Easy

Our friend Philip Bernard of Raleigh, North Carolina, has plenty of hickory-smoked barbecue options, and still he’s a cheater. Philip likes to add molasses and vinegar to the pork butt to create a built-in sauce while it cooks. Be sure to trim the excess fat from raw meat in recipes like this when you want to serve the barbecue right away in its cooking liquid.

In between cruises when you’re pining for the late-night lido deck scene, there’s no better way to escape the quotidian than an island-themed luau. Lining the slow cooker with banana leaves and filling it with seasoned pork can really generate a breezy mood. The cheater way is to put a whole banana, skin and all, on top of our Luau Pork during cooking. It gets the party point across just as well. To carry the theme, think side dishes with tropical fruits, macadamia nuts, coconut, and rice.

Three thousand miles from the Atlantic, California sauces welcome Asian influences. Honey, ginger, soy, citrus, and Asian hot pepper sauce mingle with ketchup.

Eastern North Carolina’s pungent vinegar sauce is accented with black pepper notes and a light sweetness, but no tomato. Because it works so well with pulled pork, its popularity has traveled way beyond the region.

Moving through the Plains toward the Southwest, the sauce flattens out with more tomato, less vinegar, and a touch of chili on the horizon.

Farther south in South Carolina and Georgia, tangy yellow mustard predominates.

Nashville Crossroads is an even balance of vinegar, ketchup, and sugar, combining the influences from the Carolinas to our east and from Memphis to our west. It’s our number one pick to brush on Ultimate Cheater Pork Ribs (page 61) and pretty much any cheater pork. Even dry-rubbed Memphis ribs enjoy a bath at the crossroads.

Heating up in the desert sun, chipotles bring the smoke; lemon takes over for the vinegar.

Heading west toward Missouri, the sauce darkens, deepens, and sweetens, thanks to molasses and bottled smoke.

Heading west toward Tennessee on I-40, Pink Vinegar is more voluptuous, kinder, and gentler thanks to a little ketchup and more sugar.

Back in the day when Min and her pal Philip Bernard attended Virginia Tech football pregame tailgate parties with fervent religiosity, a touch of special cider was often the incentive for warming up some team spirit. In truth, there is absolutely nothing Hokie about this fine cider punch, what with the assistance of the special team’s Tennessee whiskey and all.

An Arctic cold snap certainly inspires one to rethink the traditional all-day hickory-smoked approach to barbecued ribs, especially with a 10°F wind chill outside and football and a roaring fire inside. Saucy Asian-style Rooster Riblets were named when we first made them for Chinese New Year, then the Year of the Rooster. Rename them annually, throw them in the oven, set the timer, and relocate your cooking post to the recliner. Even better, cook them a couple days in advance. Before serving, reheat the ribs with their sauce for a few minutes in the oven, on a grill, or under the broiler to add a little crust. Chinese ribs aren’t a good match for the usual baked beans, potato salad, and creamy slaw. If you’re up for it, serve pan-fried dumplings (find them in the grocery freezer section) or rice and an icy rice vinegar–cucumber salad (page 153).

Like fried chicken and good corn bread, oven drums are all about the crust. The key to Hot-Oven Drums is to get the skin working for you. Hot-Oven Drums are inspired by Nashville’s cultish hot pan-fried chicken that’s dusted-to-dredged in cayenne pepper. Proceed with caution! Here the skillet meets the oven. The bread crumbs, dry rub, and oil keep the Hot-Oven Drums crisp and the cayenne pepper, added right before cooking, lets you control the heat. Serve the drums just like chicken wings with ranch or blue cheese dressing and celery and carrot sticks. Eat them on your feet with a beer in the other hand and no worries about the red mess all over your face and hands.

A heavy little cast-iron hibachi is R. B.’s favorite outdoor grill for fast and efficient high-heat cooking. Indoors, that efficiency is called the broiler. Both tools use direct high heat to sear tender cuts of meat hot and fast. It’s just that the broiler heats from above, the grill from below. Even better, the broiler gets burning hot in minutes with the turn of a knob. Quick Sticks are a very loose version of Thai satay—thin cuts of chicken and steak rubbed with curry, threaded onto skewers, and quickly broiled. The dipping sauce is first-class cheating—barbecue sauce with some chopped peanuts thrown in. Icy Q-Cumbers (page 153) are a Quick Sticks must.

Dating back at least to the 1950s is a party classic known as sweet-and-sour meatballs, or smoky sausages in an easy blend of mustard and jelly. We’ve seen signature variations on this theme using just about every flavor of jelly and mustard around. In the end, they all work the same, producing an easy sweet-and-sour sauce for the meat to bathe in. R. B.’s Aunt Kate, a veteran hostess and merrymaking ringleader in Melbourne, Florida, gives particularly high marks to dishes like this that score lowest in effort and highest in empty bowl at cocktail-recipe swap meets. Our somewhat Asian fusion variation calls for broiled fresh pineapple and kielbasa.

These days quality hardwood-smoked salmon and trout in convenient Cryovac packages are easy to find. What we never expected was that even canned tuna, a product that has required little contemplation beyond water- versus oil-packed, would go through a major transformation with the new retort vacuum-packed foil pouch. No can opener, no draining, and new flavors to play with. A pouch or two of hickory-smoked tuna works for this spread. When we say any fish, we mean any fish or any shellfish, like smoked oysters or clams. We usually use a frozen pack of R. B.’s patio-smoked, fresh-caught Rhode Island bluefish courtesy of his friend and neighbor Chappy Pierce. Vary the ratio of seafood to cream cheese to your liking. If things taste fishy, add lemon juice. Serve the spread mounded in a bowl garnished with capers and lemon slices. We prefer plain water crackers for serving.

Have we cheesed you out? Take a cheese break and try this straight vegetable-bean puree with nutty sweet garlic and smoked paprika. It may not be the lead-off dish to a night of Crock Dogs, but it fashionably introduces dressier barbecue dinners. We especially like it with Tandoori BBQ Chicken Thighs (page 96), Cider-Soy Pork Tenderloin (page 79), House Lamb Shanks (page 128), and Ultimate Cheater Oven-Smoked Salmon (page 132).

Hummus may come and go, but warm spinach cheese dip, with its highly satiating qualities and homey familiarity, is still and always will be an excellent choice for casual parties involving cocktails. Broiler-charred jalapeños are our spin to bump this old classic into flavor advanced placement. As with any creamy cheese spread, R. B. will find any leftovers, no matter how buried in Min’s fridge, to plop on open-faced burgers.

Recipes, like everything else fashionable, rise and fall with popular perception. They’re in, they’re out, they’re hot, they’re hopelessly last season. Liver has never caught the wave of coolness, unless it’s taken from a force-fed goose. Even liver as haute couture as foie gras is on the OUT list, branded as inhumane and even outlawed in some places. Slumming with ready-to-wear liverwurst, on the other hand, is looking pretty fresh. Why shouldn’t it? Liverwurst has plenty in common with foie gras, especially its color and buttery smoothness when it’s blended with cream cheese. Instead of slapping it on rye bread with mustard, serve it with the sweet flavors that commonly adorn foie gras, and your perception will instantly change. This is absolutely one of R. B.’s favorite cheater recipes.

In addition to seasoning the Roasted Eggplant White Bean Spread (page 25), roasted garlic with a little smoke adds great flavor to hummus, mashed potatoes, and butter or olive oil spread on bread or over a steak. Blend roasted garlic with some mayonnaise for burgers and sandwiches.