How to cook alligator (Florida-style)
From the larger cities of Miami and Tampa in Southern Florida and Everglades National Park to the Spring Breaker paradise of spots along the Gulf Coast, Florida is a stunningly beautiful state with a VERY unique energy. It’s a place that you can be on a white sand beach, then a nightclub on one day, then on an airboat shooting gators out of the swamp on the next. It’s a sophisticated southern state with its own unique cultures.
Though I do love a Cubano sandwich and love the Latin energy that Florida’s biggest city Miami has to offer and stone crabs are very chill, I wanted to shine light on a Floridian tradition that, even in the state itself, you might not see everyday. 🤘🏻Adam
Florida-Style Alligator Brine, Spices and BBQ Sauce
Ingredients
Instructions
- Pour two gallons of water into a large cooler. Bring the remaining one gallon of water to a simmer. Add the salt, sugar, lemons, oranges, thyme, rosemary, bay leaves and Cajun-Creole Spice Blend and stir until the salt and sugar dissolves. Pour the hot brine into the cooler with the other water and stir to combine. Fully submerge the alligator in the cooler and cover with ice. Close the cover, seal tightly and let the gator brine for 24 hours.
- Optionally toast spices then grind. Mix all spices together. Store in closed container. Keeps on the shelf for weeks.
- To a medium saucepan, add the oil, garlic, ginger and onion. Season with a pinch of salt and sweat the aromatics over medium heat for 5 minutes.
- Stir in the smoked paprika and red pepper flake then stir until the spices coat the aromatics. Continue cooking for 30 seconds to 1 minute just until the spices start to smell nice.
- Add in the ketchup, water, apple cider vinegar, soy sauce, brown sugar and molasses. Stir the mixture until it comes back up to a boil. The mixture will be slightly thin, reduce it by a quarter over low heat or until the sauce has a viscous consistency.
- Remove from the heat and pour the chunky veg mixture into a blender followed by MSG and more salt and pepper if needed. Puree until smooth. The sauce should be tangy, umami-rich and semi-sweet. Taste and adjust seasoning as needed.
Adam's Notes
Gator Brine
- I wrote this brine recipe to act as an example and base recipe for those of you who do not want to calculate an exact brine. It'll work fine, but if you'd like to get a little more technical (and nerdy) about your measurements I'll talk more about it in a section below.
Cajun Creole Spice Blend
- I know. This is a Louisiana-inspired rub, but Gator is also a big part of Louisiana food culture and I absolutely love this blend that I used for my Jambalaya and Gumbo video so... here we are. It's nice and nice on gator. Trust me.
- This recipe makes just over a cup of rub. I quadrupled the recipe for this video to ensure that I had enough to cover both gators AND for the brine. You might need a little more, or a little less. I always make more than I think that I'll need to cover my bases.
M.S.G.B.B.Q.
- Serve the saucer as is, or optionally smoke the sauce in a small saucepan for one hour, stirring once at the 30 minute mark and after the full hour.
- This sauce is tangy and on the sweeter side. The sugars from the brown sugar, molasses and ketchup caramelize well on the gator helping to give it a nice mahogany coloring (along with help from the rub and smoke).
A Note On Smoking Alligator:
Smoking anything in an “offset” smoker is a whole new topic and video on its own. One must keep the fire alive and at a certain temperature by continuously adding wood (and/or charcoal) to the fire over a long multi-hour session. It’s a lot of fun (if you’re a masochist like myself) and highly rewarding if you have the will to screw up and teach yourself how to operate your equipment.
To ensure that the gator stayed juicy in the smoke throughout the 6 hour cooking process, I brined it for 24 hours - see more details on that process below. Then I stuck a probe in the thickest part of the gator’s tail and smoked it between 225-250F until the internal temperature reached 165F. I also stuck another probe into the gator’s legs (where the dark meat is) to make sure that it hit above 165F. I then pulled the entire beast out of the smoke and let it rest for one and a half hours. The result was juicy, spicy and tender white meat off the tail, and slightly stronger dark meat off of the legs.
As much as I hate to say it, the gator tasted like chicken. Really, really good chicken. It’s a copout, but yeah... chicken.
A Note On Brining Alligator:
I brined the gator like I brine any protein. I calculate the weight in grams of the animal plus the water, then add 2% salt. The additional sugar, spices and herbs are all for flavor. So long as the correct amount of salt is dissolved into the water and the meat is left to sit for 16-24 hours, you’ll be left with brined meat that holds onto juices even in the hottest, fastest or lowest, slowest cooking environments. I know this looks complicated, but trust me, I’m no mathematician and I was able to figure it out so I know that you can too.
First measure the weight of the animal in grams then subtract 20% of that weight to account for the bones. Bone cannot be penetrated by brine, therefore, we must account for it then remove it from our calculation. 20% is a solid general number that I use when brining chicken and, in this case, alligator. Add the meat weight and water weight together in grams, then multiply that number by (.02) to get 2%. That 2% number is how much salt that you need to weigh then add to the water in grams.
As you can see, I used a large 90 quart cooler to brine the gators. A smaller cooler should do the trick, depending on the size of the gator(s) of course. A large 22 quart Cambro or even a stockpot would work for smaller gators.
The picture below is a picture of the notes that I used when I brined the gators for this video. Sorry for the janky handwriting.
Stuff that I Use:
Buy whole frozen Alligator here (not affiliate link)
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