Side Pork Fest

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Belly/Side/Side Pork - The belly, although a fattier meat, can be used for steaks or diced stir-fry meat. Belly pork may be rolled for roasting or cut for streaky bacon - Wikipedia

Of course if you live in Brussels, WI you can build a festival around this cut of pork and raise money for your local volunteer fire department.

In the big cities there always seems to be buckets of money laying about for the fire department to have virtually anything they want.

In Brussels, or any other small town in America, volunteer fire departments are always holding fundraisers to make ends meet.  A succession of brat frys, chicken BBQs, pancake and porkie breakfasts are routinely scheduled to purchase a defibrillator or two, pay-off a grass truck, fire engine, tanker or finance an air boat to fetch stranded ice drinkers from the Bay.

The BUG (Brussels, Union, Gardner) Fire Department held their first Side Pork Fest today.

The Frau and I went over there in the afternoon to take-in this gastronomical event.  A hamburger topped with side pork on a bun-$5.  Side pork dipped in chocolate-$2.  Side pork straight-up-$1.  Pitcher of  Bud-$8.

Live music at the ball field with the Kentucky Headhunters as the closing act.

For any of you who have never grilled side pork on your Weber it is a messy proposition.  Flames and smoke everywhere.  But very tasty.  And considering the flare-ups probably not a bad idea to have the fire fighters doing the grilling.

Simply lay your slices on the grate, sprinkle liberally with Lawry's Seasoned Salt.  Grill until crispy and serve with catsup, BBQ sauce, mustard, grated Parmesan or whatever.

Yum! 

Sidepork Fest was no different - only gigantic in scale.  I inquired about how much of this greasy delicacy was on hand for the event and was told that the fire department had 1000 pounds of it on hand for grilling.

Returning home it was showers all around. We both felt like we had a molecular layer of grilled pork fat all over...