EGGFest 2025 Recipes

• Posted on 3 November 2025
• By Skyler Spartan
• Posted in eggfest
• 0

After going on hiatus for a year in order to make it out to Atlanta for EGGtoberfest, we returned to the Smokin In The Ozarks EGGFest over at Outdoor Home in Nixa to see if we could pull off another win. Our wives decided to create a team of their own to see if they could take us down, and the brawl ensued. Here are the bites we served and the recipes behind them so that you can recreate these dishes yourself at home to share them with others.

All recipes described are, of course, set up for cooking on a Big Green Egg, although you can alter them to use other grills according to what you have available if you don't own an EGG.

BBQ Meatballs

By Chris Crosby

✅ This recipe has been scaled for 50 Meatballs, or ~3⅙ lb total mixture

Ingredients/Supplies:

Meatball Mixture

• 2⅓ lb (2 lb 5 oz) ground beef (80/20)
• 13 oz (about ¾ lb) ground pork
• 3 large eggs
• 7 tbsp breadcrumbs (≈ 0.44 cup)
• ⅓ cup milk
• ¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese
• ½ medium onion finely minced (or 1⅓ tbsp onion powder)
• 2½–3 cloves garlic, minced (or ¾ tsp garlic powder)
• 3 tbsp Bear & Burtons W-Sauce worcestershire sauce
• 2 tbsp BBQ rub (plus a bit extra for dusting)
• Fresh cracked black pepper to taste

Spicy Jelly BBQ Sauce (for ~50 Meatballs)

• 1 cup Secret Stache Original BBQ sauce
• ½ cup JB's Zesty Lemon & Blood Orange Pepper Jam
• 2 tsp apple cider vinegar or 1½ tsp bourbon
• 1½ tsp honey or brown sugar (optional)
• 1 tsp butter
• Optional: pinch red pepper flakes
• Instant read thermometer, such as a Thermoworks Thermapen ONE or Fireboard Spark

Instructions:

Blueberry Stuffed Sausage Fatty

By Josh Dukewits

Pineapple Pork Loin

By Charlie Wallace

Ingredients/Supplies:

• Richard Fergola BBQ All Purpose Rub
• Richard Fergola BBQ Cherry Apple Rub
• Blues Hog Raspberry Chipotle BBQ Sauce
• Pineapple Rings
• Pork Loin
• A stick of butter (We Use Kerrygold)
• Slicing knife, such as the one we use from Wüsthof
• Instant read thermometer, such as a Thermoworks Thermapen ONE or Fireboard Spark

Instructions:

- Season your tenderloin with All Purpose rub, and then Cherry Apple rub. Let sit for ~10 mins to sweat.

- Season your pineapple rings with All Purpose rub

- With your EGG set up for indirect cooking at 325°F, place your tenderloin on the grill for ~45mins or until 138°F internal temperature is reached.

- Remove tenderloin and place on your stick of butter to rest for ~10mins, covering it with your Raspberry Chipotle sauce at this time.

- Place your pineapple rings on the grill as well, keeping an eye on them and flipping them as soon as you get some grill marks on one side. This won't take long, so pay attention to them.

- Slice and serve with bits of grilled pineapple

Bacon Wrapped Jalapeno Chicken Poppers

By Skyler Spartan

Ingredients/Supplies:

• Chicken breasts or tenders
• Bacon, regular cut (Just not thick cut!)
• Richard Fergola Honey Habanero BBQ Rub
• Richard Fergola Apple Cherry BBQ Rub
• Sliced Hot Jalapenos (We use Mezzetta Brand)
• Toothpicks
• Cooling Rack(s) - optional
• Instant read thermometer, such as a Thermoworks Thermapen ONE or Fireboard Spark

Instructions:

- Slice your chicken into roughly 1"x1" cubes. Some will vary in size and that's okay.

- Slice your pack of bacon in half down the center. This gives you just the right amount of bacon to wrap each chicken bite. :: PRO TIP - Try to make sure your working with bacon that is freshly refrigerated for easier handling. ::

- Stage your ingredients for easy grabbing in an assembly line style setup. This will make assembly much easier since you'll be doing it over and over again.

- I like to grab a jalapeno and lay in onto the end of a slice of bacon, and I'll top it with my piece of chicken. With my toothpick, I'll put the tip under the bacon to lift it off the surface so I can roll the chicken and jalapeno up and then I'll use my toothpick to stab through the bite, holding it all together once rolled up. Feel free to use whatever method you find easiest, though.

- With your EGG set to 325°F, I like to place my bites on a cooling rack and place them on the grill all at the same time, and we're going to run these to 160°F internal before pulling them so they can carry-over cook to 165°F as they rest before serving them hot!

Shrimp Stir Fry

By Austin Bell

Ingredients/Supplies:

• Day old refrigerated rice (Can be made the day before and stored in the fridge, or purchased from your favorite oriental restaurant like we did)
• Frozen peas, carrots & corn in the bag
• Large, deveined Shrimp w/ tail removed
• Richard Fergola BBQ Buttery Garlic Rub
• Bachan's Roasted Garlic Sauce
• Cooking oil (We use avocado oil)
• BGE Wok and ConvEGGtor Basket

Instructions:

- This is cooked on the EGG in a wok, which you'll need to make sure is well seasoned in order to prevent your food from sticking.

- With your EGG open and your wok in place and screaming hot, add a high temp cooking oil and add your veggies first and work them through until they begin to soften, then remove and set aside

- Next, we'll re-oil and add in your shrimp. Stir them around in the wok until they begin to turn translucent all around and pull them off to set aside for now.

- Next, re-oil and throw your day old rice in and give it a kick around until its nice and warm, and then we'll throw our other ingredients back in, incorporating them all together.

- As you stir, add in your Buttery Garlic rub and roasted garlic sauce to taste before removing from the heat and serving.
:: PRO TIP - This is usually a very fast cook, so have your bowls/plates/utensils at the ready and try to move as quickly as you can to avoid over cooking your shrimp. This dish can easily be done with other proteins as well if you're concerned about overcooking shrimp on your first attempt. Practice makes perfect on this one! ::

Blue Cheese Ribeye Crustini

By Richard Fergola

Ingredients/Supplies:

• 3/4" Thick Ribeye
• Blue Cheese Spread (Kraft is likely the easiest to find)
• Balsamic Glaze (Bertolli is easy to find)
• French Baguette
• Room Temperature Butter (We use Kerrygold unslalted)
• Elk Creek Chimi Churri (Or you can make your own)
• Richard Fergola BBQ Buttery Garlic Rub
• BGE 2pc Expander set
• A sharp knife, such as this Kiritsuke knife we use from Cangshan
• Tin Foil, enough to cover your steak once it comes off the grill
• Instant read thermometer, such as a Thermoworks Thermapen ONE or Fireboard Spark

Instructions:

- We're going to start with making our resting butter. With your room temperature butter, we're going to mix in roughly a tablespoon of Buttery Garlic rub. Combine thoroughly and set aside.

- Season your ribeye generously on both sides with your Buttery Garlic rub and let sit for about 10 minutes to sweat.

- While you're waiting on your steak to sweat, you can slice your baguette at a roughly 45° angle to provide a nice bite-through once toasted.

- You should also have time to go ahead and mix up your chimi churri to have it ready to go. The key here is a nice even consistency when you pick it up with a spoon. It should flow off the spoon with a nice fluidity without being too watery or clumpy. You should be able to tinker with it until you get the right mix, and if you have too much left over, it's cheap and easy, so you shouldn't need to worry too much about throwing some out.

- Now is also a good time to set up your plate/cutting board or whatever surface you're going to set your ribeye on once it comes off the grill. We're going to use half of our resting butter on the surface itself, and hang on to the other half to top your steak once it comes off the grill.

- With your EGG setup for direct cooking at 425°F, we're going to put our steak on the grill's lower rack, and we're going to use the upper rack of the expander to place our sliced baguette pieces to toast. You'll be in and out of here more frequently to check on your steak, so you can feel of your bread to make sure you're getting good color and feel without over-toasting them.

- Once your bread is firming up and has nice color on it, remove it from the heat and set aside

- We're looking for a really nice crust on each side of the ribeye without exceeding 118-120°F internal temp on this steak, because it is thinner and is going to have some carry over cooking that is going to take it closer to medium rare as it rests. Therefore, you won't want to leave it unattended for very long in between check-ins on it. 

- Once you achieve the color and temperature we're looking for on the steak, we're going to set it on our resting butter from earlier and top if with the other half of the butter for the duration of the rest. Put your foil over the top of it, and make sure to bring it in tightly around your steak to keep the heat from escaping while it sits.

- DON'T TOUCH IT FOR 5 MINUTES - I know it smells good...control yourself.

- Now's the perfect time to use a spoon and spread your blue cheese spread on your baguette slices in preparation for construction. Go ahead and get your balsamic glaze and chimi churri at the ready as well.

- Once 5 minutes has passed, remove your foil tent and slice thinly (1/8 - 1/4" thick)

- Place your sliced steak onto your baguette/blue cheese slices, and top with balsamic glaze and a little bit of chimi churri before serving.

When people say "Oh, no thanks, I don't like blue cheese." You can confidently say, "Just try it" and watch their eyes roll into the back of their heads as they discover they've just never had it the right way before. Become their new hero. Mission accomplished. Let this be your mic drop moment. Thank us later.

PS. this recipe won the People's Choice award at the Royal Oak invitational in 2025, served by Richard Fergola, Heath Riles, Megan Day, and Duce Raymond

We want to extend a HUGE Thank You to the guys who graced us with their presence on our team this year. We had a frickin' blast, and we are so blessed to have you all around to help elevate us beyond what we ever thought we could be.

We want to thank the Wives Team for showing up and giving their hearts to this event. They came up with some really awesome stuff, and to be honest, we were pretty dang impressed by it!

We want to thank Outdoor Home for putting this event on. Aaron is the "behind the scenes" guy that usually keeps himself parked behind a computer screen the rest of the year keeping their websites up to date, but he really does a bang up job with this event, and it never ceases to amaze us how well he's done with this. The rest of the team over there does fantastic, too, especially this year with the pivot into the warehouse to make this event happen rain or shine. Kudos to them all, and Thanks again for letting us come out and play.

Lastly, and most importantly, thanks to those who came out and attended this event. If it weren't for you all, there wouldn't be a Smokin' In The Ozarks EGGFest, so it's really you all who make this event a success. Thanks so much to each and every one of you!