha Chilli Sauce and the veggies kept us coming back for more. Lupe and I just about finished off the whole chicken. Dang was this good!!!

Gotta love outdoor cooking!!!

Until next time....

Rainy Weather?? Deep Fry those Spare Ribs!!!

Well it's rainy season in Guam right now. We only have two seasons, rainy and dry. Typically, rainy season runs from July through December and the dry season runs from January through June. Of course there are plenty of dry and wet days in both seasons. But today we had on and off rain. My plans to BBQ pork spare ribs were sidelined. So I went to Plan B......Deep Fried Pork Spare Ribs!!!!

Deep Fried Pork Spare Ribs, Chicken Kelaguen, Red Rice and a Garden Salad.

Here is how I do it.....

Take the rack of spare ribs and remove the membrane on the bone side.

Separate all the ribs and cut up the rib tips into nice size two inch chunks.

I rub them down with my salt, black pepper, garlic and onion powders.

Give them a healthy coat of regular mustard. 

I let these sit and marinade for a couple of hours.

When it's time to cook, I pour the oil into a large, high sided pot, and bring the oil temp up to about 350 degrees F.

Coat the ribs with self-rising flour. This really gives a great, crispy coat to the ribs.

Fry them until they get a nice golden brown.

Remove them and set on a drip grate over a flat baking pan for 5 minutes.

And they are ready for serving.

You would not believe how tender, juicy, and crusty these ribs are and with such tremendous flavor!! This is a big winner in my book.

Hope you give it a try. My bet is you'll be glad you did!!!

Until next time....

BBQ'd Spare Ribs.....From Zero to Done in 3 Hours

Being in the semi-retirement mode has it benefits. Even my wife Lupe is cashing in on that action.

Here's the story. Lupe works for one of the local elementary schools, Harry S. Truman here in Santa Rita (Guam). As school was getting closer to the beginning of the new year, all hands have been on deck to clean everything up, give the school a new paint job and all else that goes with readying the school for the new year.

Well this past week all the employees brought in pot luck food to feed all the volunteer workers that were not employees of the school. She told me about 10 persons total from the outside. Well, I get this semi-frantic call from Lupe about 8:30 in the morning, about an hour after she left for work. She said that they had a whole lot more volunteers show up than was anticipated. A whole lot more. She asked for my help. No problem, what can I do, right?? Lupe says I need for you to BBQ!! Ahhh, that may be a problem!! I have no nothing on hand to feed the multitudes. She said and I need for you to BBQ Spare Ribs. Oh yeah right!!! Ha, even better yet. I asked her what time is feeding? Lupe says 11:30am. Great, that would mean that I would have to go to the store, buy a case of spare ribs, which will be frozen, come home, defrost them, prepare them, season them, build a fire, grill them and have all that ready by 11:15 so that she can deliver them to the school in time for lunch. Oh yeah, no problem I told her. Just be here to pick them up. I will try my best. Small order...right??

Well, I went to the store, which is 10 minutes away, and bought the case of ribs. Returned home, put them all in the sink filled with water, and defrosted the ribs. Not my #1 choice of defrosting meat, but in a pinch it works just fine. Remember, just like the old days when we didn't know any better. No one died or got sick back then. At least no one I know.

Anyway, while the ribs were defrosting in the sink, I went outside, cleaned out the ashes from my Santa Maria-style BBQ pit from the last BBQ and started the fire with a small bag of Match Light Charcoal. It's the rainy season on Guam and I had a lot of wet wood. But I had some dry stuff, though not enough for the BBQ. That is why I will use the Match Lite as a starter. Works great to start up wet wood, as it did on this day. I loaded up the pit with small kindling on top of the Match Lite and placed my dry stuff with a little of the wet wood on top of that. After about 10 minutes of burning it was all a go.

I went back inside, and started trimming the rib tips off the rib racks. Then I cut each rack in half just to expedite the defrosting. The rest of the rib prep was just rubbing them down with my basic salt, black pepper, onion and garlic powders. I placed the ribs in a large plastic bag to marinate until the fire was ready.

After the rib preparation, I went back out to the pit and spread the fire out, cleaned and oiled the grill down and readied everything for the ribs. Just before I slapped the ribs down on the hot grill, I oiled it one last time and starting cooking. 

Time was a little after 10am. I thought I would have plenty of time for this. Ribs are normally only about an hour long grill time for me. The case of ribs filled up my entire grill. The fire was still a little too hot so I raise up my grill just enough so that the right amount of heat was hitting my ribs. Love my grill. I basted my ribs with olive oil and freshly squeezed calamansi lemons as they cooked. We have the lemons in our garden.

What's great about calamansi lemons is they are not as overpoweringly tart like the regular yellow lemons. Great flavor for BBQ and grilling.

My Santa Maria-style pit (B-Pit) by made by my Son-In-Law, Barry Quinata, Umatac, Guam

Ribs on and cooking nicely.

Ribs are just about done.

Well, when it was all said and done, the ribs were cooked, packaged and ready for delivery by 11:20am. Lupe was waiting and she made the delivery. 

Yep, BBQ'd Spare Ribs from Zero to Done in less than 3 hours!!! That's my story and I'm sticking to it. 

Just another beautiful and fun grilling day on Guam.

Until next time....