Cooking at Chiditarod - Chilling and Grilling on the Run

I spent yesterday cooking for everyone racing in Chiditarod. We built a couple grill carts and ran the race giving out food - I think we must have given out about 2-300 servings of food. We did beef satays, chicken wings, chicken yakitori, turkey neck sandwiches, sliders, a spicy coriander chicken, kielbasa, and a few other things I've forgotten already. Grilling while on the move was a very interesting experience, but everything turned out great and it was GREAT day to be outside.

looks like a fun day , in the 2nd pic fire got alittle big

Nice photos, looks and sounds like a twisted, wild and GOOD time!
http://www.chiditarod.org/
Check the above link for details and pics.

philw wrote:looks like a fun day , in the 2nd pic fire got alittle big

It was the best time I've had in a long time! The fire in the second shot was an absolute necessity to light the charcoal and clean the grill. We considered other methods, but there was clearly NO other way to do it.

Cbot wrote:Nice photos, looks and sounds like a twisted, wild and GOOD time!
http://www.chiditarod.org/
Check the above link for details and pics.

In a few days they should have a final count of how much food was gathered, apparently the food Chiditarod donated to the Chicago Anti-Hunger Federation has filled their storage space completely! It looks like it was the most successful Chiditarod yet.

Attrill wrote:I spent yesterday cooking for everyone racing in Chiditarod. We built a couple grill carts and ran the race giving out food -

Fantastic, really cool, love the way you married the grills to shopping carts, a red neck trailer mount.

Did you really run the Chiditarod pushing lit/cooking grills? Amazing.

This is a new one on me, thanks for the post.

Enjoy,
Gary

G Wiv wrote:

Attrill wrote:I spent yesterday cooking for everyone racing in Chiditarod. We built a couple grill carts and ran the race giving out food -

Fantastic, really cool, love the way you married the grills to shopping carts, a red neck trailer mount.

Did you really run the Chiditarod pushing lit/cooking grills? Amazing.

This is a new one on me, thanks for the post.

Enjoy,
Gary

We kept the barrel grill going for the entire race and the Weber kettle going for most of it (although saying we "ran" the race would be too generous. We moseyed, ambled, and eventually stumbled our way through most of the course). I built a charcoal basket out of expanded metal for the barrel smoker and kept about 1/2 a chimney of charcoal plus some wood chunks going in it at all times. It stayed at about 275-300 while we were moving, and I smoked the chicken legs at that temp as we moved. Once we reached a check point we'd throw on a lot of charcoal and crisp up the skin on the chickens and cook some satays and other direct grilled foods. Once the fire started to die down I'd thrown on some apple chunks, a new batch of chicken to smoke, and we'd move on.



Oh - we also had a bar cart as well...




There are some more photos of the race and the construction of the carts here if anyone is interested.

We also ran into the Chicago Firewood delivery guy and scored a couple logs of various hardwoods.

Final count was 14,525lbs. of food dropped to the chicago food depository. Not bad for a shopping cart race.

Attrill and I had our first assessment for this year. Exited to do some continuing modifications and make a cooking plan.

Chiditarod 2011
http://www.chiditarod.org/

Gary's post on Azur Meat Market has me leaning towards Cevapcici this year. We're going to be using Twitter to inform people of our route and menu during the race this year. We'll have three grill carts and a beverage cart. More details to come...

We're going to be announcing our route and menus via twitter this year: @attrill

Our carts are ALMOST ready, I've done more welding and grinding in the last week than I have in my entire life, we're going big time this year!

I'm definitely doing cevap, and picked up some Mutton neck, beef short ribs, and pork shoulder to grind. In addition to the two grill carts we had last year we'll also have a "What About Bob" themed cart giving out free kabobs.

I was a volunteer at this event last year and it was a blast!
Some people really go all out with their carts and costumes.
If anybody cares to take in the action, the starting line this year is 1900 W. Hubbard (the corner of Hubbard and Grand Ave.). They go off at about noon and it's quite a mad spectacle. The starting line is also the best place to bring food donations, as the finish line and checkpoints are supposedly kept secret.
Come on out and cheer Team Attrill on to victory!

Due to traveling for a convention and the madness that is CPS acceptance policies I've been pretty distracted for the last few weeks - here's this year's recap!



The weather was not so kind this year - lower thirties, very windy and light snow. Our grill carts served double duty as warming stations.





My main dish was Cevap. I cooked about 80 of them total and served them with grilled onions and tomatoes with a roasted red pepper sauce. I used an equal mix of beef short rib (Dietzler), pork shoulder (Jakes), and mutton neck (Mint Creek Farms). Going with good meat across the board made a HUGE difference in the taste.



I also did some beef satays that I marinaded in soy, ginger juice, sake, brown sugar, habenero powder, and green onion.



I cooked about 40 of those. I also did some chicken legs at the end, but both I and the photos were too blurry at that point to post.

Shoebocks made some GREAT pork sausage along with some great chicken, both of which I remember enjoying immensely, but I forget the details of how they were made.



Once again it was an incredible day that ended up raising $18.5K in cash and 17.5Klbs in food for the Chicago Anti-Hunger Federation. On a side note, this year my favorite cart was a pair of shopping carts that were decked out as the Titanic - they split in half and launched flares as they drove along. Brilliant!

This year's Chiditarod is coming up!

http://www.chiditarod.org/

March 3rd is the date, and we'll be doing the same thing we always do (see above). I'm open to any suggestions of what the best food to cook for loads of people on a grill mounted to a shopping cart would be, and will be posting more info about our menu, route, and schedule soon! If anyone wants to join us please PM me, we are not an exclusive group by any means. What could be better than walking the streets of Chicago cooking and drinking on the the first weekend of March?

Hi,

I hope you will post on the Event's forum, too. I am sure I am not the only one who might want to show up and watch.

Regards,

Thanks Cathy!
Sean posted it to the Events thread and I'll post a video of the start to that thread in a bit. It is a thing a beauty.

I put new front wheels on the frame of our cart tonight and have kicked off the build. If anyone has any old steel file cabinets, cabinets, lockers, etc. let me know - I'd love to use them. I'm looking for flat steel pieces of any sort to weld onto the side of our cart. I'm hoping to incorporate a kegerator into the cart this year as well.

Everything is coming together for tomorrow's race. It starts around noon at the intersection of Wolcott and Hubbard and then moves onto a series of bars throughout West Town and Ukrainian Village - they'll announce the route late tonight at Chiditarod.org. I'll be tweeting the bars we'll be stopping at @Attrill - Still finalizing the menu, but I'll definitely be doing burgers of some sort. Hope to see some of you there!

That looks like a great time for a great cause!

Unfortunately I'm just seeing this now and don't know if it will work with my schedule tomorrrow as we're having a new washer delivered. I'm definitely going to keep it in mind for next year if I can't make it over there tomorrow. Have a blast!

Congratulations to Chris (Attrill) for winning the prize for best food cart @ this year's event.
I obviously need a tutorial in posting photos, but for what it's worth, here are some 'images.
Hopefully there will be more to come from the man himself.

Thanks! We had another great Chiditarod, cooking around 200 servings of various things and drinking a lot more than I thought I was capable of. I still need to get some photos of the actual food we cooked, but I took a few shots in between cooking and pushing.

This year we went with a sort of generic bar/grill concept and built some wood paneling and a drop down bar for people to hang at:



We stuck with the same barrel grill, which worked just great (as always):



For food we covered pretty much all the bases during the course of the day. Some of the things we cooked were:

Toasted bagels (at the start)
Burgers w/burnt tomatoes and cheese
Grilled Cheese and tomato sandwiches (our veggie option)
Sliced flat iron steak sandwiches w/horseradish sauce
Pulled pork
Roast beef
Spicy chicken thighs
Deconstructed (on a skewer) Chicago hot dogs

I think there are a few things I missed. Everything went really well and we won the first ever Best Food Cart Trophy!

Congratulations Chris! Your cart is a masterpiece, very creative. This event looks like so much fun.