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Some things are just meant to be, but who’d a thunk it was watermelon and Fireball Whisky?
Menu planning for the 50 Campfires Field Trips begins well before the team hits the road. We research regional foods in the area they will be traveling. We look for dishes that are traditionally prepared there as well as ingredients that are grown, raised, processed, or made in the region.
The Field Trip: Great River Road ending in New Orleans presented many opportunities and challenges alike. Of course, New Orleans is famous for it cuisine. It offers tons of variety. On the other hand, fame is a challenge because everybody covers New Orleans dishes like jambalaya, po’ boys, gumbo, and beignets. And besides, we need to take those world renowned dishes and make them campfire, cook stove — or at least charcoal grill — simple. That’s a challenge on something like gumbo that takes all day and most of the night to cook.
So we looked for consummately Southern and consummately Louisianan ingredients. We came up with watermelon and Fireball Whisky.
We came up with a unique way to put them together, and it blew our collective minds!
This is so simple, it can barely be called a recipe, but here it is:
Fireball on Watermelon Rocks
Combine these to consummately Southern and consummately Louisianan ingredients and be prepared to have your mind blown. This is one of the best combos we’ve tasted in a long time!
Author: 50 Campfires
Recipe type: Cocktail
Cuisine: Cocktail
Serves: as many cubes as tray will hold
Ingredients
- 1 watermelon from a roadside stand with character
- ice cube tray(s)
- 1 bottle of Fireball Whisky (unless you have A LOT of friends over, then 2)
Instructions
- Halve and quarter watermelon.
- Remove rind.
- Chop flesh into chunks and juice that will pour into the individual spots on an ice cube tray.
- Pour into tray.
- Freeze.
- Place frozen cubes into any beverage that could benefit from a bit of watermelon flavor — but especially Fireball Whisky. (We tried everything from Mississippi River Water to Fireball to beer for a makeshift watermelon shandy.
- For transport or to make more, dump tray of watermelon ice cubes into Ziploc bag and put in freezer or cooler to take to the campsite.
The 50 Campfires Team and our in-camp guests loved watermelon rocks with Fireball Whisky, but we’ve tried these pink cubes of deliciousness to cool and flavor a variety of beverages and haven’t found anything we really dislike them in. Get yourself a nice, light brew and add some cubes. Cooling and delicious. Vodka’s a natural, of course. If you want something non-alcoholic unsweetened ice tea is great. Plain sparkling water takes on flavor from watermelon cubes, too.
What’s really cool is you can customize the intensity of the watermelon flavor in your own drink. Just swirl and swirl until you get just the right ratio of melted watermelon juice in your beverage.
Enjoy!
