Everett firefighters turn on the burner and fire up the grill

EVERETT — What’s on the burner at Fire Station One in Everett?

For starters, how about steak bites with oven-roasted vegetables, sautéed buttered shrimp, pulled pork sandwiches and teriyaki chicken. For breakfast: sweet potato scramble and sausages. Oh, and every Sunday, biscuits and gravy.

Everett firefighters do it all: fight fires, save lives and cook!

“We like good food — appetizers, fondue, special rolls for our hamburgers, special desserts” said Ladder 1 Capt. Todd Stark at Everett Fire Station One.

If you don’t know your way around the kitchen, you’ll learn on this job. From grocery shopping to grilling chicken, everyone pitches in.

“A lot of people don’t come with cooking experience. But as part of the crew, we ask them to contribute — figure out a couple of recipes,” Stark said.

There’s only one rule — make it good and make plenty.

“The worst thing you can do is not make enough. The other thing is to make something horrible,” Stark said.

Firefighters pool their money and pay for their own meals: breakfast is $5 and dinner is usually $10-$12. (You’re on your own for lunch, though that’s usually leftovers.)

“It’s best to start with easy recipes, like steaks and burgers. These are beginner-friendly meals. It’s hard to mess those up,” said firefighter Junious Lockette.

Still, meal planning for 12 can be tricky. Due to allergies, garlic is taboo. Spicing is low to moderate — not everyone is a fan of the heat. And skip the urge to experiment.

Unless you’ve mastered a new dish at home, don’t try it out at the station. The last thing you want is to ruin dinner for a dozen firefighters.

“People remember the really horrible meals forever,” Stark said.

If you do botch a meal, order pizza or take-out and pay for it on your own dime, old-timers advise.

STOP, DROP AND ROLL

Fire Station One on Rucker Avenue, which covers the city’s downtown core, is the largest and busiest of Everett’s six firehouses. “A minimum of 11 firefighters are always on duty,” said Everett Fire Department spokesperson Rachael Doniger.

The station’s four crews – Ladder 1, Engine 1, Medic 1 and Aid 1 — respond to about 30 emergency calls per day, Doniger said.

In between calls, they take turns making breakfast and dinner, every single day. Each crew has its specialties. Ladder company’s is tacos and smoked meats; the engine loves its fish-stick tacos and the medics are partial to pork chops with homemade applesauce, Stark said.

These days, the emphasis is on healthy fare, but that wasn’t always the case, Stark said. When he joined the department 25 years ago, cheap eats were the norm, and dinners revolved around pasta.

Now, a main dish is more likely to feature spaghetti squash than spaghetti.

The firehouse kitchen is equipped with three refrigerators and two stoves, property of the Everett Fire Department. However, the specialty appliances — pressure cookers, crock pots, cast iron pans and a fryer big enough to cook a 22-pound turkey — belong to firefighters. Same with the two outdoor barbecues, flat top grill and smoker. (Firefighters like their smoke!)

“There’s not much we don’t have for cooking,” Stark said.

Except uninterrupted stretches.

If you think cooking with kids and dogs underfoot is a nightmare, try whipping up a meal when job one is answering emergency calls.

When a call comes in, it’s stop, drop everything and roll out the door. One minute you’re dicing chicken thighs for teriyaki, the next minute, you’re racing down Highway 99 in a ladder truck.

“Everything gets interrupted here — your sleep, your shower,” firefighter Ryan Fromm said. “Showers are the worst — try putting your socks on when your feet are wet.”

And, of course, dinner.

“If you’re making a crock pot dinner, it usually goes smoothly,” Fromm said. “But if you’re making something a little more intricate and everybody has to leave, it can get messed up.”

Meal prep starts around 4 p.m. “You cross your fingers and hope you’ll get a quiet stretch,” Fromm said.

But even a quick meal can go sideways — fast.

“Salmon only takes 15 minutes, but then, boom, you’re out the door,” he said. “It’s a crucial 15 minutes.”

If an emergency call doesn’t require everyone respond, another crew can stir the pot and take over. But as any good cook will tell you — turning the oven on and off is hardly a recipe for success.

“You have to reset the ovens,” Stark said. “It makes it tough. You’re not going to bake a cake here, it would be ruined.”

Interruptions have resulted in some epic failures: rubbery salmon, under cooked chicken and its complement — burnt-to-a-crisp, hellfire chicken. “That was inedible,” said Fromm, making a face.

And then, there’s the danger of fire itself.

Nearly half of all home fires start in the kitchen and firefighters aren’t immune. The leading cause of fire station blazes? Forgetting to turn off the stove when a call comes in, according to the U.S. Fire Administration.

Fortunately, the electrical system at Station One has a built-in safeguard, said Engine 1 Capt. Paul Bryant. When the entire crew answers a call, “the ovens, cook tops and barbecues shut off automatically,” Bryant said. “Otherwise, we would have burned this place down long ago.”

FIRE FOR DINNER

Firefighters typically work eight to nine 24-hour shifts a month, giving them plenty of chances to perfect their culinary skills.

Menu planning can start a few days ahead of a shift or the day of. “We talk about it either when we get here or when I’m shopping,” said Stark, who frequents Costco on his days off.

A trip to the grocery store starts the day. For 12 hungry firefighters, breakfast means four dozen eggs, three pounds of breakfast meat and six pounds of potatoes. For dinner, figure on a pound-and-a-half of meat for each member of the crew, Stark said.

“We head straight for the meat section,” Fromm said. “Once we spot what’s on sale or what looks good – everything falls into place.”

The Safeway store on Rucker Avenue, less than a mile from the station, is a favorite stop. Plus, staff know just what to do if firefighters get a call and have to abandon their grocery cart in the middle of the aisle and rush out the door.

“They’ll wheel our cart into the walk-in cooler until we come back,” Fromm said. “It happens a lot.”

But even grocery runs can get derailed when the switchboard lights up.

“We tried to shop four times one day and got called away every time,” firefighter Tyler Otteson said. “Finally we gave up and got takeout.”

The final challenge? Sitting down to supper. While 6 o’clock is the aimed-for-dinner hour, it can be 8 p.m. before they eat — or never.

“On a big call, say a fire past 8 or 9, dinner may not happen,” Stark said.

The big conference table is cleared. The silverware and plates come out. Dinner is served …

“You sit down to eat, you take three bites and then a call comes and you’re out the door,” Fromm said. “You come back and everything is cold.”

Worse than a cold dinner are the nights when there’s no dinner at all.

In July 2020, an apartment building under construction at the Port of Everett caught fire. Dozens of firefighters from across Snohomish County responded. The crew at Everett Station One was among the first on the scene. In all, more than 50 ladder trucks and fire engines battled the flames.

“We got there just before dinner,” Stark recalled. “We were just getting ready to eat.”

By the time they got back, it was midnight.

“That night,” said Stark, “we ate a lot of fire for dinner.”

Janice Podsada is a freelance writer and former employee of the Daily Herald. She can be reached at jpod2024@gmail.com

Editor’s note: This story originally appeared in Sound & Summit magazine, The Daily Herald’s quarterly publication. Explore Snohomish and Island counties with each issue. Subscribe and receive four issues for $18. Call 425-339-3200 or go to soundsummitmagazine.com

RECIPE (box)

On a recent Tuesday evening, we joined firefighters at Fire Station One for dinner. It was Ladder 1’s turn to cook and Capt. Todd Stark’s Teriyaki Chicken led the menu.

The consensus: Dinner was smokin’! The chicken was tender and delicately smoked, the rice fluffy. The stir-fried vegetables – broccoli, sugar snap peas, bell peppers and carrots — were tender-crisp. Perfectly done.

“If everyone gets quiet, it usually means it’s good,” Stark said.

It was quiet.

Everett Fire Station One’s Stir Fry Teriyaki Chicken with Rice

(serves 12, including leftovers)

Ingredients:

15 pounds of boneless skinless chicken thighs

One or two bottles of Bachan’s Japanese Barbecue Sauce

11 pounds of mixed vegetables (Ladder 1 uses two 5.5-pound bags of Costco’s Kirkland Stir Fry Vegetable Blend)

One or two bottles of Kinder’s Teriyaki Sauce

Eight cups of uncooked rice

Ladder 1 sometimes skips the rice and adds two pounds of Yakisoba noodles when the veggies are cooking on the grill.

Steps:

Pour a bottle of barbecue sauce on the chicken thighs. Marinate for at least an hour. If you’d like, add fresh garlic and red pepper flakes.

Put the chicken in the smoker for 1½ to 2 hours.

Once the chicken is smoked, transfer it to a barbecue and cook on low to medium heat for about 10 minutes per side, until the internal temperature reaches 165°F.

When the chicken is done, take it off the grill and cut into bite-sized pieces.

In the meantime, spread the veggies on a Blackstone grill and cook for about 10 minutes. Try not to turn everything into mush, keep it a little crisp, said Ladder 1 Capt. Todd Stark.

Add the cut-up chicken to the veggies and pour one bottle of Kinder’s Teriyaki sauce over the mix. Cook for another 10 minutes.

“You don’t want to go too heavy on the sauce to start,” Stark said. “You can always add more.”

Ladle over rice.

Enjoy, hopefully without interruptions!