Egg Rolls

 About 35 years ago I met a man who would become the best friend I have in the world.  Bob and I met at church and we hit it off immediately.  We both love Mississippi State, bourbon, cigars, and cooking.  (I had to give up the cigars a few years ago for health reasons!) We’ve shared the good times and the bad, happy and sad   We’ve leaned on each other through the deaths of our parents and the loss of my son.  We’ve celebrated our children’s weddings and the births of our grandchildren. Bob is the closest thing I have to a brother. 

Before I met Bob, he came up with a recipe for homemade egg rolls. These aren’t typical Asian egg rolls.  They have smoked pork, pork sausage, venison, and the usual vegetables. Lots of garlic and Cajun crab boil are the primary seasonings.  We make the filling in huge batches, over 200 pounds at a time, and bag it in gallon zipper bags for the freezer.  One bag makes 50-60 rolls. We have to cool it down before freezing and after several unsuccessful attempts to get it cool, I came up with an ingenious idea.  After cooking the meat and vegetables (everything is pre cooked) we dump them into a plastic kiddy swimming pool to cool!  No water. We spread it out and surface area gets it cool in no time.  

We cook them for parties, weddings, barbecue contests, and even one funeral! We’ve cooked in scorching heat, monsoon rain, and frigid cold.  At beautiful homes, patios, hunting camps, commercial buildings, cow pastures, and one cemetery.  We’re like celebrities!  The guests bring us food, fix our drinks, whatever we need!  I’m the roller and Bob is the fryer.  We normally do 150-200 for a party.  Our record for one event is 450 in one night at the Memphis in May world championship barbecue contest cooking at a party for one of the teams.  The guests of honor were the Netherlands National Barbecue Team!

Egg rolls are how I became a barbecue judge.  We had friends who had competition cooking teams. They invited us to come to the contests and cook for them on Friday nights after they put the meat on the smoker.  They kept encouraging us to get certified as judges. Bob didn’t want to but I did.  That was in 2007 and I’ve been doing it since! I’ll tell more about my adventures on the barbecue circuit in another post.  

I figure I’ve rolled about 10,000 egg rolls over the years.  I can roll in my sleep!  Egg rolls have played a big part of the last 25 years of my life. They’re even responsible for my son meeting his wife!  More on that later.  

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