The skill to grill

Malverne F.D. wins annual barbecue competition

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There were other tables full of food, but somehow people couldn’t help lingering around the Malverne Fire Department’s table full of freshly barbecued ribs and chicken. “This is ‘Nonna’s [expletive] Kicking Ribs,’ and over here we have ‘Not Your Grandpa’s Jerk Chicken,’” said Jeff Sattali, a Malverne firefighter who was debriefing the crowd while fellow firefighter Tim Engleke chopped up the meat.

Word spread quickly that Malverne most likely had the winning table at the Grilling Throwdown, an annual event organized by the Nassau County Firefighters Museum & Education Center that challenges the best self-proclaimed firehouse chefs from across Nassau County. The event was held at the Atria on Roslyn Harbor, a senior retirement community.

Malverne did go on to win the competition — and had good odds of doing so, because many of the firehouses scheduled to cook didn’t show — but its food was, by all accounts, delectable. Would the department share a recipe? “Nope,” answered Sattali, revealing only that the ribs recipe was his grandmother’s. “It’s not gonna happen.”

One of the secrets to the firefighters’ cooking skills was a device called the Caja China box, which slowly cooks up to 100 pounds of meat in four hours or so using indirect heat. The meat is placed inside the box, charcoal is placed on a shelf above the meat, and a lid contains the whole operation.

As part of the competition, each fire department used a secret ingredient, supplied by Atria. This year it was apples. “The Atria was very kind to give us a variety of different apples: Gala apples, Honeycrisp apples, Granny Smith apples, Rome apples,” Sattali said. We took apples that we thought would fit best with bourbon, and what kind of barbecue wouldn’t be great without bourbon?”

The firefighters used the apples and bourbon, and combined them with honey and perhaps some other ingredients — we’re still not sure — to make a succulent, fall-off-the-bone chicken that was winning high praise from every judge who visited the table.

“Just remember to put the ‘e’ on the end of Malverne when you vote,” Sattali said to a nearby judge. “Don’t spell it the Pennsylvania way. Spell it the Malverne way.”