For me, America’s birthday is mostly about the grilled and smoked meat.  I love liberty and all, but mainly I love the liberty to grill and smoke lots of meat on my deck.

This year I enjoyed several cuts of many different animals at a neighbor’s house on the 4th, then took my turn as fire-master on the 5th.  Having just bought a five-shelf rib rack (through Amazon), I set out to fit the maximum amount of food possible onto my XL Big Green Egg(R).  A few weeks ago, I had watched this epic (19-minutes+) video about how to make perfect pork ribs on the Egg, starting with applying yellow mustard as an adhesive for the spice rub, after which I smoked one test rack for six hours.  It came out unbelievably well.