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Burgoo [was: "Wanted: Homemade Bourbon BBQ Sauce Recipe]


Gillman
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Yeah, the City squirrels walk right up to you and hold a gun to your head for some food. I laid down in the sun in the park the other day, and I feared for my life as the squirrels gathered around not afraid of much of anything. Rats with tails! Hmmm...now there's something wild to throw in burgoo...some New York City sewer rats!

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Be very careful, from what I hear of New York sewer rats, they are big enough to throw YOU in the burgoo. smilielol.gif

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now there's something wild to throw in burgoo...some New York City sewer rats!

YeeeGawds! An' I thought it sounded gross when Gary mentioned fish... smilielol.gif

Ya'll are starting to really creep me out... lol.gif

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I have been enjoying this Burgoo thread. I've asked some folks around here about what goes into burgoo.

Here are The Burgoo Rules as I understand them:

1. The meat must be acquired by acute lead poisoning. (That implies, you can't pick it up off the road, buy it or have it die on your property)You gotta shoot it.

2. You can use just about any type of meat.

3. Real Burgoo Gourmets include other gizzards as well as the tough cuts. I have it on good authority that squirrel brain is the preferred finishing touch, about the size of a walnut with a unique flavor and texture

4. Burgoo must be cooked a really long time. (No one really agrees, but in Lawrenceburg, they keep the same pot going for about 4 days during The Burgoo Festival, adding additional ingredients as they go)

5. A wood fire is preferred and bits of ash that float into the mixture are required. (pallet wood makes nice ash flakes)

6. The pot must be black. Most say cast iron, but the evidence is that any metal that has been over a fire long enough to be completely black on the outside is good.

7. You have to stir it with a big wooden paddle. No spoons or metal objects in the pot

8. Bite gently, lead shot is considered an acceptable hazard, like the occasional fish bone in fish stew.

9. The best burgoo is the one you're raised on. Regions are proud of their burgoo and nobody else's is considered "right".

10. Nobody puts bourbon in burgoo. Why? If people want bourbon flavor, there's no reason to put it in the burgoo. Just drink some. About as silly as bourbon flavored cigars.

11. I suggested that burgoo might be a "hunter's stew" and was told in no uncertain terms that burgoo was made at home and at fairs, not in the woods. No reason given. That was just silly. You fry it, grill it or roast it on a stick in the woods.

12. Nobody brings burgoo to a covered dish supper. (Couldn't decide if it was because they don't like to share it or they know that nobody else is going to think that their burgoo is "right".

13. You either love it or hate it. Half say they would never touch it, the other half swear its the best thing since The Hot Brown.

I continue to be amazed with interesting foods in Kentucky.

Here are some others that I never had before moving here:

1. Paw Paw: a mango like fruit that grows in clusters like bananas

2. Poke: A green made famous by Salad Annie, but apparently poisonous if not prepared correctly. (another story)

3. Fried Banana Peppers: Ya, just like it sounds.

4. Lamb Fries (with cream gravy): Fried, different

5. Hickory Nuts

6. Black Walnuts: Outrageously Walnutty

7. Tigger Melon: Orange and Yellow, grapefruit sized, tastes like cucumber and is used as an air freshener.

8. Wild Ginger

9. Ramp: Now this is the stinkiest leek/scallion-like thing you will ever eat. They grow wild in the spring. They sell for $18.00/lb in NY.

10.Ale-8-One: Winchester Swamp Water: The name is a play on words (A Late One) A sugary, caffeine ginger/citrus soda. Not really like any other. Now available in diet. The green bottle is the preferred projectile for roadside littering and bike rider whacking. (another story)

toast.gif

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Great, many thanks!

You've emulated my non-brevity but the information conveyed is commensurate!

Lamb fries. Ramp. Paw-paw. Wow!

Gary

P.s. What the heck is Hot Brown??

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Had one at the Brown Hotel last year... Great stuff. Here's the recipe.

Actually, a bunch of us ate there last year (me and Stacy, Chris and Kristin and Koji and Yuki) and if I recall we all had hot browns! lol.gif

HotBrownSandwich.jpg

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Interesting, Mark, thanks! I passed by the Brown Hotel while looking for a similar pile nearby (the hotel with German-American name that escapes me for a moment, although its bourbon bar doesn't smile.gif).

Gary

Is the Brown of the Brown Hotel the same as in Brown Forman, i.e., of the same family?

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After dinner we all met up with Omar and Mike V. at the D. Marie Lounge atop the Galt House... They had some bourbon selection there! A little info with a small pic of the bar can be found here.

I don't think it does Gary, but here's some hotel history.

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Thanks, Mark, an interesting story. But I've got to wonder if the Louisville-area Browns (the major business names) aren't related somehow. I believe Brown & Williamson, the tobacco concern, also was founded in or near Louisville and I wonder if the Brown in that company was connected to the Browns in distilling.

Gary

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I always thought it was "poke salad" too, but the correct term is "poke salat". Here is a pretty good reference: http://www.watersheds.org/nature/poke.htm By the way, I have it growing in my lawn and I pull it and pull it, but it keeps coming back. I haven't eaten any of it in about 50 years.

Black walnuts are wonderful, aren't they? My grandfather used to have a few trees on a city lot in an old section of Atlanta. I loved it when those nuts came in. If I'm not mistaken, you only get a lot of nuts every other year.

Tim

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Geezzzzz Mr. Ed...

You forgot the caviar of all caviars... Mountain Oysters grin.gif and Chitlins grin.gif

Just goes ta show ya (like I said before) folks will eat anything smilielol.gif

grin.gifgrin.gif Bettye Jo grin.gifgrin.gif

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The Brown and Seelbach really aren't that close to each other. The Brown in on the southern edge of downtown while the Seelbach is central. The Hyatt Regency is near the Seelbach. Then there is the Galt House, on the river, at the northern edge of downtown.

I can save people some trouble by telling them that the Hot Browns at the Brown Hotel are no better than the ones you can get anywhere else in town. It's a pretty easy dish to bring off.

But delicious.

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Brown is a prominent name in Kentucky and I know of no common ancestor. There are the whiskey Browns, who started with the half-brothers George Garvin and John Thompson Street just after the Civil War.

Then there are the political Browns, mostly all named John Young Brown, democrats, including the current Secretary of State and a recent governor.

And J. Gramham Brown, lumber baron and developer, who was a Republican political leader, although never in elective office, in the 20s.

The tobacco Browns were never a Louisville company. Brown & Williamson was started in North Carolina in the 1870s. The company located to Louisville in 1927 after it was sold to London-based British American Tobacco (BAT).

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An impressive command of business and social history, thanks. My peregrination in quarters of Louisville was on a Sunday during my recent trip, looking for the Seelbach bar for a whiskey before going to the airport. Unfortunately the bar (as I should have guessed) was closed, as was the one at Brown's Hotel. Still, it was a good chance to see some historic and other Louisville architecture. The Seelbach is always a favorite and I like to spend time in its lobby and admire the marble floors, the frescos, the gilt. It evokes a grand age when cities were the locus for families of all social rank and entertaining was done in the city at such impressive piles. I imagine that the balls and fetes that used to be held at these hotels are now held at country clubs and other such retreats. Something has been lost, here. The city nourished fortunes that now look elsewhere to disport and show the emblems of social standing. Still, in many other cities, the equivalent of the Seelbach and Brown have been long closed; in Louisville they carry on and that's a good thing.

Gary

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Chuck,

I can save people some trouble by telling them that the Hot Browns at the Brown Hotel are no better than the ones you can get anywhere else in town. It's a pretty easy dish to bring off.

You're absolutely right. A very forgiving dish. And despite the recipe the Brown Hotel puts out there now, the Hot Browns I remember at the Brown (as a child) had a more cheddar based sauce. Almost anything goes, I have eaten it with broccoli on top of the tomato.

Here's a couple more recipes: Hot Brown page . (someday I'm gonna finish that website...;-)

Honestly, I have added Bourbon to my cheese sauce the last couple of times I've made a Hot Brown...and ya know...I like it.

They're also a great way to use Thanksgiving turkey (eternity is one person and a cooked turkey).

Bj

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10. Nobody puts bourbon in burgoo. Why? If people want bourbon flavor, there's no reason to put it in the burgoo. Just drink some. About as silly as bourbon flavored cigars.

I figure burgoo is open to include whatever the cook wants to throw in. If I happen to drink too much bourbon and some of it sloshes from my glass or bottle into the pot, so be it!

I found the following quote on a KY tourism web site and got a chuckle:Bourbon & Burgoo

In this state you may find bourbon not only in your glass but on your plate. Kentuckians are fond of and familiar enough with bourbon to cook with it. Experts in the art of burgoo—a stew featuring beef, lamb, chicken, and less common meats, plus okra, tomatoes, corn, lima and green beans, pepper, and other ingredients—say that bourbon is essential, because the stew must cook outdoors overnight in a large kettle, and the preparers need something to sip as they tend the fire.

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This was info I gathered in passing, not an exhaustive survey. I guess that would make Lexington Burgoo "Not Right" in comparison to others. Always a risk.

Please take whatever liberties you like with the recipe.

I'm no expert, having only eaten it a few times and never having prepared it. (I haven't fired a weapon in years. BTW, I noticed that no game birds or waterfowl ever appear in the recipes)

Today, I heard that someone adds grape jelly their burgoo.

Go figure.

toast.gif

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Rocky Moutain Oysters and Chitterlins.

Seen'm in the stores, haven't made the leap. RMO's are intimidating in size compared to lamb fries or the bite size turkey fries (which are great in brown gravy)

I saw a lady in Critchfield's Meats, standing at the meat case just poking at RMO's with her finger. She asked the butcher what they were. I thought she was going to die when he whispered the "real name" into her ear.

lol.gif

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peregrination

??

I am fairly widely read, but you got me on that one. The only thing I can come up with is "peregrine falcon". I must go look it up.

Tim

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peregrination

??

As used by one of our resident wordsmiths, Gary Gillman, peregrination referred to his "travels/journey/meandering" in Louisville. Given the warp and weft of this thread, the word could also be used to refer to the "widely ranging discourse" it has become!

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Thanks for rescuing the Seelbach go to a Louisville developer named Roger Davis, a retired TV actor best known for his roles in "Dark Shadows" and "Alias Smith and Jones."

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Thanks, Cliff, and indeed this thread has become long and winding, kind of a "pot-pourri" but isn't that what burgoo is..? smile.gif I do find words interesting and Tim's comment has made me realise why the kind of falcon he mentioned is termed peregrinating. I learn a lot about words from our forum here. Just the other day, I learned the original meaning of shindig when Bettye Jo spelled it in two words (shin dig): clearly it means a dance (another way to say, kick up your heels), which explains its more general meaning of a party. I always wondered where that word came from!

Gary

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I have some first hand experience with the avian peregrines. For the first few years of my commercial fishing life, I ran my fishwheel below a bluff on the Yukon River between Nulato and Koyukuk. Each summer a peregrine would return to nest on the rocky bluff above my wheel.

This "duck hawk" --the name used in the Alaskan bush to refer to peregrines-- is, without question, the most aggressive creature I have ever observed. At fish camp we are worried primarily about bears (and keep loaded long rifles on hand as a consequence), but at this first camp I maintained we also had to deal with this little dynamo who would dive bomb any human, dog, or moose that dared meander on the beach below the nest.

An amazing creature, the peregrine falcon:

post-207-14489811555176_thumb.jpg

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When I was working for a living, I officed in a 70 story building in downtown Houston. There was a priviate dining club on the 70th floor. Two peregrines decide to nest up there during their migration south. They feasted on squab all day long. Never saw them dive bomb a human, but from 70 stories up, they had quite the view.

Randy B

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